Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-03-20/SPV

Four days after its protection under the office protection policy, the article on Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney and critic of video game violence, has been unprotected.

On 10 March, Danny, an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, removed the article upon advice from the Foundation's attorney, replacing it with a protected one-sentence description of Thompson (see archived story). During the protection, the article was rewritten by many users, with better sourcing and a more neutral point of view. On 14 March, Danny and Michael Snow replaced the protected article with the new draft. Since its unprotection, the article has received over 250 additional edits, adding new citations and other information.

Since its introduction in February, the policy has been invoked several times; Harry Reid was protected for a time, and Brian Peppers was deleted through the office actions policy. Some critics of the policy feared that it would encourage litigation to remove unfavorable content from articles. However, most users agree that the policy is necessary to avoid legal troubles.

The Signpost interviewed Brad Patrick, legal counsel to the Foundation, about the policy on Monday:

Colored version

Wikipedia Signpost: What prompted the Foundation to examine Jack Thompson?

Brad Patrick: As the community is aware, the Foundation was in receipt of a letter addressed to the Board of the Foundation. As outside general counsel to the Foundation, I was made aware of the letter and responded to Mr. Thompson. Based on our communication, I felt a review of the article was warranted legally, and asked some administrators (with Danny's assistance) to perform that review. That was where the WP:OFFICE notice came up.

WS: What sort of problems were there with the article?

BP: I can't comment on the specifics, but generally, his allegations were that certain of the material in the article could, potentially, be considered libelous or defamatory.

WS: About how many office requests do you receive every week/month? Of these, how many are acted upon?

BP: That's a hard question to answer. There are probably one or more noteworthy requests a week, on average. Certainly a legitimate request from an attorney is the exception. Most of the stuff that comes in through e-mail is far from significant. Many readers express shock and astonishment that just anyone "could say [X] like that" and want one of our thousands of "paid" editors to explain how this got there. So, for the most part, the real situations are few and far between, and that's why WP:OFFICE should not be taken lightly.

BP: If Seigenthaler had happened and we had an WP:OFFICE policy, there is no doubt that would have been used in that circumstance while we figured out how to handle the issue. The important part is that Jimbo is not responsible for the content of the encyclopedia, obviously. Everyone just thinks he is. But we do have an obligation to respond to potentially libelous material that is on our servers, if we are made aware of it, investigate it, and we believe it has legal merit. When you get right down to it, we are in the business of being an encyclopedia, nothing more, nothing less. And we should respond to legitimate criticism legitimately. But the Foundation does not "cave in" because someone doesn't like something, as some have suggested.

WS: How much has the article improved since its protection?

BP: I'm not the best person to judge. Michael Snow did a phenomenal job rewriting the article from scratch, in a very short time, and sourcing every bit of it. The challenge to the critics was to source their proposed contributions with the same degree of verifiability, and that is what caused an uproar. So, from a legal protection perspective, I'm very satisfied that the article has improved. In a short amount of time. Verifiability is critical.

WS: Is there anything else you'd like to say in regards to the situation?

BP: Just one other thing. I think people in the community may lose sight of the fact that we are engaged in a very serious venture. It's cool, we love it, we have friends online, we edit what we like. It is freedom in the best sense. But there is a very real issue; it is the responsibility of the Foundation not to be put at risk based on the sloppy, poorly thought out choices of others. We have 1 million users and articles in English Wikipedia. That's a lot. We don't have millions of dollars. We are a small foundation, in the grand scheme of things. We want the Foundation and Wikipedia to be around 2, 5, 10 years from now. And to do that, we need to make sure we act responsibly to keep the mission moving forward. So, my advice to contributors is - keep doing the amazing work you are doing. And my advice to administrators is - if you see a WP:OFFICE warning, trust us. We are doing something at the highest level to make sure we aren't putting the Foundation at risk, and I promise, we are dealing with it - not promising to deal with it later. This isn't a "set & forget" policy.

BP: Also, this isn't my plaything. My job is to advise the Board and protect the Foundation if they are sued. So far, it hasn't happened.

Two Wikipedians were granted CheckUser rights this week. Ambi and Essjay were both granted the status after Arbitrator James Forrester requested the move, citing a discussion on the private Arbitration Committee mailing list. Ambi is a former Arbitrator who served from January 2005 to July 2005, while Essjay is the chairman of the Mediation Committee, making him the first non-arbitrator on the English Wikipedia to be granted checkuser access. There are now a total of 12 people on the English Wikipedia with CheckUser status.

Voting on a proposed redesign of the Main Page concluded this week, with the poll attracting significant participation. Nearly 700 Wikipedians supported the redesign, approximately 200 opposed it, and another 50 remained neutral. Following the closure of the poll, the main page was changed accordingly.

The Chinese Wikimedia community has chosen its location for the 2006 Chinese Wikimedia Conference; it will be held in Hong Kong in late August. The choice of the city was announced on March 14th, coming from a selection of six finalist cities. Taipei finished second in the voting, with Shanghai and Beijing tying for third. The judges noted Hong Kong's facilities as a key reason for their choice; the University of Hong Kong is expected to provide accommodation along with the conference facilities.

The Hockessin Community News continued their series on Wikipedia and Wikipedians, reporting on the February meetup in Newark in the March 16 issue (page 6). There were eight Wikipedians attending the meetup: Stilltim, CComMack, Mrowlinson, Grenavitar, Rydia, Gmaxwell, Mindspillage, and Raul654. The article, written by staff reporter Kevin Barrett, who attended the meetup as well, briefly highlighted each person. The series on Wikipedia is expected to continue next week.

Two new Wikimedia projects were proposed this week: Wikikernel and One Encyclopedia Per Child. Wikikernel would be an independent wiki where new ideas could be proposed and developed, similar to the existing Meta-wiki, but with more emphasis and freedom in testing ideas and proposals. One Encyclopedia Per Child, meanwhile, would develop a set of basic articles, written in simple English, that could be distributed globally in conjunction with the proposed "One Laptop Per Child", involving the distribution of simple laptops to children around the world.

• The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 19,000 articles.
• The Slovene Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.
• The Spanish Wiktionary has reached 5,000 entries.
• The Italian Wikipedia has reached 50,000 registered users.
• The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 50,000 registered users.
• The English Wikipedia has reached 1.1 million registered users.
• The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
• The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
• The WiKoelsch - Kölsch Wikipedia, a rapidly growing, recognized trial Wikipedia listed on the test-wp page, has reached 3,000 articles and 50 registered users.
• The Korean Wikipedia has reached 22,000 articles.
• The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 60,000 articles.
• The Romanian Wikipedia has reached 32,000 articles.
• The Chinese Wikinews has been activated.
• The Thai Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.

On Monday, 13 March, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales were the joint keynote speakers at the South by Southwest conference and festival in Austin, Texas. Newmark did most of the talking and received most of the news coverage ("Craigslist, Wikipedia founders chat at SXSW", News.com), but Jimmy later took the microphone at the "20x2" event at an Austin nightclub to discuss his personal reasons for launching Wikipedia. ("The Secret of Wikipedia", San Francisco Chronicle).

On Wednesday, 15 March, David D. Weinberger, a fellow at the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet and Society, discussed “The Authority of Wikipedia”[1] with Wikipedia steward Samuel J. Klein in front of about 25 people; the exchange was reported in "Fellow: Is Wikipedia Legit?" in The Harvard Crimson.

On Thursday, 16 March, The Economist took a look at the open-source business model in "Open-source business: Open, but not as usual". Some quotes regarding Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with around 2.6m entries in more than 120 languages, gets more visitors each day than the New York Times's site, yet is created entirely by the public.
• Constant self-policing is required to ensure its quality. This lesson was brought home to Wikipedia last December, after a former American newspaper editor lambasted it for an entry about himself that had been written by a prankster. His denunciations spoke for many, who question how something built by the wisdom of crowds can become anything other than mob rule.
• Openness has been both the making of, and a curse to, Wikipedia. [...] Yet two seemingly contradictory things happened: chaos reigned, and an encyclopedia emerged. So-called “edit wars” dominated the online discussions, biases were legitimised as “another point of view” and specialists openly sneered. Many contributors were driven away by the fractious atmosphere (including Mr Sanger, who went on to pen essays predicting Wikipedia's vulnerability to abuse). Still, the power of decentralised collaboration astounded everyone. After 20 days, the site had over 600 articles; six months later, it had 6,000; by year's end, it totalled 20,000 articles in a plethora of languages.

Further explanations of Wikipedia's processes were slightly skewed: like many others, the reporter interpreted daily business-as-usual against vandals and trolls as an increasing attack, and the tools Wikipedia uses against them as desperate last-ditch defenses; graphs accompanying the story unaccountably showed the number of articles and contributors falling in early 2006; Don't be a dick was mentioned as a new policy (despite being first created by Phil Sandifer over a year ago, on 27 January 2005); and it was stated (incorrectly) that only registered users are able to edit existing articles (although the article correctly mentioned that new contributors must wait several days before being able to create new articles).

"Wikipedia and Britannica: The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man)" is an in-depth feature article in Information Today that analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica. It includes an overview of the editorial processes of each, and extended excerpts of interviews with Jimmy Wales and Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications at Britannica.

A student reporter at Weber State University in Utah was fired after a story submitted to the school newspaper was found to be heavily plagiarized from Wikipedia articles. A review of the reporter's previous work found further plagiarism. His dismissal was mentioned in a broader article on plagiarism in The WSU Signpost ("University to monitor plagiarism"). Earlier this year, a professional reporter at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin was also fired for plagiarizing from Wikipedia (see archived story).

• "Reboot: Is Wikipedia a reliable source of information?", The Guardian
• "Despite the criticism, Wikipedia worthwhile", The Baltimore Sun
• "Wiki attacks join political warfare", Orlando Sentinel (Florida)
• "Wikipedia woes again raise questions about credibility", Bismarck Tribune
• "Bracket Provokes Its Own Madness for the N.C.A.A.", The New York Times - "Nowhere is the growth of the bracket's prestige more evident than with the proliferation of bracketology, a concept defined in Wikipedia, not Webster's."

• "Wikipedia Made Mobile for Palm OS", Palm InfoCenter
• "Cell phone-optimized Wikipedia now available", MobileMag

Five users were granted admin status last week: Myleslong (nom), Cactus.man (nom), Gflores (nom), Gator1 (nom) and Smurrayinchester (nom).

No articles were featured last week.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: Theodore Roosevelt, Makuria, Palazzo Pitti, Second Malaysia Plan, Order of St. Patrick, The West Wing and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Articles that were de-featured last week: Bathing machine, Hip hop music and Ferdinand Magellan.

Two lists reached featured list status last week: Provinces of the Philippines and List of Kansas birds.

Four pictures reached featured picture status last week:

• 
  Pulmonata
• 
  Orb-weaver spider
• 
  Carrot

• 
  Boxing

Server-related events, problems, and changes included:

• 14 March — Chinese Wikinews created
• 16 March — srv36 set up as mysql server
• 16 March — quickipedia.org/quickipedia.net set up as redirects to the English Wikipedia
• 18 March — srv36 added
• 20 March — Database dump site temporarily down

The Arbitration Committee closed two cases this week.

A case against Boothy443 was closed on Monday. As a result, Boothy443 was placed on personal attack parole. Boothy443 was found to have edit warred and violated the three-revert rule.

A case against Instantnood and Huaiwei was closed on Monday. As a result, both users were placed on indefinite probation and general probation, and restricted regarding page move proposals, polls, and policy changes relating to Chinese naming conventions. Both users had edit warred in Chinese naming-related issues.

A case was accepted this week involving Karmafist (user page). It currently has a motion to close on the table. Another case was accepted this week involving Locke Cole (user page). It is in the evidence phase.

Additional cases involving administrators involved in a userbox-related edit war, Lou franklin (user page), editors on Depleted uranium, ZAROVE (user page), and Agapetos angel (user page) are in the evidence phase.

Cases involving -Ril- (user page), Licorne (user page), editors on Shiloh Shepherd Dog, Tony Sidaway (user page), editors on bible verse articles, Lapsed Pacifist (user page), and users IronDuke and Gnetwerker are in the voting phase.

A motion to close is currently on the table in a case involving Jason Gastrich (user page).