Billionaire trying to sue Wikipedians; "Critical Point of View" book published; World Bank contest; brief news

As reported by The Guardian (" US billionaire wins high court order over Wikipedia 'defamation'"), Louis Bacon, a US national who is a hedge fund manager and a billionaire (as estimated by Forbes magazine) has obtained court orders in the UK against three US website service providers, the Wikimedia Foundation, WordPress and the Denver Post, "to disclose the identities of online commenters alleged to have defamed him." According to the Guardian, "Bacon wants to launch defamation proceedings against a number of online commenters – all of whom use sobriquets like 'gotbacon' and 'TCasey82' – alleged to have posted libellous material about him on these websites." A Wikipedian using the latter name received a BLP warning in March (as the first and so far only message on his/her user talk page): "You seem quite obsessed with editing Mr. Bacon's article and I must ask you to focus your efforts elsewhere. You clearly have a bias against him ...", after OTRS complaints. The user then stopped editing the article, at least under this account.

The Guardian reports that on May 9th, High Court Justice Michael Tugendhat "granted Bacon's application to serve a court order – known as a Norwich Pharmacal Order (NPO) – by email against these websites. However, legal experts have told the Guardian that the US-based companies could legally ignore or refuse to comply with the orders," and that Tugendhat had said that "the Wikimedia Foundation had told Bacon's solicitors, Schillings, that it would hand over details of the commenters if it was served with a court order – but later said that it would have to be a US subpoena, as opposed to a NPO brought in a UK court." After the " Video Professor incident" at the end of 2007, where users had protested against the Foundation's release of their IP data to a company aiming to sue them for defamation, the WMF's policies were updated to state that it keeps only the minimal amount of users' personal information as required for the functioning of the projects, and that users would be notified if possible whenever the WMF is required to release it to other parties ( Signpost coverage).

Possibly in an effort to counter the interpretation of Bacon's choice to pursue the matter in the UK instead of the US as a case of libel tourism, a representative of his solicitors said that the reason was that in 2010 Bacon had brought, and subsequently dropped, a similar case against the UK-based company justhost.com.

(See also related recent Signpost coverage: " Company sues IP editors for defamation", " Administrators removing material that violates UK legal injunctions")

The Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures last week published " Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader", a 386 page book compiling research and essays about Wikipedia "with an emphasis on theoretical reflection, cultural difference and indeed, critique". Edited by Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz, it contains 26 contributions mainly from presenters of the three conferences held last year in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Leipzig by the "Critical Point of View" (CPOV) Wikipedia research initiative. The introduction notes the diversity of viewpoints of the contributions: "Some are more critical than others; some are penned by active Wikipedians, others by people who want nothing to do with the project. Famous Wikipedia critics,... such as Jon Awbrey and Gregory Kohs, who initially participated in the CPOV discussion mailing list, were approached to contribute to this reader but declined the invitation". The whole book is under a CC-BY-SA license and available both as a hardcopy and as a freely downloadable PDF. A separate publication in German, supported by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and focusing on the Leipzig conference, is in preparation. (See also the Signpost interview with Tkacz and Johanna Niesyto from the CPOV initiative.)

Registration for " The World Bank’s Second Water Sector Writing Contest on Wikipedia" is closing this Friday (May 13), with submissions due in June. Open to students enrolled at participating universities worldwide, the competition calls for contributions in English, Spanish or French regarding water-related articles, either by starting new entries, by writing a "comparative analysis ... comparing a group of notes on water topics ... using the resources from the Wikipedia notes created by the World Bank", or by improving multiple existing entries. Participants are required to adhere to Wikipedia's Manual of Style and are reminded of its policies about citing sources and avoiding original research. The first-placed contestants will win "week-long paid trips to join a World Bank team on a working mission in a country TBD". Similarly, the prize in the inaugural version of the contest had been the opportunity to participate in a World Bank event in Washington DC, which one of the winners, User:Jcherlet from Ghent University, described as an experience "definitely worth the effort of writing a Wikipedia article from scratch – but the fact that the article is online now and thousands might find it useful, is just as rewarding."

The contests form part of the World Bank's " Wikipedia Project", initiated in December 2006 and described as "an innovative approach for sharing World Bank knowledge by defining the status of the water sector in Latin American and Caribbean countries on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. The project covers sectors such as water resources management, water supply and sanitation, irrigation and integrated urban water management".

• Wikipedia the most popular source of student plagiarism?: An article published in Washington Post (" 8 top sites for potential plagiarism‎") said in a study of 40 million student papers, Wikipedia was the website found most frequently as the source of "unoriginal content" - i.e., of potential plagiarism (but also counting cases where it was quoted but properly cited).
• Grande Guide to Wikipedia for marketers: Eloqua, a US-based marketing automation company, published the " Grande Guide to Wikipedia", a brochure explaining the inner workings of Wikipedia to marketing professionals, as part of Eloqua's "Grande Guide" series of e-books. It was authored by Wikipedian William Beutler ( User:WWB, who gave some background on the book on his "The Wikipedian" blog): "Because Eloqua’s audience is marketers, they are also the focus of this guide. One of the first (rhetorical) questions raised in this guide is this: “Is Wikipedia a marketing opportunity?” The answer, more or less, is: “No, but…” While trying to use Wikipedia as a marketing tool is one of the surest ways to find yourself in trouble with Wikipedia editors, there are times where it is appropriate for someone who works with or for a company to make positive suggestions and even some non-controversial edits."
• Wikipedia used in "poison pen" campaign against rival: As reported by The Daily Telegraph (and earlier in a print-only article in the Evening Standard), London art dealer Philip Mould has been the victim of a "poison pen" campaign by a rival art dealer (said to have been jealous of his professional success), who inserted mention of a fabricated extramarital affair into his Wikipedia article (where it was removed at first), and then sent press releases about the affair to tabloid newspapers, whereafter the Daily Mail printed the allegations and was in turn cited in the Wikipedia article. As conjectured in a chronicle of the edits on the blog of a longtime Wikipedia critic, Mould may have been involved in editing it himself. On the talk page of Jimbo Wales, the case triggered an extended discussion, with some users going as far as suggesting that the websites of tabloids should be put on the URL blacklist to prevent them from being cited in BLPs.
• Jimmy Wales on Hollywood and Wikipedia: On the occasion of his keynote speech at the "Digital Hollywood Content Summit", Jimmy Wales was interviewed by Hollywood Today, discussing the wiki model and "how his vision of Wikipedia and Wikia.com fit into the Hollywood landscape", talking at length about fan-based documentation of productions such as Lost ( Lostpedia). Asked about the relationship between Wikipedia and truth, Wales said that "when it works well", the discussion process on Wikipedia resembles the film 12 Angry Men, where a lone dissenting juror's fact-based approach manages to sway the entire jury, initially decided against the defendant, to vote "not guilty".
• Wales on Al Jazeera's The Stream: Jimmy Wales appeared in the May 4 episode of Al Jazeera's new media show The Stream [2], discussing YouTube comedy about the Arab world and Cuba's pressure on bloggers. He also answered viewers' questions about Wikipedia.
• Daily work of a WMF communications intern: On the blog of the Communication Studies Department at the University of San Francisco, a student described her work as a communications intern at the Wikimedia Foundation ( current job opening), which involved checking Google Alerts each morning with search terms that are "related to projects or people affiliated with the foundation", and compiling "media reports filled with news articles, blogs and press releases that are about the Foundation or its projects (for example, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, etc.). To keep a permanent record of the news coverage, I convert these files into pdfs and upload them to a folder. I also keep track of journalists who write about the foundation. In particular, I keep a spreadsheet of Indian journalists because a new Wikimedia office recently opened in India last January. From time to time I also have projects which mostly consists of research and copy editing.” Among the things that the internship had taught her, she named the importance of transparency and a sense of humor in the work world.
  
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2011-05-09

Game Night at WikiProject Board and Table Games

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By Mabeenot

WikiProject news

News in brief

• The May Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive is underway. Copyedit some articles today and you could earn barnstars for your efforts!
• WikiProject Unreferenced BLPs could use your help referencing articles tagged since September 2009.

Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

File:Cluedo arms.png

This week, we challenged WikiProject Board and Table Games to answer our interview questions. The project was founded in August 2006 to improve articles about board games, card games, dice games, tile-based games, miniature wargames, and other games typically played on a table or other flat surface. The project has several child projects and siblings, ranging from WikiProject Poker and WikiProject Contract Bridge to WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons and WikiProject Warhammer 40,000. WikiProject Board and Table Games maintains a special relationship with the autonomous WikiProject Chess and excludes most Chess-related articles from the scope of WikiProject Board and Table Games. The project contributes to the Sports and Games Portal. We interviewed Tetron76.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Board and table games? What is your favorite board or table game? Do you prefer a specific type/genre of game?

I have expertise in several board and card games which made it a project of interest to me, but I suppose that the specific reason that I joined was when trying to improve a bad article and had a talk page discussion with a BTG member for improving it.

My favorite game at the moment is an obscure abstract strategy game called Entropy (or Hyle) invented by Eric Solomon, its depth of play is surprising considering you pull counters from a bag. It is colorful too and about making pretty patterns.

I have fairly eclectic tastes in any game of skill, my main genre is probably strategy games as other games lose their challenge too quickly. I am keen on German style board games such as Settlers of Catan and I used to be a very keen card player.

Has the project had any difficulties getting enthusiasts of a specific game to contribute to other board and table games? What are some of the challenges facing the project's recruitment and sustainability?

I think that board games is a very broad field which means that it is always going to be challenging to deal with games that are not household favorites. This means that there are certainly issues of some enthusiasts, becoming exclusively immersed in their own game, which can leave some consistency issues. While other projects seem to have struggled for membership such as game theory and strategy games, I think that everyone plays games at some point in their lives and their are many editors who contribute to pages that are watched by BTG. I don't foresee that the project will ever have sustainability issues but there are probably recruitment issues when it comes to getting participation to bring all of the articles up to the highest standards rather than merely proving notability.

The project has several former featured articles and good articles. Were there any commonalities in the demotion of these articles? Has there been an effort to improve the articles and restore their FA or GA status.?

I think that some of the articles were demoted from changing standards from when they originally made the rank. There are others that had slipped that probably are very close to GA such as Go (game). I think that there has only been gradual effort to improve these articles with references and rewrites of the odd sentence, I suspect that a concerted effort could probably manage to improve most of the traditional board game pages to GA or above.

WikiProject Board and table games is related to several projects covering token, miniature, and card games. Do you contribute to any of these projects? Have there been any inter-project collaborations?

I have only really contributed to these articles with one or two references often as a result of an AfD. I don't know of any formal inter-project collaborations but there is the occasional communication.

WikiProject Chess's project page notes that WikiProject Board and table games intentionally excludes Chess-related articles to prevent overlap. Why was this decision made? Would you recommend similar boundaries between other projects?

I don't know why the decision was made as it was before I joined. It makes sense, where there is a dedicated project to give them the scope to improve the articles and create articles on chess to a consistent style. However, there are clearly cases where a certain level of overlap is needed at least in monitoring pages. History of board games is one obvious area where consistency is needed, Chess hybrids and all-round games players all overlap. So I think that a level of overlap is needed but mainly just with tag watching. I would recommend that if a similar boundary is wanted it is still useful to add the pages to watchlists. The reason is that a project can become inactive and some critical pages are then no longer monitored. It is sometimes useful to have occasional feedback so that the general perspective is not lost. I do think that it is helpful to allow any new project the scope to grow and expand but I wouldn't recommend formalising any such arrangement.

What are the project's most pressing needs and concerns? How can a new member help today?

There are 3 main areas that need to be addressed. 1) Card games - there is huge duplication of card games and very few references, the problem is that you cannot easily navigate the card games without prior knowledge and there were many pages without any project tags. 2) There are several older articles that are very badly referenced or lack real world perspective especially that overlap other projects such as RPG. 3) There are no guidelines in how to deal with people - I have started a discussion about drawing up some game guidelines. It is complicated due to many games experts having achievements in several other fields. The only common contentious area that the games pages are suffering is with the history of board games that there are a surprising number of differing standards between aging a game.

Anything else you'd like to add?

I think that there are some unique problems to do with some information being word of mouth. The dice games require very specialised sources and can be unreferenced and there are very few sources that discuss dice games but I have no doubt about their notability at an earlier point in history. The problem is that I don't think that the project currently has access to editors with specialised sources.

Next week we'll revive fading WikiProjects. Until then, glean helpful tips from our previous interviews in the archives.

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2011-05-09

Featured articles bounce back

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87

This week's "Features and admins" covers Sunday 1 May – Saturday 7 May

New administrator

The Signpost welcomes Catfish Jim and the soapdish ( nom) as our newest admin. He is primarily a content editor, focusing on subjects relating to Scottish history and geography, and is a member of WikiProject Scotland. He says that he has fallen into an informal anti-vandalism role, and intends to work more in this area as an admin.

If The Signpost had an award for the most imaginative username, Jim would be a very strong candidate.

Featured articles

After two weeks off from promotions, featured articles has caught up, with an impressive 19 promotions:

• Calabozos ( nom), a volcano in the Southern Volcanic Zone, one of the three distinct volcanic belts of South America, lies in an extremely remote area of poorly glaciated mountains. (Nominated by Ceranthor)
• Abdul Karim (the Munshi) ( nom), an Indian Muslim who became a secretary to Queen Victoria, and influenced her views on India. Described variously as "exemplary and excellent", and "thoroughly stupid and uneducated". ( Wehwalt and DrKiernan)
• Olivia Shakespear ( nom), a minor novelist and playwright who was WB Yeats' lover and Ezra Pound's mother-in-law. ( Truthkeeper88)
• SS Edmund Fitzgerald ( nom), subject of a popular song, this 222-metre (728 ft) ship sank in a huge storm with 11-metre waves on a Canadian lake, with all hands lost; the cause remains a mystery. ( North8000)
• George Headley ( nom), a brilliant but controversial West Indian cricketer, mainly in the years before the Second World War. ( Sarastro1)
• Hurricane Ginger ( nom), the second-longest lasting Atlantic hurricane, a 27-day phenomenon in 1971. ( Hurricanehink)
• Pigeon photography ( nom), an aerial photography technique invented in 1907: it involved a homing pigeon that would be fitted with an aluminum breast harness to which a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera could be attached. A version of this article has been in the German and Czech Wikipedias, and has now been brought to English-speakers by the nominator, Hans Adler.
• Charles Holden ( nom), an early modernist architect who left a lasting architectural legacy in London. His largest buildings remain prominent examples of the 1930s monumental style, but he is probably best known for and had the longest lasting influence with his stations for London Transport. ( DavidCane) picture at right
• U.S. Route 131 ( nom), a 266-mile (428 km) highway that follows a major corridor in the state of Michigan. ( Imzadi1979)
• Hygeberht ( nom), the only Archbishop of Lichfield, UK, ever. Nominator Ealdgyth says, "a very obscure little guy, but [surrounded by] papal intrigue, royal prestige-seeking, and wild accusations".
• Green children of Woolpit ( nom). Extra-terrestrial aliens who landed in 12th-century England? ( Drmies, Ealdgyth, and Malleus Fatuorum) picture at right
• Science Fantasy (magazine) ( nom), one of the mainstays of British science fiction for 17 years, from 1950 to 1967. ( Mike Christie)
• Peace dollar ( nom), the fourth in what will eventually be a ten-article topic about the Great Redesign of US coinage from 1907 to 1921. ( Wehwalt)
• Ernst Lindemann ( nom), a German naval captain and the only commander of the battleship Bismarck during its eight months of service in World War II. ( MisterBee1966) picture at right
• Macrotarsomys petteri ( nom), a rat that has had a dramatic shrinking in its range on the island of Madagascar, possibly due to climate change and the direct impact of human activity. ( Ucucha)
• SMS Bayern (1915) ( nom), launched during World War I, was the lead ship of the Bayern class of battleships in the German Imperial Navy. ( Parsecboy) picture at right
• USS New Ironsides ( nom), a wooden-hulled broadside ironclad built for the US Navy during the American Civil War. The ship spent most of her career blockading the Confederate ports of Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina in 1863–65. ( Sturmvogel 66)
• Zoo TV Tour ( nom), one of the most well-covered and documented tours in popular music; it was a key part of U2's reinvention in the 1990s, during one of its peaks in commercial popularity. ( Y2kcrazyjoker4)
• Trade dollar (United States coin) ( nom), one of the most reviled coins in the history of the United States. ( RHM22)

Featured lists

Four lists were promoted:

• List of Chicago White Sox first-round draft picks ( nom) (Nominated by Wizardman.)
• Appy Awards ( nom) (Nominated by The Rambling Man.)
• List of San Francisco Giants first-round draft picks ( nom) (Nominated by Courcelles.)
• Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album ( nom) (Nominated by Blackjacks101.)

Featured pictures

Six images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":

• DNA structure ( nom; related article), the DNA double helix, including several key features relevant for biology: elemental content, the base pairing scheme, and the position of the minor and major grooves. (Created by User:Zephyris.) picture at right
• Paul Simonon ( nom; related article), an English musician, born 1955, best-known as the bass guitarist for punk rock band The Clash. (Created by Rama.)
• Bufonaria perelegans shell ( nom; related article), also known as the Near-elegant Frog Shell. (Created by User:George Chernilevsky.)
• QR Code Structure ( nom; related article), a specific matrix barcode (or 2D code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. (Created by User:Zephyris.)
• Leaf tissue structure ( nom; related article), a representation of a simple but extremely important piece of biology. (Created by User:Zephyris.)
• V-22 Osprey ( nom; related article), an American multi-mission, tilt-rotor aircraft with both a vertical take-off and landing, and short take-off and landing capabilities. (Created by Markus Maier of the US Airforce.) picture at top

Featured sounds

Six sounds were promoted.

• Bruckner's motet, Ave Maria ( nom; related article), performed by the United States Navy Band's Sea Chanters ensemble.
• White noise ( nom; related article), covering all frequencies of sound.
• Drum cadence A ( nom; related article), standard military march drum cadences, performed by the United States Navy Band, along with the next two files.
• Drum cadence B ( nom; related article)
• Four Flams ( nom; related article)
• Zez Confrey's Kitten on the Keys ( nom; related article), a piano rag played by the composer, first released 1922. picture at right

From Wehwalt's new featured article, Peace dollar: the obverse (left) and the reverse of the coin.

Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.

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2011-05-09

AEsh case comes to a close - what does the decision tell us?

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases and closed one case. Two cases are currently open.

Open cases

Racepacket (Week 2)

During the week, 44 kilobytes was submitted in on-wiki evidence, while proposals and comments were also submitted in the workshop by arbitrators, parties, and others. The evidence phase is currently set to close on 14 May 2011.

Tree shaping (Week 2)

During the week, 30 kilobytes was submitted in on-wiki evidence, while in the workshop, proposals and comments were submitted by parties and others. The parties also submitted responses to the questions posed by drafter Elen of the Roads. The evidence phase is currently set to close on 12 May 2011.

Closed case

Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling (AEsh) (Week 9)

This case was opened to review the handling of AE sanctions (including the classification, imposition and reversal of such sanctions, the relevant processes, and whether administrators who regularly work in this area are appropriately receptive to feedback from uninvolved users). 24 editors submitted on-wiki evidence, and several users submitted proposals in the workshop, including drafter Roger Davies. The proposed decision which was drafted by several arbitrators, attracted votes from 13 arbitrators, and the case came to a close three days ago.

What is the effect of the decision and what does it tell us?

• Dreadstar ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is reminded to adhere to procedure, in light of his having substantially reversed an arbitration enforcement (AE) block without the requisite consensus or permission.
• Sandstein ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is advised to take care to communicate more effectively in future arbitration enforcement actions.
• Ludwigs2 ( talk · contribs) is cautioned and reminded to discuss matters more circumspectly and to avoid drama-creating rhetoric.
• Administrators (admins) are advised and reminded to abide by the principles of this decision. As trusted members of the Community, admins are expected to follow Wikipedia policies, perform their duties to the best of their abilities, as well as learn from experience and justified criticisms of their actions.
• The Committee appreciates the work performed by admins who address AE requests; such admins handle one of the project's most sensitive and stressful admin tasks. To share the workload, the Committee encourages more admins, particularly experienced ones, to become involved in this task. More administrators are also urgently needed to handle other tasks at the front lines of addressing user-conduct issues, such as review of unblock requests on-wiki and on the unblock-l mailing list.
• Admins should exercise care and judgment when using their tools. Because of the priority given to enforcement of discretionary sanctions (delegated by the Committee), admins must be deliberate and careful in applying their discretion to impose sanctions. In general, such sanctions should be imposed in situations where there has been a serious violation or a pattern of violations of a remedy contained in a Committee decision, and prior warnings have not resolved the problem. When it is not entirely clear whether a sanction is appropriate, or when an admin knows that there is a division of opinion regarding whether a sanction is warranted, and there is no pressing need for immediate action, it may be best for an administrator to raise the issue in the discussion venue for Arbitration Enforcement and seek a consensus, rather than to act unilaterally.
• When giving a warning based on a Committee decision, the admin should ensure the warning is clear and unambiguous. The warning should also identify the misconduct, advise how the editor may mend their ways, and specify the link to the decision authorising the sanctions. When imposing a sanction, the admin should provide notice of the sanction imposed which specifies the term of the sanction, the misconduct for which the sanction has been imposed, as well as the process of appealing the sanction. The admin should respond to appropriate questions raised by the warned or sanctioned editor.
• Discretionary sanctions have an established and clearly defined appeal process which must be adhered to. Overturning arbitration enforcement actions out of process is strictly prohibited per longstanding principle. Discretionary sanctions should be used with caution where the Community is already dealing with the specific issue through dispute resolution processes.
• When an admin's actions are disagreed with or overturned, the admin should assess why others disagreed with or overturned the action, and take this into account in future decision-making. The admin should not take this as a personal rebuke; over time, every active admin working anywhere on the project will have some of his or her actions disagreed with or overturned (just as every arbitrator sometimes finds himself or herself in the minority on an issue voted on by the Committee).

Motions

Russavia-Biophys

Two motions were passed in this case:

1. The case remedy that banned YMB29 ( talk · contribs) from editing the Soviet Union and former Soviet Republics topic has been terminated. YMB29 is now subject to a 1RR restriction from the relevant topic area ("articles about the Soviet Union and former Soviet Republics, and all related articles"). YMB29 was reminded to abide by the principles discussed in the decision, as well as all applicable Wikipedia policies and guidelines, in his future editing, and that he remains subject to discretionary sanctions under the terms of related decisions, should he violate them.
2. An editor who is restricted from editing in a topic area under a Committee decision "may request an amendment to lift or modify the restriction after an appropriate time period has elapsed. A reasonable minimum time period for such a request will ordinarily be six months, unless the decision provides for a different time or the Committee subsequently determines otherwise. In considering such a request, the Committee will give significant weight to, among other factors, whether the editor in question has established an ability to edit collaboratively and in accordance with Wikipedia policies and guidelines in other topic-areas of the project."
   
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2011-05-09

MediaWiki 1.16.5, 1.17b1; 1.18 branched; UploadWizard the default; Berlin Hackathon; brief news

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By Jarry1250

MediaWiki releases: 1.16.5, 1.17b1 and a branch for 1.18

This week saw a number of developments regarding the MediaWiki software on which Wikimedia Foundation wikis run. The first, on the 4 May, was the announcement of a security update to MediaWiki 1.16, the version currently considered stable enough for all major external wikis to use ( wikitech-l mailing list). Version 1.16.5 closed another security loophole related to those closed in 1.16.3 and 1.16.4 (see previous Signpost coverage) and additionally fixed a flaw in MediaWiki's implementation of $wgBlockDisablesLogin that allowed users to mimic unblocked users' cookies in order to gain additional permissions (no Wikimedia wikis were affected).

“	Please try it out and let us know what you think. Don't run it on any wikis that you really care about, unless you are both very brave and very confident in your MediaWiki administration skills.	”
— Developer Tim Starling on 1.17b1 ( wikitech-l)

Two substantive announcements were also made on 5 May. The first, of interest almost exclusively to users operating their own external wikis, was the release of a beta version of MediaWiki 1.17, the version already running on WMF sites ( wikitech-l). The second, perhaps of more interest to Wikimedians, was the branching of MediaWiki version 1.18 (also wikitech-l). Although some changes are deployed out of process to Wikimedia sites, new releases such as 1.18 contain many smaller improvements of interest to editors and visitors alike. With 1.17 already live, branching 1.18 represents a significant step towards the deployment of another batch of improvements, already slated to include 179 bug fixes and feature requests, plus localisation updates ( provisional release notes). 1.18 will now be left to "bake": no new features will be added to it as the release is purged of bugs, before going live to Wikimedia wikis ahead of a release to external sites. Commenting on the branch, former CTO Brion Vibber's post to wikitech-l consisted solely of the word "Woohooooooo!"; meanwhile, however, debates will no doubt be ongoing about the future shape of the MediaWiki release schedule.

UploadWizard to become default

After a period of being one option among many for uploading files to Wikimedia Commons, the new UploadWizard is to become the default on or around 9 May, it was announced this week ( Wikimedia Commons). Local communities will then be able to adopt it as their own default method of allowing uploads.

The wizard, which has been in development for a number of months, boasts a number of improvements over the existing upload form, per Erik Möller:

“

Up to 10 files can be uploaded in one batch. We are hoping to expand this feature set to allow for parallel uploading, multi-file selection, and more. Some metadata is automatically extracted and pre-filled. You can see thumbnails before you complete your upload. Error cases should be handled in a clear and understandable interface. Less clutter due to systematic learning design as opposed to mixing instructions and process. Much, much friendlier to new users as validated by our usability studies.

”

A number of bugs linger, however, and these will need to be dealt with before the UploadWizard can enjoy widespread success. For example, uploads longer than 25 minutes still fail; thumbnails for some file formats (video and audio, for instance) are not shown during the upload process; right-to-left support is far from perfect and consistent; and there are a number of other known cases where uploads will stall and the user has no option to fix the problem. The relatively low interface translation rate (as of time of writing, it has been translated fully into only 14 languages) may also be a worry for a Foundation committed to total internationalisation. There are also worries that by making it easier to upload and removing many of the "traps" of the old upload form, a higher percentage of copyright violations may go undetected. Despite these concerns, the response to the new wizard has been largely positive.

Berlin prepares for Hackathon

Next week will see the Berlin Hackathon (13-15 May). The annual event, which began in 2009, will be focussed this year on "more hacking and less talking", say organisers. Volunteer developers and Wikimedia professionals alike will come together over a number of "core" projects (excerpted from MediaWiki.org):

• "Fixing the parser. Once and for all." Programmers will look at the promise of a new parser, MediaWiki.next, with a report and demonstrations of initial work by Brion Vibber and Trevor Parscal. A hot topic for discussion is likely to be how to mark pages as incompatible with the new parser whilst retaining its core functionality.
• Sorting out how best to handle the influx of photo uploads expected as part of Wiki loves Monuments in September
• Looking at operations issues, including the new data centre, and preparing all infrastructure and services for running two data centres in parallel; the expansion of the Virtualisation Framework for better MediaWiki testing, and the rise of IPv6.
• Discussing source code version control systems and how they affect the speed and process of code review
• Improving usability/accessibility with little skin hacks
• Discussing the development of the mobile site
• Developing "an attractive and fun tool that allows users to understand how to pick a [copyright] licence".
• Pondering the future of OpenStreetMap integration in Wikimedia sites
• Participating in a general purpose "Bug hunt"

Other projects are also likely to come up during the Hackathon, including the new Narayam extension and other work done recently regarding improving the user experience of those who write in non-Latin alphabets. Historically, the meetup has provided a focal point that invigorates projects, rather than an inclusive event where projects are begun, worked on and finished. The Signpost hopes to report the success of the 2011 event in future issues.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

• Gerard Meijssen blogged about improving the nature of MediaWiki's current support for both types of written Chinese ( Simplified and Traditional) such that it can be ported and enabled on Wikia wikis.
• With the resolution of bug # 28655, {{#time:Y|1945}} now works properly. Other problems with the parser function remain unfixed, however, since they have their roots in the PHP programming language itself.
• Gerard Meijssen interviewed former CTO and now once again paid developer Brion Vibber. Asked to comment on what non-pressing scheme he would like to work on, he responded that "the modern web has caught up with... Flash in terms of infographics, interactive timelines, maps and diagrams, and games and simulations; good collaborative tools for creating things that are both information-rich *and* move and respond to the user are still sorely lacking".
• On 9 May, version 3.0 of the Article Feedback tool will go live to 100,000 articles on the English Wikipedia ( wikitech.wikimedia.org). It incorporates the new EmailCapture extension, allowing readers to provide and validate their email addresses for follow-up contact.
• Users experienced intermittent problems this week with the colouration used for diffs. The problem is likely the result of one server getting out of sync with the rest of the "pool" that handle requests. Developer Roan Kattouw said on the Server Admin Log that he "thought we [the Foundation] had measures to prevent out-of-sync servers from being pooled?"
  
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