Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-06-25/SPV

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Volume 3, Issue 26 25 June 2007 About the Signpost
(← Prev) 2007 archives (Next →)
Board election series: An interview with the candidates RfA receives attention, open proxies policy reviewed
WikiWorld comic: "Thagomizer" News and notes: Logo error, Norwegian chapter, milestones
Features and admins Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
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An interview with the candidates

By Ral315, 25 June 2007
The Wikipedia Signpost
2007 Board of Trustees elections
A Wikipedia Signpost series
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 interviews the candidates running for the Board of Trustees.

As a service to the community, we've asked each of the candidates running in this year's elections for the Board of Trustees this year a series of questions that we hope will be informative and beneficial as you make your choices for this year's elections. These questions have been answered by some, but not all, of the board candidates; we hope that by the time ballots open this Thursday, that most or all of the candidates will have responded. You may wish to place the question-and-answer page on your watchlist to keep abreast of new responses.

The questions and answers can be found here.

Thanks to all the users who have translated these questions into various languages. These interviews will soon be available in at least some of the following languages: French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

In other news, the elections will start on Thursday, June 28, and end on Saturday, July 7, with results to be announced shortly thereafter. Users are allowed to change their votes as many times as they want until the close of the voting period, with only the last set of votes counting.

Last week, five new users entered the race: Frieda Brioschi (Frieda), Dan Reif (Jouster), Stephen Kennedy, Sean Heron, and Michael "Chad" Horohoe (^demon). This increased the number of candidates running to eighteen; however, Reif, Heron, and Garrett Fitzgerald (SarekOfVulcan) were removed, for lack of 12 endorsements, a requirement to participate in the elections. 15 users will therefore stand in this year's board elections.

The software to be used for voting has not yet been announced publicly, nor has the third-party organization who will be handling the results of the election.

Next week: The Signpost will report ongoing news relating to the election, following the beginning of voting on Thursday.


RfA receives attention, open proxies policy reviewed

By Sr13, 25 June 2007

During the course of the last week, an RfA on behalf of CharlotteWebb has spurred major discussions. Although the discussion closed as an unsuccessful request for adminship, the debate continues on the use of open proxies. Extended discussion on the policy has even gotten to the talk page of the RfA page, the talk page of the Meta version, and the mailing list. A request for arbitration has been filed as well because of possible misuse of checkuser privileges by revealing private information.

On 14 June 2007, Acalamari nominated CharlotteWebb for adminship. Several hours after the nomination, Jayjg asked this revealing question, which would be the center of controversy:

Can you explain why you edit using Tor proxies?

Before the question was asked, the tally was 32/4/3, and the only concerns raised were on civility. From this, it seems that the question has completely changed the state of the RfA from a likely successful request to a state of fury on both sides.

A couple of days later, CharlotteWebb posted a message on her talk page stating that her IP addresses had been blocked because they were suspected open proxies.

Another industrious checkuser has taken it upon himself to identify and block every IP address I have used in the last three months. I know this because I have read the block logs and noticed that several of the IPs blocked as part of this spree have (oh, shit!) nothing to do with the Tor network. For obvious reasons it would be foolish of me to say which is which, though I don't doubt everything about me will be revealed soon enough. It's so refreshing to know that my privacy is in such safe, competent hands! This looks and smells like an unannounced de facto ban from the English Wikipedia (one having nothing to do with my behavior). Because of the heightened level of surveillance I'm under, any further edits I make from this account will only have a denial-of-service effect on myself and any other legitimate users of the Tor network. So, all I can say is I hope to meet you all again in the future when I feel safer.

She also states that she has been editing under a new username:

I have already chosen to create a new username, after wasting a year of my life on this one. Of course I do realize that anyone with unrestricted use of checkuser will be able to find me if they fish long and hard enough for it. I'll just have to deal with it when the time comes.

After the standard seven days of discussion, Cecropia closed the RfA as "consensus not reached".

During the RfA and after the closure, discussion ensued and still ensues in various areas. The discussion is not on the contributions of the candidate, but rather the policy which the candidate may have broken by using an open proxy. For example, a concern was raised by Gurch that the opposition was concerned more with the breach of policy than the merits of the candidate (e.g. civility was the only concern raised prior to the question by Jayjg) and that the candidate has left the project because of the RfA. There were also a number of comments made on the issue at the mailing list as well. There is a current arbitration case on "whether Jayjg's actions were appropriate and within the limits of the privacy policy".


WikiWorld comic: "Thagomizer"

By Greg Williams, 25 June 2007

NB: Greg Williams is on vacation. This rerun is from January 2, 2007.

This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Thagomizer". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
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Image:Thagomizer comic.jpg


News and notes

By Ral315, 25 June 2007

New York Times notes errors in Wikipedia logo

Noam Cohen of The New York Times noted errors in typography on the Wikipedia globe logo, and the difficulty in correcting these errors. The article includes quotes from Jimbo Wales, Paul Stansifer, the creator of the original logo, David Friedland (Nohat), who refined the image and introduced the errors noted, and Kizu Naoko (Aphaia).

Norwegian chapter formed

In an announcement on Sunday, Jon Harald Søby announced that Wikimedia Norge was officially founded. Bylaws were approved, and will be submitted to the Chapters committee for approval.

Briefly


Features and admins

By E, 25 June 2007

Administrators

Six users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Eleassar (nom), CloudNine (nom), Spartaz (nom), Ericorbit (nom), Leebo (nom) and Kubigula (nom).

Bots

One bot or bot task was approved to begin operating this week: PbBot (task request).

Featured content

Eleven articles were promoted to featured status last week: Stereolab (nom), Geology of the Lassen volcanic area (nom), Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (nom), Uncle Tupelo (nom), SkyTrain (Vancouver) (nom), Ion Heliade Rădulescu (nom), Olm (nom), Fightin' Texas Aggie Band (nom), AHS Centaur (nom), Margate F.C. (nom) and IK Pegasi (nom).

Four articles were de-featured last week: Speaker of the British House of Commons (nom), Bulbasaur (nom), Parliament of Canada (nom) and Tony Blair (nom).

Five lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of New Jersey Devils players (nom), List of Cricket World Cup records (nom), 2007 Cricket World Cup statistics (nom), List of World Tag Team Champions (WWE) (nom) and List of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya episodes (nom).

No portals were promoted to featured status last week.

Two topics were promoted to featured status last week: Devil May Cry game series (nom) and Christ Illusion (nom).

No 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: Hippocrates, Final Fantasy VI, Boston, Massachusetts, Antioxidant, Turkish language, B-52 aircraft crash at Fairchild Air Force Base and All Blacks.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: B-2 Spirit, Smithsonian Institution Building, Hypolimnas bolina, Luna Park, Melbourne, Hupa, NGC 602 and Zabriskie Point.

Eleven pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.

Landslide on Mars

Whipped slave

Maslenitsa

Acrididae

Alluvial fan

Great White Shark
Einsatzgruppen-Killingfull.jpg

Einsatzgruppen

Little Joe

Thespis (opera)

Sami people

South Dakota



Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

By ais523, 25 June 2007

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

  • Some mixes of <pre> tags and section headers no longer cause section editing to duplicate part of the page. (r23101, bug 10309)
  • Protecting a redirect now returns to the redirect itself, not to its target. (r23304, bug 10344)

New features

Other technology news

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, 25 June 2007

The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week, and closed one case.

Closed case

  • TingMing: A case involving the actions of TingMing (talk · contribs). Ideogram (talk · contribs) alleged that he had engaged in "controversial edits", edit warring, incivility, and possibly sockpuppetry. As a result of the case, TingMing, who was already blocked while the case was ongoing, was banned for one year.

New case

  • Zacheus-jkb: A case involving the actions of -jkb- and Zacheus. Jkb alleges that Zacheus has published personal data on him, and has made legal threats. Zacheus denies the allegations, and Thatcher131 alleges on the talkpage that jkb has himself revealed personal information on Zacheus.

Evidence phase

  • 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.

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 remedies cautioning or admonishing Violetriga and Night Gyr to avoid undeleting content deleted under BLP, all of which have the support of nine to ten arbitrators. Various remedies relating to Badlydrawnjeff have been proposed, but none has so far achieved a majority, except for one cautioning him "to adhere to the letter and the spirit of the Biographies of Living Persons policy", which stands at six to two.
  • 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, but a proposal to prohibit administrator actions between the parties has the support of six arbitrators, and a recent proposal to desysop Rama's Arrow (who recently resigned adminship) stands at five-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.

Motion to close

  • 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. If closed, Tajik would be banned for one year, and his community ban would be endorsed, and AzaToth would be reminded that Wikipedia operates by consensus.

Under review