Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives/2013-01-21

News and notes

Requests for adminship reform moves forward

The English Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process has entered another cycle of proposed reforms. Over the last three weeks, various proposals, ranging from as large as a transition to a representative democracy to as small as a required edit count and service length, have been debated on the RfA talk page. The total number of new administrators for 2012 was just 28, barely more than half of 2011's total and less than a quarter of 2009's total. The total number of unsuccessful RfAs has fallen as well. These declining numbers, which were described in what would now be considered a successful year (2010) as an emerging "wikigeneration gulf", have been coupled with a sharp decline in the number of active administrators since February 2008 (1,021), reaching a low of 653 in November 2012.

WikiProject report

Say What? — WikiProject Linguistics

This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Linguistics. Started in January 2004, the project has grown to include 7 Featured Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 2 A-class Articles, and 15 Good Articles maintained by 43 members. The project's members keep an eye on several watchlists, maintain the linguistics category, and continue to build a collection of Did You Know? entries. The project is home to six task forces and works with WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Writing Systems.

Featured content

Wazzup, G? Delegates and featured topics in review

This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured topics. We interviewed Grapple X and GamerPro64, who are delegates at the featured topic candidates.

Arbitration report

Doncram case continues

The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.

Technology report

Data centre switchover a tentative success

On 22 January, WMF staff and contractors switched incoming, non-cached requests (including edits) to the Foundation's newer data centre in Ashburn, Virginia, making it responsible for handling almost all regular traffic. For the first time since 2004, virtually no traffic will be handled by the WMF's other facility in Tampa, Florida.

Want the latest Signpost delivered to your talk page each month?

Home

About

Archives

Newsroom

Subscribe

Suggestions