Hello, Tobias1984, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially what you did for World Geodetic System. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
Hi Tobias. Thanks for adding those coordinates, very helpful. I had a look at your tag, it’s right on the mark! Thanks for the recognition! OscarK878 (talk) 14:01, 28 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Tobias. Take care when using picture galleries. This is an en.encyclopedia and it isn't a picture gallery, commons.wikimedia is the picture gallery here. Kurile islands could have two pictures less. Take care when adding books to "#references". As I understand, books in references are actually used in the article. You could place some books in a "#see also" section, though. People revert these kind of things. If nobody opposes, I'll ask de.kartenwerkstatt if it's possible to translate to english File:Sibirien topo2.png. Cheers --Chris.urs-o (talk) 08:32, 14 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the suggestions. I already took care of the books and the picture gallery. I can also help with the translation of the map. --Tobias1984 (talk) 09:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Check if the description I gave of the usage of Ptychagnostus atavus in biostratigraphy is correct. While I can fill in the paleontological details without problem, I'm obviously not very familiar with the geological side, heh. I'll use your corrections as a guide to the rest of the stubs I'll be making, so please fix any errors in the description.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL22:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Tobias. I thought you might want to know that I made some changes Template:Cambrian_graphical_timeline. I think it renders okay now, but I have only verified on Firefox. I think it should be the same across browsers, but I don't have access to others.
Specifically, I did the following:
For the vertical text, I added "line-height:10px;display:block;". This allowed the lines to compress so the text doesn't run beyond the boxes
For text that was displaced outside the box, I adjusted the "bar##-nudge-down=
Hello Tobias. It seems to be just you and me over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geology#Collaboration_for_December (not entirely unexpected) and in reality that means just you; I'll do whatever I can but it'll all be meta stuff - I am not a geologist.
Speaking of meta:
The robot job has been volunteered for by a new bot owner; it may take him a while to get it done. Will continue to try to guide it through.
Hey Arb! Thank you for setting up the task force page, I'm sure that it will get people more involved in meteorite topics. I hope progress isn't too slow, but I would blame it on a lot of Wikipedians preparing for holidays and taking snow days. I hope you have time for some snow days too, and we will just try to get the best out this month ;) --Tobias1984 (talk) 14:04, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No snow here yet; perhaps in the new year. It would make the children happy. I've just added an Infobox to your new Dronino meteorite which reminded me... There are now boxes on all meteorite articles, complete (as far as the information in the article allows) except for the chemistry fields which I didn't feel competent to touch. If you have the urge it would be well worth going through them all and checking / adding chemistry to the box. The easiest way to access them (as you doubtless know) is at Category:Meteorites by name. -Arb. (talk) 14:38, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My view today. We have had some nice snow the last couple of days (I uploaded a picture). I actually did't know that category yet. I think I can still go through the list today and look at the chemistry. I was wondering if we should add a to-do list to the task force page like at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geology? What do you think? --Tobias1984 (talk) 16:23, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Now there's an uplifting view; lucky fellow. Adding a proper to-do list is a fine idea. There's some content for it here but the presentation you have in mind is preferable; more attention grabbing, brings it to the top where it belongs and can be made visible in other places if required. Go right ahead. -Arb. (talk) 18:16, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've tweaked daubréelite a bit and when I looked at what links here I found the daubréeite redirect. Seems daubréeite is a bismuth oxide mineral and I've turned your redirect into a new article. I had never heard of it before, but your spelling glitch led me to discover it - rather an interesting species altho' quite unrelated to meteorites. Keep on trucking :) Vsmith (talk) 02:39, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia editor Kieranian2001 just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:
Reviewed as part of page curation. Interesting
detailed article on geology complete with references and categories.Kieranian2001 (talk) 14:09, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
To reply, leave a comment on Kieranian2001's talk page.
You recently added Earth and Planetary Science Letters to {{Meteorites}}. This is undoubtedly correct but there's nothing in the article that makes it self-evident. Would it be possible for you to add a sentence or even just a word to make it clear that meteorites and/or meteoritics are a primary topic of the journal. -Arb. (talk) 17:11, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. Re your recent edit to Itqiy meteorite. A numbered list followed by a single bullet point in External links does look odd (until you get used to it) but it's standard; See also is explicitly for links internal to Wakipedia: Wikipedia:See_also#See_also_section. By the way, great work completing all those assessments. Three days to go. -Arb. (talk) 18:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted my edit and added a ":" so the two lists align. I guess that is a good way of reducing the change in indentation. Three days left for the collaboration of the month, but hopefully we can continue working in the task force next year. --Tobias1984 (talk) 19:39, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really an expert on this template code. Is it possible that the first if-else-relationship (the one that adds the default picture) prevents the second if-else-relationship to recognize that image is undefined (because it is defined with the default picture)? Anyway, I hope you and your loved ones have a really great new year! --Tobias1984 (talk) 22:22, 31 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
They're asleep now. Good wishes for 2013 to you and yours too. The bug was a spurious "</includeonly><noinclude>{{doc}}"; the </includeonly> deactivated the new code. There are 34 meteorites in the category as of just now. A pleasing first edit of the year. -Arb. (talk) 00:57, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well lunar and martian meteorites are considered clans in one of my sources. I'm not sure we have a duo or trio article. Wouldn't those be considered grouplets? --Tobias1984 (talk) 20:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll make those two clans then (if you don't get there first). As for duos and trios, you are quite right; I'd misremembered Binze, Lauretta, McSween, et al (very edifying read that one, by the way). Will eliminate Duo. -Arb. (talk) 21:26, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Might be an idea if you added your source to the lunar and martian articles and a few words about being in a clan too. -Arb. (talk) 21:30, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Another topic. Do we have a definition for "Compositional type" anywhere? The infobox has a link to the wrong place right now. -Arb. (talk) 21:26, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure that this classification goes back to Maskelyne 1862 (or 1863?). So maybe it could link to "Meteorite Classification#Maskelyne Classification" where the tripartition could be explained. Or we make an own article about the Maskelyne classification. What do you think? --Tobias1984 (talk) 22:39, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The tripartition is covered at Meteorite_classification#Traditional_classification_scheme is it not? As for "Maskelyne Classification", there's already a fair bit in "Meteorite_classification#History" so if you add another section watch out for overlap/duplication. Getting back to "Compositional type", if it can be said to be "in widespread use" it would conveniently fit at Meteorite classification#Terminology. That said, I don't have a strong view where it goes, just that it should be in and somewhere linkable. Let me know what you decide (so the infobox link can be fixed). -Arb. (talk) 23:20, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would love to argue about this subject, but I have no idea how the algorithm calculates the importance of an article. Is there a way where the template is automatically set to the calculated importance scale? Then all the article would have the same consistent rating of their importance. Seems like a bot could calculate that once a month and adjust the settings. --Tobias1984 (talk) 07:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A bot might do that eventualy but for now it's a little trial of an idea of mine that needs a reality test. That's why I'd really value your opinion (as you have an overview of the full range of articles and some specialist subject knowledge) about whether the algorithmic assessment is reasonable for each of these four or if you feel your original rating is the correct one and should prevail. The fact that neither of us has full insight into the details of the algorithm is unimportant; we can still have an opinion about whether or not it looks/feels right for a particular article. I say "feels" because an element of intuition undoubtedly comes into it when we rate articles subjectively. -Arb. (talk) 12:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Would't you also think that the articles about groups should be more important than the members of that group? Maybe the algorithm uses the interlinkage of the articles and we just don't have enough links pointing to primitive achondrite for example. To me all the articles about groups and grouplets should be at last mid to high. But maybe that will happen anyway once we introduce more single meteorites and improve the inerlinkage of all the articles. --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
At a guess you are back at Uni and busy with your studies but if you have the time and haven't yet seen it Meteorites/Articles with one redlink would be well worth a skim by your knowledgeable eyes. There are sure to be some quick wins left; I've done all that were obvious but you will likely spot others. -Arb. (talk) 20:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I will try to get to it today or tomorrow. I'm also sandboxing another article right now. I'm a bit more busy, but there always has to be room for a little Wikipedia ;) --Tobias1984 (talk) 07:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"...create red links to articles you intend to create, technical terms that deserve treatment beyond a mere dictionary definition and topics which should obviously have articles..."
"Do not create red links to articles that will likely never be created..."
"In general, a red link should be allowed to remain in an article if it links to a term that could plausibly sustain an article, but for which there is no existing candidate article, or article section, under any name."
"A red link to an article that will plausibly be created in the future should be left alone rather than being created as a minimal stub article that has no useful information."
"Red links serve the purpose of notifying readers that a need exists in Wikipedia for creation of a new article with at least minimal information content; the creation of minimalist marker stubs simply to get rid of a red link destroys this useful mechanism."
So, it needs someone with a clue as to which Martian meteorites (or whatever) could sustain an article (ie meet Notability guidelines) and which are just generic. Is that you? -Arb. (talk) 14:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That does make sense. In that case better to leave the red links where they are for now and let future you and future me decide what to do with them :) --Tobias1984 (talk) 14:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I changed most of the links from meteorite pages that were "Fe-Ni", "FeNi", "Fe-Ni-alloy", "FeNi-metal" etc.. to meteoric iron. I thought that if people would still link to FeNi it should list all the alloys or combinations of the two elements and not just redirect to meteoric iron. Not sure if it is a good idea though. --Tobias1984 (talk) 14:04, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've broken the large, unwieldy list of single red links into smaller sections and asked various WikiProjects for help with relevant bits of it. If you've got a few minutes would you look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geology/Meteorites/Articles_with_one_redlink_by_topic#Rocks.2C_minerals.2C_geology.2C_etc and split it into Rocks and minerals items versus Geology items. When you're done I'll compare your rocks and minerals selection to what we've already asked them to help with to see if I missed any and also ask Geology project for help with Geology items. You have a better grasp then me of the fine distinction between these fields, hence this request. Also, if there are any links that "belong" to neither project best highlight those too. Many thanks. -Arb. (talk) 22:08, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure I can safely modify the template {{Geologic Ages Inline}}, what if (with no rush) I drop a list of the right ages somewhere, e.g. on a subpage of my user page. Than you could check the syntax and cut-and-paste. --Kaapitone (talk) 13:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I note that you have removed the non-SI units from the Russian meteor article per MOS. MOS states that miles and feet should not be included in "science" articles, but they are found as conversions in the article about the Tunguska event and 2012 DA14. These might be considered as historical and news, respectively, rather than pure science articles. For consistency, it seems appropriate to allow feet and miles in the article about the Russian meteor event. Regards. Edison (talk) 17:47, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Non-SI units are used all over Wikipedia even where MOS specifically depreciates them. I don't think that that is consistency, but a set of editors trying to convert every single number on Wikipedia so they don't have to familiarize themselves with the SI-system or do the conversion. --Tobias1984 (talk) 17:59, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. While my strength in Wikipedia is molecular biology and astrobiology, and I've been drawn to the Polonnaruwa (meteorite) article because of the unusual claims of living organisms within. The preliminary consensus by biologists and (local) geologists is that it is not a meteorite at all. Is there a way to determine if that object has been recognized as a meteorite by the competent meteorite experts? Thanks for any help you may give. CHeers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:15, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi BatteryIncluded! You probably have read these commentaries on the science behind this rock:
I think as a rule of thumb you can say that any rock that is not included in the meteoritical society bulletin database or the natural history museum database is not a meteorite. The first article also has a picture of the rock. As a geologist I can tell you that that is the last thing I would pick up and call a meteorite :). --Tobias1984 (talk) 14:45, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hello again. That team just released another paper on the elemental analysis of some rocks. Verifying that it is a meteorite with embeded diatoms, has repercusions in astrobiology. I am interested in your opinion regarding their bias/neutral science and conclusion. I don't want to give it too much weight in the Wikipedia article as they are going against the opinion of all other scientists who have looked into these rocks, and Wickramanshe has a history of publishing unverifiable and unreviewed papers (as in the Journal of Cosmology.)
PS: Keep in mind this is a new 'meteorite' found 2 months ago, unrelated to their previous claims of extraterrestrial microbial life.
Again this is a really weird publication with the weirdest approach of identifying a meteorite one could possibly think of. They are just publishing meaningless from machines they don't understand. The fact that none of these people have any idea of what they are doing is that they first coat a sample with gold to look at it with the electron microscope, and THEN they analyse the chemistry and write: "The gold is from the coating". Well why didn't they just use another piece of their "meteorite"? :) They intentionally don't use cheap and reliable methods (like a thin section) because that would show that their just looking at some limestone. --Tobias1984 (talk) 14:40, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I know their biology techniques have been intentionally twisted and plain dishonest BS, and am not surprised they are doing the same with elemental analyses. Thank you for your feedback. BatteryIncluded (talk) 13:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You created an "one liner" stub (ixiolite) :[ User:Ixfd64 created one liner mineral stubs beginning with 'A' (November 2006, e.g. arctite, arcubisite, artroeite), they are still very small stubs :[ Please, don't create one liner stubs :[ Calm down, chill out and keep cool ;) There is no deadline for improving Wikipedia ;)
I took that picture at a restaurant. Thought it looked kind of cool. Not sure if it will be kept on Commons as a piece of modern art :) --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:17, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that you are active at WikiProject Geology so I wonder if you can help with this. A few days ago I created a new article for paleontologist Donald Prothero which I have also nominated for a DYK. Afterward I learned about the bot that lists new geology articles but I notice the Prothero article is not on the list despite containing a lot of the necessary keywords. Does that indicate a need to add keywords to the bot?
The reason I ask is because I want to get a better understanding of how the bot works so that I can create a search for new articles in the area of scientific skepticism. I'd appreciate any help you can provide! Allecher (talk) 19:30, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just used a picture of the geologic time sale 2012 and copypasted the colors with Gimp. Probably that is not the best way to do it. If you have the exact RGB values it might be time to update the English version once more. --Tobias1984 (talk) 07:43, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The reference was not replaced when I did the edit request. The colors in the GTS2012 are slighty more pastel, probably for readability. The correct reference should be: http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-chart-timescale I don't know if those RGB values are written down anywhere, but those are the images I used to read out the color values with Gimp. --Tobias1984 (talk) 09:42, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I know that you were one of the only people working on the Geology of North America article. I have been working on the article in my sandbox as noted on the talk page. I have gotten quite a ways on that article, and I would be interested to hear what you think about my draft? I would be inclined to move my draft to article space for Geology of North America, and move the current article back to Geology of the United States where it belongs. I tried to include most of the sourced information from the current article. Do you have any thoughts? --Al Climbs (talk) 00:09, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I remember that we even thought of deleting it, as it was just a huge collection of red links with very little content. As AlClimbs now has a more appropriate Geology of North America article the old one can be moved to Geology of the United States and we will try to sort out things from there. --Tobias1984 (talk) 18:05, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for helping me through that mess I created. I know that Geology of the United States now needs a lot of work, but I am somewhat sick of those two articles, and I am disinclined to work on them. The cleanup from this will be worse than trying to sort through the administrative issues I created. Again, I would stay and help but I am sick of them. Also, I feel I need to end by repeating thanks for helping that along. Think I need to make note of what happened at the Wikiproject Geology? --Al Climbs (talk) 01:16, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad I could help. And things like that are bound to happen sometimes ;) I also wouldn't worry about the cleanup. I looked through the history of both articles and I think nobody will mind the way we handled this. I also sometimes get tired of some topic. Best is just to take a break or work on something else. When you are ready to work on it again it will be fun to see what other people added. --Tobias1984 (talk) 06:37, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I hope you put this page on your watchlist. Listen, I'm afraid that I can't approve the DYK nomination yet until editing has settled down or issues (including unrelated ones that would affect the article, like tagging) are addressed. Hopefully, you can resolve these issues or have someone else interested to do so. --George Ho (talk) 14:30, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I only nominated the article. Don't have the time nor the interest to argue with the IP-editor who highjacked the article. Thanks for the message. --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:40, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Crisco told that guy off, so... you can semi-retire, not fully, from DYK. To be honest, IP comes across as vain, vindictive, petty, dangerous, and someone I cannot socialize with. --George Ho (talk) 00:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tobias1984, the IP has asked for Greenland to be included on the first image (and maybe the second). This may be a reasonable request - the Greenland article indeed says it's physiographically N. Am. - in which case either the image or its caption need to be updated. Or if the request is unreasonable, if you'd explain it to me then I'll update the DYK; either way, once that's done I think we can proceed to DYK. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:07, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Chiswick! I will try to crop something together from another map. Could you maybe change the hook to something less bad than what I suggested. --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:16, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're asking me? My geology extends to granite, marble, and slate... ok, limestone as well. (just kidding). How about something like
I like that hook. Nice and simple and nobody can take offence in it. I changed the map to something that includes Greenland. --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:40, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
geology
Thank you for contributing with scientific background quality articles on geology and mineralogy, by country and about single people, such as Karl Hugo Strunz, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!
You're welcome. Are you planning to do more work about the geology of Ireland? Would be nice to have better coverage of that area. --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Concerns for an early Mars sample return until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
Warren Platts (talk) 21:40, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
During this work I noted that some information in the list of the GBSP-article is not consistent, but I will leave those to you to deal with, i.e.:
Discoaster brouweri is identified as haptophyte, while D. surculus is identified as a calcareous nannofossil. Both are correct, but it is a bit odd to use two different terms where the reader probably does not realise both are haptophytes that have conserved as calcareous nannofossils; I'd definitely prefer the information given on the haptophyte page to the the information on the pages calcareous and fossil;
the end of the fossil record of Discoaster brouweri is called extinction, while for D. kugleri it is called "Last Common Occurrence" (a term that merits some further consideration: the capitals suggest that it is an official term, but there is no wiki article, nor does it occur anywhere else on wiki, and it evades me with what in this occurrence is common).
Thank you so much for all the help. I replaced the "calcareous fossil links" with haptophyte. You're right about the biostratigraphic terms. We probably should have entries for "first occurence", "last occurence", "first common occurence", "last common occurence", "first regular occurence" and "last regular occurence". In the case of D. kugleri there is some information here:
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Hi Tobias1984. A french wikipedian is translating an article from the french Wikipedia in the english Wikipedia. He requested me to correct him, but I am not sure his translation is good. Could you help us please ? Cordially, Juraastro (talk) 10:23, 23 August 2013 (UTC).[reply]
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The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.
The 2013 WikiCup competition is entering its final round. Eleven articles and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia's annual volunteer-driven and the world largest photo contest, is gearing up to be conducted throughout September 2013. The event, originally developed in the Netherlands in 2010, has gone global with 34 countries taking part last and 49 this year.
Wikipedia's traditional image gallery format, produced by the markup, has remained largely unchanged for years. The resulting layout, seen below, does not adapt well to variations in image size, and has been characterized by some critics as aesthetically unappealing.
After media praise for Wikipedia's decision to move the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning, the reversion of that page move on August 31, after a discussion in which several hundred Wikipedians participated, has so far triggered less favourable feedback, as well as a blog post from Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner expressing her disappointment with the decision.
On September 3, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the second stage of the process to improve the privacy policy implemented on most Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia and its sister projects, by publishing a policy draft.
As mentioned in "In the news" on Wikipedia's main page, the Library of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has opened. This interior photo was taken a week before opening. The article reports that the library "has been described as the largest public library in the United Kingdom, the largest public cultural space in Europe, and the largest regional library in Europe."
This week, we spent some time with the minds behind WikiProject Psychology. The project was created in March 2006 and has grown to include 14 Featured Articles and 43 Good Articles.
The dispute over the title for the Manning article escalated quickly to arbitration levels, as the Bradley/Chelsea Manning naming dispute case was accepted for arbitration.
In this week's "Technology report", we explore ways of making Wikipedia more accessible to users of screen readers. Graham87 is a highly active contributor who is also blind and accesses the site through a screen reader.
'The National Law Journal reported on September 9 that lawyer Susan L. Burke has been taking legal steps to discover the identity of Wikipedia editor . Zujua had edited her biography, allegedly adding misleading content about various lawsuits in the process
The deadline for proposals to the Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) volunteer committee on Meta will pass on 30 September. The program is designed to fund projects that tackle long-term problem and have a significant editing community impact; it has previously supported solutions like The Wikipedia Library, which improves Wikipedian access to online reference sources like JSTOR (see Signpost coverage).
While the Syrian Civil War crept its slow way into the minds of the public, with a new fourth related entry in the top 25, the top 10 remained dominated by celebrity, mainly sports and music. Two megabucks transfers stimulated public interest in football/soccer ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, while Lil Wayne's public apology ahead of his latest album release sent him to the top.
Discussion over the Manning title dispute was off to a running start as evidence and workshop phases continued in the Bradley/Chelsea Manning naming dispute. The Infoboxes case closed with topic bans for two users, and a recommendation for community discussion of infoboxes.
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the volunteer-led body that evaluates chapter and (for the first time) thematic organizational annual plan grant requests to the Wikimedia Foundation, is preparing for its third round of public proceedings to deliberate on the distribution of several million US dollars of Wikimedia movement funds.
This week, the Signpost headed to WikiProject Good Articles. As of publishing time, out of the 4,331,477 articles on Wikipedia, only 18,464 are rated as "good" (about 1 in 235).
In this week's "Technology report", we look at how the growth of Wikidata can benefit Wikipedia. Gerard Meijssen is a highly active contributor and frequent blogger about Wikidata. We asked him to share his thoughts on how the new project benefits Wikipedia.
The top 10 is bookended by unlucky dates, as Friday the 13th fell just after the anniversary of 9/11. Breaking Bad's final season continued to draw attention, while interest in Miley Cyrus's youthful exuberance is fading only slowly.
Over the last year, there's been extensive debate about whether public relations professionals and other corporate representatives should participate on Wikipedia and, if so, to what extent and what kinds of rules should be followed.
The saga of Walter White, chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin, as told in the critically adored television series Breaking Bad, has been a water-cooler necessity for years, and now, as it nears its end, audiences are feverishly following every plot thread to guess what the finale will reveal.
On 30 September, Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the Wikimedia community's global photo competition, will reach to the end of its submission period. The proceedings have been underway since the first of this month; national juries will start reviewing submissions for the first round of selections after it closes ... Community aggravation with one of the Wikimedia Foundation's signature initiatives, the VisualEditor, came to the fore again this week with the announcement and implementation of code blocking the tool.
This week, we continued our exploration of other language editions of Wikipedia by visiting the Spanish Wikipedia's Wikiproyecto Fútbol (WikiProject Football).
A conference paper makes a rather serious claim: "We find a surprisingly large number of editors who change their behavior and begin focusing more on a particular controversial topic once they are promoted to administrator status."
Medical images have transformed many aspects of modern medicine. Over the past two decades the increasing sophistication of MRI, CT-scanning, and X-ray techniques has made these technologies the cornerstone of diagnosing a range of conditions, replacing what used to be largely guesswork by doctors. They can be the difference between life and death for a patient, and their importance is underlined by the tens of billions of dollars spent on them annually just in North America. For Wikimedia Foundation projects, advanced images are now a powerful tool for describing and explaining, and educating our worldwide readership of medical articles.
In what will be remembered as a game-changing week for Wikimedia grantmaking, the Foundation's executive director, Sue Gardner, published a forthright and in places highly critical statement, Reflections on the FDC process, and grantmaking staff revealed that the WMF will significantly strengthen its targeting of optimal impact in funding.
Editor's note: To go beyond the mere facts of cases, the "Arbitration report" invited several editors who participated in the recent Infoboxes case to comment on infoboxes: what they are, where new users can go to find out about them, specifications and protocols, best practices, and how the upcoming community discussion recommended by the Committee in the case decision should be framed.
This week, we revisited the enthusiastic editors at WikiProject U2. Started in June 2007, the project has grown in spurts, resulting in a collection of 8 Featured Articles and 24 Good Articles. The project maintains a to do list, portal, and a list of references.
If you're living in the United States, what did you do during the government shutdown? Well, it seems most people watched the final episode of Breaking Bad.
An investigation by the English Wikipedia community into suspicious edits and sockpuppet activity has led to astonishing revelations that Wiki-PR, a multi-million-dollar US-based company, has created, edited, or maintained several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients using a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts.
The University of California, San Francisco attracted substantial media attention over its new course offering that will give credit to fourth year medical students for editing Wikipedia articles about medicine.
A proposed decision has been posted in the Manning naming dispute. The workshop phase of the Ebionites 3 case closes 13 October. Arbitrator NuclearWarfare has resigned.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Clunia, Austria, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Feldkirch (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Media coverage on Wiki-PR, the multi-million-dollar US-based company that has broken several policies and guidelines on the English Wikipedia in its quest to create and maintain thousands of articles for paying clients, continued this week with a feature story by Martin Robbins in the British edition of Vice magazine.
A slow week, with low overall views and the Top 10 dominated by longstanding pages. Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's outer space-set action art film, not only held its position at the top of the US box office but climbed to the top of the Wikipedia chart as well, showing that it has become a major talking point.
This week, we studied coats of arms and flags with the folks at WikiProject Heraldry and Vexillology. Started in September 2006, the project has grown to include 20 Featured Articles and nearly 50 Good Articles. The project maintains a portal, a list of resources, and a variety of images and templates.
The Manning naming dispute case has closed, with a strong and unanimous statement by the Committee against disparaging references to transgendered persons. Sanctions were enacted against six editors.
Also, it seems we start to have a small group of ~3 GIS map makers around. That's the first time this happen on wiki-en. Please ask questions whenever you need to get GIS / Mapmaking know-how, and show us what you are doing so we may give tricks or ask you questions as well. Yug(talk)12:28, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The next twice-yearly round of Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) grantmaking is soon to close for community questioning and commentary. Ten nation-based Wikimedia chapters and one thematic organisation are asking for a total of more than US$5M of donors’ money from the Foundation’s renamed annual plan grant process. Aside from Wikimedia UK ($708k), the three biggest asks are from the German-speaking chapters: Wikimedia Germany is asking for $2.4M and Wikimedia Austria $311k; and the German-language-related Swiss chapter is applying for $500k.
Twelve articles, four lists, and four pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including the article on cabbage.
MIT Technology Review published a long article on what it called "The decline of Wikipedia". Editor involvement has decreased since 2007; according to the article, this has had an adverse qualitative effect on content, particularly on issues pertinent to non-British and American male geeks.
This week, we headed to an elementary subject with WikiProject Elements. Founded by Mav in 2002, this project has grown to have 19 featured articles, 2 featured topics, and 68 good articles. The project also has a list of templates, and a periodic table of elements filled with pictures.
The top 10 encapsulates the history of human aviation; at #1, a Google Doodle celebrating the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump; at #10, the enduringly popular scifi film Gravity, a paean to human spaceflight. It's odd to think it's taken us 200 years to travel about that many miles up.
While giving a speech on behalf of a gubernatorial candidate, Paul advocated his pro-life position, and compared allowing unrestricted abortions to the film Gattaca. He went on to use strikingly similar language and phraseology in his speech to what the Wikipedia page reads. The Washington Post's article conceded that Wikipedia is a widely used source for trivial information, but mocked the fact that a politician would view it as a reliable source.
In January we raised several potentially troublesome issues for the Wikimedia movement in taking on Wikivoyage, including the apparent inadequacy of the English Wikivoyage sex-tourism policy, hurriedly strengthened against mention of child sex after our inquiries. However, both sex-tourism and illegal-activities policies remain equivocal about how the site should treat entries about sex tourism more generally, and drugs that are classed as illicit in almost every country. Yet the Signpost has found it remarkably easy to locate material in Wikivoyage that violates both the spirit and the letter of the policies.
This year's WikiCup competition has finished, while three articles, five lists, and six pictures, were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Laura Stein, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, has concluded that, based on her comparison of user policy documents (including the Terms of Service) of YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, Wikipedia offers the highest level of participation power overall.
With Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and other gloomy celebrations this week, we're taking a look at Wikipedia's dead and dying. For some dead WikiProjects, the sole purpose of their life was simply to serve as a warning to others. Some of these projects may still be salvageable, but for most, a revival is unlikely. Here are some projects that never got off the ground and the lessons that can be gleaned from their follies
This article should not be speedily deleted for lack of asserted importance because... I tried to make similar to other Classified websites in Wikipedia, for example: Dubizzle .. Opensooq is really a well known website in MENA regions, we reach 5 million unique visitors per month, so I would appreciate to make it more professional and be included in Wikipedia --Existed (talk) 11:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair I also nominated Dubizzle for deletion. Having millions of visitors is not notable anymore in our world. It is also not notable to have an office, an app, an investor, having relocated, having a website, .... I am sure you agree with this. --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:59, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the addition! Please feel free to add additional important species, but when you do please update the notable species include bit....I already fixed it for your addition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rm13967 (talk • contribs) 11:23, 8 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As part of the second major "outing" controversy to hit the English Wikipedia in less than a year, the Chelsea/Bradley Manning naming dispute was dragged into the spotlight yet again when the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee ruled by motion to remove the administrator tools from and ban long-time Wikipedia contributor Phil Sandifer.
It's fair to say that commemorating death was a strong theme this week, with Lou Reed's passing generating interest, as well as a Google Doodle celebrating the costume designer Edith Head. And of course, the world's greatest celebrations of the dead, Halloween and the Day of the Dead, were also popular this week.
HMS Hood, one of the most famous warships of the Second World War, was a battlecruiser and therefore part of what is now the largest featured topic on Wikipedia: "Battlecruisers of the world". The topic was promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week alongside eleven articles, three lists, four pictures, and two other topics.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Accessibility, a project that strives to make Wikipedia accessible for users with disabilities. The project improves Wikipedia's guidelines and Manual of Style, collects useful templates and scripts, and provides support to impaired Wikipedians.
Hi Tobias1984. Thanks for your work on the map, but it has serious shortcomings which should be fixed, if the map is to be used on wikipedia. It does not show many notable medieval towns, while it is unduly overcrowded with Albanian places, many of which were not recorded in the 14th century. This is also the case with some other towns, such as Novi Sad and Mostar. Some names are anachronistic (for example, Podgorica, Tuzla, Sarajevo, and Sofia were then called Ribnik, Soli, Vrhbosna, and Sredets)... I can provide the correct place names and coordinates, via email if you want. Also, the map should show the West Morava and Vardar Rivers. "Truma" should be Struma. There are no names of the seas... Vladimir (talk) 14:43, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, send me a spread-sheet and I will make the changes. The problem is that there are no databases that can provide names and coordinates of historic cities. Let's hope that Wikidata can soon provide map makers with this kind of information. --Tobias1984 (talk) 14:51, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Tobias1984. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Well done! That's a great improvement. There are several things still to be fixed. The point at which the western border departs from the Drina River should be moved a bit to the south (see File:Serbian Empire.png). The narrow coastal strip west of Dubrovnik (the former Republic of Ragusa) should be bordered off from the Banate of Bosnia. The Morava River should be indicated as in your previous version. If "Niš" stands in the way, move it to the north (you can delete "Nisava"). "Treska, Vardar" should be just "Vardar" (Treska is a different river). I found that there are two errors in the table I sent you: 1) The southern of the two "Vidins" should be deleted - there is no such place. 2) The correct coordinates for Severin are 44.567, 22.667. Cheers, Vladimir (talk) 14:27, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The western border is now ok. "Morava" is shown, but "Niš" disappeared. There's the circle for the town, but no label. The previous version had all diacritics (č, ć, š, ž) but now č and ć are lost. "Wallachia" was moved too far to the south. It should be north of the Danube. As for Ragusa, see the island west of Dubrovnik partially shown at the western border of the map (Mljet). North of it is a narrow land mass - Pelješac. North of Pelješac is a narrow inlet of sea. The border of the Republic of Ragusa should run along this inlet. Currently, the coastal strip is too broad at its western part. You may label the republic. Vladimir (talk) 15:45, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The numbers this week are beyond anything that has been seen since this report began. The top view count beats the average by an order of magnitude. Usually the appearance of numbers this big on the list is due to spamming, but in this case it seems they are due to honest interest; more specifically, Google Doodles, which for the first time claimed all five top slots. This column has raised numerous times the power of a Google Doodle to shine light on Wikipedia, but the wattage has never been as high as this.
The supporting staff of the Wikimedia Foundation’s powerful volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) have released their assessments for the third half-yearly round of funding applications. The applications for the newly named annual plan grants were submitted by affiliated entities on 1 October, and comprise a total of more than US$5M in bids.
The Italian-language Wikipedia community has overwhelmingly voted to request the Wikimedia Foundation's assistance in recovering wikipedia.it, a website that has been frequently confused with the Italian Wikipedia.
As I said in August, contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement, not to mention the English Wikipedia.
Peter Burke's A Social History of Knowledge: Volume II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia is a broad and wide-ranging look at how knowledge has been created, acquired, organized, disseminated, and sometimes lost in the Western world over the last two and a half centuries, a sequel to his 2000 book covering the prior three centuries, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot.
Four articles, five lists, and thirty-four pictures were promoted to 'featured status' this week, including an image of a small fraction of the 18,000 taxis that serve Hong Kong.
This week, we headed over to WikiProject National Football League. With 10 Featured Articles, 61 Featured Lists, and 142 Good Articles (as of publication), this WikiProject has done a lot of work improving American football articles.
The Wikimedia Foundation has sent a formal cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR—the public relations agency accused of breaking Wikipedia policies and guidelines by creating, editing, and maintaining several thousand articles for paying clients through a sophisticated array of accounts. The Foundation's attorneys, Cooley LLP, have demanded that Wiki-PR's employees abide by the site's Terms of Use and the language of a community ban from the English Wikipedia.
It's not hard to guess which event is leading interest in the top 25 this week. The sheer scale of Typhoon Haiyan is staggering; estimates place its maximum windspeed upon first landfall in the Philippines on November 6 at 315 km/h, which would make it the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to reach land. To date, the storm has killed nearly 4000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 4 million homes.
Back in March, when the March 25 Arbitration Report covered the Audit Subcommittee appointment discussion, a statement from the WMF legal division clarified its position that access to deleted revisions required an RFA or RFA-identical process; therefore AUSC committee appointments were not open to non-admins. The WMF legal team has now further clarified its position, saying that running for and winning an election for arbitrator would qualify as the type of rigorous community selection process required for the checkuser and oversight rights held by arbitrators.
Summary:Doctor Who nearly got cancelled in its first week because its premiere was swamped by coverage of the JFK assassination, which happened the same day. Thankfully, producers saw fit to rerun it the next day, which is now its official anniversary date.
Wikipedia works on the efforts of unpaid volunteers who choose to donate their time to advance the cause of free knowledge. This phenomenon, as trivial as it may sound to those acquainted with Wikipedia inner workings, has always puzzled economists and social scientists alike, in that standard Economic theory would not predict that such enterprises would thrive without any form of remuneration.
The sister project Wikisource, the digital library that hosts free-content primary sources, is now a decade old. Wikisource, which now has versions in 63 languages, is the sixth type of project to reach ten-year milestone and will be the last until 2016. The Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations to the Board of Trustees on 11 new applications for annual grants by 11 WMF-affiliated organisations. The maximum total budget for the current and upcoming March rounds is US$6M.
This week, we returned to WikiProject Apple Inc. for a peek at their newest articles about the latest in gadgets and software. The last time we took a bite out of WikiProject Apple, they had just finished merging WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject iPhone OS. Today, the project is hard at work rewriting their primary article, improving the subject's outline, and adding to the project's list of 25 Good Articles and 6 Featured Articles.
When one edits this page for too long, one is tempted to appoint oneself as the psychoanalyst for the human race, or at least the English-speaking portion thereof. Since nearly everyone uses Wikipedia, the constant stream of TV updates, pointless celebrity scandals, and inquiries after who has died can seem like a dreary peek into humanity's surprisingly banal collective consciousness.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales caught headlines last week when he referred to former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden ... Loek Essers of the International Data Group, (IDG) News Service is reporting that a German court has held Wikipedia liable for its content, but still does not have to fact check the information in advance.
Amid great anticipation the international prize winners have just been announced for the fourth annual Wiki Loves Monuments, now the world's largest photographic competition and one of the biggest events on the Wikimedia movement's calendar. ... The first prize has gone to David Gubler's photograph of a Swiss train crossing a viaduct.
On 7 December, Wikipedia editor Wehwalt reached the momentous milestone of 100 featured articles with History of Chincoteague, Virginia. Quite apart from the reading and research, that's around three-quarters of a million words of finalised text, not counting footnotes, image captions and the rest.
On 6 December, the latest version of the MediaWiki software was released. In development from March 2013 through October 2013, the release featured anti-spam and counter-vandalism improvements.
I honestly don't know whether fossils should be listed under the formation or formation under the fossils since the information doesn't really seem more or less relevant to either concept. Is there anyway to list it under both simultaneously? I know so little about Wikidata that I'm not sure what how to make a helpful suggestion. I am really excited about the concept, though. Abyssal (talk) 18:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.
A little more than six days after the close of voting, the results of the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced. Of the 22 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, though only one gained the support of more than half of the voters. Eight were elected to two-year terms, and a ninth will serve for one year.
This week, the GLAMWikiToolset, or GWToolset, is being deployed to the Wikimedia Commons. It allows for GLAM organizations to batch upload content based on various metadata stored in an XML schema. In the past this has been done by various bots, but now it will be easier for GLAMs to do it directly.
Analyzing edits to the-then 46 largest Wikipedias between July 9 and August 8, 2013, a study identified a set of about 8,000 contributors with a global user account who have edited more than one of these language versions in that time frame.
We saved one last special report for 2013. After our well-received review of great WikiProject logos a couple years ago, it was only a matter of time before we collected a new batch of interesting iconography that showcases the creativity of the Wikipedia community. Hopefully, these logos will also inspire other projects to liven up their drab pages.
A significant move by the Wikimedia Foundation has been to broaden the types of activities it funds to develop several different programs for judging and allocating that funding, and to set up volunteer committees that initially assess applications for funding.
Last month, the OAuth extension was deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. OAuth is a standard used for allowing users to authenticate third-party applications, also known as consumers, to take actions on their behalf.
On New Year's Day, an article by Tim Sampson published in The Daily Dot and republished shortly after on Mashable covered the currently ongoing medical disclaimer RfC.
This was the year in which one journalist described the flagship site, Wikipedia, as "wickedly seductive". It was the year Wikipedia's replacement value was estimated at $6.6bn, its market value at "tens of billions of dollars", and its consumer benefit "hundreds of billions of dollars". But it was also the year in which one commentator forecast the decline of Wikipedia—that the project is in trouble from its shrinking volunteer workforce, skewed coverage, "crushing bureaucracy" and 90 percent male community.
The year 2013 has come and gone, adding 50 new WikiProject Reports to our long list of projects we've had the privilege to meet. Last year saw the continuation of our Babel series, featuring WikiProjects from other languages of Wikipedia. We also expanded our selection of special reports, offering readers a growing collection of helpful tips and tools as they participate in WikiProjects.
Over the past year 1181 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured picture candidates (FPC), which promoted an average of 46 pictures a month. This was followed by featured article candidates (FAC; 32.5 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 18 a month).
The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.
On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Germany, the largest national affiliate, has authored an extensive critique of the Funds Dissemination Committee's process for issuing funding recommendations for the various large organizations in the movement.
The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.
It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.
Wikipedia's recent decline in readership, possibly due to Google's Knowledge Graph. ... Judith Newman in the New York Times asks "What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?"
A particularly esoteric anthology of speculative fiction, filled with imaginary Wikipedia entries from, as the introduction puts it, "the many Wikipedias across the Multiverse."
The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.
This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.
An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.
While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.
There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.
Community review is open for the four applications in the second and final round of applications to the WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee for 2013–14. Three eligible organisations have applied for funding under the newly named "annual program grants": Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Norway, and the India-based Centre for Internet and Society, which last November was recognised as eligible to apply for FDC funding purposes.
"I remember laughing and talking and laughing and talking at Wikimania 2012. I took this picture of her that she used for a long while as a profile pic. Someone on Facebook said it looked 'skepchickal', which she loved."
Television has always been a topic of choice on this site, but it exploded this week. Fully six slots were devoted to television shows, as the final episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular Wikipedia searches of the last few years, coincided with the season finale of The Walking Dead and the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. The number rises to 8 if movies released on video and new TV tech are are included.
The annual Wikimedia Conference wound up last Sunday, 13 April—a four-day meeting costing several hundred thousand dollars, hosted in Berlin by Wikimedia Germany and attended by more than 100 Wikimedians.
Hey you—yeah you, the Wikipedian! Do you want to help a museum, a library, a university, or other organization explore ways to engage with Wikipedia? Great—you should offer your expertise as a Wikipedian in residence!
Cynthia Ashley-Nelson, who edited as "Cindamuse" on the Wikimedia projects, passed away in her sleep at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin on 10 April.
After just over a month of deliberation, the Wikimania jury has selected Wikimedia Mexico's bid to host Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, with a proposed date of 15–19 July.
Like hammering a square peg into a round hole, the Wikimedia Foundation has submitted a draft annual plan for 2014–15 to its own Funds Dissemination Committee. Unlike the WMF's submission to the FDC's inaugural round in October 2012, the "proposal" does not seek funding.
Not much to report this week. The same post-Easter celebrations (4/20, Earth Day) were popular again this year, except last year we were still reeling from the Boston Marathon bombing.
The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) introduced the first form of what are known as the "discretionary sanction" (DS) in 2009. A new DS regime, called Discretionary sanctions (2014), is the result of an elaborate review process involving both the community, since last September, and the committee, for more than a year.
For all the claims of Wikipedia bringing the world's knowledge to all who want it, it seems the human race most wants is a tabloid newspaper; a quick source for TV listings, pop culture facts, celebrity gossip and, above all, scandal—with some nice juicy racism thrown in too.
In a live video stream on 1 May, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Lila Tretikov will be replacing Sue Gardner, its executive director. Gardner, who has been in the position since 2007, declared her intention to leave more than a year ago.
Boston Children's Hospital postdoctoral fellow David McIver and a team have determined that using page view statistics from Wikipedia, they can track flu progression better than the Center for Disease Control can using Google searches.
Formed in 2003, the Eurovision WikiProject boasts four featured articles and 22 good articles. The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, so we went to the stage to talk with one of the project's members.
On 2 May 2012, the Wikimania jury announced that Hong Kong's bid to hold the 2013 event had beaten four other proposals. Moderator James Forrester wrote: "The Jury has confidence that the Hong Kong bidding team will pull off a magnificent Wikimania,"—and indeed there were positive comments about the event from most attendees.
Editors of Australian-related topics on the English Wikipedia may have noticed an odd addition if they viewed the article's talk pages. For example, on Talk:Darwin, Northern Territory, they might be drawn in by the question mark, nested within what is often a sea of WikiProject templates: "Need help improving this article? Ask a librarian at the National Library of Australia, or the Northern Territory Library." Just what is this?
Last Sunday the board of Wikimedia Germany passed 9–1 a vote of no confidence in the chapter's executive director, Pavel Richter, who has held the position since 2009. With more than 50 employees, an annual budget approaching $10 million, and the right to conduct its own fundraising through the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) site banners, Wikimedia Germany is the second-largest organisation in the movement after the WMF itself. The decision was announced on the Wikimedia mailing list by the chapter chair, Nikolas Becker.
It's a relief to see Google Doodles having an impact again; their wide coverage means that they inspire curiosity on many subjects which, for reasons of nationality, ethnicity or gender, might not be known in the English-speaking world. It's a shame then, that Wikipedia so often fails to keep up; articles on Google Doodles are almost invariably C-class, and seldom do justice to their subjects. Still, interest in Google Doodles has been waning in recent months—Audrey Hepburn last week was the first to top the list since December—so any rise in popularity is worth celebrating.
With the promotion to featured article of Grus (constellation) on 17 May, Casliber became Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion, following Wehwalt's groundbreaking achievement last December. Cas's first FA, Banksia integrifolia, a group effort, was promoted on 16 November 2006. His first solo project, Diplodocus, followed in January 2007; he has rarely been off the FAC since. In a second story, Ward Cunningham, an American computer programmer who invented the wiki, was interviewed by the WMF.
Wikipedia editor Sven Manguard's work is quite underappreciated a lot of the time, most likely because people haven't heard of it yet: He's developed good relationships with game companies, and is thus able to get full-resolution screenshots released under a Creative Commons license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. This week's trove of new featured items on the English Wikipedia comprises seven articles, three lists, and four pictures.
In the US, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer, and summer is definitely on people's minds this week, with summer films Godzilla and X-Men: Days of Future Past, the apparently designated summer song "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea, and summer TV show, Game of Thrones.
Wikipedia in the eyes of its beholders; "Chinese-language time zones" favor Asian pop and IT topics on Wikipedia; and bipartite editing prediction in Wikipedia.
Individual engagement grants (IEGs) are announced twice yearly by a volunteer WMF committee, the most recent of which we covered last December. The scheme, launched at the start of last year, awards funds to individuals or teams of up to four to produce high-impact outcomes for the WMF's online projects. It favours innovative approaches to solving critical issues in the movement.
New trustee Frieda Briosch from Italy: we face "a couple of headaches", she says: "how to boost editors, which includes the development of the next strategic plan, and how to keep our project always 'glamorous'."
I never feel quite adequate trying to paraphrase Sumana's words: she is so articulate. I highly encourage every person who reads this article to directly watch her keynote—it directly speaks to a lot of Wikimedia's most significant issues, made with great eloquence. We have a serious issue with retaining editors, and parts of her speech could serve as a pretty good partial blueprint towards how we could begin to fix that problem.
David Iliff, or Diliff, as he is known on here outside of the file pages for his many, many, excellent photographs, is one of Wikipedia's longest-standing professional-standard photographers. This week, the Signpost salutes him.
The northern summer is a time when one is meant to celebrate the exuberance of life; instead, commemoration of the dead was a significant theme this week.
Eleven public relations agencies have declared their intention to follow "ethical engagement practices" in Wikipedia editing. The results were published last Tuesday: a joint statement from the participating PR agencies—representing five of the top ten global agencies and all but one of the top ten in the United States—clarifying their views and practices with regards to the Wikimedia projects.
It seems that, more than commemorating the great moments in our history, more than even anticipating great sporting events, what our audience wants is the weird.
William Beutler (WWB), author of the blog The Wikipedian, is a long-time editor and community-watcher. He is also a paid editor (WWB Too). Well—not anymore—because he gave up direct editing of articles in 2011. Instead, for the past three years he has followed Jimmy Wales' Bright Line rule in acting as a researcher and consultant for companies and clients that want to suggest changes to Wikipedia articles and engage on the Talk page.
Last week we reported the announcement of two new affiliate-selected WMF trustees. The board of trustees is the most powerful and influential body in the movement, and chapters have been permitted to select two of the 10 seats since 2008, for two-year terms that start in even-numbered years.
The Wikimedia Foundation has amended its terms of use to ban editing for pay without disclosing an employer or affiliation on any of its websites. The broad scope of these changes will allow the WMF to selectively enforce their terms of use to avoid ensnaring well-meaning editors.
The Bangladesh chapter of the Wikimedia movement was formed in 2009. They received official local registration from the national authorities on 10 June 2014. The long road in between was subject to much persistence, patience, and luck—along with a good deal of worry.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the 2014 FIFA World Cup was the main draw this week, taking four slots. People appeared desperate to bone up on their trivia; checking not only this year's World Cup, but the last one. Even so, they still couldn't push Game of Thrones from the top ten. It will be interesting to see what happens come next week's season finale.
The US National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) have committed to engaging with Wikimedia projects in their newest Open Government Plan. The biannual effort is a roadmap for how the agency will accomplish its goals in the digital age.
Despite the interest generated by its season finale, Game of Thrones still couldn't top the World Cup, which still dominated interest, as evidenced by the fact that this top 10 is virtually identical to last week's, just with a different dead celebrity.
In her first interview since taking office, Lila Tretikov, the Wikimedia Foundation's new executive director, speaks about grantmaking, the global south, and the gender gap.
In a recent paper, Jacob Solomon and Rick Wash investigate the question of sustainability in online communities by analysing trends in the growth of WikiProjects.
The Los Angeles Times highlighted a recent Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) course at Pomona College in their article "Wikipedia pops up in bibliographies, and even college curricula". We interviewed Char Booth, the campus ambassador for the course, for additional details.
With Game of Thrones over for another year, the World Cup dominated yet again. And that is pretty much that. This list isn't likely to be particularly eventful until the Cup is won.
Wikimedia Israel (WMIL) has won a Roaring Lion in the category of Internet and cellular for its public outreach during the tenth anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia in July 2013.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Wikimedia Deutschland's Toolserver project was switched off, marking the end of one of the Wikimedia movement's longest running Chapter-led projects. The Toolserver, which was in fact a collection of servers, first came online in 2005, hosting hundreds of webpages and scripts ("tools") made available for use by Wikimedia readers, editors and administrators.
Last May, James Forrester announced to the world that London had been awarded the 2014 Wikimania conference. Functioning as the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, it is separate from the chapter-focused Wikimedia Conference. The first, located in Frankfurt, took place in 2005 and had 380 attendees. London, the tenth, is now expected to attract 1500. With Wikimania ambition, attention, and attendance rising significantly over the last nine years, how have this year's monetary costs come to be?
After an extremely close race, round three is over. 244 points secured a place in Round 4, which is comparable to previous years—321 was required in 2013, and 243 points in 2012.
The Wikimedia Education Program currently spans 60 programs around the world; students and instructors participate at almost every level of education. The Education program Signpost series presents a snapshot of the Wikimedia Global Education Program as it exists in 2014.
As with the troubled release of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) flagship VisualEditor project, the release of the new Media Viewer has also been met with opposition from the English Wikipedia community.
Unsurprisingly, the World Cup continued to dominate the English Wikipedia's viewing statistics. In particular, the record-breaking performance of US goalkeeper Tim Howard and the tournament-ending injury to Brazil's Neymar drove large amount of views to their articles.
On the same day the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) announced it would offer assistance to English Wikipedia editors embroiled in a legal dispute with Yank Barry, the lawsuit has been withdrawn without prejudice at the request of Barry's legal team—but this action is being described as "strategic" so that they can refile the lawsuit with a "new, more comprehensive complaint."
The Swedish Wikipedia's prolific Lsjbot, which has created a significant proportion of the site's 1.7 million articles and has nearly single-handedly pushed it to being the fourth-largest Wikipedia, was covered in the Wall Street Journal this week. The newspaper reported that the bot has created 2.7 million articles, which is apparently a reference to the Waray-Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias, where Lsjbot is also active, and that "on a good day", it creates 10,000 articles.
Last week I predicted that the World Cup dominance on the report would be over—but I was wrong. The World Cup Final fell on the 13th of July, which was actually the first day of the week covered by this report, not the last day of the last report. Hence, five of the Top 10 this week are again World Cup related-topics.
Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) today are facing fewer barriers to uploading their content onto Wikimedia projects now that the new GLAM-Wiki Toolset Project has been launched. The tool, which is the fruit of a collaboration between Europeana and several Wikimedia chapters, relieves GLAMs from having to write their own automated scripts and gives them a standardized method of uploading large amounts of their digitized holdings.
The English Wikipedia's did you know (DYK) section has been a feature of the site's main page since February 2004. From the beginning, the section has served as a place to highlight Wikipedia's newest articles. But over the last few years, the did you know section has gotten steadily larger and more complex, and non-notable or plagiarized articles have occasionally slipped through the reviewing process, leading numerous editors to call for reforms to the system. We asked two editors to share their views.
In Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Dariusz Jemielniak discusses Wikipedia from the standpoint of an experienced editor and administrator who is also a university professor specializing in management and organizations. In Virtual Reality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It's True?, Charles Seife presents a more broadly themed work reminding us to question the reliability of information found throughout the Internet.
Kim Osman has performed a fascinating study on the three 2013 failed proposals to ban paid advocacy editing in the English language Wikipedia. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, Osman analyzed 573 posts from the three main votes on paid editing conducted in the community in November 2013.
Another hoax on the English Wikipedia was uncovered this week—not by any thorough investigation, but through the self-disclosure of an anonymous change made when the editors were in their sophomore year of college. The deliberate misinformation had been in the article for over five years with plenty of individuals noticing, but not one suspected its authenticity. This leads to one obvious question: how many more are there?
We indeed moved far away from football this week, and further into much more serious issues of war and death. The Israel-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate the news, and the top 10, with Gaza Strip, Israel, and Hamas. The top 25 also includes Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Death also lies behind the popularity of James Garner, the American actor who died on July 19th, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and deaths in 2014.
As the start of Wikimania proper on 8 August approaches, the Signpost looks ahead to what its dozens of presentations might offer the technologically-inclined, whether attending in person or taking advantage of what promises to be a strong digital offering.
Serious news continues to dominate the most popular articles chart on Wikipedia this week, with the Ebola virus disease far and away in the top spot. In the top 25, we see the related articles Ebola virus, which talks about biological aspects, at #18 and 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak at #19.
The Wikimedia Foundation has published its first transparency report, covering from July 2012 to June 2014. The move comes on the same day the organization announced that Google, in order to comply with a recent court order upholding the "right to be forgotten", has removed a number of Wikipedia articles from their European search results.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Sava Fault, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Jesenice. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Slate reports that Tom Scott, co-creator of the emoji social network Emojli, created a Twitter bot called Parliament WikiEdits to automatically tweet a link to any Wikipedia edits made from an IP address belonging to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Scott's bot initially did not tweet any links to edits made from Parliament and, according to Scott, an "insider" reports that their IP addresses changed. Despite this, Scott's Twitter bot has inspired similar creations in numerous other countries.
It's been a grim few weeks. It says something that formerly arresting crises like the war in Ukraine, Boko Haram and the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, despite still being ongoing, have fallen out of the top 10 to make way for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and the equally if not more intense conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Wikimania 2014 was held last week in the Barbican Centre in London. Below, the Signpost's former "Technology report" writer Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250) shares his thoughts on a bustling conference.
Wikimedia Foundation staff members have now been granted superpowers that would allow them to override community consensus. The new protection level came as a response to attempts of German Wikipedia administrators to implement a community consensus on the new Media Viewer. "Superprotect" is a level above full protection, and prevents edits by administrators.
Erythrophobia is the fear of, or sensitivity to, the colour red. Recently, I have seen more and more erythrophobic Wikipedians; specifically, Wikipedians who are scared of red links. In Wikipedia's early days, red links were encouraged and well-loved, and when I started editing in 2006, this was still mostly the case. Jump forward to 2014, and many editors now have an aversion to red links.
The Observer reported (August 2) that Google would "restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new 'right to be forgotten' legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia."
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Alfenz, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Donau. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Denny Vrandečić argues that "We should focus on measuring how much knowledge we allow every human to share in, instead of number of articles or active editors."
"On 1 September, the Arbitrators voted to suspend the Media Viewer case for 60 days. After the suspension period is up, the case is to be closed unless the committee votes otherwise. The case suspension comes in response to several new initiatives and policies announced by the Wikimedia Foundation that may make the case moot. In the same motion, the committee declared that Eloquence's resignation of the administrator right was "under the cloud" and that he can only regain the right through another RfA."
"This week we saw three of the top ten articles remain in place, with the Ice Bucket Challenge at #1, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at #2, and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at #5, all for a second straight week..."
"This week, the Signpost went out to meet WikiProject Anatomy, dedicated to improving the articles about all our bones, brains, bladders and biceps, and getting them to the high standard expected of a comprehensive encyclopaedia."
Last month, I wrote an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, inviting others to join me in a simple but important request: roll back the recent actions—both technical and social—by which the Wikimedia Foundation has overruled legitimate decisions of several Wikimedia projects.
Even though it's not quite 3/4 over, it's safe to say that 2014 will go down as a year of war, mass murder, plane crashes and terrible diseases. While certainly paying it some heed, it's not surprising that Wikipedia viewers tried this week to find any alternative to that litany of tragedy and pain, and their chosen method of escape was, as usual, celebrity.
The amazing and strange tongue-eating louse replacing a fish's tongue! Because isopods, the subject of a new featured article, are both awesome and really damn weird!
This week, the Signpost decided to have a look around with WikiProject Check Wikipedia a maintenance project not concerned so much with articles' content, but in all the tiny errors that are to be found scattered within them. Their front page gives a list of things they mainly focus on ...
As Scotland is deciding its future this week, we thought it might be a good idea to get to know the editors of WikiProject Scotland and talk to them about the project.
A prominent Wikipedia researcher has discovered that the encyclopedia's widely used article traffic statistics are missing out on approximately one-third of total views.
The Hindustan Times speculates (September 18) that politicians and their supporters are "sanitizing" their articles in advance of the 2014 Maharashtra State Assembly election. The Times notes the absence of significant controversies in the articles of particular politicians and the presence of heavily promotional language.
0.75% of Wikipedia birthdates are inaccurate, reported Robert Viseur at WikiSym 2014. Those inaccuracies are "low, although higher than the 0.21% observed for the baseline reference sources". Given that biographies represent 15% of English Wikipedia, the third largest category after "arts" and "culture", their accuracy is important.
This could be the beginning of a new era for this list. Until now, decisions to remove suspicious content have been largely educated guesswork. This week though, we have a new collaborator who can shine a light on the origins and patterns, sorting once and for all the webwheat from the cyberchaff.
A year and a week later, we're with some of the members of WikiProject Good Articles, who wanted to share the news of their upcoming contest within the project, the GA Cup. The aim of this friendly competition, which is held in the same light friendly manner of the WikiCup and the Core Contest, is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed articles at Good article nominations which has been a constant problem for quite a few years for those running the GA process.
Banning Policy finishes the workshop phase on 23 September. Parties have proposed findings of fact on the topics of the 3RR, the role of Jimbo Wales, and proxying for banned users. A request for arbitration was posted on 20 September about Landmark Worldwide.
This article was first published in the Signpost in 2009. Written by several long-standing editors, including the late Adrianne Wadewitz, the article was subjected to extensive commentary and ultimately influenced the English Wikipedia's plagiarism guideline. With recent debates about close paraphrasing vis-à-vis plagiarism, we feel that this dispatch retains its relevance and deserves a second airing.
The argument on Wikipedia over the benefits of crowdsourcing versus the primacy of "expert" contributors stretches back to co-founder Larry Sanger's break with the project to start the alternative Citizendium.
This week, the Signpost went down to the farm to have a look at the work of WikiProject Agriculture, which has been in existence since 2007 and has a scope covering crop production, livestock management, aquaculture, dairy farming and forest management.
Jews wished each other Shanah Tovah ("Good year") this week as Rosh Hashanah was our most popular article. It was also a week not dominated by heavy news and tragedies, so aside from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (#2, sixth week in the Top 10), our popular article list runs the gamut of current events including new television series Gotham (#3), the 2014 Asian Games (#4), and Reddit-fueled popularity for German director Uwe Boll (#7).
As the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American Civil War draws to a close, the race to improve content continues. The Battle of Franklin, fought on November 30, 1864, will, quite appropriately, be Picture of the Day for November 30, 2014, its 150th anniversary. If you want to help commemorate the American Civil War, why not help out at the Military History WikiProject's Operation Brothers at War. Or help out with the World War I centennial, just starting up, Operation Great War Centennial.
Ben Koo of the sports blog Awful Announcing investigated how player Joe Streater's name became involved in recent years with a historic sports scandal.
We are pleased to report that the WP:5000 has now been updated to include mobile views, including a column reflecting the percentage of views coming from mobile devices.
Today, it's the turn of WikiProject Ohio to give us an interview probing deep into of how they manage to run a project covering one fiftieth of the United States, and the workings of how they manufacture their successes and other articles.
Among many newsworthy stories this week, the Signpost notes the passing of Italian Wikipedia administrator and former Wikimedia Italia treasurer [Cotton
Noam Cohen reports in The New York Times (October 26) that Wikipedia's "Ebola Virus Disease article has had 17 million page views in the last month," an indication of the public's reliance on the online encyclopedia.
Rather than the usual WikiProject Report, this week our guest author Jheald is telling us about a campaign to identify thousands of old maps which have been digitised, to make them available for georeferencing and upload
Ebola virus disease leads the Report for the fourth straight week. The rest of the list is primarily a mix of pop culture topics, including movie Avengers: Age of Ultron (#4) whose trailer was leaked early, and the death of Oscar de la Renta (#7). A BuzzFeed article on creepy Wikipedia articles, no doubt well-timed with Halloween (#9) around the corner, was responsible for three articles in the Top 25, including June and Jennifer Gibbons (#10), Taman Shud Case (#17), Joyce Vincent (#25). And the internet-run-amok controversy of Gamergate cracked the Top 25 for the first time at #19.
In new research conducted in light of proposed changes to data protection legislation in the European Union (EU), authors Bart Custers, Simone van der Hof, and Bart Schermer conducted a comparative analysis of social media and user-generated content websites’ privacy policies along with a user survey (N=8,621 in 26 countries) and interviews in 13 different EU countries on awareness, values, and attitudes toward privacy online.
"Rachel Feltman, in The Washington Post (November 4), examined research in which a team, mostly from Los Alamos National Laboratory, headed by Kyle Hickman developed a model that enabled them "to successfully predict the 2013-2014 flu season in real time" by employing "an algorithm to link flu-related Wikipedia searches with CDC data from the same time." Apparently when individuals search for information about the flu and its symptoms in Wikipedia when they feel ill, this generates data useful in forecasting the the flu season."
"It is, perhaps, ironic that humanity chose the week of Halloween to finally put its fears to bed. Let's face it: 2014 has been a year of tragedies, conflicts, plagues and pain, and eventually something had to break... Whether we at last came to terms with our limited ability to affect events, shoved those events under the carpet, or just decided to let go and move on, we turned our eye to more positive things, such as sports heroes, hotly anticipated movies, and lifelong learning; two Google doodles appeared in the top 25 for the first time since the beginning of August."
"Technology media outlets are abuzz after the November 6 unveiling of the Amazon Echo, an Internet-connected voice command device"; "The EUobserver talks (November 4) with Dimitar Dimitrov (User:Dimi z) about the lack of freedom of panorama in some European Union countries and its implications for Wikimedia projects"; "Scott Cantrell, classical music critic for the Dallas Morning News, recounts efforts to verify an uncited claim in the Wikipedia article for the Béla Bartók opera Bluebeard's Castle."
This was very much a week dominated by holidays and pop culture over current events, with new film Interstellar taking the top spot followed by holidays Day of the Dead (#2), Guy Fawkes and his Night (#4 and #5), and Halloween (#8, and its third week on the list). And a foursome of television shows, all return visitors, appear to setting up residence on the greater Top 25: The Walking Dead (#11), American Horror Story: Freak Show (#14), Gotham (#16), and The Flash (#18).
We return to our interview format this week, speaking with the participants of WikiProject Hospitals. This project, formed in 2010, has no Featured content and only three Good articles, yet aided by around 30 hard-working Wikipedians covers a topic that is essential to life.
Numerous media outlets are reporting on a November 14 statement on the website of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library announcing the formation of a Russian "alternative" to Wikipedia, a "regional electronic encyclopedia" dedicated to "Russian regions and the life of the country".
It's time for this year's edition of the Report looking at possibly our largest wikiproject: Military history. Since our last interview in June 2013, the project has had no break in its huge quest to document everything in their scope, that is, militaries and conflicts of the past. As usual, its participants were eager to answer the questions posed by The Signpost and update us on how they are doing.
Often times in popular culture, a subject will be quite popular among a distinct niche of people or region of the world, but little-known elsewhere -- like a musical artist that is boasted to be "big in Japan". The Traffic Report provides a bevy of examples this week.
Thanks Tobias! To be super-clear I'm talking about navboxes and not infoboxes. And then getting a bot to remove them from the navbox titles... should improve their readability significantly. Just let me know where to support and I will. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:55, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Tom (LT): I think that the people that are running the bots, can also grab the codes from the navboxes. But after that, the data can be used wherever it is needed. But I agree that putting them in the headline of a navbox is just too much information density. - The voting for new properties on Wikidata requires a {{support}} or {{oppose}} under each of the proposal boxes with a signature (d:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Natural_science#ICD-10-PCS). Only properties that get enough support are created after a minimum of one week. --Tobias1984 (talk) 23:18, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata, Wikimedia's free linked database that supplies Wikipedia and its sister projects, is gearing up to submit a grant application to the EU that would expand Wikidata's scope by developing it as a science hub. The proposal, supported by more than 25 volunteers and half a dozen European institutions as project partners, aims to create a virtual research environment (VRE) that will enhance the project's capacity for freely sharing scientific data.
A "study tour" by the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation for the purpose of researching development projects has been the subject of much controversy and criticism in the Indian press... The Indian Express described a government report about the trip as having copied extensively from the Wikipedia articles for Port Blair and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
Unlike last year, Wikipedia viewers seem to have embraced the Christmas spirit, with three topics in the top 10 (and eight in the top 25) focused on the holiday season.
Chris Troutman has been a campus ambassador for six classes in the Los Angeles area over the past four consecutive semesters. He is currently a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar at University of California, Riverside.
A paper titled "Factors that influence the teaching use of Wikipedia in Higher Education" uses the technology acceptance model to shed light on faculty's (of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) views of Wikipedia as a teaching tool.
ISIL hostage quotes Wikipedia in propaganda video; AirAsia articles draw complaints regarding Flight 8501; Article errors reveal US political approaches to Wikipedia editing; Rhode Island Governor numbering debate
User:Jakec has been a Wikipedia editor for over two years and has been a writer of many recent Did you know articles on Wikipedia, including multiple articles on rivers and streams in the state of Pennsylvania.
We end 2014 and and start 2015 with the normal array of year-end activities, including movie watching with Bollywood film PK (#1) topping the list, followed by The Interview (#2), 2014 in film (#10), and five other films in the rest of the Top 25, plus a number of articles about the subjects of these films. We celebrated the New Year by singing "Auld Lang Syne" (#11), or perhaps watching Adam Lambert (#9) perform with Queen. But we could not avoid a final tragedy with the crash of Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 (#4) on December 28.
Ever since the Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident in 2005 triggered the restriction against un-registered editors creating new pages, WikiProject Articles for creation (AfC) has stood in the breach. The WikiProject's purpose is to review draft submissions from IPs (and frequently new registered editors) to sort the wheat from the chaff.
This anniversary issue, the WikiProject report is returning to WikiProject Articles for creation for one of our largest interviews ever. Last looked at in 2011, AfC is the method used by unregistered or new users to create articles, and provides an effective filtering system to remove all unsuitable or unsourced submissions to save them needing to be found and deleted later.
On the fourteenth anniversary of the founding of the English Wikipedia, the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation has announced that its prestigious annual Erasmus Prize will be awarded to the worldwide community that has built Wikipedia.
It's a grim certainty what topic most interested Wikipedia viewers this week. The horrific attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine have drawn anger and resolve from around the world, and also the attention of an English-speaking world that had previously never heard of it.
Over seventy years ago, the US destroyer Mahan was patrolling off Ponson Island in the Philippines when eleven Japanese kamikaze aircraft appeared over the horizon and attacked. George Pendergast, who edits Wikipedia with the username Pendright, was eighteen years old when he joined Mahan 's crew in April 1944.
Our contributor opines that WikiProjects are failing to live up to their potential. WikiProject X is a new project funded by a Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grant that focuses on figuring out what makes some WikiProjects work and not others.
Quotes from Jimbo on Wikipedia in education; net neutrality; preserving musical heritage; Wikipedia in audio; a cheerful vandal credits high school with papal visitations.
The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee has closed the colossal GamerGate arbitration case, whose size—involving 27 named parties—recalls large and complex cases of the past.
A paper presented at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition last year presents an automated method to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theatre plays.
As with last year, music stars were the majority of celebrities on the list, as their frequent concerts and media appearances keep their flames alight longer than others of their stripe.
A small band of dedicated editors seek to improve articles relating to a less lively topic. If you haven't yet guessed, this week's focus is WikiProject Death.
Edina edit war illustrates disconnect between new and experienced editors; Wikipedia is "astroturf's dream come true"; Canadian government investigating even more Wikipedia editing; academics on Gamergate as "clash of civilizations"?
Wikipedia presents itself as a repository for the world, and while that is a noble sentiment, it is still true that, Conservapedian complaints notwithstanding, the English language Wikipedia is very often the American Wikipedia, and never has that been more apparent than this week.
This week, we bring three of the most recently created WikiProjects to come into being on the English Wikipedia. While many long-established projects are becoming inactive, (as we have covered before), that doesn't stop new ones forming every now and then to cover a topic that a group of editors feel should be better cared for.
The Australian ("Wikipedia not destroying life as we know it", February 11) and Times Higher Education ("Wikipedia should be 'better integrated' into teaching", February 10) reported on a recent study performed at Monash University, titled "Students’ use of Wikipedia as an academic resource – patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness".
The authors of this report inform us that the "goal in the Revision Scoring project is to do the hard work of constructing and maintaining powerful AI so that tool developers don't have to. This cross-lingual, machine learning classifier service for edits will support new wiki tools that require edit quality measures."
Darwin Day is observed annually on February 12 to commemorate the life and work of scientist Charles Darwin. Here is a selection of images of life on the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin made key observations leading to his scientific theory of evolution by natural selection.
This week saw the 57th Annual Grammy Awards (#13 on the Top 25) held on 8 February dominating the traffic chart, as music lovers checked out Sam Smith (#3) picking up four awards, Beck taking album of the year, and performances including Sia (#9), Madonna (#11), and Annie Lennox (#16). But Valentine's Day (#1) proved the perfect time for the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, with the movie coming in at #5, the book of the same name at #2, and the primary actors at #14 and #15.
The most significant item on ArbCom's agenda this fortnight has been the closure of the Wifione case and subsequent fallout, although the fallout from GamerGate continues to linger.
A report from the external research firm Lafayette Practice has declared that the Wikimedia Foundation is the "largest known participatory grantmaking fund." Several concerns have been raised with the report, the phrase being used (participatory grantmaking), the now-former Wikipedia article on that phrase, and an alleged conflict of interest by WMF staff members.
Doc James tells us that "The one good thing that has come out of all of this is that Wikipedia’s content passing a major textbook publisher review processes is some external validation of Wikipedia’s quality."
Andrew McMillen's February 3 profile of and his quest to rid Wikipedia of the phrase "comprised of" has been one of the most widely circulated and commented upon media stories about the encyclopedia recently.
The Gallery is an occasional Signpost feature highlighting quality images and articles from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons based on a particular theme, as well as an article you could help improve. This week, we feature subjects that are "far from home".
An odd juxtaposition this week, as interest in Fifty Shades of Grey coincided with the observance of the Chinese New Year and the annual festival of penance, Ash Wednesday.
This week's project is on a youth activity, one of the largest in the world; its project is commensurately large, containing around 136 active editors. It's WikiProject Scouting, a group of editors whose remit is everything relating to the Scouting movement, which has around 42 million members worldwide and celebrated the centenary of its founding only eight years ago.
Editor's note: the Blog will be a recurring Signpost section that will highlight a recent post from the Wikimedia blog, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. This week's installment is written by Philippe Beaudette, the Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy, and focuses on planning for the future of the Wikimedia movement.
A report from the external research firm Lafayette Practice has declared that the Wikimedia Foundation is the "largest known participatory grantmaking fund." Several concerns have been raised with the report, the phrase being used (participatory grantmaking), the now-former Wikipedia article on that phrase, and an alleged conflict of interest by WMF staff members.
Doc James tells us that "The one good thing that has come out of all of this is that Wikipedia’s content passing a major textbook publisher review processes is some external validation of Wikipedia’s quality."
Andrew McMillen's February 3 profile of and his quest to rid Wikipedia of the phrase "comprised of" has been one of the most widely circulated and commented upon media stories about the encyclopedia recently.
The Gallery is an occasional Signpost feature highlighting quality images and articles from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons based on a particular theme, as well as an article you could help improve. This week, we feature subjects that are "far from home".
An odd juxtaposition this week, as interest in Fifty Shades of Grey coincided with the observance of the Chinese New Year and the annual festival of penance, Ash Wednesday.
This week's project is on a youth activity, one of the largest in the world; its project is commensurately large, containing around 136 active editors. It's WikiProject Scouting, a group of editors whose remit is everything relating to the Scouting movement, which has around 42 million members worldwide and celebrated the centenary of its founding only eight years ago.
Editor's note: the Blog will be a recurring Signpost section that will highlight a recent post from the Wikimedia blog, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. This week's installment is written by Philippe Beaudette, the Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy, and focuses on planning for the future of the Wikimedia movement.
We received a large amount of feedback in our survey indicating that our readers found the idea of contributing to the Signpost difficult due to our opaque internal structure.
Last week, my colleagues on the Signpost produced a news report covering a minor controversy about a report commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation. Written by the staff of The Lafayette Practice, a French research firm, it proclaimed the WMF as a leader in the practice of participatory grantmaking.
In the first of what the author hopes will become a regular feature of the Arbitration report, the Signpost speaks to veteran arbitrator Newyorkbrad, who recently retired from the committee after almost seven years of arbitrating. The Signpost was keen to hear his thoughts on his time on the committee and on the past, present, and future of ArbCom.
Before being indefinitely blocked, User:FergusM1970 made more than 4600 edits on the English Wikipedia, spread over eight years. In the last two years, he was paid to edit several articles for clients that included the Venezuelan energy company Derwick Associates. We spoke with him about his experiences.
Numerous news outlets are reporting that the domain loser.com now redirects to the Wikipedia article for rapper Kanye West. Page views on West's Wikipedia article skyrocketed to almost 250,000 views on March 2, up from less than 19 thousand the previous day.
Black History Month is celebrated annually in the United States in February, to commemorate the history of the African diaspora. For this occasion, Wikipedians worked together to honor black history and to address Wikipedia's multicultural gaps in the encyclopedia, hosting Wikipedia edit-a-thons throughout the United States, from February 1 to 28, 2015.
The Wikimedia Foundation gave the Signpost an advance copy of the results of a survey of English Wikipedia readers regarding Wikimedia fundraising, due for official release today.
In an effort to protect and maintain the privacy of Wikipedia's thousands of editors, the Wikimedia Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the United States' National Security Agency, Department of Justice, and the Attorney General.
A dull week, with only three new entries in the top 10; a UFC champion, a Google Doodle and a Hindu festival involving people throwing powder at each other (though that does sound fun).
I continue to be excited about the Core Contest because I see it as a way of encouraging the expansion of broad articles that are typically neglected by our article improvement incentives.
We announce with sadness and gratitude that Signpost publication and newsroom manager Pine will be stepping back to focus on other Wikipedia and Wikimedia-related endeavors.
This process is now entering its long-awaited final phase with the upcoming SUL finalization, scheduled for April 15, less than a month away. ... Wikimedia Foundation chief talent and culture officer Gayle Karen Young announced her retirement from the Foundation this week. Young will be replaced in that role by interim chief operating officer Terry Gilbey. According to the Foundation's job description for the title as it was applied in the past, Gilbey will be in charge of "overall administration and business operations of the Wikimedia Foundation."
On March 13, Kelly Weill of Capital New York revealed that numerous Wikipedia edits originated from 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD. Most of the attention has focused on a number of their edits to articles about incidents of alleged police brutality and controversial police practices.
The publication of the Wikimedia survey findings on fundraising questions came three months after significant concerns were voiced about the design and wording of the December 2014 fundraising banners and e-mails.
Thank you for using VisualEditor and sharing your ideas with the developers.
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The Editing team is asking for your help with VisualEditor. I am contacting you because you were one of the very first testers of VisualEditor, back in 2012 or early 2013. Please tell them what they need to change to make VisualEditor work better for you. The team has a list of top-priority problems, but they also want to hear about small problems. These problems may make editing less fun, take too much of your time, or be as annoying as a paper cut. The Editing team wants to hear about and try to fix these small things, too.
You can share your thoughts by clicking this link. You may respond to this quick, simple, anonymous survey in your own language. If you take the survey, then you agree your responses may be used in accordance with these terms. This survey is powered by Qualtrics and their use of your information is governed by their privacy policy.
More information (including a translateable list of the questions) is posted on wiki at mw:VisualEditor/Survey 2015. If you have questions, or prefer to respond on-wiki, then please leave a message on the survey's talk page.
Once when I was young, growing up in the 1990s, my father pulled his collection of railroad slides out from the basement, set up his projector, and shared a glimpse into American railway history with our family.
The authors attempt to answer the question "Who are the most important people of all times?" Their findings clearly show that different Wikipedias give different prominence to different individuals.
A university gives a top Wikipedia editor free and full access to the university library's entire online content—and the Wikipedia editor, who is unpaid and not on campus, then creates and improves Wikipedia articles in a subject area of interest to the institution.
The Report is more of a mix of random topics than usual this week. The top spot is taken by Bhutanese passport, a Wikipedia article which contained a crazed spoken word version which drew widespread attention.
The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) will announce later today that it will begin accepting edits by mail for all of the projects under its scope, including Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons.
The Report is more of a mix of random topics than usual this week. The top spot is taken by Bhutanese passport, a Wikipedia article which contained a crazed spoken word version which drew widespread attention.
The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) will announce later today that it will begin accepting edits by mail for all of the projects under its scope, including Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons.
With Holy Week having recently drawn to a close, it is an apt time to examine WikiProject Christianity, which was created in 2006, and boasts over 200 active members.
Time profiles Lila Tretikov, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and paints a grim picture of the challenges faced by Tretikov and the encyclopedia.
If it wasn't for Easter, Fast and Furious related articles would have taken the top four spots this week. The latest installment of the movie franchise, Furious 7, tops the chart for the second straight week.
A Signpost investigation of the released data has revealed Sony's corporate practices regarding Wikipedia and uncovered what appears to be undisclosed advocacy editing of Wikipedia by Sony employees and possibly by others.
The Affiliates Committee this week announced the organization of a community referral for comment, currently open on the meta-wiki, to address upcoming changes to the way that the Affiliations Committee will review movement-affiliated user-groups in the future.
2015 will see through the biennial community election for the three community-elected seats on the Board of Trustees—the "ultimate corporate authority" of the Wikimedia Foundation and the level at which the strategic decisions regarding the Wikimedia movement are made.
The Gallery is an occasional Signpost feature highlighting quality images and articles from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons based on a particular theme.
Esino Lario is set to host Wikimania 2016, but volunteers and others have raised a host of concerns that raise serious questions about the town's suitability for hosting such a large conference.
David Coburn, a Member of the European Parliament for the Scotland region for the UK Independence Party, was blocked from editing Wikipedia on April 6.
Though the continued predominance of movies, TV, and sports noted in last week's report largely continues, three additional topics joined the Top 10 this week.
Reader demand for some topics (e.g. LGBT topics or pages about countries) is poorly satisfied, whereas there is over-abundance of quality on topics of comparatively little interest, such as military history.
artnet and The Next Web report (May 6) that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is releasing a hundred images of works in its collection under Creative Commons licences in conjunction with a May 19 editathon.
Elections have begun for five community members of the Funds Dissemination Committee, the Foundation's volunteer body for judging and recommending millions of dollars worth of annual grants to affiliates in the movement. The election lasts just eight days, from Sunday 3 May until 23:59 UTC on Sunday 10 May, so at the time of publication, voters will need to act promptly.
Like colliding ocean liners, rousing entertainment and harsh reality merged ungainly in this week's top 10 list. The much heralded pay-per-view pummeling of Manny Pacquiao by Floyd Mayweather, Jr. dominated the list's top slots, giving this list one of its highest total view counts in months.
Three community-elected seats on the Board of Trustees—the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation—will be decided by Wikimedians in the election to be held 17–31 May.
Casual viewers may think I've posted the same list twice. But no, readers just happen to be really interested in May 2's Big Fight. In fact, last week was just the weigh-in and the trash talk. This week, the numbers actually increased.
Grant Shapps, who was the co-chairman of the UK's Conservative Party until this week, has been accused of maliciously editing the Wikipedia biographies of his party's rivals.
as i "say" ..."i don't understand any "problem", i live current-ly in Simferopol, and i know what i voting for on referendum, and where i belong now, stop falsify people minds, i know better than you, european union , and others where i live." and where for example there are all gas fields in which i works, and which concern from Russia, not Ukraine (Rosnieft) is paying me now. So!, sorry I'm not interested geopolitical propaganda and etc. --Muffi (talk) 18:39, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikimedia Foundation's bi-annual Board of Trustees election is open for voting. Of the ten seats on the board, three are elected representatives of the global Wikimedia community—you.
The article counts of many Wikimedia wikis suddenly changed on 29 March 2015: as the Signpost reported at the time, sixty-five wikis fell below milestones tracked at the Wikimedia News Meta page, and three increased to new milestones.
The list is topped this week by Danish scientist Inge Lehmann, thanks to a Google Doodle celebrating her 127th birthday. Lehmann discovered in 1936 that the Earth has a solid inner core. It is sometimes surprising to realize how recently such basic scientific knowledge of the Earth, which we now take for granted, was discovered.
Wikipedia editors logging in on May 19 found themselves walking into an unexpected amount of anti-vandal work to keep the site in line with its extensive biographies of living persons policy. A plethora of Wikipedia articles related to the United States House Committee on Appropriations, and the fifty-one representatives serving on it, have been hit by a raft of anonymous editors making often vulgar edits referencing "chicken fucker," or more creative combinations: "sexual conduct", "sexual congress", "fornicator", "intimate relations", or "trysts with chickens."
Jimmy Wales and five others accepted the 2015 Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University on May 17. The prize comes with US$1 million, ten percent of which goes to doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships.
This week, we had the pleasure of interviewing WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, which has come a long way since our last interview in 2008. Like most projects, it has a long member list, but only a small subset of that group regularly contributes. With 28 featured articles and 58 top-importance start class ones, the project has clearly had some success, but has a ways to go. We talked to three regular project contributors.
The Arbitration Committee has an unusually large case load at present. Although perhaps not on a par with the high-profile, multi-party cases seen towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year, with five open cases the arbitrators are likely to be kept busy for the next several weeks.
The Wikimedia Foundation recently switched to a quarterly report structure to better align reporting with the generally quarterly planning and goal-setting processes.
British media reports on Wikipedia editing to articles of Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prior to the May 7 United Kingdom general election from IP addresses assigned to Parliament.
To many, Internet Relay Chat is an old relic, but not to Wikipedia. Wikipedia currently has an IRC help channel designated to help and assist editors with editing Wikipedia.
As usual for the time of year, pop culture rules this week. The start of summer vacation in the US means a focus on summer movies, particularly blockbuster sequels Avengers: Age of Ultron, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road.
...allegedly. In a post to wikitech-l, Steven Walling pointed out that the TV show CSI: Cyber had used a screenshot of MediaWiki's HTML output and claimed it was responsible for blowing up printers.
The Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer election committee has announced the election results for the three vacant seats on the Board of Trustees. Dariusz Jemielnak, James Heilman, and Denny Vrandečić are set to take up their two-year terms on the Board. They will replace the three incumbents, all of whom stood this time unsuccessfully: Phoebe Ayers, Samuel Klein, and María Sefidari.
Caitlyn Jenner—the American hero of the 1976 Olympics, a film actor, and prominent member of Keeping Up with the Kardashians—may now be the most famous openly transgender person in the world.
The traffic report is nothing unusual this week, with a Google Doodle for astronaut Sally Ride topping the list, the accidental death of famous mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. at #2, and the normal fare of recent popular American movies and television.
This week saw the publication of the Chapter-wide Financial Trends Report 2013, a now-completed research project that examines the finances and outlays of the 36 movement-affiliated chapters.
The Medical Translation Project, an ambitious attempt to improve and translate Wikipedia’s medical content from English into other languages, began in 2012.
With this edit (and a few subsequent edits) to Module:Wikidata, you added several calls to a printError function. However, there is no such function, and you didn't write one. This makes Lua crash whenever any of those calls happen. Can you do something about this? Thanks, Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:59, 17 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Jackmcbarn: Sorry, I never even saw that anything was failing. Where did you find the bug? - In any case I grabbed that function from the German module and looked over some pages and didn't notice any errors. The lack of a version control system and a proper virtual environment makes testing difficult. --Tobias1984 (talk) 21:14, 17 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't remember what page I saw it on. I think the issue that led to printError getting called went away, so the problem isn't currently visible, but it still exists. Can you just copy that function over as well? Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:38, 18 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Jackmcbarn: Already copied it to en and simple-en. Those are all the modules I edited in the past. Maybe we should create a test-page which does any imaginable call to Wikidata. If that page shows any errors we revert the latest edit to the Wikidata-module. It is not ideal, but at least it gives us a way to discover bugs. --Tobias1984 (talk) 10:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Princess of Asturias Foundation announced that Wikipedia would be the recipient of the 2015 Princess of Asturias award in the category of International Cooperation.
We interviewed an Australian veteran who deployed to the region as a peacekeeper and now writes articles on the region's history to help him understand what he encountered there.
Over more than a decade of weekly publication, The Signpost has accumulated an incredibly lengthy and detailed record about the issues, controversies, successes, and failures of the English Wikipedia community and the movement at large.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Language Engineering team plans to introduce Content Translation—a tool that makes it easier to translate Wikipedia articles into different languages—as a beta feature on the English Wikipedia.
During 2009–2011 Google ran the Google Translation Project (GTP), a program utilising paid translators to translate most popular English Wikipedia articles to various Indian language Wikipedias.
The Board of Trustees is the "ultimate corporate authority" of the Wikimedia Foundation and the level at which the strategic decisions regarding the Wikimedia movement are made ...
The Hürriyet Daily News reports that the Turkish Wikipedia has posted banners on the top of the encyclopedia to warn users that a number of articles are being blocked by the Turkish government.
After six years of work, a residency in the Canadian Rockies, endless debugging, and more than a little help from my friends, I have made Print Wikipedia.
This week The Center for Internet and Society published a promotional blog post highlighting the heritage of the center's creation of the Train the Trainer program.
A week now remains until the vote, expected on 9 July, when the European Parliament will express either its approval, disapproval, or lack of opinion on the question of freedom of panorama in the European Union.
Like many editors of the world's largest encyclopedia, Karanacs was browsing the site's articles and found that they were of relatively poor quality—and that the traditional narrative she'd learned was not necessarily accurate.
Lila Tretikov this week posted an email to the wikimedia-l mailing list announcing the final publication of the Wikimedia Foundation's 2015 annual plan.
It's July 4 weekend and on this list that means only one thing: Wimbledon. Sure, the American Independence Day gets noticed too, but it can't hold a candle to that staggeringly British sporting event.
"How long will this take?" This is one of the first questions new clients ask. They come to us because the Wikipedia entry about the company at which they work is wrong, incomplete, or even just outdated. The answer varies ...
In The Register, Andrew Orlowski reports that three weeks ago, Grant Shapps filed a request with Wikimedia UK (WMUK) under the Data Protection Act 1998 "for all data relating to him".
Wikimania 2015 is underway in Mexico City, and one of its sessions—a scheduled follow-up to the annual Wikimedia Conference that was held in Berlin in May—is good reason to provide a retrospective of that Conference.
"Editors representing rival political tribes [are] frequently attempting to impose their respective narratives as the official version of one or another cultural controversy."
That particular artists would be omitted through oversight or happenstance is reasonable, but that one of the world's leading publishers of art books is completely unaware of their major omissions is startling.
Death is no stranger to this list, but it has never cast such a pall as this week, when for the first time half the slots in the top 10 were devoted to it, including the top 3.
The late-summer smash success of Straight Outta Compton remains the chief talking point of the English-speaking world, interrupted only by the welcome return of a Google Doodle.
First bot-created article generated from Wikidata; the Orange Bar of Doom has finally met its doom; active editor numbers still on the rise; arbitrator to resign; ne templates added in wake of Orangemoody case
English speakers, like most of humanity, are primarily a northern-hemispheric people, and as autumn draws close and the days grow shorter, as a group we tend to huddle around our flickering screens and remember what matters: TV, movies, sports and, of course, crazy doomsday prophecies.
By night, she smites trolls on the Internet with positive punishment: for each harassing email she receives, one Wikipedia article on a woman in science is created.
Wherein I am STILL fucking angry about systemic bias and am highlighting kick-ass articles we created and improved this month in our never-ending quest to fix it.
Poetry: “it is the stuff of the soul; it speaks to the body, the mind, and the spirit alike.” Sonja Bohm worked for years to get all of Florence Earle Coates’ poetry online, and now proofreads poetry on the English Wikisource, the free library. We asked why.
The Board’s two-year moratorium on new chapters and thematic organisations has expired; presentation of new criteria is reigniting smoldering controversies and introducing new ones
Victoria Coleman to fill long-vacant CTO role; Trustee Kelly Battles joins Quora executive team; last week for community input on Creative Commons 4.0 license
Hello, Tobias1984. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Women's marches on seven continents attracted strong Wikipedia engagement; Media luminaries and a presidential candidate joined WMF boss Katherine Maher at a New York gathering
The Signpost's poll suggests we should take a cautious approach to the Newsletter Extension, under development; and our RSS feed is functional once again
This newsletter starts with the motto "common endeavour for 21st century content". To unpack that slogan somewhat, we are particularly interested in the new, post-Wikidata collection of techniques that are flourishing under the Wikimedia collaborative umbrella. To linked data, SPARQL queries and WikiCite, add gamified participation, text mining and new holding areas, with bots, tech and humans working harmoniously.
Scientists, librarians and Wikimedians are coming together and providing a more unified view of an emerging area. Further integration of both its community and its technical aspects can be anticipated.
While Wikipedia will remain the discursive heart of Wikimedia, data-rich and semantic content will support it. We'll aim to be both broad and selective in our coverage. This publication Facto Post (the very opposite of retroactive) and call to action are brought to you monthly by ContentMine.
Wikimedians interest themselves in everything under the sun — and then some. Discussion on "core topics" may, oddly, be a fringe activity, and was popular here a decade ago.
The situation on Wikidata today does resemble the halcyon days of 2006 of the English Wikipedia. The growth is there, and the reliability and stylistic issues are not yet pressing in on the project. Its Berlin conference at the end of October will have five years of achievement to celebrate. Think Wikimania Frankfurt 2005.
Progress must be made, however, on referencing "core facts". This has two parts: replacing "imported from Wikipedia" in referencing by external authorities; and picking out statements, such as dates and family relationships, that must not only be reliable but be seen to be reliable.
In addition, there are many properties on Wikidata lacking a clear data model. An emerging consensus may push to the front key sourcing and biomedical properties as requiring urgent attention. Wikidata's "manual of style" is currently distributed over thousands of discussions. To make it coalesce, work on such a core is needed.
WikiFactMine project pages on Wikidata, including a SPARQL library (in development).
Fatameh tool for adding items on scientific papers to Wikidata, by User: T Arrow. It has made a big recent impact. Offline for maintenance as we go to press, it is expected back soon.
Interviewed by Facto Post at the hackathon, Lydia Pintscher of Wikidata said that the most significant recent development is that Wikidata now accounts for one third of Wikimedia edits. And the essential growth of human editing.
Internet-In-A-Box
Impressive development work on Internet-in-a-Box featured in the WikiMedFoundation annual conference on Thursday. Hardware is Raspberry Pi, running Linux and the Kiwix browser. It can operate as a wifi hotspot and support a local intranet in parts of the world lacking phone signal. The medical use case is for those delivering care, who have smartphones but have to function in clinics in just such areas with few reference resources. Wikipedia medical content can be served to their phones, and power supplied by standard lithium battery packages.
Yesterday Katherine Maher unveiled the draft Wikimedia 2030 strategy, featuring a picturesque metaphor, "roads, bridges and villages". Here "bridges" could do with illustration. Perhaps it stands for engineering round or over the obstacles to progress down the obvious highways. Internet-in-a-Box would then do fine as an example.
"Bridging the gap" explains a take on that same metaphor, with its human component. If you are at Wikimania, come talk to WikiFactMine at its stall in the Community Village, just by the 3D-printed display for Bassel Khartabil; come hear Template:Noping talk at 3 pm today in Drummond West, Level 3.
Dorstenia elata, a critically endangered South American herb, contained in Moraceae, the family of figs and mulberries
Clearly, conservation work depends on decisions about what should be done, and where. While animals, particularly mammals, are photogenic, species numbers run into millions. Plant species lie at the base of typical land-based food chains, and vegetation is key to the habitats of most animals.
ContentMine dictionaries, for example as tabulated at d:Wikidata:WikiFactMine/Dictionary list, enable detailed control of queries about endangered species, in their taxonomic context. To target conservation measures properly, species listings running into the thousands are not what is needed: range maps showing current distribution are. Between the will to act, and effective steps taken, the services of data handling are required. There is now no reason at all why Wikidata should not take up the burden.
Annotation is nothing new. The glossators of medieval Europe annotated between the lines, or in the margins of legal manuscripts of texts going back to Roman times, and created a new discipline. In the form of web annotation, the idea is back, with texts being marked up inline, or with a stand-off system. Where could it lead?
1495 print version of the Digesta of Justinian, with the annotations of the glossator Accursius from the 13th century
ContentMine operates in the field of text and data mining (TDM), where annotation, simply put, can add value to mined text. It now sees annotation as a possible advance in semi-automation, the use of human judgement assisted by bot editing, which now plays a large part in Wikidata tools. While a human judgement call of yes/no, on the addition of a statement to Wikidata, is usually taken as decisive, it need not be. The human assent may be passed into an annotation system, and stored: this idea is standard on Wikisource, for example, where text is considered "validated" only when two different accounts have stated that the proof-reading is correct. A typical application would be to require more than one person to agree that what is said in the reference translates correctly into the formal Wikidata statement. Rejections are also potentially useful to record, for machine learning.
As a contribution to data integrity on Wikidata, annotation has much to offer. Some "hard cases" on importing data are much more difficult than average. There are for example biographical puzzles: whether person A in one context is really identical with person B, of the same name, in another context. In science, clinical medicine require special attention to sourcing (WP:MEDRS), and is challenging in terms of connecting findings with the methodology employed. Currently decisions in areas such as these, on Wikipedia and Wikidata, are often made ad hoc. In particular there may be no audit trail for those who want to check what is decided.
Annotations are subject to a World Wide Web Consortium standard, and behind the terminology constitute a simple JSON data structure. What WikiFactMine proposes to do with them is to implement the MEDRS guideline, as a formal algorithm, on bibliographical and methodological data. The structure will integrate with those inputs the human decisions on the interpretation of scientific papers that underlie claims on Wikidata. What is added to Wikidata will therefore be supported by a transparent and rigorous system that documents decisions.
An example of the possible future scope of annotation, for medical content, is in the first link below. That sort of detailed abstract of a publication can be a target for TDM, adds great value, and could be presented in machine-readable form. You are invited to discuss the detailed proposal on Wikidata, via its talk page.
Under the heading rerum causas cognescere, the first ever Wikidata conference got under way in the Tagesspiegel building with two keynotes, One was on YAGO, about how a knowledge base conceived ten years ago if you assume automatic compilation from Wikipedia. The other was from manager Lydia Pintscher, on the "state of the data". Interesting rumours flourished: the mix'n'match tool and its 600+ datasets, mostly in digital humanities, to be taken off the hands of its author Magnus Manske by the WMF; a Wikibase incubator site is on its way. Announcements came in talks: structured data on Wikimedia Commons is scheduled to make substantive progress by 2019. The lexeme development on Wikidata is now not expected to make the Wiktionary sites redundant, but may facilitate automated compilation of dictionaries.
And so it went, with five strands of talks and workshops, through to 11 pm on Saturday. Wikidata applies to GLAM work via metadata. It may be used in education, raises issues such as author disambiguation, and lends itself to different types of graphical display and reuse. Many millions of SPARQL queries are run on the site every day. Over the summer a large open science bibliography has come into existence there.
At the beginning of December, Wikidata items on individual scientific articles passed the 10 million mark. This figure contrasts with the state of play in early summer, when there were around half a million. In the big picture, Wikidata is now documenting the scientific literature at a rate that is about eight times as fast as papers are published. As 2017 ends, progress is quite evident.
Behind this achievement are a technical advance (fatameh), and bots that do the lifting. Much more than dry migration of metadata is potentially involved, however. If paper A cites paper B, both papers having an item, a link can be created on Wikidata, and the information presented to both human readers, and machines. This cross-linking is one of the most significant aspects of the scientific literature, and now a long-sought open version is rapidly being built up.
The effort for the lifting of copyright restrictions on citation data of this kind has had real momentum behind it during 2017. WikiCite and the I4OC have been pushing hard, with the result that on CrossRef over 50% of the citation data is open. Now the holdout publishers are being lobbied to release rights on citations.
But all that is just the beginning. Topics of papers are identified, authors disambiguated, with significant progress on the use of the four million ORCID IDs for researchers, and proposals formulated to identify methodology in a machine-readable way. P4510 on Wikidata has been introduced so that methodology can sit comfortably on items about papers.
From the days of hard-copy liner notes on music albums, metadata have stood outside a piece or file, while adding to understanding of where it comes from, and some of what needs to be appreciated about its content. In the GLAM sector, the accumulation of accurate metadata for objects is key to the mission of an institution, and its presentation in cataloguing.
Today Wikipedia turns 17, with worlds still to conquer. Zooming out from the individual GLAM object to the ontology in which it is set, one such world becomes apparent: GLAMs use custom ontologies, and those introduce massive incompatibilities. From a recent article by Template:Noping, we quote the observation that "vocabularies needed for many collections, topics and intellectual spaces defy the expectations of the larger professional communities." A job for the encyclopedist, certainly. But the data-minded Wikimedian has the advantages of Wikidata, starting with its multilingual data, and facility with aliases. The controlled vocabulary — sometimes referred to as a "thesaurus" as term of art — simplifies search: if a "spade" must be called that, rather than "shovel", it is easier to find all spade references. That control comes at a cost.
Case studies in that article show what can lie ahead. The schema crosswalk, in jargon, is a potential answer to the GLAM Babel of proliferating and expanding vocabularies. Even if you have no interest in Wikidata as such, simply vocabularies V and W, if both V and W are matched to Wikidata, then a "crosswalk" arises from term v in V to w in W, whenever v and w both match to the same item d in Wikidata.
For metadata mobility, match to Wikidata. It's apparently that simple: infrastructure requirements have turned out, so far, to be challenges that can be met.
One way of looking at Wikidata relates it to the semantic web concept, around for about as long as Wikipedia, and realised in dozens of distributed Web institutions. It sees Wikidata as supplying central, encyclopedic coverage of linked structured data, and looks ahead to greater support for "federated queries" that draw together information from all parts of the emerging network of websites.
Another perspective might be likened to a photographic negative of that one: Wikidata as an already-functioning Web hub. Over half of its properties are identifiers on other websites. These are Wikidata's "external links", to use Wikipedia terminology: one type for the DOI of a publication, another for the VIAF page of an author, with thousands more such. Wikidata links out to sites that are not nominally part of the semantic web, effectively drawing them into a larger system. The crosswalk possibilities of the systematic construction of these links was covered in Issue 8.
Wikipedia:External links speaks of them as kept "minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article." Here Wikidata finds more of a function. On viaf.org one can type a VIAF author identifier into the search box, and find the author page. The Wikidata Resolver tool, these days including Open Street Map, Scholia etc., allows this kind of lookup. The hub tool by Template:Noping takes a major step further, allowing both lookup and crosswalk to be encoded in a single URL.
Around the time in February when Wikidata clicked past item Q50000000, another milestone was reached: the mix'n'match tool uploaded its 1000th dataset. Concisely defined by its author, Template:Noping, it works "to match entries in external catalogs to Wikidata". The total number of entries is now well into eight figures, and more are constantly being added: a couple of new catalogs each day is normal.
Since the end of 2013, mix'n'match has gradually come to play a significant part in adding statements to Wikidata. Particularly in areas with the flavour of digital humanities, but datasets can of course be about practically anything. There is a catalog on skyscrapers, and two on spiders.
These days mix'n'match can be used in numerous modes, from the relaxed gamified click through a catalog looking for matches, with prompts, to the fantastically useful and often demanding search across all catalogs. I'll type that again: you can search 1000+ datasets from the simple box at the top right. The drop-down menu top left offers "creation candidates", Magnus's personal favourite. m:Mix'n'match/Manual for more.
For the Wikidatan, a key point is that these matches, however carried out, add statements to Wikidata if, and naturally only if, there is a Wikidata property associated with the catalog. For everyone, however, the hands-on experience of deciding of what is a good match is an education, in a scholarly area, biographical catalogs being particularly fraught. Underpinning recent rapid progress is an open infrastructure for scraping and uploading.
Open Citations Month, with its eminently guessable hashtag, is upon us. We should be utterly grateful that in the past 12 months, so much data on which papers cite which other papers has been made open, and that Wikidata is playing its part in hosting it as "cites" statements. At the time of writing, there are 15.3M Wikidata items that can do that.
Pulling back to look at open access papers in the large, though, there is is less reason for celebration. Access in theory does not yet equate to practical access. A recent LSE IMPACT blogpost puts that issue down to "heterogeneity". A useful euphemism to save us from thinking that the whole concept doesn't fall into the realm of the oxymoron.
Some home truths: aggregation is not content management, if it falls short on reusability. The PDF file format is wedded to how humans read documents, not how machines ingest them. The salami-slicer is our friend in the current downloading of open access papers, but for a better metaphor, think about skinning an onion, laboriously, 100 times with diminishing returns. There are of the order of 100 major publisher sites hosting open access papers, and the predominant offer there is still a PDF.
Red onion cross section
From the discoverability angle, Wikidata's bibliographic resources combined with the SPARQL query are superior in principle, by far, to existing keyword searches run over papers. Open access content should be managed into consistent HTML, something that is currently strenuous. The good news, such as it is, would be that much of it is already in XML. The organisational problem of removing further skins from the onion, with sensible prioritisation, is certainly not insuperable. The CORE group (the bloggers in the LSE posting) has some answers, but actually not all that is needed for the text and data mining purposes they highlight. The long tail, or in other words the onion heart when it has become fiddly beyond patience to skin, does call for a pis aller. But the real knack is to do more between the XML and the heart.
The proposal includes downloading 30,000 open access papers, aiming (roughly speaking) to create a baseline for medical referencing on Wikipedia. It leaves open the question of how these are to be chosen.
The basic criteria of WP:MEDRS include a concentration on secondary literature. Attention has to be given to the long tail of diseases that receive less current research. The MEDRS guideline supposes that edge cases will have to be handled, and the premature exclusion of publications that would be in those marginal positions would reduce the value of the collection. Prophylaxis misses the point that gate-keeping will be done by an algorithm.
Two well-known but rather different areas where such considerations apply are tropical diseases and alternative medicine. There are also a number of potential downloading troubles, and these were mentioned in Issue 11. There is likely to be a gap, even with the guideline, between conditions taken to be necessary but not sufficient, and conditions sufficient but not necessary, for candidate papers to be included. With around 10,000 recognised medical conditions in standard lists, being comprehensive is demanding. With all of these aspects of the task, ScienceSource will seek community help.
Facto Post enters its second year, with a Cambridge Blue (OK, Aquamarine) background, a new logo, but no Cambridge blues. On-topic for the ScienceSource project is a project page here. It contains some case studies on how the WP:MEDRS guideline, for the referencing of articles at all related to human health, is applied in typical discussions.
Close to home also, a template, called Template:Tl for short, is used to express dissatisfaction with particular references. Technology can help with patrolling, and this Petscan query finds over 450 articles where there is at least one use of the template. Of course the template is merely suggesting there is a possible issue with the reliability of a reference. Deciding the truth of the allegation is another matter.
This maintenance issue is one example of where ScienceSource aims to help. Where the reference is to a scientific paper, its type of algorithm could give a pass/fail opinion on such references. It could assist patrollers of medical articles, therefore, with the templated references and more generally. There may be more to proper referencing than that, indeed: context, quite what the statement supported by the reference expresses, prominence and weight. For that kind of consideration, case studies can help. But an algorithm might help to clear the backlog.
Officially it is "bridging the gaps in knowledge", with Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town paying tribute to the southern African concept of ubuntu to implement it. Besides face-to-face interactions, Wikimedians do need their power sources.
Hackathon mentoring table wiring
Facto Post interviewed Template:Noping, who has attended every Wikimania, and now works as Senior Product Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation. His take on tackling the gaps in the Wikimedia movement is that "if we were an army, we could march in a column and close up all the gaps". In his view though, that is a faulty metaphor, and it leads to a completely false misunderstanding of the movement, its diversity and different aspirations, and the nature of the work as "fighting" to be done in the open sector. There are many fronts, and as an eventualist he feels the gaps experienced both by editors and by users of Wikimedia content are inevitable. He would like to see a greater emphasis on reuse of content, not simply its volume.
If that may not sound like radicalism, the Decolonizing the Internet conference here organized jointly with Whose Knowledge? can redress the picture. It comes with the claim to be "the first ever conference about centering marginalized knowledge online".
Plugbar buildup at the Hackathon
Links
ScienceSource focus list (shortcut WD:SSFL on Wikidata), project to tag a first-pass open access medical bibliography on Wikidata, and also overcome the systematic biases in the medical literature by curation.
Anti-parasitic drugs being distributed in Côte d'Ivoire What's a Neglected Disease?, ScienceSource video
To grasp the nettle, there are rare diseases, there are tropical diseases and then there are "neglected diseases". Evidently a rare enough disease is likely to be neglected, but neglected disease these days means a disease not rare, but tropical, and most often infectious or parasitic. Rare diseases as a group are dominated, in contrast, by genetic diseases.
A major aspect of neglect is found in tracking drug discovery. Orphan drugs are those developed to treat rare diseases (rare enough not to have market-driven research), but there is some overlap in practice with the WHO's neglected diseases, where snakebite, a "neglected public health issue", is on the list.
From an encyclopedic point of view, lack of research also may mean lack of high-quality references: the core medical literature differs from primary research, since it operates by aggregating trials. This bibliographic deficit clearly hinders Wikipedia's mission. The ScienceSource project is currently addressing this issue, on Wikidata. Its Wikidata focus list at WD:SSFL is trying to ensure that neglect does not turn into bias in its selection of science papers.
In an ideal world ... no, bear with your editor for just a minute ... there would be a format for scientific publishing online that was as much a standard as SI units are for the content. Likewise cataloguing publications would not be onerous, because part of the process would be to generate uniform metadata. Without claiming it could be the mythical free lunch, it might be reasonably be argued that sandwiches can be packaged much alike and have barcodes, whatever the fillings.
The best on offer, to stretch the metaphor, is the meal kit option, in the form of XML. Where scientific papers are delivered as XML downloads, you get all the ingredients ready to cook. But have to prepare the actual meal of slow food yourself. See Scholarly HTML for a recent pass at heading off XML with HTML, in other words in the native language of the Web.
The argument from real life is a traditional mixture of frictional forces, vested interests, and the classic irony of the principle of unripe time. On the other hand, discoverability actually diminishes with the prolific progress of science publishing. No, it really doesn't scale. Wikimedia as movement can do something in such cases. We know from open access, we grok the Web, we have our own horse in the HTML race, we have Wikidata and WikiJournal, and we have the chops to act.
Enslaved: People of the Historic Slave Trade, Michigan State University project for a linked open data platform. Quote: "Disambiguating and merging individuals across multiple datasets is nearly impossible given their current, siloed nature."
Around 2.7 million Wikidata items have an illustrative image. These files, you might say, are Wikimedia's stock images, and if the number is large, it is still only 5% or so of items that have one. All such images are taken from Wikimedia Commons, which has 50 million media files. One key issue is how to expand the stock.
Indeed, there is a tool. WD-FIST exploits the fact that each Wikipedia is differently illustrated, mostly with images from Commons but also with fair use images. An item that has sitelinks but no illustrative image can be tested to see if the linked wikis have a suitable one. This works well for a volunteer who wants to add images at a reasonable scale, and a small amount of SPARQL knowledge goes a long way in producing checklists.
Gran Teatro, Cáceres, Spain, at night
It should be noted, though, that there are currently 53 Wikidata properties that link to Commons, of which P18 for the basic image is just one. WD-FIST prompts the user to add signatures, plaques, pictures of graves and so on. There are a couple of hundred monograms, mostly of historical figures, and this query allows you to view all of them. commons:Category:Monograms and its subcategories provide rich scope for adding more.
And so it is generally. The list of properties linking to Commons does contain a few that concern video and audio files, and rather more for maps. But it contains gems such as P3451 for "nighttime view". Over 1000 of those on Wikidata, but as for so much else, there could be yet more.
Go on. Today is Wikidata's birthday. An illustrative image is always an acceptable gift, so why not add one? You can follow these easy steps: (i) log in at https://tools.wmflabs.org/widar/, (ii) paste the Petscan ID 6263583 into https://tools.wmflabs.org/fist/wdfist/ and click run, and (iii) just add cake.
GLAM ♥ data — what is a gallery, library, archive or museum without a catalogue? It follows that Wikidata must love librarians. Bibliography supports students and researchers in any topic, but open and machine-readable bibliographic data even more so, outside the silo. Cue the WikiCite initiative, which was meeting in conference this week, in the Bay Area of California.
Wikidata training for librarians at WikiCite 2018
In fact there is a broad scope: "Open Knowledge Maps via SPARQL" and the "Sum of All Welsh Literature", identification of research outputs, Library.Link Network and Bibframe 2.0, OSCAR and LUCINDA (who they?), OCLC and Scholia, all these co-exist on the agenda. Certainly more library science is coming Wikidata's way. That poses the question about the other direction: is more Wikimedia technology advancing on libraries? Good point.
Wikimedians generally are not aware of the tech background that can be assumed, unless they are close to current training for librarians. A baseline definition is useful here: "bash, git and OpenRefine". Compare and contrast with pywikibot, GitHub and mix'n'match. Translation: scripting for automation, version control, data set matching and wrangling in the large, are on the agenda also for contemporary library work. Certainly there is some possible common ground here. Time to understand rather more about the motivations that operate in the library sector.
Links
Wikidata and Libraries: Facilitating Open Knowledge, book chapter by Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, metadata librarian and Lydia Pintscher, Wikidata Product Manager, from Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge (2018)
LD4P and WikiCite: Opportunities for collaboration, WikiCite 2018 program abstract, Christine Fernsebner Eslao of Harvard Library Information and Technical Services and Michelle Futornick, Linked Data for Production Program Manager at Stanford University
Besides the handiness of Zotero's warehousing of personal citation collections, the Zotero translator underlies the citoid service, at work behind the VisualEditor. Metadata from Wikidata can be imported into Zotero; and in the other direction the zotkat tool from the University of Mannheim allows Zotero bibliographies to be exported to Wikidata, by item creation. With an extra feature to add statements, that route could lead to much development of the focus list (P5008) tagging on Wikidata, by WikiProjects.
Zotero demo video
There is also a large-scale encyclopedic dimension here. The construction of Zotero translators is one facet of Web scraping that has a strong community and open source basis. In that it resembles the less formal mix'n'match import community, and growing networks around other approaches that can integrate datasets into Wikidata, such as the use of OpenRefine.
Looking ahead, the thirtieth birthday of the World Wide Web falls in 2019, and yet the ambition to make webpages routinely readable by machines can still seem an ever-retreating mirage. Wikidata should not only be helping Wikimedia integrate its projects, an ongoing process represented by Structured Data on Commons and lexemes. It should also be acting as a catalyst to bring scraping in from the cold, with institutional strengths as well as resourceful code.
Template:PhabWrite a Zotero translator and document process for creating new Zotero translator and getting it live in production, long Phabricator thread 2015–17.
Recently Jimmy Wales has made the point that computer home assistants take much of their data from Wikipedia, one way or another. So as well as getting Spotify to play Frosty the Snowman for you, they may be able to answer the question "is the Pope Catholic?" Possibly by asking for disambiguation (Coptic?).
Headlines about data breaches are now familiar, but the unannounced circulation of information raises other issues. One of those is Gresham's law stated as "bad data drives out good". Wikipedia and now Wikidata have been criticised on related grounds: what if their content, unattributed, is taken to have a higher standing than Wikimedians themselves would grant it? See Wikiquote on a misattribution to Bismarck for the usual quip about "law and sausages", and why one shouldn't watch them in the making.
Wikipedia has now turned 18, so should act like as adult, as well as being treated like one. The Web itself turns 30 some time between March and November this year, per Tim Berners-Lee. If the Knowledge Graph by Google exemplifies Heraclitean Web technology gaining authority, contra GIGO, Wikimedians still have a role in its critique. But not just with the teenage skill of detecting phoniness.
There is more to beating Gresham than exposing the factoid and urban myth, where WP:V does do a great job. Placeholders must be detected, and working with Wikidata is a good way to understand how having one statement as data can blind us to replacing it by a more accurate one. An example that is important to open access is that, firstly, the term itself needs considerable unpacking, because just being able to read material online is a poor relation of "open"; and secondly, trying to get Creative Commons license information into Wikidata shows up issues with classes of license (such as CC-BY) standing for the actual license in major repositories. Detailed investigation shows that "everything flows" exacerbates the issue. But Wikidata can solve it.
Systematic reviews are basic building blocks of evidence-based medicine, surveys of existing literature devoted typically to a definite question that aim to bring out scientific conclusions. They are principled in a way Wikipedians can appreciate, taking a critical view of their sources.
PRISMA flow diagram for a systematic review
Ben Goldacre in 2014 wrote (link below) "[...] : the "information architecture" of evidence based medicine (if you can tolerate such a phrase) is a chaotic, ad hoc, poorly connected ecosystem of legacy projects. In some respects the whole show is still run on paper, like it's the 19th century." Is there a Wikidatan in the house? Wouldn't some machine-readable content that is structured data help?
Most likely it would, but the arcana of systematic reviews and how they add value would still need formal handling. The PRISMA standard dates from 2009, with an update started in 2018. The concerns there include the corpus of papers used: how selected and filtered? Now that Wikidata has a 20.9 million item bibliography, one can at least pose questions. Each systematic review is a tagging opportunity for a bibliography. Could that tagging be reproduced by a query, in principle? Can it even be second-guessed by a query (i.e. simulated by a protocol which translates into SPARQL)? Homing in on the arcana, do the inclusion and filtering criteria translate into metadata? At some level they must, but are these metadata explicitly expressed in the articles themselves? The answer to that is surely "no" at this point, but can TDM find them? Again "no", right now. Automatic identification doesn't just happen.
Actually these questions lack originality. It should be noted though that WP:MEDRS, the reliable sources guideline used here for health information, hinges on the assumption that the usefully systematic reviews of biomedical literature can be recognised. Its nutshell summary, normally the part of a guideline with the highest density of common sense, allows literature reviews in general validity, but WP:MEDASSESS qualifies that indication heavily. Process wonkery about systematic reviews definitely has merit.
The term Applications Programming Interface or API is 50 years old, and refers to a type of software library as well as the interface to its use. While a compiler is what you need to get high-level code executed by a mainframe, an API out in the cloud somewhere offers a chance to perform operations on a remote server. For example, the multifarious bots active on Wikipedia have owners who exploit the MediaWiki API.
APIs (called RESTful) that allow for the GET HTTP request are fundamental for what could colloquially be called "moving data around the Web"; from which Wikidata benefits 24/7. So the fact that the Wikidata SPARQL endpoint at query.wikidata.org has a RESTful API means that, in lay terms, Wikidata content can be GOT from it. The programming involved, besides the SPARQL language, could be in Python, younger by a few months than the Web.
Magic words, such as occur in fantasy stories, are wishful (rather than RESTful) solutions to gaining access. You may need to be a linguist to enter Ali Baba's cave or the western door of Moria (French in the case of "Open Sesame", in fact, and Sindarin being the respective languages). Talking to an API requires a bigger toolkit, which first means you have to recognise the tools in terms of what they can do. On the way to the wikt:impactful or polymathic modern handling of facts, one must perhaps take only tactful notice of tech's endemic problem with documentation, and absorb the insightful point that the code in APIs does articulate the customary procedures now in place on the cloud for getting information. As Owl explained to Winnie-the-Pooh, it tells you The Thing to Do.
Working With Wikibase From Go, Digital Flapjack blogpost 26 November 2018, Michael Dales, developer for ScienceSource using golang, with a software engineer's view on Wikibase and the MediaWiki API
Talk of cloud computing draws a veil over hardware, but also, less obviously but more importantly, obscures such intellectual distinction as matters most in its use. Wikidata begins to allow tasks to be undertaken that were out of easy reach. The facility should not be taken as the real point.
Coming in from another angle, the "executive decision" is more glamorous; but the "administrative decision" should be admired for its command of facts. Think of the attitudes ad fontes, so prevalent here on Wikipedia as "can you give me a source for that?", and being prepared to deal with complicated analyses into specified subcases. Impatience expressed as a disdain for such pedantry is quite understandable, but neither dirty data nor false dichotomies are at all good to have around.
Issue 13 and Issue 21, respectively on WP:MEDRS and systematic reviews, talk about biomedical literature and computing tasks that would be of higher quality if they could be made more "administrative". For example, it is desirable that the decisions involved be consistent, explicable, and reproducible by non-experts from specified inputs.
What gets clouded out is not impossibly hard to understand. You do need to put together the insights of functional programming, which is a doctrinaire and purist but clearcut approach, with the practicality of office software. Loopless computation can be conceived of as a seamless forward march of spreadsheet columns, each determined by the content of previous ones. Very well: to do a backward audit, when now we are talking about Wikidata, we rely on integrity of data and its scrupulous sourcing: and clearcut case analyses. The MEDRS example forces attention on purge attempts such as Beall's list.
Two dozen issues, and this may be the last, a valediction at least for a while.
It's time for a two-year summation of ContentMine projects involving TDM (text and data mining).
Wikidata and now Structured Data on Commons represent the overlap of Wikimedia with the Semantic Web. This common ground is helping to convert an engineering concept into a movement. TDM generally has little enough connection with the Semantic Web, being instead in the orbit of machine learning which is no respecter of the semantic. Don't break a taboo by asking bots "and what do you mean by that?"
The ScienceSource project innovates in TDM, by storing its text mining results in a Wikibase site. It strives for compliance of its fact mining, on drug treatments of diseases, with an automated form of the relevant Wikipedia referencing guideline MEDRS. Where WikiFactMine set up an API for reuse of its results, ScienceSource has a SPARQL query service, with look-and-feel exactly that of Wikidata's at query.wikidata.org. It also now has a custom front end, and its content can be federated, in other words used in data mashups: it is one of over 50 sites that can federate with Wikidata.
The human factor comes to bear through the front end, which combines a link to the HTML version of a paper, text mining results organised in drug and disease columns, and a SPARQL display of nearby drug and disease terms. Much software to develop and explain, so little time! Rather than telling the tale, Facto Post brings you ScienceSource links, starting from the how-to video, lower right.
Please be aware that this is a research project in development, and may have outages for planned maintenance. That will apply for the next few days, at least. The ScienceSource wiki main page carries information on practical matters. Email is not enabled on the wiki: use site mail here to Template:Noping in case of difficulty, or if you need support. Further explanatory videos will be put into commons:Category:ContentMine videos.
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Hello! Your submission of Geology of Russia at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Orlady (talk) 01:13, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Done--Tobias1984 (talk) 09:08, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
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