Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-24/SPV

An intervention by the Wikimedia Foundation office over two related articles last week resulted in a flap over miscommunication and the blocking and de-sysoping of developer and long-time contributor Erik Möller. Amid confusion over whether the case fell under the domain of the "Office Actions" policy, and following a chorus of complaints, these actions were reversed, while the affected articles are now semi-protected and conditionally open to editing.

The Office Actions policy was instituted by Jimbo Wales a little over two months ago and has been used a handful of times, sometimes prompting additional controversy (see archived stories). As publicly stated thus far, Wales and Danny Wool, executive assistant for the Wikimedia Foundation, are the primary people authorized to invoke the Office Actions policy. Wool is one of three full-time Foundation employees (developer Tim Starling was recently hired as the third). The Wikimedia Foundation's outside counsel, Brad Patrick, has given help and advice regarding some of these situations.

On Monday, 17 April, Danny Wool protected two articles, Christopher Ruddy and NewsMax.com (a website Ruddy founded), after removing all of the content except for a brief initial paragraph. This approach has been used by the Foundation on several occasions, requiring that the article be rebuilt from the ground up with the strict expectation that additions cite sources and adhere to the neutral point of view policy. It may be prompted by such concerns as outside complaints about the content from an affected party.

The Office Actions policy indicates that reverting such an action could be grounds for blocking. However, Wool did not specifically identify this as an office action, such as by using the WP:OFFICE label. He did comment on Splash's talk page, "If I do something like that, please assume it is with office authority. I do not delete pages because I do not like the content."

Two days later, Erik Möller (User:Eloquence, a developer who was for a few months the Foundation's Chief Research Officer) unprotected both articles, saying that the protection was "inappropriate per protection policy" and that Wool should "be explicit when using WP:OFFICE". The pages were reprotected by Kelly Martin within minutes, and Wool blocked Möller and removed his administrator status (on both the English Wikipedia and the Meta-Wiki), citing "recklessness".

Möller then wrote to the wikiEN-l mailing list about the situation, setting off a lengthy discussion about everyone's conduct during the incident and implementation of the Office Actions policy in general. Some people criticized Wool's failure to label the intervention as an office action, saying this gave Möller no notice of the potential consequences for undoing it. One argument made in response was that anyone looking at the situation should have recognized it as unusual, and Möller himself was at fault for not asking about the reasons for protection beforehand. Considerable debate also followed about administrators reversing each other's actions generally, and whether this was appropriate at all or should be left to the original administrator.

Within a few hours, Möller's block had been removed, reinstated, shortened, then finally removed definitively by Jimbo Wales, and by the next day all of his editing and administrative privileges had been restored. Pointing to the lack of clarity about whether an office action was involved, and the fact that he had not reverted the "stubbification" of the articles, Möller said, "I apologize if my actions were rash, but I believed them to be justified based on the information available to me." Wales called for everyone to "relax so we can talk about these issues slowly and carefully."

As Katefan0 suggested, part of the problem might be a reluctance to invoke the Office Actions policy, even when Wool is acting in an official capacity, due to the attention given to actions taken under OFFICE. With some calling for more transparency, not only in its implementation but in justifying that implementation in each case, others pointed out that for legal reasons, not all of the details involving a complaint can necessarily be disclosed. Wales later commented, "What got things wound up in this case was not the secrecy, but a wildly disproportionate and unfair blocking and desysopping".

Meanwhile, Wool has created a new account, User:Dannyisme (his IRC nickname), to use for future office actions. The actual issues with the Ruddy and NewsMax articles have received less attention, but a few editors have begun trying to flesh out the content a little bit.

A Chicago-based producer of other encyclopedias (no, not Encyclopædia Britannica) has threatened to sue Wikipedia for copyright infringement, but has yet to provide any specific examples. However, revelations about misinformation in those encyclopedias, including some that made its way into Wikipedia, have prompted Jimmy Wales to call the author an unsuitable source in any event.

The source in question is Jay Robert Nash, a prolific author who primarily produces reference works and anthologies about crime. He is currently cited as a reference in a number of crime-related articles, most of which can be found by following the what links here feature. Although crime is his specialty, Nash has also branched out into other subjects, including with his 1976 book Darkest Hours: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters — From Ancient Times to the Present.

This latter work figured in an earlier incident in which Wikipedia's accuracy was called into question. The incident involved a Washington Post article that was criticized for mischaracterizing the actions of Catholic priests after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake (see archived story). Theresa Carpinelli, a Catholic radio host based in Ohio, took umbrage at its claim that "priests roamed the streets, hanging those they believed had incurred God's wrath." As part of a lengthy rebuttal, she investigated and guessed that the reporter had taken this information from Wikipedia.

When the reporter ultimately responded to her challenge, Carpinelli related that he defended his assertion by citing Nash's encyclopedia in support of it. The reporter quoted a passage that read, "Battalions of priests roved through the debris of Lisbon looking for heretics to burn". The Nash text mentioned in connection with this the tale of "an Englishman named Chase" who supposedly feigned unconsciousness to avoid their attention, according to an account published by Blackwood's Magazine in 1860 (oddly, more than a century after the event).

Carpinelli then went on to attempt a reconstruction of the research in order to dissect and debunk the claims. She determined that the account in question was that of Thomas Chase, and it had originally appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine in 1813. However, she said that she found nothing, either in this version or the later publication by Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, suggesting that priests targeted heretics for death or that Chase mentioned faking unconsciousness to avoid them. Carpinelli concluded, "To imply that this information came from Chase’s account in the Blackwood's Magazine, as Jay Robert Nash does, is simply false."

[Update: Although Nash referred to Chase in the same sentence, he did not explicitly state that Chase was his source as to the burning of heretics. Carpinelli has since backed off from her statement that Nash implied this, and Catholic Exchange, the site where it appeared, has apologized for it. Since Chase didn't mention priests, the possibility remains that Nash had another source for the passage about priests burning heretics. Carpinelli indicated that she did not check Nash's entire bibliography, but further investigation by The Wikipedia Signpost located a second possible source—which, however, also fails to support Nash's description. See here for details.]

It seems plausible that Nash's inaccuracy may have fooled not only the reporter, but also the contributor who originally added the same information to Wikipedia. This addition happened in October 2003, a time when citing sources was not emphasized as strongly on Wikipedia, so the ultimate source has never been precisely identified. However, Wikipedia editors are often fans of encyclopedia-type reference works in general and have been known to use these as a resource for transferring information into Wikipedia, so it may well have come from Nash. [Update: As noted on the talk page, Carpinelli points to a website as an intermediate source for the Wikipedia article, but the site clearly appears to draw its information from Nash.]

The offending passage was removed from the Wikipedia article in question, 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and with considerable additional work, it became a featured article in April 2005. Carpinelli herself, who started out quite critical of Wikipedia's response, said that the article "is now so well-written and well-balanced that even I am impressed."

Nash has won "Best Reference" citations from the American Library Association for four of his books, including Darkest Hours. However, he has repeatedly said that his books are seeded with misinformation, including incorrect facts and nonexistent people, so as to catch those who "steal" from his work. Librarian Sally G. Waters, writing for the Library Journal, called his work "fascinating yet flawed" and recommended that it be used only for background research, verifying the information based on the sources in Nash’s bibliography. In the Journal of American History, Richard Maxwell Brown also noted the "numerous errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and anomalies" in Nash’s encyclopedias.

More recently, Nash has claimed that Wikipedia has violated his copyright by either copying or plagiarizing the content for many of its crime-related articles. He has stated on several occasions that he is compiling a list of examples in which Wikipedia allegedly infringes on his work. An actual list has not been provided at this point and so far as is known, no Wikipedia content that infringes on Nash's work has yet been identified by him or anyone else.

Jimmy Wales commented that he would be happy to remove any instances of copying if pointed out, but called Nash's books unfit as sources for Wikipedia regardless of any legal issues. "Nash's work should not be relied upon," Wales concluded, on the grounds that the deliberate insertion of errors "makes it unsuitable as a reference anyway."

Nash once filed a lawsuit against CBS for producing an episode of Simon & Simon with a plotline based around his notion that bank robber John Dillinger was not killed by the FBI in 1934. (Nash focused two separate books on his theory, which has won little acceptance from historians.) His claim of copyright infringement was dismissed on summary judgment, a ruling upheld by an appeals court. The court compared Nash's writing to "speculative works representing themselves as fact" and concluded that he could not claim a copyright on his analysis of historical facts, only his expression of them. The court added that Nash should not be surprised at the result, pointing out, "His own books are largely fresh expositions of facts looked up in other people's books."

A new proposal, called the paid editor job board, started by Cookiecaper earlier this week has generated a firestorm of controversy. The proposal, originally named Wikipedia:Now Hiring, operates on a similar principle to Wikipedia:Bounty Board. However, unlike the Bounty Board, the paid editor job board would pay individual editors for specific Wikipedia contributions, instead of giving a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Many users are vehemently opposed to the proposal. "This is completely against the spirit of the project," states Ambi. Others, though, say that it will lead to more articles being brought to featured article status. "People work on Wikipedia for all sorts of reasons, and money could be one of those motivations," notes Matt Crypto.

Matt Crypto, among others, also reasoned that this would not be the first time that people have been paid for contributing to Wikipedia. Larry Sanger, once editor-in-chief of Nupedia, was effectively a paid contributor to Wikipedia, where he acted as "chief organizer".

The proposed page to post possible editing jobs was nominated for deletion on 23 April. The result was to keep the page; in closing the debate, A Man In Black observed that "nearly every 'delete' comment has instead offered a reason that the proposal should be rejected." Discussion about the proposal is still taking place on the talk page.

A proposal of the same nature last July on the German Wikipedia garnered some attention as well (see archived story). The response at the time was fairly similar, to the extent of both proposals surviving attempts to delete the page amid considerable criticism of the idea.

According to Alexa, Wikipedia has become the 17th most visited website on the internet, passing Blogger. This actually happened in late March. Just above Wikipedia are Google UK and Microsoft. Wikipedia's daily traffic rank has remained relatively constant since February.

A Wikipedia criticism site, Wikitruth, has raised the ire of administrators by publicly posting information available only to administrators. The information, which includes revisions of Wikipedia articles deleted under the office actions policy, was posted on the site and later mentioned by an article in The Guardian. A subsequent posting included a channel log from a private administrator-only IRC channel.

• The Hebrew Wikisource has reached 1,000 text-units.
• The Gothic Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Telugu Wikipedia has reached 3,000 articles.
• The Russian Wikipedia has reached 15,000 users.
• The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 175,000 articles.
• The Arpitan Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Italian Wiktionary has reached 40,000 entries.
• The Greek Wiktionary has reached 15,000 entries.
• The Bulgarian Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.
• The Georgian Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
• The Chinese Wikinews has reached 200 news stories.
• The Chinese Wiktionary has reached 40,000 entries.
• The Yiddish Wikipedia has reached 1,500 articles.
• The Hungarian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 registered users.
• The Korean Wiktionary has reached 6,000 entries.
• The Turkmen Wikipedia has passed 100 articles.
• The Twi Wikipedia has passed 10 articles.
• The Marathi Wikipedia has passed 7,500 total pages and 17,000 edits.
• The Ilokano Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• Japanese Wikipedia won the "All About Super recommended site grand-prix 2006" channel prize. The award ceremony will be held at 04/26(JST) in Tokyo.
• goo.ne.jp, a search engine in Japan, starts an encyclopedia word search service that searches the Japanese Wikipedia.
• The Pennsylvania German Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
• The Malay Wikipedia has reached 3,000 registered users.
• The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Albanian Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.

• This week, The Economist reported Encyclopædia Britannica's dispute with the science journal Nature over the accuracy of their December comparison between Wikipedia and Britannica (see archived story). In "The wiki principle: Are many minds better than a few?" (subscription required), the magazine says:

For a lot of new-media watchers, the most interesting thing about the episode was something entirely different: that Britannica, somewhat representative of old media in general, instinctively regards Wikipedia as a threat, whereas Wikipedians are not the least bit tempted to reciprocate. “I'm a big fan of Britannica's work,” says Mr Wales, adding that he is not motivated by “disrupting” anybody, and is glad that Brockhaus, the biggest encyclopedia in Germany (where Wikipedia is very popular), appears to be doing better than ever. But why not have a free alternative as well? And why not test the limits of what social collaboration can do? Mr Wales is the first to admit that “there are some inherent limitations,” and says they are busy trying to discover what they are.

• United States National Public Radio blogger Andrea Seabrook discussed a presentation Jimmy Wales made at NPR headquarters, in "Mixed Signals: A Wikipedia Revolution". She says:

And finally I would like to assert that, in my opinion, services like Wikipedia are the information sources of the future. They take risks, act boldly, emphasize their content over their technology, and encourage the free flow of ideas and information. They break down the stuffy walls of academia and hand knowledge back to everyday people. They take joy in understanding and describing the world. And that is exactly what NPR should be doing.

• Wired reporter Lore Sjöberg posted a tongue-in-cheek guide at "The Wikipedia FAQK":

Well, Wikipedia exists in a state of quantum significance flux. It's simultaneously a shining, flawless collection of incontrovertible information, and a debased pile of meaningless words thrown together by uneducated lemurs with political agendas. It simply cannot exist in any state between these two extremes. You can test this yourself by expressing a reasonable opinion about the site in any public space. Whatever words you type, they will be interpreted by readers as supporting one of these two opposing views.

• In a discussion of new optimism about the Internet, "The Way We Boom Now" in New York Magazine, Kurt Andersen mentions "the collective Utopia of Wikipedia actually working" as possible evidence of a new Internet bubble

"New media expert" Mark Glaser at the PBS MediaShift blog wrote several articles focused on Wikipedia this week. Most include thoughtful discussion in the comments section, from Wikipedia editors and others.

• 14 April: "How much do you trust Wikipedia?"

My editor recently questioned whether I should source my blog posts with links to Wikipedia , the community-built online encyclopedia. It’s a good question, a fair question, and one that many newsrooms are grappling with to some extent.

• 17 April: "Is There a Neutral View on George W. Bush?"

And Wikipedia also has an entire subsection titled Alcohol and drug abuse for Bush, something Encarta doesn’t mention at all in its lengthy four-page entry. Again, after a lot of arguments on the subject, Wikipedia created a whole new entry just for George W. Bush substance abuse controversy.

Isn’t the creation of these special pages an act of bias in and of itself? Why isn’t there a special page on Bush’s time as governor of Texas or on his religious beliefs? It’s true that Wikipedia is trying to take these more controversial aspects of an already controversial president’s entry off the table, in a way, to make the main entry less controversial. But the final effect feels biased.

• 18 April: "MySpace, Wikipedia Cope With Growing Pains"

[Writer danah boyd] became a more well known offline personality as she became an expert on social networks for Fox News, NPR and other mainstream outlets during the MySpace boom and panic. One of boyd’s friends posted an entry about her on Wikipedia, and then she had the strange experience of witnessing Wikipedians (as people in that community are called) arguing over whether her entry was notable enough to keep. Worse than that, she felt helpless when seeing her entry riddled with errors. (boyd's blog entry)

• 19 April: "Top 5 for Wikipedia Week", a link collection:

• • "The Wikipedia FAQK", Wired
  • "Wiki honcho follows the money", News.com
  • "The Great Failure of Wikipedia (transcript of Notacon talk)", Jason Scott
  • "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head", Nature, and Britannica's response.
  • "Wales and Sanger on Wikipedia", The Register

• 20 April: "Believers, Negativists Debate Wikipedia’s Trustworthiness"

“Whatever you think of it, Wikipedia is hugely influential,” blogger Todd Zeigler writes. “It is the 17th most visited site on the Internet and is the number one search result for lots of obscure/technical terms. I actually spend time helping to edit entries when I think they are inaccurate/need clarification. Everyone who cares about the concept of a collaborative encyclopedia should as well. Contributing is more effective than complaining about it. Wikipedia isn’t going anywhere. And it matters even if you think it is flawed.”

• 21 April: "Wales Discusses Political Bias on Wikipedia", a discussion between Jimmy Wales and conservative blogger Robert Cox, who feels his views were unfairly shut out of Wikipedia due to a liberal bias.

MARK GLASER: So you feel that Wikipedia having a “slightly more liberal” slant than the U.S. is OK? How does it affect the goal of neutral point of view and should you do something to counteract it in some way?

JIMMY WALES: I do not think it affects the goal at all. The question totally misapprehends the process. The idea that neutrality can only be achieved if we have some exact demographic matchup to United States of America is preposterous, as I am sure you will agree.

Some other blogs have followed up on the question of bias at Wikipedia:

• "Liberal Bias at Wikipedia?", Matthew Sheffield, NewsBusters
• "Jimmy Wales defends Wikipedia", Mathew Ingram, The Globe and Mail
• "Wales discusses political bias on Wikipedia" J.D. Lasica, New Media Musings

Wikipedia was mentioned in the May cover article of .net magazine, "Create sites with impact" (subscription only), which includes a list of ten websites that have "instant impact".

A screenshot of the wikipedia.org portal was accompanied by brief commentary: "Wikipedia pages aren't much to look at. The collaborative encyclopedia overcomes this with two landing pages. The first is a high-impact splash page with language options, search and navigation, while the second [the Main Page] highlights current content." Some of the other sites chosen include Google, Flickr and BBC News Online.

Author and columnist Warren Boroson wrote an opinion column titled "Wikipedia site filled with major mistakes", published Tuesday 11 April in the The Daily Record in New Jersey, in which he said

It's not just that Wikipedia makes lots of mistakes. The writing is awfully long-winded, clumsy and boring. Obvious questions aren't answered. There are grammatical howlers galore. Clearly, people who can't write and who can't edit and who can't do research are running things. What next? Barbers will do brain surgery?

A week later, he published a follow-up to that column, "It's important to defend against liars", in which he says

I have received a ton of e-mails about my denunciation of Wikipedia.... Clifford from London scored a palpable hit. I criticized Wikipedia for not providing enough information on mutual funds, but he pointed out that the Encyclopedia Britannica is a far worse offender in this regard.... Having done more reading, I concede that I went too far. There are good articles in Wikipedia.

According to the article "Lunch with Gandalf" in the May issue of the film magazine Empire (subscription only), actor Ian McKellen is unhappy with his article in Wikipedia. (The article was removed from the featured article list last month, and is currently undergoing revision.)

McKellen: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on it and it's thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the basis of my career, an article that was written about five years ago, and why someone doesn't correct it... is that how it's done?

Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go on and correct it yourself.

McKellen: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates, or where they were born, it would be quite useful."

• "Academics question Wikipedia’s credibility", The Ithacan, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York
• "Seeing ourselves as others see us, courtesy Wikipedia", The Ledger Independent, Maysville, Kentucky

• "Internet Brands Buys Wikitravel, World66", SoCalTech.com Internet Brands
• "Wikipedia - oh wherefore art thou?", Silicon.com, regarding power outages
• "Recent changes", Shortpacked! web comic, the beginning of a story arc about obsessive editing on a Transformers wiki
• "SXSW2006: Jimmy Wales, Uber Wikipedian", a video interview on Geek Entertainment TV

Five users were granted admin status last week: Lightdarkness (nom), Pagrashtak (nom), No Guru (nom), Petros471 (nom) and Rockero (nom).

Twelve articles were featured last week: Sanssouci, Bangladesh, Demand Note, Perfect Dark, FIFA World Cup, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, Lastovo, The Office (US TV series), Solar eclipse, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Tenebrae (film) and Mosque. A record eight articles were de-featured last week: Economics, Battle of Aljubarrota, Glass, European Union, Fermi paradox, Zuiderzee Works, Crime fiction and Smile (Brian Wilson album).

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: Sverre of Norway, Retreat of glaciers since 1850, Cheers, Guqin, Buckingham Palace, Marshall Plan and Turkish literature.

One list reached featured list status last week: 2005 NFL Draft.

The latest portals to reach featured status are Portal:Aviation and Portal:Food.

Seven pictures reached featured picture status last week:

• 
  Copper Country
• 
  Loch Ard Gorge
• 
  Mount Hotham

• 
  Liquid crystal display
• 
  Grizzly Bear
• 
  Mount Hood

• 
  Machu Picchu

Rob Church created and installed a recent extension, MakeBot, which allows bureaucrats to set bot flags. Previously, the task was handled by stewards. Stewards still have the ability to grant bot access through the stewards' interface. In another fix, Brion Vibber fixed a bug prohibiting stewards from changing rights on the English Wikipedia.

A series of changes to the watchlist were made on 17 April and 18. The most notable change was the addition of an "enhanced watchlist" function, available through a user's preferences. This function, similar to the "enhanced recent changes" function, offers additional information via a JavaScript toggle button. Other changes included the ability to set other preferences, including the number of days shown, through preferences, the addition of a "clear all" link, which removes all items from a user's watchlist, and a working "hide bot edits" function.

• 17 April — Editing toolbar fixed in certain versions of Opera, Safari, and Konqueror
• 18 April — List of unused templates generated
• 21 April — Special:Newpages now filter-able by namespace
• 22 April — Special:Wantedpages updated for pages created since last report

Server-related events, problems, and changes included:

• 19 April — Tampa cluster fails
• 20 April — Wikisource mailing list created
• 22 April — Search servers restarted
• 24 April — Chapter committee wiki fixed

The Arbitration Committee did not close any cases this week. A motion did pass, however, in a prior case.

A motion in the prior case against Xed, to place the user on personal attack parole indefinitely, passed with 5 support votes and no opposition. Xed was placed on personal attack parole in an earlier case, but that remedy lapsed in March 2006.

No new cases were accepted this week.

Cases involving users SqueakBox and Zapatancas, Monicasdude (user page), Messhermit (user page), and Jacrosse (user page) are in the evidence phase.

Cases involving Marcosantezana (user page), users DarrenRay and 2006BC, Terryeo (user page), FourthAve (user page), editors on Depleted uranium, Aucaman (user page), Agapetos angel (user page), Locke Cole (user page), and Lou franklin (user page) are in the voting phase.

A motion to close is on the table in the case involving editors on Bible verse articles.