On Thursday, June 23, a user going by the name of "MaliceAforethought" began leaking selected email threads of Arbcom-l, the Arbitration Committee's non-public mailing list, on Wikipedia Review. The issue was promptly noted on the Committee's talk page.
On June 27, arbitrator (and list admin) Roger Davies stated that "we have not established the source of the data theft though our investigations are continuing", dismissing the conclusion of an earlier investigation that had indicated the leak was probably the result of an unauthorized person gaining access to the Yahoo email account of one arbitrator, whose access to all private mailing lists and wikis was temporarily revoked. Another arbitrator, who had been inactive since February, returned to editing on Friday, June 24. As he did not respond to emails, when he edited again the following day, his account was globally locked, and his special permissions and mailing list accesses were temporarily revoked, but then reinstated after the Committee confirmed his identity. Roger Davies later emphasized that "there is no credible evidence at all to suggest that [these two arbitrators] were responsible, either directly or indirectly". He also told The Signpost he was "unaware of any evidence, credible or otherwise, implicating any other arbitrator", and noted that the entire list archive appears to have been compromised, going back to July 2005. At the time of writing, the leaker was continuing to post new threads purporting to be from the Arbcom-l archives, which have amounted to around 20 threads so far.
Also on June 27, the Mailman site password was changed dead link. A further announcement about these security issues is expected in the next few days.
While the leaks so far do not appear to have revealed any particularly controversial actions of ArbCom, there has been great concern about the amount of personal information revealed, not only about ArbCom members but also – as arbitrator Kirill Lokshin pointed out – within "the various material (including evidence, complaints, requests for assistance, and so forth) submitted by other editors [to the list]; in many cases, this correspondence includes personal information (real names, addresses, telephone numbers, ages) whose release could have negative consequences for editors and non-editors with no relation to the Committee". In a related discussion, the long-term retention of Checkuser data was questioned. As explained by Dominic, efforts have already been underway to address such concerns: The archives of the closed Checkuser-l mailing list are currently being removed, in favor of a recently established private Checkuser wiki that is intended only to "host the data from investigations that actually needs to be retained for the future due to persistent abuse". According to Kirill Lokshin, a similar solution has been considered for Arbcom-l (involving the existing Arbcom wiki), but it "would be prohibitively time-consuming for arbcom-l due to the immense volume of the archives; and there have been security concerns with the arbitration wiki as well."
In 2009, there had already been concern about a former arbitrator publishing selected e-mails from the Arbcom-l archives (obtained while authorized) on an external site.
See also a current RfC on account security and last year's Signpost coverage of an assessment of Wikipedia's password security, including a list of former incidents where user accounts had been compromised.
On the Wikimedia Foundation's blog, a new tool was announced last week, called WikiLove (after the concept). WikiLove has been developed into a MediaWiki extension (after first becoming available three months ago as a user script), and is currently in testing at the prototype wiki. The tool, which displays only on userpages, is represented by a red heart icon on the edit bar. Clicking on it will open a menu with options for giving awards: specifically, barnstars, various food and drink items, kittens, as well as an option to make your own award. The tool is designed to be simple and elegant; the user need only fill out a few fields and select an image or barnstar, and the message is even auto-signed.
Users are encouraged to go to the Prototype Wiki, create an account, and experiment with the tool (note: because of a known bug, creating an account requires editors to check the Remember Me box). WikiLove will be rolled out of testing on June 29, 2011 (assuming no last-minute delays), and the English Wikipedia will be first to receive it. Users can opt to disable it by going to My Preferences → Editing → Labs Features, and disabling the experimental feature. WikiLove also automatically updates special databases to help study its impact on Wikipedia, and the designers are looking into related tools for welcoming and encouraging new editors.
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The Foundation's announcement describes some motivations for the introduction of the new tool: A recent survey on Wikipedia editors (see previous Signpost story) found that among 17 choices, being looked down on by more experienced editors is the most common reason for editing less (69%), and receiving praise from others is the most common reason for editing more often (78%). In addition, recent results on newbie teaching strategy trends from the Wikimedia Summer of Research have shown that the number of warnings and criticisms that new editors receive has increased, combined with "a significant drop in messages including praise and thanks", as shown in the graphs above.
On Thursday, June 23, a user going by the name of "MaliceAforethought" began leaking selected email threads of Arbcom-l, the Arbitration Committee's non-public mailing list, on Wikipedia Review. The issue was promptly noted on the Committee's talk page.
On June 27, arbitrator (and list admin) Roger Davies stated that "we have not established the source of the data theft though our investigations are continuing", dismissing the conclusion of an earlier investigation that had indicated the leak was probably the result of an unauthorized person gaining access to the Yahoo email account of one arbitrator, whose access to all private mailing lists and wikis was temporarily revoked. Another arbitrator, who had been inactive since February, returned to editing on Friday, June 24. As he did not respond to emails, when he edited again the following day, his account was globally locked, and his special permissions and mailing list accesses were temporarily revoked, but then reinstated after the Committee confirmed his identity. Roger Davies later emphasized that "there is no credible evidence at all to suggest that [these two arbitrators] were responsible, either directly or indirectly". He also told The Signpost he was "unaware of any evidence, credible or otherwise, implicating any other arbitrator", and noted that the entire list archive appears to have been compromised, going back to July 2005. At the time of writing, the leaker was continuing to post new threads purporting to be from the Arbcom-l archives, which have amounted to around 20 threads so far.
Also on June 27, the Mailman site password was changed dead link. A further announcement about these security issues is expected in the next few days.
While the leaks so far do not appear to have revealed any particularly controversial actions of ArbCom, there has been great concern about the amount of personal information revealed, not only about ArbCom members but also – as arbitrator Kirill Lokshin pointed out – within "the various material (including evidence, complaints, requests for assistance, and so forth) submitted by other editors [to the list]; in many cases, this correspondence includes personal information (real names, addresses, telephone numbers, ages) whose release could have negative consequences for editors and non-editors with no relation to the Committee". In a related discussion, the long-term retention of Checkuser data was questioned. As explained by Dominic, efforts have already been underway to address such concerns: The archives of the closed Checkuser-l mailing list are currently being removed, in favor of a recently established private Checkuser wiki that is intended only to "host the data from investigations that actually needs to be retained for the future due to persistent abuse". According to Kirill Lokshin, a similar solution has been considered for Arbcom-l (involving the existing Arbcom wiki), but it "would be prohibitively time-consuming for arbcom-l due to the immense volume of the archives; and there have been security concerns with the arbitration wiki as well."
In 2009, there had already been concern about a former arbitrator publishing selected e-mails from the Arbcom-l archives (obtained while authorized) on an external site.
See also a current RfC on account security and last year's Signpost coverage of an assessment of Wikipedia's password security, including a list of former incidents where user accounts had been compromised.
On the Wikimedia Foundation's blog, a new tool was announced last week, called WikiLove (after the concept). WikiLove has been developed into a MediaWiki extension (after first becoming available three months ago as a user script), and is currently in testing at the prototype wiki. The tool, which displays only on userpages, is represented by a red heart icon on the edit bar. Clicking on it will open a menu with options for giving awards: specifically, barnstars, various food and drink items, kittens, as well as an option to make your own award. The tool is designed to be simple and elegant; the user need only fill out a few fields and select an image or barnstar, and the message is even auto-signed.
Users are encouraged to go to the Prototype Wiki, create an account, and experiment with the tool (note: because of a known bug, creating an account requires editors to check the Remember Me box). WikiLove will be rolled out of testing on June 29, 2011 (assuming no last-minute delays), and the English Wikipedia will be first to receive it. Users can opt to disable it by going to My Preferences → Editing → Labs Features, and disabling the experimental feature. WikiLove also automatically updates special databases to help study its impact on Wikipedia, and the designers are looking into related tools for welcoming and encouraging new editors.
![]() |
![]() |
The Foundation's announcement describes some motivations for the introduction of the new tool: A recent survey on Wikipedia editors (see previous Signpost story) found that among 17 choices, being looked down on by more experienced editors is the most common reason for editing less (69%), and receiving praise from others is the most common reason for editing more often (78%). In addition, recent results on newbie teaching strategy trends from the Wikimedia Summer of Research have shown that the number of warnings and criticisms that new editors receive has increased, combined with "a significant drop in messages including praise and thanks", as shown in the graphs above.
Discuss this story
Wiki-Love was pretty cool 6 years ago when it was WP:Esperanza. Night Ranger ( talk) 01:10, 28 June 2011 (UTC) reply
What's the meaning of the "green blob" in the language committee logo? I stared at it for 5 mins and couldn't deduce any meaning out of it. OhanaUnited Talk page 02:19, 28 June 2011 (UTC) reply
I work in an area of engineering that is especially prone to industrial espionage (electronic toys) and we use the following method as an anti-leak countermeasure; every so often, we send out multiple versions of a particular email with slightly different wording. Sometimes just a few recipients get a variation, sometimes half of them do (with a different split each time). That way, if an account is compromised, the content of the leaked emails contains a hard-to-obfuscate signature identifying which account is leaky. Has anyone at Wikipedia considered using such a system? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 04:50, 28 June 2011 (UTC) reply
Citizendium
As for the "testing ground for various perennial proposals" argument, why not offer some updates about Wikinfo, which is perhaps the oldest fork of Wikipedia still in existence? (IIRC, it was created back in 2004.) I had a peak at it a few months back, & was surprised not only to find it still in existence, but with a determined handful of members working away. And with far more articles than Citizendium ever produced. -- llywrch ( talk) 03:25, 1 July 2011 (UTC) reply
WikiLove
It may have been worth mentioning the relatively high amount of media attention that the WikiLove extension received, e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4]. Reagrds, HaeB ( talk) 06:02, 28 June 2011 (UTC) reply