This is an archive of past discussions with User:SpacemanSpiff. 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.
Some of Wikimedia's most valuable photographs have been shot and uploaded under free licenses as a direct result of the annual Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) event each September. Last year, the project was conducted on a European level, resulting in the submission of an extraordinary 168,208 free images of cultural heritage sites ("monuments") from 18 countries, making it the world's largest photographic competition. Organising the 2012 event—which has just opened and will run for the full month of September—has required input from chapters and volunteers in 35 countries.
Developers are currently discussing the possibility of a MediaWiki Foundation to oversee those aspects of MediaWiki development that relate to non-Wikimedia wikis. The proposal was generated after a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list about generalising Wikimedia's CentralAuth system.
Five featured pictures were promoted this week, including a video explaining the recent landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. NASA called the final minutes of the complicated landing procedure "the seven minutes of terror".
Since May 2012 I've been a Wikimedia Foundation community fellow with the task of researching and improving dispute resolution on English Wikipedia. Surveying members of the community has revealed much about their thoughts on and experiences with dispute resolution. I've analysed processes to determine their use and effectiveness, and have presented ideas that I hope will improve the future of dispute resolution.
The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)
Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.
Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow
In this issue:
Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
Research: The most recent DR data
Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
some user named secret of success, without explaining, is removing content from Telugu cinema and is replacing it with 2 year old content, I think it is not correct. I presume he may be vandalising the page, as i have been seeing, the article may need complete protected status, to avoid consistent vandalism and edit wars. I request your kind self to guide me. Bioradsq (talk) 12:38, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to the initiative of Yuvi Panda and Notnarayan, the Signpost now has an Android app, free for download on Google Play. ... but would readers be interested in an iOS app for Apple devices?
Much like article content, the English Wikipedia's help pages have grown organically over the years. Although this has produced a great deal of useful documentation, with time many of the pages have become poorly maintained or have grown overwhelmingly complicated.
Philip Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, wrote an open letter in the New Yorker addressed to Wikipedia this week, alleging severe inaccuracies in the article on his The Human Stain (2000).
After a week's hiatus, the WikiProject Report returns with an interview featuring WikiProject Fungi. Started in March 2006, the project has grown to include over 9,000 pages, including 47 Featured Articles and 176 Good Articles. The project maintains a list of high priority missing articles and stubs that need expansion.
In dramatic events that came to light last week, two English Wikipedia volunteers—Doc James (James Heilman) and Wrh2 (Ryan Holliday)—are being sued in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Internet Brands, the owner of Wikitravel.com. Both Wikipedians have also been volunteer Wikitravel editors (and in Holliday's case, a volunteer administrator). IB's complaints focus on both editors' encouragement of their fellow Wikitravel volunteers to migrate to a proposed non-commercial travel guidance site that would be under the umbrella of the WMF.
In its September issue, the peer-reviewed journal First Monday published The readability of Wikipedia, reporting research which shows that the English Wikipedia is struggling to meet Flesch reading ease test criteria, while the Simple English Wikipedia has "lost its focus".
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for August 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).
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.
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.
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.
You seem to be unaware of the previous disputes over this article. Please be specific with your concerns so that I can address them in a better way. The message you left was very vague, and please do not revert the last edit. Discuss whatever you have to on the talk page first, if you go through the article and the citations that have been given now, Im sure you'll be satisfied that none of the WikiPolicies were violated this time around. If you find any such anomaly, try and remove it manually rather than just blatantly reverting it. Ruderow—Preceding undated comment added 11:31, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
And please see if the sources really are cherry picked and unreliable as Sitush thinks. He seems to have a problem with all the edits to that article, whether sourced or un-sourced. Do compare the sources cited by him with mine and draw a conclusion. As you'll know, Im not much of an experienced editor here, and I am keen on learning more, so even if you find problems with whatever was written by me, point them out and tell me how to correct them, but just don't leave the article as it was, it was extremely misguiding. How it was, we can discuss further on the talk page, Ill not use up this space more. A lot actually has already been discussed on the Kulin Kayastha talk page, and I have tried to address all the issues that came up there. But, somehow Sitush is bent upon proving whatever he's written and wherever he's seen it from to be absolutely infallible, and to be really honest, I think he's being trying to bully me to give in, being an experienced editor and I being so naive. On the last occasion as well, i.e. before he got me banned, I sought help on how to take this to a dispute resolution forum as well but to no use, I just got banned. Ruderow—Preceding undated comment added 11:53, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Btw, Ruderow, you did not just get banned. In fact, Salvio specifically unblocked you so that you could file something per WP:DR but it seems that you chose instead to walk away until the orecise day that your ban expired. That is not encouraging behaviour. - Sitush (talk) 12:06, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
When you come back from your block for sockpuppetry, edit in line with our policies, else you are likely to be either blocked or topic banned for a much longer duration. —SpacemanSpiff04:04, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
It's definitely meatpuppetry if not socking. My only concern here is that Quicksilver's command of the English language is a lot better. But I haven't looked deeply, so I don't know for sure. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff09:34, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
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."
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.
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
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.
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
I'll let the CU sort this one out as there's just a lot on this; also think a sleeper check might be needed, I've blocked two in the last two days. —SpacemanSpiff02:40, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
