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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions

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The Wikipedia Signpost
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Welcome to The Wikipedia Signpost's Tip Line. There are several ways to leave tips:

  1. Add a tip on this page
  2. Anonymously e-mail us at WikipediaSignpost@Gmail.com (for convenience, you may use this link). It is monitored by Ragesoss and Phoebe, and a handful of past trusted Signpost editors also have access.
  3. On Twitter or identi.ca, send a tweet to @wikisignpost, which is maintained by Ragesoss.

Not every mention of Wikipedia in the media will make it into Signpost. Consider editing Wikipedia:Press coverage or Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source so we have a comprehensive record.

Please do not post newsletters to this page; news from WikiProjects is always appreciated, but templated messages are much more likely to be ignored. Ral315 (talk) 05:43, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

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[edit] Ongoing

[edit] Archives of this page

about archiving this page: regular archives have not been made in the past (instead stories have been deleted) because some stories are of ephemeral interest while others may need to stay for a while while an author is found to write about them. I find broadly organizing by date helpful, however.

[edit] Calendar of upcoming events

I intend this to be a sort of calendar of upcoming events, on and off Wikipedia (particularly non-obvious events, that might be easily missed) -- things that readers might be interested in. Anyone can add events here.

  •  ???
    • Would {{Meetup}} be appropriate for this section...or am I off-base? §hepTalk 07:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Requests for WikiProject features

If you'd like your WikiProject featured in an upcoming WikiProject report, feel free to list it here. Note that these requests are entirely advisory, and may or may not be used in future reports. Please do not "support" or "oppose" individual requests, and keep requests short and concise. Ral315 (talk) 05:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

  • WP:DINO, with over 90 members, the Dinosaur WikiProject is really dedicated to dinosaur coverage. See achievements for more information. Bibliomaniac15 21:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • WikiProject Oregon is a lively and productive project that currently supports over 5000 articles, and has a dedicated core group of editors who work toward getting articles to GA and FA. Currently we are working on a response to the Oregon Historical Society's announcement that they are starting a collaborative encyclopedia project that will somehow be better than Wikipedia. Katr67 (talk) 02:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Textile Arts nearly died and came back to life. Originally begun in early 2007, by the start of December it had dwindled to just two active members. For a view of how much it's revived, here's its March newsletter (featured pictures, good articles, DYKs, and a featured portal drive). Durova 09:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I think Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized might be a nice success-story to include in some edition of the Signpost. Various gnomes have hacked away at this backlog ever since bots like Alaibot started populating it a year and a half ago. Of course, this is a never-ending task but it's an important one and the backlog typically hovers around 2000 articles (compared to 10 times that a year ago). Pichpich (talk) 13:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Spotlight. We have just restarted and our first article was elevated to a GA by our effort. We have already created new templates and even a barnstar. The one thing we are missing is people. The last article (Kristallnacht) was a 3-person job, and we could do with a little feature just to let people know we're back Dendodge 17:45, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
  • WikiProject Environment. It has quite a bit of members and quality of articles (5 FA, 20 GA, 3 GAN). It has a task force that has attracted an English course in University of Kansas to improve environment-related sections in Wikipedia articles. OhanaUnited 13:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • WikiProject U.S. Roads. There have been a recent surge of good articles, making a total of 12 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 1 featured picture, 2 featured topics, 9 A-Class articles, and 117 Good articles. There are five main users that should be interviewed, and they are Rschen7754, Scott5114, O, Kéiryn, and NE2. --CG 03:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
  • WikiProject Comedy - It contains over 50 featured works, over 200 GAs, and has just under 50 members. ISD (talk) 08:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • WikiProject Horror. Established in 2006, this project has been given renewed life recently and hopes to be able to contribute and improve articles within our scope. hornoir (talk) 15:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] April 1-15 2009

[edit] russian wikipedia predicting?

this edit to the russian wikipedia happened about 10 minutes before the news broke that the person in question had been attacked. See here.Geni 22:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] where britannica rules, wikipedia has conquered

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/05/digital-media-referenceandlanguages --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:31, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] DRaMA: Proposed display of date on Merger and Split tags

A tip for DRaMA/Centralized discussions:

Proposed display of date on Merger and Split tags
A discussion about enabling the display of the "date" parameter in all the merge/split templates, such as "Proposed since April 2009". Three propositions: (A1) To maintain the current status of not displaying tagging data on the ground that it would make the tag's sentence too long, (A2) To enable display of tagging date on the ground that it is standard and prevents tags lingering for months without actual discussion, (B) Independantly, to have a bot automatically remove merge/split tags after N months. / The change was briefly enabled on 10 templates then mass-reverted and the discussion started.

(This is an attempt at a sample NPOV prose that you can copyedit at will, of course. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 20:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC))

[edit] "The making of a wiki page" - blog post

May be of interest, about a Wikipedia page: The making of a wiki page, April 5th, 2009. --Chriswaterguy talk 21:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] for may issue: it.wiki festival of digital freedoms

http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Wikimedia_news/numero_24/en#What_will_happen_next_month

[edit] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright

Ars Technica reports that a U.S. federal court issued a ruling on the copyright case Golan v. Gonzales, finding that it violates the First Amendment for a law to move works back under copyright after they have passed into the public domain. While copyright activists such as Lawrence Lessig and Anthony Falzone hail this as an important victory, further appeals are expected.--ragesoss (talk) 22:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WSJ: Wikipedia's Old Fashioned Revolution

A Wall Street Journal in the April 6, 2009 edition entitled Wikipedia's Old Fashioned Revolution. Article mentions Lih's book, Encarta, and how administrators monitor the site as well as how they are elected. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WP:FILMS Coordinator election

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

Since the Military History coordinator election was mentioned in last week's edition, I'll also point out WP:FILMS' recent election completed on March 29, with 7 elected coordinators. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Retiring Users

I don't know if this would be possible or plausible, but it would be nice if there was a mention of well-known users who retired in the week before the Signpost came out. If that's too much, then just admins would be fine. Thanks, Genius101Guestbook 22:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

It did that for Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-03-21/Top admin leaves, only to have the admin in question wander back fairly quickly. Given that a significant number of the editors who declare their departure end up editing again within three months, I would oppose this proposal. - BanyanTree 22:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I've thought about this before but it's simply too difficult to do it well. Some people announce retirement and then return, others stop participating gradually without any fanfare (and may still be lurking and not considered themselves retired even when they haven't edited in many months).--ragesoss (talk) 01:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Which admin are we talking about here? Sorry for being slow lately and didn't catch any wind of this news until now. OhanaUnitedTalk page 02:18, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
BanyanTree was referring to Ta bu shi da yu in 2005. I don't know if there was any particular retirement that inspired this thread, but the attrition rate among once-active editors is high enough that there are always a few who recently left the project.--ragesoss (talk) 02:55, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
I am talking about the recent departure of an admin, not the one that departed in 2005..... OhanaUnitedTalk page 12:39, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Why we would want to encourage editors to formally announce their retirement? Plus once they have been semi-officially recognized as being retired, that would be at least a minor disincentive for them to return. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:31, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] History Engine, "a Wikipedia for undergraduate scholars"

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "U. of Richmond Creates a Wikipedia for Undergraduate Scholars". The website, called History Engine, is a forum for collecting, tagging, and curating short topical essays on history. Described as "Wikipedia for students", "[e]xcept better", History Engine is an attempt to solve the problem that "the volume of historical scholarship get[s] in the way of our ability to make sense of history". It provides a venue for participating college history classes to publish assigned essays. According to the History Engine website, the project "subjects its contents to a careful academic screening process on the part of library staff, archivists, professors, and teaching assistants", essentially establishing an undergraduate analog to traditionally published historical scholarship.--ragesoss (talk) 01:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Here's an excerpt from the instructions to students:
"But the goal of the [student] assignment is also different: an episode should be built around a story, not an argument. The focus of your episode should be one primary source (or a couple of documents about the same family, issue, town, etc.). Your job will be to tell the story of this source and explain its significance to American life."
I looked at a half-dozen articles/assignments/episodes, which were one to four paragraphs in length. Here is one of the longer ones, for those interested. (It's one which doesn't seem to follow the instructions about focusing on a single source, perhaps reflecting the difficulty of getting academics in different colleges in universities to do things exactly the same.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Locr travel photobooks

This is really interesting. Locr lets you build photobooks online, adding maps and other geo related information to them, including relevant excerpts from Wikipedia articles. http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/Locr-intros-location-enabled-travel-photo-book_a1453.html There is a youtube video there that illustrates the process. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia UK formed

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

Wikimedia UK - the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom - has been reformed and is holding its first AGM on 26th April. Elections for the first permanent Board of Trustees are currently underway. AndrewRT(Talk) 23:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Draft arbitration policy

The Arbitration Committee has prepared a provisional draft of an updated arbitration policy for initial community review. All editors are invited to examine the text and to provide any comments or suggestions they may have via one of the two methods specified on the draft page.

[[Sam Korn]] (smoddy) 11:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikipedia-generation not ready for university"

(translated from Dutch by MacGyverMagic) Spits News, April 8, 2009:

The "Wikipedia-youth" is not ready for a university education. First-year students are immature, rely too much on internet sources like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and they expect success without making too much of an effort. That is the outcome of a Canadian poll of 2000 professors.

Over 55 percent of them believe students are less well-prepared than three years ago. " They see something on the internet and copy it," says professor Brian Brown in the Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen. According to him solid research is hard to find among students. Brown is the chairman of the confederation of universities in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Earned

The current youth culture of self confidence, which makes the youths believe they can handle everything, means they no longer know the word 'failure'. They think that because their curiculum is paid for, they 'earn' good grades.

I think a response to this bollocks would be in place. Especially since it's based on the personal opinions of the professors rather than solid research of facts which they seem to find so important. The irony! Let's start with the choice of students. Obviously first-years are a bad choice because they haven't been thought how to handle sources that's something those professors should be instilling themselves. As for the second paragraph of the article: the feeling they can handle everything is commonly found in young adults and a medical fact of the brain. I doubt anyone in their right mind would agree with the second sentence... - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 09:00, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Here's the entry in the Ottawa Citizen itself: [1] - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 09:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] AFD discussions extended to 7 days

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

You might want to have something in the Signpost about the change; see Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Proposal to change the length of deletion discussions to 7 days, which passed today. –Drilnoth (T • C) 03:03, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] "Scale-free topology of the interlanguage links in Wikipedia"

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

Physics-based paper on arXiv investigating the "Scale-free topology of the interlanguage links in Wikipedia" by Łukasz Bolikowski: [2]. Mike Peel (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Licensing update vote begins

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/License_vote

The licensing update vote has begun. Because of issues with how central notices function, not everyone is yet seeing the announcement but the vote is live and can be accessed via Special:SecurePoll/vote/1. Dragons flight (talk) 20:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia Foundation joins protest against Obama's RIAA appointments

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

The Wikimedia Foundation, together with 18 other public interest groups, library associations, and trade associations representing the technology, consumer electronics, and telecommunications industries (among them the Internet Archive, Public Knowledge, the American Library Association and Educause) has signed an open letter to U.S. president Barack Obama expressing concern that

several of your appointees to positions that oversee the formulation and implementation of IP [ intellectual property ] policy have, immediately prior to their appointments, represented the concentrated copyright industries

(Wired indicates that two of these are the former Recording Industry Association of America attorneys Donald Verrilli Jr. and Tom Perrilli who were appointed to two of the highest ranking positions in the US Department of Justice (Associate Deputy Attorney General and Associate Attorney General), which subsequently already sided with the RIAA in an important lawsuit [3].) The letter asks Obama

to consider that individuals who support overly broad IP protection might favor established distribution models at the expense of technological innovators, creative artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and an increasingly participatory public. Overzealous expansion and enforcement of copyright, for example, can quash innovative information technologies, the development and marketing of new and useful devices, and the creation of new works, as well as prohibit the public from accessing and using its cultural heritage.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikia considering GFDL to CC-by-sa switch

Wikia, which had been silent on the issue until now, has mooted the possibility of updating their licenses from GFDL to CC-by-sa. See http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Licensing_update .--ragesoss (talk) 16:15, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WMF announces "Letter of Support"

Not sure WHERE Sue actually announced this, but sounds interesting regardless. http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/2009/04/letter-of-support.html --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Might also be a good idea to get clarification on what a 'letter of support' actually is. Raul654 (talk) 19:52, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Foundation hires Chief Program Officer

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-20/News_and_notes

The Foundation has announced the hire of Jennifer Riggs as Chief Program Officer, a position responsible for "all non-technical program activities such as volunteer recruitment and public outreach."--ragesoss (talk) 14:07, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] April 16-30 2009

[edit] Wikimania 2010 delay

The bidding procces was due to be closed on or before 16th April. [4] Either the Wikimania 2010 jury are following a much more strict decision making process, or they are having a hard time chosing beetween the bids. IMHO Amsterdam and Gdańsk currently have made the most well organised and interesting bids and it might be difficult to choose between one of them, with the Oxford bid being slightly behind.Mieciu K (talk) 12:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I have a conflict of interest here, since I'm moderating the jury, but the fact that the jury is late doesn't mean much -- the jury has been late each of the last three years :) Anyway this is maybe newsworthy for a quick mention but nothing more than that until the bid actually does get chosen, imho. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia opts out of Phorm trial

Via wikitech blog. Reported on wired, El Reg and others. Nanonic (talk) 14:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Preliminary results of UNU-Merit survey

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-20/News_and_notes

Only 13% of Wikipedia editors are female, and the average editor is a twentysomething. Skomorokh 17:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Mapping the Contents in Wikipedia

The Augmented Social Cognition Research Group at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC): "What topics are the most well-represented? Where topic areas have the most conflict?"

Turns out that "philosophy" and "religion" have generated 28% of the conflicts each. This is despite the fact that they were only 1% and 2%, respectively, of the total distribution of topics.

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Google books settlement

Slightly OT but relevant to us, I think: [5]. This happened last week but I'm going to put off writing about it for a week, no time to properly research atm. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 03:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch museums cooperate with Commons photographers

http://www.nieuwsuitamsterdam.nl/en/2009/04/volunteers-put-art-online-wikipedia --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Physicians using Wikipedia

"Nearly 50% of US physicians going online for professional purposes are visiting Wikipedia for health and medical information, especially condition information" and "only about 10% of the 1,900 physicians surveyed created new posts or edited existing posts on Wikipedia, the study found." http://www.mmm-online.com/Docs-look-to-Wikipedia-for-condition-info-Manhattan-Research/article/131038/ (mmm-online.com) - BanyanTree 05:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ArbCom case makes it to the news

I wouldn't want to make this a story to be included anytime soon, but, yeah, it's happened. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Workshop#Participation of newly registered users and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Greek nationalist canvassing off-wiki. And I'm one of the lucky parties involved in this one. Oooohhh my head.... John Carter (talk) 19:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


[edit] Wikipedia Art

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-27/In_the_news

Apparently the WMF is suing some artists for cybersquatting [6] . Samuell Lift me up or put me down 21:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

No, they're not. Some performance artists, with a history of using Wikipedia inappropriately for non-encyclopedic purposes, were running a website that was ambiguous about their relation to Wikipedia (namely, none). The WMF sent them a cease and desist letter (the gentlest "demand letter" one can possibly write is how Mike Godwin, the letter's author, described it.), and they agreed to put up a disclaimer saying they are not affiliated with us. Raul654 (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Read the original letter and make up your own mind. It certainly appears to be threatening to a non-lawyer (emphasis in original): "... please let me know in writing by April 6, 2009, if you will transfer <wikipediaart.org> to Wikimedia and cease using the WIKIPEDIA trademark". Perhaps a lawyer would find it gentle according to their own standards. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 21:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh p-s-shaw. The letter is asking them nicely to stop using the name. It does have to set a timeframe though. Would you have been happier with "some time in the next thousand years"? The real world has its own constraints, including laches (IANAL). How much more non-threatening can "stop doiing this" get? Smile everyone, we're part of the artwork! Franamax (talk) 23:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Consider if the shoe were on the other foot, and such a letter had been sent to Wikipedia, with phrases like "investigate whether your actions violate (legal cite), (legal cite), (legal cite), etc, etc, etc, ...". Can you argue to me with a straight face that there wouldn't be a massive hue and cry about NO LEGAL THREATS!!!, and anyone who talked about relative gentleness wouldn't be ruthlessly mocked for cluelessness and not-getting it? This is one of the most blatant double-standards in Wikipedia insider/outsider treatment I've seen in a while. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
"No legal threats" is a user conduct policy for on-wiki behavior, not a general principle for the Foundation; in fact, it explicitly directs people to contact the Foundation about legal matters involving Wikipedia itself rather than the conduct of specific users. That's why, instead of community members threatening the users who came to Wikipedia to instigate their little bit of performance art, the issue was brought to the attention of the Foundation, and handled by the WMF lawyer and the Wikipedia Art people directly. On the mailing list, some Wikipedians have been arguing over 'gentleness' of the letter, but it's sort of moot now; Wikipedia Art has put up a disclaimer, and WMF is satisfied. Please, let's not make this page another venue for extending the performance.--ragesoss (talk) 00:10, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Some more coverage. Skomorokh 04:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] France Telecom’s Orange has partnered with Wikimedia

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-27/News_and_notes

In the news, [7],[8], i guess 2008 was the last year with volunteer donations..... Mion (talk) 20:15, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I would have thought that was unlikely. Presumably the WMF will be revealing the terms of the deal in due course. -- The Anome (talk) 22:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
It was announced on Foundation-l and the Wikimedia blog [9] a few days ago. Dragons flight (talk) 22:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
I thought Wikia was the commercial entitity, but it seems Wikimedia wants to play that role as well, thats Novell a commercial Non-profit, good luck with it, i'm out. Mion (talk) 06:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia has been involved with things like this before now, e.g., with Answers.com. Basically, (if it's along similar lines) it means Orange pays for a priority feed and the right to say "This article brought to you by Wikipedia" when they serve up content through their web portal or mobile platform. It shouldn't have any impact on users unless they are Orange customers, and even then it will only be additional Wikimedia project content available in new places. Involvement with commercial corporations has been going on for a while.--ragesoss (talk) 14:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikia is a completely different entity from the WMF. -- The Anome (talk) 09:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Its contrary to the role of a charity that lives from donations, other telecoms might donate for free for the good cause, thats thrown away now because WMF is advertised together with Orange, you cant have both, in this way they are killing the free donations and get hooked up in commercial company interests witch are not for the good of the Wikipedia community. But quick money is appealing , yes. Mion (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
See ragesoss' comments above: this kind of activity is not a new development, and there has not been any perceptible impact to donations in the past. Nor does it affect the WMF's status: nonprofit charitable organizations are perfectly entitled to raise money by activities such as this, providing the money made from the activity is spent on their charitable goals. -- The Anome (talk) 08:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
That its not a new development doesn't make it right, you have to proof that it doesn't have an impact on donations, which you can't because other telecoms and multinationals wont donate to this project anymore, the only thing thats happening is that the WMF is building the commercial cathedral with a few companies around it instead of the bazaar model, but i have another approach, if this strategy is right, show me the statistics that volunteer contributions and small donateurs are rising.... Mion (talk) 01:22, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
You're speculating. No one has shown that this type of deal has either a positive or negative effect on overall donations. If we were receiving a large donation stream from a competitor of Orange, certainly we would think twice about partnering with them - but we're not. Dcoetzee 01:34, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm speculating ?, first volunteer contributions are heavily down, secondly, its not only other telecoms, but other multinationals as well, WMF broadcasted it would work as a non profit, and now its going commercial ? and should we trust that ? Mion (talk) 01:40, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, speculating. If donations are down (evidence of which you have not presented), that doesn't prove anything about why they're down - the most likely reason to me seems to be that people donate less during a recession. As for trust, commercial entities are not inherently evil; it's deceptive and exploitative practices that are evil. This is all very much in the open, and no one is going to reach the conclusion that Orange is influencing our content. Dcoetzee 01:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Dont twist my words Dcoetzee Mion (talk) 02:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
for the people who follow the news : Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Orange_Wikimedia_partnership Mion (talk) 02:25, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

←The WMF has more money now rather than less (money is now available for some individual WMF chapters), and if they start running out, I'm sure they'll let us know. I don't see the mechanism that would corrupt, or even influence, Wikipedian content as a result of taking money from Orange. None of the people who write and improve articles care what Orange is doing, AFAIK. - Dank (formerly Dank55) (push to talk) 03:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment. What exactly is "co-branding" in the context of this Orange Wikimedia partnership? Maybe the Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost can flesh out some of the details in their next newsletter. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:19, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Academic study of the search impact of Wikipedia's coverage of medical topics

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-27/In_the_news

Abstract, comment from Wikimedian. Skomorokh 04:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Somewhat tangentially-related: nearly half of American doctors researching conditions online use Wikipedia. The article contains more interesting factoids. Skomorokh 05:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like we need to make the medical disclaimer more prominent. MER-C 11:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I concur. Skomorokh 04:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
This AP article is about the same study I presume? Mentions Michael Laurent and Tim Vickers by name. Steven Walling (talk) 22:58, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Further adventures in legal land

A ruling that Wikipedia could be relied upon as a source is overturned in New Jersey.[10][11] Skomorokh 05:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Attack on BLP subject predicted in advance

According to this article in the LA Times, shortly before human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov was assaulted on Mar 31/Apr 1, his Russian Wikipedia entry was edited to say that he had been killed in an attack. Here's the article history for his Russian article. I can't read Russian but perhaps someone who can could look at it and verify if this actually occurred. Cla68 (talk) 23:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

See above. Skomorokh 19:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Some assorted news

bibliomaniac15 The annual review... 23:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Original Sun "story" here. Nanonic (talk) 00:23, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Amazon has it-Ravedave (talk) 01:16, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! I've added it to the review desk. Once a few people sign up to review it, I'll contact the publisher to see if we can get some review copies before the official release (which is not until September).--ragesoss (talk) 16:26, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] May 1-15 2009

I'm sorry, I don't know where to add this link: Parallel article writing contest in 3 WPs. Avjoska (talk) 20:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

It is almost ready to use in any part of Signpost now. Avjoska (talk) 17:48, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WP:Update

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-04/News_and_notes

The April update of all content policy, deletion policy and enforcement policy pages and all the general style guidelines is done, and I'll try to get the updates done on the first of each month from now on. - Dank (formerly Dank55) (push to talk) 03:45, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Found this just now, by accident. Very useful. How about putting a link to the page in every issue of the Signpost?--Goodmorningworld (talk) 20:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
It only gets updated on a monthly basis, so the plan is to mention the new updates in the first issue after they get made each month. I had intended to make sure this happened for earlier months, but it slipped by until Dank's note.--ragesoss (talk) 21:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikipedia article's role in attempt to solve 60 year-old mystery"

People may be interested to hear the role the article Taman Shud Case is playing in an attempt to solve the 60 year old case. The case itself has everything: The Cold War, mysterious ciphers, red herrings aplenty, a strange cast of characters and at the centre of it all, a dead man with no name or even a cause of death. I'm the main editor of the article and have been trading information on the case with a team of Adelaide University academics as they seek to crack the code and exhume the body to solve the case.

My day job is hack journo so I can write the article although I would be referring to myself in the third person, which could look odd. Otherwise someone else could write and interview Professor Derek Abbott (who is leading the Adelaide Uni team) and me. Any questions, fire away. --Roisterer (talk) 05:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

that sounds amazing! I don't think it's a problem if you want to throw together an article yourself... or if not perhaps you can help lay out the facts of the case for someone else to write about. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 2500 Featured articles

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/News_and_notes

Just in case you managed to miss that headline, relayed at WP:ANN. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 15:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Hoax

A Wikipedia hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world. The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March."[13] Lectonar (talk) 12:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Apparently the uncited quote remained in the article for 24 hours despite our BLP policies. Kaldari (talk) 17:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
So do BLP policies apply to dead people? ;) Conicidentally, today's Dilbert is of interest.--194.106.220.83 (talk) 12:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, BLP policies do apply to recently dead people. Kaldari (talk) 19:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
I've just looked at the BLP policy and its requirements re BDP are that they "must still comply with all wikipedia policies", not that they need any special attention compared to, say, a frog species or a chemical compound. Still, after reminiscing on some horror films from 30 years ago I reckon one shouldn't get on the wrong side of potential zombies.--94.196.92.246 (talk) 09:32, 9 May 2009 (UTC) (a.k.a. 194.106.220.83)
Also appeared on The Register. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia for Journalists & Bloggers

Yesterday, I gave a presentation on Wikipedia for journalists and bloggers at the Portland WikiWednesday, which was followed by a panel including myself, Pete Forsyth and two local journalists. Today, my slides from the presentation are featured on the front page of Slideshare. Steven Walling (talk) 21:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] "Citizen Sanger" - Larry Sanger interview in _Hot Press_

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/In_the_news

"Citizen Sanger" I will simply quote their summary - "In an exclusive interview, LARRY SANGER - widely credited as co-founder of Wikipedia - takes issue with a number of comments made by ex-colleague Jimmy Wales in Hot Press recently, and explains why his new online encyclopedia, Citizendium, will eventually conquer cyberspace." (paywall'ed) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 20:01, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

A shame about the paywalling. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Jimmy on Web 2.0 advertising

How Consumer Generated Content Is Changing Advertising - A video of an Interview with Jimmy, WebProNews discusses advertising in the age of user generated content. A small blurp on Wikia Search is also present. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] One of our images used by the BBC

Compare the people at the bottem of File:Rodina mat zovet.jpg and this bbc image.Geni 22:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

This image is now up for deletion on commons, on grounds of being an unfree image due to Freedom of Panorama restrictions. -mattbuck (Talk) 08:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Dilbert mentions WP

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/In_the_news

See today's strip. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 03:27, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I guess this is something for the new page patrollers to watch out for too, right? John Carter (talk) 14:54, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New BAG member

User:Tinucherian has been promoted to become a member of the BAG. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 11:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Report on the state of bracket-led disambiguation published

A small scale report has been published : introduction, findings. It builds on work done in January 2007 and looks at changes that have happened between. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 11:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Collaboration with Chemicals Abstracts announced

WP:CHEM has been working with Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society) for over a year now to free up some of their information. We have now got the go ahead to shout about it [14], so we shall do. Myself or Walkerma for more details, although I'll obviously try to add them here as well! Physchim62 (talk) 21:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a dispatches piece at User:Physchim62/Signpost. Physchim62 (talk) 01:00, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New someecards on Wikipedia

There's a new Someecards satirizing Wikipedia (direct link). Steven Walling (talk) 00:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Loves Art contest winners

Contest winners for Wikipedia Loves Art held in February have been announced. [15] --Aude (talk) 04:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, we've announced winners at 12 of the 15 participating institutions so far; still to come are winners from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New-York Historical Society and the Victoria and Albert Museum.--Pharos (talk) 18:02, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] May 16-31 2009

[edit] BBC Digital Planet

There was an article on this week's Digital Planet about the history of Wikipedia and trying to predict its future. There is no transcript available but the audio can be obtained at this link. Orderinchaos 13:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Flagged revisions update

Brion gave a quick update on wikitech-l on the status of flagged revisions for English Wikipedia:

Quick update:

  • Yes, we do plan to roll out an English Wikipedia test setup for Flagged Revs.
  • There's not yet a fixed schedule for it, but I'd like to see it up and running in production before Wikimania. :) [August]
  • Right now we're running round tidying up general things, getting the 1.15 release set up, and prepping to get our live sites updated to development trunk -- nice things are afoot like a total upgrade to the preferences backend which Werdna has done, yay!
  • As we get back up to speed, we'll want to coordinate w/ Aaron to confirm that we've got a configuration planned and that it'll look good, and get that test config on en.labs.wikimedia.org and test.wikipedia for a while before we roll it to en.wikipedia.

I'd also like to see folks ponder a bit on the final terminology for things -- we'd also like to roll out the Drafts extension (for saving your in-progress edit page in the background so you can return to it if you accidentally close it or your browser crashes), but Flagged Revs also uses the 'draft' terminology sometimes. We want to make sure we're not going to be looking too confusing having both of those things in the system.

-- brion

--ragesoss (talk) 19:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WikiAlarm: offsite watchlist?

See http://wikialarm.com/ . Two related stories are the Jarre quotation hoax and the concept of "wiki circularity", where OR is picked up in reliable sources which are then used to source it. Some blog posts: [16] [17] [18] [19]  Skomorokh  19:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikinews finishes its OR "Eurovision special"

As Europeans will know, the Eurovision Song Contest is now over. The "Eurovision special," which we started in February, is now over as well. We interviewed 13 past contestants, which is a record number of interviews for Wikinews in such a short time. Of those 13 past contestants, six were past winners (Anne Marie David '73, Nicole '82, Charlotte Perrelli '99, Niels Olsen '00, Marie N '02, and Ruslana '04). In addition, we got freely-licensed photographs when possible, so all those biographies now have photos. Most of the other singers we interviewed, Edsilia Rombley, Chiara, Jessica Garlick, Ani Lorak, Sirusho, Tajci and Hanna Pakarinen have new media if not just the interviews. Mike H. Fierce! 22:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike. Do you have links to the relevant Wikinews pages?  Skomorokh  22:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I just linked to the "Eurovision special" page up there, and it has links to all the interviews. Mike H. Fierce! 22:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Cheers (edit conflicted with your second post).  Skomorokh  22:29, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
(ec) For my final interview set (with eight singers), I had countering systemic bias in mind. Half of the eight interviewed in the final piece are from Eastern Europe or the Caucasus (Tajci is from Croatia, Marie N is from Latvia, Ani Lorak is from Ukraine and Sirusho is from Armenia). Mike H. Fierce! 22:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Also, the interviews with the final eight in the series were translated into nine different languages (Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian), another first for Wikinews in terms of sheer cross-wiki collaboration and translation. Since unlike on Wikipedia, Wikinews has a "newsworthiness" time limit of only a few days, and the interview sets were VERY large, this was a big feat for all involved and I can't thank them enough. Mike H. Fierce! 22:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Judge directs scary obsessive towards Wikipedia

It would be criminal not to include this funnier than The Onion "item" in the next Signpost :) --Goodmorningworld (talk) 13:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Not bad, but the bit about the "Star Wars discussion board" was off. Mike R (talk) 13:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sweet shop swizzler claimed he had billions (but he only had hundreds and thousands)

An article from The Independent which mentions Wikipedia. ISD (talk) 14:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Open textbooks

[edit] Licensing update vote result

The result of the licensing update poll has been announced: m:Licensing update/Result.

Dragons flight (talk) 05:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC) (for the Licensing Update Committee)

This morning a Foundation Resolution was added and now the migration plans are adopted and set to take effect June 15th. Dragons flight (talk) 18:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Heresy on BBC Radio 4

Tuesday's episode of Heresy, a comedy panel game on BBC Radio 4, had a section about Wikipedia and whether you can trust information on the Internet. David Mitchell made a spirited (and funny) defense. If you're in the UK, you can listen on iPlayer at [20] (available until next Tuesday). The relevant section starts at around 19m30s. the wub "?!" 17:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Victoria Coren, presenter, comments "Sadly, false information is put up on Wikipedia by saboteurs who frankly should have better things to do with their time. Luckily, it's then taken down by a team of dedicated, round-the-clock, voluntary moderators who frankly should have better things to do with their time." Defending Wikipedia, Mitchell replies "Wikipedia has become like a shortcut to a joke about it being rubbish, and that's not fair, because most things things on Wikipedia are completely true... and also, it's worth remembering that no reference work - no book at all - is necessarily true... You should question everything you read." Yes, a very spirited defence. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 14:30, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Also interesting to note that on their mini "Is Wikipedia true?" test, Wikipedia came out fighting. All of their chosen "facts" were indeed true, if you consider that for comedic effect "what the David Mitchell article said about you" was a little mis-represented and what the article actually did say much more closely resembled the truth. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 14:43, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Omar Khadr's sister met boyfriend on Wikipedia

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-marriage-thrust-into-the-public-eye/article1146437/

Khadr is a Canadian in Gitmo, and apparently his sister met her match on Wikipedia. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Chryon Operator:Television character generator for the various printed words that show up on the screen as you watch..

This was the occupation that was given for a two day winner on this weeks Jeopardy...(05/19/ and 05/20/09.

[edit] StringFunctions

Bug 6455 is closed as the StringFunctions extension is folded into ParserFunctions. After r50997 is pushed live to the Wikimedia wikis, templates will be able to make use of basic string-handling operations, such as len (string length) and replace. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:33, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This sounds interesting. If it means what I think, it probably merits a full article in the Signpost explaining the new template possibilities. Anyone proficient with templates care want to take this on? Or at least flesh out some of the implications informally right here?--ragesoss (talk) 05:07, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Briefly:
  • #len: String length.
  • #sub: Generate substring specified by index and length.
  • #count: Number of times substring appears in a string.
  • #pos (#rpos) : Position of first (last) occurrence of substring in string.
  • #replace: Replace occurrences of a target substring with a new substring.
  • #explode: Break string into chunks and return a specified chunk.
Those functions, plus obvious derivatives, should cover most common string operations. String operations are limited to strings of 1000 characters or less. Dragons flight (talk) 06:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
That would mean the ability for templates (albeit with a performance hit) to manipulate strings passed to them automatically then. Incidentally, would these be subst: safe? And could #pos also be used like in some programming languages as a "contains" check? - Jarry1250 (t, c) 08:57, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
This is added as a special section of this week's technology report, but don't think this requires a special story. --Aude (talk) 23:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] The Museum of Curiosity on Radio 4

Wikipedia was mentioned on The Museum of Curiosity last night. It was mentioned by John Hodgman when he donated "Complete world knowledge" to the Museum and covered several encyclopedias, including Wikipedia. The episode is on the BBC iPlayer here. ISD (talk) 08:12, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Section starts around 18 minutes in and last approximately five minutes. Despite lamenting the idea he loves - the concept of the encyclopedia - as an "arrogant" one, Hodgman makes an exception for Wikipedia, on the grounds that it is the only encyclopedia which could actually succeed in containing everything. He also admits that it "is where most of everything [he] just said [about encyclopedias in history] was sourced". After Hodgman's piece, he and the presenters (Sean Lock and John Lloyd) briefly debate whether an encyclopedia should contain everything or merely everything worth knowing; Hodgman mentions the controversy that the Encyclopaedia Britannica found itself in for following the latter directive to the letter, but does not pass comment on Wikipedia's own notability guidelines. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 08:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 100,000 articles on the Arabic Wikipedia

100,000 articles on the Arabic Wikipedia [21] --Aude (talk) 17:15, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's a translation of the announcement: "Finally, after a long wait, the Arabic Wikipedia has crossed the 100,000 article mark. Article #100,000 is "The Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts" [22] (of the University of Gabès in Tunisia), created by User م ض." --Aude (talk) 17:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed changes to the Featured picture process

I wondered if this ongoing discussion qualified as a tip, :-)

This star symbolizes the featured content on Wikipedia.

Please help determine the future of the Featured picture process. Discussions regarding the current issues affecting featured picture contributors can be found here. We welcome your input!

Maedin\talk 18:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sotomayor

The wonder of wiki mentioned on Huffpost. Nice to see someone saying something nice. Darrenhusted (talk) 09:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Navify

via techcrunch - Navify is a new site that lets users search for and display a Wikipedia article whilst also pulling in related Flickr and Youtube content. Something that has no doubt been attempted before but this one seems to work ok. My only complaint is related to 'Navify CEO Alan Rutledge says what triggered development was the thought: “If people around the world can help each other by building a free collaborative encyclopedia, couldn’t we make it more useful for everyone by illustrating it together?”' - which would be nice if we were the recipient of the images, but all it's doing is scraping content of various licences. Shame. Nanonic (talk) 22:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Biggest shame is that they have failed to attribute the authors of the images under a number of licenses (Excluding PD)! Bidgee (talk) 12:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
The attribution issue has been fixed after I sent them a email about it. Bidgee (talk) 07:10, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] creator of Wikipedia's first logo didn't know he was

Bjørn Smestad, the creator of Wikipedia's first official logo (right), which was in use for about eight months in 2001, has come forward as User:Bjornsm. Smestad, a teacher of mathematics instruction in Norway, had responded to a logo contest held for Nupedia, the precursor to Wikipedia, in about 2000. However, his submission lost the Nupedia contest and Smestad, who states he was never very active on either Nupedia or Wikipedia, was unaware that Jimmy Wales had chosen his logo to replace the American flag placeholder image used when Wikipedia was started. It was not until User:Mosca dug through some old web archives to reconstruct the history of the logo that Smestad's role was uncovered and mentioned in March 2009, at which point Smestad stumbled upon his previously unknown claim to fame after Googling himself in May 2009. Smestad states, "The two black vertical lines were included in an effort to make the logo seem like an 'N'. However, it is ironical that while I probably didn't succeed too much in making it appear like an 'N', that may be precisely why it could be used for Wikipedia," and remarks, "this may therefore be one of my most welcome failures ever." (Smestad's blog post) - BanyanTree 01:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] BBC uses wiki image

The BBC used File:Dendroaspis polylepis head.jpg in their slideshow on the world's deadliest creatures. The photo, released into the public domain by User:TimVickers, was unattributed. - BanyanTree 07:15, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, previous BBC-used image, File:Rodina mat zovet.jpg, is now up for deletion on commons on grounds of being an unfree image due to Freedom of Panorama restrictions. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Images released to public domain usually doesn't require attribution. OhanaUnitedTalk page 13:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Church of Scientology news

From The Register -mattbuck (Talk) 08:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

and Huffpost. Darrenhusted (talk) 18:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
They seem to conclude that Scientology editors were banned from Wikipedia. The ArbCom decision was to ban one user, whereas the others are just "topic-banned" from Scientology-related articles, but may otherwise still edit Wikipedia. (To give them the benefit of doubt, perhaps they were confused because the editor banned was "Justallofthem".) Mindmatrix 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Story is at Wired too. Mindmatrix 18:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Now general, including AFP, CNET, Telegraph, etc etc. FishbowlLA offers a short interview with a expert professor on Scientology for context. (Why is the only media source doing original journalism a blog? What sort of crazy world do we live in?) National Review wins the award for most amusing coverage with "Wikipedia Breaks Scientologists' Editing Pencils". Astonishingly, much of the coverage is linking to and quoting from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Scientology, which may be a first. - BanyanTree 02:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
Update: Just noticed the guy interviewed by FishbowlLA is named in the case as StephenAKent (talk · contribs) - BanyanTree 02:58, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
ABC News offers a long original article. - BanyanTree 03:17, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone want to volunteer to write this up for the Signpost? It ought to have its own story.--ragesoss (talk) 05:00, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] The Dongle of Donald Trefusis

An article from Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten which was reporting on The Dongle of Donald Trefusis mentioned the Wikipedia article covering the show, which is strange when you consider it was created yesterday. The quote is "På Wikipedia kan man lese at den populære Frys album er en blanding av podcast, lydbok og radiomonolog, og er både skrevet og lest opp av multitalentet Stephen Fry." It roughly translates as "On Wikipedia you can read that the popular Freeze album is a mix of podcasts, audiobooks and radio monolog, and are both written and spoken by multi-talented Stephen Fry." ISD (talk) 17:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] June 1-15 2009

[edit] Bing

Microsoft's new bing.com search engine seems to have a taste for returning Wikipedia articles at the top, or near the top, of its search results listings for a wide range of terms. It might be interesting to compare this with Google's rankings for the same searches. -- The Anome (talk) 09:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

More on this: from the Register on 4th June 2009 -- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/04/bing_and_powerset/ -- quote:
According to a blog post from Scott Prevost, general manager of Microsoft's Powerset division, the division has tweaked Microsoft's primary search engine in certain "subtle" ways. But its main contribution is a secondary engine that searches nothing but Wikipedia. In essence, Microsoft's has taken Powerset's existing Wikitool and latched it to the Bing torso.
-- The Anome (talk) 10:23, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bigipedia

BBC Radio 4 is to broadcast a new comedy series called Bigipedia which is described as "a malevolent mix between Google, Microsoft and Wikipedia". Co-creator Nick Doody wrote that, "a piss-take of Wikipedia, with all the same inaccuracies, written by nutters". It is to be recorded next week and broadcast this July. More information is reported at Chortle.co.uk and Pozzitive (see news section). ISD (talk) 14:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 25000 articles on is.wp

The Icelandic Wikipedia reached 25k articles recently - see [23]. -- Schneelocke (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Block graphs

I'm a little bit late with this, sorry... but this is kind of interesting. The folks at RationalWiki have been keenly following the user and IP range block statistics at Conservapedia - to put it in easily digestible vernacular terms, there's one sysop there who likes to eat breakfast and then kill a country. In May 22nd, they made a survey which also included the range blocks in Wikipedia. And made xkcd-inspired Peano-curve maps of the blocked IP spaces. Right here. Regrettably the images don't have licences specified so we can't just copy them here, but the concept was pretty neat, and the differences between the two wikis and the blocking policies are quite staggering =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 20:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

How did they get the list of blocked ranges? Raul654 (talk) 22:23, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
Wow, I never knew that Halliburton owned 1/256th of the internet. Kaldari (talk) 22:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm assuming they just parsed Special:BlockList. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 10:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Colbert on Scientology arbitration

The first segment on The Colbert Report for June 4 was about the Scientology arbitration decision. Colbert mocks the usernames of arbitrators Carcharoth, FloNight, Newyorkbrad, and Wizardman, and says "They're just like the Supreme Court, only their robes are bathrobes."--ragesoss (talk) 13:56, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Study of coverage in the English Wikipedia of 40 large Italian companies

"The research looked at the companies of the S&P Mib 40 index of the Milan stock exchange to see how well they were covered on the English language Wikipedia." The [report contained] pointers ... as to how companies can better engage with the Wikipedia community in order to improve their profiles." (The executive summary, available online lists the "top five tips".) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New Zealand MP's staffer blocked

Stuff.co.nz reports that a New Zealand Parliament IP was blocked after attempts by a staffer for New Zealand MP Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga to remove material the MP's Wikipedia article. Asked for comment, Lotu-Iiga described Wikipedia as "an open forum for people to sabotage or write remarks about politicians".--ragesoss (talk) 04:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] The [edit] button

Thanks for mentioning the proposal to move the [edit] button in the Signpost of 25 May. I'd appreciate it if another mention could be given in the next edition of Signpost. I appreciate it may be too late for tomorrow's edition, so would be happy with next weeks edition. This issue needs the input of as many editors as possible. Mjroots (talk) 06:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia 'sentinel' quits after using alias to alter entries

Another article on the David Boothroyd story. Currently the 2nd most read article on independent.co.uk, and wrong in countless ways. Choice quotes include "Wikimedia UK, the British arm of the American company" [24] the wub "?!" 09:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Ouch. What an example of really sloppy journalism. --seav (talk) 02:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] NYT on Scientology

I haven't been following the Scientology case in much detail, or, indeed, The Signpost's coverage of it, but a link on Milhist took me to this New York Times report, published yesterday (Sunday), which seems (to me) to be more balanced that some of the reports that came out in the hours after the decision. They've got interviews, and seem to be more factually correct (blocks vs. bans; right to appeal). - Jarry1250 (t, c) 11:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Picasso edit

Picasso conspiracy theory alert

Don't know if anyone noticed or if I should go elsewhere with this one. User:Jeanfuzzy made their first and so far only edit on Talk:Main Page at 01:36 on 8 June 2009. The edit in question concerned "some articles" about Picasso, "such as some erotic drawings and a picture of three naked women standing up". The user asked if they might keep them or dump them and said they had received them after a friend had passed away... innocent enough, until I read this less than twenty-four hours later. Obviously I'm aware that the user may have indulged in a prank or maybe has no relationship with this at all but I thought I would point it out nonetheless... the theft was apparently discovered today though... the item has since been removed from Talk:Main Page by another user who felt it did not have any connection to the Main Page... --candle•wicke 23:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Um, I don't really see a strong connection here.--Pharos (talk) 17:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Google News experimenting with links to Wikipedia on its homepage

I don't know if you saw it, but Google News is apparently experimenting with links to Wikipedia. -- Luk talk 13:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Paid editing

RfC and Register story. Cla68 (talk) 05:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales: No one can make money from Wikipedia... -mattbuck (Talk) 06:03, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
See also User:Ha!/paid editing adverts, Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Nichalp, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brad Sugars. IMHO this is the most important story (from a community viewpoint) this week, and it is a bit unfortunate that (except for a brief mention of the RfC in the Discussion report section which doesn't explain the background) we don't have it covered yet.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Added some lines to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-06-15/News and notes. Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Coverage of the Usability Initiative

Wrote a post for ReadWriteWeb on the design/mockups from the initiative, and the potential for improvements to affect more than just Wikipedia. (Read here) Steven Walling (talk) 23:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Swedish Aftonbladet article

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet hails Wikipedia's up to date coverage and admonishes universities and colleges to allocate resources to improve Wikipedia.[25] Siawase (talk) 11:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] June 16-30 2009

[edit] Study on Wikipedia vandalism

This recent report (or a summary) might be interesting to your readers: User:Aetheling/Vandalism survival. —Aetheling (talk) 18:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC).

[edit] Paid editing in the news

[26] (CNN). hmwithτ 14:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] British Library makes available online 2 million articles from 19th/20th century newspapers

This massively increases the number of topics Wikipedia can now cover in accordance with the WP:GNG. Free access for UK students, some public libraries and some foreign institutions.  Skomorokh  08:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It could be a massive help for sourcing material in Wiktionary. But it's a paywall. *deadpan* woot. Circeus (talk) 22:47, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] HSC students to get Wikipedia course.

-- Taku (talk) 02:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

This article is from 2008. It somehow popped back up as a supposedly new article in Google News.--ragesoss (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Ouch. -- Taku (talk) 11:26, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Outline of Knowledge

An up and coming project aiming to cover and index every element of human knowledge. Outlines function like a contents, outlining all wikipedia has to offer on that topic. Having created outlines for all main topics and countries and US states etc. we plan to continue building, in collaboration with relevant wikiprojects and slowly link outlines into the mainspace.

For a list of hundreds of outlines, see Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge. For more information (including why does Wikipedia need outlines? and what are outlines?) see Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge, contact me or speak to User:The Transhumanist.

Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 11:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Rfc on self-elected groups in Wikipedia

On the offchance that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Self electing groups is going strong by the time of you next issue, could you include it please? I'm conscious that not everybody reads the village pump or other notcieboards where I've just spammed this. MickMacNee (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bot creating large number of erroneous algae articles

Two IP editors (69.226.103.13 and 213.214.136.54) raised the alarm that a bot (User:Anybot) have created thousands of algae articles with incorrect and/or factual information errors. OhanaUnitedTalk page 15:34, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] MeatballWiki

If anyone is interested in writing it, I think it might be useful to have a Signpost piece about MeatballWiki and its relevance to the Wikipedia community. Lots of newer users are not familiar with it, so a sort of guide or overview of important insights would be worthwhile, I think.--ragesoss (talk) 17:09, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you're overestimating the importance of Meatball wiki. It was marginally relevant to Wikipedia in 2003, and not at all today. I'd be surprised if 1 in 10 new users (2006-and-after) have even heard of it. Raul654 (talk) 19:01, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not saying it was super important, but it's still interesting and, at least in my opinion, worthwhile to let more people know about. If others don't think it's worth writing about, or if people think it shouldn't be in the Signpost, that's fine; this was just an offhand idea.--ragesoss (talk) 20:26, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
It shows up occasionally across various pages in project space. It would be interesting to trace the connections between the project. Personally, I never quite understood it myself. MeatBall Wiki itself does not make much sense to me at all. Circeus (talk) 22:52, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
It seems that MeatballWiki's influence on today's Wikipedia community is huge, but indirect: It influenced many early principles which were later taken for granted. This would explain why Wikipedians who joined in 2003 (like me) or later are not likely to have read its name in day-to-day policy discussion very often.
To quote from Andrew Lih's book "The Wikipedia Revolution":
MeatballWiki would prove to be instrumental in documenting online practices and, specifically, the new emerging wiki culture. Shah saw MeatballWiki as unique among other technology-oriented groups. "What differentiates Meatball-Wiki from many online meta-communities is that participants spend much of their time talking about sociology rather than technology, and when they do talk about technology, they do so in a social context." It would prove later to be a rich resource for Wikipedia, as that nascent community started to run into issues that MeatballWiki had documented and discussed at length.
Lih describes voting as one such issue, in the context of the misunderstanding of deletion discussions as votes (which crept in partly due to the "VfD" misnomer, which was later corrected by the rename to AfD, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-08-29/Roll with the changes): It was never considered a binding vote in order to discourage gaming [...] In fact, Wikipedia took its stance from the original MeatballWiki culture, where online communities have discouraged outright voting. Wikipedia’s stance was very similar: "Don’t vote on everything, and if you can help it, don’t vote on anything."
Another example Lih mentions are barnstars (Wikipedians adopted a convention of recognizing each other’s efforts, derived from the original MeatballWiki community. There, they believed that building an online community was similar to the traditional "barn raising" efforts of German-American farming communities in the 1800s ...).
"Right to leave" and (according to meta:Right to vanish) "Right to vanish" seem to be two other concepts which might have been taken from or at least influenced by Meatballwiki.
Meatballwiki's importance for Wikipedia's genesis was also recognized by the organizers of the June 2004 Wizards of OS conference, who invited Sunir Shah as one of three panelists about "Wikipedia & Co." - alongside Erik Möller and Jimmy Wales.[27]
So I think an Signpost article about MeatballWiki and Wikipedia would be a good thing, although some additional research would be useful to demonstrate the relationship in more detail.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:43, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] news: video editing to be imbedded in site

As well as drag and drop video placement, according to MIT's Technology Review. Already picked up in Reuters. I imagine that there is discussion on some email list. I'm mainly interested in hearing how the devs plan on implementing this without massive 2 Girls 1 Cup vandalism. - BanyanTree 23:30, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki sourced on 538

Sanford to Minneapolis? Not really more than a mention, but... -mattbuck (Talk) 09:47, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Citizendium Porting

Since you guys are going to cover the license switch, I thought you might be interested in this. Don't know if it is needed; CZ has only about 1000 approved articles, and many of their counterparts here in Wikipedia are already well-developed. (The exception being for instance Ancient Celtic music and Augustin Louis Cauchy, two articles greatly expanded with CZ materials.) -- Taku (talk) 10:54, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Just a minor point, but CZ's number of approved articles is actually closer to 100. And just over 11000 articles total. 189.105.109.94 (talk) 20:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Full-date unlinking bot

There is an RFC about a proposal for a bot to unlink some dates. There is already discussion in the RFC, but we could sure use some fresh voices. Date delinking has a small effect on each article, but affects many, so it is something the community should be aware of. --Apoc2400 (talk) 11:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] CNN article

Due to Michael Jackson's death, various websites were overloaded from numerous visitors. This CNN article talks about Jackson's Wikipedia article and the number of revisions in the first 24 hours as well as vandalism to his page. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 18:56, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The Guardian comments on the edit wars following the many conflicting reports. Matthewedwards :  Chat  00:35, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
To my knowledge, it is also the first time it was necessary to add a special "article=Michael Jackson" condition to Mediawiki in order to keep the servers from straining under the intense load. The live hack to keep our site running was discussed on wikitech-l. Dragons flight (talk) 07:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Some more sources and coverage, most from Death of Michael Jackson: Web slows after Jackson's death - BBC, broad coverage, Jackson: Did the internet buckle? - BBC blog, "But did the internet actually buckle? Well, there was some strain - but it seems to have come through well.", Michael Jackson Tops the Charts on Twitter - NY Times blog, Michael Jackson's death roils Wikipedia - CNET, some details on the early edit wars etc, Google thought Michael Jackson traffic was attack - CNET. Siawase (talk) 07:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] largest successful bulk AfD in the history of Wikipedia?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anybot's algae articles resulted in the deletion of 4077 articles; possibly the largest successful bulk AfD ever? Hesperian 00:38, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wales + admins colluded to omit news of NYT journalists kidnapping

Very interesting article in The New York Times about their efforts to keep news of reporter David Rohde's kidnapping by the Taliban in May 2008 out of the press. The history of the David_S._Rohde (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) article is illuminating, as is the NOINDEXING of the article's talk page without explanation. Ominous portents.  Skomorokh  04:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Ominous in what way? People made difficult decisions in an extremely unusual circumstance with real world life and death consequences. I don't see how one can say much about general practices based on such a specialized case. Dragons flight (talk) 07:03, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
This isn't the forum for discussing the moral hazard of stifling the media; if that's what you're looking for you might find these recentrelated discussions more fitting.  Skomorokh  07:13, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Unless I misread you, your comments about "without explanation" and "ominous portents", etc. seem to be implying that the issue has some wider impact for Wikipedia beyond the very specialized circumstances of this specific case. And I would presume you'd want the Signpost to include a comment on that. The facts of the case are fairly simple, but editorializing about the larger implications for Wikipedia would be something else entirely. Personally, I don't really see that there is a larger issue — with respect to the functioning of Wikipedia — that would need to be discussed here beyond the facts of the extremely unusual specific case. Or am I misunderstanding the intent of your comments? Dragons flight (talk) 07:41, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
On a personal note, I am not related to David Rohde in any way that I am aware of. Robert Rohde aka Dragons flight (talk) 07:44, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
It's very clear that the incident has wider implications, but unless I am mistaken, the Signpost exists to disseminate information, not to editorialize.  Skomorokh  13:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Also see coverage from TechCrunch and Mashable. There will likely be more, and the Mashable post in particular needs some correcting, hopefully in the comments. *cough* Steven Walling (talk) 09:44, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, if no other news organization has reported on the abduction, how can it be reflected in the BLP article without reliable sources? I think Wikipedia's policies would (or should) work here as it stands even without Jimbo's intervention. --seav (talk) 05:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The complication is that it was reported by the Italian news agency AKI, whose report was picked up by several bloggers before AKI's article was blanked. See a pissed off anon trying to get multiple blogs referencing the AKI article into the wiki. Michael Yon, whose blog is arguably a credible source given his relevant expertise and publications, has some comments from a March post in which he has some independent reporting on the kidnapping that actually discusses the censorship on Wikipedia. In my experience, this would have been enough for a "Sources such as AKI and the blog of freelance reporter Michael Yon have reported that Rohde was kidnapped in November 2008, though there has been no supporting media coverage from other mainstream sources"-type mention in the article, if there hadn't been a decision to remove all such mention. Leaving aside the wider question of if the censorship was warranted, trying to absolve the responsibility of decision-makers by pointing to the BLP policy is a clear dodge in my opinion. - BanyanTree 04:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Three million articles

Presumably everyone has noticed that we're approaching three million articles. Surprisingly there wasn't a three millionth topic pool, so I've created it: Wikipedia:Three-millionth topic pool. Stevage 05:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] GLAM - event and challenge

On August 6-7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting the GLAM Wiki as part of the leadup Wikimedia Australia is running the GLAM Challenge. The challenge which is open to all editors not just Australians, purpose is to improve article content and we are offering real prizes which will be posted to the winners. Gnangarra 12:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] July 1-6 2009

[edit] We've been catalogued

The state library of kansas has started includeing a selection of wikipedia articles in their catalogue. See here for the catalogue in action and this blog post for further details.©Geni 13:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It's an interesting project, though they've actually been doing this for quite a while (for a while, their records weren't totally correct, either). -- phoebe / (talk to me) 05:57, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bigipedia press release

More information has been released concerning the forthcoming BBC Radio 4 comedy series Bigipedia.

Bigipedia Ep 1/4 New series Thursday 23 July 11.00-11.30pm BBC RADIO 4 For half an hour, BBC Radio 4 takes part in a unique experiment in "broadwebcasting" as it hands over control of its output to Bigipedia – the all-round 360-degree information knowledge article-based conglomerate portal. Inspired by Wikipedia, Bigipedia is Radio 4's The Sunday Format for the online age. It features multiple-overlapping voices to create information "pages", service announcements, discussion forums and endless upgrades... Written and created by Nick Doody and Matt Kirshen (Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive), everything in Bigipedia is utterly untrue. Producer/David Tyler BBC Radio 4 Publicity

The information is also here. ISD (talk) 19:03, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject Citizendium Porting

--Cybercobra (talk) 03:47, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions"
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