Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2012-07-16

Young chapter shows experience beyond its years

Update, October 2012: this piece provides a basic timeline and covers the major speeches made during the conference. Individual sessions may be viewed on Youtube.

Nearly 1400 Wikimedians and others from 87 countries descended on the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C., for Wikimania 2012.

Wikimania is the annual conference for anyone interested in Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. This year marked the eighth straight year it has been held; the first Wikimania was in Frankfurt (Germany), with subsequent conferences as far apart as Taipei in Taiwan, Alexandria in Egypt, and Buenos Aires in Argentina. The 2012 conference was held July 12–15 on the campus of George Washington University, using their Lisner Auditorium and Marvin Center, with optional sessions organized before and after those dates.

Wikimania unofficially started with a series of events aimed mainly at international visitors – "Wikimania Takes Manhattan". Organized by the Wikimedia New York City chapter, the initiative was very well attended and received. The social activities, tours, and dinners coordinated during this time allowed international visitors, who were flying in at relatively high expense, to enjoy more time in the United States rather than flying in for just the few days of the conference. After the four-hour bus trip to bring these participants to DC, on July 9 before the main conference, a hackathon designed for beginner programmers and an unconference hosted by the Ada Initiative (focusing on women's participation in Wikimedia projects) were held. July 11 saw the Google Opening Reception, attended by 700 people, and a meeting of the Wikimedia Chapters Association, an initiative to improve inter-chapter links, was held (see this week's related Special report).

The opening keynote was given by Mary Gardiner, a co-founder of the Ada Initiative, which seeks to improve female participation in the free-culture movement and related areas. She was the first woman to deliver a keynote at a Wikimania conference. The talk was neutrally received by conference attendees, many of whom felt that the speech had beneficial ideas but left many undeveloped. Her main advice to Wikipedians looking to improve the treatment of editors in general was to "shut up and listen", rather than continue a practice or behavior which the other editor cannot stand.

Jimmy Wales then came on the stage to give the now-annual "State of the Wiki". He began with the same basic premise of Gardiner's speech – diversity – but took a different tack, emphasizing the need to "rexamine our priorities" and cover all topics, even if they are pure pop culture, because if the Wikimedia movement does not cover it, the people will go somewhere else.

He used the speech to highlight what he sees as one of the the greatest opportunities awaiting the Wikimedia movement: Africa. Internet use in the continent is exploding; for example, while only 0.1% of the Nigerian population used the internet in 2000, 29% had access in 2010. Bandwidth is seeing a similar boost. Yet Wales noted that stereotypes, like those where farmers use donated mobile phones to assist in farming, are inadvertently perpetuated in the Western world with little basis in fact. In reality, the top sites visited by those in African countries include Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia – broadly similar to those in the West. Calling this the "ongoing march of technology", Wales noted that these new editors, in a process of "normalization", may not speak the traditional English or French mixture common in former colonies of Western European countries.

Continuing a tradition from last year, along with extending the theme in his speech, Wales gave a "Jimbo Award" to the Yoruba Wikipedia's Demmy, who used bot-assisted article creation to boost the site's article count to 29,000. Through this and other initiatives, Demmy increased the editor base from essentially himself to at least four active editors. Wales announced that he would give Demmy, who at the time of the speech had no idea he had won anything, US$5000. Last, in something he "dreamed up last night", Wales also awarded "Staffer of the Year" to two Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) employees: the English Wikipedia's community liaison Moonriddengirl (aka Mdennis (WMF)) and the WMF's senior designer Brandon Harris.

Sue Gardner's speech focused on the year before ("what we did") and what is planned for the year ahead ("what we will do"). She reported that Wikimedia sites have seen a 25% increase in readers from the previous year, from 400 to 500 million, and remarked on the success of foundation initiatives like Wikipedia Zero, which will enable free mobile access to Wikipedia in developing countries, and the Teahouse, which aims to provide a welcoming experience for new users. She pointed out that the new upload wizard on Commons contributed to a 27% increase in uploaded images, and she commended Wiki Loves Monuments for a visible spike in the number of image uploads in September 2011.

Moving to the future, Gardner said that editor retention is "our single biggest challenge." While more editors have been retained over the past year, slowing the rate of departure, the overall numbers are still in the red. The WMF has assisted in this area, she said, including the emailing of lapsed editors with an invitation to return, but this is primarily an area where possibilities of forging change lie with the communities. Of the WMF's core goals for goals for 2015, three are currently on a successful track:

• Readership is up
• Quantity is up
• Quality is up
• Participation, primarily measured in the number of editors, is down
• Diversity, including women and the 'Global South', has not changed

Gardner moved into a discussion of "where we are failing" – primarily in participation (as efforts in diversity continue). She listed:

• Poor usability, of which the greatest barrier is wikitext;
• Lack of discoverability;
• Warnings and reversions, which are much increased over 2006;
• A lack of support and coaching, as opposed to the one-on-one coaching luxury of earlier days;
• Policy cruft, which presents yet another hurdle to new users.

She sees specific divisions in these, where the first two bullets are the WMF's responsibility and the last three are the communities' responsibility. Her answers to these challenges were no surprise:

• Better usability, in the form of the visual editor, notifications, ease of attainment of a customized experience (see related Signpost coverage)
• Better discoverability
• Kinder warnings and reversions
• More interactions expressing support, e.g. with WikiLove
• Policy simplification

Her comments on what the WMF will be attempting to do in the first two areas, however, were unexpected: "your job is to support the WMF and let it make these changes."

The 2012–13 plan will broadly follow these lines, with the visual editor, for example, planned for deployment in December 2012. There will also be efforts to allow editing from the mobile site and an emphasis on improved site performance, such as quicker loading times.

Gardner ended her speech with the recognition that editors, when given a choice between the WMF, volunteers, Wikimedia chapters, and themselves, will tend to rate the latter last. She partially attributed this to the fundraising banners, which presents the featured editors as perfect, such that other editors feel a lower self-worth. She attempted to counter this by saying all editors are "heroic and altruistic" and "the work you are doing is changing the world."

The Archivist of the United States and head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), David Ferriero, gave an extremely well-received speech at the close of the regular conference. He called himself a "huge fan of Wikipedia", but the challenge is that most GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) are still wary of the "radical" notion of Wikipedia. With changing technologies, Ferriero said that the online world is "changing the way [GLAMs] think about archival work." The biggest challenge in this new world is visibility, so he stated that GLAMs need to be "aware of where the people are."

This thought process, along with President Barack Obama's commitment "to an unprecedented level of openness in government", is what led Ferriero to Wikipedia and other popular online sites upon his appointment by the United States Senate in 2009. He quickly ran through the history of NARA's involvement with Wikipedia, including the appointment of a Wikipedian-in-Residence (Dominic McDevit-Parks), and quoted a blogger who attended Wikipedia's tenth anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C.: "If Wikipedia is good enough for the Archivist of the United States, maybe it should be good enough for you."

Ferriero emphasized the benefits NARA has received from its association with Wikipedia, including the Wikipedia article about Desegregation of the United States Marine Corps, which was inspired by one of NARA's "Today's Documents" and has been viewed four million times (as opposed to 17 million hits on NARA's website in the entire calendar year), and the inclusion of four NARA images in USS Arizona (BB-39). These images were digitized on request, featured on the main page on the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and viewed more than 150,000 times in just two days (editor's note: the author of this Signpost article significantly contributed to the latter).

Ferriero closed his speech with three parting thoughts: while Wikipedia is still suspect in GLAM eyes, the only way to overcome this is to keep working to improve; a call for international attendees to assist their country's archivists; and a restating of the blogger's quote: "if Wikipedia is good enough for the Archivist of the United States ...".

Despite the Wikimedia DC chapter's incorporation after they were awarded the bid, and even with an unprecedented number (1400) of conference attendees — the previous two Wikimanias, held in Gdańsk (Poland) and Haifa (Israel), were attended by fewer than 1100 people combined – Wikimania 2012 was a complete success, with attendees' reaction to the conference coming out as ecstatic and laudatory.

While a few of the most popular sessions held in smaller rooms were crowded, quick planning by conference organizers, who had estimated that there would be 1000 attendees – rather than the actual 1400 – avoided any major issues. The largest problem was in a presentation on Jimmy Wales' transition from "benevolent dictator to royal monarch to spokesman", when a presenter unexpectedly illustrated a slide on the Wales vs. Wikimedia Commons pornography debate in 2009 (see previous Signpost coverage), in violation of the conference's "Friendly Space Policy".

James Hare, the coordinator of Wikimania 2012, believes that "the greatest metric of Wikimania's success is the number of connections people made during the conference. ... needless to say, many were made." Peter.C praised it, saying "Wikimania was great as I was able to work together with other Wikipedians to discuss what works, what doesn't, and what we should do going into the future." Risker was enthusiastic about the WMF employees in attendance: "I had the opportunity to talk with about 30 WMF staff over the course of the conference, and every one of [them] impressed me with [their] openness, enthusiasm, and genuine interest in working with the larger community. I learned a lot this past week from a lot of really wonderful Wikimedians." Others commented on the strange feeling of meeting online friends in the flesh, and whether their mental image of them matched the actual person. Brandon Harris, the WMF's senior designer, said "I feel that this was the best Wikimania I've attended. It was exciting to put faces to names and directly hear the voices of the editor community. I think we're on the cusp of something great now."

Editor's note, April 2013: This article was altered to correct the mistaken impression that Jimmy Wales had previously given US$5000 to Demmy of the Yoruban Wikipedia as part of his eponymous award.

• "Tech talks at Wikimania amid news of a mixed June," Signpost, 16 July 2012.
• "WMF enacts reforms," Signpost, 16 July 2012.
• "Wikimania 2012 tackles diversity issues," Wikinews, 14 July 2012.
• WWB, "My Wikitinerary: Day 1 at Wikimania DC," The Wikipedian, 12 July 2012
• WWB, "Wikitinerary: Day 2."
• WWB, "Wikitinerary: Day 3."
• Wikipedia Weekly, Wikimania epidodes.
• Official Wikimania 2012 Twitter account.
• Twitter hashtag #Wikimania.
• Category:Wikimania 2012 on the Wikimedia Commons.
  
  Reader comments
  

2012-07-16

Taking flight

Contribute  —  

Share this

•  E-mail
•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  LinkedIn
•  Reddit
•  Digg

By Crisco 1492

This edition covers content promoted between 8 and 14 July 2012.

This week two featured articles on aviators were promoted: Thomas J. Hudner, Jr. of the United States (left) and James Rowland of Australia (far right).

Featured articles

Eight featured articles were promoted this week:

• Bivalvia (nom) by Cwmhiraeth. Bivalvia is a taxonomic class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have a laterally compressed body enclosed by a shell in two hinged parts. Commonly known as the bivalves, they are mostly filter feeders and have no head or rasping tongue. Most embed themselves in hard surfaces to avoid predators and have a hard shell composed of calcium carbonate. The class, which has been traced back more than 500 million years, consists of over 9,200 species. Bivalvia has long been part of world diets and a source for pearls.
• Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (nom) by Parrot of Doom. Lord Lucan (born 1934) is a British peer and suspected murderer. Raised in post-war England, as a youth he developed a taste for gambling, later becoming a professional gambler. His expensive tastes drove him into poverty and led his marriage to collapse; he later stalked his wife. On 7 November 1974, the children's nanny was bludgeoned to death and Lady Lucan was attacked. She named her husband as the killer, but he disappeared shortly after the murder, and his fate remains a mystery.
• DNA nanotechnology (nom) by Antony-22. DNA nanotechnology is the design and manufacture of artificial nucleic acid structures for technological uses. In this field, nucleic acids such as DNA are used as non-biological engineering materials for nanotechnology, rather than as the carriers of genetic information in living cells. Researchers have created a variety of nanostructures such as crystal lattices, molecular machines, and DNA computers. The field is being applied to basic science problems in structural biology and biophysics; potential applications in molecular electronics and nanomedicine are also being investigated.
• Pride & Prejudice (2005 film) (nom) by Ruby2010. Pride & Prejudice, a 2005 British romance film, was directed by Joe Wright and based on Jane Austen's 1813 novel of the same name. Starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, it follows five sisters as they deal with marriage, morality and misconceptions. The film, shot over eleven weeks, deals with themes of realism, romanticism and family, departing in places from the novel. Although less critically successful than a 1995 adaptation, the film was well received and a commercial success.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy (nom) by Khanassassin. Ed, Edd n Eddy is a television series created by a.k.a. Cartoon which was broadcast from 1999 to 2009. The cartoon follows three adolescent boys collectively known as "the Eds", who hang around in a suburban cul-de-sac. The show, based on cartoons from the 1940s to the 1970s, was broadcast on Cartoon Network and remains that network's longest running original series. It was a critical and broadcast success, shown in 29 countries.
• Paul McCartney (nom) by GabeMc. McCartney (born 1942) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and composer. He gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and his collaboration with John Lennon is highly celebrated. After the band's break-up he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings. McCartney has been described by Guinness World Records as the "most successful composer and recording artist of all time", and his song "Yesterday" has been covered more than any other song in history.
• Thomas J. Hudner, Jr. (nom) by Ed!. Hudner (born 1924) is a retired officer of the United States Navy and a former naval aviator. He entered the Navy in 1946 and eventually took up flying. He arrived in Korea in October 1950. That December, after his wingman Jesse L. Brown's aircraft was struck by ground fire and crashed, he crash-landed his own aircraft and unsuccessfully tried to rescue Brown. Hudner received the Medal of Honor for his efforts and continued to serve until 1973, when he retired as a captain.
• James Rowland (RAAF officer) (nom) by Ian Rose. Rowland (1922–1999) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He joined the RAAF in 1942 and was posted in Europe as a bomber pilot. Captured in 1944, after the war he became a test pilot and rose through the ranks. He served as Chief of the Air Staff from 1975 to 1979; during this time he was knighted. He retired in 1979 to serve as Governor of New South Wales, a post he held from 1981 to 1989.

Featured lists

Two featured lists were promoted this week:

• List of international cricket centuries by Mohammad Yousuf (nom) by Sahara4u. Pakistani cricketer Mohammad Yousuf has scored 24 centuries in Test cricket (including four double centuries) and 15 in One Day International. He is critically acclaimed for his batting and has scored more centuries in international cricket than any other Pakistani player.
• List of Rosenborg BK records and statistics (nom) by Arsenikk. The Norwegian association football club Rosenborg Ballklubb is the country's most successful club, having won the Norwegian Premier League 22 times and the Norwegian Football Cup 9 times. The club's record win is 17–0, while the record number of spectators is 28,569. The longest serving player was Roar Strand, while Harald Martin Brattbakk is the top scorer.

Featured pictures

Five featured pictures were promoted this week:

• Bara Imambara, Lucknow, India (nom; related article), created by Muhammad Mahdi Karim and nominated by Alborzagros. Bara Imambara, literally "big imambara", is an imambara complex in Lucknow, India, built in 1784. It is also called the Asafi Imambara.
• Martin Van Buren (nom; related article), created by Mathew Brady and nominated by Spongie555. Van Buren (1782–1862) was the eighth President of the United States. He is among the earliest US presidents of whom there is a photograph.
• Saint George Palace (nom; related article), by Julia W. The Saint George Palace in Rennes, France, was built in 1670 as an abbey residence. The building now houses the fire services for the city and other civil administrative offices.
• 2012 Venus Transit (nom; related article), created by NASA/SDO, AIA and nominated by EngineerFromVega. The 2012 transit of Venus, when the planet Venus appeared as a small, dark disk moving across the face of the Sun, began at 22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012, and ended at 04:49 UTC on 6 June.
• Sandboarding (nom; related article), created by Steven J. Weber and nominated by Tomer T. Sandboarding is a board sport similar to snowboarding. It is a recreational activity that takes place on sand dunes rather than snow-covered mountains. This image was taken in Dubai.

Reader comments

2012-07-16

Tech talks at Wikimania amid news of a mixed June

Contribute  —  

Share this

•  E-mail
•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  LinkedIn
•  Reddit
•  Digg

By Jarry1250

Tech talks at Wikimania

As Wikimania, the annual conference targeted at Wikimedians and often well attended by those with a technical slant, draws to a close, comments have already begun to come in from attendees regarding the many tech-related features of the conference.

The Foundation will be pleased with the reception of many of their major projects on show during Wikimania, including Page Triage, a more feature-heavy version of Special:NewPages, and the landmark Visual Editor project (see previous Signpost coverage). The latter, attendees were told, should be live on its first wikis by December, confirming the expected six month delay after a design u-turn earlier this year. Developers also confirmed that the tool would continue to support manual mode for the foreseeable future, much to the relief of several hardened editors in the crowd. It is unclear whether the projects will retain support as they near fruition in the months to come.

Perhaps the most thought provoking of the talks, however, proved to be that of WMF Senior Designer Brandon Harris, whose proposed "Wikipedia in 2015" designs raised numerous eyebrows among the Wikimania attendees. The four-pronged suggestions incorporate not only a drastic new skin for Wikipedia pages (Athena, mockup illustrated right) but also possible designs for the Echo notifications project, Agora (a centralised design and icon repository), and Flow, an eventual replacement for user talk pages. All are marked as being of a strictly "future" nature: but their dramatic difference from current systems and designs no doubt took many in the crowd by surprise. Whether the Foundation has the willpower and legitimacy to push through such large scale design changes remains an open question, but they are aware of the issues that may arise: as Harris stated, "Athena is supposed to be a kick in the head. It's a process, not a final design. It's a conversation about what we need to do; not what we are doing." In the interim, some of the suggestions could find their way into the front pages of WikiProjects – or so a well-received talk by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller suggested.

Slides for some talks are already available, while many more, plus videos of each of the talks, will be made available over the coming weeks.

June engineering report published

“	In June 2012: 92 unique committers (up 15 from April) contributed 1401 patchsets of code to MediaWiki. The total number of unreviewed commits [reached] 320 (up 70). About 53 shell requests were processed (up 17). 45 developers received developer access to Git and Wikimedia Labs (down 63). Wikimedia Labs now hosts 100 projects (up 3), 182 (up 5) instances and 468 users (up 37).	”
—Engineering metrics, Wikimedia blog

The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for June 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project). Of the four headlines in the report, three have already been covered in the Signpost: the Berlin hackathon, described as "the largest gathering of Wikimedia technologists to-date"; the deployment of a second Visual Editor prototype backed by new parser Parsoid; and the launch of IPv6 support during IPv6 World Launch day. Finally, a fourth headline focussed on the commencement of development work on a new Wiki Loves Monuments mobile app, which is to be built by the Foundation's inhouse mobile team.

The monthly report also included news of a "distributed spam attack on [the Wikimedia] mail system involving what appeared to be a few thousand malicious hosts"; having blocked the attack, it "took a day for the mail system to catch up". Elsewhere, on the mobile platform there was a significant release for both the iOS and Android apps (bringing a "dramatic speed improvement" to both apps); testing conducted to allow telecommunications provider Orange to roll out free Wikipedia access to users in six countries and other providers to roll it out in Bangladesh and Montenegro; and "significant progress" on getting Wikipedia available cheaply over the SMS protocol. Just as significant was work on improving sister projects' mobile sites, and then setting up redirection to those mobile sites for users of mobile devices – a project that upgraded Wiktionary, Wikinews, and Wikisource wikis during June and has since been expanded to include Wikiquote, Wikibooks and Wikiversity wikis.

On the negative side, for the umpteenth month in a row, volunteer developers seem to be struggling to get timely code review, contributing to fears that now that unreviewed code does not block deployment, code could be sitting around for months without a review. In addition to publishing a headline figure of approximately 350 unreviewed revisions, the monthly report also contained the first fruits of the Foundation's attempt to generate proper statistics on the composition of the backlog, showing that just 76 were overtly waiting for the original submitter to take action, 49 were overtly awaiting reviewer action and 203 were in a grey area normally indicative of awaiting a reviewer. There was also little progress on the long-running TimedMediaHandler project (now in its 26th month of active development) but nevertheless good news: a final push is expected in late July to prepare the extension, which dramatically improves MediaWiki's support for video display, for a full Wikimedia deployment.

In brief

Signpost poll

Performance

You can now give your opinion on next week's poll: "Excessively long lines have made it harder for me, or someone I know, to read Wikipedia"

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.

• Wikidata deployment plan coming together: Denny Vrandecic, the director of Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project (see previous Signpost coverage) this week proposed a tentative plan for its first round of deployments (wikitech-l mailing list). That round of deployments would bring into effect phase 1 of the project – the provision of a central interwiki repository. Although no dates have been set, the process is expected to begin shortly, starting with the Hungarian Wikipedia and thereafter fanning out. Abnormal (non-one-to-one) interwiki cases will be left as-is for the foreseeable future, but, community consensus notwithstanding, all other interwiki links are set to be replaced with a single Wikidata call in the near future. A new logo for the project was also finalised this week.
• Find a Wikipedia in your language: A volunteer-developed search box has been added to http://www.wikipedia.org to allow users to find a Wikipedia in their own language (blog post by volunteer developer Robin Pepermans). Although the search engine will require further improvement, the interface already allows users to enter the name of their language and be redirected to the appropriate Wikipedia; currently, there are over 200 such Wikipedias or incubator projects. It is not yet enabled for mobile devices.
• Contractor joins fulltime staff: Longtime contractor for the Foundation Peter Youngmeister has been hired as a full-time member of the Technical Operations staff (wikitech-l mailing list). Youngmeister joins the operations team, "so that he can continue protecting the data and fighting for the user", wrote WMF Director of Technical Operations CT Woo, announcing the hire. The Foundation currently has over a dozen job vacancies; British chapter Wikimedia UK is also currently seeking a fulltime developer, as they announced this week on the same mailing list.
• Gerrit evaluation begins: The time is ripe to consider changing code review systems even if the outcome is sticking with Gerrit, Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier argued in a thread on the wikitech-l mailing list on Wednesday, alluding to earlier promises to review Gerrit after users had had time to understand its capabilities. A self-admitted afterthought, few disagree with the need for a review; rather, as points both for and against mount, critics are far more likely to point to describe Gerrit as an unfortunate fait accompli: the costs of moving, even from imperfect software, have already been cited as a reason for sticking with Gerrit, almost certainly to the dismay of those who wanted Gerrit's shortcomings to block the Git switchover. As of time of writing, the review – which, as previously reported, will be headed by Lead Software Architect Brion Vibber – seems to be inextricably heading for a "Gerrit but with fixes" outcome.
• OAuth a tricky business: Creating a suitable OAuth environment – that is to say, settling on a protocol whereby external "apps" could interact with Wikipedia pages on a user's behalf – could be a tricky business, suggests developer Daniel Friesen in a series of posts this week on the wikitech-l mailing list (1, 2, 3). Considerations for establishing the perfect system include security concerns, extensibility issues and maintenance of essential functionality, such as allowing custom-built mobile apps to ease editing (whether on a Wikimedia wiki or otherwise).
• Two bots approved: 2 BRFAs were recently approved for use on the English Wikipedia:
  • Svenbot's 3rd and 4th BRfA, taking over tasks previously run by Fbot.

At the time of writing, 11 BRFAs are active. As usual, community input is encouraged.

Reader comments

2012-07-16

Fæ faces site-ban, proposed decisions posted

Contribute  —  

Share this

•  E-mail
•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  LinkedIn
•  Reddit
•  Digg

By James

No cases were closed or opened, leaving the number of open cases at three.

Open cases

Fæ (Week 8)

See related Signpost coverage in this week's Special report

The case concerns alleged misconduct in aggressive responses and harassment by Fæ toward users who question his actions. The case was brought before the committee by MBisanz and also involves Michaeldsuarez and Delicious carbuncle. In response to a workshop proposal calling for the removal of his adminship, Fæ's administrator rights were removed at his request on 18 June.

Proposed findings of fact include Fæ's violation of clean-start restrictions: his failure to disclose other accounts during his request for adminship (where he claimed to be making a clean start with no imposed sanctions), and neglecting to mention that he left during an active request for comment. Fæ's mischaracterisation of good-faith concerns and harassment were noted, as were personal attacks directed at others, deceiving the community with attempts to withhold key evidence, lack of response to good-faith criticism, use of ad hominem attacks to discredit others, and accusations of copyright infringement. Also noted were harassment from Michaeldsuarez, and Delicious carbuncle's posting of identifying information.

Part of the proposed decision stipulates that, given Fæ's resignation under controversial circumstances, he must start an RfA if he wants to regain adminship, and must publicly declare his past accounts. There are remedies calling for Fæ's file contributions to be reviewed, a limitation to one account, and admonishment for him and Delicious carbuncle. A newly proposed remedy calls for Fæ to be indefinitely banned from the site, following his attempts to solicit intervention from the Foundation, and his claims that publicly listing all his accounts would be too onerous due to "ongoing security risks". In the same remedy, it was noted that at the time of his appeal he was still an official on the Wikimedia UK chapter. He was further criticised for attempting to dodge good-faith concerns. A few arbitrators believe that if Fæ's claims are valid then he must be removed from the community.

Falun Gong 2 (Week 7)

The case concerns behavioural issues related to Ohconfucius, Colipon, and Shrigley. The accused parties deny TheSoundAndTheFury's claims, and have decried his alleged "POV-pushing". According to TheSoundAndTheFury, the problem lies not with "these editors' points of view per se [but is] fundamentally about behaviour".

Proposed findings of fact include that involved parties edited in a biased fashion—in particular that edits by Homunculus favoured the Falun Gong movement and discredited the Communist Party of China, whereas Ohconfucius and Colipon edited with the reverse bias. It was found that Ohconfucius engaged in uncivil conduct. Ohconfucius and Homunculus have edit-warred on topics related to the movement.

It was proposed that Colipon, Homunculus, and Ohconfucius be topic-banned from articles concerning the movement and related government persecution. Mandated external review by uninvolved administrators was also proposed; editors placed on review would be required to seek consensus for major edits (beyond grammatical and aesthetic changes); and once a consensus has been reached, the discussion must be reviewed by an uninvolved editor, after whose approval the editor under mandated review may proceed.

Perth (Week 5)

The case, filed by P.T. Aufrette, concerns wheel-warring on the Perth article after a contentious requested move discussion (initiated by the filer) was closed as successful by admin JHunterJ, and after a series of reversions by the other involved parties (all admins).

Some findings of fact: JHunterJ closed the request and moved the article accordingly, but responded to criticism problematically; Deacon of Pndapetzim was involved in discussion regarding the merits of moving the article, made edits to related topics, and reverted the original decision without discussion; Kwamikagami upheld the original decision without discussion; Gnangarra upheld the reversed decision without discussion; and the page moves on 9 and 10 June required the use of redirect suppression and were therefore covered by the wheel-warring portion of the administrator policy.

It is proposed that Gnangarra, Deacon of Pndapetzim, and Kwamikagami be desysopped; but only the last of these has reached the required threshold for enforcement (subject still to reversals in the voting). Arbitrator Newyorkbrad has voiced his opposition to these remedies, calling them "completely disproportionate and excessive" (due to admissions of poor judgement and subsequent disengagement), noting that both Kwamikagami and Gnangarra have been good contributors to the project and have, for the most part, unblemished records. It has also been proposed that JHunterJ be reminded to respond calmly and courteously to queries regarding administrative actions.

Reader comments

If articles have been updated, you may need to refresh the single-page edition.

The Signpost is written by editors like you – join in!

Home

About

Archives

Newsroom

Subscribe

Suggestions