User talk:Fluffernutter/Archive 11
Good memory
The Signpost: 19 November 2012
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.
Deborah GreenMy pleasure, glad it got through in the end Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:50, 26 November 2012 (UTC) The Signpost: 26 November 2012
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.
my entry yesterday at ANII just now saw your edit summary. Please tell me what I should have done so I will know the next time. Gtwfan52 (talk) 03:00, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia Goes to the Movies in NYC this Saturday Dec 1![]() You are invited to Wikipedia Goes to the Movies in NYC, an editathon, Wikipedia meet-up and workshops focused on film and the performing arts that will be held on Saturday, December 1, 2012, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (at Lincoln Center), as part of the Wikipedia Loves Libraries events being held across the USA. All are welcome, sign up on the wiki and at meetup.com!--Pharos (talk) 06:57, 30 November 2012 (UTC) GOCE November drive wrap-up
The Signpost: 03 December 2012
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.
A rather trivial matterHi there. I was reading through the AN thread on User:Okip, and opened WP:Functionaries in the next tab, to make it easier to keep track of who in the conversation had access to what information. (I'm a bit new here, so I'm still getting acquainted with all the "major players," so to speak.) I was then surprised to see you mention Functionaries-I, and to see, upon checking your userpage, that you're indeed an Oversighter, since your name doesn't appear at WP:Functionaries. So my question (I warned you it was trivial!) is why you're not listed there... am I misunderstanding something about its purpose? I was under the impression that it listed all the CheckUsers and Oversighters. Skimming through the oversighter list, it looks like you're the only one not included at the Functionaries page, though I could be missing somebody. — Francophonie&Androphilie(Je vous invite à me parler) 04:40, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Barnstar
The Signpost: 10 December 2012
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.
GOCE mid-December newsletter
I don't know what the story is here - would you like to reply to the undeletion request at WP:REFUND#User:Yobronzino/Brando Palomino Bronzino? JohnCD (talk) 10:04, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
KharviHi, just a courtesy thing: I'd queried the Kharvi grammar point at User talk:Malleus Fatuorum before you posted your initial explanation. - Sitush (talk) 00:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
The Signpost: 17 December 2012
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.
The Signpost: 24 December 2012As 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.
ECFluffernutter, please restore my comments. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 00:40, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Merchandise nomination
David1217 What I've done 04:32, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
GOCE 2012 Annual Report
Re on serial killersI have NOT used the given blog, but SOLELY already existing articles at Wikipedia. Attack those if you like, not me. I have NOT the intention at all to add others than others already at Wikipedia, in particular: Not adding anyone solely occurring at "unknownmisandry". PS: I do NOT object to any others removing my additions, but please formulate your criticism in a proper manner, namely that I have not used a properly verified Wikipedia article (I have not used any other main source on these additions) Arildnordby (talk) 20:32, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Arildnordby (talk) 20:40, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
1. DEAD: Sophie Charlotte Ursinus 2. DEAD: Patty Cannon 3. DEAD: Catherine Wilson 4. DEAD Margaret Waters 5. DEAD: Mary Ann Cotton 6. DEAD: Flannagan sisters (Black Widows of Liverpool) 7. DEAD: John and Sarah Makin 8. DEAD: Amelia Dyer 9. DEAD: Amelia Sach and Annie Walters 10. DEAD: Martha Rendell 11. DEAD: Enriqueta Martí 12. DEAD: Amy Archer-Gilligan 13. DEAD: Martha Wise 14. DEAD: The Angel Makers Nagyrev 15. DEAD: Daisy Louisa C. De Melker 16. DEAD: Anna Marie Hahn 17. DEAD: Marie Besnard 18. DEAD: Mary Elizabeth Wilson 19. DEAD: Delfina, María, Carmen & Maria Luisa de Jesús González 20. ALIVE: Charlene Gallego, plead guilty 21. ALIVE: Suzan Barnes Carson, found guilty on 3 accounts, 3 independent references. 22. ALIVE: Cynthia Coffman found guilty of 5, 4 independent references. 23.ALIVE: Blanche Taylor Moore, 9 references. 24. ALIVE: Karla Homolka, convicted serial killer, 65 references 25. DEAD: Betty Neumar, 14 references. Now, I kindly suggest you delete THOSE articles, prior to attacking me on scurrilous grounds Arildnordby (talk) 21:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
To mention SFTKs definition, it is said "A serial killer is defined as someone who kills more than three victims one at a time in a short time period.". Now, that is SOMEWHAT different from the sourced and referenced definition from "Serial Killers", which specifically makes the period of time extended, in order to distinguish from "spree" and "mass" murderers. On several possibles, I have excluded those that should be regarded as spree rather than serial, and furthermore, INCLUDED such as to whom strong suspicion was attached to achieve 3+. the reason for THAT latter choice, is that several within the category already had "achieved" their status of 3+ by strong suspicion, rather than official confirmation. THUS, I have only followed what seems to have been DEFINED as "serial killer" by the Wikipedia community, through reference to other sources at "serial killers" in particular, rather than inventing anything of my own. -- For example, if a woman is simply listed under English Female Murderers, like Beverley Allitt, who was CONVICTED of murdering four children+ 9 further attempts, I have CHOSEN to include her within category "Female serial killers", not because what I think, but strictly on the basis of the defionitions set up at SKTF and "serial killers"-page. Now, you can disagree with that choice of definitions ALREADY EXISTING, but you really should argue for why my choices, in the cases given, does not follow the definitions (i.e, guidelines) set up in the relevant projects/general pages at Wikipedia. Arildnordby (talk) 22:00, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
1. "A serial killer is traditionally defined as an individual who has killed three or more people[1][2] over a period of more than a month, with down time (a "cooling off period") between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification.[3][4] Some sources, such as the FBI, disregard the "three or more" criteria and define the term as "a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone" or, including the vital characteristics, a minimum of two murders.[4][5]" If you read further, you will also see that the requirement "cooling down" period isd also rejected by several experts (and many of those prior to my edits, in particular the "historical ones", have no judicially proven "cooling down" period". Do you disagree qwith those??) . 2. Furthermore, several of the women under "English female murderers" do NOT have a reference who callas her, precisely: "English female murderer". Do you disagree with THAT categorization as well? 3. I have SPECIFIED, to the last detail, at the Category.talk page, precisely those I have chosen to include, so that constructive, particular criticism and deletion can be made. Instead, I have been met by hysterical, irrational, and, largely unfounded accusations. Arildnordby (talk) 22:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
That "reliable sources" have somewhat differing definitions are THEIR problem, not mine; I need to be able to show that MY inclusions are fully within the interpretative space set up by..the reliable sources. and so they happen to be. Arildnordby (talk) 22:44, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Arildnordby (talk) 23:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
The only reason you keep up weith this idiogtic and toally irrational crirticism of me is that I happened to express appfreciation for a particular, highly politicized blog not of my own mam,king. Stop this charade. Now. Arildnordby (talk) 23:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Hello, Fluffernutter. I'm stopping by your talk page to let you know that I also reverted Arildnordby at an article concerning this topic, and commented about it here. Flyer22 (talk) 22:54, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Wishing you a
Wikipedia Day Celebration and Mini-Conference in NYC Saturday Feb 23![]() You are invited to celebrate Wikipedia Day and the 12th anniversary (!) of the founding of the site at Wikipedia Day NYC on Saturday February 23, 2013 at New York University; sign up for Wikipedia Day NYC here, or at bit.ly/wikidaynyu. Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience!--Pharos (talk) 01:38, 2 January 2013 (UTC) The Signpost: 31 December 2012
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.
WERJust wanted to drop a note to say that your opinion on certain editors is likely in the majority there. The recent discussion domination is only due to recent events. My abundance of tolerance regarding certain individuals is a minority viewpoint there. The beauty of WER is that people can strongly disagree there but the atmosphere is such that it doesn't become attacks. We tolerate all opinions, but not attacks or finger pointing, and try to steer the discussion around the negativity. I really don't run the place nor want to, it would like herding cats. I don't try to dominate the direction people want to move in, it isn't my way. You probably don't realize that you and I agree on many, many more things than disagree, trust me. I'm just a peacemaker so I tend to ride the fence publicly, even when I do have an opinion; It is the mediator in me. The problem at WER is that it is new and needs some organization to focus on the ideas that we all agree on. This means finding novel ways to reward editors that are often overlooked, and helping newer or established editors that are needing some assistance due to low level edit warriors, POV, etc. Problems that aren't ANI ready, but need someone to come in and help. You would be surprised how much of that we already do, it just doesn't hit the talk page there, and some organization would be helpful. I'm just not sure of the best way forward, but it is time to do so. Take a look at the roster[3], 114 people with drastically different opinions, different ideas, and different experience levels. That is why WER has the potential to do some good stuff, because it isn't a fan club of anyone, it is a diverse group of admin and non-admin. There are a lot of people willing to help out, but there is a shortage of experienced people willing to take the lead on one aspect, one sub-project, and make it work. I would love to see us figure out a more formal way to report and help editors who are at risk of leaving, but I lack the experience and smarts to do it alone. I am pretty good at rallying the troops, settling disputes, and putting out fires, but that is just a small part of it. What WER needs, what Wikipedia needs, is someone to take a lead in designing a system to make reporting and helping these people. This is only one part of editor retention, but an important part. WER has problems, it is a bit scattered, but you could actually help shape it, and I would invite you to. To both address these problems and to insure that the project remains a neutral project. It already has some good momentum, what it needs is to branch off into the different aspects with some leadership and direction. I know you care about the retention of new editors and the biting that takes place, you have made that clear and we completely agree, as does everyone there. What you might not realize is that you can actually make a huge difference there, and you would get a tremendous amount of support in doing so, much more than you probably realize. I have no desire to be "the leader" there, it is just thrust upon me. Retention as a whole is too big for one person. I want many of us to take the lead in different areas, coordinate and work as a big team. This is the ONLY way it could ever work, and why it is not living up to it's potential now. Think about it. Feel free to email me or ping me on IRC as well. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 15:18, 3 January 2013 (UTC) Social Media WeekFluffernutter, I saw your RSVP on the NYC Wikipedia Day page about the paid-editing-on-wikipedia panel during Social Media Week. I couldn't find anything on the SMW site about that, but would like to attend. Can you direct me to some information about it. Thanks and all the best, Jweiss11 (talk) 00:08, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 07 January 2013Meta 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.
Tour of Consumer Reports' laboratories![]() On Tuesday January 15 at 3pm Wikipedians are invited to join a tour of laboratories at Consumer Reports in Yonkers. If you would like to attend please RSVP at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/January 2013. If you have questions feel free to ask on that page or contact me on my talk page or by my office phone at 914.378.2684. Thank you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC) Wikipedia Ambassadors updateHi! 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.
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.
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:
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) 20:47, 14 January 2013 (UTC) The Signpost: 14 January 2013
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.
TalkI am sorry, but what exactly to talk out? This is blatant nationalist vandalism, removal of sourced data per IDONTLIKEIT without any explanation or reason. This is no worthy of a protection, but at least its short. I will invite for a talk. --WhiteWriterspeaks 19:11, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
GOCE mid-drive newsletter, January 2013
Committee invitationHi, I would like to invite you to apply to join the IEG Advisory Committee on Meta. --Pine✉ 09:34, 18 January 2013 (UTC) A barnstar for you!
Copyedit?Fluffs, when you get a spare bit can you please do a quick copyedit of Margaret McKenna. merci --Guerillero | My Talk 01:02, 24 January 2013 (UTC) The Signpost: 21 January 2013
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.
Your free 1-year Questia online library account is approved and readyGood news! You are approved for access to 77,000 full-text books and 4 million journal, magazine, newspaper articles, and encyclopedia entries. Check your Wikipedia email!
Thanks for helping make Wikipedia better. Enjoy your research! Cheers, Ocaasi 18:28, 24 January 2013 (UTC) |