Commons hit six million files last week, with the mass upload of images from the Geograph website. Geograph is a site containing about 1.5 million CC-by-SA-2.0 licensed images of the British Isles. The Isles are divided into squares of 1 × 1 kilometre (0.62 × 0.62 mi), and the goal of the project is to get at least one photograph of every square. More than 250,000 of these images have been uploaded.
According to Mike Peel of Wikimedia-UK, one of these images—a picture of sailing on Ullswater in the Lake District—became the six-millionth file on Wikimedia Commons.
This milestone comes less than five months after Commons hit five million files. In response to this rapid growth, the storage space on Commons was recently tripled, according to a recent blog post by Erik Möller, deputy director of the WMF.
In the post, which discusses the "virtuous circle" in which cultural institutions upload freely licensed content to the Commons, Möller highlighted other recent large uploads of collections, and noted two toolserver scripts by Magnus Manske that track usage of Commons files: Glamorous, which tracks where files are used within the Wikimedia projects, and Amalglamate, which tracks comparative collection usage data over time (starting 12 January).
The Biographies of Living People taskforce starts work 8 February with part one, board recommendations and proposal. This will run for two months, with the second half on community focus, beginning in April. The project has a global focus, and encourages worldwide participation in discussion.
More information can be found on the Strategy wiki page.
Another MediaWiki developer's meetup will be held in Berlin 14–16 April, just before the annual meeting of the chapters. Wikimedia Deutschland will again host the conference. According to the post, "all MediaWiki developers, Toolserver users, Gadget hackers, and other people interested in the technical side of Wikimedia projects" are welcome. Last year's developer meetup was also held in conjunction with the chapters' meeting.
Australian television presenter Naomi Robson's manager Max Markson sparked a small edit war and press interest this week when he polished her article in anticipation of the launch of her online dating show. On 1 February, Mumbrella.com first connected several deletions in late January and February to User:Maxmarkson. Claiming that much content was "totally false and libelous", he removed copious unfavorable information, including the entire "Controversy" section and two-thirds of the article's citations ( diff). User:Marksonsparks displayed similar behavior ( diff) but was not named in the press. Markson expressed no remorse when Mumbrella contacted him for a follow-up article, saying "I'm doing my job", and clarifying elsewhere that that involves "being the good spin doctor and manager that I am". The article was temporarily protected for this and other unrelated IP vandalism.
Several academics and Wikipedia contributors were invited to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) on 2 February to mark the Hebrew Wikipedia's 100,000th article. Representatives of the Hebrew Wikipedia presented their achievements to the Science Committee of the Knesset. At the meeting there were also representatives of Creative Commons Israel, the Ministry of Education, and Israeli academics who use Wikipedia as an educational tool and improve its contents.
Committee chairman Meir Sheetrit was impressed by the possibilities of the Free Culture model and promised to draft a proposal to loosen the copyright restrictions on images, legal texts and educational materials produced by the Israeli government for the benefit of the public. A press release from the Israeli chapter of Wikimedia reported several supportive quotes from Sheetrit:
The Jerusalem Post documented that the group received both praise and criticism, and lobbied for the Israeli government to release more images.
Content review processes such as
Featured article candidates (FAC),
Featured list candidates (FLC),
Good article nominations (GAN) and
Peer reviews (PR) are at the core of establishing and maintaining high standards for Wikipedia articles, and provide valuable feedback on how to achieve these standards. Reviewers in these processes tend to gain significant respect in the community for their work. Despite the prestige of the job, such reviewers are in short supply, and 2009 saw a reduction in reviewer participation by most measures.
Featured articles represent Wikipedia's best work, and achieve this status after a review open to the whole Wikipedia community. Editors can support the article's promotion if they believe it meets all the criteria, or oppose it by providing examples of instances where it does not. The featured article director or his delegates will promote an article if consensus in favour of promotion has been reached among the reviewers after a reasonable time.
In 2009, 522 articles were promoted to Featured article (FA) status, while 157 articles had featured status removed via the Featured article review (FAR) process. The net increase, 365 featured articles, is almost 40% down on the 2008 figure of 576. [1] This trend has been evident throughout 2009; the rate of promotion has slowed, because it is taking longer to get sufficient reviews for a given featured article candidate (FAC) to determine consensus to promote the article or not. The decline in reviewer activity has been noted several times throughout the past year on the talk page associated with the FAC process, and is backed up by an analysis of the figures.
In 2009 there were 991 FACs (522 successful, 469 unsuccessful), which attracted a total of 9,409 reviews. 1,434 editors were involved with the FAC process, of whom 224 were nominators only, 302 were both nominators and reviewers, and 908 were reviewers only. A successful FAC had, on average, reviews from 12 different people, while an unsuccessful FAC had reviews from 9. In 78% of all FACs, one of these reviewers was Ealdgyth who reviewed the sources used for reliability. [2] By contrast in 2008 there were 1,328 FACs (719 successful, 609 unsuccessful), which attracted a total of 12,743 reviews. 1,987 editors were involved with the FAC process, of whom 87 were nominators only, 258 were both nominators and reviewers, and 1,642 were reviewers only. A successful FAC had, on average, reviews from 11 different people, while an unsuccessful FAC reviews from 9. Once again Ealdgyth provided sterling service, commenting on reliability of sources for 66% of all 2008 FACs. [2]
Thus compared to 2008, there were 28% fewer people participating in the FAC process in 2009, which led to 26% fewer reviews. However there were in fact 35% fewer people providing reviews; the number of editors nominating an article but not reviewing others increased by a factor of 2.5, or 250%.
Articles can also lose featured status through the Featured article review process. Editors who believe an article no longer meets the featured article criteria can list it at FAR. Ideally one or more editors will take on the task of bringing it up to standard. The FAR process showed a similar decline in participation in 2009. Last year there were 219 FARs (157 demoted, 62 kept), and 767 editors participated in reviews. In 2008 there were 263 FARs (143 demoted, 120 kept), and 1129 editors participated. The number of editors participating thus dropped by 32% in 2009. [3]
Similar processes to FAC and FAR exist for primarily list-based content—featured list candidates (FLC) and featured list removal candidates (FLRC). In 2009, 500 lists were promoted to Featured list (FL) status, while 83 lists had featured status removed via the FLRC process. The net increase, 417 featured lists, is down compared to the 2008 value of 669. [4] In 2009 there were 574 reviewers and nominators, while in 2008 there were 743. [5]
FLRC bucked the trend, having 235 people involved in 114 reviews, compared to 179 in 72 reviews in 2008. [5] The increased number of lists having their featured status reviewed is possibly a consequence of the large growth of the featured list process in 2008.
Good articles (GA) must meet a less stringent set of criteria than featured articles. The review process also differs—promotion to GA only requires a review from one editor who was not a significant contributor to the article. The number of Good articles (GA) increased by 2,151 over 2009. This is down 11% on the net increase of 2,416 in 2008. There are currently 8,104 Good articles, 1.8 times the number of featured articles and lists. [6] The total number of nominators and reviewers in this process is also down compared to 2008—1351 compared to 1809, a drop of 25%. [7]
On the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment scale there is a level between FA-Class and GA-Class—A-Class articles. An A-Class rating may be awarded by a WikiProject whose scope covers that article; the process is determined by each WikiProject. This contrasts with the centralised (i.e. not WikiProject-based) processes for Featured articles etc. A small number of WikiProjects have active formal A-Class review systems. [8] Of these half dozen A-Class review departments, that of the Military History WikiProject is the largest, processing 220 A-Class reviews in 2009. This is an increase on the 155 reviews processed in 2008, however the number of participants in the process (nominators plus reviewers) has remained steady; 144 in 2009, compared to 140 in 2008. [9]
Peer review (PR) differs from the previously discussed processes in that it does not result in the awarding of a particular status to the article; instead it is a means for editors to solicit suggestions for improving an article. Peer review is often recommended as a way of attracting the attention of previously uninvolved editors to spot problems which might not be apparent to those closer to the article. Once again this requires reviewers.
In 2009 a peer review was requested for 1,478 articles, resulting in 2,062 reviews. Of these, 891, or 43%, were carried out by just three editors— Ruhrfisch (343), Finetooth (332) and Brianboulton (216). [10] They were assisted by a further 730 reviewers making one or more review comments. A further 503 editors nominated articles for PR but did not review others. [11] Once again, these numbers are down on last year. In 2008, 2,090 articles had a peer review. For technical reasons the number of reviewers could only be determined for the period February to December; [12] in this period 1028 editors reviewed PRs and a further 499 nominated articles for PR and did not comment on others. In the corresponding period of 2009 the numbers are 645 (37% lower) and 449 (11% lower) respectively. [11]
Start reviewing articles! This previous Signpost article gives suggestions for how to go about it. Perhaps start off at Peer review where "you can literally leave one sentence and help improve an article." [13] To find out more about reviewing Good Articles, you can see Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles. You can even ask for a mentor. At places like FAC or FLC you could start off by checking the criteria ( What is a featured article?, What is a featured list?), then reading other people's reviews to see what sort of things to look for. If you don't feel confident enough to support or oppose initially, you can leave a comment instead.
The Olympics WikiProject is one of the older WikiProjects, having been founded on 1 March 2002. The project has a large amount of content under its scope, with the modern Olympics having been held since 1896. In honor of the Vancouver Olympics that start 12 February, I asked Miller17CU94, Scorpion0422, Parutakupiu, and Andrwsc, all members of the project, to answer some questions about the project and their involvement in it.
Note: Special thanks to User:Kirill Lokshin, from whom I adapted several questions found in his interview of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones.
1. First, tell us a bit about yourself and your involvement in WikiProject Olympics.
2. When did you first join WikiProject Olympics? What are some of the challenges that the project has met since you joined, and how were they dealt with?
3. What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?
4. Have any major initiatives by the project ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?
5. What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?
6. What plans does WikiProject Olympics have concerning the 2010 Winter Olympics?
7. What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles within its scope, developing over the next years and future Olympics?
Next week, WikiProject Report will focus on a cosmopolitan country that has never competed in the Winter Olympic Games. Until then, check out previous reports in
the archive.
Reader comments
Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Taelus ( nom) and Calmer Waters ( nom).
Ten articles were promoted to featured status this week: Umbriel (moon) ( nom), Chadderton ( nom), Aaliyah ( nom), Subway (Homicide: Life on the Street) ( nom), Rumours ( nom), Takalik Abaj ( nom), Alexander Pentland ( nom), L'ange de Nisida ( nom), Panellus stipticus ( nom) and The Green Child ( nom).
Twelve lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of Copenhagen Metro stations ( nom), List of Texas Tech Red Raiders men's basketball seasons ( nom), List of National Treasures of Japan (shrines) ( nom), List of UTA TRAX stations ( nom), List of Governors of New Jersey ( nom), List of IIHF World Under-20 Championship players for Canada ( nom), United States Secretary of Transportation ( nom), Black Eyed Peas discography ( nom), Bodley's Librarian ( nom), Providence Grays all-time roster ( nom), List of National League pennant winners ( nom) and List of Boston Red Sox first-round draft picks ( nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: " Bale Out", Marshalsea, Wii Sports, GRB 970508, Ghosts I–IV, Carucage and Roman–Persian Wars.
Two articles were delisted this week: Turkish literature ( nom) and Karen Dotrice ( nom).
No lists were delisted this week.
No topics were delisted this week.
No portals were delisted this week.
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Brighton, Ottoman camel corps before the First Suez Offensive of World War I, New Holland Honeyeater, Passionfruit, Babe Ruth, Quarterback and Morchella conica.
No featured sounds were promoted this week.
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Thirteen pictures were promoted to featured status this week.
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week and closed none, leaving two open.
Commons hit six million files last week, with the mass upload of images from the Geograph website. Geograph is a site containing about 1.5 million CC-by-SA-2.0 licensed images of the British Isles. The Isles are divided into squares of 1 × 1 kilometre (0.62 × 0.62 mi), and the goal of the project is to get at least one photograph of every square. More than 250,000 of these images have been uploaded.
According to Mike Peel of Wikimedia-UK, one of these images—a picture of sailing on Ullswater in the Lake District—became the six-millionth file on Wikimedia Commons.
This milestone comes less than five months after Commons hit five million files. In response to this rapid growth, the storage space on Commons was recently tripled, according to a recent blog post by Erik Möller, deputy director of the WMF.
In the post, which discusses the "virtuous circle" in which cultural institutions upload freely licensed content to the Commons, Möller highlighted other recent large uploads of collections, and noted two toolserver scripts by Magnus Manske that track usage of Commons files: Glamorous, which tracks where files are used within the Wikimedia projects, and Amalglamate, which tracks comparative collection usage data over time (starting 12 January).
The Biographies of Living People taskforce starts work 8 February with part one, board recommendations and proposal. This will run for two months, with the second half on community focus, beginning in April. The project has a global focus, and encourages worldwide participation in discussion.
More information can be found on the Strategy wiki page.
Another MediaWiki developer's meetup will be held in Berlin 14–16 April, just before the annual meeting of the chapters. Wikimedia Deutschland will again host the conference. According to the post, "all MediaWiki developers, Toolserver users, Gadget hackers, and other people interested in the technical side of Wikimedia projects" are welcome. Last year's developer meetup was also held in conjunction with the chapters' meeting.
Australian television presenter Naomi Robson's manager Max Markson sparked a small edit war and press interest this week when he polished her article in anticipation of the launch of her online dating show. On 1 February, Mumbrella.com first connected several deletions in late January and February to User:Maxmarkson. Claiming that much content was "totally false and libelous", he removed copious unfavorable information, including the entire "Controversy" section and two-thirds of the article's citations ( diff). User:Marksonsparks displayed similar behavior ( diff) but was not named in the press. Markson expressed no remorse when Mumbrella contacted him for a follow-up article, saying "I'm doing my job", and clarifying elsewhere that that involves "being the good spin doctor and manager that I am". The article was temporarily protected for this and other unrelated IP vandalism.
Several academics and Wikipedia contributors were invited to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) on 2 February to mark the Hebrew Wikipedia's 100,000th article. Representatives of the Hebrew Wikipedia presented their achievements to the Science Committee of the Knesset. At the meeting there were also representatives of Creative Commons Israel, the Ministry of Education, and Israeli academics who use Wikipedia as an educational tool and improve its contents.
Committee chairman Meir Sheetrit was impressed by the possibilities of the Free Culture model and promised to draft a proposal to loosen the copyright restrictions on images, legal texts and educational materials produced by the Israeli government for the benefit of the public. A press release from the Israeli chapter of Wikimedia reported several supportive quotes from Sheetrit:
The Jerusalem Post documented that the group received both praise and criticism, and lobbied for the Israeli government to release more images.
Content review processes such as
Featured article candidates (FAC),
Featured list candidates (FLC),
Good article nominations (GAN) and
Peer reviews (PR) are at the core of establishing and maintaining high standards for Wikipedia articles, and provide valuable feedback on how to achieve these standards. Reviewers in these processes tend to gain significant respect in the community for their work. Despite the prestige of the job, such reviewers are in short supply, and 2009 saw a reduction in reviewer participation by most measures.
Featured articles represent Wikipedia's best work, and achieve this status after a review open to the whole Wikipedia community. Editors can support the article's promotion if they believe it meets all the criteria, or oppose it by providing examples of instances where it does not. The featured article director or his delegates will promote an article if consensus in favour of promotion has been reached among the reviewers after a reasonable time.
In 2009, 522 articles were promoted to Featured article (FA) status, while 157 articles had featured status removed via the Featured article review (FAR) process. The net increase, 365 featured articles, is almost 40% down on the 2008 figure of 576. [1] This trend has been evident throughout 2009; the rate of promotion has slowed, because it is taking longer to get sufficient reviews for a given featured article candidate (FAC) to determine consensus to promote the article or not. The decline in reviewer activity has been noted several times throughout the past year on the talk page associated with the FAC process, and is backed up by an analysis of the figures.
In 2009 there were 991 FACs (522 successful, 469 unsuccessful), which attracted a total of 9,409 reviews. 1,434 editors were involved with the FAC process, of whom 224 were nominators only, 302 were both nominators and reviewers, and 908 were reviewers only. A successful FAC had, on average, reviews from 12 different people, while an unsuccessful FAC had reviews from 9. In 78% of all FACs, one of these reviewers was Ealdgyth who reviewed the sources used for reliability. [2] By contrast in 2008 there were 1,328 FACs (719 successful, 609 unsuccessful), which attracted a total of 12,743 reviews. 1,987 editors were involved with the FAC process, of whom 87 were nominators only, 258 were both nominators and reviewers, and 1,642 were reviewers only. A successful FAC had, on average, reviews from 11 different people, while an unsuccessful FAC reviews from 9. Once again Ealdgyth provided sterling service, commenting on reliability of sources for 66% of all 2008 FACs. [2]
Thus compared to 2008, there were 28% fewer people participating in the FAC process in 2009, which led to 26% fewer reviews. However there were in fact 35% fewer people providing reviews; the number of editors nominating an article but not reviewing others increased by a factor of 2.5, or 250%.
Articles can also lose featured status through the Featured article review process. Editors who believe an article no longer meets the featured article criteria can list it at FAR. Ideally one or more editors will take on the task of bringing it up to standard. The FAR process showed a similar decline in participation in 2009. Last year there were 219 FARs (157 demoted, 62 kept), and 767 editors participated in reviews. In 2008 there were 263 FARs (143 demoted, 120 kept), and 1129 editors participated. The number of editors participating thus dropped by 32% in 2009. [3]
Similar processes to FAC and FAR exist for primarily list-based content—featured list candidates (FLC) and featured list removal candidates (FLRC). In 2009, 500 lists were promoted to Featured list (FL) status, while 83 lists had featured status removed via the FLRC process. The net increase, 417 featured lists, is down compared to the 2008 value of 669. [4] In 2009 there were 574 reviewers and nominators, while in 2008 there were 743. [5]
FLRC bucked the trend, having 235 people involved in 114 reviews, compared to 179 in 72 reviews in 2008. [5] The increased number of lists having their featured status reviewed is possibly a consequence of the large growth of the featured list process in 2008.
Good articles (GA) must meet a less stringent set of criteria than featured articles. The review process also differs—promotion to GA only requires a review from one editor who was not a significant contributor to the article. The number of Good articles (GA) increased by 2,151 over 2009. This is down 11% on the net increase of 2,416 in 2008. There are currently 8,104 Good articles, 1.8 times the number of featured articles and lists. [6] The total number of nominators and reviewers in this process is also down compared to 2008—1351 compared to 1809, a drop of 25%. [7]
On the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment scale there is a level between FA-Class and GA-Class—A-Class articles. An A-Class rating may be awarded by a WikiProject whose scope covers that article; the process is determined by each WikiProject. This contrasts with the centralised (i.e. not WikiProject-based) processes for Featured articles etc. A small number of WikiProjects have active formal A-Class review systems. [8] Of these half dozen A-Class review departments, that of the Military History WikiProject is the largest, processing 220 A-Class reviews in 2009. This is an increase on the 155 reviews processed in 2008, however the number of participants in the process (nominators plus reviewers) has remained steady; 144 in 2009, compared to 140 in 2008. [9]
Peer review (PR) differs from the previously discussed processes in that it does not result in the awarding of a particular status to the article; instead it is a means for editors to solicit suggestions for improving an article. Peer review is often recommended as a way of attracting the attention of previously uninvolved editors to spot problems which might not be apparent to those closer to the article. Once again this requires reviewers.
In 2009 a peer review was requested for 1,478 articles, resulting in 2,062 reviews. Of these, 891, or 43%, were carried out by just three editors— Ruhrfisch (343), Finetooth (332) and Brianboulton (216). [10] They were assisted by a further 730 reviewers making one or more review comments. A further 503 editors nominated articles for PR but did not review others. [11] Once again, these numbers are down on last year. In 2008, 2,090 articles had a peer review. For technical reasons the number of reviewers could only be determined for the period February to December; [12] in this period 1028 editors reviewed PRs and a further 499 nominated articles for PR and did not comment on others. In the corresponding period of 2009 the numbers are 645 (37% lower) and 449 (11% lower) respectively. [11]
Start reviewing articles! This previous Signpost article gives suggestions for how to go about it. Perhaps start off at Peer review where "you can literally leave one sentence and help improve an article." [13] To find out more about reviewing Good Articles, you can see Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles. You can even ask for a mentor. At places like FAC or FLC you could start off by checking the criteria ( What is a featured article?, What is a featured list?), then reading other people's reviews to see what sort of things to look for. If you don't feel confident enough to support or oppose initially, you can leave a comment instead.
The Olympics WikiProject is one of the older WikiProjects, having been founded on 1 March 2002. The project has a large amount of content under its scope, with the modern Olympics having been held since 1896. In honor of the Vancouver Olympics that start 12 February, I asked Miller17CU94, Scorpion0422, Parutakupiu, and Andrwsc, all members of the project, to answer some questions about the project and their involvement in it.
Note: Special thanks to User:Kirill Lokshin, from whom I adapted several questions found in his interview of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones.
1. First, tell us a bit about yourself and your involvement in WikiProject Olympics.
2. When did you first join WikiProject Olympics? What are some of the challenges that the project has met since you joined, and how were they dealt with?
3. What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?
4. Have any major initiatives by the project ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?
5. What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?
6. What plans does WikiProject Olympics have concerning the 2010 Winter Olympics?
7. What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles within its scope, developing over the next years and future Olympics?
Next week, WikiProject Report will focus on a cosmopolitan country that has never competed in the Winter Olympic Games. Until then, check out previous reports in
the archive.
Reader comments
Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Taelus ( nom) and Calmer Waters ( nom).
Ten articles were promoted to featured status this week: Umbriel (moon) ( nom), Chadderton ( nom), Aaliyah ( nom), Subway (Homicide: Life on the Street) ( nom), Rumours ( nom), Takalik Abaj ( nom), Alexander Pentland ( nom), L'ange de Nisida ( nom), Panellus stipticus ( nom) and The Green Child ( nom).
Twelve lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of Copenhagen Metro stations ( nom), List of Texas Tech Red Raiders men's basketball seasons ( nom), List of National Treasures of Japan (shrines) ( nom), List of UTA TRAX stations ( nom), List of Governors of New Jersey ( nom), List of IIHF World Under-20 Championship players for Canada ( nom), United States Secretary of Transportation ( nom), Black Eyed Peas discography ( nom), Bodley's Librarian ( nom), Providence Grays all-time roster ( nom), List of National League pennant winners ( nom) and List of Boston Red Sox first-round draft picks ( nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: " Bale Out", Marshalsea, Wii Sports, GRB 970508, Ghosts I–IV, Carucage and Roman–Persian Wars.
Two articles were delisted this week: Turkish literature ( nom) and Karen Dotrice ( nom).
No lists were delisted this week.
No topics were delisted this week.
No portals were delisted this week.
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Brighton, Ottoman camel corps before the First Suez Offensive of World War I, New Holland Honeyeater, Passionfruit, Babe Ruth, Quarterback and Morchella conica.
No featured sounds were promoted this week.
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Thirteen pictures were promoted to featured status this week.
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week and closed none, leaving two open.