WMF elections, strategy wiki, museum partnerships, and much more
Voting continues for Wikimedia Board elections
Voting is continuing in the 2009 Board of Trustees elections for the Wikimedia Foundation. Voting will continue until August 10th. Questions can still be asked of the candidates. Philippe Beaudette, a member of the Elections Committee, reported on August 3rd that nearly 1200 votes had been cast thus far. (see previous story)
Voting in the English Wikipedia CheckUser and Oversight elections is also continuing, until August 10th. (See previous story).
Strategic planning wiki, call for proposals opens
A new wiki for the strategic planning process, strategy.wikimedia.org, was opened last week. It includes a Call for Proposals about what projects or directions the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia movement should take on; anyone is invited to submit a proposal. This proposal process is tentatively scheduled to run through October. Information about the strategic planning process, including the various stages of the project and background, is also included on the wiki. The project planners are also holding weekly IRC office hours on the Freenode #Wikimedia channel.
The Wikimedia Strategic Planning process is a year-long process designed to get wide community involvement in setting the direction of the Wikimedia Foundation over the next five years; the process aims to deliver a "vision paper" for the Wikimedia movement generally, and a five-year strategic plan for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Two Dutch museums partner with WMF
The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and Spaarnestad Photo of Haarlem are partnering with WMF to provide content. The Tropenmuseum plans to upload some 100,000 images about Indonesia to Wikimedia Commons and in preparation will upload first a smaller collection about Suriname. Spaarnestad has plans to upload an undisclosed number of files. Gerard Meijssen (User:GerardM), who heads the Open Progress Foundation, has been instrumental to the progress, working in cooperation with the WMF Netherlands chapter.[1][2]
PD-Art petition
An off-wiki petition has been started, which Wikipedians who are UK residents or British Citizens (irrespective of their residency) are invited to sign. Using the e-petition facility on the 10 Downing Street website, it calls for a review of the copyright status of exact reproductions on 2 dimensional works of art—the same area in which the National Portrait Gallery has recently found itself entangled with the WMF. If there are more than 500 signatures, the Prime Minister's office are obliged to reply. The petition has not at the time of writing been formally endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. More details.
Wikimedia UK denied charity status
Wikimedia UK—the local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation in the United Kingdom—has been denied charitable tax status by HM Revenue and Customs, according to a report from Charity Finance dated June 2009. The chapter reportedly plans to appeal the decision.
Briefly
- The Usability Initiative team blogged about the upcoming usability release "Babaco", which will include a number of new features.
- The Wikimedia Foundation approved a grant of $40,000 for the purchase of new database servers for the Toolserver.
- Cary Bass (Bastique) has begun maintaining a Wikipedia organization page on Facebook, where users can sign up as fans and comment on recent Wikipedia-related news.
- Video of Jimmy Wales' keynote at the Wikiconference NYC last week is now available. More videos will be posted shortly.
- The Wikimedia Australia GLAM conference is now fully subscribed, with 170 attendees; Liam Wyatt has posted a list of the attending organizations.
- Wikimedia Mobile is looking for multilingual users to translate the mobile interface on translatewiki.net.
- A new edition of English Wikizine, number 113, came out this week.
Milestones
- The Latin Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles with the creation of Magninovilla.
- The Galician Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
- The Erzya Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
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Dispute over Rorschach test images, and more
Rorschach test dispute reported
New York Times writer and longtime Wikipedia observer Noam Cohen wrote up a story on a dispute on Rorschach test, which revolves around whether posting the ten original (public domain) inkblot images will cause patients of psychologists to game the test, making it useless. The publisher of Rorschach's work said it was looking into a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation, about which Mike Godwin, the Foundation's general counsel, seemed unconcerned.[1] The story was picked up widely, with coverage ranging from the straightforward[2] to the mocking.[3][4] The Globe and Mail published an extensive account of the kerfuffle,[5] while Newsweek and Science Daily used the controversy to emphasize that the Rorschach test is not considered particularly effective.[6][7] Discussion among Wikipedians is ongoing.
In brief
- The Wikipedia Academy at the National Institutes of Health (see previous Signpost article) was reported on by The Washington Post, who wrote of one NIH employee who edited his first article as a result of the training.[8] In response, a government watchdog group raised concerns that "the government may impose its issues on the public if it is not vigilant."[9]
- Eric Felten of The Wall Street Journal wrote an opinion piece on the DCoetzee (Wikipedia) – National Portrait Gallery copyright dispute (see previous Signpost article). Felten criticized the museum's argument, stating by comparison that "museums don’t go around claiming that by touching up the odd Rembrandt they’ve created something original with a shiny new copyright."[10]
- Litblog The Millions unearthed the second deletion discussion for journalist and writer Ed O'Loughlin, in which the subject himself characterized the article as "a starkly one-sided attack on my personal and professional character which is based entirely on highly partisan sources and falsehoods." O'Loughlin's profile has been raised since his first novel was put on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize on July 28th.[11][12] The post, picked up by other literary blogs, does not mention that the article was deleted and salted in January 2008.
- Jimmy Wales appeared in a CNN Money "Corner Office" video this week. He discussed the non-profit nature of Wikipedia, advertisements on Wikia, and the use of user-generated content by professionals.
- Christopher C. Miller (Miller17CU94) wrote an article for the July issue of Quality Progress, the organ of the American Society for Quality, about quality in everyday life: "Quality Isn’t a 9-to-5 Job" (membership or payment required to view). Miller discusses his participation in the Good Article process, collaborating with others (Reviewer: Arsenikk, Editors that assisted: Theilert, Voletyvole) on the article FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2009 to make it a certified Good Article.
References
- ^ "A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?". New York Times. July 28, 2009.
- ^ "Testing times for Wikipedia after doctor posts secrets of the Rorschach inkblots". The Guardian. 29 July 2009.
- ^ "Victorian Psychiatrists Upset at Wikipedia Exposing Their Voodoo Secrets". Gawker. 29 July 2009.
- ^ See Talk:Rorschach test#Streisand break for a more extensive list of media coverage.
- ^ "Rorschach and Wikipedia: The battle of the inkblots". The Globe and Mail. 30 July 2009.
- ^ "Analyze This". Newsweek. 30 July 2009.
- ^ "Invisible Ink? What Rorschach Tests Really Tell Us". Science Daily. 30 July 2009.
- ^ "NIH Staffers Get Into the Wiki World". The Washington Post. July 28, 2009.
- ^ "NIH to Edit Wikipedia – A Slippery Slope?". OMB Watch. July 28, 2009.
- ^ "Whose Art Is It, Anyway?". The Wall Street Journal. 30 July 2009.
- ^ "Judges decide on Man Booker Dozen". The Man Booker Prizes. 28 July 2009.
- ^ "Debut Booker Longlister Subject of Controversy Online and Off". The Millions. 30 July 2009.
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Approved this week
Administrators
One editor was granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: ThaddeusB (nom).
Featured pages
Nine articles were promoted to featured status this week: Charles Carroll the Settler (nom), Herrerasaurus (nom), Adrian Cole (RAAF officer) (nom), Fight Club (film) (nom), Charles Stewart (Canadian politician) (nom), Hepatorenal syndrome (nom), The Lucy poems (nom), Mary Toft (nom) and Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 (nom).
Thirteen lists were promoted to featured status this week: MCW Heavyweight Championship (nom), BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award (nom), List of international cricket centuries by Sourav Ganguly (nom), List of Grade I listed buildings in South Somerset (nom), NWA Wrestling Legends Hall of Heroes (nom), List of Premier League hat-tricks (nom), List of First World War Victoria Cross recipients (nom), List of England national football team hat-tricks (nom), List of Gold Glove Award winners at catcher (nom), List of City University of New York institutions (nom), List of CMLL World Tag Team Champions (nom), List of tallest buildings in Las Vegas (nom) and WCW United States Tag Team Championship (nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: 243 Ida, Augusta, Lady Gregory, Forest Park, Don Tallon, Nagorno-Karabakh War and Michael Gomez.
Former featured pages
No articles were delisted this week.
One list was delisted this week: List of number-one Billboard Top Latin Albums of 1999 (nom).
No topics were delisted this week.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Sea otter, Black mulberry, Atomic bomb, The Nightwatch, Clyde River, NGC 1300 and Metriorrhynchus rhipidius.
No featured sounds were promoted this week.
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Ten pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Please note that some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.2 (8fd6c9c), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
Bots approved
2 bots or bot task were approved for operation this week. These were:
- Xenobot 6.1: To standardise stub templates to use {{asbox}}.
- SmackBot XV: To replace start date and end dates with templates that emit microformat data.
New features
- A new hook (BeforeInitialize) has been added in includes/Wiki.php, before the performRequestForTitle() function. (r54318, bug 15209)
- A legend and tooltips has been added to Special:Watchlist, to indicate what the various recent changes flags mean. (r54242, r54248)
- The MediaWiki API has a new setting that can be used to permit cross-site Ajax requests to the API from any domain, or to a list of whitelisted domains, or those that match particular regex expressions. (r54127, bug 19907)
- New parameters (size, wordcount, timestamp, snippet) have been added to list=search in ApiQuerySearch.php. (r53904)
Other news
- Changes have been made to the CodeReview extension to integrate parser tests. For any code check-ins to the trunk code, parser tests will be run and the results will be displayed in CodeReview. (message at wikitech-l)
- Systems were down on July 31 at 12:00 GMT to allow the primary router at the Tampa hosting facility to be rebooted. (wikimedia techblog, wikitech-l)
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The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee passed one motion and closed no cases this week, leaving one case open.
Motions
- Geogre: The Committee indefinitely blocked Geogre's secondary account Utgard Loki (though later unblocked it) and forbade Geogre from operating any undisclosed alternate accounts. Geogre was admonished for his usage of the Utgard Loki account—which they found violated the sockpuppet policy—and desysopped.
Evidence
- Abd-William M. Connolley: A case regarding editing and administrative behavior relating to the Cold fusion article.
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