This week, the Signpost caught up with newly-elected Board of Trustees member Erik Möller, who won the elections held last month. (See archived story.) We asked Möller a few questions pertaining to both his role in the Board and his thoughts on the election in the interview.
1. Congratulations on your election! First, is there anything you would like to say to all Wikimedians? Those who supported you in the election? Those who didn't support you? The other candidates?
2. Reflecting back on the elections in retrospect, what changes would you have made, if any? Do you think the elections were fair? As a Board member who will indubitably influence the next election, what changes do you think can (or should) be made next time?
3. You've had a long history of contributions to Wikimedia projects, including a number of disputes, most significantly your
resignation as
Chief Research Officer, stemming from what you called "personal differences and a fundamental disagreement about the nature and scope of the role", a "personality conflict" between yourself and current Board member
Anthere, as well as tensions between you and Jimbo. Both Jimbo and Anthere are still currently on the Board. How well do you think you will work with them this time as a Board member? What has changed since last time? How will the past affect your relationships with both Anthere and Jimbo?
4. Another conflict you've had is when you were temporarily blocked and de-sysoped by Foundation employee
Danny Wool, both here and on
Meta-Wiki, in April of this year for unprotecting two articles and allegedly violating
"Office Action" policy, although you were unaware of the actions at the time. (See
archived story.) The action by Wool was later overturned on both the English Wikipedia and Meta. Do you think this conflict will affect your dealings as a Board member? How do you think it will impact your workings with Danny?
5. In an
interview with the Signpost last month, you commented that it would be critical to "establish a high level of transparency and low barriers to entry," and in your
platform, you expanded on this theme by advocating more openness within committees and the Foundation in general. Would you mind clarifying this? How would you accomplish this?
6. You also advocated a need to invite more experts as one of the most pressing issues for Wikipedia, saying that "we need to make a serious call to the scientific community to participate, and provide them with easy channels to do so." How important is this? As a Board member, what actions would you take to ensure that this happens?
7. What other issues do you plan to address right now as a Board member? How so?
8. You've also worked as a developer in the past and contributed to
MediaWiki. From your perspective as a Board member, how important are technical changes and advances in the software? What is the most significant update to date in MediaWiki? What do you think is the biggest change that should be made? Do you plan to continue working on the technical side while serving on the Board?
9. What would you say to the Wikimedia and more specifically, the Wikipedia community, right now? How do you think your role as a Board member will influence Wikimedia and Wikipedia? What changes do you project to Wikimedia and Wikipedia at the end of your term in July 2007? Do you plan on running for re-election?
10. Finally, is there anything else you want to mention?
In a twist on the charge sometimes leveled at Wikipedia editors, the Wall Street Journal included Wikipedia in its discussion of Grupthink last week (no, that's not a misspelling, although it's sometimes written Grūpthink).
Grupthink, the subject of a Wednesday piece by Journal columnist Aaron Rutkoff, is actually a website that allows users to create and run polls on virtually any subject imaginable. As one example of this, Rutkoff noted a Wikipedia Showdown poll, which asks site users to pick "the weirdest, funniest, craziest, and most bizarre entries" Wikipedia carries.
Leading the poll, which started running 10 May, is the List of fictional expletives. Lists were actually rather popular choices in the poll, such as List of English words containing Q not followed by U (which is also a featured list on Wikipedia), "List of songs featuring cowbells" (despite the fact that the article has since been deleted), and of course Lists of lists. Other poll options included Groupthink (inevitably), the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Nihilartikel, and the always-popular Heavy metal umlaut (see archived story).
The deleted article on songs with cowbells also made an appearance in Sunday's New York Times as well. This was in an article exploring several recent discussions on Articles for deletion; also included were Pooky (merged), Chuck Greene (deleted), and the Constantian Society (kept). The most interesting case was Diane Farrell, a Connecticut congressional candidate whose article was deleted in July and re-created three different times. The third time, which came after the appearance of the Times story, led to a reconsideration of the original deletion because the content was not identical and presented new arguments for her notability.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia seems to be a fairly popular resource with the Grupthink community (see [1]). Another poll currently has Wikipedia leading in response to the question of what is the "best open source project".
Shockingly, considering the way internet phenomena are documented on Wikipedia, nobody had attempted to create an article on Grupthink at the time the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. It did show up as an external link related to the Choose Your Own Adventure series (someone had started a group of polls structured in a similar fashion), but no other articles mentioned it and there were no signs of a linkspam campaign. Grupthink did appear as a "requested article" listed on the Culture and fine arts subpage, under "Internet and tech culture - Miscellaneous".
The Wikipedia account of a business selling its services in creating Wikipedia articles was blocked by Jimbo Wales, after a truce over the ethical concerns involved broke down. User:MyWikiBiz has been blocked indefinitely, and Wales deleted two of the articles created as a result.
The company MyWikiBiz.com, the brainchild of Pennsylvania marketer Gregory Kohs, announced in August that it was offering to create Wikipedia articles for companies, at prices ranging from $49 to $99 (see archived story). This caught Wales's attention, leading him to block MyWikiBiz temporarily. He unblocked the account after a phone conversation in which they discussed the possibility of Kohs "creating" articles by posting them on his own website, licensed under the GFDL. Uninvolved Wikipedia editors could then decide independently whether to transfer the articles over.
The following week, MyWikiBiz was blocked for a week after leaving comments advertising his services on Articles for deletion discussions (the comments were followed by emoticons, and Kohs says they were tongue-in-cheek). A request for arbitration was also made by Cyde, who observed that MyWikiBiz was also actively nominating articles about businesses for deletion, raising the possibility of a different kind of conflict of interest. The Arbitration Committee rejected the case, however, and Wales suggested that it was premature, noting that the conflict of interest policy was still evolving.
In September, an article was created about MyWikiBiz.com (not by Kohs, however), leading inevitably to a debate over whether to delete that. MyWikiBiz did not create any more articles directly, although at least one was created after being posted on his website.
At the time of the original incident, Erik Möller (since elected to the Wikimedia Foundation board) had proposed and started a Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest page. After considerable development, this was marked as a guideline on Wednesday by Radiant! This apparently triggered the reopening of the conflict.
Kohs soon posted to the talk page, questioning the action on the grounds that Wales had called the proposal "absolutely unacceptable" in private correspondence. Wales said he was addressing the form of the proposal at the time, and because his own suggestions had been incorporated, he supported it as "a starting point for discouraging" people from "writ[ing] articles on behalf of companies for money."
Wales charged that Kohs was "trying to stir up sentiment" against him and misrepresenting the situation. Accordingly, he left a stern warning on MyWikiBiz's talk page. Kohs responded by telling Wales, "you, Sir, are now misrepresenting your very own thoughts about the efforts of MyWikiBiz.com." Wales then promptly blocked the MyWikiBiz account indefinitely, replacing the user page with an explanation and a warning to its potential customers. (Kohs's personal account, User:Thekohser, had already been blocked earlier.)
In addition to blocking the account, Wales deleted two articles produced by MyWikiBiz that Kohs had mentioned in his reply. However, one of the articles deleted, Arch Coal, had been copied from MyWikiBiz.com by another editor. This led the issue to come up for deletion review. Wales agreed that the discussion could proceed, although he called the article "a travesty of NPOV." The article was ultimately kept after a ground-up rewrite. Meanwhile, several more of the articles posted on MyWikiBiz.com were copied over by other editors after the situation flared up again.
As of Tuesday, 9 October, 2006, the Portuguese language Wikipedia contains about 190,000 articles, making it the 8th largest Wikipedia by number of articles. It has 217 articles (approximately 1 in 837) that have been chosen as Os melhores artigos ("The best articles", equivalent to featured articles). There is no equivalent to " good articles" on the Portuguese Wikipedia, but the creation of a similar category is under discussion, although no name for it has been decided yet. Additionally creation of a peer review process is being discussed.
The choice of a featured article is slightly different from the process in the English Wikipedia. First, the article must be submitted to a vote which decides whether it should be included in the list of "the best articles". Only then can it be submitted to a second vote, that chooses which articles should appear on the Main Page.
The latest three additions to the list of melhores artigos are:
As of 9 October, 2006, 61 users of the Portuguese language Wikipedia are administrators. Administrators make up 0.05% of the total number of 120,313 registered users, and about 39% of the very active (100+ edits per month) contributors.
In the last few months, the Portuguese language community has made substantial transformations in Wikipedia dynamics, trying to adapt the project to the needs of its rapidly growing size (it has grown by over 130% since October 2005, when it had 82,000 articles). Resolution of some issues, such as the adoption of fair use in the Portuguese Wikipedia, has left room for redevelopment of other aspects of the project. The featured articles promotion system was redesigned, as well as the Main Page, and many other features were created, such as Imagem em destaque ( Featured images), Sabia que ( Did you know), Efeméride ( Selected anniversaries).
Currently, the Portuguese Wikipedia is deciding whether the local upload of media files should be disabled, redirecting all uploads to the Wikimedia Commons, as was recently decided on the Spanish Wikipedia.
In the next few days, Portuguese Wikipedia will hold the fifth edition of its WikiConcurso ("WikiContest"), whose main goal is to enhance the content of articles in a specific field. These articles must be stubs, and contestants are invited to improve them during a two-week period, at the end of which the improved articles are submitted for review and voting by fellow participants in the contest. The first four editions were very successful in achieving a good number of excellent articles, making it one of the favorite activities of the Portuguese language community.
As a result of comments made by Wikipedians in the Village Pump, regarding the absence of articles on certain Portuguese and Brazilian personalities, but already existed in Wikipedias in other languages, a project was formed with the goal of creating articles, regardless of subject. This task was named Wikiactividade ("Wikiactivity" - compare Featured articles in other languages).
Its first edition, which was held from 1 August to 31 August, required that these new articles should have at least 2,000 bytes, be properly categorized, and include interwiki links. Forty users rallied for the task, and their work resulted in the creation of 1,010 new articles.
Inspired by good results of Wikiatividade, another idea called Colaboração da Semana ( Collaboration of the week) was proposed by several members of the community. This project has just begun, with its initial focus directed towards problem articles, such as those in need of links and categories.
One of the most controversial discussions in the Portuguese language Wikipedia centered on the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. This discussion almost led to the creation of two separate Wikipedias, something considered a heresy by the majority of the Portuguese speaking community. Several discussions in the Village Pump and Meta pages threatened what most of Portuguese-speaking sysops and veteran users consider 'an effort towards unity, respect and understanding'. Many resolutions towards this goal have been approved, such as the use of neutral vocabulary in some cases, and the development of an integration culture.
Instead of using the German userbox solution, the community decided, after a vote, to use a similar, but different system: userboxes should be included under the domain Wikipedia:Userbox/. Userboxes in users subpages, however, are allowed.
Brazilian users in the Portuguese language Wikipedia community held their second meeting, on 5 August, 2006 in the city of São Paulo. The community of users from Portugal also recently held their first meeting, in Lisbon on 7 October, 2006.
Five Portuguese language sister projects began from December 2003 to August 2005. They have all grown considerably, and all but one is in the Top 10 for number of articles in the different language versions:
New accounts may no longer include the at sign (@) in their names (thanks to a bugzilla request). Users complained that many accounts with the symbol were mainly users who registered with their e-mail addresses, opening up the likelihood of spamming. In addition, many accounts with e-mail addresses as usernames were being blocked, according to username policy.
"Somewhere ... between the discovery that you are listed in the phone book and, say, being knighted, sits the Wikipedia entry," begins Noam Cohen. He then describes the need for Wikipedia to delete articles. Cohen claims that about 2,000 of the 4,000 new articles are deleted each day by administrators. Cohen then features highlights from the deletion and the final decision for the following: List of songs featuring cowbells ( AfD); Pooky the Teddy Bear ( AfD); Chuck Greene ( AfD); The Constantian Society ( AfD); and Diane Farrell ( AfD, AfD 2nd nom).
NEA Today, the monthly magazine of the National Education Association, features Wikipedia in its October issue. Cindy Long gives an overview of Wikipedia and suggests that it is "a powerful [teaching] tool for educators trying to teach information literacy in the digital age." The problem of vandalism is explained and those doing recent changes patrol are compared to "hall monitors."
The Evansville Courier Press, in Internet & Wikipedia showcase nonsense, claims "It's dangerous [to live] in the misinformation age. So much of what you hear and read is incorrect, stupid and crazy." The article then quotes articles such as spontaneous human combustion to support that thesis.
The Michigan Daily, a newspaper serving the University of Michigan, discusses the Wikipedia articles on the Michigan gubernatorial candidates, Jennifer Granholm and Dick DeVos, concluding that while they "contain few overt inaccuracies, the articles may give readers a skewed impression."
Arizona State University's online campus newspaper, the Web Devil followed up last week's article with an editorial describing the editing process at Wikipedia as a "seething pit of contention that is Internet culture... [where] face clawing and name calling [have] been continuously going on since Wikipedia's initial success." Wikipedia is also contrasted with Citizendium.
NPR affiliate KUOW-FM in Seattle, on its October 11, 2006 "Weekday" show, featuring writer and performer John Hodgman (author of the book "The Areas of my Expertise") [2]. Hodgman described Wikipedia as not a place to check facts, but to determine what the controversies were for any given subject. He called it "the place where a million people go to grind their tiny axes.”
The Parksville Qualicum News article, News travels fast on wiki site reports on Wikipedia's "unparalleled self-correcting qualities ... and its unique ability to be absolutely up to date, [making] a strong argument for its use as the go to reference on a wide range of subjects." Wikipedian User:KenWalker is interviewed.
Six users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Duja ( nom), Merope ( nom), Irongargoyle ( nom), NCurse ( nom), Johan Elisson ( nom) and Adambiswanger1 ( nom). BanyanTree was re-sysoped without an RfA, per the policy found at the guide to requests for adminship ( discussion).
Both Duja and Johan Elisson were promoted by 90 and 64 (respectively) unanimous support votes.
Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee ( nom), Stephen Trigg ( nom), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater ( nom), Compact Cassette ( nom), Maraba Coffee ( nom), Kazi Nazrul Islam ( nom), Fauna of Puerto Rico ( nom), Ulm Campaign ( nom), Enzyme kinetics ( nom), Alcibiades ( nom), Arctic Tern ( nom), Dhaka ( nom) and Leonhard Euler ( nom).
Six articles were de-featured last week: Go (board game), Domestic AC power plugs and sockets, Joshua A. Norton, Sudoku, and Abraham Lincoln.
One portal reached featured status last week: Portal:Poetry.
No lists were featured last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Detroit, Lost (TV Series), Dürer's Rhinoceros, The Lord of the Rings, Gas tungsten arc welding, Adi Shankara and Acute myeloid leukemia.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Wikipe-tan, Global tropical cyclone tracks, Hacha Grande, Horseracing, Ajanta, European Parliament building and Animated cartoon.
Twelve pictures were featured last week:
For the first time in over five months, the Arbitration Committee neither opened nor closed any cases this week.
For the first time in over five months, the Arbitration Committee neither opened nor closed any cases this week.
This week, the Signpost caught up with newly-elected Board of Trustees member Erik Möller, who won the elections held last month. (See archived story.) We asked Möller a few questions pertaining to both his role in the Board and his thoughts on the election in the interview.
1. Congratulations on your election! First, is there anything you would like to say to all Wikimedians? Those who supported you in the election? Those who didn't support you? The other candidates?
2. Reflecting back on the elections in retrospect, what changes would you have made, if any? Do you think the elections were fair? As a Board member who will indubitably influence the next election, what changes do you think can (or should) be made next time?
3. You've had a long history of contributions to Wikimedia projects, including a number of disputes, most significantly your
resignation as
Chief Research Officer, stemming from what you called "personal differences and a fundamental disagreement about the nature and scope of the role", a "personality conflict" between yourself and current Board member
Anthere, as well as tensions between you and Jimbo. Both Jimbo and Anthere are still currently on the Board. How well do you think you will work with them this time as a Board member? What has changed since last time? How will the past affect your relationships with both Anthere and Jimbo?
4. Another conflict you've had is when you were temporarily blocked and de-sysoped by Foundation employee
Danny Wool, both here and on
Meta-Wiki, in April of this year for unprotecting two articles and allegedly violating
"Office Action" policy, although you were unaware of the actions at the time. (See
archived story.) The action by Wool was later overturned on both the English Wikipedia and Meta. Do you think this conflict will affect your dealings as a Board member? How do you think it will impact your workings with Danny?
5. In an
interview with the Signpost last month, you commented that it would be critical to "establish a high level of transparency and low barriers to entry," and in your
platform, you expanded on this theme by advocating more openness within committees and the Foundation in general. Would you mind clarifying this? How would you accomplish this?
6. You also advocated a need to invite more experts as one of the most pressing issues for Wikipedia, saying that "we need to make a serious call to the scientific community to participate, and provide them with easy channels to do so." How important is this? As a Board member, what actions would you take to ensure that this happens?
7. What other issues do you plan to address right now as a Board member? How so?
8. You've also worked as a developer in the past and contributed to
MediaWiki. From your perspective as a Board member, how important are technical changes and advances in the software? What is the most significant update to date in MediaWiki? What do you think is the biggest change that should be made? Do you plan to continue working on the technical side while serving on the Board?
9. What would you say to the Wikimedia and more specifically, the Wikipedia community, right now? How do you think your role as a Board member will influence Wikimedia and Wikipedia? What changes do you project to Wikimedia and Wikipedia at the end of your term in July 2007? Do you plan on running for re-election?
10. Finally, is there anything else you want to mention?
In a twist on the charge sometimes leveled at Wikipedia editors, the Wall Street Journal included Wikipedia in its discussion of Grupthink last week (no, that's not a misspelling, although it's sometimes written Grūpthink).
Grupthink, the subject of a Wednesday piece by Journal columnist Aaron Rutkoff, is actually a website that allows users to create and run polls on virtually any subject imaginable. As one example of this, Rutkoff noted a Wikipedia Showdown poll, which asks site users to pick "the weirdest, funniest, craziest, and most bizarre entries" Wikipedia carries.
Leading the poll, which started running 10 May, is the List of fictional expletives. Lists were actually rather popular choices in the poll, such as List of English words containing Q not followed by U (which is also a featured list on Wikipedia), "List of songs featuring cowbells" (despite the fact that the article has since been deleted), and of course Lists of lists. Other poll options included Groupthink (inevitably), the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Nihilartikel, and the always-popular Heavy metal umlaut (see archived story).
The deleted article on songs with cowbells also made an appearance in Sunday's New York Times as well. This was in an article exploring several recent discussions on Articles for deletion; also included were Pooky (merged), Chuck Greene (deleted), and the Constantian Society (kept). The most interesting case was Diane Farrell, a Connecticut congressional candidate whose article was deleted in July and re-created three different times. The third time, which came after the appearance of the Times story, led to a reconsideration of the original deletion because the content was not identical and presented new arguments for her notability.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia seems to be a fairly popular resource with the Grupthink community (see [1]). Another poll currently has Wikipedia leading in response to the question of what is the "best open source project".
Shockingly, considering the way internet phenomena are documented on Wikipedia, nobody had attempted to create an article on Grupthink at the time the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. It did show up as an external link related to the Choose Your Own Adventure series (someone had started a group of polls structured in a similar fashion), but no other articles mentioned it and there were no signs of a linkspam campaign. Grupthink did appear as a "requested article" listed on the Culture and fine arts subpage, under "Internet and tech culture - Miscellaneous".
The Wikipedia account of a business selling its services in creating Wikipedia articles was blocked by Jimbo Wales, after a truce over the ethical concerns involved broke down. User:MyWikiBiz has been blocked indefinitely, and Wales deleted two of the articles created as a result.
The company MyWikiBiz.com, the brainchild of Pennsylvania marketer Gregory Kohs, announced in August that it was offering to create Wikipedia articles for companies, at prices ranging from $49 to $99 (see archived story). This caught Wales's attention, leading him to block MyWikiBiz temporarily. He unblocked the account after a phone conversation in which they discussed the possibility of Kohs "creating" articles by posting them on his own website, licensed under the GFDL. Uninvolved Wikipedia editors could then decide independently whether to transfer the articles over.
The following week, MyWikiBiz was blocked for a week after leaving comments advertising his services on Articles for deletion discussions (the comments were followed by emoticons, and Kohs says they were tongue-in-cheek). A request for arbitration was also made by Cyde, who observed that MyWikiBiz was also actively nominating articles about businesses for deletion, raising the possibility of a different kind of conflict of interest. The Arbitration Committee rejected the case, however, and Wales suggested that it was premature, noting that the conflict of interest policy was still evolving.
In September, an article was created about MyWikiBiz.com (not by Kohs, however), leading inevitably to a debate over whether to delete that. MyWikiBiz did not create any more articles directly, although at least one was created after being posted on his website.
At the time of the original incident, Erik Möller (since elected to the Wikimedia Foundation board) had proposed and started a Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest page. After considerable development, this was marked as a guideline on Wednesday by Radiant! This apparently triggered the reopening of the conflict.
Kohs soon posted to the talk page, questioning the action on the grounds that Wales had called the proposal "absolutely unacceptable" in private correspondence. Wales said he was addressing the form of the proposal at the time, and because his own suggestions had been incorporated, he supported it as "a starting point for discouraging" people from "writ[ing] articles on behalf of companies for money."
Wales charged that Kohs was "trying to stir up sentiment" against him and misrepresenting the situation. Accordingly, he left a stern warning on MyWikiBiz's talk page. Kohs responded by telling Wales, "you, Sir, are now misrepresenting your very own thoughts about the efforts of MyWikiBiz.com." Wales then promptly blocked the MyWikiBiz account indefinitely, replacing the user page with an explanation and a warning to its potential customers. (Kohs's personal account, User:Thekohser, had already been blocked earlier.)
In addition to blocking the account, Wales deleted two articles produced by MyWikiBiz that Kohs had mentioned in his reply. However, one of the articles deleted, Arch Coal, had been copied from MyWikiBiz.com by another editor. This led the issue to come up for deletion review. Wales agreed that the discussion could proceed, although he called the article "a travesty of NPOV." The article was ultimately kept after a ground-up rewrite. Meanwhile, several more of the articles posted on MyWikiBiz.com were copied over by other editors after the situation flared up again.
As of Tuesday, 9 October, 2006, the Portuguese language Wikipedia contains about 190,000 articles, making it the 8th largest Wikipedia by number of articles. It has 217 articles (approximately 1 in 837) that have been chosen as Os melhores artigos ("The best articles", equivalent to featured articles). There is no equivalent to " good articles" on the Portuguese Wikipedia, but the creation of a similar category is under discussion, although no name for it has been decided yet. Additionally creation of a peer review process is being discussed.
The choice of a featured article is slightly different from the process in the English Wikipedia. First, the article must be submitted to a vote which decides whether it should be included in the list of "the best articles". Only then can it be submitted to a second vote, that chooses which articles should appear on the Main Page.
The latest three additions to the list of melhores artigos are:
As of 9 October, 2006, 61 users of the Portuguese language Wikipedia are administrators. Administrators make up 0.05% of the total number of 120,313 registered users, and about 39% of the very active (100+ edits per month) contributors.
In the last few months, the Portuguese language community has made substantial transformations in Wikipedia dynamics, trying to adapt the project to the needs of its rapidly growing size (it has grown by over 130% since October 2005, when it had 82,000 articles). Resolution of some issues, such as the adoption of fair use in the Portuguese Wikipedia, has left room for redevelopment of other aspects of the project. The featured articles promotion system was redesigned, as well as the Main Page, and many other features were created, such as Imagem em destaque ( Featured images), Sabia que ( Did you know), Efeméride ( Selected anniversaries).
Currently, the Portuguese Wikipedia is deciding whether the local upload of media files should be disabled, redirecting all uploads to the Wikimedia Commons, as was recently decided on the Spanish Wikipedia.
In the next few days, Portuguese Wikipedia will hold the fifth edition of its WikiConcurso ("WikiContest"), whose main goal is to enhance the content of articles in a specific field. These articles must be stubs, and contestants are invited to improve them during a two-week period, at the end of which the improved articles are submitted for review and voting by fellow participants in the contest. The first four editions were very successful in achieving a good number of excellent articles, making it one of the favorite activities of the Portuguese language community.
As a result of comments made by Wikipedians in the Village Pump, regarding the absence of articles on certain Portuguese and Brazilian personalities, but already existed in Wikipedias in other languages, a project was formed with the goal of creating articles, regardless of subject. This task was named Wikiactividade ("Wikiactivity" - compare Featured articles in other languages).
Its first edition, which was held from 1 August to 31 August, required that these new articles should have at least 2,000 bytes, be properly categorized, and include interwiki links. Forty users rallied for the task, and their work resulted in the creation of 1,010 new articles.
Inspired by good results of Wikiatividade, another idea called Colaboração da Semana ( Collaboration of the week) was proposed by several members of the community. This project has just begun, with its initial focus directed towards problem articles, such as those in need of links and categories.
One of the most controversial discussions in the Portuguese language Wikipedia centered on the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. This discussion almost led to the creation of two separate Wikipedias, something considered a heresy by the majority of the Portuguese speaking community. Several discussions in the Village Pump and Meta pages threatened what most of Portuguese-speaking sysops and veteran users consider 'an effort towards unity, respect and understanding'. Many resolutions towards this goal have been approved, such as the use of neutral vocabulary in some cases, and the development of an integration culture.
Instead of using the German userbox solution, the community decided, after a vote, to use a similar, but different system: userboxes should be included under the domain Wikipedia:Userbox/. Userboxes in users subpages, however, are allowed.
Brazilian users in the Portuguese language Wikipedia community held their second meeting, on 5 August, 2006 in the city of São Paulo. The community of users from Portugal also recently held their first meeting, in Lisbon on 7 October, 2006.
Five Portuguese language sister projects began from December 2003 to August 2005. They have all grown considerably, and all but one is in the Top 10 for number of articles in the different language versions:
New accounts may no longer include the at sign (@) in their names (thanks to a bugzilla request). Users complained that many accounts with the symbol were mainly users who registered with their e-mail addresses, opening up the likelihood of spamming. In addition, many accounts with e-mail addresses as usernames were being blocked, according to username policy.
"Somewhere ... between the discovery that you are listed in the phone book and, say, being knighted, sits the Wikipedia entry," begins Noam Cohen. He then describes the need for Wikipedia to delete articles. Cohen claims that about 2,000 of the 4,000 new articles are deleted each day by administrators. Cohen then features highlights from the deletion and the final decision for the following: List of songs featuring cowbells ( AfD); Pooky the Teddy Bear ( AfD); Chuck Greene ( AfD); The Constantian Society ( AfD); and Diane Farrell ( AfD, AfD 2nd nom).
NEA Today, the monthly magazine of the National Education Association, features Wikipedia in its October issue. Cindy Long gives an overview of Wikipedia and suggests that it is "a powerful [teaching] tool for educators trying to teach information literacy in the digital age." The problem of vandalism is explained and those doing recent changes patrol are compared to "hall monitors."
The Evansville Courier Press, in Internet & Wikipedia showcase nonsense, claims "It's dangerous [to live] in the misinformation age. So much of what you hear and read is incorrect, stupid and crazy." The article then quotes articles such as spontaneous human combustion to support that thesis.
The Michigan Daily, a newspaper serving the University of Michigan, discusses the Wikipedia articles on the Michigan gubernatorial candidates, Jennifer Granholm and Dick DeVos, concluding that while they "contain few overt inaccuracies, the articles may give readers a skewed impression."
Arizona State University's online campus newspaper, the Web Devil followed up last week's article with an editorial describing the editing process at Wikipedia as a "seething pit of contention that is Internet culture... [where] face clawing and name calling [have] been continuously going on since Wikipedia's initial success." Wikipedia is also contrasted with Citizendium.
NPR affiliate KUOW-FM in Seattle, on its October 11, 2006 "Weekday" show, featuring writer and performer John Hodgman (author of the book "The Areas of my Expertise") [2]. Hodgman described Wikipedia as not a place to check facts, but to determine what the controversies were for any given subject. He called it "the place where a million people go to grind their tiny axes.”
The Parksville Qualicum News article, News travels fast on wiki site reports on Wikipedia's "unparalleled self-correcting qualities ... and its unique ability to be absolutely up to date, [making] a strong argument for its use as the go to reference on a wide range of subjects." Wikipedian User:KenWalker is interviewed.
Six users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Duja ( nom), Merope ( nom), Irongargoyle ( nom), NCurse ( nom), Johan Elisson ( nom) and Adambiswanger1 ( nom). BanyanTree was re-sysoped without an RfA, per the policy found at the guide to requests for adminship ( discussion).
Both Duja and Johan Elisson were promoted by 90 and 64 (respectively) unanimous support votes.
Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee ( nom), Stephen Trigg ( nom), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater ( nom), Compact Cassette ( nom), Maraba Coffee ( nom), Kazi Nazrul Islam ( nom), Fauna of Puerto Rico ( nom), Ulm Campaign ( nom), Enzyme kinetics ( nom), Alcibiades ( nom), Arctic Tern ( nom), Dhaka ( nom) and Leonhard Euler ( nom).
Six articles were de-featured last week: Go (board game), Domestic AC power plugs and sockets, Joshua A. Norton, Sudoku, and Abraham Lincoln.
One portal reached featured status last week: Portal:Poetry.
No lists were featured last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Detroit, Lost (TV Series), Dürer's Rhinoceros, The Lord of the Rings, Gas tungsten arc welding, Adi Shankara and Acute myeloid leukemia.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Wikipe-tan, Global tropical cyclone tracks, Hacha Grande, Horseracing, Ajanta, European Parliament building and Animated cartoon.
Twelve pictures were featured last week:
For the first time in over five months, the Arbitration Committee neither opened nor closed any cases this week.
For the first time in over five months, the Arbitration Committee neither opened nor closed any cases this week.