User talk:Wayiran

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The Signpost: 17 September 2012

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  • From the editor: Signpost expands to Facebook
    We now have a Facebook page at facebook.com/wikisignpost. We invite you to "like" the page and join the discussion there.
  • WikiProject report: Action! — The Indian Cinema Task Force
    This week, we shine the spotlight on the Indian Cinema Task Force, a subproject that seeks to improve the quality and quantity of articles about Indian cinema. As a child of WikiProject Film and WikiProject India, the Indian Cinema Task Force shares a variety of templates, resources, and members with its parent projects. The task force works on a to-do list, maintains the Bollywood Portal, and ensures articles follow the film style guidelines. With Indian cinema celebrating its 100th year of existence in 2013, we asked Karthik Nadar (Karthikndr), Secret of success, Ankit Bhatt, Dwaipayan, and AnimeshKulkarni what is in store for the Indian Cinema Task Force.
  • Featured content: Go into the light
    Eight featured articles, six featured lists, ten featured pictures, and one featured topic were promoted this week.
  • News and notes: Tens of thousands of monuments loved; members of new funding body announced
    The world's largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, is entering its final two weeks. The month-long event, of Dutch origin, is being held globally for the first time after the success of its European-level predecessor last year. During September 2011 more than 5000 volunteers from 18 countries took part and uploaded 168,208 free images. This year, volunteers and chapters from 35 countries around the world have organised the event. The best photographs will be determined by juries at the national and finally the global level.
  • Technology report: Future-proofing: HTML5 and IPv6
    1.20wmf12, the 12th release to Wikimedia wikis from the 1.20 branch, was deployed to its first wikis on September 17; if things go well, it will be deployed to all wikis by September 26. Its 200 or so changes – 111 to WMF-deployed extensions plus 98 to core MediaWiki code – include support for links with mixed-case protocols (e.g. Http://example.com) and the removal of the "No higher resolution available" message on the file description pages of SVG images.

Thanks

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I wanted to thank you for looking out for vandalisms in various webpages..you might want to see [[1]] and here:[2][3]..incase of future vandalisms..--108.18.145.11 (talk) 03:06, 20 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 September 2012

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  • In the media: Editor's response to Roth draws internet attention
    Oliver Keyes' (User:Ironholds) defense of Wikipedia against the recent Philip Roth controversy has drawn a significant amount of attention over the last week. The problems between Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, and Wikipedia arose from an open letter he penned for the American magazine New Yorker, and were covered by the Signpost two weeks ago. Keyes—who wrote the piece as a prominent Wikipedian but is also a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation—wrote a blog post on the topic, lamenting the factual errors in Roth's letter and criticizing the media for not investigating his claims: "[they took] Roth’s explanation as the truth and launched into a lengthy discussion of how we [Wikipedia] handle primary sourcing."
  • Recent research: "Rise and decline" of Wikipedia participation, new literature overviews, a look back at WikiSym 2012
    A paper to appear in a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist (summarized in the research index) sheds new light on the English Wikipedia's declining editor growth and retention trends. The paper describes how "several changes that the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have lead to a more restrictive environment for newcomers". The number of active Wikipedia editors has been declining since 2007 and research examining data up to September 2009 has shown that the root of the problem has been the declining retention of new editors. The authors show this decline is mainly due to a decline among desirable, good-faith newcomers, and point to three factors contributing to the increasingly "restrictive environment" they face.
  • WikiProject report: 01010010 01101111 01100010 01101111 01110100 01101001 01100011 01110011
    This week, we tinkered with WikiProject Robotics. From the project's inception in December 2007, it has served as Wikipedia's hub for building and improving articles about robots and robotics, accumulating two Featured Articles and seven Good Articles along the way. The project covers both fictitious and real-life robots, the technology that powers them, and many of the brains behind the robotics field
  • News and notes: UK chapter rocked by Gibraltar scandal
    In the second controversy to engulf Wikimedia UK in two months, its immediate past chair Roger Bamkin has resigned from the board of the chapter. The resignation last Wednesday followed a growing furore over the conflict of interest between two of Roger's roles outside the chapter and his close involvement in the UK board's decision-making process, including the access to private mailing lists that board members in all chapters need. But the irony surrounding Roger's resignation is its connection with efforts by Wikimedians and collaborators to strengthen the reach of Wikimedia projects through technical innovation.
  • Technology report: Signpost investigation: code review times
    Late last month, the "Technology report" included a story using code review backlog figures – the only code review figures then available – to construct a rough narrative about the average experience of code contributors. This week, we hope to go one better, by looking directly at code review wait times, and, in particular, median code review times
  • Featured content: Dead as...
    Fourteen featured articles were promoted this week, including Dodo, along with six featured lists and five featured pictures.

The Signpost: 01 October 2012

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  • Paid editing: Does Wikipedia Pay? The Founder: Jimmy Wales
    Does Wikipedia Pay? is a Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues by speaking openly with the people involved. This week, a scandal centering around Roger Bamkin's work with Wikimedia UK and Gibraltarpedia erupted ... In light of these events, opinions on how to avoid future controversy are as important as ever. ... The Signpost spoke with Jimmy Wales to better understand how he views the paid editing environment and what he thinks is needed to improve it.
  • News and notes: Independent review of UK chapter governance; editor files motion against Wikitravel owners
    Following considerable online and media reportage on the Gibraltar controversy and a Signpost report last week, the Wikimedia UK chapter and the foundation published a joint statement on September 28: "To better understand the facts and details of these allegations and to ensure that governance arrangements commensurate with the standing of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK and the worldwide Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia UK's trustees and the Wikimedia Foundation will jointly appoint an independent expert advisor to objectively review both Wikimedia UK's governance arrangements and its handling of the conflict of interest."
  • Featured content: Mooned
    Five articles, three lists, and nine images were promoted to "featured" this week.
  • Technology report: WMF and the German chapter face up to Toolserver uncertainty
    The Toolserver is an external service hosting the hundreds of webpages and scripts (collectively known as "tools") that assist Wikimedia communities in dozens of mostly menial tasks. Few people think that it has been operating well recently; the problems, which include high database replication lag and periods of total downtime, have caused considerable disruption to the Toolserver's usual functions. Those functions are highly valued by many Wikimedia communities ... In 2011, the Foundation announced the creation of Wikimedia Labs, a much better funded project that among other things aimed to mimic the Toolserver's functionality by mid-2013. At the same time, Erik Möller, the WMF's director of engineering, announced that the Foundation would no longer be supporting the Toolserver financially, but would continue to provide the same in-kind support as it had done previously.
  • WikiProject report: The Name's Bond... WikiProject James Bond
    In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film series, we spent some time bonding with WikiProject James Bond. The project is in the unique position of having already pushed all of its primary content to Good and Featured status, including all of Ian Fleming's novels, short stories, and every film that has been released. Work has begun in earnest on the article Skyfall for the release of the new Bond film later this month. The project could still use help improving articles about Bond actors, characters, gadgets, music, video games, and related topics

The Signpost: 08 October 2012

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  • News and notes: Education Program faces community resistance
    Wikipedia in education is far from a new idea: years of news stories, op-eds, and editorials have focused on the topic; and on Wikipedia itself, the Schools and universities projects page has existed in various forms since 2003. Over the next six years, the page was rarely developed, and when it did advance there was no clear goal in mind.
  • WikiProject report: Ten years and one million articles: WikiProject Biography
    On this day five years ago, the WikiProject Report debuted as a new Signpost column with an overview of WikiProject Biography. Today, we're celebrating two milestone: five years of the WikiProject Report and the tenth birthday of our first featured project. WikiProject Biography is by far the largest WikiProject on Wikipedia, with over one million articles under the project's scope. As a comparison, WikiProject Biography is three times larger than Wikipedia's second largest project, and if WikiProject Biography were split into its 14 subprojects and work groups, it would still make the list of the 20 largest WikiProjects... four times.
  • Featured content: A dash of Arsenikk
    This week the Signpost interviews Arsenikk, an editor of six years who has brought sixteen lists through our featured list process, mostly regarding transportation in Norway but also about the 1952 Winter Olympics and World Heritage Sites in Africa. Arsenikk tells us about why he joined the project, what moves him, and how editors can join the sometimes daunting world of featured lists.
  • Technology report: The ups and downs of September and October, plus extension code review analysis
    The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for September 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment). Three of the seven headline items in the report have already been covered in the Signpost: problems with the corruption of several Gerrit (code) repositories, the introduction of widespread translation memory across Wikimedia wikis, and the launch of the "Page Curation" tool on the English Wikipedia, with development work on that project now winding down. The report also drew attention to the end of Google Summer of Code 2012, the deployment to the English Wikipedia of a new ePUB (electronic book) export feature, and improvements to the WLM app aimed at more serious photographers.

The Signpost: 15 October 2012

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  • Op-ed: AdminCom: A proposal for changing the way we select admins
    There is wide agreement among English Wikipedians that the administrator system is in some ways broken—but no consensus on how to fix it. Most suggestions have been relatively small in scope, and could at best produce small improvements. I would like to make a proposal to fundamentally restructure the administrator system, in a way that I believe would make it more effective and responsive. The proposal is to create an elected Administration Committee ("AdminCom") which would select, oversee, and deselect administrators.
  • In the media: Wikipedia's language nerds hit the front page
    This week saw a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on editorial debates in Wikipedia. The story focused on the title-naming dispute surrounding the Beatles article, and specifically the RfC on whether the 'the' in the band's name should be capitalized or not.
  • Featured content: Second star to the left
    On the English Wikipedia, five featured articles, ten featured lists, and four featured pictures were promoted, including USS Lexington, a ship built for the United States Navy that, although ordered in 1916 as a battlecruiser, was converted to an aircraft carrier. It was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea during the Second World War.
  • News and notes: Chapters ask for big bucks
    The volunteer-led Wikimedia Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and interested community members are looking at Wikimedia organization applications worth about US$10.4 million out of the committee's first full year's operation, in just the inaugural round one of two that have been planned for the year with a planned budget of US$11.4M.
  • Technology report: Wikidata is a go: well, almost
    A trial of the first phase of Wikimedia Deutschland's "Wikidata" project–implementing the first ever interwiki repository—may soon get underway following the successful passage of much of its code through MediaWiki's review processes this week.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Chemicals
    This week, we experimented with WikiProject Chemicals. Started in August 2004, WikiProject Chemicals has grown to include over 10,000 articles about chemical compounds. The project has a unique assessment system that omits C-class, Good, and Featured Articles. As a result, the project's 11 GAs and 9 FAs are treated as A-class articles. WikiProject Chemicals is a child of WikiProject Chemistry (interviewed in 2009) and a parent of WikiProject Polymers.

The Signpost: 22 October 2012

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  • Special report: Examining adminship from the German perspective
    Unlike the long-running disputes that have characterised attempts to reform the RfA process on the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia's tradition of making decisions not by consensus but knife-edged 50% + 1 votes has led to a fundamentally different outcome. In 2009, the project managed to largely settle the RfA mode issue in 2009 indirectly.
  • Technology report: Wikivoyage migration: technical strategy announced
    Planning for Wikivoyage's migration into the WMF fold built up steam this week following a statement by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller about what the technical side of the migration will involve. Wikivoyage, which split from sister site Wikitravel in 2006, is hoping to migrate its own not-inconsiderable user base to Wikimedia, as well as much of its content, presenting novel challenges for Wikimedia developers
  • News and notes: Wikimedians get serious about women in science
    It is well known that women are underrepresented in the sciences, and that high-achieving female scientists have often been excluded from authorship lists and passed over for awards and honours solely on the basis of gender. Also significant has been the underplaying in the academic literature, news reporting, and online, of women's current and historical contributions to science.
  • WikiProject report: Where in the world is Wikipedia?
    The WikiProject Report normally brings tidings from Wikipedia's most active, inventive, and unique WikiProjects. This week, we're trying something new by focusing on Wikipedia's dark side: the various regional and national WikiProjects that are dead or dying. How can some tiny municipalities and exclaves generate highly active, cross-language, multimedia platforms be successful while the projects representing many sovereign countries and entire continents wallow in obscurity? Today, we'll search for answers among geographic projects large and small, highly active and barely functioning, enthusiastic about the future and mired in past conflicts.
  • Featured content: Is RfA Kafkaesque?
    Eleven articles, including one on Franz Kafka, three lists, one image, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status this week.

The Signpost: 29 October 2012

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  • News and notes: First chickens come home to roost for FDC funding applicants; WMF board discusses governance issues and scope of programs
    The first round of the Wikimedia Foundation's new financial arrangements has proceeded as planned, with the publication of scores and feedback by Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) staff on applications for funding by 11 entities—10 chapters, independent membership organisations supporting the WMF's mission in different countries, and the foundation itself. The results are preliminary assessments that will soon be put to the FDC's seven voting members and two non-voting board representatives. The FDC in turn will send its recommendations to the board of trustees on 15 November, which will announce its decision by 15 December. Funding applications have been on-wiki since 1 October, and the talk pages of applications were open for community comment and discussion from 2 to 22 October, though apart from queries by FDC staff, there was little activity.
  • WikiProject report: In recognition of... WikiProject Military History
    This week, we're checking out ways to motivate editors and recognize valuable contributions by focusing on the awards and rewards of WikiProject Military History. Anyone unfamiliar with WikiProject Military History is encouraged to start at the report's first article about the project and make your way forward. While many WikiProjects provide a barnstar that can be awarded to helpful contributors, WikiProject Military History has gone a step further by creating a variety of awards with different criteria ranging from the all-purpose WikiChevrons to rewards for participating in drives and improving special topics to medals for improving articles up to A-class status to the coveted "Military Historian of the Year" award.
  • Technology report: Improved video support imminent and Wikidata.org live
    The TimedMediaHandler extension (TMH), which brings dramatic improvements to MediaWiki's video handling capabilities, will go live to the English Wikipedia this week following a long and turbulent development, WMF Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier announced on Monday ... Wikidata.org, a new repository designed to host interwiki links, launched this week and will begin accepting links shortly. The site, which is one half of the forthcoming Wikidata trial (the other half being the Wikidata client, which will be deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia shortly) will also act as a testing area for phase 2 of Wikidata (centralised data storage). The longer term plan is for Wikidata.org to become a "Wikimedia Commons for data" as phases 2 and 3 (dynamic lists) are developed, project managers say.
  • Featured content: On the road again
    Thirteen articles, ten lists, nine images, one topic, and one portal were promoted to featured after peer reviews.

The Signpost: 05 November 2012

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  • Op-ed: 2012 WikiCup comes to an end
    J Milburn is a British editor who has been on the site since 2006. He is one of two judges of the WikiCup. Here, he uses an op-ed to explain the way the WikiCup works and to review this year's competition, which ended recently.
  • News and notes: Wikimedian photographic talent on display in national submissions to Wiki Loves Monuments
    The results of most of the national heats for Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) have been published on Commons. A maximum of 10 images have been submitted by all but eight of the 34 participating countries, and the international jury for what is the largest competition of its type in the world is set to announce the global winner in four weeks' time.
  • In the media: Was climate change a factor in Hurricane Sandy?
    Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record and has caused millions of dollars in damage. Naturally, Wikipedia covered it. But was Wikipedia's coverage unbiased?
  • Featured content: Jack-O'-Lanterns and Toads
    This week, the Signpost interviewed two editors. The first, PumpkinSky, collaborated with Gerda Arendt in writing the recently featured article on Franz Kafka and won second prize in the Core contest last August. The second, Cwmhiraeth, collaborated with Thompsma in promoting the article Frog, which was featured last week. We asked them about the special challenges faced while writing Core content and things to watch out for.
  • Technology report: Hue, Sqoop, Oozie, Zookeeper, Hive, Pig and Kafka
    The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for October 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. TimedMediaHandler also went live.
  • WikiProject report: Listening to WikiProject Songs
    This week, The Signpost sings along with WikiProject Songs which focuses on articles about songs of every generation and genre. The project initially began as a rough outline in October 2002 and was reimagined in March 2004 using its parent WikiProject Albums as a template.

The Signpost: 12 November 2012

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  • News and notes: Court ruling complicates the paid-editing debate
    Last week, media outlets reported a ruling by a German court on the problem of businesses using Wikipedia for marketing purposes. The issue goes beyond the direct management of marketing-related edits by Wikipedians; it involves cross-monitoring and interacting among market competitors themselves on Wikipedia. A company that sells dietary supplements made from frankincense had taken a competitor to court. The recently published judgment by the Higher Regional Court of Munich, in dealing with the German Wikipedia article on frankincense products, was handed down in May and is based on European competition law.
  • Featured content: The table has turned
    Thirteen articles, six lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status last week.
  • Technology report: MediaWiki 1.20 and the prospects for getting 1.21 code reviewed promptly
    In late September, the Technology report published its findings about (particularly median) code review times. To the 23,900 changesets analysed the first time (the data for which has been updated), the Signpost added data from the 9,000 or so changesets contributed between September 17 and November 9 to a total of 93,000 reviews across 45,000 patchsets. Bots and self-reviews were also discarded, but reviews made by a different user in the form of a superseding patch were retained. Finally, users were categorised by hand according to whether they would be best regarded as staff or volunteers. The new analyses were consistent with the predictions of the previous analysis.
  • WikiProject report: Land of parrots, palm trees, and the Holy Cross: WikiProject Brazil
    As promised, we're expanding our horizons by featuring projects that cover underrepresented areas of the globe. This week, we headed to WikiProject Brazil which keeps track of articles about the world's largest Portuguese-speaking country. The project has shown spurts of activity and continues to serve as a hub for discussions, despite the project's collaborations, peer reviews, and outreach activities being largely inactive.

The Signpost: 19 November 2012

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  • News and notes: FDC's financial muscle kicks in
    The WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations for the inaugural round 1 of funding. Requests totalled US$10.4M, nearly all of the FDC's budget for both first and second rounds. The seven-member committee of community volunteers appointed in September advises the WMF board on the distribution of grant funds among applying Wikimedia organizations. The committee, which has a separate operating budget of $276k for salaries and expenses, considered 12 applications for funds, from 11 chapters and from the WMF itself for its non-core activities. The decision-making process included community and FDC staff input after October 1, the closing date for submissions. Taken together, the volunteers decided to endorse an average of 81% of the funding sought—a total of $8.43M, which went to 11 of the 12 applicants. This leaves $2.71M to be distributed in round 2, for which applications are due in little more than three months' time.
  • WikiProject report: No teenagers, mutants, or ninjas: WikiProject Turtles
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Turtles. The young project started in January 2011 and has accumulated 5 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, and 6 Featured Pictures. The project maintains a combined to-do list and hot articles meter, a popular pages ranking, and a collection of resources for turtle articles. We interviewed Faendalimas and NYMFan69-86.
  • Technology report: Structural reorganisation "not a done deal"
    WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner was forced to clarify this week that proposed structural changes to the Foundation's Engineering and Product Development Department were not a "done deal" and that it was "important that you [particularly affected staff] realise that ... your input is wanted". The reorganisation, announced on November 5 and planned for the middle of next year, will see its two components split off into their own departments.
  • Featured content: Wikipedia hit by the Streisand effect
    Seven featured articles, four featured lists and ten featured pictures – including the photograph that spawned the Streisand effect – were promoted this week.

The Signpost: 26 November 2012

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  • News and notes: Toolserver finance remains uncertain
    On November 24, a general assembly of Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) voted on the fate of the Wikimedia Toolserver, a central external piece of technical infrastructure supporting the editing communities with volunteer-developed scripts and webpages of various kinds that are assisting in performing mostly menial tasks.
  • Recent research: Movie success predictions, readability, credentials and authority, geographical comparisons
    An open-access preprint presents the results from a study attempting to predict early box office revenues from Wikipedia traffic and activity data. The authors – a team of computational social scientists from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Aalto University and the Central European University – submit that behavioral patterns on Wikipedia can be used for accurate forecasting, matching and in some cases outperforming the use of social media data for predictive modeling. The results, based on a corpus of 312 English Wikipedia articles on movies released in 2010, indicate that the joint editing activity and traffic measures on Wikipedia are strong predictors of box office revenue for highly successful movies.
  • Technology report: Wikidata reaches 100,000 entries
    Wikidata, the new "Wikimedia Commons for data" and the first new Wikimedia project since 2006, reached 100,000 entries this week. The project aims to be a single, human- and machine-readable database for common data, spanning across all Wikipedia projects, which will "lead to a higher consistency and quality within Wikipedia articles, as well as increased availability of information in the smaller language editions" while lowering the burden on Wikipedia's volunteer editors—whose numbers have stalled overall, and continue to dwindle on the English Wikipedia.
  • WikiProject report: Directing Discussion: WikiProject Deletion Sorting
    This week, we uncovered WikiProject Deletion Sorting, Wikipedia's most active project by number of edits to all the project's pages. This special project seeks to increase participation in Articles for Deletion nominations by categorizing the AfD discussions by various topic areas that may draw the attention of editors. The project was started in August 2005 with manual processes that are continued today by a bevy of bots, categories, and transclusions. The project took inspiration from WikiProject Stub Sorting and some historical discussions on deletion reform. As the sheer number of AfDs continues to grow, the project is seeking better tools to manage the deletion sorting process and attract editors to comment on these deletion discussions.

The Signpost: 03 December 2012

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  • Featured content: The play's the thing
    Three articles, two lists, and four images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
  • Technology report: MediaWiki problems but good news for Toolserver stability
    Deployments of MediaWiki 1.21wmf5 cause widespread problems for users across wikis when HTML and CSS updates came temporarily out of sync. On the first wikis targeted for deployment, this was caused by the different cache invalidation rates for HTML (typically one month) and CSS (typically five minutes). The retrospective on the problem highlighted the fact that that the test wiki – the WMF's answer to a production environment that individual developers can no longer practically emulate themselves – actually demonstrated the exact problem that would later manifest itself on production wikis. It went unnoticed.
  • WikiProject report: The White Rose: WikiProject Yorkshire
    This week, we went searching for white roses in the lands of WikiProject Yorkshire. The project began in May 2007 as a way to improve articles about the historic English county of Yorkshire and its modern-day administrative divisions and cities. Since then, the project has accumulated 31 Featured Articles, 14 Featured Lists, 91 Good Articles, and a monstrous list of Did You Know entries. Despite all of the effort improving Yorkshire articles, the project has experienced waning participation in the last few years. The project still publishes a newsletter each month, monitors the popularity of and recent changes to its articles, maintains a portal, and collects resources for contributors to use.

The Signpost: 10 December 2012

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  • News and notes: Wobbly start to ArbCom election, but turnout beats last year's
    At the time of writing, this year's election has just closed after a two-week voting period. The eight seats were contested by 21 candidates. Of these, 15 have not been arbitrators (Beeblebrox, Count Iblis, Guerillero, Jc37, Keilana, Ks0stm, Kww, NuclearWarfare, Pgallert, RegentsPark, Richwales, Salvio giuliano, Timotheus Canens, Worm That Turned, and YOLO Swag); four candidates are sitting arbitrators (David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, Jclemens, and Newyorkbrad); and two have previously served on the committee (Carcharoth and Coren). Four Wikimedia stewards from outside the English Wikipedia stepped forward as election scrutineers: Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia; Teles, from the Portuguese Wikipedia; Quentinv57, from the French Wikipedia; and Mardetanha, from the Persian Wikipedia. The scrutineers' task is to ensure that the election is free of multiple votes from the same person, to tally the results, and to announce them. The full results are expected to be released within the next few days and will be reported in next week's edition of the Signpost.
  • Featured content: Wikipedia goes to Hell
    Eight articles, four images, six lists, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Technology report: The new Visual Editor gets a bit more visual
    The Visual Editor project – an attempt to create the first WMF-deployable WYSIWYG editor – will go live on its first Wikipedias imminently following nearly six months of testing on MediaWiki.org. A full explanatory blog post accompanied the news, explaining the project and its setup. Once a user has opted-in, the editor can handle basic formatting, headings and lists, while safely ignoring elements it is yet to understand, including references, categories, templates, tables and images. At the last count, approximately 2% of pages would break in some way if a user tried the Visual Editor on them; it is unclear whether any specific protection will be put in place beyond relying on editors to spot problems.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Human Rights
    In celebration of Human Rights Day, we checked out WikiProject Human Rights. Started in February 2006, the project has grown to include over 3,000 articles, including 12 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, 66 Good Articles, a large collection of Did You Know entries, and a few mentions "in the news". The project monitors listings of popular pages and cleanup tags. We interviewed Khazar2, Cirt, and Boud.

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

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  • News and notes: Arbitrator election: stewards release the results
    Seven days after the close of voting, the results of the recent Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced by two of the four stewards overseeing the election, Mardetanha and Pundit. Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain positive support-to-oppose ratios, and the top eight will be appointed to two-year terms on the committee by Jimbo Wales, exercising one of his traditional responsibilities.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProjekt Computerspiel: Covering Computer Games in Germany
    In the past year, we've tried to expand our horizons by looking at how WikiProjects work in other languages of Wikipedia. Following in the footsteps of our previously interviewed Czech and French projects, we visited the German Wikipedia to explore WikiProjekt Computerspiel (WikiProject Computer Games). The project dates back to November 2004 and has become the back-end of the Computer Games Portal, which covers all video games regardless of platform. Editors writing about computer games at the German Wikipedia deal with unique cultural and legal challenges, ranging from a lack of fair use precedents to the limited availability of games deemed harmful for youths to strong standards for the inclusion of material on the German Wikipedia.
  • Op-ed: Finding truth in Sandy Hook
    This week's big story on the English Wikipedia is obviously the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (which, by the time you read this, may be renamed 2012 Connecticut school shooting). Quickly created and nominated for deletion not once but twice, and both times speedily kept, the article saw the expected flurry of edits (a look at the history suggests an average of at least one a minute over the first day and a half) and more than half a million page views on the first full day.
  • Featured content: Wikipedia's cute ass
    Four articles, three lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week, including a picture of a three-week old donkey (also known as an 'ass').
  • Technology report: MediaWiki groups and why you might want to start snuggling newbie editors
    MediaWiki users (including Wikimedians) can now organise themselves into groups, receiving recognition and support-in-kind from the Wikimedia Foundation. The project, backed by new Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, has seen five proposals lodged in its first week of operation. The idea of MediaWiki groups mimics that of Wikimedia User Groups.

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

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  • News and notes: Debates on Meta sparking along—grants, new entities, and conflicts of interest
    As part of its new focus on core responsibilities, the Wikimedia Foundation is reforming its grant schemes so that they are more accessible to individual volunteers. The community is invited to look at proposals for a new scheme—for now called Individual engagement grants (IEGs)—which is due to kick off on January 15. On Meta, the community is once again debating the two new offline participation models—user groups (open membership groups designed to be easy to form) and thematic organizations (incorporated non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work on a specific theme within or across countries). In a consultation process on Meta that will last until January 15, the community will be discussing WMF proposals for a new guideline on conflicts of interests concerning Wikimedia resources. The draft covers COI issues for both volunteers and organizations across the movement.
  • WikiProject report: A Song of Ice and Fire
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire, which focuses on the eponymous series of high fantasy literature, the television series Game of Thrones, and related works by George R. R. Martin. The project was started in July 2006 and has grown to include 11 Good Articles maintained by a small yet enthusiastic band of editors.
  • Featured content: Battlecruiser operational
    Seven articles and two lists were promoted to 'featured' status this week, including List of battlecruisers. The article covers all of the battlecruisers—which were a type of warship similar in size to a battleship but with several defining characteristics—ever planned or constructed. The last British battlecruiser built, HMS Hood, is pictured at right.
  • Technology report: Efforts to "normalise" Toolserver relations stepped up
    Efforts were stepped up this week to sow a feeling of trust between the major parties with an interest in the future of the Toolserver. The tool- and bot-hosting server – more accurately servers – are currently operated by German chapter, Wikimedia Germany, with assistance from the Foundation and numerous volunteers, including long-time system administrator Daniel Baur (more commonly known by his pseudonym DaB). However, those parties have more recently failed to see eye-to-eye on the trajectory for the Toolserver, which is scheduled to be replaced by Wikimedia Labs in late 2013, with increasing concern about the tone of discussions.

The Signpost: 31 December 2012

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  • From the editor: Wikipedia, our Colosseum
    In the impersonal, detached Colosseum that is Wikipedia, people find it much easier to put their thumbs down. As such, many people active in the Wikimedia movement have witnessed a precipitous decline in civil discourse. This is far from a new trend, yet many people would agree that it all seemed somehow worse in 2012.
  • In the media: Is the Wikimedia movement too 'cash rich'?
    A recent, poorly researched and poorly written story in the Register highlighted the perceived "cash rich" status of the Wikimedia movement. ... The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are multiple links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party non-democratic state.
  • Technology report: Looking back on a year of incremental changes
    In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.
  • Interview: Interview with Brion Vibber, the WMF's first employee
    Brion Vibber has been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 11 years and was the first person officially hired to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. He was instrumental in early development of the MediaWiki software and is now the lead software architect for the foundation's mobile development team.
  • Featured content: Whoa Nelly! Featured content in review
    At the beginning of the year, we began a series of interviews with editors who have worked hard to combat systemic bias through the creation of featured content; although we haven't seen six installments yet, we've also had some delightful interviews with people who write articles on some of our most core topics. Now, as we close the year, I would like to present some of my own musings on the state of featured content—especially as it pertains to systemic bias and core topics.
  • WikiProject report: New Year, New York
    This week, we're celebrating the New Year from Times Square by interviewing WikiProject New York City. Since December 2004, WikiProject NYC has had the difficult task of maintaining articles about the largest city in the United States, many of which are also among the the most viewed articles on Wikipedia. The project is home to 22 Featured Articles, 7 Featured Lists, 32 pieces of Featured Media, and a lengthy list of Did You Know? entries.
  • Recent research: Wikipedia and Sandy Hook; SOPA blackout reexamined
    Northeastern University researcher Brian Keegan analyzed the gathering of hundreds of Wikipedians to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. ... A First Monday article reviews several aspects of the Wikipedia participation in the 18 January 2012, protests against SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA. The paper focuses on the question of legitimacy, looking at how the Wikipedia community arrived at the decision to participate in those protests.

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

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  • Op-ed: Meta, where innovative ideas die
    Meta is the wiki that has coordinated a wide range of cross-project Wikimedia activities, such as the activities of stewards, the archiving of chapter reports, and WMF trustee elections. The project has long been an out-of-the-way corner for technocratic working groups, unaccountable mandarins, and in-house bureaucratic proceedings. Largely ignored by the editing communities of projects such as Wikipedia and organizations that serve them, Meta has evolved into a huge and relatively disorganized repository, where the few archivists running it also happen to be the main authors of some of its key documents. While Meta is well-designed for supporting the librarians and mandarins who stride along its corridors, visitors tend to find the site impenetrable—or so many people have argued over the past decade. This impenetrability runs counter to Meta's increasingly central role in the Wikimedia movement.
  • WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Episode IV: A New Year
    The dawning of a new year offers both a fresh slate and an opportunity to revisit our previous adventures. 2012 marked the fifth anniversary of the WikiProject Report and was the column's most productive year with 52 articles published. In addition to sharing the experiences of Wikipedia's many active projects, we expanded our scope to highlight unique projects from other languages of Wikipedia, and tracked down all of the former editors-in-chief of the Signpost for an introspective interview ... While last year's "Summer Sports Series" may have drawn yawns from some readers, a special report on "Neglected Geography" elicited more comments than any previous issue of the Report. Following in the footsteps of our past three recaps, we'll spend this week looking back at the trials and tribulations of the WikiProjects we encountered in 2012. Where are they now?
  • News and notes: 2012—the big year
    The past 12 months have seen a multitude of issues and events in the Wikimedia foundation, the movement at large, and the English Wikipedia. The movement, now in its second decade, is growing apace in its international reach, cultural and linguistic diversity, technical development, and financial complexity; and many factors have combined to produce what has in many ways been the biggest, most dynamic year in the movement's history. Looking back at 2012, we faced a difficult task in doing justice to all of the notable events in a single article; so the Signpost has selected just a few examples from outside the anglosphere, from the English Wikipedia, and from the Wikimedia Foundation, rather than attempting to cover every detail that happened.
  • Featured content: Featured content in review
    Over the past year, 963 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured article candidates (FAC), which promoted an average of 31 articles a month. This was followed by featured picture candidates (FPC; 28 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 20 a month). Featured topic and featured portal candidates remained sluggish, each promoting fewer than 20 items over the year.
  • Technology report: Looking ahead to 2013
    Following on from last week's reflections on 2012, this week the Technology report looks ahead to 2013, a year that will almost certainly be dominated by the juggernauts of Wikidata, Lua and the Visual Editor.

The Signpost: 14 January 2013

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  • Investigative report: Ship ahoy! New travel site finally afloat
    After six years without creating a new class of content projects, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has finally expanded into a new area: travel. Wikivoyage was formally launched—though without a traditional ship's christening—on 15 January, having started as a beta trial on 10 November. Wikivoyage has been taken under the WMF's umbrella on the argument that information resources that help with travel are educational and therefore within the scope of the foundation's mission.g
  • News and notes: Launch of annual picture competition, new grant scheme
    On January 16, voting for the first round of the 2012 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest will begin. Wikimedia editors with 75 edits or one project are eligible to vote to select their favorite image featured in 2012. ... On January 15, the foundation launched its latest grant scheme, called Individual Engagement Grants (IEG).
  • WikiProject report: Reach for the Stars: WikiProject Astronomy
    This week, we set off for the final frontier with WikiProject Astronomy. The project was started in August 2006 using the now-defunct WikiProject Space as inspiration. WikiProject Astronomy is home to 101 pieces of Featured material and 148 Good Articles maintained by a band of 186 members. The project maintains a portal, works on an assortment of vital astronomy articles, and provides resources for editors adding or requesting astronomy images.
  • Special report: Loss of an Internet genius
    Comforting those grieving after the loss of a loved one is an impossible task. How then, can an entire community be comforted? The Internet struggled to answer that question this week after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a celebrated free-culture activist, programmer, and Wikipedian at the age of 26.
  • Featured content: Featured articles: Quality of reviews, quality of writing in 2012
    Continuing our recap of the featured content promoted in 2012, this week the Signpost interviewed three editors, asking them about featured articles which stuck out in their minds. Two, Ian Rose and Graham Colm, are current featured article candidates (FAC) delegates, while Brian Boulton is an active featured article writer and reviewer.
  • Technology report: Intermittent outages planned, first Wikidata client deployment
    The Wikidata client extension was successfully deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia on 14 January, its team reports. The interwiki language links can now come from wikidata.org, though "manual" interwiki links remain functional, overriding those from the central repository.

The Signpost: 21 January 2013

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  • News and notes: Requests for adminship reform moves forward
    The English Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process has entered another cycle of proposed reforms. Over the last three weeks, various proposals, ranging from as large as a transition to a representative democracy to as small as a required edit count and service length, have been debated on the RfA talk page. The total number of new administrators for 2012 was just 28, barely more than half of 2011's total and less than a quarter of 2009's total. The total number of unsuccessful RfAs has fallen as well. These declining numbers, which were described in what would now be considered a successful year (2010) as an emerging "wikigeneration gulf", have been coupled with a sharp decline in the number of active administrators since February 2008 (1,021), reaching a low of 653 in November 2012.
  • WikiProject report: Say What? — WikiProject Linguistics
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Linguistics. Started in January 2004, the project has grown to include 7 Featured Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 2 A-class Articles, and 15 Good Articles maintained by 43 members. The project's members keep an eye on several watchlists, maintain the linguistics category, and continue to build a collection of Did You Know? entries. The project is home to six task forces and works with WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Writing Systems.
  • Featured content: Wazzup, G? Delegates and featured topics in review
    This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured topics. We interviewed Grapple X and GamerPro64, who are delegates at the featured topic candidates.
  • Arbitration report: Doncram case continues
    The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
  • Technology report: Data centre switchover a tentative success
    On 22 January, WMF staff and contractors switched incoming, non-cached requests (including edits) to the Foundation's newer data centre in Ashburn, Virginia, making it responsible for handling almost all regular traffic. For the first time since 2004, virtually no traffic will be handled by the WMF's other facility in Tampa, Florida.

The Signpost: 28 January 2013

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  • In the media: Hoaxes draw media attention
    On New Year's Day, the Daily Dot reported that a "massive Wikipedia hoax" had been exposed after more than five years. The article on the Bicholim conflict had been listed as a "Good Article" for the past half-decade, yet turned out to be an ingenious hoax. Created in July 2007 by User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a, the meticulously detailed piece was approved as a GA in October 2007. A subsequent submission for FA was unsuccessful, but failed to discover that the article's key sources were made up. While the User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a account then stopped editing, the hoax remained listed as a Good Article for five years, receiving in the region of 150 to 250 page views a month in 2012. It was finally nominated for deletion on 29 December 2012 by ShelfSkewed—who had discovered the hoax while doing work on Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs—and deleted the same day.
  • WikiProject report: Checkmate! — WikiProject Chess
    When we challenged the masters of WikiProject Chess to an interview, Sjakkalle answered our call. WikiProject Chess dates back to December 2003 and has grown to include 4 Featured Articles and 15 Good Articles maintained by over 100 members. The project typically operates independently of other WikiProjects, although the project would theoretically be a child of WikiProject Board and Table Games (interviewed in 2011). WikiProject Chess provides a collection of resources, seeks missing photographs of chess players, and helps determine ways that Wikipedia's coverage of chess can be expanded.
  • News and notes: Khan Academy's Smarthistory and Wikipedia collaborate
    To many Wikimedians, the Khan Academy would seem like a close cousin: the academy is a non-profit educational website and a development of the massive open online course concept that has delivered over 227 million lessons in 22 different languages. Its mission is to give "a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere." This complements Wikipedia's stated goal to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge", then go and create that world. It should come as no surprise, then, that the highly successful GLAM-Wiki (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) initiative has partnered with the Khan Academy's Smarthistory project to further both its and Wikipedia's goals.
  • Featured content: Listing off progress from 2012
    This week, the Signpost featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured lists. We interviewed FLC directors Giants2008 and The Rambling Man as well as active reviewer and writer PresN.
  • Arbitration report: Doncram continues
    The Doncram case has continued into its third week.
  • Technology report: Developers get ready for FOSDEM amid caching problems
    As reported in last week's "Technology Report", the WMF's data centre in Ashburn, Virginia took over responsibility for almost all of the remaining functions that had previously been handled by their old facility in Tampa, Florida on 22 January. The Signpost reported then that few problems had arisen since handover. Unfortunately that was not to remain the case, with reports of caching problems (which typically only affect anonymous users) starting to come in.

The Signpost: 04 February 2013

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  • Special report: Examining the popularity of Wikipedia articles
    On February 12, 2012, news of Whitney Houston's death brought 425 hits per second to her Wikipedia article, the highest peak traffic on any article since at least January 2010. It is broadly known that Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website on the Internet, but the English Wikipedia now has over 4 million articles and 29 million total pages. Much less attention has been given to traffic patterns and trends in content viewed.
  • News and notes: Article Feedback Tool faces community resistance
    Article feedback, at least through talk pages, has been a part of Wikipedia since its inception in 2001. The use of these pages, though, has typically been limited to experienced editors who know how to use them.
  • WikiProject report: Land of the Midnight Sun
    This week, we took a trip to WikiProject Norway. Started in February 2005, WikiProject Norway has become the home for almost 34,000 articles about the world's best place to live, including 16 Featured Articles, 19 Featured Lists, and nearly 250 Good Articles. The project works on a to do list, maintains a categorization system, watches article alerts, and serves as a discussion forum.
  • Featured content: Portal people on potent potables and portable potholes
    This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured portals, a small yet active part of the project. We interviewed FPOC directors Cirt and OhanaUnited.
  • In the media: Star Trek Into Pedantry
    On 30 January 2013, Kevin Morris in the Daily Dot summarised the bitter debates in Wikipedia around capitalisation or non-capitalisation of the word "into" in the title of the upcoming Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness.
  • Technology report: Wikidata team targets English Wikipedia deployment
    Following the deployment of the Wikidata client to the Hungarian Wikipedia last month, the client was also deployed to the Italian and Hebrew Wikipedias on Wednesday. The next target for the client, which automatically provides phase 1 functionality, is the English Wikipedia, with a deployment date of 11 February already set.

The Signpost: 11 February 2013

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  • Featured content: A lousy week
    Six articles, one list, and fourteen pictures were promoted to "featured" states this week on the English Wikipedia.
  • WikiProject report: Just the Facts
    This week, we got the details on WikiProject Infoboxes.
  • In the media: Wikipedia mirroring life in island ownership dispute
    Foreign Policy has published a report on editing of the Wikipedia articles on the Senkaku Islands and Senkaku Islands dispute. The uninhabited islands are under the control of Japan, but China and Taiwan are asserting rival territorial claims. Tensions have risen of late—and not just in the waters surrounding the actual islands.
  • Discussion report: WebCite proposal
    Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

The Signpost: 18 February 2013

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  • WikiProject report: Thank you for flying WikiProject Airlines
    This week, we put our life in the hands of WikiProject Airlines. Starting in July 2005, the project has improved articles relating to airline companies, alliances, destination lists, and travel benefit programs. WikiProject Airlines has accumulated over 4,000 pages, including 4 Featured Articles and 26 Good Articles.
  • Technology report: Better templates and 3D buildings
    As of time of writing, twenty wikis (including the English, French and Hungarian Wikipedias) are in the process of getting access to the Lua scripting language, an optional substitute for the clunky template code that exists at present.
  • News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation declares 'victory' in Wikivoyage lawsuit
    On February 15, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) declared 'victory' in its counter-lawsuit against Internet Brands (IB), the owner of Wikitravel and the operator of several online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The lawsuit clears the last remaining hurdles for the WMF's new travel guide project, Wikivoyage.
  • In the media: Sue Gardner interviewed by the Australian press
    Sue Gardner's visit to Australia sparked a number of interviews in the Australian press. An interview published in the Daily Telegraph on 12 February 2013, titled "Data plans 'unnerving': Wikipedia boss", saw Gardner comment on Australian plans to store personal internet and telephone data. The planned measure, intended to assist crime prevention, would involve internet service providers and mobile phone firms storing customer usage data for up to two years.
  • Featured content: Featured content gets schooled
    Two articles, nine lists, and thirteen pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

The Signpost: 25 February 2013

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  • In the media: Ex-WMF trustee creates "Wikipedia Corporate Index" for PR agency
    On 13 February 2013, PR Report, the German sister publication of PR Week, published an article announcing that PR agency Fleishman-Hillard was offering a new analysis tool enabling companies to assess their articles in the German-language Wikipedia: the Wikipedia Corporate Index (WCI).
  • Recent research: Wikipedia not so novel after all, except to UK university lecturers
    "Wikipedia and Encyclopedic Production" by Jeff Loveland (a historian of encyclopedias) and Joseph Reagle situates Wikipedia within the context of encyclopedic production historically, arguing that the features that many claim to be unique about Wikipedia actually have roots in encyclopedias of the past.
  • News and notes: "Very lucky" Picture of the Year
    The Wikimedia Commons 2012 Picture of the Year contest has ended, with the winner being Pair of Merops apiaster feeding, taken by Pierre Dalous. The picture shows a pair of European Bee-eaters in a mating ritual—the male bird (right) has tossed the wasp into the air, and he will eventually offer it to the female (left).
  • Featured content: Blue birds be bouncin'
    Six articles, three lists, and twelve images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this month.
  • WikiProject report: How to measure a WikiProject's workload
    How can we measure the challenges facing a project or determine a WikiProject's productivity? Several prominent projects have been doing it for years: WikiWork.

The Signpost: 04 March 2013

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  • Op-ed: We must do more to turn readers into editors
    Recently I was having a casual conversation with a friend, and he mentioned that he spent too many hours a day playing video games. I responded with a comment that I, too, spent way too much time on an activity of my own – Wikipedia. In an attempt to reply with a relevant remark, he offered something along the lines of: "So have you ever written anything?" After a second, I quickly answered yes, but I was still in shock over his question. It seemed to be rooted in a belief on his part that using Wikipedia meant just reading the articles, and that editing was something that someone, hypothetically, might do, but not really more likely than randomly counting to 7,744.
  • News and notes: Outing of editor causes firestorm
    "WP:OUTING", the normally little-noticed policy corner of the English Wikipedia that governs the release of editors' personal information, has suddenly been brought to wider attention after long-term contributor and featured article writer Cla68 was indefinitely blocked last week. This snowballed into several other blocks, a desysopping by ArbCom, and a request for arbitration.
  • Featured content: Slow week for featured content
    Three articles, six lists, and three pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including the article on "Laura Secord", who was a Canadian heroine of the War of 1812 best known for warning the British of an impending American attack.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Television Stations
    This week, we tuned to WikiProject Television Stations, a project that dates back to March 2004. WikiProject Television Stations primarily focuses on local stations, national networks, television markets, and other topics related to television channels in North America, the Caribbean, and some Pacific countries. The project has a fair bit of work ahead of them with over 4,000 unassessed articles and only one Good Article out of 626 assessed articles, giving the project a relative WikiWork rating of 5.262.

The Signpost: 11 March 2013

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  • From the editor: Signpost–Wikizine merger
    I am pleased to announce that the Signpost and Wikizine have reached an in-principle agreement that will see Wikizine published as a special Signpost section at the beginning of each month.
  • News and notes: Finance committee updates
    During March, three of the Wikimedia Foundation's grantmaking schemes on Meta will reach important crossroads, which will shape how both the editing communities and Wikimedia institutions handle the distribution of donors' money across the movement.
  • Featured content: Batman, three birds and a Mercedes
    Twelve articles, five lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including an image of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, a front-engine, 2-seat luxury grand tourer automobile developed by Mercedes-AMG.
  • WikiProject report: Setting a precedent
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases.
  • Technology report: Article Feedback reversal
    The WMF has aborted a plan to deploy version 5 of the Article Feedback tool (AFTv5) rolled out to all English Wikipedia articles.

The Signpost: 18 March 2013

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  • News and notes: Resigning arbitrator slams Committee
    Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. At the heart of a strongly worded statement, posted both on his talk page and the arbitration notice board, was the claim that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for".
  • WikiProject report: Making music
    This week, we composed a tribute to WikiProject Composers. The project was created during the final hours of 2004 and finalized in early January 2005. It has grown to encompass over 8,000 pages, including 26 Featured Articles and 23 Good Articles. WikiProject Composers faces a difficult workload, with a relative WikiWork rating of 5.45.
  • Interview: Meeting in the middle: Wikipedia and libraries
    Ask librarians what they think about Wikipedia and you might get some interesting answers. Some will throw up their hands about the laziness of the Google generation and their overdependence on Wikipedia. Some see it as the "competition". And some will tell you it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
  • Featured content: Wikipedia stays warm
    Nine articles, seven lists, eleven images, and one topic were promoted to "featured status" this week on the English Wikipedia.
  • Arbitration report: Richard case closes
    On Thursday, arbitrator Coren resigned, following closely on the heels of Hersfold's resignation on Wednesday. There are two open cases. A final decision has been given in the Richard case.
  • Technology report: Visual Editor "on schedule"
    The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.

The Signpost: 25 March 2013

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  • Featured content: One and a half soursops
    Seven articles, one list, six pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Arbitration report: Two open cases
    This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute over transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.
  • News and notes: Sue Gardner to leave WMF; German Wikipedians spearhead another effort to close Wikinews
    Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, has announced her plans to leave the position when a successor is recruited. Ranked as one of the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine, Sue Gardner is widely associated with the rise of the Wikimedia movement as a major custodian of human knowledge and cultural products.
  • Technology report: The Visual Editor: Where are we now, and where are we headed?
    Since its inception in May 2011, the Foundation's Visual Editor project has grown to become one of its main focuses. As the project nears its two-year birthday, the Signpost caught up with Visual Editor project manager James Forrester to discuss the progress on the project.

The Signpost: 01 April 2013

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  • Special report: Who reads which Wikipedia?
    The Wikimedia Foundation has released its latest report card for the movement's hundreds of sites. The WMF has published statistics about the sites since 2009, but only recently have these been expanded in scope and depth to provide a rich source of data for investigating the movement and the world it serves. Dutch-born Erik Zachte is the driver of the WMF's statistical output, and he writes that the report card and accompanying traffic statistics comprise "enough tables, bar charts and plots to keep you busy for a while".
  • WikiProject report: Special: FAQs
    This week's Report is dedicated to answering our readers' questions about WikiProjects. The following Frequently Asked Questions came from feedback at the WikiProject Report's talk page, the WikiProject Council's talk page, and from previous lists of FAQs.
  • Featured content: What the ?
    The Signpost interviewed prolific featured content creator and former Signpost "featured content" report writer Crisco 1492 about ? and Indonesian cinema. ? was the "Today's featured article" for 1 April 2013. 1 April is popularly known as April Fools' Day in many countries.
  • Arbitration report: Three open cases
    A case brought by Lecen involves several articles about former Argentinian president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).

The Signpost: 08 April 2013

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  • Wikizine: WMF scales back feature after outcry
    Numerous Wikimedia Commons editors have chimed in on the Wikimedia Foundation's deployment of a new feature to its mobile website. Allowing anonymous users to register and upload pictures for use in an article, the feature was placed prominently at the top of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.
  • WikiProject report: Earthshattering WikiProject Earthquakes
    This week, we felt the world tremble in the presence of WikiProject Earthquakes. The project was started in May 2008 to deal with articles about earthquakes, aftershocks, seismology, seismologists, plate tectonics, and related articles. While the project has seen success building 14 Featured Articles, one A-class Article, and 21 Good Articles, a fairly heavy workload remains, with a relative WikiWork rating of 4.94. WikiProject Earthquakes maintains a portal, a list of open tasks, a popular pages listing, and an article alerts watchlist.
  • News and notes: French intelligence agents threaten Wikimedia volunteer
    Last Friday, the Wikimedia movement awoke to news that one of their number—Rémi Mathis, a French volunteer editor—had been summoned to the offices of the interior intelligence service DCRI and threatened with criminal charges and fines if he did not delete an article on the French Wikipedia about a radio station used by the French military.
  • Arbitration report: Subject experts needed for Argentine History
    The arbitration committee is looking for expertise in Argentina and the Spanish language for a case involving former Argentinean president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).
  • Featured content: Wikipedia loves poetry
    Four articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Technology report: Testing week
    The deployment of phase 2 of Wikidata to the English Wikipedia, originally scheduled for 8 April but delayed due to technical problems, may be rescheduled again as the result of community resistance.

The Signpost: 15 April 2013

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  • Op-ed: How do we fix RfA inactivity?
    The RfA process is widely discussed here on the English Wikipedia and it has been well documented that less and less new Requests for adminship are being filed. There are an abundance of bytes devoted to the discussion and analysis of this situation and plenty of hands have been wrung over the matter. Various RfCs have attempted to find a way to fix the problem. Many proposals have been made offering solutions, some more potentially drastic than others, with the goal of making the changes necessary to kick–start RfA back into regular action. However, Wikipedia operates based on consensus and, to this point, there are have simply been too many disagreeing views for us to reach a consensus on how to increase RfA activity.
  • WikiProject report: Unity in Diversity: South Africa
    This week, we ventured to WikiProject South Africa. The project was started in February 2005 and is home to thirteen pieces of featured material, two A-class articles, and twenty-one good articles.
  • News and notes: Another admin reform attempt flops
    The most recent move to reform the requests for adminship process on the English Wikipedia has failed, after a complex and drawn-out three-step procedure for community input was subject to decreasing participation as time wore on and came up with no clear consensus.

The Signpost: 22 April 2013

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  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Editor Retention
    This week, we spent some time with a project that develops tools and methods for improving the user experience in the hope that new users will continue editing the encyclopedia. The project was started in July 2012 and has grown to include 124 members. The project's members partner with the Teahouse and the Welcoming Committee to spread WikiLove, welcome new users, encourage civility, and other related activities.
  • News and notes: Milan conference a mixed bag
    The Wikimedia Conference is an annual meeting of the chapters to discuss their status and the organisational development of the Wikimedia movement. For the first time it included groups that wish to be considered for WMF affiliation as thematic organisations and one of the three groups that was recently affiliated as a user group. The conference was also attended by members of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) Board of Trustees, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the WMF Affiliations Committee, and a representative of the Wikivoyage Association.
  • Featured content: Batfish in the Red Sea
    Nine articles, four lists, eight pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
  • Technology report: A flurry of deployments
    On Monday, the English Wikipedia became the 12th wiki to be able to pull data from the central Wikidata.org repository, with other wikis scheduled to receive the update on Wednesday.

The Signpost: 29 April 2013

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  • News and notes: Chapter furore over FDC knockbacks; First DC GLAM boot-camp
    The Funds Dissemination Committee released its recommendations to the WMF board last Sunday. The news that the Hong Kong chapter's application for US$212K had failed was followed by a strongly worded resignation announcement by Deryck Chan on the public Wikimedia-l mailing-list.
  • In the media: Wikipedia's sexism; Yuri Gadyukin hoax
    On 24 April 2013, novelist Amanda Filipacchi published what turned out to be an influential op-ed in the New York Times; illuminating the unusual background of the Yuri Gadyukin hoax.
  • Featured content: Wiki loves video games
    Nine articles, three lists, three pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" this week.
  • WikiProject report: Japanese WikiProject Baseball
    This week, we traveled to the Japanese Wikipedia's WikiProject Baseball for perspectives from a version of Wikipedia that treats WikiProjects as their own unique namespace (プロジェクト:) independent of "Wikipedia:".

The Signpost: 06 May 2013

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  • News and notes: Candidates nominating for Foundation elections; Looking ahead to Wikimania 2014
    Although not yet in great numbers, candidates are coming forward for Wikimedia Foundation elections, which will be held from 1 to 15 June. The elections will fill vacancies in three categories, the most prominent of which will be the three community-elected seats on the ten-member Board of Trustees (or the first Board meeting after the election results are announced, if sooner). The current two-year terms for these trustee positions ends on 1 September.
  • Technology report: Foundation successful in bid for larger Google subsidy
    The Wikimedia Foundation will be receiving more than $100,000 worth of free developer time courtesy of internet giant Google, it was announced this week. The funds, allocated as part of Google's Summer of Code programme, will support up to 21 student developers through three months of coding time.
  • Featured content: WikiCup update: full speed ahead!
    May sees the beginning of Round 3 of the 2013 WikiCup, with 33 of the original 127 competitors remaining. ... six articles, ten pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • In the media: New Wikipedia for Schools edition; Anders Behring Breivik's Wikipedia contributions
    The SOS Children's Villages news service advised on 3 May 2013 that Wikipedia for Schools 2013 is nearly ready for release. ... On 26 April 2013, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation published an article reviewing Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's edits to the English Wikipedia, where it revealed the name of Breivik's English Wikipedia account.
  • WikiProject report: Earn $100 in cash... and a button!
    This week's English Wikipedia project, WikiProject Biophysics, is home to several experts in their fields and a collaboration with the Biophysical Society. The project is hosting a contest through July 15 with six contributors winning $100 in cash and given the opportunity to attend the 2014 meeting of the Biophysical Society in San Francisco. Other strong entries will be awarded barnstars online and everyone who contributes can receive a physical button mailed out to them.

The Signpost: 13 May 2013

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  • News and notes: WMF–community ruckus on Wikimedia mailing list
    The removal of administrator rights from all volunteers on the Wikimedia Foundation's official website sparked a highly emotional reaction on the Wikimedia-l mailing list—one of the largest off-wiki methods of communication for the Wikimedia movement.
  • WikiProject report: Knock Out: WikiProject Mixed Martial Arts
    This week, we spent some time watching WikiProject Mixed Martial Arts, which was started in August 2005 and has grown to include 12 Good Articles and a Featured List.

The Signpost: 20 May 2013

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  • WikiProject report: Classical Greece and Rome
    This week, we traveled to WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. The project was started in May 2006 and has 37 featured articles.
  • In the media: Qworty incident continues
    Salon.com published another article detailing the ongoing incidents with Wikipedia user Qworty, who has identified himself as Robert Clark Young. It documents Qworty's role in the controversy involving Amanda Filipacchi's op-ed, which kindled a debate on Wikipedia sexism as it relates to categories, where Qworty was responsible for a series of revenge edits against Filipacchi in the days after she released her op-ed.
  • Featured content: Up in the air
    Nine articles, six lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

Love history & culture? Get involved in WikiProject World Digital Library!

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World Digital Library Wikipedia Partnership - We need you!
Hi Wayiran! I'm the Wikipedian In Residence at the World Digital Library, a project of the Library of Congress and UNESCO. I'm recruiting Wikipedians who are passionate about history & culture to participate in improving Wikipedia using the WDL's vast free online resources. Participants can earn our awesome WDL barnstar and help to disseminate free knowledge from over 100 libraries in 7 different languages. Multilingual editing encouraged!!! But being multilingual is not a necessity to make this project a success. Please sign up to participate here. Thanks for editing Wikipedia and I look forward to working with you! 14:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 May 2013

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  • News and notes: First-ever community election for FDC positions
    Alongside the Signpost's interviews with the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) Board of Trustees candidates, the Signpost asked the candidates for the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and its Ombudsperson position a series of questions relating to the positions they may be taking on. For the FDC candidates, this will include specific recommendations to the WMF on how to disburse over US$11 million in donors' funds to affiliate organizations, something which appears to have garnered little attention from the editing community at large so far.
  • In the media: Pagans complain about Qworty's anti-Pagan editing
    In the continuing saga of User:Qworty's outing as author Robert Clark Young, several blogs and websites covered the now-banned user's anti-Pagan editing. In an article published on 22 May 2013, TechEye described Qworty's edits as a "reign of terror" and were pleased to find that he had not succeeded in removing several prominent Pagan biographies from the encyclopedia.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Geographical Coordinates
    This week, we plotted out the demarcations of WikiProject Geographical Coordinates, which aims to create a single standard of handling coordinates in Wikipedia articles.
  • Featured content: Life of 2π
    Twelve articles, four lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Technology report: Amsterdam hackathon: continuity, change, and stroopwafels
    Second only to the technical track of Wikimania in terms of numbers, the Berlin Hackathon (2009–2012) provided those with an interest in the software that underpins Wikimedia wikis and supports its editors a place to gather, exchange ideas and learn new skills.

The Signpost: 05 June 2013

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  • From the editor: Signpost developments
    I am excited to announce that a Portuguese-language journal, Correio da Wikipédia has been launched by Vitorvicentevalente. It has just published its third edition, and I encourage readers who speak the language to read and contribute to its already-expansive coverage of the Portuguese Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement.
  • Featured content: A week of portraits
    Five articles, four lists, and thirteen images were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
  • Discussion report: Return of the Discussion report
    This is mostly a list of requests for comment believed to be active on 4 June 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC or watchlist notices.
  • In the media: China blocks secure version of Wikipedia
    An article on TheNextWeb.com says that the Chinese Government has effectively blocked Wikipedia by cutting off access to the HTTP Secure (https) "workaround", almost completely cutting off access to those in China.
  • WikiProject report: Operation Normandy
    This week, we reflect on the anniversary of D-Day by storming the shores of Operation Normandy, a special initiative of WikiProject Military History.

The Signpost: 12 June 2013

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  • News and notes: How Wikimedia affiliates are spending $8.4 million; PRISM scandal
    Late last year, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) awarded $8.4 million in donors' money to 11 Wikimedia entities, including the Wikimedia Foundation and 10 nationally defined chapters. Under this arrangement, these organisations are required to issue quarterly reports on how far they have progressed towards their declared programmatic and financial goals. The FDC has now announced that all 11 completed and submitted their reports by the 1 April deadline, and have responded to each.
  • Featured content: Mixing Bowl Interchange
    Seven articles, two lists, five pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • In the media: VisualEditor will "change world history"
    In an article published by the Huffington Post's United Kingdom edition, writer Thomas Church asserts that the new VisualEditor will change history, literally. It says that Wikipedia's mark-up language has been to its advantage, as most people didn't bother trying to learn it
  • Op-ed: The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons
    I've long thought that we should get rid of the Wikimedia Commons as we know it. Commons has evolved into a project with interests that compete with the needs of the primary users of Commons and the reason it was created. It's also understaffed, which results in poor curation, large administrative backlogs, and poor policy development.
  • Traffic report: Who holds the throne?
    Last week's most popular article list on the English Wikipedia was dominated by the massively popular TV series Game of Thrones, which claimed six slots in the top 25, including the top three. Its popularity was likely stoked by the most recent episode, The Rains of Castamere. Bollywood continued to increase its share of views as well, aided by the tragic suicide of star Nafisa Khan.
  • WikiProject report: Processing WikiProject Computing
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Computing. Started in October 2003, the project has grown to include 17 featured articles, 11 featured lists, 3 pieces of featured media, and 80 good articles.

Speedy deletion nomination of CloniZER

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If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on CloniZER, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 10:32, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned non-free image File:CloniZER Logo.jpg

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Thanks for uploading File:CloniZER Logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 12:17, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned non-free image File:Ifilm logo.png

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Thanks for uploading File:Ifilm logo.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 02:13, 23 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

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Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability 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. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:59, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:People of Khorasan

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Template:People of Khorasan has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. --woodensuperman 10:20, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of File:Iran Biruni.jpg

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Notice

The file File:Iran Biruni.jpg has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

unused, low-res, no obvious use

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:02, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Afghanistan

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Hello Wayiran, your name has been removed from the less active members list at WikiProject Afghanistan/Members and moved to the former section of the members list. This is because you have not edited for over a year. If you become active again, feel free to move your name back to the active members lists. Cheers, —Danre98(talk^contribs) 15:31, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Persian alchemists has been nominated for renaming

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Category:Persian alchemists has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 00:24, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]