Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-06-11/SPV

This week, we introduce a weekly series on the upcoming elections to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. As part of this series, we will ask all candidates to respond to an optional interview.

For this interview, I'm soliciting any Wikipedians who would be willing to help with translation. If a candidate does not speak English, I will need to have the questions, and their answers, translated into their native tongue. Also, any truly motivated users who would be willing to translate all interviews into another language would be quite helpful for voters from non-English wikis. Let me know if you're interested, either on my talk page or via e-mail.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

— Ral315

A report on the privacy practices of several major website and Internet companies included Wikipedia among the leaders in privacy awareness. The report received widespread media coverage and also drew objections from the companies it criticized, notably Google.

The report was put together by Privacy International, a London-based nonprofit organization that calls itself "a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations." The findings for each site or company were summarized in a chart (PDF) covering various criteria and providing a justification for the ratings.

Wikipedia received the rating, "Generally privacy-aware but in need of improvement". In its explanation, Privacy International commended Wikipedia data retention practices but said some information was lacking. The best rating possible, "Privacy-friendly and privacy enhancing", was not given to any of the sites or companies reviewed. In receiving the next-highest rating, Wikipedia joined a group that included the BBC, eBay, Last.fm, and LiveJournal.

Google, which was singled out for the worst rating, "Comprehensive consumer surveillance & entrenched hostility to privacy", responded publicly with some of its objections. The company complained that Privacy International did not give it an opportunity to discuss the findings, which it said were filled with "numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services". Privacy International hit back by calling Google's response a "smear campaign" and said it had contacted the company but received no response.

It is not clear whether Privacy International attempted to contact the Wikimedia Foundation, as it mentioned its inability to verify the retention policy. The report called the privacy policy "clear" and noted its adoption by the Board of Trustees, but pointed to the lack of an explicit contact point in the organization. It seems that Privacy International may have been unaware of the existence of an Ombudsman commission. This group reviews complaints about potential violations of the privacy policy, although it is primarily focused on use of the CheckUser tool.

On the English Wikipedia mailing list, Mathias Schindler of the Communications committee said he had contacted Privacy International requesting more information, adding the comment that he was "unconvinced about their methodology." The discussion then veered to potential conflicts of interest and prompted a reference to Wikimedia's ownership of 187 shares of Google stock received as a donation, however Wikimedia board member Kat Walsh noted that Wikimedia has since sold those shares.

This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and "Mike the Headless Chicken". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

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Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty cited a Wikipedia article in a comment made last week in a newspaper article; however, McGuinty apparently misread the article. Commenting on a move to reduce power consumption by setting government air conditioning at a higher temperature and allowing employees to ditch suits and ties in favor of casual clothes suitable for a higher temperature, McGuinty joked that the French were to blame for ties, saying that the cravat originated in France. However, the article actually states that the cravat was popularized by the French after noticing the neckband, a part of the uniform for Croatian mercenaries.

After a close and controversial RFA that was halted while bureaucrats attempted to determine the outcome (see archived story), bureaucrats judged that no consensus was present on Wednesday. A bureaucrat chat was initiated for bureaucrats to discuss the request (the second RFA to use such a process, after Danny's in April). In all, the request took over a week to decide.

Note: Due to delay, the full story on the RfA closure will be published next week.

• The Igbo Wikipedia has reached 200 articles.
• The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 100,000 edits.
• The English Wiktionary has reached 400,000 entries.
• The Pali Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Dutch Wiktionary has reached 200,000 edits.
• The Divehi Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.

Twenty-three articles were promoted to featured status last week: Political history of medieval Karnataka (nom), Rudolph Cartier (nom), God Hates Us All (nom), Texas A&M University (nom), Cougar (nom), Herne Bay, Kent (nom), Eyes of the Insane (nom), Webley Revolver (nom), Styracosaurus (nom), Report of 1800 (nom), Æthelbald of Mercia (nom), Amanita phalloides (nom), Gwen Stefani (nom), Kevin Pietersen (nom), Evolution (nom), Aquaman (TV program) (nom), Derry City F.C. (nom), Westgate-on-Sea (nom), Coonskin (film) (nom), Vagrant Story (nom), Film Booking Offices of America (nom), New York City (nom), Rings of Jupiter (nom).

Two articles were de-featured last week: Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (nom), Charles I of England (nom).

Seven lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Queensland Roar FC players (nom), List of cetaceans (nom), List of Carolina Panthers first-round draft picks (nom), List of WWE Cruiserweight Champions (nom), Indian national cricket captains (nom), 2007 Cricket World Cup squads (nom), 2004 NBA Draft (nom).

One topic was promoted to featured status last week: Chrono series (nom).

No portals were promoted to featured status last week.

No sounds were promoted to featured status last week.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Excel Saga, Frank Klepacki, Jupiter, Battle of Midway, Atheism, Aaron Sorkin, Flag of Portugal, and Cougar.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Oscar (fish), Bassoon, Helix Nebula, Western honey bee, Hrant Dink, Osprey, Torre Agbar, Natural Satellite.

Four pictures were promoted to featured status last week:

• 
  Common Snipe
• 
  Gibraltar Barbary Macaques
• 
  Quicksort
• 
  British Columbia Parliament Buildings

9 users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Black Falcon (nom), Goodnightmush (nom), DoomsDay349 (nom), David Eppstein (nom), Jmlk17 (nom), Beetstra (nom), KrakatoaKatie (nom), Pax:Vobiscum (nom), Fvasconcellos (nom).

10 bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: HermesBot (task request), AMbot (task request), DeadBot (task request), R Delivery Bot (task request), AutocracyBot (task request), OsamaKBOT (task request), HBC RenameClerkBot (task request), MadmanBot (task request), Seedbot (task request), Polbot (task request).

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.3 (b4aac1f), and changes with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.

• A bug causing images to be deleted on Wikimedia Commons whenever a description page for an image with the same name was deleted on a different project (such as the English Wikipedia) has now been fixed. (This means that it's now safe for administrators to resume deletions under speedy deletion criterion I2.) (r22718, bug 10128)
• Editing section 0 of a page now shows the correct list of templates used on that page at the bottom of the screen. (r22779, bug 10149)

• A new parser function, #titleparts, was added, to return the first few parts of a slash-separated subpage structure; for instance, {{#titleparts:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-06-11/Technology report|2}} is Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-06-11. (r22711, bug 6067)
• Two new special pages were added:
  • Special:Mostlinkedtemplates, to find out which templates are most heavily used, (r22720, bug 10118)
  • and Special:Uncategorizedtemplates, to list templates with no categories. (r22897, bug 8869)
• There is now an option to display all namespaces in Special:Newpages. (r22730, bug 9898)
• There is now a checkbox for administrators to watch a page at the same time as changing its protection level. (r22739, bug 9769)
• The user interface for Special:Preferences now shows an example of what setting a stub threshold looks like. (r22740, bug 9886)
• The what-links-here links on Special:Whatlinkshere itself can now be customized using user CSS. (r22757, bug 10145)
• "DEFAULTSORTKEY" and "DEFAULTCATEGORYSORT" are now legal aliases for "DEFAULTSORT". (r22839, bug 5908)
• Administrators can now block a user from using Special:Emailuser. (r22816, bug 7997)

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

The Arbitration Committee did not accept or close any cases this week, except that Koavf was unblocked and placed on revert parole, after an appeal (resolved without a full case) from an indefinite block by Dmcdevit.

• Badlydrawnjeff: A highly controversial case involving the actions of Badlydrawnjeff, Doc glasgow, Tony Sidaway and JzG in relation inter alia to the article known as QZ, which underwent an AfD which was closed as delete by Drini, but overturned on DRV by Xoloz. The resulting AfD was then speedily closed by thebainer. Badlydrawnjeff then filed for a deletion review, which was speedily closed or removed by a number of administrators and others consecutively, including JzG, Doc Glasgow and Tony Sidaway, and the closures often reverted or new DRVs opened. There is dispute as to whether the actions of all parties were within process, and whether, as some believe, WP:BLP takes priority over DRV. A peripheral issue to the case is a 60-hour block of Badlydrawnjeff by Zsinj, apparently after discussions on the admin IRC channel, although some have stated that the consensus on the channel did not favour the block. The block was quickly undone by Gaillimh. Additionally, some allege that violetriga acted improperly in undeleting some articles deleted under BLP.

• PalestineRemembered: A case involving the actions of PalestineRemembered (talk · contribs), referred from the Community sanction noticeboard.

• Miskin: A case involving the actions of Miskin (talk · contribs), who was controversially blocked by Swatjester (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) for one month (later reduced to one week) for alleged revert warring.

• Abu badali: A case alleging that Abu badali (talk · contribs) has disruptively tagged non-free images for deletion, even when a valid fair-use justification exists, and has harassed editors who have complained about this behavior. Abu badali denies the allegations.

• NYScholar: A case involving the actions of a number of users, including NYScholar (talk · contribs) and Notmyrealname (talk · contribs), in relation to the Lewis Libby article.

• Piotrus: A case involving Piotrus (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) and other editors on Central and Eastern Europe-related articles. Multiple parties accuse others of edit warring, incivility, unethical behavior and biased editing. (An earlier arbitration case, Piotrus-Ghirla, was dismissed without prejudice in part due to inactivity of Ghirlandajo (talk · contribs), who was listed as a party in the new case.) An amnesty for past behaviour in editing disputes on articles relating to Eastern Europe has the support of two arbitrators.

• Paranormal: A case involving the actions of various users, especially as regards bias and attribution, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon. Proposals placing paranormal-related articles on article probation, limiting editors on them to one revert per week, and cautioning Dradin and Kazuba.

• Hkelkar 2: A case involving the actions of Rama's Arrow (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), Bakasuprman (talk · contribs), Dangerous-Boy (talk · contribs) and Sbhushan (talk · contribs), Rama's Arrow alleges that the others acted as meatpuppets of banned user Hkelkar, and blocked them for six months. They deny the allegations, and allege that Rama's Arrow acted improperly in blocking them, and in posting private e-mails to the incidents noticeboard. Various remedies have been proposed including an early proposal to impose no sanctions on any of the parties but calling on the parties to enter into mediation, based on a finding of fact noting a lack of reliable evidence in the case, and a proposal to prohibit administrator actions between the parties has the support of six. Voting on a recent proposal to desysop Rama's Arrow is split at three-to-one. Voting on principles regarding the posting of private e-mails is split but it appears that a majority of arbitrators will support the principle that private e-mails may not be posted on-wiki without the consent of the sender.

• TingMing: A case involving the actions of TingMing (talk · contribs). Ideogram (talk · contribs) alleges that he has engaged in "controversial edits", edit warring, incivility, and possibly sockpuppetry. TingMing denies the allegations, and alleges incivility on the part of Ideogram. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy banning TingMing for one year, which has the support of eight arbitrators.

• E104421-Tajik: A case involving the actions of E104421 and Tajik. The case had been suspended to allow a referral to Community enforceable mediation, but the mediation broke down after Tajik was alleged to have edited through sockpuppets while claiming to be away and unavailable for the mediation. Remedies have been proposed banning Tajik either indefinitely or for one year (which have the support of six arbitrators), and reminding AzaToth that Wikipedia operates by consensus (with the support of three arbitrators).

• Transnistria: A case involving the actions of MariusM (talk · contribs) and William Mauco (talk · contribs) on Transnistria-related articles. MariusM alleges that Mauco (who has not made a statement because he is blocked) has engaged in sockpuppetry, edit warring and other misconduct. If closed, MarkStreet (talk · contribs), William Mauco (talk · contribs) and EvilAlex (talk · contribs) would be indefinitely banned from any editing related to Transnistria.