Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-06-18/SPV
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| Volume 3, Issue 25 | 18 June 2007 | About the Signpost |
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From the editor
Next week, we will be publishing interviews with candidates for the Board of Trustees. As a service to non-English Wikimedia communities, I would like to translate these interviews into as many languages as possible. I currently have volunteers willing to translate to German, French, Dutch, and Portuguese, but have no current volunteers willing to translate interviews to Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, or any other language. This would probably take some time, but would be a great benefit to voters who do not speak English, since most questions asked of and answered by board candidates are exclusively in English. If you're interested, leave me a note on my talk page, or e-mail me.
Thanks for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
Wikipedia critic's article merged
An article about Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt was merged this week with a few related articles, after its 14th deletion discussion.
On June 9, Durova nominated the page for deletion, citing concerns regarding the biographies of living persons policy:
With respect for the editors who’ve contributed these pages, it’s always been my belief that ethical decisions where good people disagree should be placed in the hands of the people who live with the consequences. No one could have more at stake in this request than these articles’ subjects. We ask notable people not to edit their own articles; we insist that they don’t own the content and we stand by other site policies. On a human level – setting any personal antipathies aside – it’s fair that we extend one courtesy in return.
The request attracted nearly 200 KB of discussion, and was edited over 500 times. Consensus was difficult to determine, with nearly equal numbers of users arguing for keeping and for deleting the articles, and a minority of users arguing for a merge or other solution. In his closure, A Man In Black said,
We have a handful of conflicting interests, namely:
- Brandt's activities are subjects of significant commentary, and as such should be covered in this encyclopedia.
- This article causes Brandt distress, largely because of previous and potential coverage of minor things he'd rather not have discussed in public but which have been mentioned in minor self-published publications Brandt has mostly tried to bury. (I'm aware of some examples but I won't be mentioning them here out of respect for Brandt; they're strictly comparable to the urinary tract infection example given by 81.62.) The potential for vandalism is also a factor, but a lesser one; any WP article can be vandalized.
- This article cannot hope to be complete, due to incomplete coverage in the sources, which largely treat him as a private figure. "Daniel Brandt, 57, of San Antonio, who makes his living as a book indexer" in NYT is a prime example.
I feel this compels us not to treat Brandt as a biography subject. What then, do we do about our first interest, completeness? We merge this info to the subjects we want to cover, then redirect this article somewhere. ... Hopefully, this will serve both the needs of Wikipedia and the needs of Brandt, while allowing us to move past this wasteful, internecine fight.
As a result, the article was redirected to NameBase (later changed to Public Information Research), and the content of the article was merged to the following articles:
- NameBase, a new article on the database founded by Brandt and maintained by Public Information Research;
- CIA HTTP cookies controversy, a new article;
- Google Watch, an existing article on the website founded by Public Information Research;
- Criticism of Wikipedia (although it appears such content was instead moved to Wikipedia Watch)
The closure itself was placed on deletion review almost immediately. Nominator JoshuaZ said, "I'm really sorry to have to do this. If this had closed as almost any form of keep or delete I wouldn't be doing this, but the current close just doesn't work." The DRV itself attracted over 300 edits and over 150KB in discussion; by the numbers, about two-thirds of commenting users endorsed the closure, with about one-third voting to overturn the opinion. The deletion review was closed early Tuesday by Ryan Postlethwaite, who said:
The question that is asked at deletion review is simple, was the initial closure at AfD correct? Obviously there are two sides to this deletion review debate, on one side, the people wishing to endorse the closure. Many of these users would have preferred to see the article outright deleted, but accept A Man In Black's middleground merge, they make it clear that the AfD closure was an attempt to balance the views of both parties wanting to delete and parties wanting to keep. What it widely quoted is AMIB's closing notes (User:A Man In Black/Brandt) and the thought process put behind his closure. On the other side, there are many comments from the parties wishing to overturn the AfD result that still attempt to show that Daniel Brandt is notable - this is not what deletion review is for, there is also very little in the way of explaining why the close was wrong, with just simple commenting that there was no consensus for for the merge. I have therefore come to the conclusion that the close is endorsed as a complex merge.
The AFD was actually one of two deletion requests made by Durova at the time; the other was a request to delete Seth Finkelstein, also at the request of the subject. Finkelstein is a computer programmer and co-founder of the Censorware Project. That request, closed as "delete" by Sean William, is also being reviewed at DRV.
Board election information
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| 2007 Board of Trustees elections A Wikipedia Signpost series |
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| June 11 | Candidacies open |
| June 18 | Election information |
| June 25 | Candidate interviews |
| July 2 | Elections open |
| July 9 | Elections closed |
| July 16 | Election results |
This week, the Signpost examines election rules and regulations.
This year's board elections will be run similarly to the elections of 2006. All Wikimedia contributors will be allowed one ballot, provided that they have at least 400 edits on a single project by June 1, 2007, and their first edit was made before March 1, 2007.
The election will be handled using approval voting, giving each voter a simple yes-or-no vote on each candidacy. It has not yet been announced who will tally the vote, except that a third-party organization is being contacted. Results will not be released to voters or to the Board of Trustees until after the election; in last year's election, some results were leaked to board members. (see archived story).
One new facet of the elections is the requirement that every candidate be endorsed by 12 voting-eligible users. Endorsements are currently being solicited, through 23:59 UTC, June 23. Each voter can endorse up to 3 candidates. Many candidates have already reached the twelve-endorsement minimum. Any users willing to stand in the board election can present themselves through 23:59 UTC, June 23, although an earlier entry would probably be required to ensure that candidates have enough time to receive 12 endorsements. Candidates must have made at least 400 edits by June 1, 2007, and their first edit must have been made before June 1, 2006. Also, Florida law requires that all board members (and, by extension, all candidates) must be at least 18 years old, and must make their real name public. Candidates must submit proof of age and identity to the Foundation.
This week, eleven users entered the election, making a total of thirteen users currently standing in the election. Incumbents Erik Moeller, Kat Walsh and Oscar van Dillen all announced their intention to seek another term; other users entering the race this week include Paweł Dembowski (Ausir), former Foundation employee Danny Wool, Jason Safoutin (DragonFire1024), River Tarnell (Kate), Kim Bruning, Garrett Fitzgerald (SarekOfVulcan), Steve Dunlop (UninvitedCompany), and Yann Forget (Yann). Michael Snow and Artur Jan Fijałkowski (WarX) had already entered the race.
Next week: The Signpost will interview all users standing in the election.
Admin account apparently compromised, blocked
Over a month ago, four administrators were desysopped due to an apparent compromise of their accounts (see archived story). After a brief respite from successful cracking attempts, another admin account, Vancouverguy (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves • rights), was blocked indefinitely on June 12, because the account had apparently been compromised.
The last activity from the account before the compromise was nearly two years ago, on 24 October 2005. At 15:29 UTC, 12 June 2007, Vancouverguy deleted the category for the candidates for speedy deletion page. The edit summary was "title is inaccurate: should be Candidates for deletion when we get around to it." To the incident, David Fuchs (talk · contribs) responded, "Is there a reason you deleted C:CSD?" With no explanation for the deletion, David Fuchs restored the page.
At 15:46 UTC, the account moved the articles for deletion page to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion when we get around to it, moving the talk page as well. Moreschi (talk · contribs) re-moved the pages as appropriate and the target pages were deleted by WJBscribe (talk · contribs).
Two minutes later, at 15:48, Bastique desysopped the account. One minute later, the account was blocked for 24 hours by H, reversed just seconds later to an indefinite block by Moreschi.
There were no further questions on the incident, and no evidence was presented as to who the compromiser was. The compromiser may have been 87.175.68.193, because the IP's only edits were vandalism pertinent to the incident. After the vandalism was fixed and the admin account blocked, the IP replaced both pages with "Deleted until we get around to restoring it." After those edits were reverted, he vandalised again, adding "Delete this when someone gets around to it." on the top of the AfD page.
It is unlikely that Vancouverguy will be resysopped or unblocked. Unlike those of the four victims of password cracking in May, all of whom were resysopped shortly after the incidents, Vancouverguy's account had been inactive for over 18 months, and as a result, proving who the account holder actually is would be an unlikely scenario.
Controversial RfA withdrawn, bureaucrats fail to clarify consensus
NB: This article did not meet the deadline last week, and so is being published this week.
In an issue two weeks ago, the Signpost covered Gracenotes' RfA and the heavy discussion that ensued for over a week afterward (see archived story). Upon closure of the RfA, which ended with 73% support, it was left to the discretion of the bureaucrats to make a decision. Although a re-run may have been imminent, no consensus was reached by the bureaucrats by the time Gracenotes withdrew his RfA.
In the bureaucrat chat page, there were comments raised from 5 bureaucrats:
- Cecropia (rights • renames • bots • contribs)
- Warofdreams (rights • renames • bots • contribs)
- Redux (rights • renames • bots • contribs)
- Nichalp (rights • renames • bots • contribs)
- Secretlondon (rights • renames • bots • contribs)
Not all of the bureaucrats participated because they may have recused, or have not been available at the time.
The opening statement of the bureaucrat chat by Cecropia stated that determining consensus of the RfA was the primary objective. A later comment by Redux basically summarized the positions of users in the RfA:
Having read all the comments there, I've observed that, on the opposition side, the concern over the candidate's views regarding attack sites is drawing nearly 100% of the opposition. On the support side, there's also been a considerable number of people who have supported commenting specifically that they either agree with the candidate's position or that they would support regardless of his position.[1]
Nichalp came to the conclusion that Gracenotes should be promoted. Cecropia also commented, "Stalking, which is a special kind of harassment (which in itself can be civilly or criminally actionable) is the pivot around which this RfA has been spinning.[2]
Given all of the comments by the bureaucrats and the uniqueness of the RfA, Cecropia came to his own conclusion that "...with a calmer start, there is no reason the community can't actually seek and obtain consensus among themselves, rather than have bureaucrats tell them what it should be.[3] Secretlondon agreed. Because there was no clear consensus established, the conclusion by the bureaucrats was to relist the RfA.
The final statement was by Warofdreams, who has said that the bureaucrat discussion had halted after a lack of discussion for nearly two days. After Gracenotes stated on his talk page that he wished to withdraw his nomination and run at a later time, Cecropia finally closed the RfA.
WikiWorld comic: "They Might Be Giants"
- By Greg Williams, 18 June 2007
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "They Might Be Giants", "John Flansburgh" and "John Linnell". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
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Features and admins
Featured content
Seven articles were promoted to featured status last week: Whitstable (nom), History of Arsenal F.C. (1886–1966) (nom), Supreme Commander (nom), Ælle of Sussex (nom), Toraja (nom), An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (nom), and USS New Jersey (BB-62) (nom).
Three articles were de-featured last week: Mordechai Vanunu (nom), Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution (nom), and Hebrew calendar (nom).
Two lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of WWE Tag Team Champions (nom) and St. Louis Cardinals seasons (nom).
Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Sustainable development (nom) and Portal:Basque (nom).
No topics or sounds were promoted to featured status last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: El Hatillo Municipality, Miranda, Hollaback Girl, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Meteorological history of Hurricane Katrina, Robert Garran, Norwich City Football Club, and History of Puerto Rico. The summary for Hollaback Girl that appeared on the Main Page noted that the song was "especially criticized for its repeated use of the word shit"; the profanity attracted minor attention.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Palace of Westminster, Mole cricket, Lilac chaser, Antanas Smetona, Lichtenstein Castle, Thomas Jefferson Building, and TRS connectors.
One picture was promoted to featured status last week: "shallow water equation model of water in a bathtub" (7 MB animated GIF, not included here due to its large size).
Administrators
Ten users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Wimt (nom), DrKiernan (nom), Mecu (nom), Ck lostsword (nom), Magnus animum (nom), Chochopk (nom), Shyamal (nom), SirFozzie (nom), SchuminWeb (nom), and ElinorD (nom)
Bots
Two bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: HermesBot (task request) and TEMPbot (task request).
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.13alpha (r36195), and changes with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.
Fixed bugs
- A bug which caused the interface for some registered user contribution pages to display as though they were contribution pages for anonymous users was fixed. (r22969, bug 10247)
- Some code was added to prevent the diff display breaking on some old Mozilla versions. (r22970, bug 9948)
- Some bugs in the API were corrected:
- Paging forwards and then backwards on categories containing large numbers of images now returns the correct page of images rather than a blank page. (r23012, bug 10265)
- When the number of jobs in the job queue reaches 0, the approximate number of jobs shown on Special:Statistics now gives the exact correct value of 0 rather than 1. (r23057, bug 10228)
New features
- It is now possible to specify an 'editintro' on a link to edit a page, which changes the text above the edit box; the syntax is to put &editintro=URLencoded_name_of_editintro_page at the end of the URL. (r22905, bugs 5175 and 10215)
- A new interface message MediaWiki:Modifiedarticleprotection is used as the log entry when the protection level for a page is changed, rather than the previous generic 'protection' message. (r22947, bug 8734)
- The maximum length of a customized user signature on a given wiki can now be limited (see 'Configuration changes' below). (r22960, bug 8458)
- Some more features were added to the API:
- It is now possible to query the API for a list of valid interwiki prefixes, using the meta=siteinfo parameter. (r22975, bug 10096)
- The results of a query (prop=links) on the links from a page can now be filtered by namespace. (r23044, bug 10275)
- It is now possible to query for a page's protection level. (r23052, bug 10260)
Configuration changes
- The maximum customized signature length $wgMaxSigChars on the English Wikipedia has been set to its default value of 255; any signatures longer than this should be changed. (This value can be changed by developers.)
Ongoing news
- Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; 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
- By David Mestel, 18 June 2007
The Arbitration Committee did not accept or close any cases this week.
Evidence phase
- PalestineRemembered: A case involving the actions of PalestineRemembered (talk · contribs), referred from the Community sanction noticeboard.
- Miskin: A case involving the actions of Miskin (talk · contribs), who was controversially blocked by Swatjester (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves • rights) for one month (later reduced to one week) for alleged revert warring.
- Abu badali: A case alleging that Abu badali (talk · contribs) has disruptively tagged non-free images for deletion, even when a valid fair-use justification exists, and has harassed editors who have complained about this behavior. Abu badali denies the allegations.
- NYScholar: A case involving the actions of a number of users, including NYScholar (talk · contribs) and Notmyrealname (talk · contribs), in relation to the Lewis Libby article.
Voting phase
- Badlydrawnjeff: A highly controversial case involving the actions of Badlydrawnjeff, Doc glasgow, Tony Sidaway and JzG in relation inter alia to the article known as QZ, which underwent an AfD which was closed as delete by Drini, but overturned on DRV by Xoloz. The resulting AfD was then speedily closed by thebainer. Badlydrawnjeff then filed for a deletion review, which was speedily closed or removed by a number of administrators and others consecutively, including JzG, Doc Glasgow and Tony Sidaway, and the closures often reverted or new DRVs opened. There is dispute as to whether the actions of all parties were within process, and whether, as some believe, WP:BLP takes priority over DRV. A peripheral issue to the case is a 60-hour block of Badlydrawnjeff by Zsinj, apparently after discussions on the admin IRC channel, although some have stated that the consensus on the channel did not favour the block. The block was quickly undone by Gaillimh. Additionally, some allege that violetriga acted improperly in undeleting some articles deleted under BLP. Kirill Lokshin has proposed principles to the effect that the overriding principle with respect to BLPs should be "do no harm", and that suspected violations may be speedy deleted, but that these may be contested through the normal channels, although they must not be restored until consensus has formed to do so, and principles cautioning Violetriga and Night Gyr to avoid undeleting content deleted under BLP, all of which have the support of FloNight. A remedy banning Badlydrawnjeff from editing all articles covered by WP:BLP, and any associated discussions, especially deletion discussions, and those relating to the policy itself has not been voted on.
- Piotrus: A case involving Piotrus (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves • rights) and other editors on Central and Eastern Europe-related articles. Multiple parties accuse others of edit warring, incivility, unethical behavior and biased editing. (An earlier arbitration case, Piotrus-Ghirla, was dismissed without prejudice in part due to inactivity of Ghirlandajo (talk · contribs), who was listed as a party in the new case.) An amnesty for past behaviour in editing disputes on articles relating to Eastern Europe has the support of two arbitrators. Voting on other remedies is split.
- Paranormal: A case involving the actions of various users, especially as regards bias and attribution, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon. Proposals placing paranormal-related articles on article probation, limiting editors on them to one revert per week, and cautioning Dradin and Kazuba have the support of two arbitrators; voting on other remedies is split.
- Hkelkar 2: A case involving the actions of Rama's Arrow (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves • rights), Bakasuprman (talk · contribs), Dangerous-Boy (talk · contribs) and Sbhushan (talk · contribs), Rama's Arrow alleges that the others acted as meatpuppets of banned user Hkelkar, and blocked them for six months. They deny the allegations, and allege that Rama's Arrow acted improperly in blocking them, and in posting private e-mails to the incidents noticeboard. Various remedies have been proposed including an early proposal to impose no sanctions on any of the parties but calling on the parties to enter into mediation, based on a finding of fact noting a lack of reliable evidence in the case, and a proposal to prohibit administrator actions between the parties has the support of six arbitrators. Voting on a recent proposal to desysop Rama's Arrow is split at three-to-two. Voting on principles regarding the posting of private e-mails is split but it appears that a majority of arbitrators will support the principle that private e-mails may not be posted on-wiki without the consent of the sender.
- E104421-Tajik: A case involving the actions of E104421 and Tajik. The case had been suspended to allow a referral to Community enforceable mediation, but the mediation broke down after Tajik was alleged to have edited through sockpuppets while claiming to be away and unavailable for the mediation. Remedies have been proposed banning Tajik either indefinitely or for one year (which have the support of six arbitrators), and reminding AzaToth that Wikipedia operates by consensus (with the support of three arbitrators).
Motion to close
- TingMing: A case involving the actions of TingMing (talk · contribs). Ideogram (talk · contribs) alleges that he has engaged in "controversial edits", edit warring, incivility, and possibly sockpuppetry. TingMing denies the allegations, and alleges incivility on the part of Ideogram. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy banning TingMing for one year, which has the support of eight arbitrators. However, a motion to close the case "as moot" has the support of three arbitrators.
- Transnistria: A case involving the actions of MariusM (talk · contribs) and William Mauco (talk · contribs) on Transnistria-related articles. MariusM alleges that Mauco (who has not made a statement because he is blocked) has engaged in sockpuppetry, edit warring and other misconduct. If closed, MarkStreet (talk · contribs), William Mauco (talk · contribs) and EvilAlex (talk · contribs) would be indefinitely banned from any editing related to Transnistria. However, Jdforrester has opposed the motion to close, calling for remedies against MariusM.
Under review
- Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram: A review of the Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram case. Ideogram and Sean William allege that Certified.Gangsta has engaged in tendentious editing since the main case.
