This week, we've got a special feature. In honor of Wikipedia's 2,000th featured article, Wikinews interviewed the team behind one of the five articles promoted at the same time. The principal writers were kind enough to dual-license the content under the GFDL, to avoid any potential licensing concerns.
We're also looking for more writers (as we always are!) We're looking for writers for our tutorial series, and general writers. If you'd like to write one or more tutorials, check out the suggested topics, or come up with your own. If you'd like to be a general, week-to-week writer, covering things like the 2,000th featured article, or other stories within the Wikimedia sphere, please contact me for more information.
Thanks for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
This week, the English-language version of Wikipedia reached 2,000 featured articles with the inclusion of the article El Señor Presidente. Featured articles (FAs) meet Wikipedia's highest standards for quality, accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style, and thus are considered the best articles on Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia process ( Featured article candidates) that evaluates articles for featured article status promoted five articles to FA status at the same time: Walter de Coventre, Maximian, El Señor Presidente, Lord of the Universe, and Red-billed Chough. With five promoted at the same time, conferring the status of 2,000th on one is an arbitrary decision and in some respects any of these articles could actually make a claim to the honour.
One of the five, El Señor Presidente, was unique in that it is the first known article to reach FA status as part of a class project, WikiProject Madness, Murder, and Mayhem. Jon Beasley-Murray, a professor of Spanish literature at the University of British Columbia, decided to make Wikipedia editing a class assignment, divvying up a set of articles related to the theme of his Spanish Literature class. Students who reached GA status would receive As, while FAs would earn students an A+ on the assignment. Aiding the class was the FA-team, a new WikiProject of sorts whose aim is to help newer Wikipedians achieve FA status. The project consists of several editors with copy-editing and MOS experience to help guide new editors through the often-confusing process of reaching FA status. Out of twelve articles chosen as part of the project, eight have (as of the end of the project, April 22) passed as GAs, and a total of three are FA ( Mario Vargas Llosa and The General in His Labyrinth were promoted subsequent to El Señor Presidente). Before the project began, a few of the twelve, including El Señor Presidente, did not exist.
Beasley-Murray began using Wikipedia as a collaborative space where his students could both do coursework and provide a type of virtual public service. Thus, he created a Wikipedia project, Murder Madness and Mayhem, that focused on creating articles relating to the Latin American literature covered in his class. Not surprisingly, El Señor Presidente is considered one of the most important books in Latin American literature, written by Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias.
Beasley-Murray has written an essay describing the experience, in which he states that the assignment helped students improve their research skills and become familiar with writing for a public audience. Wikipedia, he says, does not encourage the kind of persuasive writing usually sought for in a university setting, but it can be a great exercise in critical thinking and research. This WikiProject has caused a bit of a stir on higher education discussion boards on the internet as in this post entitled: "Is murder, madness and mayhem the future of higher education?"
This is not the first college class to make Wikipedia editing part of its coursework. It is, however, the first to achieve this kind of success. In the past, projects of a similar sort have had varying degrees of success, some adding only a little information to the pages involved, and others being absolutely chaotic, having no leader, no respect for the rules of Wikipedia, and no real guidance other than "add to get the grade." This project seems to have succeeded where others have failed for several reasons. First, the leadership of the teacher of the class, Jbmurray. Second, the guidance of the FA-team helping the students and the professor become familiar with Wikipedia's etiquette and other oddities.
The Wikinews team contacted Prof. Beasley-Murray, who agreed to be interviewed for this story. His responses can be found below. Included are sections soliciting responses from three students who took the class and helped create and bring El Señor Presidente to Feature Article status. Thus far the project has created seven good articles in addition to the 2,000th featured article.
Wikinews: Professor Beasley-Murray, thank you for giving us some of your valuable time and agreeing to talk to us. Can you give some background on what prompted you to start this project?
Did you consult with fellow academics or students prior to launching this project?
I would assume the Wikipedia community was in favour of your project. Did anyone outside that community make notably critical comments about your idea?
How significant a percentage of the mark you were giving for the class came from Wikipedia contributions?
As a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's communications committee, I (Brian McNeil) frequently see both sides of the conflict over Wikipedia's relevance or reliability. This ranges from queries coming in from students working on their school paper who want a response to their librarian and teachers effectively banning use of Wikipedia, to the other extreme such as a recent case where a teaching surgeon in the UK asking for permission to quote extensively from Wikipedia for a paper on the site's relevance and potential use for undergraduates in medicine. I have a stock answer detailing how to check Wikipedia sources: that Wikipedia is a great starting point for research, and that if you disallow Wikipedia you should disallow Britannica. Is this something you would agree with?
Was the experience of using a wiki for collaboration something you would repeat? There have been suggestions for something you might call "EduWiki" for the collaborative development of course material. Would you get involved with something like that? Do you see potential for use of the MediaWiki software in other areas of education? Such a project could be hosted under Wikimedia Foundation projects such as Wikibooks or Wikiversity. Would you favour that over a closed project within academia where contributors' credentials could be verified?
Would you describe your students as receptive to the idea of doing coursework where the general public could view their works in progress?
Did any students fail to fit in and find themselves unable to work with Wikipedia?
Do you feel that doing this part of the course in such a radically open way encouraged any of the students to work to a higher standard than they might otherwise have?
In reflecting on the project, is there anything you would have done differently?
You've hit about 6,000 edits personally – have you caught the "wiki bug"? Will you keep editing?
In light of the apparent success of your project, what would you say to other academics to try to persuade them to try similar experiments?
Before moving on to bringing your students into the discussion, I'd like to close with your thoughts on making this a regular part of the curriculum. Do you intend to do so? Do you feel other institutions should examine your project with a view to emulating it?
In addition to the one featured article, seven made Good Article status. How much of an encouragement was that to those of you involved in the project?
How long were you involved with Wikipedia before you really felt Good or Featured was achievable?
If you could improve the guidelines for people wanting to take articles up to Featured status, what would you change?
Do you feel that having anything you did immediately viewable by anyone on the Internet encouraged you to aim for a higher standard than you might have with a more conventional paper that only the professor would see?
Do you believe that contributing something to a 'digital commons' gives you more of a sense of achievement than just turning in a term paper?
Have you caught the "wiki bug"? Will you keep editing?
Assuming Professor Beasley-Murray repeats this project in subsequent years, what advice would you give to students following in your footsteps and starting on Wikipedia?
Which would you describe as the harder 'marking authority'? Other professors where you've submitted conventional term papers, or the teams assessing Wikipedia contributions with a view to awarding Good or Featured status?
Was there significant input from other Wikipedians not taking your course? If so, was this valuable?
As a fairly open-ended question, would you see any use for wiki technology in any of your other study areas, or even where you may hope to eventually end up in employment?
How did you feel when "El Señor Presidente" was promoted to Featured Article (FA) status? Did you have a celebratory drink or party?
Were you disappointed that more of your articles didn't make FA status?
Was getting the article up to that status harder than you expected?
Does the lack of credit on Wikipedia concern you?
Academia is often characterised as "publish or die". Do you believe the educational establishment should embrace Wikipedia or wiki technology as a way of making this publishing requirement less onerous?
How has working on getting something to FA status changed your opinion of Wikipedia from that you held prior to the start of this project?
I'd like to thank you all for taking the time out of your busy schedules to help on this Wikinews article. Who knows – it too could end up featured!
After recent proliferation of image placeholders on biographies, designed to solicit freely-licensed photos of article subjects, a centralized discussion is being held to determine whether these images should continue to be used. For the course of the discussion, an agreement has been made to refrain from adding or removing these images from articles.
Generic image placeholders, containing a silhouette and the text "No free image/do you own one?/If so, please click here", have been placed on many as-yet un-illustrated biography articles (usually, but not necessarily, inside infoboxes). Readers who click the image are taken to a form, which is more streamlined for this task than the general upload form. When the reader uploads an image and completes the form, the image placeholder gets replaced with the new image.
Replace this image female and Replace this image male are the latest versions of the placeholder boxes. The placeholders have been added to over 50,000 articles, often with the help of the automated tool AutoWikiBrowser, attracting both positive and negative reactions from Wikipedia editors.
Some editors felt the practice of adding this placeholder made a fundamental change to a large number of Wikipedia articles, and it should not be continued without first establishing a broad consensus of Wikipedia editors. A preliminary discussion was held ( summarized here) agreeing to suspend adding the image placeholders, pending the outcome of a promptly-held centralized discussion.
That broader discussion is underway now, and all are invited to participate. Some of the issues raised include:
While much has already been discussed, the discussion is ongoing, and opinions are still being solicited on the issue.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from " Pet skunk". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees met on April 5–7. On April 10, board Chair Florence Devouard released a recap of the events of the meeting. The first day concerned the June Board elections, and possible reorganization, and a much-discussed Wikicouncil, composed of community members. According to Devouard, Jan-Bart de Vreede will report this outcome "within the next ten days" (by Sunday).
The second day concerned the search for a new Treasurer on the Board, and related issues, including audit news. Devouard indicated that she would give an update on the matter soon. The third day dealt with a report from Executive Director Sue Gardner, as well as various issues, including the press issues surrounding Jimmy Wales, resolutions on data retention and privacy policies, a Wikimania security assessment (which is to be posted by Mike Godwin), and a decision that no restrictions would be made on Board members becoming staff members, or vice versa.
A proposed "non-disparagement agreement" for board members also came up during the meeting, but was rejected by the Board.
Resolutions passed during the meeting have not yet been posted to the Foundation's resolutions page.
Wikipedia breeds 'unwitting trust' says IT professor - Deakin University associate professor Sharman Lichtenstein believes that the increasing use of Wikipedia creates blind trust in information, to the detriment of valuable knowledge and expert opinion. She says that Australians already disrespect intellectuals and academics, but she asks us to consider whether we would use a trained brain surgeon or a student who has just read Wikipedia for brain surgery. She notes that Wikipedia prides itself on being built by groups of lay citizens, and experts are unlikely to contribute anyway because they would expect to be paid. Credibility of Wikipedia articles is questioned because of the formation of "elite" editors and administrators, a trend that has caused growing dissatisfaction with Wikipedia's editorial process, leading others to create competitors to Wikipedia.
Other recent mentions in the online media include:
The English-language Wikipedia reached a milestone with the promotion of its 2,000th article to Featured Article (FA) status on 10 April. These 2,000 articles represent the best 0.09% of articles on Wikipedia—almost one in a thousand articles. Five articles were promoted simultaneously and share the distinction of being the 2,000th promotion: Walter de Coventre, Maximian, El Señor Presidente, Lord of the Universe, and Red-billed Chough.
The Featured article process (FAC) was initiated in June 2003 as "Brilliant prose"; it reached 500 featured articles in February 2005 (see archived story) and the 1,000th FA was promoted three years later, in June 2006 (see archived story). Although deterioration over time and rising standards in what constitutes Wikipedia's best work have meant that some previously promoted articles have had their Featured article status removed, the net number of FAs continues to rise, from an average of 44 articles promoted a month in early 2006 to a current average of almost 70 a month. In the first three months of 2008, 227 articles were promoted to FA and 25 were delisted, providing a net increase of 202 and bringing the total number of FAs to 1,981. In the first nine days of April, 14 articles were promoted, and early that morning (UTC) FA Director Raul654 promoted these five, bringing the total to an even 2,000. [1] These articles reflect the wide variety of topics that are represented at FAC: their topics include a medieval bishop, a Roman emperor, a novel written by a Nobel-Prize-winning Latin American author, a 1974 PBS documentary about a young "guru", and a bird in the crow family.
Walter de Coventre was first nominated for FA status on 20 March, just 18 days after its primary contributor, Deacon of Pndapetzim, had created it. The nomination was archived without promotion on 1 April after several reviewers expressed concern with the prose. Malleus Fatuarum performed a copyedit, and on 5 April, PMAnderson (who had previously peer reviewed the article) renominated it for FA status in conjunction with Deacon of Pndapetzim. Consensus was soon reached that the article met the FA criteria; in particular, reviewer Ealdgyth remarked that the article did an "excellent job of making an obscure subject shine", and reviewer GrahamColm called the re-nomination "proof of the importance of 'fresh eyes' and a bloody good copy editor".
Geuiwogbil began working on Maximian on 14 March and in less than two weeks expanded the article by a magnitude of seven. Geuiwogbil nominated the article at FAC on 5 April. Although several reviewers initially opposed on the basis of prose, after Roger Davies and Dulcem completed a copyedit, those reviewers struck their declarations of "Oppose". The article was promoted with unanimous support; reviewer Roger Davies noted that the article was "remarkably well-cited and referenced".
Lord of the Universe was nominated for featured article status by its recent primary contributor Cirt on 4 April. The article drew no opposes, and the few critical comments were addressed. Semifreddo remarked that it was an "informative article on [a] little-known film". The unanimous promotion was especially notable given that the article is part of Category:Prem Rawat, and all articles in this category have been placed on WP:1RR due to contentious editing.
El Señor Presidente was created on 15 January by Professor Jbmurray as part of a Spanish literature class assignment at the University of British Columbia. Three of his students, eecono, katekonyk, and Mfreud, were given the task of improving the article from a one-line stub to a featured article. The students, who had not previously edited Wikipedia, were assisted by members of WikiProject Novels and the recently created FA-Team, which aims to help editors unfamiliar with FAC to bring their articles to FA status. The students researched and wrote the article, while more experienced Wikipedians provided frequent peer reviews as well as MOS compliance and copy-editing assistance. FA-Team member Awadewit nominated the article for FAC on behalf of Mfreud, katekonykm, eecono, and Jbmurray, saying that "they have created one of the best Spanish-language literature articles on Wikipedia". Although the nomination generated debate on how to interpret some of Wikipedia's image policies, it received near-unanimous support. Maxim commented that it was "brilliant work".
After bringing the article to Good article status on 15 February, primary contributor Jimfbleak nominated Red-billed Chough for FA on 31 March. FA reviewers provided suggestions for improving the prose which Jimfbleak quickly implemented. In a pun on the article's avian subject, reviewer Shyamal noted that the article was "ready to fly".
As of 14 April, seven additional articles have been promoted to featured article status. Two others have been delisted after discussion at Featured article review, giving a net of 2,005 featured articles. Forty-one articles are nominated as Featured article candidates.
Three users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Bedford ( nom), Davidgothberg ( nom), and EyeSerene ( nom).
Eight bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: IainadamsBot ( task request), MagnusA.Bot ( task request), John Bot III ( task request), SpillingBot ( task request), FairuseBot ( task request), DyceBot ( task request), DOI bot ( task request), and SQLBot-Hello ( task request).
Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Cyclone Elita ( nom), Nguyen Ngoc Tho ( nom), Priestley Riots ( nom), Red-billed Chough ( nom), Maximian ( nom), El Señor Presidente ( nom), Lord of the Universe ( nom), Walter de Coventre ( nom), Peterloo Massacre ( nom), The Mummy (1999 film) ( nom), Oort cloud ( nom), USS Siboney (ID-2999) ( nom), Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition ( nom), Bezhin Meadow ( nom), and Catherine de' Medici ( nom).
Nine lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of universities in Bangladesh ( nom), List of Governors of New York ( nom), List of tallest buildings in Charlotte ( nom), List of North Carolina hurricanes (1900-1949) ( nom), Bibliography of Edgar Allan Poe ( nom), 30 Rock (season 1) ( nom), SPFA Players' Player of the Year ( nom), List of tallest buildings in Minneapolis ( nom), and List of tributaries of Larrys Creek ( nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status last week: Meerkat Manor ( nom).
Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Norway ( nom), Portal:American Civil War ( nom).
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Rotavirus, Suleiman the Magnificent, Victoria Cross, Chrono Trigger, J. K. Rowling, Kansas Turnpike and Lisa del Giocondo.
Two articles were delisted recently: Golden plates ( nom) and Btrieve ( nom).
No lists were delisted recently.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Map of Ancient Egypt, Blackface transformation of Billy Van, Notre Dame de Paris, Common lilac, Pair of rice grasshoppers, Jaguar and Saturn.
No sounds were featured last week.
One featured picture was demoted recently: Image:Challenger (STS-51-L) Explosion.ogg ( nom).
Three pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.13 (8eaf4e5), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases this week and closed two cases, leaving just two cases currently open.
This week, we've got a special feature. In honor of Wikipedia's 2,000th featured article, Wikinews interviewed the team behind one of the five articles promoted at the same time. The principal writers were kind enough to dual-license the content under the GFDL, to avoid any potential licensing concerns.
We're also looking for more writers (as we always are!) We're looking for writers for our tutorial series, and general writers. If you'd like to write one or more tutorials, check out the suggested topics, or come up with your own. If you'd like to be a general, week-to-week writer, covering things like the 2,000th featured article, or other stories within the Wikimedia sphere, please contact me for more information.
Thanks for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
This week, the English-language version of Wikipedia reached 2,000 featured articles with the inclusion of the article El Señor Presidente. Featured articles (FAs) meet Wikipedia's highest standards for quality, accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style, and thus are considered the best articles on Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia process ( Featured article candidates) that evaluates articles for featured article status promoted five articles to FA status at the same time: Walter de Coventre, Maximian, El Señor Presidente, Lord of the Universe, and Red-billed Chough. With five promoted at the same time, conferring the status of 2,000th on one is an arbitrary decision and in some respects any of these articles could actually make a claim to the honour.
One of the five, El Señor Presidente, was unique in that it is the first known article to reach FA status as part of a class project, WikiProject Madness, Murder, and Mayhem. Jon Beasley-Murray, a professor of Spanish literature at the University of British Columbia, decided to make Wikipedia editing a class assignment, divvying up a set of articles related to the theme of his Spanish Literature class. Students who reached GA status would receive As, while FAs would earn students an A+ on the assignment. Aiding the class was the FA-team, a new WikiProject of sorts whose aim is to help newer Wikipedians achieve FA status. The project consists of several editors with copy-editing and MOS experience to help guide new editors through the often-confusing process of reaching FA status. Out of twelve articles chosen as part of the project, eight have (as of the end of the project, April 22) passed as GAs, and a total of three are FA ( Mario Vargas Llosa and The General in His Labyrinth were promoted subsequent to El Señor Presidente). Before the project began, a few of the twelve, including El Señor Presidente, did not exist.
Beasley-Murray began using Wikipedia as a collaborative space where his students could both do coursework and provide a type of virtual public service. Thus, he created a Wikipedia project, Murder Madness and Mayhem, that focused on creating articles relating to the Latin American literature covered in his class. Not surprisingly, El Señor Presidente is considered one of the most important books in Latin American literature, written by Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias.
Beasley-Murray has written an essay describing the experience, in which he states that the assignment helped students improve their research skills and become familiar with writing for a public audience. Wikipedia, he says, does not encourage the kind of persuasive writing usually sought for in a university setting, but it can be a great exercise in critical thinking and research. This WikiProject has caused a bit of a stir on higher education discussion boards on the internet as in this post entitled: "Is murder, madness and mayhem the future of higher education?"
This is not the first college class to make Wikipedia editing part of its coursework. It is, however, the first to achieve this kind of success. In the past, projects of a similar sort have had varying degrees of success, some adding only a little information to the pages involved, and others being absolutely chaotic, having no leader, no respect for the rules of Wikipedia, and no real guidance other than "add to get the grade." This project seems to have succeeded where others have failed for several reasons. First, the leadership of the teacher of the class, Jbmurray. Second, the guidance of the FA-team helping the students and the professor become familiar with Wikipedia's etiquette and other oddities.
The Wikinews team contacted Prof. Beasley-Murray, who agreed to be interviewed for this story. His responses can be found below. Included are sections soliciting responses from three students who took the class and helped create and bring El Señor Presidente to Feature Article status. Thus far the project has created seven good articles in addition to the 2,000th featured article.
Wikinews: Professor Beasley-Murray, thank you for giving us some of your valuable time and agreeing to talk to us. Can you give some background on what prompted you to start this project?
Did you consult with fellow academics or students prior to launching this project?
I would assume the Wikipedia community was in favour of your project. Did anyone outside that community make notably critical comments about your idea?
How significant a percentage of the mark you were giving for the class came from Wikipedia contributions?
As a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's communications committee, I (Brian McNeil) frequently see both sides of the conflict over Wikipedia's relevance or reliability. This ranges from queries coming in from students working on their school paper who want a response to their librarian and teachers effectively banning use of Wikipedia, to the other extreme such as a recent case where a teaching surgeon in the UK asking for permission to quote extensively from Wikipedia for a paper on the site's relevance and potential use for undergraduates in medicine. I have a stock answer detailing how to check Wikipedia sources: that Wikipedia is a great starting point for research, and that if you disallow Wikipedia you should disallow Britannica. Is this something you would agree with?
Was the experience of using a wiki for collaboration something you would repeat? There have been suggestions for something you might call "EduWiki" for the collaborative development of course material. Would you get involved with something like that? Do you see potential for use of the MediaWiki software in other areas of education? Such a project could be hosted under Wikimedia Foundation projects such as Wikibooks or Wikiversity. Would you favour that over a closed project within academia where contributors' credentials could be verified?
Would you describe your students as receptive to the idea of doing coursework where the general public could view their works in progress?
Did any students fail to fit in and find themselves unable to work with Wikipedia?
Do you feel that doing this part of the course in such a radically open way encouraged any of the students to work to a higher standard than they might otherwise have?
In reflecting on the project, is there anything you would have done differently?
You've hit about 6,000 edits personally – have you caught the "wiki bug"? Will you keep editing?
In light of the apparent success of your project, what would you say to other academics to try to persuade them to try similar experiments?
Before moving on to bringing your students into the discussion, I'd like to close with your thoughts on making this a regular part of the curriculum. Do you intend to do so? Do you feel other institutions should examine your project with a view to emulating it?
In addition to the one featured article, seven made Good Article status. How much of an encouragement was that to those of you involved in the project?
How long were you involved with Wikipedia before you really felt Good or Featured was achievable?
If you could improve the guidelines for people wanting to take articles up to Featured status, what would you change?
Do you feel that having anything you did immediately viewable by anyone on the Internet encouraged you to aim for a higher standard than you might have with a more conventional paper that only the professor would see?
Do you believe that contributing something to a 'digital commons' gives you more of a sense of achievement than just turning in a term paper?
Have you caught the "wiki bug"? Will you keep editing?
Assuming Professor Beasley-Murray repeats this project in subsequent years, what advice would you give to students following in your footsteps and starting on Wikipedia?
Which would you describe as the harder 'marking authority'? Other professors where you've submitted conventional term papers, or the teams assessing Wikipedia contributions with a view to awarding Good or Featured status?
Was there significant input from other Wikipedians not taking your course? If so, was this valuable?
As a fairly open-ended question, would you see any use for wiki technology in any of your other study areas, or even where you may hope to eventually end up in employment?
How did you feel when "El Señor Presidente" was promoted to Featured Article (FA) status? Did you have a celebratory drink or party?
Were you disappointed that more of your articles didn't make FA status?
Was getting the article up to that status harder than you expected?
Does the lack of credit on Wikipedia concern you?
Academia is often characterised as "publish or die". Do you believe the educational establishment should embrace Wikipedia or wiki technology as a way of making this publishing requirement less onerous?
How has working on getting something to FA status changed your opinion of Wikipedia from that you held prior to the start of this project?
I'd like to thank you all for taking the time out of your busy schedules to help on this Wikinews article. Who knows – it too could end up featured!
After recent proliferation of image placeholders on biographies, designed to solicit freely-licensed photos of article subjects, a centralized discussion is being held to determine whether these images should continue to be used. For the course of the discussion, an agreement has been made to refrain from adding or removing these images from articles.
Generic image placeholders, containing a silhouette and the text "No free image/do you own one?/If so, please click here", have been placed on many as-yet un-illustrated biography articles (usually, but not necessarily, inside infoboxes). Readers who click the image are taken to a form, which is more streamlined for this task than the general upload form. When the reader uploads an image and completes the form, the image placeholder gets replaced with the new image.
Replace this image female and Replace this image male are the latest versions of the placeholder boxes. The placeholders have been added to over 50,000 articles, often with the help of the automated tool AutoWikiBrowser, attracting both positive and negative reactions from Wikipedia editors.
Some editors felt the practice of adding this placeholder made a fundamental change to a large number of Wikipedia articles, and it should not be continued without first establishing a broad consensus of Wikipedia editors. A preliminary discussion was held ( summarized here) agreeing to suspend adding the image placeholders, pending the outcome of a promptly-held centralized discussion.
That broader discussion is underway now, and all are invited to participate. Some of the issues raised include:
While much has already been discussed, the discussion is ongoing, and opinions are still being solicited on the issue.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from " Pet skunk". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees met on April 5–7. On April 10, board Chair Florence Devouard released a recap of the events of the meeting. The first day concerned the June Board elections, and possible reorganization, and a much-discussed Wikicouncil, composed of community members. According to Devouard, Jan-Bart de Vreede will report this outcome "within the next ten days" (by Sunday).
The second day concerned the search for a new Treasurer on the Board, and related issues, including audit news. Devouard indicated that she would give an update on the matter soon. The third day dealt with a report from Executive Director Sue Gardner, as well as various issues, including the press issues surrounding Jimmy Wales, resolutions on data retention and privacy policies, a Wikimania security assessment (which is to be posted by Mike Godwin), and a decision that no restrictions would be made on Board members becoming staff members, or vice versa.
A proposed "non-disparagement agreement" for board members also came up during the meeting, but was rejected by the Board.
Resolutions passed during the meeting have not yet been posted to the Foundation's resolutions page.
Wikipedia breeds 'unwitting trust' says IT professor - Deakin University associate professor Sharman Lichtenstein believes that the increasing use of Wikipedia creates blind trust in information, to the detriment of valuable knowledge and expert opinion. She says that Australians already disrespect intellectuals and academics, but she asks us to consider whether we would use a trained brain surgeon or a student who has just read Wikipedia for brain surgery. She notes that Wikipedia prides itself on being built by groups of lay citizens, and experts are unlikely to contribute anyway because they would expect to be paid. Credibility of Wikipedia articles is questioned because of the formation of "elite" editors and administrators, a trend that has caused growing dissatisfaction with Wikipedia's editorial process, leading others to create competitors to Wikipedia.
Other recent mentions in the online media include:
The English-language Wikipedia reached a milestone with the promotion of its 2,000th article to Featured Article (FA) status on 10 April. These 2,000 articles represent the best 0.09% of articles on Wikipedia—almost one in a thousand articles. Five articles were promoted simultaneously and share the distinction of being the 2,000th promotion: Walter de Coventre, Maximian, El Señor Presidente, Lord of the Universe, and Red-billed Chough.
The Featured article process (FAC) was initiated in June 2003 as "Brilliant prose"; it reached 500 featured articles in February 2005 (see archived story) and the 1,000th FA was promoted three years later, in June 2006 (see archived story). Although deterioration over time and rising standards in what constitutes Wikipedia's best work have meant that some previously promoted articles have had their Featured article status removed, the net number of FAs continues to rise, from an average of 44 articles promoted a month in early 2006 to a current average of almost 70 a month. In the first three months of 2008, 227 articles were promoted to FA and 25 were delisted, providing a net increase of 202 and bringing the total number of FAs to 1,981. In the first nine days of April, 14 articles were promoted, and early that morning (UTC) FA Director Raul654 promoted these five, bringing the total to an even 2,000. [1] These articles reflect the wide variety of topics that are represented at FAC: their topics include a medieval bishop, a Roman emperor, a novel written by a Nobel-Prize-winning Latin American author, a 1974 PBS documentary about a young "guru", and a bird in the crow family.
Walter de Coventre was first nominated for FA status on 20 March, just 18 days after its primary contributor, Deacon of Pndapetzim, had created it. The nomination was archived without promotion on 1 April after several reviewers expressed concern with the prose. Malleus Fatuarum performed a copyedit, and on 5 April, PMAnderson (who had previously peer reviewed the article) renominated it for FA status in conjunction with Deacon of Pndapetzim. Consensus was soon reached that the article met the FA criteria; in particular, reviewer Ealdgyth remarked that the article did an "excellent job of making an obscure subject shine", and reviewer GrahamColm called the re-nomination "proof of the importance of 'fresh eyes' and a bloody good copy editor".
Geuiwogbil began working on Maximian on 14 March and in less than two weeks expanded the article by a magnitude of seven. Geuiwogbil nominated the article at FAC on 5 April. Although several reviewers initially opposed on the basis of prose, after Roger Davies and Dulcem completed a copyedit, those reviewers struck their declarations of "Oppose". The article was promoted with unanimous support; reviewer Roger Davies noted that the article was "remarkably well-cited and referenced".
Lord of the Universe was nominated for featured article status by its recent primary contributor Cirt on 4 April. The article drew no opposes, and the few critical comments were addressed. Semifreddo remarked that it was an "informative article on [a] little-known film". The unanimous promotion was especially notable given that the article is part of Category:Prem Rawat, and all articles in this category have been placed on WP:1RR due to contentious editing.
El Señor Presidente was created on 15 January by Professor Jbmurray as part of a Spanish literature class assignment at the University of British Columbia. Three of his students, eecono, katekonyk, and Mfreud, were given the task of improving the article from a one-line stub to a featured article. The students, who had not previously edited Wikipedia, were assisted by members of WikiProject Novels and the recently created FA-Team, which aims to help editors unfamiliar with FAC to bring their articles to FA status. The students researched and wrote the article, while more experienced Wikipedians provided frequent peer reviews as well as MOS compliance and copy-editing assistance. FA-Team member Awadewit nominated the article for FAC on behalf of Mfreud, katekonykm, eecono, and Jbmurray, saying that "they have created one of the best Spanish-language literature articles on Wikipedia". Although the nomination generated debate on how to interpret some of Wikipedia's image policies, it received near-unanimous support. Maxim commented that it was "brilliant work".
After bringing the article to Good article status on 15 February, primary contributor Jimfbleak nominated Red-billed Chough for FA on 31 March. FA reviewers provided suggestions for improving the prose which Jimfbleak quickly implemented. In a pun on the article's avian subject, reviewer Shyamal noted that the article was "ready to fly".
As of 14 April, seven additional articles have been promoted to featured article status. Two others have been delisted after discussion at Featured article review, giving a net of 2,005 featured articles. Forty-one articles are nominated as Featured article candidates.
Three users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Bedford ( nom), Davidgothberg ( nom), and EyeSerene ( nom).
Eight bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: IainadamsBot ( task request), MagnusA.Bot ( task request), John Bot III ( task request), SpillingBot ( task request), FairuseBot ( task request), DyceBot ( task request), DOI bot ( task request), and SQLBot-Hello ( task request).
Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Cyclone Elita ( nom), Nguyen Ngoc Tho ( nom), Priestley Riots ( nom), Red-billed Chough ( nom), Maximian ( nom), El Señor Presidente ( nom), Lord of the Universe ( nom), Walter de Coventre ( nom), Peterloo Massacre ( nom), The Mummy (1999 film) ( nom), Oort cloud ( nom), USS Siboney (ID-2999) ( nom), Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition ( nom), Bezhin Meadow ( nom), and Catherine de' Medici ( nom).
Nine lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of universities in Bangladesh ( nom), List of Governors of New York ( nom), List of tallest buildings in Charlotte ( nom), List of North Carolina hurricanes (1900-1949) ( nom), Bibliography of Edgar Allan Poe ( nom), 30 Rock (season 1) ( nom), SPFA Players' Player of the Year ( nom), List of tallest buildings in Minneapolis ( nom), and List of tributaries of Larrys Creek ( nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status last week: Meerkat Manor ( nom).
Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Norway ( nom), Portal:American Civil War ( nom).
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Rotavirus, Suleiman the Magnificent, Victoria Cross, Chrono Trigger, J. K. Rowling, Kansas Turnpike and Lisa del Giocondo.
Two articles were delisted recently: Golden plates ( nom) and Btrieve ( nom).
No lists were delisted recently.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Map of Ancient Egypt, Blackface transformation of Billy Van, Notre Dame de Paris, Common lilac, Pair of rice grasshoppers, Jaguar and Saturn.
No sounds were featured last week.
One featured picture was demoted recently: Image:Challenger (STS-51-L) Explosion.ogg ( nom).
Three pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.13 (8eaf4e5), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases this week and closed two cases, leaving just two cases currently open.