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Volume 3, Issue 15	9 April 2007	About the Signpost

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Danny Wool regains adminship in controversial RFA	Leak last year likely to produce changes for handling next board election
Association of Members' Advocates' deletion debate yields no consensus	WikiWorld comic: "Fake shemp"
News and notes: Donation, Version 0.5, milestones	Wikipedia in the news
Features and admins	Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Report on Lengthy Litigation


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Danny Wool regains adminship in controversial RFA

By Ral315, 9 April 2007

Former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool was promoted after a successful request for adminship, a few weeks after his resignation from the Foundation, and his voluntary resignation of all Wikimedia rights and positions.

After his unexpected resignation from the Wikimedia Foundation office in March (see archived story), Wool resigned all of his rights on all Wikimedia projects, saying, "To ensure that there are no misunderstandings or claims of an abuse of power, I ask that all admin status on the various projects be revoked."

On April 3, Cyde nominated Danny for adminship. The request was commented on by a record number of users; with 256 users in favor of his adminship, it became the second-most supported RFA after Phaedriel's, and the most opposed RFA, with 118 users in opposition (the next-closest are Karmafist's and Everyking's, which failed with 78 and 73 opposes, respectively, and Carnildo's, which passed with 71 opposes). With 383 comments overall, it also became the most commented-upon RFA, with over 100 more users commenting than Phaedriel's.

The request, which received an unusual amount of input in its last day (discounting sockpuppets, 59 new users commented on the nomination in the 24 hours before it was closed), was protected by Raul654 early Tuesday morning, while the bureaucrats discussed the nomination. To help facilitate public discussion of the closure, a bureaucrat chat page was created, where the bureaucrats who were online at the time of the closing could make a final decision. Of the five bureaucrats who participated prior to the closure, three (Raul654, Redux, and Rdsmith4) believed that Danny should be promoted, while two (Warofdreams and Taxman) found no consensus. After Warofdreams and Taxman agreed that they would support a decision to promote, Danny was officially sysopped. Taxman said,

After Warofdreams' last comments, what it left us at was the only people that wouldn't have called it a promotion ourselves stated that we would support the decision to promote. That's as close as you can get to full consensus in my book. Not everyone has to state they would have made the same decision, but if everyone can support the outcome, that's as good as it gets.

In a comment shortly after Danny was officially sysopped, bureaucrat UninvitedCompany noted that because Danny had not left under criticism, "Strictly speaking, he could have his adminship back for the asking without having listed himself at RFA".

The request received just 68% support, a somewhat low degree of support (most requests that pass receive at least 75% support). However, bureaucrats noted that the request was an unusual one. Bureaucrat Rdsmith4 said,

"The opposers give various justifications. Those most frequently mentioned are his brusque attitude to questions, history of newbie-biting, and aggressive deletion habits, but other editors have objected on the grounds that: the resignation of adminship last month shows a lack of devotion; he has not explained his reasons for resigning from his Foundation positions; Cyde nominated him; his actions as a bureaucrat have been questionable; many trustworthy users have opposed him; WP:OFFICE is contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia and Danny's role in its implementation reflects a similar attitude. These latter few rationales (after the colon) I find irrelevant to the matter at hand: whether he should be trusted with the powers of an administrator."

Other bureaucrats agreed that some of the rationales, including those related to his actions as a bureaucrat or as a Wikimedia employee, had little bearing to his ability to act soundly as an administrator. Redux said,

I'm finding that there's a considerable amount of people who opposed for reasons that are less than convincing, and it is not limited to those who opposed based on Danny's work related to WP:OFFICE — an example: at least two people cited his decision as Bureaucrat to promote Essjay to Bureaucratship as indication of his alleged "lack of judgement". First, that'd be judging him for exercising discretion in a position completely different then the one he is nominated to; Second, while that decision was difficult, it is inevitable to conclude that Danny's judgment in promoting Essjay in a close-call RfB (which it was) is being questioned only in retrospective to Essjay having lost all his privileges almost a year later. However Essjay was not removed for abusing Bureaucrat tools, or any other restricted tool. Consensus in Essjay's RfB was at 89,9% with 16 opposers. Danny made a call that was within his mandate as a Bureaucrat, even if it was debatable (which it was, and I personally would not have promoted Essjay in that RfB). But to question his trustworthyness or competence to perform as an Administrator citing his decision as a Bureaucrat to promote Essjay in those circumstances is a non sequitur —. I'm not about to disregard anyone's input because I don't agree with them, but it is also our job not to allow unrelated grudges, personal dislikes and the like to interfere with what is really the purpose of a RfA. And those cases are there, and it's not just one or two of them — Dan has just exposed them. Of course, there's also a lot of supporters who didn't give a reason for their support, some only signed their names. While this is less than ideal in any RfA, we are, it must be noted, dealing with a very unusual circumstance: Danny is about as visible and well-known as it gets. I find it only natural that some people didn't see a need to expand on what they thought that Danny should be made an admin again. Second, I've identified several users amid the opposers that had not edited for a long time, sometimes months, and came back solely to oppose Danny. They didn't have a problematic history for the most part, but this attitude goes to motivation. I find it problematic to see people who were not active and suddenly came back just to oppose Danny. Canvassing is highly likely in such situations. How were they not active but knew when Danny had been put up for adminship. There are about 5 people in that situation. All that said, I must say that despite what the bots are showing, the actual support ratio, taking everything I mentioned into account, is probably closer to somewhere between 74% and 76%. That doesn't mean we should necessarily promote though. There is substantial valid opposition, and the sheer number of opposers is remarkable. However at the moment I'm also inclined to promote.

Community input on the promotion, as of press time, was mostly positive. Oleg Alexandrov said,

In conclusion, this was closed rather professionally...I wish Rdsmith4 didn't just vote and promote, and that he didn't rush to close this while bureaucrats were still discussing, but I guess there's only so much one can hope for. My general impression of how properly Wikipedia follows due process is that things are improving

Everyking, however, disagreed with the promotion, saying,

Danny received 68% support, below the accepted 70% minimum. Why are we making an exception for Danny? Personally, I am all in favor of lowering the minimum a bit, but only if it's applied to all editors. ... It seems very clear to me that the community made one decision here, and the bureaucrats made a different one.

Kusma, while supporting the bureaucrats' decision, replied,

I agree with Everyking that this should not be an exception, and hope that future RfAs of less well-known people are treated with the same extra scrutiny if they happen to fall into the grey area (which the bureaucrats also seem to be expanding). I think the opposition showed that there was no consensus to promote Danny ... In discussions that won't ever reach consensus, it is sometimes better not to use the default result, and the bureaucrats decided that here.

In an interesting development surrounding the request, Just H was blocked indefinitely for sock puppetry, as were his sock puppets Yankee Rajput, Centurion 5, and Georgian Jungle. All four had commented on the nomination; three of the four had opposed, while the fourth described their opinion as "Neutral, Leaning To Oppose". Their votes were struck prior to the request's closure. Users also noted prior incidents of sock puppetry on close RFAs, including that of Carnildo, where three sock puppets cast two oppose votes and one neutral vote.

The closure draws parallels to the resysopping of Carnildo (see archived story), who was an admin prior to losing administrative privileges after an arbitration case involving a prominent wheel war. Bureaucrats faced a similar decision; many of the oppose votes "contained several votes from users of questionable legitimacy, as well as votes from legitimate users which were themselves spurious", according to Rdsmith4. However, it should be noted that Danny resigned adminship voluntarily, and received a notably higher support percentage than Carnildo.

Comments about the promotion continued today.

Leak last year likely to produce changes for handling next board election

By Michael Snow, 9 April 2007

With the next election for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees looming in June, a discussion about administering the election prompted the revelation that in last year's race, election results were leaked while voting was underway. Although the outcome was not affected, this brought into question the appropriateness of the disclosure and how to ensure fairly administered elections in the future.

The issue came up after Lodewijk Gelauff, one of the stewards who handle user access levels on different Wikimedia sites, raised the question of how this year's elections would be run. With the matter of planning for the next election on the table, previous procedures were also revisited. As a consequence, some of the rumors circulating during the last election resurfaced and it became officially known that preliminary election results were released to the board while voting was still ongoing. Angela Beesley, the former trustee whose board seat the election was held to fill, called the situation "a disgrace."

As indicated, rumors about leaked election results were in the air last September in the days leading up to the official announcement of the final results. The Signpost was aware of some of the rumors at the time, but did not have sufficient concrete facts on the record to justify reporting it then. The rumors were fueled when Jimmy Wales took the unusual step of writing to several Wikimedia mailing lists with an endorsement of two candidates, Kat Walsh and Oscar van Dillen. (These two, as it turned out, would finish second and third behind Erik Möller, with whom Wales earlier had some public differences.)

Although others were also publicly endorsing candidates — Möller had a list of people endorsing him, while also identifying several candidates he favored besides himself — Wales's endorsement drew a mixed reception. Some, including David Mestel, criticized this as an unseemly interjection into the election process, a viewpoint Wales also acknowledged. As others like Gerard Meijssen argued, the message may not really have done these candidates a service — for example, Walsh expressed that she was not comfortable with being endorsed in this fashion, whether or not it affected her prospects.

The endorsement seems not to have played a significant role in the outcome, as the order in which these candidates ultimately finished did not change from the leaked preliminary results. Later, with Möller on it, the board decided to add both Walsh and van Dillen as part of the long-awaited expansion of the board.

Now that the information has become public knowledge, Dariusz Siedlecki, one of the election officials, confirmed that a board member did inquire about the results a little more than a week before voting ended, offering a promise not to reveal them. As Siedlecki described the sequence of events, the election officials decided to inform all of the continuing board members, apparently under the impression that they lacked the authority to withhold this information from the board. Wales sent his message the following day.

Details for this year's election have not yet been set, although it appears that some changes will be in store. Developer Tim Starling, who originally wrote the software used to administer Wikimedia board elections, suggested that the vote should be run by an independent group on outside servers, with no possibility of access for volunteers or staff members who might have an emotional stake in the results.

Association of Members' Advocates' deletion debate yields no consensus

By KnightLago and Dev920, 9 April 2007

A deletion debate focusing on the future of the Association of Members' Advocates, was halted on 3 April 2007 after talks failed to achieve a consensus. The deliberation over the future of the organization resulted in over 500 edits spanning a five day period.

Nominated for deletion on 29 March 2007 (see archived story), the Association of Members' Advocates (AMA) is a controversial organization dedicated to helping users through the dispute resolution process. While their stated goals are positive, the actions and advice given by AMA members has sometimes proven to be controversial due to conflicts with administrators and the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). When proposing the Association for deletion, Consumed Crustacean wrote that the deletion of the Association "was suggested by multiple people on [the administrators' noticeboard]. Specific reasons include the bureaucratic and lawyering nature of the AMA, and that the most useful of its functions can be served by the help desk. The AMA tends to be more divisive than anything."

Upon the opening of the miscellany for deletion debate, arguments mainly focused on keeping the AMA, or "Esperanzifying" the organization. Esperanza was a Wikipedia group whose "goal was to support the encyclopedia indirectly by encouraging a sense of community." However, the organization was heavily criticized for cabalism, opaqueness, and a lack of consensus building. This led to the group being declared inactive after its second deletion debate on 1 January 2007 (see archived story). In arguing for the retirement of the Association of Members' Advocates Guy further explained the term and summed up the majority of complaints about the organization and its members writing:

Esperanzify, that is, mark [the Association] historical, stub or delete subpages. AMA involvement in cases has, in my experience, been one of two things: useless, or actively unhelpful. I am sure we need a system of some sort, but this is not it. Check through past cases, you will see well-meaning and enthusiastic AMA advocates (a word which in itself is as un-Wikipedia as you get, they should be assistants not advocates) taking up cases on behalf of trolls, and in the process pissing off people who thought they had dealt with the troll, only to find it popping up again with reinforcements. AMA involvement in ArbCom cases has never, as far as I can tell, yielded a good result. I have sent people the way of AMA, and I profoundly regret it. Yes, we undoubtedly need a place where people can go to be assisted through difficult times, but that is not what AMA does, what AMA all too often does is to advocate for problem users rather than explain to them why their behavior is a problem. Please, please shut it down. Esperanza was mostly harmless but distracting; AMA is in many cases actively harmful.

Following continued discussion, the level of discourse devolved into confusion, argument, and comments foreign to the issue at hand. As a result NicholasTurnbull closed the deletion discussion early on 3 April writing:

The result of the debate was no consensus. Although there has been a huge amount of comment here on this [miscellany for deletion] (MfD), more recently that comment has not been germane to the question as to whether this page is deleted. There has been much personal comment and argument entirely unrelated to the question, and it is frankly impossible for this discussion (given its current length) to yield any valuable purpose. Thus, I am closing this discussion now as is clear this discussion is no longer serving the purpose of gaining consensus. Although the simple majority for this discussion was delete/Esperanzify, there is insufficient evidence for Wikipedia consensus to do so. As a consequence, for the time being, I will undertake no closing administrative action regarding these pages. I leave the question to others as to what the next course of action to take will be; I personally feel MfD is probably not the place to discuss this.

During the debate a similar organization, editor assistance, was created to be a sister project, and possible successor, to the AMA. Unlike the AMA, editor assistants are specifically required to inform disruptive and unhelpful users that they are being so, and not to automatically take their side. Assistance is intended to help the user become aware of the best avenues to pursue, what policies affect their situation, and how to express themselves effectively and civilly.

At this point the future of the Association of Members' Advocates' remains uncertain. Following the closure of the deletion debate, a wide range of proposals were made on the Association's discussion page, however it is not yet evident which changes the AMA will choose to adopt, if any.

WikiWorld comic: "Fake shemp"

By Greg Williams, 9 April 2007; Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Fake shemp.

WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential.

Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.


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News and notes

By Ral315, Ian Manka and Jreferee, 9 April 2007

$100,000 donation to Wikimedia Foundation

A $100,000 donation was made to the Wikimedia Foundation from Stephen J. Luczo, Chairman of the Board of Seagate Technology, on March 19, 2007. This is one of the largest single donations received from a single individual in the history of the Wikimedia Foundation, not counting matching funds-related donations.

Wikipedia 0.5 released

Version 0.5 has been released on CD. The CD can be purchased from WikipediaOnDVD.com; torrents are also available for free.

Article Assessment Drive completed

The February-March month long WikiProject Biography Spring 2007 Assessment Drive recently closed with unprecedented success. Through the efforts of over forty Wikipedians, 44,324 articles were assessed, reducing the number of unassessed articles by an astounding 33% - from 135,345 to 91,021. In addition, many of the assessed articles further were linked to the appropriate work groups, such as sports and games, arts and entertainment, and science and academia, thereby significantly improving the chance that these articles will be improved. The drive was organized by Mocko13, Ozgod, and Jreferee. Outriggr also worked closely with the drive to bring wide applicability to his article assessment script, allowing the quick and easy assessment of articles. Users wishing to contribute to on-going assessment efforts can visit WikiProject Biography Assessment for more information.

Wikipedia again appears on U.S. primetime television

On the April 5, 2007 episode of the United States television series The Office, entitled "The Negotiation," Wikipedia ("the best thing ever") was extensively used by Michael Scott, who printed out a list of raise negotiations during salary negotiations. He explained his reasoning for using the article, stating "anybody in the world can write anything they want, about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information." This is the second time that The Office has mentioned Wikipedia (see archived story), and the third time it has been mentioned on an NBC sitcom.

After the article was mentioned on the show, Negotiation (process) was semi-protected due to the vandalism it received in the thirty minutes following the mention -- 50 edits were recorded in a little over a half hour, from 9 anonymous and 2 newly-registered users.

Briefly

The GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association wrote about the WikiProject LGBT Studies in their Spring 2007 issue (pdf). This appears to be the first documented case of the promotion of a WikiProject in a print source.
In another policy organization change, the undeletion policy was merged into the deletion policy this week.
The English Wikipedia has reached 125,000,000 edits, 750,000 media files (excluding Commons files), and 1,337 featured articles.
The Portuguese Wikipedia has reached 250,000 articles.
The Wikipedia of Ripuarian languages has reached 200 users.
The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 1,000,000 edits.
The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 70,000 edits.
The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 220,000 articles.
The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 80,000 articles.
The Classical Chinese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
The Japanese Wikipedia has reached 350,000 articles.

In the news

By Lumos3, 9 April 2007

US librarians see opportunities in Wikipedia

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) met for its 13th National Conference in Baltimore on March 29 to April 1. A session on Wikipedia was led by Dan Ream, head of education & outreach services at the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries, and Lucretia McCulley, head of outreach and instruction services, at the University of Richmond Library. They did a straw poll of people at the session. They began by asking the crowd if they had used Wikipedia in the past week. More than 50 percent said they had. "About one-third said they'd recommend it to library users, and about the same number said they preferred Wikipedia to a traditional encyclopedia. About one-quarter of the crowd thought librarians should have an active role in editing Wikipedia. Still, at least half the attendees indicated they had told students not to use it." One of those who said they never recommend it later said this was because students would be insulted as they already knew about it and used it. In the debate that followed, it was pointed out that inspired amateurs have had a rich history contributing to reference works with the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, described in The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester used as an example. Some held that Wikipedia offered them and their students new opportunities to learn critical thinking.

It also emerged that University of Washington's decision to actively link Wikipedia entries with links to its previously underused collections of digitized photographs [1] had resulted in usage skyrocketing and 235 Wikipedia entries now include an image sourced from them. (See some at Category:Images from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections.)

"Wikipedia a Pariah? Not Really, Say Campus Interviewees", LibraryJournal.com, April 6, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-08.

Everything else wiki

Sporadic media reports have featured a new wiki site yet to launch which will give whistleblowers in government or corporations the opportunity to post documents which reveal wrongdoing or deception. The site, to be called Wikileaks, will be powered by MediaWiki, the same software which powers Wikipedia, but will be specially adapted to anonymise contributions. The Wikimedia Foundation is not involved in this project.

Commentators have cast doubts on the site’s ability to guarantee anonymity and its ability to stop itself being swamped with spam and disinformation.

Muncaster, Phil. "Web 2.0 sites could encourage data leaks", IT Week, March 22, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-08.

Thompson, Bill. "Who stands to gain from Wikileaks?", BBC, March 13, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-04.

Features and admins

By The Placebo Effect, 9 April 2007

Administrators

Nine users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Xdamr (nom), PullToOpen (nom), Akhilleus (nom), KFP (nom), Soumyasch (nom), Meno25 (nom), Darthgriz98 (nom), Nmajdan (nom), and Danny (nom) (see related story).

Featured content

Three articles were promoted to featured status last week: Gwoyeu Romatzyh (nom), Battle of Shiloh (nom) and Doolittle (album) (nom).

Three articles were de-featured last week: Robert Oppenheimer, Suzanne Lenglen, and History of Alaska.

Five lists were promoted to featured status last week: Territorial evolution of Canada (nom), List of delegates to the Millennium Summit (nom), List of Georgia Institute of Technology alumni (nom), List of Caribbean drums (nom), and List of Smallville episodes (nom).

No sounds, topics, or portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Ziaur Rahman, Mandy Moore, Medieval cuisine, The Turk, Germany, Daniel Webster, and Solar System.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Strabismus surgery, Mandelbrot set, St Isaac's Square, Rothschild's Giraffe, A man riding a bucking bronco, Mexican Wolf, and Saffron.

Eight pictures were promoted to featured status last week:

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

By Mets501, 9 April 2007

Please keep in mind that features listed here may not be live on the English Wikipedia yet. Also, in general, features that do not affect the English Wikipedia, such as new extensions that are not enabled here, are not listed.

This page covers revisions up to r21091.

New features

Special:Blockip now contains a dropdown menu of common block reasons, customizable with MediaWiki:Ipbreason-list. The default options, as of now, are "vandalism", "linkspam", "insults", and "sockpuppet". (r21000)

Fixed bugs

Special:Statistics now displays an estimate as to the length of the job queue instead of an exact number for performance reasons. (r21071)

Extensions

A large amount of work this week was put into three extensions, none of which are enabled on the English Wikipedia as of now:

FlaggedRevs

FlaggedRevs is an extension which allows "reviewers" and "editors" to rate an article's accuracy, depth, and style, and then set certain revisions as the default version which will show up on regular page views. This extension is still in early development, so expect a number of features to change, be removed, or be added.

Semantic MediaWiki

From the project page:

The WikiProject "Semantic MediaWiki" provides a common platform for discussing extensions of the MediaWiki software that allow for simple, machine-based processing of Wiki content. This usually requires some form of "semantic annotation," but the special Wiki environment and the multitude of envisaged applications impose a number of additional requirements. The overall objective of the project is to develop a single solution for semantic annotation that fits the needs of most Wikimedia projects and still meets the Wiki-specific requirements of usability and performance. It is understood that ad hoc implementations (i.e. "hacks") may sometimes solve single problems, but agreeing on common editing syntax, underlying technology, exchange formats, etc. bears huge advantages for all participants.

Quiz

Quiz is an extension which allows for the creation of quizzes. According to the creator, Quiz aims to be

Reliable and light.

Simple in its syntax and its use; powerful in its possibilities.

Open to suggestions and improvements (by facilitating the addition of new types of questions).

Internationalization

Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla.

The Report on Lengthy Litigation