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The Signpost: 12 November 2012

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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.
Thirteen articles, six lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status last week.
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.
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.

Adoption

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Hi! I'm a new user on Wikipedia, and would like to be adopted and take your course. What do I need to do to become adopted by you? B. Jakob T. (talk) 21:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey there...sorry about the delay. If you wanted to take the course, just introduce yourself here, and we can get started on the policies lesson :) Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 17:55, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, my username is B. Jakob T., but my signature looks like this: Jakob. I have been on Wikipedia since the 19th of October, and I have attempted to create one article, but it wasn't notable enough. I am currently trying to create this. I would like to contribute to articles, i.e. fixing grammatical errors or removing disambiguation, and I would also like to fight vandalism. Thanks, Jakob 21:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

British & Irish topic ban repeal?

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Howdy Steven. Would you & DBD review my contributions? see if I'm reformed? GoodDay (talk) 19:41, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I made comments but as I'm unlikely to be active enough to debate them I've withdrawn them by "rollback". Consider them stricken. Pedro :  Chat  21:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I read the comments Pedro made, and he makes a good point. I think you should consider taking them on board. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 17:58, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I read Pedro's (now deleted) posts, too. I'm not certain as to what my self-declaration of being a Canadian republican, has to do with British & Irish articles. FWIW, I don't make pro-republican edits or arguments at Canadian monarchial articles. GoodDay (talk) 07:49, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

May I please have my topic ban lifted? I wish to expand my gnome edits. GoodDay (talk) 02:36, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is your evidence that you are a reformed character? Assume we haven't been watching closely; do the work for us. DBD 11:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here's 3 examples: [1], [2] & [3]. GoodDay (talk) 16:03, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's almost Christmas, and I'm in a generous mood, and while I've not had any angry mobs on my talk page for some time, it might be best to provide more info as DBD asks above. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 12:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Over 90% of my contributions have been gnome style. My edit summaries will lead you to them: Fix intro, The article 'is' the biography, Removing empty sections etc etc. GoodDay (talk) 15:51, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've given 3 examples. Do you both require more? and if so, how many? GoodDay (talk) 02:33, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here's 3 more [4], [5] & [6], there's more on the way. It may take awhile, but I'll give yas over 50 for starters. Other then that, I not completely certain as to what you're both looking for. GoodDay (talk) 08:48, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How about an argument against? Pick someone whom you've rubbed up the wrong way before and ask them to provide us with reasons (and evidence) why not. DBD 12:12, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't going to comment when I saw this pop up on my watch list because it gets tired having to see the same thing over and over. But seeing the DBD mentioned having someone who had issues with him in the past provide reasons why not. I can say just looking at his current talk page alone and not doing any further digging than that I can find no less than 5 threads going back only to the 29th of November warning him for the same behaviour that lead to both of his topic bans. User talk:GoodDay#Associate justices of the Supreme Court of the US, User talk:GoodDay#A fair warning, User talk:GoodDay#NLP, User talk:GoodDay#Scott, User talk:GoodDay#WP:OPENPARA. I should note I won't get any further into the situation here. I am sure if he went to AN to try and have the topic ban removed others would find a lot more than that if they looked through his edit history. -DJSasso (talk) 13:37, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
May I point out Dan, all but the NLP issue was resolved & within a short period of time. There's going to always be editors who'll throw negativity at me or try & keep me down. I'm not going to humiliate myself by kissing their asses. But I will avoid those continuing disputes on the British & Irish articles. Disputes like 1) What to name Derry, 2) Is a person British or Welsh, 3) Is Scotland a country or constituent country, 4) What is Northern Ireland -- questions such as these are no longer relevant to me. Furthermore, if you recall, some of the editors who agreed to the topic-ban, did so because I agreed to it - remeber the result was 50/50. Otherwise, I never would've been banned in the first place. GoodDay (talk) 16:06, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here's 4 more examples [7], [8], [9] & [10] of the types of edits I wish to make on British & Irish articles. GoodDay (talk) 23:32, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawing my appeal. I thought these community topic-bans were suppose to be preventative, not punitive :( GoodDay (talk) 06:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we are making it punitive. You've shown places that you've done gnome edits, and that's great, but the reason you were topic banned from these articles is because of how you interacted with others, and because of your attitudes. What I want to know is what's changed with how you deal people? What will you do differently to avoid conflict with other users? Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 07:47, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Along with respecting the aforementioned 4 conditions, I won't be immediately reverting editors who revert my edits & will respect the D in BRD more closely. Furthermore, I'll make greater efforts to AGF with disputing editors. GoodDay (talk) 08:00, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Steven - I made a suggestion to GoodDay about restrictions and mentoring here which he accepted. I may regret it, but willing to give it a go. What do you think? ----Snowded TALK 07:03, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I look forward to seeing it going well. DBD 12:36, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@Snowded, the conditions seem reasonable. If you could please keep an eye on GoodDay on these articles (I will do my best to as well) and let me know if there are any problems. @GoodDay, your topic ban is lifted subject to the restrictions imposed by Snowded. Please be very careful. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 02:12, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. GoodDay (talk) 04:59, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 19 November 2012

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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.
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.
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.
Seven featured articles, four featured lists and ten featured pictures – including the photograph that spawned the Streisand effect – were promoted this week.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include the question of ticker symbol placement and the notability of various types of creative performer.

User:Dennis Brown/RfA/Steven Zhang

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Due to your prior request, I have started an RfA review for you. I have others ongoing as well, and may not get them completed in order. I will notify you when I'm done, but may also notify you if I (or others) have questions for you to answer. For now, I would request you go and answer the existing questions at the bottom of the review page. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 18:28, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there...thanks so much, but for the time being, I think I need to focus all my energy on rounding up my fellowship. I'll have much more free time once that's concluded. Raincheck? Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 11:04, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
By all means. Ping me when you are ready, I will be happy to review at any time. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 17:20, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 November 2012

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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.
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.
Six articles, one list, and six images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
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.
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.

Information

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I noticed your username commenting at an Arbcom discussion regarding civility. An effort is underway that would likely benifit if your views were included. I hope you will append regards at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement/Questionnaire Thank you for considering this request. My76Strat (talk) 08:46, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 03 December 2012

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The global jury of Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the world’s largest photo contest, announced its results on 3 December.
Three articles, two lists, and four images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
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.
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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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.
Eight articles, four images, six lists, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
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.
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.


did you vote?

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hi there, your vote in ArbCom elections triggered a spoof CSRF alarm. Would you be so kind as to please confirm that you actually voted? :) Apologies for the inconvenience. Pundit|utter 07:33, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to be always causing trouble nowadays ;-). Yes, I confirm that I did vote in the election (I have no idea what that alarm is though :-)) Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 08:33, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Winter Wonderland

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Peace is a state of balance and understanding in yourself and between others, where respect is gained by the acceptance of differences, tolerance persists, conflicts are resolved through dialog, peoples rights are respected and their voices are heard, and everyone is at their highest point of serenity without social tension.

Happy Holidays. ```Buster Seven Talk 15:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Policies Lesson

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Many policies on Wikipedia are important. Some, like staying civil, signing your post on talk pages, and not vandalizing, are common sense.

However, other policies, such as sourcing, are not as clear. This policy states that you should not make edits that make claims or state facts if you do not have a reliable source. The trick part comes in when you ask the question, what is considered reliable? Sources like Twitter or Myspace are definitely not.

Another policy that is not very clear is notability. This states that if it does not have enough reliable sources to back it up, then it is not worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia.

To sum it up, policies try to keep Wikipedia an encyclopedia, not an advertising noticeboard, and also just to remind users to use common sense. Jakob 15:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's good. When you say the policy is unclear, do you mean you don't understand the meaning of it, or you just feel it's vague/unclear? If it's the former, please let me know and I'll try and explain it to you a bit better. If it's the latter, well, a lot of policies are a bit vague, but it's more important at times to follow the spirit of policy, rather than just what it says (the "letter"). But it seems like you've grasped the basics. Let me know when you want to move on to another lesson. Regards, Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 12:00, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for responding so late... When I said unclear, I meant that it's vague, but I understand the spirit. Sure, I'm ready to move on to the next lesson. –Jakob 15:23, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK, read over the Vandalism 1.1 lesson - let me know when you've read it and I'll give you the test. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 22:45, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Do you want me to do what you say in the lesson, like, finding three vandalizing edits? Oh, and I use Mozilla Firefox as my browser. Jakob 15:58, 31 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

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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.
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.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
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.
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').
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.

Letting you know.

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I've made one last request to Djsasso, to leave me alone. GoodDay (talk) 21:36, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mediation for Jerusalem

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Regarding your suggestion for mediation for Jerusalem, I agree with you that mediation would probably be better. The talk page of the article right now is a disaster, very disjointed and hard to follow, and I imagine the RfC would look no worse. There are already too many cooks in the kitchen, and I doubt anyone else would want to enter. Not to mention that participation in past RfCs hasn't exactly been a cross-section of the Wikipedia community.

But if ArbCom can't enjoin mediation, so you say, um... how would we get mediation? Mediation was attempted just last month, and it was rejected. If mediation isn't involuntary, we could conceivably (perhaps likely) face the same problem, with some people not wanting to participate (thereby preventing the RfM from being accepted). And how would its results be assured to have permanence? -- tariqabjotu 06:02, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Mediation can happen anywhere - it doesn't have to be at MedCom. I'm not naive enough to think such a mediation would resolve the dispute alone (you never know, anything is possible) but I think it is best that we try and work through proposed lede sections and get a few alternatives, then take those to a binding RFC. It's worked well in the past, and I think it'd work well here. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 06:08, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, it doesn't have to. But you'd have to agree it'd be a bit odd for MedCom to reject this issue only for it to be mediated anyway (esp. since I saw the conversation that led to it being rejected). I won't say who that reflects poorly upon... In that case, I don't see why -- if you're up for the challenge -- you wouldn't just give it a shot. Right now, the discussion is in dire need of structure, if nothing else. The state of the talk page now is a set of threads and subthreads running in parallel (or perpendicular perhaps). It's hard to follow what's going on, and it's not clear which ideas are floating to the top. -- tariqabjotu 06:27, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think the problem is that there's no forum that will serve as a location for the dispute. I have no problems creating structure and ground rules, and getting people to compromise, but the Mediation Cabal (where I used to do all informal mediation) was closed earlier this year, so it only leaves us with a few venues. You mention there was a conversation which led to the MedCom request being rejected? Do you mind showing me that discussion? Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 11:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What's wrong with doing it on the talk page or a subpage of the talk page? The conversation I was talking about was on the MedCom mailing list (as I am a member of the Committee, and thus am on the list), so I obviously can't show it to you. I don't mean to imply there was anything unusual or damning there, though; I just mean I observed some of the thought process that led to the RfM's rejection. -- tariqabjotu 15:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I totaly agree with Tariqabjotu's comments here above. I wrote the same to the ArbCom too.
RfC is difficult to manage. We can already see this on the talk page. Only a Mediation can solve the issue even if this also will be difficult to manage.
What is demoralizing is also that it just concerns 1 sentence (at best 1 paragraph) in a lead.
Reasonnable people could solve this in 15 minutes with some good will.
I suggest that the whole discussion is brought to a dedicated talk page or forum with special rules in particular regarding the interferences of people clearly would not want to discuss a constructive way.
Pluto2012 (talk) 15:09, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thought about this for a while, but I think that my best course of action to proceed would be for me to try and be a closer of the RFC. I put my name forward so I will see how that goes, I guess. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 22:44, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

BigzMMA accusation - again!

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Hello Steve, not too sure if you remember but a few months ago you were asked by User:Dennis Brown to give him your opinion over whether you believe that a blocked user called BigzMMA and myself were one in a same person.

Well now another SPI has been opened with very little more 'evidence' to this theory to say that we are the same. I am writing to ask if you could contribute to the case. I am not expecting you to defend me, but considering that you are indeed neutral to this situation (Dennis Brown did say that he felt that we are the same person), your opinion would be the most fairest, regardless of whether you don't believe I am BigzMMA or I am. Here is the link for the SPI, so when you get a minute if you could contribute to the case I would very much appreciate it. Thank you. Pound4Pound (talk) 10:53, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Holiday cheer

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Holiday Cheer
Michael Q. Schmidt my talk page is wishing you Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings.

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

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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.
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.
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.
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.

SPI clerking

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Steven, given you have only made three edits in the last three months to SPI cases, it appears you are mostly inactive as an SPI clerk now. Please stand down as a clerk or move yourself to inactive (whichever you prefer) so that we can get a better idea of how many active clerks we have. Thanks. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 16:06, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dan. SPI is something I actually want to get back into in the new year. I'll move myself to inactive for now but will be active again within the next month. Hope you had a good Christmas. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 22:17, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Feel free to move yourself back to active once you return to activity. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 15:02, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Meetup invitation: Melbourne 26

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Hi there! You are cordially invited to a meetup next Sunday (6 January). Details and an attendee list are at Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne 26. Hope to see you there! John Vandenberg 06:57, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(this automated message was delivered using replace.py to all users in Victoria)

G'day

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Looking at the recent contributions of GoodDay, who lists you as a mentor, I note a series of minor edits to several people who happen to share the same name as a close family member. He has also made several provocative posts over the past few days, trying to draw my attention on trivia and being generally disruptive. The Redirect thing is a case in point.

This is a disturbing trend, and if you could keep an eye on him, I would be grateful. --Pete (talk) 17:24, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How is nominating a redirect for deletion, disruptive? GoodDay (talk) 20:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hiya Steven. I don't understand his "...close family member" comment, but I've gotten over my frustrations with his SPA-style. I'm re-concentrating on my gnoming. GoodDay (talk) 19:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 December 2012

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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.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
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.

EditorReviewArchiver: Automatic processing of your editor review

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This is an automated message. Your editor review is scheduled to be closed on 8 January 2013 because it will have been open for more than 30 days and inactive for more than 7 days. You can keep it open longer by posting a comment to the review page requesting more input. Adding <!--noautoarchive--> to the review page will prevent further automated actions. AnomieBOT⚡ 23:26, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

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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.

Advice

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Sorry to bother you, as I would imagine you've got plenty of other things going on, but I've noticed that you're involved in DR and wondered if you could offer any advice here. There has recently been a contentious discussion at the administrators' noticeboard stemming from the Apteva RfC. I don't think that the status quo over there (deliberating over potential sanctions and occasionally charged discussions about exactly who is correct on certain issues) is going to solve the problem; the problem arises from a persistent band of users who dislike elements of the MoS.

My question is this: what steps would you suggest we (those involved in this discussion) take to resolve the dispute at the root of the commotion? If this isn't very clear, or if you aren't able to reply, please let me know (it's no big deal). Thanks, dci | TALK 02:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. Sorry about the delay. Having a neutral party guide the discussion into the right direction is generally a good way of keeping things focused. Do you have a neutral party involved? Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 02:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I am a neutral party, as are a few of the other editors who have become involved in the current, somewhat quieted discussion. Our main problem has become how best to wrap the issue up. dci | TALK 01:34, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Neophyte has questions about Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#talk:Paul_Krugman

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I would like to ask questions about a dispute resolution RfC, that I initiated, currently under discussion at Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#talk:Paul_Krugman. I am unfamiliar with the dispute resolution noticeboard RfC process and am contacting you per your listing at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Volunteering#List_of_the_DRN_volunteers. Am I asking these question in the right place?

1) The RfC in question seems to be an "Opening comments" phase.

2) As the initiator of the RfC, should I add an Opening comment? When is it proper for me to enter the discussion?

3) Are the phases (e.g. "Opening comments") of the RfC process documented? Where?

4) Will I be messaged/notified when my input is needed?

5) I initiated the RfC on the narrow topic of a specific undone edit, the reason given for that undo, and subsequent discussion of the undo reason on the article's talk page. My reading of the RfC opening comments suggest that some participants are addressing broader, article-level, not edit-level issues. How do I determine what the scope of the RfC is/should be? Who/what specifies the scope of the RfC and associated discussion?

Hello there. With DRN, it's not structured like an RFC at all, it's completely different and volunteers should be able to assist with this for you if it hasn't already been sorted. Regards, Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 02:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Deicas (talk) 03:21, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Ambassadors update

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Hi! You're getting this message because you are or have been a Wikipedia Ambassador. A new term is beginning for the United States and Canada Education Programs, and I wanted to give you an update on some important new information if you're interested in continuing your work this term as a Wikipedia Ambassador.

You may have heard a reference to a transition the education program is going through. This is the last term that the Wikimedia Foundation will directly run the U.S. and Canada programs; beginning in June, a proposed thematic organization is likely to take over organizing the program. You can read more about the proposal here.

Another major change in the program will take effect immediately. Beginning this term, a new MediaWiki education extension will replace all course pages and Ambassador lists. (See Wikipedia:Course pages and Help:Education Program extension for more details.) Included in the extension are online volunteer and campus volunteer user rights, which let you create and edit course pages and sign up as an ambassador for a particular course.

If you would like to continue serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador — even if you do not support a class this term — you must create an ambassador profile. If you're no longer interested in being a Wikipedia Ambassador, you don't need to do anything.

Please do these steps as soon as possible

First, you need the relevant user rights for Online and/or Campus Ambassadors. (If you are an admin, you can grant the rights yourself, for you as well as other ambassadors.) Just post your rights request here, and we'll get you set up as quickly as possible.

Once you've got the ambassador rights, please set up at a Campus and/or Online Ambassador profile. You can do so at:

Going forward, the lists of Ambassadors at Special:CampusAmbassadors and Special:OnlineAmbassadors will be the official roster of who is an active Ambassador. If you would like to be an Ambassador but not ready to serve this term, you can un-check the option in your profile to publicly list it (which will remove your profile from the list).

After that, you can sign on to support courses. The list of courses will be at Special:Courses. (By default, this lists "Current" courses, but you can change the Status filter to "Planned" to see courses for this term that haven't reached their listed start date yet.)

As this is the first term we have used the extension, we know there will be some bugs, and we know the feature set is not as rich as it could be. (A big wave of improvements is already in the pipeline. And if you know MediaWiki and could help with code review, we'd love to have your help!) Please reach out to me (Sage Ross) with any complaints, bug reports, and feature suggestions. The basic features of the extension are documented at Wikipedia:Course pages, and you can see a tutorial for setting up and using them here.

Communication and keeping up to date

In the past, the Education Program has had a pretty fragmented set of communication channels. We're trying to fix that. These are the recommended places to discuss and stay up-to-date on the education program:

  1. The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
  2. The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address.
  3. If you use IRC regularly, or need to try to reach someone immediately, the #wikipedia-en-ambassadors connect IRC channel is the place to find me and fellow Ambassadors.
Ambassador training and resources

We now have an online training for Ambassadors, which is intended to be both an orientation about the Wikipedia Ambassador role for newcomers and the manual for how to do the role. (There are parallel trainings for students and for educators as well.)

Please go through the training if you feel like you need a refresher on how a typical class is supposed to go and where the Ambassadors fit in, or if you want to review and help improve it. If there's something you'd like to see added, or other suggestions you have for it, feel free to edit the training and/or leave feedback. A primer on setting up and using course pages is included in the educators' training.

The Resources page of the training is the main place for Ambassador-related resources. If there's something you think is important as a resource that's not on there, please add it.

Finally, whether or not you work with any classes this term, I encourage you to post entries to the Trophy Case whenever you see excellent work from students or if you have great examples from past semesters. And, as always, let students (and other editors!) know when they do things well; a little WikiLove goes a long way!

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Notice to DR/N volunteers! Dispute resolution discussions need attention

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Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there are currently discussions at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard which require the attention of a volunteer. Content disputes can hold up article development, therefore we are requesting your participation to help find a resolution. Below this message is the DR/N status update.

You are recieving this notification to request assistance at the DR/N where you are listed as a volunteer. The number of cases has either become too large and/or there are many cases shaded with an alert status. Those shaded pink are marked as: "This request requires a volunteer's attention". Those shaded blue have had a volunteers attention recently

Case Created Last volunteer edit Last modified
Title Status User Time User Time User Time
Category:PlayStation 5-only games In Progress Jursha (t) 19 days, 22 hours Robert McClenon (t) 17 hours Jursha (t) 17 hours
Michael Jackson Closed Hammelsmith (t) 19 days, 21 hours Robert McClenon (t) 17 hours Robert McClenon (t) 17 hours
Muslim Gujjars New Anpanman11 (t) 14 days, Rosguill (t) 12 days, 18 hours Sybercracker (t) 12 days, 1 hours
Talk: The Importance of Being Earnest Closed Becsh (t) 9 days, 3 hours Robert McClenon (t) 17 hours Robert McClenon (t) 17 hours
2025 visit by Donald Trump to the Middle East Closed ElijahPepe (t) 6 days, 20 hours Robert McClenon (t) 17 hours Robert McClenon (t) 17 hours
Poland New PJK 1993 (t) 17 minutes None n/a PJK 1993 (t) 17 minutes

If you would like a regularly-updated copy of this status box on your user page or talk page, put {{DRN case status}} on your page. Click on that link for more options.
--Amadscientist (talk) 01:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, I really should help out there more. My fellowship ends today, so I will be back very soon. Regards, Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 02:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever you can. Hope the fellowship was everything you hoped it would be.--Amadscientist (talk) 03:18, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Where are all the volunteers? This is a pretty huge backlog :/ Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 03:20, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 14 January 2013

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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.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
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 opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
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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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.
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.
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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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.
A special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist is devoted to "open collaboration".
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.
New discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
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.
The Doncram case has continued into its third week.
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.

Bendigo workshops 2013

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Hi Steve, you know all about this, but here is an invite for you as an active Victorian wikipedian. Wikimedia Australia will be holding an introductory training day for editing Wikipedia and related projects. With support from La Trobe University and Bendigo Community Health Services, it is for health information professionals across the region. It will also be open to other information community groups as well (regional historic societies, librarians and the like). The workshop is on Thursday, February 21, at Latrobe University Bendigo. If you can help, please contact Leighblackall or Peterdownunder, or register directly at the Wikimedia page.--Peterdownunder (talk) 06:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Peter, I'd love to go, but I will be in San Francisco for a week from the 19-26th Feb, so I will miss it. Hope it all goes well though :) Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 09:16, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 04 February 2013

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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.

The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven

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Check out the Teahouse Easter Egg Badge, awarded for helpful suggestions about improving the Teahouse.
Check out the Teahouse Genie Badge, awarded for solving issues on the Teahouse Wishlist.

Hello again! We have some neat updates about the Teahouse:

You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here

Thanks again! Ocaasi 02:25, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 11 February 2013

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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?
Six articles, one list, and fourteen pictures were promoted to "featured" states this week on the English Wikipedia.
This week, we got the details on WikiProject Infoboxes.
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.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week.

hmmm ...

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might work. Heaven knows you've certainly served your time. And in honorable fashion and with extreme dedication I might add. How ya doin buddy? How's the family? — Ched :  ?  14:42, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe one day, Ched. Family is good. I'm gonna give you a ring in the next few days. It's been too long. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 13:16, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 February 2013

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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.
Two articles, nine lists, and thirteen pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven (special Birthday recap)

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A celebratory cupcake from the Teahouse Birthday Badge

It's been a full year since the Teahouse opened, and as we're reflecting on what's been accomplished, we wanted to celebrate with you.

Teahouse guests and hosts are sharing their stories in a new blog post about the project.

1 year statistics for Teahouse visitors compared to invited non-visitors from the pilot:

Metric Control group Teahouse group Contrast
Average retention (weeks with at least 1 edit) 5.02 weeks 8.57 weeks 1.7x retention
Average number of articles edited 58.7 articles 116.9 edits 2.0x articles edited
Average talk page edits 36.5 edits 85.6 edits 2.4x talk page edits
Average article space edits 129.6 edits 360.4 edits 2.8x article edits
Average total edits (all namespaces) 182.1 edits 532.4 edits 2.9x total edits

Over the past year almost 2000 questions have been asked and answered, 669 editors have introduced themselves, 1670 guests have been served, 867 experienced Wikipedians have participated in the project, and 137 have served as hosts. Read more project analysis in our CSCW 2013 paper

Last month January was our most active month so far! 78 profiles were created, 46 active hosts answered 263 questions, and 11 new hosts joined the project.

Come by the Teahouse to share a cup of tea and enjoy a Birthday Cupcake! Happy Birthday to the Teahouse and thank you for a year's worth of interest and support :-)

-- Ocaasi and the rest of the Teahouse Team 20:51, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To add or remove yourself for receiving future newsletters, please update the list here

The Signpost: 25 February 2013

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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).
Current discussions include...
Six articles, three lists, and twelve images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this month.
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.
Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) this week committed itself to funding the Wikidata development team, ending fears that phase three would be abandoned.
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