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28 January 2008

 


2008-01-28

From the editor

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By Ral315

This week, we add another new feature: Wikipedia Dispatches. This report will "cover high quality editing and other contributions that have happened that week in the English Wikipedia."

The name was coined by Raul654, who came up with the idea for the report, and likened the report to the award a soldier can receive by being mentioned in dispatches. Thanks to Marskell, who's written the first installment.

If any readers are interested in contributing, please let me know — I'm currently looking for someone to write the "Features and admins" column temporarily; The Placebo Effect is currently unable to do so for at least a few weeks. Other writers could cover weekly news, particularly that relating to the Wikimedia Foundation, which I haven't been able to cover as well as I'd like to.

Also, my thanks to Greg Williams, contributor of the WikiWorld cartoon. Greg has decided to discontinue weekly publication of the comic due to other commitments, but indicated that non-regular installments may still be uploaded. For at least the next few months, I'll be picking some of my favorite comics from 2006 and 2007 as "best of WikiWorld" specials. I'm not sure I ever gave Greg his due here, so I'd like to thank him again for all the effort he put into the cartoons.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

— Ral315



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2008-01-28

Special: 2007 in Review, Part III

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By Ral315 and Staff
See also Part I and Part II.

Last month marked the end of 2007, and the end of the biggest year (and perhaps the most controversial year) that Wikipedia has seen. This week, the Wikipedia Signpost continues to take a look back at the year that was 2007 in Wikipedia.

Signpost interviews

In 2007, the Signpost interviewed three key figures in the Wikimedia Foundation: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation Chairperson Florence Devouard, and Executive Director Sue Gardner.

In Wales' September interview, we asked him about a trip to China, the fall fundraiser, and anonymous proxies:

Wikipedia Signpost: This week, you visited China. Did you meet with Chinese officials regarding the blocking of Wikipedia within the PRC?

:Jimmy Wales: Well, on this particular visit, I did not end up meeting with any relevant Chinese officials. Those visits are being scheduled for November. I was in Dalian, China attending an event of the World Economic Forum for the group of people they have named "Young Global Leaders". I met some awesome people. Of course they all know of Wikipedia (a few have had Wikipedia scandals or BLP issues or both). And others have missions that are in some ways similar to ours. ... I met Princess Mabel of the Netherlands, who is a delightful person, who happened to have had a WikiScanner situation last week.

That's right, we reported on that last week. What did she have to say about that?

:Well, she hoped that the edit would give rise to a debate about the facts of the situation. But the media only focused on the fact of the editing. She also thinks they could have done a better job of it. Rather than removing the two incorrect words -- which was a mistake since it was part of a quote -- she should have added a sentence pointing out that the couple continues to maintain that they gave no incorrect information, only incomplete information. (I have no opinion on the content of the controversy, but can testify that after a very long conversation with her, it was quite clear to me that it would be absurd to think of her as acting in bad faith around this matter.)

How is the Foundation planning to run the fall fundraiser? Will the emphasis be more on personal donations, or larger, corporate and grant contributions?

:For the most part it will be the same as ever, with banners on the website, etc. Except that I have gotten commitments for over US$1 million in matching funds from wealthy individuals.

In 2004, you said, “In general, I like living in a world with anonymous proxies ... There are many valid uses for them. But, writing on Wikipedia is not one of the valid uses”. How do you feel about the use of open proxies on Wikipedia today?

:I just came back from China. I was unable for that entire time to access Wikipedia. If I had been able to access Wikipedia, using Tor for example, I would likely have not been able to edit. I think that's a shame. At the same time, anonymous proxies do pose a couple of interesting problems for us. First, they spew a lot of vandalism, and the reality of the situation is that more people seem to use such tools for bad than for good. Second, there are some interesting problems that could arise due to the increasing number of griefers/trolls who would like to build fake "good" accounts at Wikipedia while at the same time continuing "bad" behaviors. I acknowledge that it is a tough problem, but I think it important that we think carefully and pro-actively and always try by default to be as open as we can be.[1]

In Devouard's November interview, we asked her about the Foundation's audit, the strengths and weaknesses of the Foundation, and misconceptions of the public:

Wikipedia Signpost: What is the current status of the Wikimedia Foundation's audit? When do you expect a public release of financial statements for FY2007?

:Florence Devouard: The audit officially began on September 17, 2007. It is expected to be finished by the end of the calendar year (hopefully). The audit is being conducted by a St. Petersburg firm called Gregory Sharer and Stuart. This is the same firm that conducted our ‘first-three-years’ audit report that was published last year.

:On the Wikimedia side, the people involved are Oleta McHenry, preparing the books on behalf of the Foundation. Mona Venkateswaran, a financial consultant to the Foundation and a former auditor, is providing oversight and guidance to Oleta. Various others are helping Oleta by providing information and/or supporting documentation. We are also now actively looking for a new treasurer.

:It is hard to plan completion date. It depends on the size of the organization, number of transactions, inherent risk in the audit work, and overall complexity of performing audit procedures. It’s fairly normal for audits to take longer to complete than was initially predicted. The Foundation’s projects (and their popularity) grew significantly over the past year, which meant that spending (number of transactions) increased. So there is more work to be done. Also, there has been some turnover in Foundation staff (e.g., the accountant), which has resulted in some loss of institutional memory that makes it harder to do the audit preparation. So it isn’t really all that surprising that the audit is fairly time-consuming.

Today, what do you think are the Wikimedia Foundation's strengths? What are its weaknesses? How can these be improved?

:People and good will are probably the biggest strengths. I would currently consider understaffing the biggest weakness. We probably miss many great opportunities to do big and important things, due to lack of time. I expect this will be improved soon, when more staff is hired. However, the success of the fundraising will also determine our future hiring ability.

What do you think is the public's biggest misconception about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects? How do you think we can remedy this?

:In January 2007, I defined as one of my priorities the following message: we are not a commercial project. By and large, the public, the corporate world, the NGOs and governmental organizations had no idea what Wikimedia Foundation was about, and considered Wikipedia was held by a private commercial company. As could be expected, such a belief raises questions (doubts...) about our (hidden) intents, about our independence etc... For this reason, in 2007, a lot of efforts have been put to explain that we are a non profit, that Wikimedia projects are here for the common good, etc. I can already see much improvement, not so much in the public mind, but definitely at the level of big non-profit organizations, big private companies and governments.

:A remedy to improve that further? Messaging... explaining what we do, how we do it, why we do it etc...everyone can help push this message: "We are a non profit, we want to bring knowledge to people". I would also consider getting one big grant a very cool way to show the public where we stand.[2]

Sue Gardner's December interview focused on her duties at the Foundation, the fundraiser, and quality concerns:

Wikipedia Signpost: As Executive Director, what are your immediate duties for the Foundation?

:Sue Gardner: I have two major immediate priorities right now: the relocation, and ensuring we’re okay financially. Financial stability is obviously critical – we can’t accomplish anything if we’re bogged down with money problems. So a lot of my attention is going towards fundraising. We have the online fundraiser underway right now, and that is important. And there are other initiatives as well – we’re doing some major donor cultivation, and I am hiring a head of fundraising whose job will be to develop and execute a sustainability strategy for us, etc.

:The second big priority is the relocation: it’s my job to get us safely and successfully to San Francisco. Which involves more than just finding us an office and buying some furniture; it involves a fair amount of hiring too. You may know that when we decided to move to San Francisco we invited all the current U.S.-based staff to come with us. But obviously many people are in no position to do that - they have husbands, they have kids in school, and other constraints. So we will need to replace several of the current staff, and we will also be hiring for a few new positions, like the fundraising one. That's really exciting and fun work, building what is in some ways a new organization. There are a bunch of other smaller urgent priorities – but those are the two major ones.

While the fall fundraiser has raised over $1,000,000 so far, this number falls well short of the $4.6 million in the 2007-2008 Planned Spending Distribution. How will the Foundation ensure that the budget is balanced?

:Yes, the online fundraiser will not cover our operating costs - nor did we expect it to. And that's okay. We have a couple of major donations coming in within the next few weeks: they’ve been committed to, and will arrive in the bank before the new year. I will be going on a mini-tour of potential major donors, starting in the middle of December. We’ll probably do another one in January. And the German chapter is doing its own fundraising, and will be pitching in to buy 15 new squid servers for Amsterdam – which is fabulous and will be very helpful.

:In the short term, I will need to focus quite a bit of my energy on fundraising, to ensure we’re okay for the coming year. In the medium and long term though, I am not particularly worried. We are going to have a head of fundraising, whose job will be –mainly- to cultivate major donations. And I think she or he will have a lot of fun in that role, and will be able to be really successful. Lots of people love Wikipedia: there is an awful lot of warmth and good feeling towards it, and also – to a lesser extent because they are lesser-known - towards the other projects. And I understand that. If I were a philanthropist, I would want to put my money towards initiatives that were able to be effective on a shoestring. And there is no denying the impact Wikimedia is having with a ridiculously small staff.

:I would also want to encourage philanthropists to attend Wikimania. It was incredibly inspiring to me to see those hundreds of very very different people, all voluntarily coming together for no reason other than to do something exciting and positive and good.

With the CBC, you handled the day-to-day operations of a website known for its quality and accuracy. How do you think the Foundation can overcome public perception of inaccuracy, and begin to foster a public image of quality growth?

:Regarding the perception-of-inaccuracy issue for us, I believe that part of the issue is simply time lag between perception and reality. First Monday published a study a few months ago that helped to validate our fundamental premise. It concluded that the best articles in Wikipedia had benefited from massive, open collaboration: working together in the way we do is critical to achieve high-quality articles. So, although I don’t want to minimize quality problems where they actually exist, I do believe that part of this is a perception issue rather than a reality issue. And my feeling is, some of the attacks on us will subside as people get more used to the idea of projects like ours. My mother has learned to embrace Wikipedia. So gradually, will other people who have been dubious about us.

:Part of the challenge is to make it clear to our readers that our core community of contributors is diligently working on building an ever improving reference work. Our fundamental openness is essential for that community to grow and thrive, but it also creates unique challenges. Recently we launched the quality portal, which lists some of the strategies we're supporting to make it easier for readers to distinguish high-quality articles from text that is in the draft stage or from random vandalism.[3]

Foundation timeline

In 2007, the Foundation went through numerous changes:

  • January: The announcement of an Advisory Board, consisting primarily of leaders and experts from the free culture movement.[4]
  • January: The hiring of Carolyn Doran as Chief Operating Officer, and Sandra Ordonez as Communications Manager.[4]
  • February: Brad Patrick departs as interim Executive Director (staying on as General Counsel); Delphine Ménard hired as Chapters Coordinator, Foundation organizational structure clarified.[5]
  • March: In unrelated announcements, both Brad Patrick and Danny Wool resigned their positions as General Counsel and Grants Coordinator, respectively, citing disagreements with the Board of Trustees.[6]
  • June: Sue Gardner is hired as a "consultant and special advisor" to the Foundation.[7]
  • July: Mike Godwin hired as Foundation General Counsel and Legal Coordinator, replacing Brad Patrick, who resigned in March.[7]
  • September: Michael Davis' intent to leave the Board of Trustees announced; he departs in December. His position as Treasurer has not yet been filled.[8]
  • September: Foundation announces intent to move its offices to San Francisco. The relocation, meant to move the Foundation closer to potential employees and donors in Silicon Valley, was completed in January.[9]
  • December: Sue Gardner promoted to Executive Director.[3]
  • December: Erik Möller abruptly resigns from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees; a day later, Möller was named the Deputy Director of the Foundation.[10]
  • December: Foundation approves a plan to fill the two empty seats on the Board of Trustees, and add up to four additional seats.[11]

Next week

Next week, the last installment of the Signpost's exceedingly long series, "2007 in review".

Links/references

  1. ^ Ral315. "Signpost interview: Jimbo Wales", 10 September, 2007.
  2. ^ Ral315. "Signpost interview: Florence Devouard", 19 November, 2007.
  3. ^ a b Ral315. "Signpost interview: New Executive Director Sue Gardner", 3 December, 2007.
  4. ^ a b Michael Snow. "Foundation names advisory board, new hires", 29 January, 2007.
  5. ^ Ral315. "Foundation organizational changes enacted", 5 February, 2007.
  6. ^ Ral315. "Patrick and Wool resign in office shakeup", 26 March, 2007.
  7. ^ a b Ral315. "Wikimedia Foundation hires consultant, general counsel", 9 July, 2007.
  8. ^ Michael Snow. "Wikimedia treasurer expected to depart soon", 17 September, 2007.
  9. ^ Michael Snow. "Wikimedia announces plans to move office to San Francisco", 24 September, 2007.
  10. ^ Ral315. "Möller resigns from board, joins foundation as employee", 17 December, 2007.
  11. ^ Ral315. "Board approves expansion, up to 11 trustees possible", 26 December, 2007.



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2008-01-28

Signpost interview: John Broughton

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By Ral315

Earlier this month, editor John Broughton's book about Wikipedia, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, was released by O'Reilly Media, as part of their Missing Manual series. The book is the first comprehensive guide to editing Wikipedia. This week, the Signpost interviews John Broughton:

Wikipedia Signpost: What first motivated you to write a book about Wikipedia?

John Broughton: In late November 2006, I created and started expanding the page that is now Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia. It actually started out being called "Wikipedia User's Manual", but it took me less than two weeks to realize that writing a comprehensive user's manual was almost an impossible task, because so many editing concepts were related to other concepts (what comes first?) and because of the wide scope of Wikipedia. So the page became an index, something that could be incrementally added to, and where relationships between topics could easily be handled by "see also" links.
In late January 2007, I realized that I in fact could write a user's manual—a book—because I already had written the index to the book. I also decided that it made sense to do this as a printed book, because there was so much material to be covered.
But my real bottom line was (and is) that Wikipedia is difficult for brand-new editors who want to do more than fix typos, despite all the internal documentation, and that a book—for many people—has huge advantages over do-it-yourself trial-and-error using online help. I hope that this book will make it easier for thousands of new editors to much more quickly become productive. And to help them avoid being bitten by initial mistakes. Or bullied by those editors who use their experience as a club. If Wikipedia gets a significant influx of good editors as a result of the book, I'll be happy, no matter how many copies are sold.

How long has the book been in progress?

I contacted O'Reilly near the end of January 2007 and submitted a sample chapter in mid-February. I signed the contract for the book in early September, and finished the first draft of the book in early December. I did some final edits in early January to try to keep the book as current as possible.

What areas of Wikipedia and Wikimedia does the book cover?

The Wikimedia Foundation is mentioned only in three places in the book, and Jimmy Wales is mentioned only once. So you can see that the book focuses on how to be a good editor, pretty much taking Wikipedia (as it is today) as a given. (The intro to the book does give some context.) I mention Wikipedia's sister projects only briefly.
As for Wikipedia, having used the index as the basis for the table of contents, I'd pretty comfortable saying that the book covers most of Wikipedia. There are, of course, hundreds of shortcuts listed in the book, referring readers to policy, guideline, and how-to pages for more details about various topics.
But perhaps the best answer to the question of what the book covers is to suggest looking at the table of contents. You can also click on any section title in the table of contents to see the first page of that section (with an occasional odd character in the text of the page that I'm going to try to get fixed).

Most of the book is devoted to editing help—how much of the book is devoted to the community (e.g. talk pages, RFA, dispute resolution)?

Part II is called "Collaborating with Other Editors". Chapter 8 is about talk pages, IRC, and email; Chapter 9 covers WikiProjects and other group efforts; Chapter 10 covers resolving content disputes; Chapter 11 is about incivility and personal attacks; and Chapter 12 is called "Lending Other Editors a Hand", which includes getting involved in dispute resolutions.

Who is the book's primary audience? What will new editors get from the book? What will experienced editors get from the book?

The primary audience is threefold: (a) someone brand new to Wikipedia, (b) someone with only a bit of experience, who is intrigued and wants to do more, but has realized just how complex Wikipedia is; and (c) a moderately experienced editor who wants to widen his/her range of editing—for example, to create tables, or to create a really good article either from nothing or from a stub, and wants information about those new topics boiled down to its critical essence.
What readers will get from the book is step-by-step guidance on how to be a good editor, with lots of screenshots and lots of explanations not only of what to do but why to do it. As O'Reilly editors reminded me a number of times, the goal is not to just say "you should do X", but to say "you should do X because ... ".
Having said that, I hope that even experienced editors will take a look at the book (in a bookstore) and see if there is more to Wikipedia than what they know. I certainly learned some things in writing the book.

Are there any immediate plans to update the book regularly, or write another book exploring a different side of the Wikimedia universe?

Certainly not another book; I'm not a writer by trade (though I've written a lot in my life), and this book was purely serendipity—I didn't start out intending to write this book, but there clearly was a need, and I had a tool—the index—that made it much easier. But perhaps a couple of articles—I find Wikipedia to be fascinating, and there are certainly aspects of the project that haven't been covered in the press.
As far as updating the book regularly, yes, I'd like to do that. A number of advanced chapters didn't get into this first version, and I'd like to add them to the next. But that depends on O'Reilly, and I'd guess that depends on how well the book sells. So we'll see.

On Amazon.com, the book is listed as "available for pre-order", and some sites, including Buy.com and Overstock.com indicate a publication date of March. The book is currently available through O'Reilly Media's website. Where else is the book available?

Since I got a copy of the book on the 24th (via FedEx), I think it's going to be available via bookstores any day now, although I don't know how long these things take. March 2008 is wrong, I believe.

John Broughton's book, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, is currently available (O'Reilly Media, $29.99, £18.50), and is available for purchase on Amazon ($19.79).[1]


  1. ^ Note: as of press time, attempting to order the book through Amazon showed an estimated ship date in late March. On January 31st, Amazon changed the availability to "Usually ships within 2 to 4 weeks." On February 5th, the availability was changed to "In stock".



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2008-01-28

New parser preprocessor introduced

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By ais523

A new preprocessor was introduced this week (see m:Migration to the new preprocessor), after several days of testing by the community, and preceding that extensive testing by developers, to try to make sure that it would not cause problems (last week's coverage). The new parser fixes several bugs, and makes new features available; however, it caused some problems as well that were not caught by the testing.

The new preprocessor has actually existed in the software for a while (since 20 November, revision r27667 of the software); however, it caused problems with strip markers (the 'UNIQ bug'; see related story) and was disabled on Wikimedia wikis until the problems could be sorted out. It was re-enabled for the English Wikipedia on 24 January (Village Pump announcement), but some unexpected problems developed, in addition to the changes that were known.

There were some changes that fit to some extent within expected behaviour; for instance, the method previously used to prevent MediaWiki:Ipbreason-dropdown expanding templates within the drop-down list stopped working, but this was easily fixed by Tim Starling (who wrote the new preprocessor) using a different method. However, there were other unexpected problems. One problem that affected certain processes like Wikipedia:Templates for deletion was that signature tildes (~~~~) inside a <!-- comment --> ended up being expanded when the page was saved under the new preprocessor; the new preprocessor was disabled for several hours while the issue was fixed, but now handles such cases correctly. Another problem was caused by the change in semantics of <onlyinclude> (which indirectly affected Portal:Current events, and possibly other pages); it now no longer removes whitespace from the same line, and therefore now behaves the same way as <includeonly> and <noinclude>. However, the change for the most part went smoothly.

Two new pieces of markup are available with the new preprocessor. The new {{#iferror:}} parser function checks to see if another parser function returned an error message, and allows a different error message or other markup instead: 

* {{#expr:2+2}} {{#iferror:{{#expr:2+2}}|error}}
* {{#expr:this is an error}} {{#iferror:{{#expr:this is an error}}|error}}
  • 4 4
  • Expression error: Unrecognized word "this". error

There is also the #tag syntax, allowing magic words, template markup and similar preprocessor markup to be used inside tag-like extensions, like <ref> and <imagemap>. There is an example on the technical village pump. One less obvious but important improvement is that branches of parser functions like {{#if:}} that are not used are now not parsed, reducing the load on the server for pages which use such constructs; this means that the pages in question will not use up nearly as much of the page's template limits as before.

A large number of bugs were also fixed by the new preprocessor (see related story).



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2008-01-28

Best of WikiWorld: "Truthiness"

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By Greg Williams

NB: WikiWorld has ceased its weekly schedule, but will continue to run occasional new comics, as well as "classic" previously-published comics. This rerun is from January 22, 2007.

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



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2008-01-28

News and notes

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By Ral315 and Avjoska

Report from the Estonian Wikipedia

Recently, Estonian Wikipedians celebrated their 45,000th article and 6,500th user (27, or 0.41% of them have administrator tools). The Estonian Wikipedia also had their 4,700th media file uploaded this week.

The Estonian Wikipedia still has no approved administrator election policy; this lack of definitive policy could be one of the reasons why only one administrator was proposed in 2007. The first administrator candidate in 2008 had the most "for" votes in the history of the Estonian Wikipedia, and was made an administrator, regardless of the lack of approved election rules.

In April and May 2007, the Estonian Wikipedia received a wave of vandalism caused by the Bronze Night. In the English Wikipedia, the Estonian flag was briefly replaced by the Nazi flag; the Estonian Wikipedia had attacks like this for almost a week in the wake of the unrest.

Media in Estonia has quoted the Estonian Wikipedia more and more every month. Its editors had their first meetup in December 2007, something that was reflected in the media.

This month, there has been a media debate on two big paper encyclopedias along with their on-line versions about to be published, and as a result, Vikipeedia has had more attention from media than usual.

Picture of the Year

The 2007 Commons Picture of the Year contest has concluded, with Broadway Tower taking 1st place, with 84 votes. The top 3 finalists are below:

Working group on ethnic/cultural edit wars

The Arbitration Committee has created a working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars. In the words of arbitrator FT2,

As part of the recent arbitration case on Palestine-Israel articles, a working group is being appointed to look freshly and with a completely open and wide remit at the kinds of nationalistic, ethnic or cultural based editorial conflicts which came to the fore in 2007, which often reflect deep feelings, advocacy, and unreconciled viewpoints in the real world. The aim of the group is to:

# Gain a detailed understanding how such conflicts occur, and the structures and approaches administrators and experienced users face in trying to obtain stability, appropriate conduct, and a neutral point of view.

  1. Generate ideas to cover different aspects of these.
  2. Report their findings and conclusions within 6 months of appointment.

Parties interested in joining the working group should read the working group guidelines first, and then email any arbcom member or the Arbitration Committee's private mailing list, arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org. Application is open to any editor in good standing, meeting the tentative criteria (broadly interpreted and subject to improvement). Applications are due 29 January; the group's membership will be announced by 2 February.

Wikipedia first to create a confusion about the death of last German WWI veteran

The death of the last German surviving veteran of World War I on January 1 went unnoticed, until an anonymous editor changed the article, linking to the death notice on the talk page. The edit was made on January 5, and the death was not noted in the press until last week. "Der Spiegel magazine noted that 'the German public was within a hair's breadth of never learning of the end of an era' until someone who had read Kaestner's death notice in a newspaper figured out who he was and updated a Wikipedia entry on the Internet." [1]

It turns out that it was a confusion in names: Erich Kästner died, but Franz Künstler seems to live on. A possible reason of misunterstanding is that while Künstler lives in Germany (and has German citizenship), he was born Hungarian German in Austria-Hungary, while Kästner was Germany-born German.

Briefly



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2008-01-28

In the news

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By Enochlau

User survey to be conducted

Wikipedia To Learn More About Its Volunteers - The Wikimedia Foundation will conduct a survey on Wikipedia users together with the joint United Nations-Maastricht University. It is said that there is currently little data about Wikipedia readers and editors, and the information will help understand how Wikipedia functions. The survey will be conducted over the next few months in various languages and the results are intended to be released at Wikimania this year.

Other mentions

Other recent mentions in the online press include:

  • What the future holds for Wikipedia - Florence Devouard was interviewed at the World Economic Forum, and she talked about how she got involved, her involvement with the Wikimedia Foundation and some future features of Wikipedia.
  • Monday Breakfast Bender - Wikipedia was used as a reference for the biggest snowflakes ever recorded.[dead link‍]
  • Wikipedia, Ubuntu founders back 'open education' - Jimmy Wales backs a declaration to disrupt the educational materials market, just as open source software has disrupted proprietary software, by introducing a process to help open-content material, while realising the difficulties that lie ahead.
  • People are taking back their power - Users on the Internet have the ability to express themselves, and that includes editing Wikipedia.



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2008-01-28

Tutorial: Reporting and dealing with vandals

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By Luna Santin

Whether you're focusing on creating and maintaining content on Wikipedia, or expressly interested in patrolling recent changes, or even regardless of whether you're a new or experienced user, chances are good that at some point you will probably run across a vandal. This tutorial aims to give you the knowledge and tools to appropriately deal with this situation, when it arises. I highly recommend you skim over this, rather than reading everything at once.

What is vandalism?

Main page: Wikipedia:Vandalism

This probably seems like a silly question, but it's an important one. Wikipedia policy defines vandalism as "any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia." Vandalism is always disruptive, but not all disruptive changes fit into the narrow category we call "vandalism." This distinction can become very important: many users accidentally treat content disputes as vandalism; doing so can muddy the waters in important discussions, could get you into trouble, and generally causes hot heads all around.

As a general rule of thumb: if you can assume good faith, try and do so. There's no deadline.

Finding vandalism

Identifying vandalism is of course an essential element of dealing with it, and there's no end to the list of tools available: if you regularly edit some articles, be sure and add them to your watchlist; you can watch recent changes for edits which add or remove large amounts of text, or are otherwise suspect -- anonymous users (recognized by an IP address in place of a user name) or users with redlinked user and talk pages tend to be new, for example; other resources include Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages (WP:MVP).

If you're interested in learning more about the available tools (it's a bit beyond the scope of this tutorial), Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol is a decent place to start.

Responding to vandalism

Main page: Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism

So, you've run into an edit, and you're pretty sure it's vandalism -- what now? Ideally you can consider each incident on a case-by-case basis, but if you're looking to get a feel for things, I recommend a progression something like the following. Don't worry too much about getting it perfect, the important part is that you boldly lend a helping hand in good faith.

In brief: revert, warn, check, report.

Revert the vandalism

This is usually the first and most important step, when responding to vandalism. There are a few ways to handle this; Help:Reverting contains a pretty useful guide. I'll run over the basics, here.

When looking at a diff, you'll see an older version of the page on the left, and a newer version on the right. You may notice the "undo" button next to the newer edit. If there was only one problem edit, and page hasn't been edited much since that edit, this is a quick solution. Undo has the advantage of frequently working even if the page has since been edited productively.

In cases with multiple problem edits, you can navigate back through a few diffs and make use of your ability to edit old versions of a page -- "edit" the last good version of the page, and simply save it with no changes (most user scripts use something akin to this method, when reverting). If there are good edits made after the bad edits, be careful and try to retain or restore the good work.

If you find yourself reverting vandals on any regular basis, you will probably want to install some user scripts (more on this, below). Around the time I started writing this, Wikipedia:Requests for rollback went live, allowing experienced users to request access to a very easy, fast, one-click method for reverting top-edit vandalism that had previously been limited to administrators -- see Wikipedia:Rollback feature. Review of this process is slated to take place just before this is scheduled for publishing.

Warn, as needed

Template warnings are quick and easy to use. It's good to place these at the bottom of a user's talk page. There's a more comprehensive list at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace (WP:WARN); generally, though, these work in most situations:

  • {{subst:uw-test1}} (assume good faith, maybe they're just testing)
  • {{subst:uw-test2}} ("heeeeey, please knock it off")
  • {{subst:uw-test3}} (more stern, start thinking about reporting if they keep up)
  • {{subst:uw-test4}} (final warning, report if vandalism continues beyond this point)

Substing is good, but not important. If you can't remember the "uw-" bit, just using {{test1}} to {{test4}} will work fine, too.

Some vandals are really trying to damage our work, but for the most part they're usually new and curious ("I can really edit this? Cool!") or don't understand what we're about. Getting angry or frustrated rarely solves the problem, and is liable to provoke further problems. It's difficult to strike a perfect balance between assuming good faith, discouraging attention-seekers, and preventing disruption, but the current suite of warning templates does a pretty amicable job of that. Some situations may call for you to "jump up the ladder" and start issuing serious warnings more quickly, but it's rarely a bad idea to start from the bottom and work your way up, one at a time.

Remember, also, that you can also write out messages by hand. Not as quick, but easy to remember and tailor-made for the situation at hand!

Check for additional problems

This step, fortunately, can be pretty easy. If you haven't already, check the page you fixed to be sure you didn't accidentally introduce new problems or revert to a bad version.

A common problem shared by the pages with both extremely high and extremely low traffic is that several vandals edit the page one right after another (sometimes with occasional decent editors in between). Therefore it is always a good idea to check the recent history of the vandalized page for suspicious user names and strange edits.

Often a vandal (or a curious fingerpoker) edits several pages. It is easy to check their other edits by following the link to the user's contributions from the history tab.

Report to administrators, as needed

A decent portion of the time, it will eventually become clear that somebody isn't just "trying things out," or that they haven't realized they should stop, or that they're earnestly trying to deal some damage to the project. Around this time, it's a good idea to get the attention of administrators, who have a variety of tools to deal with vandalism.

Scripts and resources

Main page: Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol

Development on a variety of tools to monitor and resolve vandalism is ongoing; going into too much detail is likely to render this tutorial severely dated. As of this writing, user scripts like Twinkle or Lupin's anti-vandal tool are popular options, and integrate easily with regular browsing. Other up-to-date resources are listed at Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol#Tools.



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2008-01-28

WikiProject Report: Molecular and Cellular Biology

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By Arknascar44

WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology is a WikiProject that is dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics and articles related to cellular and molecular biology, with its primary goal being "to collect and organize the totality of this information and make it accessible to researchers and laypeople alike by providing an entry point to the wealth of biological data that is currently hidden in obscure databases and journal articles." The project was created on 28 August 2005, and, since then, has grown to more than 150 members.

Interview with TimVickers (talk · contribs)

We asked some questions of TimVickers (talk · contribs), the coordinator of the Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject.

  1. What is the best way for users unfamiliar with molecular and cellular biology topics or new to Wikipedia to get involved in the project
    Dive in and help! Our article worklist could be useful to help people see the most urgent tasks, or you could get involved in the Collaboration of the Month. If you are interested in becoming part of the project in the long-term, just add yourself to the list of participants and get involved in the discussion pages.
  2. What are some of the departments or sections of the project
    We're not really sub-divided in that way, everybody has their own personal enthusiasms and areas of expertise, but we tend to work together quite loosely.
  3. What are some of the project's most recent achievements
    We have produced a lot last year. In terms of quality, we had seven MCB project FAs featured on the main page, and now have created 24 FAs in total (hopefully 25 quite soon, with User:Sedmic putting mitochondrion forward as a current candidate)! In terms of quantity, User:WillowW produced an astounding array of enzyme stubs and the ProteinBoxBot run by Andrew Su has now created several thousand stubs on human genes - we hope these stubs will be "seeds" that will attract more expert editors to improve them. The project is doing extremely well.
  4. Are there currently any ongoing discussions concerning project issues or articles within the project's scope
    Currently we are trying to decide which diagrams to request as part of the Philip Greenspun illustration project and how best to collaborate with the American Chemical Society in their setup of a ACS Chemical Biology wiki. We're hopeful that forging links between the two communities could help us recruit more experts to edit MCB articles, as well as raising the profile of Wikipedia within the academic community.



Note: If you want to hear more from Tim Vickers about this WikiProject, you can listen to the current episode of Wikipedia Weekly.



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2008-01-28

Wikipedia Dispatches: Banner year for Featured articles

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By Marskell

Wikipedia's Featured article process entered the new year having broken new ground in 2007. Net promotions to FA status (promotions at featured article candidates less demotions at featured article review) were 556, or approximately 1.5 per day, a new annual record. Only in January 2007 were net promotions below 30, and four months of the year saw the total above 60.

While an increase in featured article production does not seem unusual given a growth in the overall project, the jump was remarkably abrupt. Both 2005 and 2006 showed a very consistent trend of about one per day (376 and 359 net promotions, respectively) with monthly totals rarely deviating far from 30.

A partial explanation is provided by an analysis of the removals process: while 2005 and 2006 appear uniform, total featured article production, as opposed to net, increased from 437 to 560. But far fewer articles lost status in the first year (61 versus 201) creating an appearance of consistency. Total production would again increase in 2007, to 748, but the removal total was within ten of the previous year, at 192. In short, FA production has been steadily increasing for three years, but this only became obvious in 2007.

Growth was evident at featured topics, which jumped from six to 29. A number of editors continue to expand hurricane related coverage, with four separate topics listed (2003 Atlantic hurricane season, Florida hurricanes, Hurricane Isabel, and Retired Pacific hurricanes). Virtually every major body in the Solar System is now a featured article.

Featured article production continues to follow the Pareto principle: relatively few editors provide a majority of successful featured article candidacies (FACs). Between 30% and 35% of listed nominators have provided between 65% and 70% of FAs. Distributions of this sort are inevitable on Wikipedia as people tend to clump in processes they enjoy, and in this case the ratio is not severe. A number of editors were particularly successful at FAC in 2007. The top three were Mike Christie, Awadewit and Casliber. A full list of Wikipedians successful in nominating a featured article in 2007 is also available.



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2008-01-28

Features and admins

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By Ral315

Administrators

Eleven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Esanchez7587 (nom), Alexf (nom), MBK004 (nom), DDima (nom), Jauerback (nom), Gonzo fan2007 (nom), Malinaccier (nom), Zeibura (nom), Smalljim (nom), Rodhullandemu (nom), and EncMstr (nom).

Bots

Two bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Botpankonin (task request), and Alexbot (task request).

A record forty-two articles were promoted to featured status last week: Portman Road (nom), Hurricane Lane (2006) (nom), Matanikau Offensive (nom), Nottingham Panthers (nom), Meerkat Manor (nom), Imagination (magazine) (nom), The Simpsons Movie (nom), Silent Hill 4: The Room (nom), Interstate 355 (nom), Somerset (nom), Prairie Avenue (nom), Doomsday (Doctor Who) (nom), Emma Watson (nom), Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt (nom), Metacomet Ridge (nom), Calgary Flames (nom), Anodyne (album) (nom), Halo 3 (nom), R.E.M. (nom), Stocksbridge Park Steels F.C. (nom), U2 (nom), The World Without Us (nom), The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power (nom), Offa of Mercia (nom), PlayStation 3 (nom), Northern Pintail (nom), Greatest Hits (Lost) (nom), Battle of Musa Qala (nom), 1983 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), Alpha Kappa Alpha (nom), Ming Dynasty (nom), Jimmy McAleer (nom), Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom (nom), Suleiman the Magnificent (nom), Lead(II) nitrate (nom), Chiffchaff (nom), London congestion charge (nom), Joseph Johnson (publisher) (nom), Treehouse of Horror (series) (nom), 1988 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), USS Illinois (BB-65) (nom), and Italian War of 1542–1546 (nom).

A record sixteen lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Governors of Colorado (nom), Works of William Gibson (nom), List of unmade Doctor Who serials and films (nom), Leeds United A.F.C. seasons (nom), List of Indianapolis Colts first-round draft picks (nom), List of Knight's Cross recipients (nom), List of North Carolina birds (nom), Order of battle at the Glorious First of June (nom), Load Records discography (nom), List of Shetland islands (nom), Characters in Castlevania: Sorrow series (nom), Aesop Rock discography (nom), Washington Redskins seasons (nom), List of North Carolina hurricanes (pre-1900) (nom), Godsmack discography (nom), and List of FLCL episodes (nom).

One topic was featured last week: Gillingham F.C. (nom).

No portals or sounds were featured last week.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Geology of the Lassen volcanic area, Stede Bonnet, Crazy Taxi (series), Treatment of multiple sclerosis, Daniel Boone, Hamlet, and Battle of Ramillies.

Six articles were delisted recently:

  • History of Cape Colony from 1806 to 1870 (nom) — Nominated by Spawn Man on November 19, 2007. The article, promoted in March 2005, was demoted, without objections, per a lack of neutrality and inline citations.
  • X Window System core protocol (nom) — Nominated by Demian12358 on November 30, 2007. The article, promoted in March 2006, was demoted, with no objections, for lack of engaging prose, lack of comprehensiveness, sparse inline citations, table of contents issues, and lack of focus.
  • U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program (nom) — Nominated by Mangostar on December 7, 2007. The article, promoted in October 2005, was demoted, without objections, per concerns about non-neutral point of view and sparse citations.
  • 1755 Lisbon earthquake (nom) — Nominated by Donar Reiskoffer on December 7, 2007. The article, promoted in April 2005, was demoted, with no objections, due to concerns over some claims that lacked citations.
  • Windows XP (nom) — Nominated by OSX (an unusual irony) on November 30, 2007. The article, promoted in February 2005, was demoted, with no objections, due mainly to concerns about referencing and formatting.
  • Galveston Hurricane of 1900 (nom) — Nominated by Nilfanion on November 17, 2007. The article, promoted in August 2004, was demoted, in a relatively large discussion (eight users participating), with comprehensiveness concerns.

Six lists were demoted: 2002 NFL Draft, 2003 NFL Draft, 2004 NFL Draft, 2005 NFL Draft, 2006 NFL Draft, and List of Oh My Goddess episodes.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Siege of Strasbourg, Wildfire, London, Javier Solana, Humpback Whales, Motocross, and Gold dust day gecko.

Fourteen pictures and one video were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.



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2008-01-28

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By ais523

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.6 (d77bde6), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Fixed bugs

The introduction of the new preprocessor (see related story), which is a configuration change, fixed many bugs, mostly to do with section editing.

  • Section edit links are now linked to edit the correct section, or alternatively removed, in all the following cases where they previously were incorrect in some way:
    • The section header uses == signs and is inside the parameter of an unclosed template (this markup is incorrect anyway, but it made it difficult to section-edit the article to correct the situation previously). (bug 2375)
    • Section headers made with <h2>, etc., tags, now do not produce an edit link at all; previously they were incorrect when inside templates. (This makes it possible to create a section with no edit link, for instance in a template, without affecting other section edit links on the page.) (bug 4034)
    • A template contains section headers inside <noinclude> or <includeonly>. (bug 6563)
    • A template contains section headers and is transcluded on the same page more than once. (bug 7083)
    • A page contains a <h2>-style heading after a ==-style heading. (bug 7713)
    • There is other markup on the same line as the heading. (Note that although the section edit link will now be correct if it appears, such constructs may not necessarily create a section edit link at all.) (bug 9156)
    • A section with ==-style markup is passed as a parameter to a template. (bug 11911)
  • Parser functions are no longer double-parsed. This caused several unexpected errors; some relating to template parameters (like {{{1}}}) inside parser functions are documented at m:ParserFunctions/5678, and also allowed {{!}} to sometimes separate template parameters (that template now never separates template parameters, although it can still be used in the other contexts in which it was used). (bug 5678)
  • References in a branch of a #if: or similar parser function no longer appear on the page if that branch is not selected. (bug 9083)

Other fixed bugs

New features

Ongoing news

  • Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.



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2008-01-28

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By David Mestel

NB: I apologise for not having written a report last Monday - I was having a particularly hectic week.

The Arbitration Committee opened two new cases this fortnight (one of which was later dismissed), and closed two additional cases, leaving six currently open.

Closed cases

  • Palestine-Israel articles: Yet another case relating to alleged disruption on Israel- and Palestine-related articles. As a result of the case, remedies were passed allowing discretionary sanctions to be imposed, setting up a working group to address the issues, reminding editors that "Wikipedia cannot solve the dispute between the Israeli and Palestinian people", and counselling to them to consider editing articles relating to the history and cultural heritage of the two sides.
  • R. fiend: A case involving a controversial block of Ed Poor by R. fiend. As a result of the case, R. fiend was found to have resigned adminship under controversial circumstances (meaning that he must undergo a full RfA to regain the tools), and a note was to be made in Ed Poor's block log that the committee had found the block to be unjustified.

New case

Evidence phase

  • Waterboarding: A case involving a dispute between a large number of editors on Waterboarding, relating to the question as to whether the technique should be described as torture.

Voting phase

  • Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject. A finding of fact has been proposed stating that "In their content contributions, all parties concerned have edited industriously and earnestly, with the intention of improving the encyclopaedia".
  • Bluemarine: A case involving alleged civility and COI violations by User:Bluemarine on Matt Sanchez, the article on himself, which has also been edited tendentiously (from a hostile point of view) by a number of other editors, many of whom have been blocked. Remedies banning Bluemarine for one year and placing the article on article probation have the support of seven arbitrators.
  • IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Voting on remedies relating to Giano is split (although an editing restriction remedy is at 3-1), but a remedy subjecting Tony Sidaway to an editing restriction for one year has the support of three arbitrators, and a proposal stating that the committee will determine "Policy and procedure changes regarding Wikipedia IRC channels" separately to the case. A motion to dismiss the case is also pending, but is opposed by several arbitrators.
  • Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user If closed he would be "provisionally" desysopped for six months, and Matthew Hoffman's block log annotated to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified.



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