Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2014-10-01

Let's get serious about plagiarism

Editor's note: This article was first published in the Signpost in 2009. Written by several long-standing editors, including the late Adrianne Wadewitz, the article was subjected to extensive commentary and ultimately influenced the English Wikipedia's plagiarism guideline. With recent debates about close paraphrasing vis-à-vis plagiarism, we feel that this dispatch retains its relevance and deserves a second airing.

Individuals interested in contributing their own featured content dispatch or opinion article should email the Signpost's editor-in-chief.

Plagiarism, as Wikipedia's article on the topic explains, "is the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one's own original work." At best it is intellectual sloppiness and at worst outright theft.^[1] As Robin Levin Penslar notes in Research Ethics: Cases and Materials, "The real penalty for plagiarism is the abhorrence of the community of scholars."^[2] It can bring a community into disrepute. Wikipedia's editors should create their own articles, not adopt the work of others. But while this is an easy approach to recommend, plagiarism may not be as simple as it first seems—it is often committed inadvertently. The best way to prevent plagiarism is to understand clearly what it is, how to avoid it, and how to address it when it appears.

Wikipedia is not a primary source and contains no original research; therefore, everything that appears on Wikipedia should be rooted in a reliable source. The problem with plagiarism is not that it involves the use of other people's ideas, but rather that other people's words or ideas are misrepresented—specifically that they are presented as though they were "an editor's own original work". Even if contributors provide a citation for a sentence, it may still be plagiarism if they do not clearly indicate with quotation marks the duplication of the source's wording. Citations are universally understood as indicating a source for information, not as a license to copy the original wording.

There are three major ways to plagiarize:

1. Failing to acknowledge the source of quotations and borrowed ideas;
2. Failing to clearly mark copied language with quotation marks;
3. Failing to sufficiently adapt a summary or paraphrase and thus following the wording of a source too closely^[3]

Plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement: material can be plagiarized from both copyrighted and public domain sources.^[4] One report about a plagiarism scandal on Wikipedia claimed that "Wikipedia editors ... declared a handful [of the allegedly plagiarized articles] to be OK because copied passages came from the public domain."^[5] If this was indeed the reaction of Wikipedia editors, they were mistaken. To clarify this, think of the famous opening line of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice (1813): "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."^[6] The text of this novel, like the text of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, is in the public domain. However, these are Austen's words and even though no one owns the copyright to them any longer, we need to acknowledge that the wording is hers. By inserting this sentence without quotation marks into an article, Wikipedia editors would be plagiarizing Austen.^[7] Apart from the ethical need to credit her for her words, Wikipedia has a scholarly duty to inform its readers of the source of such a sentence, including the page number where the sentence can be found in the source.

Wikipedia policies say much about copyright violation, but far less about plagiarism. The guideline on the topic was written in 2008. Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales took a clear stand on the issue in 2005: "Let me say quite firmly that for me, the legal issues [surrounding plagiarism] are important, but far far far more important are the moral issues. We want to be able, all of us, to point at Wikipedia and say: we made it ourselves, fair and square."^[8]

Not every fact contained in a Wikipedia article requires attribution. When a fact is "common knowledge"—that is, generally known—it is not plagiarism to repeat it, even if contributors learned it from a specific reference. For example, it is commonly known that Emily Dickinson published very few poems during her lifetime.^[9] Generally, if information is mentioned in many sources, especially general reference sources, and easily found, it is considered common knowledge. It is also acceptable to reproduce non-creative lists of basic information, such as an alphabetical directory of actors appearing in a film. While Wikipedia's verifiability policy encourages the citing of such information, a failure to do so is not plagiarism.

Although common knowledge and non-creative lists of basic facts do not "belong" to a source and do not require attribution to avoid plagiarism, less commonly known information, opinions and creative text do. Likewise, the creative presentation even of common knowledge, belongs to its original author. Contributors can safely re-use the fact, but not the language unless it is a title, as for a job or a creative work, or utterly devoid of creativity, such as a common phrase. From a copyright standpoint, the level of creativity required to claim ownership is minimal. The United States Supreme Court has indicated that under US copyright law, which governs copyright matters on Wikipedia, "[t]he vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, 'no matter how crude, humble or obvious' it might be."^[10] Similarly, most text will be creative enough that its replication will be plagiarism. Accordingly, while text such as "Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830" can be copied without quotation marks, care must be taken not to rely too much on the presumption that text is not creative. Further, one cannot copy an entire source in this way, claiming that it is "common knowledge" or uncreative text. In such cases, it can come down to the length of a string of exactly copied words; good editors get a feel for where it's starting to be dishonest not to attribute.

Less commonly known facts or interpretations of facts must be cited to avoid plagiarism, and creative text must either be quoted or properly revised.

To construct articles that read smoothly while still remaining faithful to their sources, it is essential to learn how to properly use other people's ideas and words. Wikipedia contributors need to know when to give credit, how to adapt source material so that it can be used in an article, and when to use quotations.

When editors want to use verbatim excerpts of a source, there is one simple way to avoid plagiarism: use direct quotations. The words from the source should be reproduced exactly as they appear in the original, enclosed within quotation marks, and identified by an inline citation after the quotation. However, direct quotations should not be overused. They run the risk of copyright infringement if the sources used are not free. Wikipedia's non-free content guidelines offer some guidance on when to use direct quotations and remind us that the "[e]xtensive quotation of copyrighted text is prohibited." But even when free sources are used, the overuse of direct quotation produces articles that are simply collections of quotations. The risk is a fragmentary effect in which the broader context of the quoted material is unclear, and readers are left to piece together the information, which often involves shifts in writing style.

Quotations should generally be used in the following situations:

• "When language is especially vivid or expressive"^[12]
• "When exact wording is needed for technical accuracy"^[12]
• "When it is important to let the debaters of an issue explain their positions in their own words"^[12]
• "When the words of an important authority lend weight to an argument"^[12]
• "When the language of a source is the topic of your discussion"^[12]

Source text is usually adapted using a combination of paraphrase and summary. These two styles generally differ in their level of detail. A summary is more likely to be used for longer expanses of text and to cover only the major points in a passage, omitting or touching lightly on examples or definitions; a summary is generally expected to be considerably shorter than the original source. By contrast, paraphrasing is more likely to be closer to the original and may be nearly as long as or even longer than the source.

Adapting source text, whether by paraphrasing or summarizing, is a valuable skill, and contributors to Wikipedia need to be alert to the potential for inadvertent plagiarism. Many editors believe that by changing a few words here or there—or even by changing a great number of the words found in the original source—they have avoided plagiarism. This is not necessarily the case. Nor does the mere rearrangement of clauses, sentences, or paragraphs avoid the problem.

Problems in paraphrasing

In this example, Wikipedia's article text is an attempt at paraphrasing the source. However, almost all of the original word choice, word order and sentence structure is retained.

Source

"A statement from the receiver, David Carson of Deloitte, confirmed that 480 of the 670 employees have been made redundant ... At least 100 Waterford Crystal employees are refusing to leave the visitors' gallery at the factory tonight and are staging an unofficial sit-in. The employees say they will not be leaving until they meet with Mr Carson. There were some scuffles at one point and a main door to the visitors' centre was damaged ... Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly, who is one of those currently occupying the visitors' gallery, said the receiver had told staff he would not close the company while there were interested investors."

Wikipedia article:

"A statement issued by the receiver, Deloitte's David Carson, confirmed that, of the 670 employees, 480 of them would be laid off. The workers responded angrily to this unexpected decision and at least 100 of them began an unofficial sit-in in the visitors' gallery at the factory that night. They insisted they would refuse to leave until they had met with Carson. Following the revelations, there was a minor scuffle during which the main door to the visitors' centre was damaged. Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly was amongst those who occupied the visitors' gallery."

Analysis:

• "A statement issued by the receiver, Deloitte's David Carson, confirmed that, of the 670 employees, 480 of them would be laid off" vs. "A statement from the receiver, David Carson of Deloitte, confirmed that 480 of the 670 employees have been made redundant". – The structure of Wikipedia's statement is essentially the same as the original. Changing a single word and slightly reordering one phrase is not enough to constitute a paraphrase.
• "They insisted they would refuse to leave until they had met with Carson" vs. "The employees say they will not be leaving until they meet with Mr Carson". – The structure of this sentence is the same.
• "there was a minor scuffle during which the main door to the visitors' centre was damaged" vs. "There were some scuffles at one point and a main door to the visitors' centre was damaged". – The structure and language of the two sentences are the same.
• "Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly was amongst those who occupied the visitors' gallery" vs. "Local Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Kelly, who is one of those currently occupying the visitors' gallery". – This slight rewording does not change the fact that the underlying structure and language are the same. Minor changes, such as "was amongst those" --> "is one of those" and "occupied" --> "currently occupying", are not enough to constitute an original rewriting of the passage.

In terms of both plagiarism and copyright, the author of a text not only "owns" the precise, creative language he or she uses, but less tangible creative features of presentation, which may incorporate the structure of the piece and the choice of facts. In terms of plagiarism, but not copyright, the author also "owns" the facts or his or her interpretation of them, unless these are, as mentioned above, common knowledge. Revising to avoid plagiarism means completely restructuring a source in word choice and arrangement while giving due credit for the ideas and information taken from it.

In this paraphrase, the language and structure of the passage has been significantly altered, making it an original expression of the ideas. The ideas have, of course, been properly credited.

Source:

"In earlier times, surveillance was limited to the information that a supervisor could observe and record firsthand and to primitive counting devices. In the computer age surveillance can be instantaneous, unblinking, cheap, and, maybe most importantly, easy." — From Carol Botan and Mihaela Vorvoreanu, "What do Employees Think about Electronic Surveillance at Work"? p.  126^[13]

Paraphrase:

"Scholars Carl Botan and Mihaela Vorvoreanu claim that the nature of workplace surveillance has changed over time. Before the arrival of computers, managers could collect only small amounts of information about their employees based on what they saw or heard. However, because computers are now standard workplace technology, employers can monitor employees efficiently (126)."^[13]

This adaptation, from the featured article about Thomas Eakins' The Swimming Hole, displays attribution of opinion and uses a combination of paraphrase and quotation:

The Swimming Hole represented the full range of Eakins' techniques and academic principles. He used life study, photography, wax studies, and landscape sketches to produce a work that manifested his interest in the human form.^[14] Lloyd Goodrich (1897–1987) believed the work was "Eakins's most masterful use of the nude", with the solidly conceived figures perfectly integrated into the landscape, an image of subtle tonal construction and one of the artist's "richest pieces of painting".^[15] Another biographer, William Innes Homer (b. 1929), was more reserved and described the poses of the figures as rigidly academic. Homer found inconsistencies in paint quality and atmospheric effect, and wrote that the painting was unsuccessful in reconciling antique and naturalistic ideals. For him, "it is as though these nudes had been abruptly transplanted from the studio into nature".^[16]

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule for how much revision is necessary to avoid plagiarizing. In evaluating copyright concerns, the United States courts adopt a "substantial similarity" test that compares the pattern and sequence of two works, finding such similarity where "the ordinary observer [reading two works], unless he set out to detect the disparities, would be disposed to overlook them, and regard their aesthetic appeal as the same."^[17] Even if all of the language is revised, a court may find copyright infringement under the doctrine of "comprehensive non-literal similarity" if "the pattern or sequence of the two works is similar".^[18] Likewise, plagiarism may exist if readers comparing the two works would come away with a sense that one is copied from or too heavily based on another.

Editors should always compare their final drafts with the sources they have used to make sure that they have not accidentally come too close in language and structure or failed to attribute when necessary.

One way editors can minimize the tendency to reuse text is to not copy and paste text into their working drafts. Instead, editors should assemble and organize their notes, excerpts, and other source materials by topic. This can be done either in hard copy or by using an electronic filing system. Editors should then read and absorb what the sources say and proceed to writing a draft version, in their own words, of each topic. These drafts can be assembled according to the editor's own organizational schema. There are a number of ways to organize material; editors should not slavishly follow a source's structure, either in overall organization, or in the composition and arrangement of sentences and paragraphs within each section. This method reduces the temptation (and makes it harder) to adopt verbatim language and organization from the sources.

At the same time, when taking notes from a source for their own use, editors may find it useful to take them verbatim, with quotation marks, if they will not have access to that source as they are writing their final draft. If a different language is used in note-taking, an editor may find him or herself accidentally restoring some of the author's original words when constructing a draft. Being able to see at a glance exactly how the source was written can help avoid this.

Use multiple sources, if possible. Editors may find it more difficult to avoid following that text too closely if they rely on only one source, as they will necessarily be limited to those details selected by the author of that original source. It is not impossible to revise and reorganize a single source sufficiently to avoid plagiarism or copyright infringement, but it is more difficult.

Editors should be careful not to add plagiarized material to Wikipedia, and can help to protect the integrity of the project by spotting plagiarism and helping to correct it. When large sections of a source are copied word-for-word into an article, it is often easy to spot and repair. The use of ideas or uncommon facts without credit, possibly the most common form of plagiarism, can be repaired by sourcing. Detecting and dealing with subtler forms of plagiarism may be more challenging, but is usually possible.

Red flags for plagiarism include:

• Inconsistent authorial voice: Although many articles on Wikipedia are multi-authored, sudden switches in tone throughout an article may still be a sign of plagiarism. For example, if the "History" section in an article on a city sounds like a tourist brochure and the "Climate and geography" section is filled with highly technical and jargon-filled language, readers might suspect that sources have been followed too closely. A particular tip-off is the sudden introduction of sophisticated text or ideas that seem inconsistent with the authorial voice of the material surrounding it.
• Inconsistent language: If the tone of an article or passage is colloquial or does not feel "right"—for example if jargon or idioms are used incorrectly—a source may have been misused.
• Atypical elegance: A reader may have cause for concern if a section of an article seems to have been written "too well". Much writing on Wikipedia is not at the level of professional publications. Therefore, when readers suddenly come across professional-level writing on Wikipedia, with no spelling or grammatical errors, they may want to investigate further. If the article has been extensively copy-edited, such as in undergoing the featured articles process, such polish is in itself less of a red flag, though even extensive copy-editing does not guarantee the absence of plagiarism.
• Rapid maturation: Fully developed articles that appear in very few edits may signal plagiarism. While sometimes editors construct articles in sandboxes or off-wiki, sometimes a sudden maturity of text signals that material has quickly been added without careful attention to the issue of plagiarism.

If you suspect plagiarism, you may wish to start by checking the article's history. If the article has a multi-authored feel but appears to be largely single-authored, there could be reason for concern, as this may suggest a contributor has borrowed too heavily from the diction of multiple sources. It may be worth checking the contribution history of an editor across a number of articles, to see if there is a discernible authorial voice or if there is a pattern of such inconsistency. There may be a history of such issues on the editor's talk page.

Another good starting point is to review the article's sources. Particularly when plagiarism results from misunderstanding—rather than intent to deceive—a contributor may clearly identify the sources from which s/he has plagiarized, and even link to them. If the source is in another language, for instance, the contributor may be under the mistaken belief that the act of translation is a sufficient revision to eliminate concerns of plagiarism. On the contrary, whether or not the work is free, the obligation remains to give credit to authors of foreign language texts for their creative expression, information and ideas, and, if the work is unfree, direct translation is likely to be a copyright violation as well.^[19][20] Concerned readers can also use search engines and automated plagiarism detection. When searching manually, it is helpful to isolate small sections of text from an article. However, some results found this way may be from mirrors and forks of Wikipedia itself, particularly if the article is not newly created.

There are templates such as {{Copypaste}} or {{Close paraphrase}} that are added to the top of a suspect section or article and may draw attention to the problem; concerns might be noted at an appropriate WikiProject or forum. Just as Wikipedia currently has no clear guideline or policy on plagiarism, it has no clear forum for addressing plagiarism concerns. However, Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup stands to assist where plagiarism may co-exist with copyright infringement, and, even where it doesn't, project members may be able to assist with plagiarism.

This article or section appears to have been copied and pasted from a source, possibly in violation of a copyright. Please edit this article to remove any non-free copyrighted content and attribute free content correctly. Follow the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. Remove this template after editing.

If an article seems to follow the language and structure of another work too closely, first consider whether it is a matter of copyright infringement or plagiarism. If the source is not free and the text may represent a legal concern for Wikipedia, follow the procedures set out at Wikipedia's copyright violations policy. If the source is free, steps should be taken to remedy plagiarism. Wikipedia's proposed guideline on plagiarism suggests politely discussing concerns with the contributor. Further steps may need to be taken to address contributors who persist in plagiarism after being made aware of the problem, through Requests for comment or—if the contributor proves disruptive—through a report at the administrator's incidents noticeboard. The plagiarism will also need to be repaired as soon as possible. If it can be attributed, revised or turned into a usable quotation, it should be. If the editor who discovers the problem is unable to repair it or uncertain of how it should be addressed, it should be brought to the attention of other contributors.

As the main page says, Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Anyone can, and should, repair plagiarism.

• WikiProject Copyright Cleanup
• Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing
• Plagiarism.org
• Quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing, Purdue University

2014-10-01

Wikipedia article published in peer-reviewed journal; Wikipedia in education

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By Tony1, Peaceray, and Pine

Journal chief: "Modern medicine comes online"

The argument on Wikipedia over the benefits of crowdsourcing versus the primacy of "expert" contributors stretches back to co-founder Larry Sanger's break with the project to start the alternative Citizendium. Sanger's hope was that the new site would gain a much higher level of credibility through the scholarly and scientific qualifications of its contributors. He has since been critical of Wikipedia's accuracy and has questioned its credibility due to the absence of a formal peer-review process. Nevertheless, Wikipedia seems to have flourished while Citizendium remains on the outer margins of internet history.

Despite or, perhaps, because of its "anyone can edit" approach, Wikipedia itself has always been subject to dynamic tension between amateur and expert, generalist and specialist, and those with and without formal credentials in the field in which they are editing. In the latest chapter of this dynamic flux, longtime medical editor James Heilman (Doc James) announced on 3 October that for the first time a Wikipedia article has been published by Open Medicine, a peer-reviewed academic journal. "Dengue fever: a Wikipedia clinical review" is essentially the Wikipedia article on that serious infectious tropical disease, with some aspects of formatting and structure adapted to comply with the journal's house style. The journal's formal peer-review appeared on the article's talkpage.

The article is bound to ruffle a few feathers in the medical and academic worlds, if for no other reason than it challenges the established conventions that have defined the cloistered world of research publishing for more than a century. Heilman told the Signpost that a key stumbling block was the notion of credentialled authorship—something that goes against a basic ethic on Wikipedia but which in the open research literature is central to gaining readers' trust in accuracy and balance. True to this, Heilman is listed as the primary author in the Open Medicine article (on the basis that his contributions were the largest), with Wikipedians Jacob de Wolff, Graham M Beards, and Brian J Basden as the other authors. All are credentialled experts in the health sciences and are listed with their institutions. The authors' roles for the English Wikipedia are then listed under the unintuitive title of "competing interests": Heilman, Badsen, and De Wolff are board members of the Wiki Project Med Foundation, De Wolff is the founder of the English Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine, and Beards is a featured article coordinator.

Heilman says the publication of the review article underlines the fact that most mature Wikipedia articles are indeed essentially literature reviews by the very design of site policy. Like Wikipedia articles, review articles in journals (a sought-after genre for career researchers because of high readerships and citations) typically contain little or no original research. But when it comes to medical practice as opposed to research, he says: "what doctors want and need in the rush of their everyday practice is review articles, not original research articles, which are usually too narrowly pitched for immediate applied purposes". Review articles are like information hubs that present summary context and a great number of direct references, and this publication highlights their similarity to Wikipedia articles and the utility of both sources to working health professionals. Heilman comments that it is little wonder that Wikipedia is the world's most consulted source of health-related information, which appears to cast it already as a popular way to access the traditional function of review articles.

However, the fact remains that the boundaries around research publishing are closely guarded, perhaps with some justification. In a provocatively titled editorial in the same publication—"Modern medicine comes online"—Open Medicine's associate editor, James Maskalyk, wrote that Wikipedia lacks three things that are very important to research journals. The first is the identification of a single, responsible author "who acts as guarantor of the integrity of the work". Then there is review by "a trained editorial team, attuned to publication ethics". This second point may surprise Wikipedians who know the rigours of community nitpicking, particularly in the ego-crushing featured article forum. They may also be surprised that the journal perceives matters of language and formatting to be such a cleft between Wikipedia's text and that of the open research literature:

“

A lack of a single, authorial voice in the Wiki process means not only that strong personal recommendations are unlikely, but also that the style can be inconsistent, and the sentences and transitions between them less smooth, resulting in a paper that might be challenging to read. Some “Wikipedians” have little traditional experience in publishing and the editorial process that accompanies it, which can lead to frustrations about content or format that might fit a journal’s preference.

”

The third issue raised by the journal is the absence for Wikipedia articles of "formal peer review by at least one, and often many, experts who point out conflicts, errors, redundancies, or gaps". There was a gentle warning that "should the example of the dengue article be copied, this may lead to a number of rejected submissions to formally peer-reviewed journals."

Heilman says that Wikipedia medical articles might indeed sacrifice a consistent narrative unless they are very well looked after, but that this is not uncommon for prominent topics. He drew an analogy with featured articles; while some do lose their shine over time, others keep both polish and reliability, and are continually updated, through the vigilance of proud editors. This, he says, shows one of the great advantages of Wikipedia: its ability to stay abreast of fast-moving medical topics. (In this respect, the journal has made arrangements for annual updates to be indexed with PubMed—a casual reader might be struck by how much the article has evolved since the "snapshot" was taken last year for Open Medicine's external peer-review.)

Wikipedia already has analogues of the traditional academic review article, he observes, with featured forums akin to peer-reviewing, and key contributors and featured nominators akin to primary authors. Most high-quality Wikipedia articles in the health sciences, he maintains, are written by only a small number of authors. In 2014, WikiProject Medicine conducted a survey of all editors with more than 250 edits in health-science articles on all language Wikipedias during 2013. This revealed that about 50% of these editors are medically qualified as healthcare professionals, of which the greater proportion are qualified physicians.

Heilman's hope is "that making people aware of the expertise in the Wikipedia communities and the close relationship of our articles with traditional academic genres will attract more professional researchers to join us as editors". The publication of Dengue fever in the academic literature may be an important step in achieving this.

Wikipedia becomes part of the curriculum

Bruce Maiman wrote that Wikipedia has grown up on college campuses in his column in The Sacramento Bee (September 23). "Gradually and informally, educators who repeatedly warned students to avoid Wikipedia like the plague began making it part of their course curriculum, assigning students to contribute content, either by writing original Wikipedia articles or editing existing ones."

Maiman notes the incorporation of Wikipedia into coursework at Georgetown University, Rice University, California Maritime Academy, Pomona College, University of California at Berkeley, Davis, and San Francisco, and the Wikipedia education programs in the Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The column mentions the work of Kevin Gorman, the Wikipedian in Residence at UC Berkeley. He quotes students and faculty as well as LiAnna Davis, Director of Programs at the Wiki Education Foundation, about its efforts to transition collegiate involvement from those individual faculty who edit Wikipedia to more formal educational programs.

Maiman commented that "since the program’s launch in 2010, nearly 10,000 students in some 500 classes have contributed 44,000 printed pages of content, editing thousands of existing articles and creating 1,900 new ones, all of it overseen by academics while students get credit. Participating schools run the gamut from Ivy League to community college."

He also writes that students find themselves challenged by peer reviews and the norm of consensus among Wikipedians, as opposed to the usual academic model of having just one professor judging the students' work.

Subsequent to the column's publication in The Sacramento Bee, several diverse sources have rerun versions of the column online and in print, including the Athens-Banner Herald, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, eCampus News, Myrtle Beach Online, and the Savannah Morning News.

In brief

• No new administrators were appointed on English Wikipedia in September 2014: See User:WereSpielChequers/RFA by month for the history of RfAs. Only 16 editors have been appointed to adminship in 2014 as of the end of September.
• Individual Engagement Grant (IEG) and Annual Plan Grants (APG) proposals open for comment: These two grant programs are funded through the Wikimedia Foundation. Proposals are reviewed by WMF staff and the volunteer grants committees for each type of grant. The total amount of requested IEGs in this round exceeds $500,000, and the total amount of requested APGs in this round exceeds $5 million.
• WMF announces new Vice President of Engineering: Damon Sicore has been appointed to this long-planned position. WMF is splitting the Product and Engineering department. Erik Moeller will lead the Product side. Damon's background includes experience at the Mozilla Foundation. There is a Wikimedia Blog post about this announcement.
• Privacy violation results in a resignation and a removal of user rights: A request for comment on Meta about an alleged privacy violation by a steward and a global sysop resulted in the resignation of the steward, and a different steward removing rights from the global sysop. The Ombudsman commission is conducting a separate review of the incident. The Wikimedia Foundation's Philippe Beaudette says that WMF will prohibit the offending users from holding advanced permissions for one year.
  
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2014-10-01

Animals, farms, forests, USDA? It must be WikiProject Agriculture

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By Rcsprinter123

This week, the Signpost went down to the farm to have a look at the work of WikiProject Agriculture, which has been in existence since 2007 and has a scope covering crop production, livestock management, aquaculture, dairy farming and forest management. The project also covers related areas, including both governmental and NGO regulatory agencies, agribusiness, support agencies such as 4-H, agricultural products including fertilizers and herbicides, pest management, veterinary medicine and farming equipment and facilities. That's a lot of areas, much more broad than a lot of projects, and with around 50 members it certainly seems to be doing OK. We haven't spoken to them before, although an early report produced a profile back in 2007. This year, however, the members were definitely not reserved in having a chat to reveal the secrets of working with this outdoor project, and we spoke to Montanabw, SMcCandlish, Redddbaron and Jytdog.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Agriculture? Do you have life experience in this area? Have you contributed to any of the project's Good or Featured Articles?

• Montanabw: Yes, I have an interest in livestock, farming and ranching. I spent my childhood on a diversified wheat and cattle operation in Montana, continue to live in a rural area in Montana, where I am a small landowner and keep some horses. I have been a major contributor to a number of GA and FA class articles related to horses.
• SMcCandlish: As an anthropologist by training, I have a strong interest in agriculture (including horticulture, and animal domestication and husbandry) from pre-historical, historical and cultural perspectives. As a classic liberal (non-socialist) progressive activist, I have an further interest in the field as it relates to ecology, globalism, sustainability and related topics. My interest in domestic animal breeds also overlaps with that of livestock breeding more generally. I come from a ranching family and grew up in a semi-rural environment, with horses out back and various other livestock, including chickens, ducks and rabbits, but have never been a professional farmer or rancher. GA/FA: No idea. I don't keep track of such things, and generally don't notice unless someone leaves me a notice about article promotion on my talk page. To me, making ten terrible stubs into acceptable articles is a better use of my time than making one acceptable article fantastic, and they both take about the same effort.
• Redddbaron: I was researching ways to integrate animal husbandry into my organic vegetable production experimental project. When I came across Holistic management I was curious. There seemed to be a potential way to integrate it into my trials. So of course the first thing I did was wiki Holistic management. I found the information on the page was woefully inadequate at that time. It was a very poor page currently under deletion notice. So I went ahead and did the research the hard way, but saved the links I had found. I figured that maybe I could make it better for the next guy by rewriting the page after it got deleted. So I joined Wikipedia. Once here and editing to improve several pages, I decided to join WikiProject Agriculture since it appeared that there was an acknowledgement there was improvement needed on many more agricultural pages.
• Jytdog: I was a sleepy editor until about two and a half years, ago, when I walked by a protest about Monsanto and wondered what was up with it. I went to the internet and discovered the article here on Monsanto, which was a complete piece of ideological crap. Likewise, pages on genetically modified crops and food. This led me to other ag-related articles where I discovered that ideology about animal rights, environmentalism, and chemophobia – a huge bias against conventional agriculture – pretty much dominated many ag articles, and there was little content about the realities of farming in the world today, and really terrible sourcing. And just a huge, "don't know what they don't know" level of ignorance about farming and what farmers are actually like: savvy, hard working business people who are trying to make a living. Far too often farmers' perspectives are ignored altogether, and when farmers are discussed they are treated as dupes or some kind of victims. Its been interesting.

Are there any significant gaps in the coverage of Agriculture on the English Wikipedia? Are some regions or methods better represented than others? What can be done to fill the gaps?

• Montanabw: I think the quality gap is more of a problem than the quantity gap, mostly due to lack of users with actual knowledge, but also some problems with POV-pushing, some of which may be by people who could be paid editors with an interest in agribusiness. I have noticed particular problems with articles on organic foods and farming, but also in articles on cattle raising techniques.
• SMcCandlish: Ditto what Montanabw said, plus concerns about others with a COI, such as breeders. It seems to me that most important articles have already been created, but many are poorly sourced and advance questionable views. Another frequent issue is lack of non-Western cultural perspectives, as well as historical views (many agricultural topics are covered only from a modern, Western agribusiness perspective. The very article Agriculture is a problem case in point, as Traditional farming redirects there, but should be its own article and is hardly covered at that article at all.
• Redddbaron: 100% agree with Montana and McCandlish. The POV pushing is so bad in fact that there are articles that are perilously close to being complete falsehoods. But well referenced falsehoods.
• Jytdog: Lots of work to do! Articles that really need help are Intensive farming and Intensive animal farming and all their sub-articles, which are still dominated by ideological concerns.

How difficult is it to obtain images for agriculture articles? Are there any specific pictures that the project is searching for?

• Montanabw: I find that I often have to take photos of things in articles I want to illustrate. Farm equipment (other than tractors) has been hard to find, other than historic images; I believe I contributed the only photo of a hay stacker for instance.
• SMcCandlish: I don't have a general answer to this, but for animal breeds, it's often difficult to get free, correct, and truly illustrative photographs; we're at the mercy of owners/breeders of extant stock to take encyclopedic-quality photos, and this isn't happening frequently for many rare breeds.

There are 38 agriculture-related articles on Wikipedia's list of vital articles, yet around 70% of these are only Start or C class. Have there been any concerted efforts to improve these articles? Why do some vital articles receive greater attention than others?

• Montanabw: I think it is the same problem; finding dedicated editors with actual knowledge and enough time and interest.
• SMcCandlish: I'd echo that, and add that some topics are "sexy", and naturally attract multiple editors' sustained interest, while others do not. This is true across all general topic areas, from language to physics to TV shows. The reasons often have more to do with what's in the news lately than how truly important the subject is. I can't think of anything agriculture-specific about this, other than, again, a general Western, modern, industrial-agriculture WP:Systemic bias.
• Redddbaron: I have made improvements on several of those pages. I have put considerable effort into it. Some of my efforts were well taken, but on some pages it almost became an edit war, so I stopped trying to improve them, for now. I'll try again when I have more time.

How does your Project manage Portal:Agriculture and Agronomy?

• SMcCandlish: Beats me; I'm unconvinced that people make much use of portals, and am concerned that their maintenance sucks up editorial time that could be spent on more important work.

What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?

• Montanabw: More editors! Taking a stub article, finding some sources, and expanding it to at least start or C- class. Or, taking an article where there are active knowledgeable, but too-busy editors and letting us help guide a new contributor to bring it up to GA status.
• SMcCandlish: Agreed with Montanabw. Also, I think combing articles for bias and poor sourcing is especially pressing, more so in most cases than creating new articles. Fortunately, this winnowing process is a factor in both improving stubs and C-class articles, as I mostly do, and promoting B- and A-class ones to GA and FA.

Anything else you'd like to add?

• SMcCandlish: It seems unfortunate to me that so many "micro-wikiprojects" keep forming, instead of taskforces/workgroups of the main project. It just bleeds editorial attention away from ensuring that coverage throughout the larger project's scope is adequate. Speaking about the trend generally, not just with regard to agriculture: We have far too many insular wikiprojects, some simply acting as fiefdoms with only half a dozen active editors. They're a fertile ground for POV-pushing on an broad scale. The smaller the project, the more likely it is to act as a WP:FACTION.
• Redddbaron: The issue of using carefully crafted use of wikirules to corrupt an article to say exactly the opposite of the truth occurs, then there needs to be way remedy this. Good example. Lets say I post a review of 6 scientific studies on a certain type of agriculture. In that review, it states that there is no evidence of "A". A person writes a paragraph on a wikipage stating "There is no evidence of 'A'.", using that as a reference. Yet there may be 100s if not 1000s of peer reviewed, very good scientific studies of "A". They simply were not in the review cited. If I try to edit the page to say there is evidence, I can't use those scientific studies because they are primary studies? So the "no evidence" paragraph stands and the wiki page quality is poor because of this. What good is wiki as a reference when good science is eliminated and then because those references are not allowed, a POV pusher then can claim there is no evidence? This is a reference? In my mind it is an abuse of the rules. I have seen MEDRS abused in this way as well.
• Jytdog: Would love to get more people with experience farming who are also able and willing to take the time to learn how Wikipedia works. Very difficult to find such folks.
• Montanabw: This area is surprisingly contentious; I recently did a bit of work trying to play a neutral role in a dispute over a series of articles about a religion topic. Those folks were all singing Kumbayah in perfect harmony compared to some dustups I've seen over things here like organic farming or whether to use the UK or US English name for a cattle guard.

Next week, we'll find a few minutes to talk to WikiProject Time. For the time being, why not spend a while in the archive?

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2014-10-01

Shanah Tovah

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By Milowent

Jews wished each other Shanah Tovah ("Good year") this week as Rosh Hashanah was our most popular article. It was also a week not dominated by heavy news and tragedies, so aside from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (#2, sixth week in the Top 10), our popular article list runs the gamut of current events including new television series Gotham (#3), the 2014 Asian Games (#4), and Reddit-fueled popularity for German director Uwe Boll (#7). In the greater Top 25, notable events included the Mars Orbiter Mission reaching Mars (#11) and the marriage of accomplished lawyer Amal Alamuddin (#21) to an American actor. There was also a great deal of bot activity in our exclusions list this week; while this is not usually something worth noting, an identical large spike of views hitting Scotland, England, and Marriage from 26–28 September is duly acknowledged with a chuckle.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.

For the week of 21 to 27 September 2014, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Rosh Hashanah		581,893		That's the Jewish New Year to the rest of us. Jews the world over ushered in the year 5775. With just over 580,000 views, that's within 10,000 of the viewcounts on the chart last year, when the holiday had to settle for the #2 spot after Lil Wayne.
2	Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant		580,884		ISIL continues to remain in the Top 10 for a sixth consecutive week (and eighth in the Top 25), as military action against the brutal group by a large coalition of countries begins to take shape.
3	Gotham (TV series)		577,423		This American TV series is yet another reboot of the Batman franchise, and debuted on 22 September 2014.
4	2014 Asian Games		503,064		The 2014 Asian Games, a pan-Asian sporting event held every four years, commenced its 2014 edition in Incheon, South Korea on 19 September; the event will run through 4 October. The 2014 Games have 28 Olympic sports, as well as eight non-Olympic sports including baseball and sepak takraw (kick volleyball). The 2014 Asian Games medal table currently shows China at the 2014 Asian Games with a runaway lead, followed by South Korea, Japan, and Kazakhstan.
5	Derek Jeter		457,031		This very accomplished baseball player for the New York Yankees completed his 20th and final season in Major League Baseball in the United States. In his last at-bat in his final game on 28 September, Jeter hit a single off Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz. After being replaced by a pinch runner, he received a rare ovation from Red Sox fans as he exited the field.
6	August 2014 celebrity photo leaks		454,221		After dropping out of the Top 25 for a week, this tawdry story about the hack into dozens of personal files that celebrities (including Jennifer Lawrence, pictured) unwittingly stored on Apple's iCloud was back in the news with additional reports of leaked photos. And since these new leaks occurred in September, the article has been moved once again and now can be found at 2014 celebrity photo leaks.
7	Uwe Boll		453,240		Boll is a German film director whose work has included many films adapted from video games, many of which are listed among the worst ever made. His article became popular this week due to a Reddit "Today I Learned" thread which noted that in attempting to get the rights to make a World of Warcraft film, Boll was told "We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you."
8	Google		427,481		Always a fairly popular article.
9	Deaths in 2014		412,368		The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. Deaths noted this week include Frieda Szwillus on 21 September at age 112, the oldest living person in Germany; Russian mathematician Alexey Chervonenkis (22 September); former Afghan provincial governor Mullah Ghani, killed by unknown gunmen (23 September); Japanese butoh dancer Carlotta Ikeda, pictured at left (24 September); Estonian singer Jaak Joala (25 September), who also covered Western pop music in Estonian, (see this nifty 1981 cover of Billy Joel's All for Leyna (25 September); British actress Maggie Stables (26 September), and Hungarian architect Antti Lovag (27 September)
10	Facebook		408,018		A perennially popular article, unlikely to be unseated anytime soon by Ello.

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2014-10-01

Brothers at War

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By Alan Smithee and Pine

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 21 through 27 September. Anything in quotation marks is taken from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Featured articles

Seven featured articles were promoted this week.

• George Formby Snr (nominated by SchroCat) "George Formby (born James Lawler Booth; 4 October 1875 – 8 February 1921) was an English comedian and singer in musical theatre, known as one of the greatest music hall performers of the early 20th century. His comedy played upon Lancashire stereotypes, and he was popular around Britain. His nickname, 'The Wigan Nightingale', was coined because of the way he would use his bronchial cough as a comedic device in his act."
• 2002 Pacific typhoon season (nominated by Hurricanehink and Jason Rees) "The 2002 Pacific typhoon season was an active one, with many tropical cyclones affecting the Philippines, Japan, and China. Every month had tropical activity, with most storms forming from July through October. Overall, there were 37 tropical depressions declared officially or unofficially, of which 26 became named storms; of those, there were 15 typhoons, which is the equivalent of a minimal hurricane."
• Sonic X (nominated by Tezero) "Sonic X (ソニックX Sonikku Ekkusu) is a Japanese anime series created by TMS Entertainment and based on the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series published by Sega. The series initially ran for fifty-two episodes, which were broadcast on TV Tokyo from April 6, 2003 to March 28, 2004; a further twenty-six were aired in non-Japanese regions such as the United States, Europe, and the Middle East from 2005 to 2006. The show's American localization and broadcasting were handled by 4Kids Entertainment—which heavily edited the content and created new music—until 2012, when Saban Brands obtained the rights to the series."
• Russian battleship Pobeda (nominated by Sturmvogel 66) "Pobeda, (Russian: Победа), was the last of the three Peresvet-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy at the end of the nineteenth century. The ship was assigned to the Pacific Squadron upon completion and based at Port Arthur from 1903. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, she participated in the battles of Port Arthur and the Yellow Sea. Having escaped serious damage in these engagements, Pobeda was sunk by gunfire during the Siege of Port Arthur, and then salvaged by the Japanese and placed into service under the name Suwo (周防)"
• Indian Head cent (nominated by Wehwalt) "The Indian Head cent, also known as an Indian Head penny, was a one-cent coin ($0.01) produced by the United States Bureau of the Mint from 1859 to 1909. It was designed by James Barton Longacre, the Chief Engraver at the Philadelphia Mint... In the postwar period, the cent became very popular and was struck in large numbers in most years. An exception was 1877, when a poor economy and little demand for cents created one of the rarest dates in the series. With the advent of coin-operated machines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even more cents were produced, reaching 100 million for the first time in 1907. In 1909, the Indian Head cent was replaced by the Lincoln cent, designed by Victor D. Brenner."
• "Death on the Rock" (nominated by HJ Mitchell) "'Death on the Rock' was a controversial television documentary produced by Thames Television as part of the current affairs series This Week, and broadcast on ITV on 28 April 1988. The programme examined the deaths of three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) members in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988 at the hands of British special forces (codenamed 'Operation Flavius'). 'Death on the Rock' presented evidence that the IRA members were shot without warning or while attempting to surrender. It was condemned by the British government, while tabloid newspapers denounced it as sensationalist. 'Death on the Rock' subsequently became the first individual documentary to be the subject of an independent inquiry, in which it was largely vindicated... Thames lost its franchise and the IBA was abolished as a result of the Broadcasting Act 1990—decisions which several involved parties believed were influenced by the government's anger at 'Death on the Rock'."
• James Chadwick (nominated by Hawkeye7) "Sir James Chadwick, CH, FRS (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was an English physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941 he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atomic bomb research efforts. He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. He was knighted in England in 1945 for achievements in physics."

Featured lists

• 
  Lauren Bacall with Humphrey Bogart
• 
  Jimi Hendrix

Three featured lists were promoted this week.

• Historical coats of arms of the U.S. states from 1876 (nominated by Godot13) "Historical coats of arms of the U.S. states date back to the admission of the first states to the Union. Despite the widely accepted practice of determining early statehood from the date of ratification of the United States Constitution, many of the original colonies referred to themselves as states shortly after the Declaration of Independence was signed on 4 July 1776. Committees of political leaders and intellectuals were established by state legislatures to research and propose a seal and coat of arms. Many of these members were signers of the Articles of Confederation, Declaration of Independence, and United States Constitution. Several of the earliest adopted state coats of arms and seals were similar or identical to their colonial counterparts."
• Jimi Hendrix discography (nominated by Ojorojo) "Jimi Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter who recorded from 1962 until his death in 1970. His discography sets forth the recordings released during this period. Prior to his rise to fame, he recorded 24 singles as a backing guitarist with American R&B artists, such as the Isley Brothers and Little Richard. Beginning in late 1966, he recorded three best-selling studio albums and 13 singles with the Jimi Hendrix Experience."
• Lauren Bacall on screen and stage (nominated by Lady Lotus) "American actress Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) had an extensive career in films, television shows, and plays. She was one of the leading ladies during the Golden Age of Hollywood along with actresses such as Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. Bacall started her career as a teenage fashion model when she appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar and was discovered by Howard Hawks' wife Nancy. As she naturally had a high-pitched and nasal voice, she received lessons to help deepen it and was required to shout verses by Shakespeare for hours every day as part of her training... For her roles in Applause and Woman of the Year, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical."

Featured pictures

Thirteen featured pictures were promoted this week.

• Card money (Created by the Netherlands; from the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution; image by Godot13; nominated by Godot13)
• Assignat (Design: Government of France; note holder: National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution, Scanned by Godot13; nominated by Crisco 1492)
• Anatomical diagram of a hypothetical ancestral mollusc (created by KDS444, nominated by KDS444)
• Underwater photographer (created by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jayme Pastoric, nominated by Crisco 1492)
• Morpho didius, dorsal view and ventral view, (created by Archaeodontosaurus, nominated by Armbrust)
• Quaker Guns (created by George N. Barnard and/or James F. Gibson, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• Battle of Franklin (created by Kurz and Allison, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• September Morn (created by Paul Émile Chabas, nominated by Crisco 1492)
• Alexander Mosaic detail (unknown creator, nominated by Brandmeister)
• Ivan Goremykin (unknown photographer, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• Armenian woman kneeling beside dead child (created by American Committee for Relief in the Near East, restored by MjolnirPants, nominated by Étienne Dolet) Description... (300th WP:MILHIST featured picture)
• Little Nemo comic strip (created by Winsor McCay, nominated by Curly Turkey)

• 
  Anatomical diagram of a hypothetical ancestral mollusc
• 
  Little Nemo comic strip

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