Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2008-02-04
Special: 2007 in Review, Part IV
December marked the end of 2007, and the end of the biggest year (and perhaps the most controversial year) that Wikipedia has seen. This week, the Wikipedia Signpost concludes our look back at the year that was 2007 in Wikipedia.
Wikipedia critic unblocked, blocked, merged, unblocked, blocked
In April, Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt was briefly unblocked by Jimbo Wales, then reblocked by Wales a short time later. The block was lifted on April 18; Wales said, "he asked nicely, we are talking about a productive way forward in the future, it has been more than a year". Brandt was reblocked three days later, after indicating in a mailing list post that "I feel that Jimmy Wales made the wrong decision when he unbanned me a couple of days ago."[1]
In June, the article on Daniel Brandt was merged, after its 14th deletion discussion. Its closure called for the article to be merged to four separate articles: NameBase, Google Watch, Criticism of Wikipedia, and CIA HTTP cookies controversy (the latter since deleted).[2]
Shortly thereafter, Wales again unblocked Brandt on June 18, saying that "[Brandt] asked nicely. He only wants to edit talk pages of P.I.R. and other articles that affect him personally". He was reblocked by JoshuaZ a month later, due to the restoration of a website operated by Brandt, attempting to disseminate the real-life identities of Wikipedia editors.
Controversial RFAs
Former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool was promoted after a successful request for adminship, a few weeks after his resignation from the Foundation, and his voluntary resignation of all Wikimedia rights and positions. After his unexpected resignation from the Wikimedia Foundation office in March, Wool resigned all of his rights on all Wikimedia projects, saying, "To ensure that there are no misunderstandings or claims of an abuse of power, I ask that all admin status on the various projects be revoked."[3]
The RFA, which received 68% support, was controversial; users noted that the support level ranked well below that of normal RFAs (the threshold of bureaucrat discretion is considered by many to be around 70-80%; to date, Danny's is one of only three RFAs to pass with below 70% support, the others being Ryulong's 3rd RFA and Carnildo's 3rd RFA). However, bureaucrat Rdsmith4 argued that a significant portion of opposition was worried about Wool's actions outside his realm as administrator, including his actions as a bureaucrat, and his role in the Office Actions policy.
Another controversial RFA was that of Gracenotes. The RFA had 73% support; most of the opposition hinged on Gracenotes' position on the since-rejected Attack sites proposal, since partially incorporated into a guideline at Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment. Gracenotes said that, "If posting a link to an attack site is intended, in any way, to be a personal attack in itself, then Wikipedians may wish to rephrase or remove their comments. If the issue brought up by the attack site is valid, surely Wikipedians can discuss it on-wiki. ... I oppose removing all links to all such sites in all contexts, especially if such removals interfere with the good faith development of Wikipedia."[4]
Users supporting Gracenotes' promotion noted that the comments of many were based on Gracenotes' ideology, not experience character; those opposing it defended their positions.[5] With bureaucrats divided, and unable to determine whether consensus had been met, a re-run was proposed; however, Gracenotes declined. Gracenotes has not elected to seek adminship since the June RFA.
Projects disbanded
In 2007, a few community projects were discontinued and/or deleted, for various reasons. These included:
- Esperanza: Disbanded in January 2007 after a deletion discussion. Most argued that Esperanza was overly bureaucratic, and a November 2006 discussion had failed to generate any long-term changes. The "Messedrocker solution" was adopted, closing the organization, deleting many of its subpages, and replacing the main page with an explanation of the organization's history. Some of its projects remain as stand-alone projects, including Admin coaching, and the Birthday Committee's calendar.[6] However, Esperanza is still an active organization in the Simple English and Norwegian Wikipedias.
- Concordia: Disbanded in March 2007 in the light of Esperanza above.
- Association of Members' Advocates: Closed in May 2007, after a few deletion discussions. An April discussion resulted in no consensus, with concerns over bureaucracy prevalent.[7] Reform was suggested, but when reform was unsuccessful, the organization was deleted.
- Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense: Pruned and moved to Wikipedia:Silly things after a deletion debate in August. Some users expressed questions about whether the page was compliant with the GFDL, but ultimately, the concern was that the pages were a monument to vandalism, and of poor quality: "I do not think that anybody in this MfD would seriously argue for a pressing need to memorialize the claim that there exists a line of Pepsi called 'Penis Pepsi' that 'tastes like big foots dic' (sic). And yet we did."
Links/references
- ^ Michael Snow. "Wales unblocks Brandt, then reverses himself", 23 April, 2007.
- ^ Ral315. "Wikipedia critic's article merged", 18 June, 2007.
- ^ Ral315. "Danny Wool regains adminship in controversial RFA", 9 April, 2007.
- ^ Sr13. "Controversial RFA suspended, results pending", 4 June, 2007.
- ^ Sr13. "Controversial RfA withdrawn, bureaucrats fail to clarify consensus", 18 June, 2007.
- ^ Ral315. "Esperanza organization disbanded after deletion discussion", 2 January, 2007.
- ^ KnightLago and Dev920. "Association of Members' Advocates' deletion debate yields no consensus", 9 April, 2007.
Tensions in journalistic use of Wikipedia explored
Besides university policies regarding student papers, one of the places where citing Wikipedia as a source is most often debated seems to be in the newsroom. That question has been explored in the latest issue of the American Journalism Review, giving some additional perspective on the situations in which it would or would not be considered appropriate.
The piece, prosaically titled "Wikipedia in the Newsroom", highlights some instances where Wikipedia was acknowledged as the source of information repeated by a newspaper. Author Donna Shaw notes that this happens despite the fact that some news organizations have formal or informal policies against citing Wikipedia (in the wake of the Seigenthaler incident, a New York Times editor told staff there not to use Wikipedia when checking information). In exploring the issue, Shaw brings in opinions from academics, reporters, and newsroom staff ranging from copy editors to editors-in-chief, for a broader selection of views.
Whether doing background research, fact checking, or actually quoting from Wikipedia, many journalists have undoubtedly made at least some use of it. At this writing, the exact phrase "according to Wikipedia" produces 216 hits from Google News over the past month (naturally including the AJR article itself). Of course, the quality of news sources Google draws on can be as variable as the quality of a random selection of Wikipedia articles.
A thoroughly referenced Wikipedia article naturally provides a starting point for reporters who have to immerse themselves in a topic, and stories occasionally recommend it as a resource without relying on it. Taking information from Wikipedia and verifying it elsewhere was the use considered the most widely acceptable. For some situations, editors might feel citing Wikipedia was legitimate — to illustrate a point about how something is perceived (so that the accuracy of the information isn't critical), or for whimsical subject matter that simply has no more authoritative source (the turducken was mentioned as an example). Also, Wikipedia can still be helpful even after turning to other sources for verification. The Orlando Sentinel used it in reviewing a film about mixed martial arts, a concept the editor felt needed to be defined; after consulting various descriptions, she chose Wikipedia's as "the most concise".
Most of the publications whose staff were quoted in the story indicated they had no formal policy about Wikipedia, though they had wrestled with the issue. Blanket prohibitions on Wikipedia use, seeking to avoid the embarrassment of publishing misinformation, may contribute to other journalistic pitfalls instead. One possible scenario involves the instances that occasionally come up of Wikipedia articles being copied by reporters, slipping past an unsuspecting editor, and making it to publication without attribution, resulting in plagiarism allegations. For example, Agence France-Presse, which states that it has a written rule against using Wikipedia, nevertheless faced a situation in which a story on the 2006 Amish school shooting, written in German and syndicated in major German media, was promptly discovered to draw heavily from the German Wikipedia article on the Amish.
Another reason journalists rely on Wikipedia can be due to the pressure of deadlines, especially for last-minute fact checking. One recent example illustrating this comes from the New York Times, despite the advice from one of their editors mentioned earlier. When a recent article about a Spanish stew was questioned for repeating what one linguist called a "fake etymology", the editor responded that they had double-checked it with a Wikipedia article. That article, olla podrida, has since been modified to describe this as a "folk etymology", although some confusion could still result from Wikipedia's coverage, since the name of the dish given by the Times was "cocido", which at this writing directs the reader to a different article on the subject.
Incidentally, a passing tidbit from another piece in this AJR issue may also be of interest, particularly for those who follow the Encyclopædia Britannica's responses to Wikipedia. In it Thomas Kunkel relates an anecdote from Vartan Gregorian, former president of Brown University and now head of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Gregorian, in the course of doing consulting work for Britannica, indicated that its editors were considering adopting Wikipedia-like techniques, but he advised against it.
Best of WikiWorld: "Calvin and Hobbes"
- This WikiWorld rerun is from April 30, 2007.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "John Calvin", "Calvinism", "Total depravity", "Original sin", "Thomas Hobbes", and "Calvin and Hobbes". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
Briefly
- The Wu Wikipedia has reached both 500 and 1,000 articles.
- The Turkish Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles.
- The Finnish Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
- The Limburgish Wiktionary has reached 5,000 entries.
- The Luxembourgish Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
- The Zealandic Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
- The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
- The Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
- The Norwegian (Bokmål) Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
- The German Wikipedia has reached 700,000 articles.
- The Italian Wikinews has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Malay Wiktionary has reached 500 entries.
- The Romansh Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
In the news
Wikipedia could deliver to charities
Wikipedia philanthropy - An Internet entrepreneur has claimed that Wikipedia could be an even greater force for good by turning the Wikimedia Foundation into a for-profit entity and giving the profits to charitable organisations. In a conservative estimate, Wikipedia has enough traffic to generate $100 million by collaborating with an advertising network.
Other mentions
Other recent mentions in the online press include:
- Team 4: See How Govt. Employees Waste Time On Web - Government employees have been caught editing Wikipedia at work, on articles mostly unrelated to government business.
- Dvorak: Wikipedia Just Gets Better, Despite All Odds - "Are we at the peak of some golden age of information access that we'll never see again?"
- 'Lolita' bed set for girls withdrawn - Woolworths employees in Britain learn about Lolita from Wikipedia, after unwittingly giving a girls' bed set that name. (Such blunders are not uncommon, e.g., IKEA#Product names.)
Tutorial: Adding citations
This week, we'll talk about the basics of adding citations to articles from the sources you used to create verifiable content.
What are citations?
Citations (or references) are a vital part of articles, Wikipedia:Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies and all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.[1] This is true with all Wikipedia content but particularly true with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons for which Wikipedia is very firm about the use of high quality references. Unsourced or poorly sourced material should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles,[2] talk pages, user pages, and project space.
How do I add citations?
How you add citations is dependent on the reference and on the subject. For books or other sources that support a significant amount of the material in the article, place them at the bottom of the article in the section marked with the header ==References== if the section header is not there add it. For statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, including contentious material about living persons, and for all quotations; inline citations (references within the text) that provide source information for specific statements should be used. Inline citations, are increasingly mandated by the featured article and good article criteria.
The three inline citation styles used in Wikipedia are -
- Harvard referencing, widely used in the academic world.
- Placed inline (in the body of the article) with:
- (Author 2005:183)
- In the Reference section, put:
- Author, 2005, Harvard Referencing, New York: Random House. ISBN 1-899235-74-4
- The example above requires minimum markup knowledge. But the inline cite and the full information at the bottom of the article are often linked using templates: see Wikipedia:Harvard citation template examples. A variant of Harvard referencing uses the footnote system, with the footnote text being "Author 2005:183" and the full source information being in separate section, with the two not linked in an automated format.
- Placed inline (in the body of the article) with:
- Embedded citations Example -
- Placing this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embedded_Citations] inline immediately after the text being referenced gives a quick easy link to the online source, a web page. [1].
- In addition, a separate entry in the References section of the article is required, giving full information about the source.
- This approach has benefits and disadvantages which are discussed at Wikipedia:Embedded Citations#Notes.
- Wikipedia:Footnotes, with or without using Wikipedia:Citation templates, has the basic format
<ref>[CITATION INFO OR TEMPLATE HERE]</ref>. Using an appropriate citation template helps provide cleanly formatted and complete information about the source, but is not required. For the footnote information to be visible to the reader, the tag <references /> or the template {{reflist}} must be placed in the article, normally directly under a "References" section heading.[3] Examples -
<ref Name="NAME">{{cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| title =
| work =
| publisher =
| date =
| url =
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = }}</ref>
Second cite of same web
<ref name="NAME"/>
<ref Name="NAME">{{cite book
|title=
|last=
|first=
|authorlink=
|year=
|publisher=
|location=
|isbn=
|page=
|pages=
|url= }}</ref>
Second cite of same book
<ref name="NAME"/>
Why are references so important to biographical articles?
Most, if not all, facts in a biographical article must be verified, but why? Rumors can be used to defame a person. Rumors are unacceptable; a fact must be verified by reliable sources such as CNN or the BBC, or it's not acceptable in an article. It should be promptly removed by any editor who sees it.
For example, a pregnancy rumor for a young celebrity must be removed unless a good source for it is cited in the article.
Can references be used on pages other than articles?
Sure! References are good anywhere on Wikipedia, and are sometimes (though not commonly) used in projectspace and userspace.
Ref tags can also be used for notes (rather than sources/citation), if a fact doesn't fit well on a page but should be included somewhere.
Helpful links
References
- ^ When content in Wikipedia requires direct substantiation, the established convention is to provide an inline citation to the supporting references. The rationale is that this provides the most direct means to verify whether the content is consistent with the references. Alternative conventions exist, and are acceptable when they provide clear and precise attribution for the article's assertions, but inline citations are considered "best practice" under this rationale. For more details, please consult Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_cite_sources.
- ^ Jimmy Wales. "WikiEN-l Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information", May 16, 2006 and May 19, 2006
- ^ Wikipedian, User (6 January 2008). "Footnotes" (Webpage). page is considered a style guideline on Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved January 18, 2008.
{{cite web}}:|first=has generic name (help)
Dispatches: New methods to find Featured Article candidates
We've added several tools to help reviewers more quickly locate Featured Article candidates and Featured Articles under review in which they might be interested. As Featured Article production has increased, there are now usually between 40 and 60 articles seeking Featured Article status at a given time. FAR usually has fewer articles to review at any one time, but the discussions can become very long and involved. As page sizes increase, some reviewers may be discouraged from finding articles which interest them. At the request of BuddingJournalist, CBM, the operator of VeblenBot, modified the bot to create a more streamlined method of viewing the current nominations. User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article review candidates listing the candidates at FAR, while User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article candidates lists the candidates at FAC.
The length of the list at FAC can still make it difficult for a reviewer to quickly determine which FACs need more attention to clearly determine consensus. To solve this problem, Deckiller created a page to list the urgent FACs. The page is primarily updated by SandyGeorgia, although other regular FAC reviewers also maintain it. It can be transcluded onto any page, and can be found at the FAC talk page as well as on many user talk pages.
Features and admins
Administrators
Nine users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Lquilter (nom), Hdt83 (nom), LAX (nom), Pb30 (nom), CIreland (nom), Rjd0060 (nom), Ultraexactzz (nom), Happy-melon (nom), and Melesse (nom).
Bots
Two bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: BaldBot (task request) and DumZiBoT (task request).
Featured pages
Twenty two articles were promoted to featured status last week: Introduction to evolution (nom), John Michael Wright (nom), Ryan White (nom), Reese Witherspoon (nom), Ernest Shackleton (nom), Lisa del Giocondo (nom), Kit (association football) (nom), Tarbosaurus (nom), Hell Is Other Robots (nom), Monkey Gone to Heaven (nom), Woody Guthrie (nom), Judy Garland (nom), Sirius (nom), E. Urner Goodman (nom), Le Père Goriot (nom), Giant Otter (nom), Joseph Priestley House (nom), 200 (Stargate SG-1) (nom), The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson (nom), House Martin (nom), Super Mario 64 (nom), and Mumia Abu-Jamal (nom).
Ten lists were promoted to featured status last week: Nicknames of Houston (nom), Iowa Hawkeyes football seasons (nom), Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester (nom), List of Grey Cup champions (nom), List of counties in New York (nom), List of Buffalo Sabres players (nom), List of Victoria Cross recipients by nationality (nom), List of counties in Tennessee (nom), List of members of the Hockey Hall of Fame (nom), and List of West Midlands railway stations (nom).
One topic was featured last week: Halo trilogy (nom).
Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Comedy (nom) and Portal:Hong Kong (nom).
No sounds were featured last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Archimedes, "Manos" The Hands of Fate, Aikido, "Through the Looking Glass", Knut, and Las Meninas.
Former featured pages
One article was delisted recently: National parks of England and Wales (nom)
No list or portal was demoted.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Lillian Gish, Senegal Wattled Plover, Sieve of Eratosthenes, Frederick Douglass, The Princess, Mauthausen-Gusen, and Rosie the Riveter.
One featured picture was demoted: Meissner effect (nom)
Thirteen pictures and one video were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.6 (d77bde6), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
Fixed bugs
- Some interface bugs were fixed in the new 'Modern' skin, where certain elements (such as the new-messages bar and footer) were incorrectly styled, meaning that they were either the wrong colour or in the wrong position. (bugs 12876, 12863 and 12894; r30455 and r30490)
- Some invalid HTML in the deletion-confirm screen has been fixed. (r30458, bug 12887)
New features
There is a new magic wordlater reverted in r30547){{ROOTPAGENAME}}(and an escaped version{{ROOTPAGENAMEE}}) that returns the name of the non-subpage page that the current page is a subpage (directly or indirectly) of; for instance, the ROOTPAGENAME of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-04/Technology report is Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. (r30413, bug 12872,- A prop=imageinfo query in the API now returns a query-continue the same way that other API queries do. (r30483, bug 12875)
Other technology news
- The removal of the query.php API is being considered; it is recommended that bots and scripts that use it switch to the newer api.php API.
- It has now been made technically impossible for administrators to delete or move the Main Page. (Note that the technical block prevents the deletion-confirmation screen appearing; if the confirmation screen does appear for a deletion, then it means that the deletion is possible and should therefore probably not be attempted.) This follows on from two recent deletions of the Main Page; the first was as a result of an administrator having been told that the deletion was impossible and trying it for himself (ANI report), and the second to history-merge a lot of dummy revisions onto the Main Page in an attempt to push it over the large-history deletion limit (AN report); note that developers have since requested that this not be done on any page. The history of the Main Page has since been restored.
Ongoing news
- Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week, and closed one case, leaving six currently open.
Closed case
- Bluemarine: A case involving alleged civility and COI violations by User:Bluemarine on Matt Sanchez, the article on himself, which has also been edited tendentiously (from a hostile point of view) by a number of other editors, many of whom have been blocked. As a result of the case, Bluemarine was banned for one year and the article placed on article probation.
New case
- Ehud Lesar: A case involving a dispute involving Ehud Lesar, with alleged sockpuppetry on his part and alleged harrasment by Fedayee, Eupator and others.
Evidence phase
- Episodes and characters 2: A case involving alleged continuing disruption of articles concerning television series episodes and characters, following on from a prior case.
Voting phase
- Waterboarding: A case involving a dispute between a large number of editors on Waterboarding, relating to the question as to whether the technique should be described as torture. Remedies placing the article on article probation and imposing a "general restriction" have the support of two arbitrators.
- Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject. A remedy has been proposed counselling editors to consider contributing outside of disputed articles.
Motion to close/dismiss
- IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Voting on remedies relating to Giano is split (although an editing restriction remedy is at 3-1), but a remedy subjecting Tony Sidaway to an editing restriction for one year has the support of three arbitrators, and a proposal stating that the committee will determine "Policy and procedure changes regarding Wikipedia IRC channels" separately to the case. If closed, all parties would be "strongly cautioned to pursue disputes in a civil manner designed to contribute to resolution and to cause minimal disruption".
- Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user. If closed, he would be "provisionally" desysopped for six months, and Matthew Hoffman's block log annotated to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified. However, Newyorkbrad has opposed the motion to close.