First community election for FDC positions
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Alongside the Signpost's interviews with the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees candidates, we asked the candidates for the two new Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) seats and its Ombudsperson a series of questions. The FDC makes recommendations to the WMF Board on how to disburse donors' funds to affiliate organizations (in the first two rounds, more than US$11M), which thus far the Board has accepted without change. The significant responsibility the two successful candidates will take on for recommending allocations and commenting on standards and practices in the movement appears to have garnered little attention from the editing community.
In late news, the election will not begin on 1 June, as notified some time ago. Little more than 12 hours before the advertised start, the election was postponed by a week, to 8 June. The reasons given involve the inability to verify the voter list and that SecurePoll is properly functioning, and the fact that the voter interfaces have not been translated from English to other languages.
Six candidates are standing for the FDC: Smallbones (en.wp userpage), Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro), Delphine Ménard (notafish), Ben (ImperfectlyInformed), Abbas Mahmood (Abbasjnr), and Mile Kiš (MikyM).
Two candidates are standing for ombudsperson: Matthew Bisanz (MBisanz) and Susana Morais (Lusitana).
For brevity, we will refer to each candidate by first name.
Affiliate organizations
Wikimedia chapters are affiliated but independent organizations founded to support and promote the Wikimedia movement. Most are based in nation-states. The affiliate entities have grown significantly over the past five years in number (now 39) and funding. The Foundation's financial reforms last year put chapter funding and scrutiny under more centralised control, and has introduced two new types of entities that are not tied to geographical regions—user groups and thematic organisations—although few of these other types of entity have yet been launched.
The Signpost asked the FDC candidates about this large increase in funding, which now accounts for almost a third of the movement's expenditure of donors' funds, and whether it is achieving its intended objectives, such as improving the number of editors, increasing female participants, and boosting the quality of WMF sites in the developing world.
Many of the candidates believe there are not enough metrics in place to adequately measure the impact the money is having (Ben, Delphine, Cristian, Smallbones, and Michał). Ben has some reservations about the amount of money being spent, highlighting part of the 2011 editor survey, where 82 percent of those surveyed who knew about a chapters' existence in their country were not members. Put another way, "when faced with another opportunity to contribute to The MissionTM, 82 percent of Wikipedians—who had above reported that they were here and/or had joined to contribute to The MissionTM—said 'no, thank you'." Michał, on the other hand, believes that chapters are "key intermediaries" between the WMF and the global editing community, as he believes they provide a key "talent and volunteer pool and could ... act as competence centres." As for the Global South, Delphine and Abbas hope that the FDC will increase its reach to encourage more programs like Afripedia in the developing world.
The candidates are split on whether the related user groups and thematic organizations—of which only five total have been approved by the Affiliations Committee so far—should be eligible to receive funds from the FDC. Most believe it's a possibility in the future, but with the FDC only a year old (Abbas), and the activities of these groups being so limited at the present time (Cristian, Smallbones), they should not be applying at the present time. Michał is hesitant due to "possible competence clashes and problems with representation of various cultures and communities in these affiliates." Mile says: "the WMF already has programs that allow thematic organisations and user groups open access to funds. The FDC is a much more complex process that requires good results in the past and the ability to manage funds well. That means that grantees have to have an appropriate structure and capacity. If some thematic organisations or user groups have such kind of structure, there's the possibility for negotiation. It's certainly a topic for further discussion." Ben is the only candidate to fully support both organizations' ability to apply; Delphine supports thematic organizations, but doubts that user groups would even need to apply.
Global funding model
The Foundation's global funding model is divided between the FDC for eligible chapters and the Grant Advisory Committee (GAC) for other chapters and affiliated groups. Individual engagement grants (IEGs) have been recently added to the mix for small, project-based grants.
Asked whether having a division between the FDC and GAC is the optimal method of financing the Wikimedia movement, the candidates came out with interesting positions. Ben thinks that having both the FDC and GAC as reactive committees—i.e. they only respond to specific proposals put forward to them—is a poor arrangement, as it prevents them from soliciting projects that specifically align with the Foundation's core goals. He says, "it seems parochial and it is quite likely that the most effective service provider may not be a formal member of the 'movement'. The economics is that a wider and more flexible pool of options is more efficient."
Delphine believes that there is no optimal model, as "both models make sense in their particular environment and answer to a specific need at a specific time in the life of organisations or groups that wish to engage with Wikimedia. ... There's no one size fits all. And we do need a mix of caution and boldness in the way we attribute grants: we need to foster initiative and new ideas to tackle our issues, but we also need to be take responsibility for what we do with the donations entrusted to us." Cristian and Abbas see the two-headed organization financing model as the best model for the WMF, though Abbas hopes that the first year of FDC grants will be analyzed to see if the process can be improved. Mile says that despite their similarities, both FDC and GAC have many differences, and "it's good to have different bodies involved in the process."
How much of the FDC community-elected; the Hong Kong fracas
With this election, the FDC will move from being a fully appointed body to partially community-elected. We asked the candidates if this was a positive trend, and if it should continue to its logical conclusion, with all members facing scrutiny in a full election.
Ben, Delphine, Cristian, Smallbones, and Michał all expressed reservations, for different reasons. They believe that appointed slots for individuals with specific skill sets would be desirable, similar to the 40% of Board trustees. Smallbones and Delphine went further, hoping that in addition to skills, the appointed slots should be used to ensure that the FDC is balanced "in geography, languages, and culture as well as skill sets and gender" (Smallbones). Abbas is the only candidate to support a fully elected body.
As the Signpost reported four weeks ago, the Hong Kong chapter's FDC application for US$212k was rejected, due to the FDC's concern with the plan's impact, along with "WMHK’s internal governance, financial management capacity, and [the] capacity of its volunteers to manage a plan of this size." The FDC recommended that the chapter "[address] these issues before undertaking a plan of this extent." Was this the right decision?
Only one candidate, Cristian, thinks Hong Kong's request was "reasonable", though he continued to say that too much was requested, given the limited history of activity by the chapter. He thinks the Committee should have consulted with the chapter to find a more "gradual path." Abbas, Ben, and Michał all agreed with the FDC's decision; Michał based his decision on a total lack of analyzable history, few proposed programs, one of which was "professionalization ... which is not a goal per se", and what he saw as overambitious growth. On the other hand, Delphine says that without seeing the FDC's deliberations, she's not well-placed to make a decision, but it appears that it "suffered from a typical case of cultural miscommunication. The FDC should and will ... implement an even stronger pre-request monitoring of grant requests." Mile stressed the need for a "mentor/supervisor" to provide technical advice.
FDC internal process
We concluded our interview questions with three related questions about the FDC internal processes: the application forms, community feedback, and the WMF staff role in the process. Cristian did not answer these questions because he has "no experience as a proponent of a FDC request", though from his experience with the GAC, he can say that "comments from the community or the staff are usually valuable and ... a source of good ideas."
The candidates are broadly satisfied with the forms, although several candidates believe that they could be simplified. In addition, Ben and Michał both wish that more data could be displayed in charts and spreadsheets. As it stands, Ben says, it's difficult for the FDC to get a grasp on the submissions; he thinks the Meta website (which houses the FDC) "in general feels a bit like a maze, which can be frustrating. I'd like to see more data on number of articles, edits, and unique visitors", while Michał commented on "an obvious weakness of MediaWiki ... if the form were in some spreadsheet, you could easily compare submissions, create ratings, perform calculations etc." Delphine was the only candidate with a strong stance against the forms; she believes that they are too complicated and don't give requesting organizations the freedom to show the information they want to display. She believes they can be greatly improved by incorporating recommendations from past applicants.
Nearly all candidates decry the lack of community feedback in the FDC process. While they express gratitude for those who had commented, Ben highlights the "sparse" feedback, Delphine's reaction is one of dismay, and Smallbones pushed at the need for more community oversight over the disbursement of such a large amount of donors' funds. Michał attributes this lack to volunteers' responsibilities on their projects. Abbas is the only candidate satisfied with the level of community input.
The role of WMF staff role in the FDC process is supported by all candidates. Ben poses the only questions: how do the WMF staff assess the WMF's own application without a conflict of interest; but then notes that a hired consultant completed the assessment, not a WMF staff member. Delphine says the pre-request monitoring "needs to be strengthened ... to avoid misunderstandings and formal inadequacies."
Editors are invited to ask questions of the candidates on Meta.
FDC ombudsperson candidates
Matthew Bisanz and Susana Morais, the two candidates for the FDC ombudsperson position, also responded to inquiries by the Signpost. To start, we asked them about the FDC's process, including the application forms, the tripartite communication structure between the FDC, staff, and applicants, and the ombudsperson role itself.
With regards to the application forms, both candidates express their support for them as-is, but believe they can be improved. Matthew says that "the parts on comparative financial activity and SWOT could use substantial re-working to help the proposal flow more for the organization preparing [their application]", while Susana hopes that the issue of filling out these forms in wikimarkup can be improved in the future. On FDC, staff, and applicant communications, which faced criticism after the Hong Kong chapter incident, Susana believes that they can be improved. Matthew agrees, and goes farther with specifics:
| “ | I think part of this is structural. There appears to be an excessive number of pages, subpages, templates, forms, etc., relative to the actual submission and review of the proposals. Minimizing the number of pages people are editing and talking to each other on (and minimizing the use of email to supplement page discussions) will improve communication. Also, identifying bilingual individuals who can can review proposals originating from non-native English countries as well as to communicate comments back to the submitters will help to better align the expectation of grant requestors with those of the FDC and to ensure a thorough understanding of the proposals and comments. | ” |
The role of the ombudsperson, however, showed the starkest difference between the candidates. Susana, the incumbent, believes that it met her expectations, because she was able to ensure that the process remained transparent, any complaints were addressed, and comments on the process were taken on board in considering future proposals. Matthew, on the other hand, criticized the role's expectations. In his view, these are extremely unclear and blend being a mediator, internal auditor, and program evaluator; currently there is little definition "as to when the ombudsperson should act as a mediator to resolve a complaint, when they should act as an internal auditor to shine light on errors, and when they should act as a program evaluator to document ways to improve the process."
What are their top three pieces of advice for applicants who are framing an appeal or a complaint about the outcome of their FDC proposal? Matthew:
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Susana:
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Editors are invited to ask questions of the candidates on Meta.
- This article has been updated to reflect the new election timeline, which has been delayed for one week.
In brief
- Milestone: The sometimes-maligned Simple English Wikipedia has announced the creation of its 100,000th article.
- Thanks: The WMF's Thanks tool has been deployed to the English Wikipedia. It is located next to the 'undo' button.
- WikiAfrica: WikiAfrica has put out a call for two open Wikipedian-in-Residence positions. WikiAfrica, which describes itself as a an "international collaboration between the Africa Centre and lettera27 Foundation that redresses the imbalance of factual heritage and cultural knowledge about Africa on Wikipedia", is planning to bring the successful applicants to Cape Town, South Africa to work with the institution before returning to their homes to create and foster GLAM partnerships. Candidates must live in an African capital city outside of South Africa.
- Dutch Wikimedia survey: The results of a recent survey of Dutch Wikimedia contributors has been published on Wikimedia Netherlands' website.
- Infoboxes studied: Researchers have extracted infobox data over time, showing how it is updated to keep with changing statistics.
- Jerusalem RfC: An ArbCom-mandated request for comment on the Jerusalem article has begun—specifically its "the lead section and how Jerusalem is described within the current, contested geopolitical reality".
- New affiliates: The Affiliations Committee has recommended that the Wikimedia Foundation approve what would be the first thematic organization, Amical Wikimedia. In addition, they have also moved to approve the fourth user group, Wikimedians of Nepal. Discussion of the latter is on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.
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Pagans complain about Qworty's anti-Pagan editing
| “ | Although his particular reign of terror did not wipe out modern paganism, he has to have done more damage to Wikipedia's image than Tomás de Torquemada managed for the Catholic church in Spain. | ” |
In the continuing saga of User:Qworty's outing as author Robert Clark Young, several blogs and websites including Salon.com covered the now-banned user's anti-Pagan editing. In an article published on 22 May 2013, TechEye—calling Wikipedia (albeit inconsistently) "Wackypedia"—described Qworty's edits as a "reign of terror" and were pleased to find that he had not succeeded in removing several prominent Pagan biographies from the encyclopedia. The article cited one of Qworty's talk page comments as saying that practitioners of Stregheria (Italian Paganism) were "mentally ill, delusional people". The same day, Pagan blogger Jason Pitzl-Waters wrote on the group blog "The Wild Hunt" about Qworty's lack of NPOV and revenge editing against Jeff Rosenbaum, a prominent Pagan figure. Pitzl-Waters also quoted Qworty's previously mentioned comments about Stregheria at length and mentioned Qworty's numerous sockpuppets, concluding his piece with a call for his readers to help improve Wikipedia's Pagan content (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Neopaganism).
On 24 May 2013, Andrew Leonard published a follow-up to his earlier article on Qworty (see related Signpost coverage) in Salon. Leonard pointed out the irony in Qworty's accusations that prominent Pagan writer David Jay Brown edited his own article, which was deleted in November 2012. Leonard quoted Qworty's comments during the AFD: "[Brown sees himself as] a modern-day messiah who combined all of the powers of Jesus and Freud and Einstein and Marx and, oh why the heck not, Timothy Leary, lol." Leonard states that Qworty's editing in this area was brought to his attention by the Pagan community after he published the initial outing article, and that the Pagan community was very concerned about Qworty's deletion nominations, as they felt those people were notable. Leonard noted the irony in Qworty's comments about Brown seen alongside his inflated writing about himself, quoting both extensively. Both Rosenbaum and Brown responded to Leonard's request for comment, saying that though they had violated the rules about spam and COI years ago, they had since learned how to edit properly and had contributed productively. Right as the story of Young's identity broke, Brown nominated his article for deletion under the same rationale Qworty had posted for his biography, what Leonard called "hilarious in its own perverse way"—though the article was kept.
In brief
- Penalty for citing Wikipedia: An article on Patheos.com published on 23 May 2013 reported one professor's penalty if students "dare" cite Wikipedia—he will penalize them for citing Wikipedia, edit the article they cited, and then penalize them a second time for it not having the information claimed. The object is to have students realize that Wikipedia can be changed by anyone—though in view of this exact problem, Wikipedia’s guide to citing itself recommends that researchers use a permanent link rather than the normal URL.
- Bad Astronomy on front page: Phil Plait reported in Slate on 24 May 2013 that his book, Bad Astronomy, was featured on Wikipedia's front page. He said he had Susan Gerberic to thank for this, who was spearheading a Guerilla Skepticism effort, a Wikipedia editing team whose mission is "to improve skeptical content of Wikipedia. We do this by improving pages of our skeptic spokespeople, providing noteworthy citations, and removing the unsourced claims from paranormal and pseudoscientific pages."
- Wikipedia's coverage of hentai astonishes Japanese: Video game blog Kotaku, part of Gawker, reviewed Wikipedia's coverage of hentai, which is adult-oriented anime, manga and video game content, after related debates on 2ch, Japan's biggest online forum. The article showed that coverage in the Chinese and English Wikipedias was far more voluminous than in the Japanese Wikipedia, but attributed this in part to a cultural difference—the concept of hentai is more limited in Japan, while in the West, it is used as a general shorthand for adult art. "But as amused as 2ch commenters seemed by the wordy 'hentai' Wikipedia entries, they were also impressed. 'I want to send my congratulations,' wrote one user. 'This is amazing.'"
- Simple English Wikipedia: The Week (US edition) had a story on the Simple English Wikipedia on 24 May 2013, comparing the descriptions of 16 basic concepts in the English and Simple English Wikipedias. "Even native English speaking adults can find it useful when the regular English Wikipedia leaves them scratching their heads over existentialism or the Higgs-Boson particle," the magazine said.
- Edit wars mapped: On 29 May 2013, The Daily Dot reviewed the work of researchers who have created a Wikipedia conflict map. The article quoted Mark Graham, one of the map's creators: "Understanding the geography of conflict on different Wikipedia language editions gives us fascinating insights into what different groups of people feel is worth fighting about."
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Candidates talk about the Meta problem, the nation-based chapter model, world languages, and value for money
Last week the Signpost began a two-part interview with the candidates for these positions; this week, the second and final part of the interview explores two broad themes: Meta, the site that hosts movement-wide coordination; and offline entities—the chapters and the new thematic organisations and user groups.
The 12 candidates are Leigh Thelmadatter, Milos Rancic, Liam Wyatt, Phoebe Ayers, Tom Morton, John Vandenberg, María Sefidari, Jeromy-Yu Chan, Samuel Klein, Kat Walsh, Michel Aaij, and Francis Kaguna. Kat Walsh was alone among all candidates in sending no responses to the Signpost.
In late news, the election will not begin on 1 June, as notified some time ago. Little more than 12 hours before the advertised start, the election was postponed by a week, to 8 June. The reasons given involve the inability to verify the voter list and that SecurePoll is properly functioning, and the fact that the voter interfaces have not been translated from English to other languages. Given that the Signpost had just been published, we were not in a position to make enquiries about what went wrong.
All active editors of WMF projects (with minor exceptions) can vote, and there is information on how to vote, including a direct link to the SecurePoll system, which will be active from UTC midnight start of Saturday 1 June for two weeks. Risker, a member of the independent election committee, told the Signpost that banners with direct links should appear for logged-in users during the voting period. Elections for two seats on the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and its ombudsperson are being held concurrently. Candidates for these positions are interviewed in this week's "News and notes".
Meta: "a specific kind of mess"?
Meta was a child of the very early wiki environment in 2001, a time when there was little more than a threadbare English Wikipedia. Meta is the main site for stewards, the Foundation’s grantmaking activities, WMF elections, and the archives of chapter reports. The boundaries are not entirely distinct between Meta and the Foundation’s official website, and between Meta and Outreach. Despite the increasingly global reach of Meta, the site remains almost entirely in English, technocratic, and with a certain in-house mentality; editors who are new to the fray and who lack fluency in English face significant hurdles in participating.
Are candidates happy with the accessibility of Meta to members of the editing communities?
Some candidates point to the elephant in the room—that "most Wikipedia editors don't know exactly what Meta is all about" (Michel, Leigh). Milos says: "Meta is used by all Wikimedia communities, which creates a specific kind of mess. Although as a steward I'm a Meta 'native', it's often hard for me to navigate there. I don't have a particular idea of how to solve it, except to call [for] better design." Phoebe comments: "not many folks on the projects know about Meta, and they probably find it confusing to navigate, as the site has suffered from a lack of concerted maintenance over time. The best thing we could do ... is to continue to consolidate key information and projects like outreach and event planning there, and put in some design work to make it easier to use."
Samuel believes that "both small tools to support cross-wiki and cross-language discussions, and better coordination of announcements" would help. John says that although improvements have been made in translation tools, "Meta has been left to languish and be dominated by 'insiders' because the WMF and its Board have chosen to make many decisions without adequate consultation of the community, [with a few] notable exceptions." Tom emphasises the need for active links from other projects: "we lack enough hyperlinks to Meta, which means people approach it in a very haphazard manner. ... The meta community probably needs to broaden and diversify [with] more strategic collaboration there to build links between projects."
To what extent should two-way communication between Meta participants be assisted by funded translation services, and would this be viable and practical?
The responses were generally cautious and suggest that there's no clear strategy for improving inter-linguistic communication on Meta. Leigh says: "if money were no object, of course funded translation would be a necessity. However, with 270+ languages, it's not feasible." Liam is against paying people to translate, pointing to the huge amount of text at issue: "Are we also willing to pay to translate fundraising info, monthly reports, important software messages, and election information? What translation is paid for and what is not would need consensus." On this issue, Michel refers to the goals of increasing participation and reach in the Strategic Plan. Volunteer translation is the default, he says, but for important matters the Foundation should consider paying for translation—at least for the major languages and the major pages. "That shouldn't cost an arm and a leg and it would lower the threshold for [participation by] non-English speaking editors." María believes "some crucial questions or issues for the movement should have translations assured to the main languages at the very least." Her preference would be "to empower our translation volunteers".
In Phoebe's opinion, "the Board should put in more effort to make sure critical Board information is widely translated. Paying for translation is a complex proposition: it varies hugely in quality and must be reviewed by someone knowledgeable about the projects; however, I'd support it as an aid to our volunteer translator community for some documents." Tom says: "Perhaps. But a proper cost–benefit analysis would be needed. The first step would be to actively try and create a volunteer translation service, perhaps as a thematic organisation. Another option would be to look at hiring some of our more prolific volunteers to conduct translation, similar to how the Foundation has hired other community members."
Samuel set out a specific plan: "We have a body of talented multilingual editors and translators. We should commit ourselves to supporting two-way communication across a set of five or six major languages, and invest in expanding and supporting our translator community. This may include funding translation as a temporary stopgap, but should focus on honoring and recruiting [volunteer] translators, and providing them with training, tools, and a visible portfolio. This has been done with other communities, such as GlobalVoices, which handle higher volumes of text than the daily throughput of Meta."
John says: "I do not support the Foundation's outsourcing of translation to US for-profit organisations. ... In my experience, volunteers are happy to do translations if they have sufficient time." He wants "a small grants program" to facilitate discussion and dissemination of upcoming changes for editors in a particular language, and to coordinate volunteer translation, or when necessary do the translation themselves or outsource it to a local translator. He believes the WMF should fund chapters to help volunteers without English-language skills who wish to participate in an English-dominated Meta discussions.
Two second-language speakers were concerned about the quality of paid translations they have seen. Milos says that outside the key documents, translations are often "not of substantial value. English is global lingua franca and a person wanting to participate in global community has to have functional knowledge of English." Jerome-Yu has experience with the translation service hired by WMF for English to Chinese: "I still need to fix a lot, there's unfamiliarity with the terms, and ... the service is not really viable." In some cases, he says, fixing up paid translations "is actually more difficult and tedious than doing our own all over again."
Offline entities
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The chapters are independent organisations founded by interested individuals to support and promote Wikimedia projects. While projects such as Wikipedia are globally structured by language, most chapters are set up as nation-state-based organizations. The chapters have grown significantly over the past five years, now numbering 39 and accounting for almost a third of the movement's expenditure of donors' funds. The Foundation's financial reforms last year put chapter funding and scrutiny under more centralised control by insisting on the publication of regular activity reports on Meta. The Foundation has introduced two new types of entities that are not tied to any geographical region—user groups and thematic organisations—although few of these have been launched at this early stage.
Is the substantial funding allocated to chapters yielding value for money in terms of the quality and scope of WMF sites related to developing-world languages?
Despite the specific terms of the question, candidates responded to a wide spectrum of self-selected responses—some focusing on chapters, others on languages. Leigh says: "No. There is too little oversight to how the money is being spent or even if a chapter is following Wikimedia rules and values. There are far too many stories of people building little "kingdoms" of themselves and even marginalizing those they do not like."
Milos doesn't think we could create something "substantially better than chapters are", although he says it is difficult to predict how chapters, thematic organisations, and user groups will play out against each other in the coming years. Liam is upbeat about chapters: "I have always championed the raising of the bar in terms of professionalism and programmatic-reporting by chapters—and this is what we have seen in the last year with the introduction of the FDC. But this should be matched by programs to support the different stages of development of an organisation." He believes that "only when we have different metrics for different levels of organisational capacity can we make judgements on whether a chapter (or any project for that matter) is 'yielding value for money'."
María has confidence in the movement's grantmaking ability: "There are controls in place that make it possible to deny anyone, be it the developing world or elsewhere, continued access to WMF funding if they fail to report and fail to demonstrate impact." Phoebe is "really pleased with the general direction of the new Affiliations Committee and funding models (of grants and the FDC); I strongly supported more community review for all Wikimedia groups and activities, and we are slowly getting there." Jerome-Yu is generally supportive of chapters, but we should "also empower other entities, and even individuals, to fill the gap the chapters may have missed".
Samuel says: "We need to allocate more funding to chapters in the developing world in order to better advance the quality and scope of the projects in local languages. The funding allocated to chapters in the developing world has supported many of the largest outreach, writing, and content partnerships in local languages. ... Chapters in the developed world receive more than 90% of all chapter funding. They have supported some excellent projects to improve offline access to knowledge, he says, but local language quality and scope is not their primary focus."
On support for the developing-world languages on WMF sites, Tom says: "There are some great success stories within the developing world ... [like the] Kiwix and the Africa projects of European chapters. [While] a lot of funding goes into Western chapters, now we need to find ways to fund on-the-ground outreach in the developing world. The chapter model does seem to work, so why not continue to use it." Phoebe says: "we have a long way to go", but that we need to balance this against the "need to retain our editor base for our more established projects, which many chapters have been focusing on. ... For many parts of the developing world, there's a lot of potential for supporting the creation of user groups—more lightweight structures that can support particular initiatives."
John is critical of some aspects of the centralised approach: "Most Wikimedia funding for languages in the developing world remains under the operational budget and control of the US Wikimedia Foundation. Some chapters have funded programs to help the languages of the developing world and have had good return on investment, but most funding given to chapters (especially with the new FDC model) tend to be spent in the first world, or on program activity that benefits the English Wikipedia and other European-language projects." Jerome-Yu would rather there were less administrative burden for entities to get funding, whether from the WMF or locally, citing issues with charity status and the volunteer effort necessary to gain WMF funding. He wants to see chapters "be professionalized to free up volunteers to deal with the quality and scope things."
Is the nation-based model for chapters working, given that our editing communities define themselves through languages that transcend national borders?
Here again, the responses were strikingly different. Milos says, "mostly not, but that's highly politicized question without possibility to be solved in the near future." For Leigh, the nation-based model has worked best in Europe, and is useful to an extent; but "the Foundation has started to realize some of those limitations". Michel's answer is a "pragmatic" one, based on history: "Chapters owe at least part of their existence to the idea that one could physically meet up. Nationhood is a 19th-century invention that we cannot yet do without; it's a reality we all live with."
Samuel regards the geographically defined chapters to be "one of many models for movement entities that we need to integrate our work with the rest of the world. Social infrastructure—from volunteer communities and media to pools of content or funding—has developed along geographic lines, and is often drawn up along them." But other models that transcend geography are also urgently needed, he says, "which is why I pushed to expand the set of models we recognize for Wikimedia affiliation."
Liam highlights the advantages of having chapters correspond to legal jurisdictions with which so much of the freeing of cultural products is involved. "We often need a non-profit organisation to have a bank account, or to talk with the local government, or to form partnerships with national cultural institutions." Phoebe's view resonated with this: "the national model ... works with the governmental and legal constraints. ... But there's a big gap—most language editions of our projects are edited by a diaspora community of people located around the world, and I'm not sure that we've managed to tap into that effectively with current outreach efforts. I think the new thematic organizations/user group model, working with chapters, is a very promising one to address cross-border interest groups and language issues." María also sees the value in the nation-state model: "Most organizations, particularly public ones, are country-based. And most of the work chapters do is offwiki outreach, so in that context it can't just be understood from a language point of view."
While broadly supportive of "the current model for chapters and other affiliates", John believes it is "far from optimal". He sets out a possible process by which entities should be nurtured and funded once approved by the Affiliations Committee, "with the WMF providing support in finding suitable candidates if necessary for expert positions, and the candidates also being identified to the WMF as is required for stewards."
Might the new entities—thematic organisations and user groups—become more relevant than chapters to the Board's medium-term strategies?
The prevailing mood among candidates is that it's too early to tell, and that shouldn't be a competition between different entities. For Francis, what matters is "the integration of accountability" among these various layers. Leigh cites "the community of medical Wikipedians and the spinning off of US/Canada education activities from the Wikipedia Education Program" as showing promise already for thematic organisations. "However, there have already been conflicts with geographical chapters who feel threatened by these new group types." Milos predicts that chapters will be no less relevant than thematic organizations during this decade. Liam's view is that at this early stage "it's hard to tell how effective or popular [thematic organisations and user groups] are going to be. More important ... is to give every type of organisation every possible chance to succeed. ... Either way it's not going to a one-size-fits-all solution." María believes that "ideally, affiliates will complement each other and work together when needed."
Tom points out that "chapters and thematic groups both have strong relevance to the ongoing strategic plans. It's not an either/or situation". He raises an interesting question: "How do [these new groups] properly interact with other language projects? Do we end up with multiple thematic groups for different languages?" For John, "chapters and thematic organisations are complementary [to chapters.] The WMF should always be a stakeholder in any large program to provide oversight and fill any gaps in expertise". Jerome-Yu believes all types of entities should be treated equally, like chapters, but that clearer guidelines are necessary to attract more applications for thematic organisations and user groups.
Michel, again, steps back to take a big-picture view: "I think we'll find that geography is overrated. That's not to say it's not important: non-virtual human interaction is great, and I've benefited greatly from meeting people at Wikimania and the Education Summit. But I think that the kind of professionalization that will, for instance, increase article quality (one of the strategic plans) will have to come from thematic organizations."
Editors are invited to ask questions of the candidates on Meta.
- This article has been updated to reflect the new election timeline, which has been delayed for one week.
Reader comments
WikiProject Geographical Coordinates
- WikiProject Shakira has just been launched and new participants are invited
This week, we plotted out the demarcations of WikiProject Geographical Coordinates, which aims to create a single standard of handling coordinates in Wikipedia articles. We talked to Jim.henderson, The Anome, Dschwen, Andy Mabbett, and Backspace.
- What motivated you to join WikiProject Geographical Coordinates? Do you tend to spend more of your time geotagging articles or working behind the scenes on the templates and applications that provide and use geodata?
- Jim.henderson: I've loved maps for over half a century. Road maps, contour maps, rainfall maps, whatever. I always like to know where I'm at and which way I'm looking. This meshes with my interest in astronomy. I tag many pictures and some articles, and know nothing of writing apps or templates.
- The Anome: I thought that it might make Wikipedia more useful, and it might be fun to do. The expectation that coordinates are an essential feature of a well-written article also encourages better fact-checking by editors. I've put in a lot of work on coordinate discovery, data fusion, and bot-based maintenance of coordinates using my bot account,
- Dschwen: Geographical coordinates and the interactive services linked to them, such as my project the WikiMiniAtlas, are a great example of what sets an online encyclopedia apart from the print medium. It adds a layer of crosslinking between articles through proximity on a map. This is great for researching areas for a trip for example.
- Andy Mabbett: I first became involved as I wanted to add to the geo microformat to the way we display coordinates. That led to the creation of {{Coord}}, and I was the liaison person between the Wikipedia community and getting that recognised by Google for the Wikipedia layer in its maps. I quickly realised the usefulness of our coordinate data for a multitude of similar and other purposes. I've been involved in adding coordinate features to a number of templates and forging links between our articles and the corresponding entities on OpenStreetMap. I've also been involved in developing methods for displaying lists of coordinates in articles about linear features, such as those in Netherton Tunnel Branch Canal; see Wikipedia:LINEAR.
- How important is the geographical coordinate system used by Wikipedia? What use does this data have outside Wikipedia? Is the project anywhere near its goal of establishing a system akin to the ISBN system used in the publishing industry?
- Jim.henderson: I have no idea what this achievement would look like or how to get there. Probably readers get some use in opening an online map to understand the environment of an article, but I've accumulated so many maps in my head that my main use of Wikicoords is to check other Wikicoords.
- The Anome: It's already useful for finding articles for things near your location, which is fun, and for finding articles for things that are near another article. However, Wikipedia only has a very simplistic idea of geographical data, essentially just mapping the article to a point, with no idea of precision, scope, or provenance.
- I think the really interesting things are yet to come: cross-referencing Wikipedia's articles, OpenStreetMap's geographical features and semantic relationships (such as those exposed by their "Nominatim" tool) with Wikidata and other semantic data repositories opens the possibility of making a fantastic geodata resource cross-linked with information that cannot be reduced to geographical terms.
However, I don't think it's Wikipedia's job to provide globally unique identifiers, nor do I think that one single system can accommodate something as blurry as geographical data, which necessarily involves human-created distinctions everywhere. In any case, many people have had a go at this already, with their own private identifiers within their own databases. I'd rather that we participated in some geographical equivalent of VIAF, for geographical entities instead of people. VIAF apparently intends to cover geographical features, but I haven't found anything useful for our purposes: if I'm missing something here, I'd appreciate hearing about it! This is something that I hope that the Wikidata project may be able to help us with. - Dschwen: We already have crosslinking with OpenStreetMap objects. In our interactive maps OSM objects corresponding to the current article are highlighted. We know Google uses the geotagging information on Wikipedia on their maps, and mobile applications, where location based services make a lot of sense, are just beginning to use the data for proximity searches for example. Wikipedia does have the tools for more complex geographical data, such as the {{Attached KML}} template that is in use in hundreds of articles and allows to embed complex geodata that can be visualized as map overlays.
- Are Wikipedia's geographical coordinates easily accessible to the public? How difficult is it to add coordinates to an article? Do the coordinates in articles ever need to be corrected?
- Jim.henderson: It's a pain in the butt for anyone not a hardcore coordfreak like me to figure how to make additions or corrections. Offline, graphical programs (I use MS Pro Photo Tools 2) work easily and precisely but online you have to paste or otherwise deal with numbers. Which I do, most every day, because many Wikicoords put a building or other object on the wrong side of a street, and a few that belong in New York or Pennsylvania show up in Kyrgyzstan or Sinkiang. Or Patagonia.
- The Anome: yes, it's not uncommon -- I habitually click geocoordinate links when I visit articles for other reasons, just to see whether their coordinates make sense.
- Dschwen: Adding coordinates involves adding a template, which probably still is too complicated for the average user. However the preponderance of geographic coordinates on Wikipedia demonstrates that we have a sufficient amount of advanced users that are up to the task. For the enduser the coodinates seem to be hard to discover, or if the user notices them in the article they oftentime do not realize they are more than decoration and come with a lot of functionality, such as interactive maps, and the geohack page with links to dozens of external mapping resources.
- Backspace: It's not difficult to add (or to correct) geocoordinates at all. I have done perhaps thousands of them. The difficulty, of course, is in finding accurate sources. When I input a coordinate, I always check the linked-to map to see where it actually goes, because some sources, even "official" ones are sometimes just flat-out wrong. If I cannot find another source, I will then ignore the bad coordinates and post nothing.
- Do different databases and mapping services provide conflicting geographic information? Should some sources be trusted more than others? How does the project determine where something is really located?
- Jim.henderson: Everybody's databases are full of errors for parks, monuments and prominent buildings. Google landmarks, Bing Streetside View, NRHP, HMDb, Wikicommons, they all get many things wrong. Sometimes most of those agree and the one that disagrees is right or not as far wrong. Roads and active train stations have fewer errors. My bible is Google Earth's satellite photos, supplemented by historicaerials.com for vanished features and Google Streetview which has good precision in cases where the other sources can correct its baseline errors. Sometimes for local objects I hop on my bike and pedal out there. Sometimes you have to be a noodge.
- The Anome: Jim is right: everybody's databases are full of errors, some more than others, and none of them can be trusted all the time on their own without cross-checking with others. Wikipedia isn't perfect, either, but the more eyes we have on the problem, the more likely errors are to be found and fixed, for everybody's benefit.
- Dschwen: Associating point coordinates with area-like objects (cities, countries, lakes, etc.) or line-like objects (motorways, rivers, train lines) always has a degree of arbitrariness to it. We have a bunch of conventions on what points to tag, but there is also a lot of controversy with other on-wiki projects which oppose point like tagging of non-point-like features. The collaboration with OpenStreetMap should help. As for reliability of sources, I hope people will got out in the field with their GPS where they can.
- Andy Mabbett: Of course sources vary. We have the advantage, for many features, that they can be checked against reliable maps - though this is less easy for historic sites. There is, however, a difference between giving the exact pinpoint location of, say, a small building, and a point that enables a more nebulous concept like the area of a battle or the region traversed by a long-distance road, to be found in a map.
- Where do you foresee the future of geographic data heading? What new features would enhance the usefulness of this data? Is the system capable of being adapted to other types of data?
- Jim.henderson: I'm too much the geomonomaniac to see into any of that. Umm, come to think of it, better integration among Wikipedia Mobile, the photographic and geographic aspects of Commons, and Google Maps for Android, would make all of these more useful, especially to me and my quest to illustrate the many unillustrated or badly illustrated articles.
- The Anome: As I said above, the future is data fusion between many disparate sources, and geographical data is just one more way to tie things together. I suspect that the long-term future of the Wikipedia geocoding project will be as part of Wikidata -- managing that transition will be a big undertaking that at the moment we haven't even begun to address.
- Dschwen: Adding map resources for historical map data will be immensely useful. For example through reprojection and overlaying of old maps onto contemporary maps (http://mapwarper.net), explicit generation of KML data with a temporal axis (http://mapstory.org) or through encoding of time data into OpenStreetMap (check out the start_date and end_date tags on buildings for example). To have a map that reflects the status of the world at the time period relevant to the current article, or even to have maps animated with a time slider, displaying changing political borders, glacier melting, drying lakes (Aral Sea) would add tremendous educational value.
- Andy Mabbett: I see two important, and related, improvements in the near future: the hosting of coordinate data in Wikidata; and greater integration with OpenStreetMap. The latter will see the use of OSM maps in articles; and closer ties between Wikipedia articles and items mentioned in articles (or their Wikidata equivalents) and entities in OSM. For example, a building, lake, road or other feature, about which we have an article has a unique identifier in Wikidata and a unique identifier in OSM. We have a wonderful opportunity to work with the OSM community (and, indeed, others) to tie those identifiers together; to make clear that they are about the same thing; and to make sure that similar objects are not conflated.
- What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new member help today?
- Jim.henderson: Newbies can fix coordinate errors the same as other errors. Click a place you know, and if it's wrong, squawk in Talk. When oldtimers like me don't respond, study the numbers in the locator template and adjust them a few times until the map starts to come out better instead of worse. If this looks like fun, join the rest of us who are similarly afflicted.
- The Anome: I agree with Jim above about fixing things. There are also still around 160,000 articles marked as candidates for gecoding which are still missing coordinates, most of which have been categorized into per-country categories: see Category:Articles missing geocoordinate data by country. Tracking down coordinates for them can be quite entertaining, particularly as a coffee-break distraction from another task. The good news is that we've been doing really quite well at managing the backlog over the last few years, particularly when considered as a proportion of Wikipedia's ever increasing size: see here for a record of past performance.
However, it's still a vast backlog. We could really do with an outreach program to recruit editors to help, particularly those with local knowledge, and to get better interwiki coordination on coordinates-gathering. Although I understand the rationale for not cluttering up articles with maintenance categories by default, making it easier for casual editors to un-hide/un-fold "hidden categories" on pages (which first of all requires them to know that such things exist) would be a really useful feature for this, and many other maintenance projects.
Finally, it would be really good if we could get access to more machine-readable public domain geographical data -- anything which can be done to get database owners to free their data would do a great service not only for Wikipedia, but for the global community. - Dschwen: Actually I think our biggest challenges are social ones. Despite being around for quite a long time there is still a lack of acceptance towards geographical data coding in some sub-projects. Point data gets removed from articles because the coded objects are line-like (which destroys contributed information). Geodata is perceived as database data rather than encyclopedic data, weird strings of numbers just confuse the reader. We will have to work more on conveying the benefits of geodata by adding and improving the userinterfaces to add/edit and visualize the data. WikiMiniAtlas is a start, but to broaden the use and improve scalability, the geodata processing and map rendering will have to move from the underpowered toolserver onto Wikimedia Foundation infrastructure.
- Andy Mabbett: Editors can do three things: learn how to add coordinates to articles; learn to edit Wikidata, and learn to update OpenStreetMap. Once they've done one or more of them, they can contribute to the discussions of how we make and apply the improvements I refer to above.
Next week, we'll invade Europe with a well-known WikiProject. Until then, operate within the boundaries of our archive.
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Life of 2π
Featured articles
Twelve featured articles were promoted this week.
- Marie Lloyd (nom) by Cassianto. Lloyd was an English music hall singer, comedienne and musical theatre actress during the late 19th and early 20th centuries who frequently employed innuendo and double entendre during her performances.
- Madeline Montalban (nom) by Midnightblueowl. Montalban was an English astrologer and ceremonial magician who co-founded the esoteric organisation known as the Order of the Morning Star, through which she propagated her own form of Luciferianism.
- 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Kama (2nd Croatian) (nom) by Peacemaker67. The division was part of the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the German Nazi Party, and was composed of German officers and Bosnian Muslim soldiers. The division disbanded after the latter revolted, thanks to the realization that (in Peacemaker's words) "their German sponsors would leave them to the tender mercies of the Yugoslav Partisans and Russians."
- Rudd Concession (nom) by Cliftonian. Granted in 1888, the written concession for exclusive mining rights in Matabeleland, Mashonaland and other adjoining territories was later disavowed by one of the original principal signatories, King Lobengula of Matabeleland.
- Gagak Item (nom) by Crisco 1492. Gagak Item is a 1939 film that was made in the Dutch East Indies, or present-day Indonesia. The latest of several articles on Indonesian cinema by Crisco1492, the film was a bandit film that featured a main character similar to Zorro.
- Jack Hobbs (nom) by Sarastro1. Hobbs, according to the Sarastro1, is "generally rated among the top cricketers of all time, and was something of a pioneer in terms of batting technique and in establishing professional cricket as a respected occupation. He scored more first-class runs than anyone is ever going to again, was lauded wherever he played and was successful into his mid-40s at the top level."
- Banksia dentata (nom) by Casliber. This tree, which is found in northern Australia, southern New Guinea, and the Aru Islands, is the latest featured article in an already frighteningly large series on the Banksia genus.
- Norman Cob (nom) by Dana boomer. The Norman Cob is a light draft horse that originated in the province of Normandy in northern France. Dana boomer commented that it had a "happier" history than some of her other articles on French horses, as "after the event of mechanization it found another use besides being bred for the meat market."
- Manta ray (nom) by LittleJerry and Cwmhiraeth. These sea creatures are large eagle rays and belong to two separate species, M. birostris and M. alfredi.
- Middle Ages (nom) by Ealdgyth, Johnbod and Eric Corbett. The Middle Ages was a period of history corresponding to the fifth to the fifteenth centuries in Europe. Described by Ealdgyth as a "labor of love" and "probably the best short introduction to the very large topic on the web", the article is the product of nearly two years of work.
- Political career of John C. Breckinridge (nom) by Acdixon. The political career of Breckinridge included stints in the governments of Kentucky, the United States federal government, and the Confederate States of America.
- Woolly mammoth (nom) by FunkMonk. The Woolly mammoth was one of the last mammoths species in the world when they went extinct. Carcasses of these long-dead creatures are being discovered in Siberia and Alaska—including one this week where liquid blood was extracted—giving the possibility that the species could be revived through cloning.
Featured lists
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
- Citra Award for Best Leading Actress (nom) by Crisco 1492. The Citra Award for Best Leading Actress is an Indonesian award given at the Indonesian Film Festival and first awarded to Indonesian actresses Dhalia and Fifi Young in 1955 for their achievements in lead roles. The prize is described as the most prestigious award of Indonesia, and is often called as "Indonesia's equivalent to the Oscars".
- 84th Academy Awards (nom) by Birdienest81. The 84th ceremony of the Academy Awards were held at the Hollywood and Highland Center Theatre, and saw French romantic comedy-drama film The Artist be awarded Best Picture, the first silent feature to win such award since 1927. Martin Scorsese's historical adventure drama film Hugo won five awards. The ceremony attracted 39 million viewers from North America.
- List of Academy Awards for Walt Disney (nom) by Surge elec. Throughout his film career, American animator Walt Disney won or received a total of twenty-six Academy Awards, which is the most ever received by any person in history. Twenty-two of such awards were won out of fifty-nine nominations, while the rest were honorary awards for his career achievements in animation. He also holds the records for most wins and most nominations for an individual.
- List of highest scoring NBA games (nom) by Chrishmt0423. Since the implementation of the 24-second shot clock by the NBA in the beginning of the 1954–55 season, NBA games' scoring totals experienced a considerable increase, resulting in the highest scoring matches, which all have happened during the shot-clock era. The highest-scoring game is the triple-overtime game between the Detroit Pistons and the Denver Nuggets on December 1983, when both teams combined to score 370 points.
Featured pictures
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Twelve featured pictures were promoted this week.
- Grose Valley (nom) created and nominated by Diliff. Grose Valley is in New South Wales, Australia. Much of the valley is in Blue Mountains National Park. There is public access to the valley only for hiking.
- Mandarin Duck (nom) created and nominated by Diliff. The Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) is closely related to the North American wood duck. It is an East Asian perching duck with a wingspan of 65–75 centimeters. Breeding populations of the bird exist in Russia, China, and Japan. There are also breeding populations in Europe and North America.
- USS Macon (ZRS-5) (nom) created by the United States Navy and nominated by Crisco 1492. USS Macon was an airship commissioned in 1933 for the U.S. Navy. It served as a scout and floating aircraft carrier. It crashed in 1935.
- Jaimie Alexander (nom) created by Richard Goldschmidt and nominated by Keraunoscopia. Jaimie Alexander (born 1984) is an American actress. She has appeared on television in Kyle XY and in the movie Thor.
- Young Hare (nom) created by Albrecht Dürer and nominated by Crisco 1492. Young Hare (German: Feldhase) was painted in 1502 by Albrecht Dürer. Numerous contemporaries of Dürer adapted the same subject and style. The original is considered a masterpiece.
- The Spanish Wedding by Marià Fortuny (nom) created by Marià Fortuny and nominated by Armbrust. The Spanish Wedding, also known as La Vicaria, was created in 1870. It is currently at the National Art Museum of Catalonia. The painting was widely praised by art critics.
- Radian (nom) created by LucasVB and nominated by Vobedd. A radian is an unit of angular measure. In physics, angular velocity is often measured in radians per second. Radians are also used in astronomy and gunnery. The concept of the radian is normally credited to English mathematician Roger Cotes.
- Yellow mongoose (nom) created by Yathin_sk and nominated by Alborzagros. The Yellow Mongoose (Cynictis penicillata) is a small animal with a habitat in several African countries. Adults reach approximately 20 inches (500 mm) in length.
- Self-portrait (nom) created by Gilbert Stuart and nominated by Keraunoscopia. Gilbert Stuart (1755 – 1828) was an American painter. He is well known for his portraits, including those of the first six presidents of the United States.
- Cantino planisphere (nom) created by an unknown Portugese cartographer and nominated by Alvesgaspar. The Cantino planisphere is the oldest surviving map showing geographic discoveries by Portugese explorers in the East and West. The map is also the oldest surviving nautical chart showing where certain places appear according to their astronomically-observed latitudes. The map is currently at the Biblioteca Estense (Estense Library) in Italy.
- George Juskalian (nom) from the archives of the Juskalian family and nominated by Proudbolsahye. George Juskalian (Armenian: Գևորգ Ժուսգալեան) (1914 – 2010) was a highly decorated United States Army officer. He fought in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He retired in 1967 as a colonel. His awards include two Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, four Bronze Stars, and the Air Medal.
- Yellow Tang (nom) created by Lviatour and nominated by Tomer T. The yellow tang (Zebrasoma flavescens) is a popular saltwater aquarium fish. Adults can grow up to 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) in length. In the wild they are found near shallow reefs.
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Reader comments
Motivations on the Persian Wikipedia; is science eight times more popular on the Spanish Wikipedia than the English Wikipedia?
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
Motivations to contribute to the Persian Wikipedia
An article in Library Review titled "Motivating and Discouraging Factors for Wikipedians: the Case Study of Persian Wikipedia"[1] offers a much needed comparison of data from a population of editors outside the English Wikipedia. Most findings related to reasons people start and continue contributing confirm previous studies – important reasons for contributing include the desire to share knowledge and gaining recognition, and are reinforced by friendly interactions.
The authors find that "content production and improvement of Wikipedia in local language" is a significant motivation too, something missing or seen as mostly irrelevant for contributors to the English Wikipedia. The authors also look at reasons for editors to become less active, an area that is not as well understood. Their findings confirm previous research – editors may leave because they find rules too confusing or other editors too unfriendly, or because they do not have enough time. They list some additional reasons not mentioned significantly in the existing literature, such as "issues with Persian script; sociocultural characteristics, e.g. lack of research-based teaching instruction and preference for ready-to-use information; strict rules against mass copying and copyright violation; small size of Persian Web content and a shortage of online Persian references." The paper suffers from small sample size (interviews with 15 editors) and does not report statistics or rankings for some of the data, making it difficult, for example, to conclude or verify which motivations are more and less important. (Reviewer note: the reviewed pre-print copy did not include figures, which may contain the missing data.)
Science eight times more popular on the Spanish Wikipedia than on the English Wikipedia?
This paper[2] poses an interesting question: are there differences between what is popular in different language Wikipedias? This is measured through the comparing the highest-traffic articles in different Wikipedias. The authors chose four: the German, English, Spanish, and French, using open-source software for the analysis ([1]; from the paper and the software page it is unclear whether the software was developed specifically for this project). The researchers obtained 65 most popular articles from six random months of 2009. They then divided the pages into categories: entertainment (ENT), current issues (CUR), politics and war (POL), geography (GEO), information and communication technologies (ICT), science (SCI), arts and humanities (ART), and sexuality (SEX).
Two tables were compiled, the first showing some major differences between the popularity of articles on different Wikipedias. For example entertainment topics form 45% of popular articles on English Wikipedia, but only 16% on Spanish, where in turn the science articles form 24% (compared with only 3% on the English site). The second table compares the most contributed to content, again noting significant differences between different Wikipedias, as well as suggesting a lack of a major relation between a content's area popularity and number of contributors.
The paper suffers from a number of issues. The authors noted that the division of articles into categories had to be done manually, but the paper does not describe how this was accomplished (this reviewer can't but wonder: how did the researchers deal with classification of an article that would fit into more than one category, for example); nor is there any appendix that would list the articles in question. Given the rather surprising findings ("most remarkable"), this methodological omission raises issues about the reliability of the research. A number of similar issues plague the paper; for example the tables contain a "MAIN" category that is explained nowhere in the paper. The paper does not discuss any potential biases or issues, such as how the results may not be representative of cultural traits, but of short-term media news coverage; or why the data was limited only to few months in 2009 and how this could have affected our ability to generalize from it. There may be, for example, seasonal patterns of interests in certain topics; for example, one could hypothesize that science topics would receive more visits during the school year than holiday months; and if holiday months are different in sampled countries, this could be a factor in the popularity of science topics. (On a side note, this reviewer would also like to point out that his own paper is cited totally out of context by the authors.)
Overall, such exploratory research is certainly valuable, but the authors stop short of any significant analysis of data, in fact noting themselves that the presented data would benefit from a deeper sociological or sociocultural analysis. Unfortunately, there is no indication that their data set has been made publicly available. Nonetheless, despite lack of significant analysis, and methodological issues, the authors' findings are quite intriguing, suggesting that there may be a much more significant difference in coverage of topics by different language Wikipedias than most have suspected so far.
Another paper by the same four authors, titled "Visitors and contributors in Wikipedia"[3] examined a sampled pageview log of the top ten language versions of Wikipedia from 2009, discerning article views, views of history pages and edit requests (URLs with "action=edit" or "action=submit"). Among other things, they find that article views and edit requests "are highly correlated throughout the days of the week only for a group of Wikipedias: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian. This fact can be associated to a more participative attitude on behalf of the users of these editions as it seems that contributions come from the whole mass of visitors. On the contrary, editions where visits and edits are not correlated, or even negatively correlated [the Japanese and Dutch Wikipedias], can be considered as supported by a minority of contributors." (An earlier paper by some of the same researchers, based on the same 2009 sample, was reviewed in this space in 2011: "Wikipedians' weekends in international comparison".)
In brief
- Winning and losing argument patterns in deletion debates: A paper subtitled "How Experience Improves the Acceptability of Arguments in Ad-hoc Online Task Groups"[4] (presented at the CSCW'13 conference earlier this year) applied the argumentation theory of Doug Walton to classify comments in a corpus of deletion debates on 72 Wikipedia articles (all AfD that were initialized or relisted on January 29, 2011). The four Ireland-based authors emphasize that compared to previous related research which used simpler methods to classify deletion arguments, e.g. based on keywords or policy areas such as notability, their manual analysis is much more thorough and fine-grained, coding AfD comments into 17 categories based on Walton's classification. Among these, the "Rules" and "Evidence" categories are the most popular, making up 36% of AfD arguments. The papers's two other main results are that "familiarity with community norms correlates with [newbies'] ability to craft persuasive arguments" and that "acceptable arguments use community-appropriate rhetoric that demonstrate knowledge of policies and community values while problematic arguments are based on personal preference and inappropriate analogy to other cases" (drawing a direct comparison between Walton's list of problematic arguments and Wikipedia's list of deprecated AfD arguments, e.g. Walton's "Argument from Analogy" corresponds to WP:OTHER - "Other stuff exists").
- Why English Wikinews rejects submissions: [5] This write-up describes a study performed by Wikimedian LauraHale on the English Wikinews exploring the acceptance and rejection of submission made by four types of contributors (accredited journalists, new contributors, regular contributors and University of Wollongong students). 203 submissions that failed to pass review were assessed from between January 1, 2013 and April 12, 2013. The article, published on meta, consists of a discussion this dataset.
The study shows that the primary reason which new submissions fail review is due to a lack of "newsworthiness" and that, for the most part, University of Wollongong students struggle with a similar set of problems as new submitters do in general. However, the UoW students made slightly more submission attempts per article and were reject more often for lack of newsworthiness than new and regular Wikinews contributors. Overall, accredited contributors seem to be the most successful at passing through the review process. LauraHale concludes with a discussion of implications and recommendations for Wikinews, such as an "improved feedback system" for managing user's unwillingness to read the style guidelines before submitting.
- Wikipedia as a discussion forum for Malaysian students: [6] The study looks at a tiny sample of nine undergraduates from the Sunway University in Malaysia. The students in the ENGL1050: Thoughts and writing class were assigned to discuss a topic on Wikipedia. Although the paper does not cite any specific page or account name, based on the description provided the account User:ENGL1050 can be identified. Wikipedia was used as a discussion forum, with the instructor(s) and the student using a single account, and all of their edits consisting of editing the User:ENGL1050 page. The students had a generally favorite view of the assignment, with the majority agreeing that it is a useful tool of learning, collaboration and improving their English skills. Nonetheless, it is clear that the instructor(s) is not familiar with the basics of Wikipedia:School and university projects, nor with the basic guidelines such as WP:NOTAFORUM. The described activity had nothing to do with Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, and treated Wikipedia simply as a popular wiki host. (The instructor(s) was likely not aware of the existence of Wikiversity, where such an activity would be within the project scope).
- Using Wikipedia to predict the stock market: In an article[7] published in Scientific Reports, the authors have studied the page views and edit numbers of Wikipedia articles to reveal correlations to stock market fluctuations. Although the idea of considering Wikipedia activity data as financial indicators has been previously introduced by other researchers (see for example the already reviewed paper on predicting movie revenues using the same source of data), applying the same idea to stock market data has led to interesting results. Moat et al. say "We present evidence in line with the intriguing suggestion that data on changes in how often financially related Wikipedia pages were viewed may have contained early signs of stock market moves". And to show that, they investigate the activity data of 285 Wikipedia articles "on financial topics" from 2007–2012 and establish trade strategies for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. They report on a higher return for the Wikipedia-based strategy in comparison to a random strategy. The article is featured in news media like Wired.com and wallstreet-online.de.
- Main NPOV concerns in articles about corporations: Promotional language and inclusion of criticism: A conference paper titled "The Ideal of Neutrality on Wikipedia: Discursive Struggle over Promotion and Critique in Corporate Entries" analyzed the edit histories of "14 Finnish corporations ... utilizing the concept of discursive struggle by Laclau and Mouffe", according to the abstract.[8] Looking for "the particular expressions (i.e. key signifiers) that caused NPOV-claims or discussions of neutrality", the researchers identifed two main points of contention: Promotional language in the articles about the corporations, and "corporate critique".
- "Gangnam Style" pageview trends: A paper[9] presented at this month's WWW 2013 conference describes "An Approach for Using Wikipedia to Measure the Flow of Trends Across Countries". Concretely, the authors a compared pageview numbers for the articles about the 2012 YouTube hit Gangnam Style and its creator, rapper PSY, in both the Korean and English Wikipedia, finding among other things that "the initial spike in views occurred first on the South [sic] Korean article 2 days before the English article" in both cases, and that they reached their peak before the Google trends statistics for the corresponding search terms. A second part of the paper looks at the cumulative page views for the entire Category:Artist (i.e. a set of 7,752 articles retrieved using DBpedia). These showed peaks around the time of the annual Grammy Awards in February 2011 and 2012, and "time periods of dormant activity ... during the months of December and March, which correspond to worldwide holidays of cultural and religious significance, including Christmas and Easter Vacation." Comparing the Gangnam Style/PSY page views against this general backdrop, the three researchers from the University of Southampton speculate that "monitoring a subset of articles may provide an indication of articles ‘soon-to-be’ popular", but appear to delegate the development of a more specific methodology to future research.
References
- ^ Saeid Asadi, Shadi Ghafghazi, Hamid R. Jamali, (2013) "Motivating and Discouraging Factors for Wikipedians: the Case Study of Persian Wikipedia", Library Review, Vol. 62 Iss: 4/5 HTML
- ^ Antonio J. Reinoso, Juan Ortega-Valiente, Rocío Muñoz-Mansilla, Carlos Léon: Most popular contents requested by users in different Wikipedia editions. 10/2012; In proceeding of 4th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development (KEOD), Barcelona. HTML
- ^ Antonio J. Reinoso, Juan Ortega-Valiente, Rocıo Munoz-Mansilla and Gabriel Pastor: Visitors and contributors in Wikipedia PDF
- ^ Jodi Schneider, Krystian Samp, Alexandre Passant, Stefan Decker: Arguments about Deletion: How Experience Improves the Acceptability of Arguments in Ad-hoc Online Task Groups CSCW’13, February 23–27, 2013, San Antonio, Texas, USA PDF
- ^ "Research:Wikinews Review Analysis - Meta". Meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2013-05-31.
- ^ http://www.savap.org.pk/journals/ARInt./Vol.4%282%29/2013%284.2-23%29.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ Helen Susannah Moat, Chester Curme, Adam Avakian, Dror Y. Kenett, H. Eugene Stanley & Tobias Preis (2013). Quantifying Wikipedia Usage Patterns Before Stock Market Moves. Scientific Reports 3, Article number: 1801 doi:10.1038/srep01801 HTML
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- ^ Ramine Tinati, Thanassis Tiropanis, Leslie Carr: An Approach for Using Wikipedia to Measure the Flow of Trends Across Countries. WWW 2013 Companion, May 13–17, 2013, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ACM 978-1-4503-2038-2/13/05. http://www2013.org/companion/p1373.pdf
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Amsterdam hackathon: continuity, change, and stroopwafels
Developers gather in Dutch capital to talk tech
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Second only to the technical track of Wikimania in terms of numbers, the Berlin Hackathon (2009–2012) provided those with an interest in the software that underpins Wikimedia wikis and supports its editors a place to gather, exchange ideas and learn new skills. This year the focus moved to Amsterdam, where Dutch chapter Wikimedia Nederland organised their first multi-day developer event (May 24-26). Other chapters supported the event by helping with participants’ travel and accommodation costs, as did the Wikimedia Foundation for its staff as well as some volunteer participants.
Though it is difficult to pin down a central theme for a conference with 140 attendees, the choice of workshops suggest consolidation: Wikidata, Lua (slides), and Wikimedia Labs (slides) are hardly new projects and were all demo'ed at last year's hackathon. Nevertheless, there was plenty to talk about, with upbeat developers leaving sessions excited at the progress the Foundation has made with each. In particular, the negativity that had previously surrounded the Wikimedia Labs project (see previous Signpost coverage) seemed peculiarly absent, the result no doubt of the dramatic improvements in the functionality and ease of use associated with the Tool Labs project.
Also on show was a first prototype of the Visual Editor's reference, image and category modules, all of which it will need if it is to be deployed on schedule in the first week of July, as well as a myriad of pet projects among the 100 or so volunteer developers attending. All workshops were recorded and will be soon be available on Commons.
Critics will point to the high cost of hosting international events, the decision not to prioritise the grant-supported invitation of Wikimedia outsiders, and the decision to implement WMF policy on having staff sleep in better accommodation than grant-funded attendees, who stayed in six-person rooms at the venue itself (a youth hostel). Perhaps because of the lack of outreach, the gender and ethnic composition of Hackathon attendees will also concern those who see such imbalances as corrosive. Nevertheless, it is clear that whatever the price-tag, those that did attend left happy.
The Signpost understands that external sponsorship worth €2,295 (US$2975) was pledged by Google in support of the event.
In brief
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. The author is indebted to Tech News, a Foundation-assisted attempt to create weekly tech briefings.
- Commons improves multilingual support: The Translate extension and Universal Language Selector were enabled on Wikimedia Commons on May 20. Commons users can now easily switch between different input and interfaces languages, and translate pages locally with a friendly interface.
- MediaWiki 1.21 released: The first stable release of MediaWiki 1.21 for sites outside Wikimedia was published on May 25 (wikitech-l mailing list). The release, the first since November, includes dozens of changes, all of which have previously come into effect on Wikimedia wikis. They include support for high density displays, one-click patrolling and various changes to skins. The release is primarily of interest to those running external wikis, many of which do not have the capacity to keep up with Wikimedia wikis' bi-weekly deployment schedule.
- Bye-bye HTML4: MediaWiki will stop supporting XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4, between them the dominant standards for over a decade. HTML5 will now be the markup language built into all pages created by the software. The change is not expected to affect end-users, since Wikimedia wikis do not yet rely on any major features of HTML5 which do not fail gracefully in older browsers. The move ends a nine-month period during which MediaWiki officially supported the older standard, but did not use it on Wikimedia wikis themselves.
- System architecture RFCs endorsed: During a Amsterdam Hackathon (see above), developers agreed on guidelines that seek to put RFCs at the heart of current practice when it comes to big architecture changes – that is to say, changes which greatly affect the underlying processes without being visible to the user. Previously, despite playing a significant role on major WMF wikis and at bodies such as the IETF, RFCs had remained sidelined in the decision-making process (also wikitech-l: 1 2).
- Bugfixes coming soon: A number of changes made in the last week will be coming soon to a Wikimedia wiki near you:
- There is now a category to list pages with invalid music code (gerrit changeset #63268).
- The Wikimedia Commons Android app will come out of the beta phase on its next release (design-l mailing list).
- Account creation by manual log-in will now be recorded in the account creation log (bug #42434).
- Links to file description pages will again be accessible directly from within videos (bug #43747).
- The software behind recent changes patrolling was re-written; the change fixes issues related to patrolling new pages, among other things (changeset #41196).
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