This is an archive of past discussions with User:Simply south. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
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.
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.
On 27 December the Wikimedia Foundation announced the conclusion of their ninth annual fundraiser, which attracted more than 1.2 million donors. The appeal reached its goal of US$25 million, even though fundraising banners ran for only nine days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I am very pleased to award Simply south with the Motto of the Day Barnstar Award for your invaluable contributions during the past year. Thanks to your efforts and support, our project is still alive. Keep it up! … I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a very happy 2013! –pjoef (talk • contribs) 09:42, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2013}} to people's talk pages with a friendly message.
Well...
...thank you very much. I actually find it quite relaxing... and it improves my geographical knowledge immensely! Johnlp (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Within the project, discussions included the featured article review of the London congestion charge, edits to London Buses route 24, date of publication of a 1938 LU stock emergency equipment diagram, Metropolitan Railway being TFA to mark the 150th anniversary of the tube and bus routes in station articles.
Within other related projects, relevant discussions included unidentified station photo locations in London, linking to train station, bus routes in station articles, template font problems, railway route boxes, primary road destinations in infoboxes and River Lee move discussions.
Requests
If you want to post a request for help with an article, finding a photograph or seeking reference material, contact the editor
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
You may be interested in participating in an interview with WikiProject Infoboxes that is scheduled to run in the Signpost's WikiProject Report. The fourth set of questions deals with the route diagram template and could use your expertise. Feel free to contribute to any of the other sets of questions that catch your eye. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 23:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited List of Benidorm cast and characters, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page British (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Hi, this wasn't a missed section. Although more than 30 days old, MiszaBot is configured on this page with |minthreadsleft=5 which leaves a minimum of five threads behind - which is what was left following this edit. I added a thread on 12 Feb, so the 13 Feb run would have archived off the oldest, to leave five again. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:39, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a long, daresay storied history with hoaxes; our internal list documents 198 of the largest ones we have caught as of 4 January 2013. Why?
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.
Wikimedia UK, the non-profit organization devoted to furthering the goals of the Wikimedia movement in the United Kingdom, has published the findings of a governance review conducted by Compass Partnership.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hi - in reply to your message, yes I do get time-out errors on the south section occasionally, though not as bad as I found the north section (which is why I'm intending to split that one when I start work on it). I find that mostly it saves, but times out before it re-loads the page, so nothing's lost, though I've got into the habit of doing a select all - copy before submitting just in case. One thing I've found that does speed things up is disabling Show preview on first edit in the editing section of your preferences, as this dramatically speeds up the time to load the edit box. I don't think there's much else that can be done, as the page is pushing towards the boundaries of the template limit.
On the subject of complexity, I really think the level of detail you've gone to around Queens Park is unnecessary for an overview diagram that's showing such a large section of route. Even Template:Watford DC line doesn't go to that much detail. How do you feel about this proposal (right)? It shows the Bakerloo diving off underneath the mainlines from the DC lines, but retains the parallel icons to keep the indication of the proximity of the two tracks. I don't think there's any need to show the turn-back siding at Harrow & Wealdstone - we don't show sidings in other places, and the page isn't about the Bakerloo anyway.
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).
"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.
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).
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.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Star of Caledonia, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Gretna (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Within the project, discussions included the Metropolitan Railway being TFA to mark the 150th anniversary of the tube, bus routes in station articles, comparing American pseudo facts with the London Underground, renaming Uxbridge Road station and identifying stations in photographs.
Within other related projects, relevant discussions included colours of railway lines, age of metro systems, coordinates in infoboxes, {{S-line}}, watersports in London, aqueducts, lists of bus, distance measurement of British roads, rail usage figures, the West Coast Main Line, identification and rail freight .
Requests
If you want to post a request for help with an article, finding a photograph or seeking reference material, contact the editor
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is a proposal to discontinue play and mark as historical the "Word before last" word association game. As one of the contributors in the last year, please feel free to stop in and comment. Hasteur (talk) 21:23, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
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".
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.
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.
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.
Thank goodness someone—namely yourself—had the good sense and bravery to revert the latest additions to the above page. Perhaps that contributor should start a new page on "Edinburgh Castle and the paranormal"—but I hope not! Kim Traynor | Talk17:21, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your message. I'd object to those additions on other grounds. I'd like to think Wikipedia deals with facts! Also, wrong placing, disproportionatality, and they carried a distinct whiff of advertising ghost tours for potential visitors to the city. Kim Traynor | Talk18:02, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
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.
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.
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.
A paper presented at last month's CSCW Conference observes that "Mass collaboration systems are often characterized as unstructured organizations lacking rule and order", yet Wikipedia has a well developed body of policies to support it as an organization.
That image is rubbish - it's not got a gun carriage, it's just a terrible photoshop and it's not what it's captioned as. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.200.207.66 (talk) 13:32, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
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".
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.
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.
Customer satisfaction high as Emirates Air Line carries two million passengers
Barclays Cycle Hire southwest extension construction works begin
Wide-aisle gates at 180 Tube stations means more independent and quicker journeys
DLR carries record-breaking one hundred million passengers in one year
Transport for London team up with policing partners to donate unclaimed bikes to local charity
Below inflation taxi fare increase to take effect - reminder
March
TfL issues OJEU for ticketing and fare collection services beyond 2015
Majority of Taxi and Private Hire licence fees reduced or frozen
Oyster customer services moves to a local rate number
Three new lifts transform accessibility at Crystal Palace station
Transport for London proposes a new Sunday service for bus route B12
Transport for London urges teenagers to 'Stop Think! Live' on the road
Her Majesty The Queen, HRH Duke of Edinburgh and HRH Duchess of Cambridge visit Baker Street Underground station as LU celebrates 150 years of serving London
New lifts for Edgware Road (Bakerloo line) station
TfL launches competition to find operator to run Crossrail services
Transport for London launches competition to create accessibility apps
'Crossrail for the bike' in Mayor's £913m cycling plan
Emirates Air Line to close for one week for planned maintenance
Third public consultation results for Northern line extension confirms strong support for Tube link
TfL opens the door to innovative ideas
Thames Clippers to operate enhanced River Bus services between Putney and Blackfriars
Tube customer satisfaction hits record high as strong reliability performance maintained
Within the project, discussions included the Metropolitan Railway being TFA to mark the 150th anniversary of the tube, bus routes in station articles, comparing American pseudo facts with the London Underground, renaming Uxbridge Road station and identifying stations in photographs.
Within other related projects, relevant discussions included a dispute over railway systems, various discussions on railway lines, station categories, historical station usage data, identifying train locations, train timetables, images, colours, a reliable source in road articles, road junction templates, signs, boundaries, referencing Wikipedia, deletions of lists of bus routes and a proposed official bus route guide.
Requests
If you want to post a request for help with an article, finding a photograph or seeking reference material, contact the editor
DYK nomination of North British, Arbroath and Montrose Railway
Hello! Your submission of North British, Arbroath and Montrose Railway at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Not a drastic problem but could the wording of the hook be changed? I notice you have clarified the relevant part of the article under the 'Montrose viaduct' section, as that had also been rather clumsily worded initially? I've also posted this on Thin Cat's talk page as I wasn't sure where would be best. Thanks! SagaciousPhil - Chat16:30, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your encouraging interest. I have suggested an ALT1. Hope I have followed the right procedure. Thincat (talk) 18:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
The annual passenger usage is based on sales of tickets in stated financial years from Office of Rail and Road estimates of station usage. The statistics are for passengers arriving and departing from each station and cover twelve-month periods that start in April. Methodology may vary year on year. Usage since the period 2019–20 have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the period 2020–23.
As you'll see, it automatically fills in the usage of each station. The only down-side is that you also have to provide the three letter code foe each station, however this should be available in the station article's infobox. However the advantages are that it saves having to add each number individually, and when new data is available the templates can be expanded without having to update every line that transcludes it. Obviously I don't want to roll this out until I've entered the data for other years. This will be a lot of work, but I'm willing to do this if there's support for me to carry on. What I don't want to happen is for me to put in that work, only for it to be rejected by people saying they prefer the way it's done at the moment. What do you think? Is this worth pursuing or not? An optimist on the run! 21:01, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
It looks good and easier. UKsta-u, although having been around a couple of years, and associated templates, have only been implemented on a few lines so far and it should not be that hard to change them. I don't think anyone will mind and truthfully I think I'm the one who has implemented most of them anyway. Thanks for the effort.
I also wondered about exploring 1997 - 2002. With the current coding as you know u1-u8 are set up only to handle 2002-2011 and future usage data and u9 will be easy to add to sort this. Or I wonder if in the disclaimer it should only note about as far back as 2002. 1997-2002 may require redoing everything again. Simply south......eating shoes for just 7 years21:35, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Not a problem - once I've populated the template for each year's worth of data, the templates can be adapted to use any years you like. An optimist on the run! 06:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Do you think there could be a way to add extra notes as well? On many lines there are limitations on open and closed stations, duplication (although rare see for example Northern Line Merseyrail) or with London stations with no data (Goblin being a good example, due to essentially travelcard data not being separated). Simply south......eating shoes for just 7 years11:24, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I missed this comment before. I've added the option of overriding a parameter by manually setting u1, u2 etc. See the entry for Backhorse Road in the example above. Hope this helps. An optimist on the run! 14:16, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
An article by John Sweeney published on 22 April 2013 on scnow.com, the website of the Florence, South Carolina Morning News, reported that Florence city officials have taken to monitoring and correcting the Wikipedia article on their city.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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:".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
An article published on May 10 on Odwyerpr.com written by Greg Hazley documented a "spar" between Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and public relations firm Qorvis partner Matt Lauer, who disputes Wikipedia's guideline discouraging public relations firms from editing articles on their clients.
Nominations closed last Friday for the three community-elected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) ten-member Board of Trustees—the ultimate corporate authority of the worldwide WMF. The Board has influential roles and responsibilities over one of the most powerful global information sources on the Internet.
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.
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 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.
The elections for the three community seats on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees start on 8 June. This second and final part of the interview explores two broad themes: Meta, the site that hosts movement-wide coordination; and offline entities—the chapters and the new thematic organisations and user groups.
This week, we plotted out the demarcations of WikiProject Geographical Coordinates, which aims to create a single standard of handling coordinates in Wikipedia articles.
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.
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.
On 31 May, the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal and Community Advocacy team announced that the Wikivoyage logo would have to be replaced, because it has become the subject of a cease-and-desist letter from the World Trade Organization (WTO).
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.
Last week, the Signpost reported on a feeling at the Amsterdam hackathon that Toolserver developers were coming round to the idea of migrating to Wikimedia Labs.
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.
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
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.
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.
Two cases, Race and politics and Tea Party movement have been suspended. Argentine History remains open, and a proposed decision was posted on 12 June.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Two cases, Race and politics and Tea Party movement have been suspended. Argentine History remains open, and a proposed decision was posted on 12 June.
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.
Following last week's op-ed by Gigs ("The Tragedy of Wikipedia's Commons"), the Signpost is carrying two contrary opinions from MichaelMaggs, a bureaucrat on Wikimedia Commons, and Mattbuck, a British Commons administrator.
The season finale of Game of Thrones ensured that the epic high fantasy series would dominate the top 10 again last week; however, it was joined by Maurice Sendak and Man of Steel.
With erysichton elaborata, the Swedish Wikipedia passed the one million article Rubicon this week. While this is a mostly symbolic achievement, serving as a convenient benchmark with which to gain publicity and attention in an increasingly statistical world, the particular method by which the Swedish site has passed the mark has garnered significant attention—and controversy.
The WMF's engineering report for May was published recently on the Wikimedia blog and on the MediaWiki wiki ("friendly" summary version), giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.
Richard Farmbrough was set to have his day in court, but as events transpired, this was not to be so. On 25 March 2013, an accusation was made against Farmbrough at Arbitration Enforcement (AE), claiming that he violated the terms of an automated edit restriction. Within hours, Farmbrough had filed his own request with the arbitration committee, citing the newly filed AE request and claiming that the motion was being used "in an absurd way" in the filing of enforcement requests: "I have not made any edits that a sane person would consider automation."
With most TV shows on hiatus for the summer, attention has turned to movies, celebrity and sports. The dramatic events at the 2013 Confederations Cup drew massive attention, as did summer blockbusters like Man of Steel and World War Z. But the most searched event of the week was the tragic and unexpected death of popular actor James Gandolfini on June 19.
The Daily Dot has examined the perennial controversy over explicit or pornographic media on Commons. This latest salvo was touched off when Russavia uploaded a portrait of Jimmy Wales made by the artist Pricasso, who paints with his genitalia.
A comparative work by T. Yasseri., A. Spoerri, M. Graham and J. Kertész looks at the 100 most controversial topics in 10 language versions of Wikipedia, and tries to make sense of the similarities and differences in these lists.
Less than three days after the close of voting, the volunteer election committee posted the results on Meta. The worldwide Wikimedia movement has elected three WMF trustees for two-year terms on the 10-seat Board: Samuel Klein (supported by 43.5% of voters), Phoebe Ayers (38.3%), and María Sefidari (35.6%). The new trustees will take their seats at a critical time for the movement: one of the first tasks in their terms will be to help the Board to find and approve the new executive director to take up the top job when Sue Gardner departs.
This week, the Signpost interviews Adam Cuerden, a Wikimedian who has been for years gathering featured pictures, and who constantly participates in what could be his favourite part of the project. Cuerden dedicates most of his time to scanning and restoring old, valuable illustrative works. He explains to us how the featured process works, its relation with other parts of the encyclopedia, and how pictures evolve before reaching featured status.
This week, we walked the runway with WikiProject Fashion. Started in March 2007, the project is home to 4 Featured Articles and 41 Good Articles. The project has a lengthy list of how you can help and a list of Article Alerts.
Amy Chozick's profile of Jimmy Wales in the New York Times sparked significant controversy in international news outlets this week. Chozick's profile covered Wales's personal life, including his 12-year-old daughter, ex-wife, and current wife Kate Garvey, describing Wales himself as "a well-groomed version of a person who has been slumped over a computer drinking Yoo-hoo for hours." Chozick described his current role in Wikipedia as "Benevolent Dictator for Life", a statement which garnered conflict from all corners of the web, including from Wales, who responded to the piece as a whole with a lengthy talk page statement.
This week, the Signpost went to the kennel and interviewed WikiProject Dogs. The project has several featured and good articles, along with a large number of "Did you know" entries. We asked three project members about the challenges of creating, curating, and maintaining canine content in an increasingly dog-obsessed world.
The key annual event in the Wikimedia calendar, Wikimania 2013, will be held in Hong Kong in just five weeks' time. Among the events will be a presentation by two people who are working to promote the development of medical content on Wikimedia projects. One is James Heilman of Wiki Project Med, a non-profit dedicated to making "clear, reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date educational resources and information in the biomedical and related social sciences freely available to all people in the language of their choice". The other is Lori Thicke, president of Translators Without Borders (TWB), the Connecticut-based organisation set up in 2010 to provide pro-bono translation services for humanitarian non-profits
The VisualEditor extension has gone live by default to registered users on the English Wikipedia, marking a huge milestone in a project that has taken the best part of a decade to reach fruition. The extension was previously described as "the biggest and most important change to our user experience we’ve ever undertaken" by the WMF team behind it.
The real world made a strong showing in the top 10 last week, as news stories such as Yahoo!'s purchase of Tumblr, the murder of Odin Lloyd, the continuing drama over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ill-health of Nelson Mandela crowded out the usual roster of TV shows, movies, websites and video games. Not that they were entirely excluded, of course.
Following a one-month period of moderated discussion, Tea Party movement has been reopened by the Committee. The proposed decisions are currently being voted upon. Race and politics remains suspended pending the return of User:Apostle12.
This is Wikinews' fundamental problem: it can neither do a good job providing a summary of world news, nor does it have any special focus that it does well. It's a collection of random articles, with only the occasional, passing resemblance to important current events.
In apparent acknowledgment of the urgency of two issues facing the Wikimedia movement—the need to engage both women and the global south—the WMF Board has appointed Ana Toni as one of its four expert members. Toni will bring rare expertise to the movement, and the Signpost understands that her skills in advocacy and her key roles in international NGOs are likely to be a natural match with the WMF as the hub of disseminating free knowledge around the world.
The fundamental idea of an infobox is clear: keep it simple and limited to essentials. At some point, however, these basic principles seem to have been abandoned, in favour of an approach akin to "the more the merrier".
This week, we explored the fantasy worlds of video game developer Square Enix by interviewing WikiProject Square Enix. The project began in September 2006 as a spin-off of WikiProject Final Fantasy, but today covers that, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and a variety of other game series, with exceptions explained in the interview below. The project is home to 32 pieces of Featured material and 104 Good and A-class articles.
Last week the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual plan for July 2013 to June 2014. It provides a surprisingly frank view—of past achievements and failures, and future goals and risks—that could be afforded only by a non-profit that is confident and beholden to no commercial or political interests.
The case Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds was opened. Voting on the Tea Party movement case continued, after a failed attempt at moderated discussion. A group tasked with deciding the content of the lead section of the Jerusalem article has reported back to the committee. Applications for checkuser and oversight permissions close on 22 July.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday on the most controversial articles on various language Wikipedias as determined by a cross-continental research group.
This week, the Signpost delved into the vast and complex areas of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that make up religion. WikiProject Religion has been around since 2005 and has a complex scope, in that it only takes articles that deal with religion in a non-sectarian sense, along with any articles that do not have a dedicated daughter project.
Contributors to Wikivoyage, the sister project adopted by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, are celebrating their 10th anniversary this week. ... The Wikimedia Foundation has announced via press release that it has partnered with Aircel to provide free mobile access to Wikipedia.
Death hangs over the top 10 this week, as tragic deaths both past and present continued to cast their pall over an already troubled world. The death of Corey Monteith led to a spike in interest in the man himself, his girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele, and the show that made them both famous, Glee.
The case Infoboxes was opened. The evidence phase continues in Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds. Voting on the proposed decision continues in the Tea Party movement case.
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Hello! Your submission of North British, Arbroath and Montrose Railway at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Not a drastic problem but could the wording of the hook be changed? I notice you have clarified the relevant part of the article under the 'Montrose viaduct' section, as that had also been rather clumsily worded initially? I've also posted this on Thin Cat's talk page as I wasn't sure where would be best. Thanks! SagaciousPhil - Chat 16:30, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Hello. This message is to inform you that an article that you wrote, List of The Magic School Bus characters, has been recently tagged with a notability notice. This means that it may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Please note that articles which do not meet these criteria may be merged, redirected, or deleted. Please consider adding reliable, secondary sources to the article in order to establish the topic's notability. You may find the following links useful when searching for sources: Find sources: "List of The Magic School Bus characters" – news · books · scholar · JSTOR · free images. Thank you for editing Wikipedia! VoxelBot 20:13, 24 May 2013 (UTC)