The Wikimedia Commons reached the major milestone of 1,000,000 files uploaded this past week, a little more than two years after the project officially launched. The achievement was the subject of a press release and celebrated with a mosaic of images representing the Wikimedia Foundation logo. And in other Wikimedia Foundation news, the organization plans to start its next fundraiser this coming week.

One million pictures, sounds, and other media

The one-millionth file, uploaded on Thursday, 30 November, was a photograph taken at the Singapore Zoo by Terence Ong. A picture of the zoo's pygmy hippopotamus exhibit, it was among a group of photographs Ong uploaded around the same time. Over the past year, Ong has added over 4,000 files to Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Commons was started in September 2004 as a repository specifically for free content media, with no fair use arguments being applied. Some of its content existed previously on Wikipedia or other projects and has migrated to Commons, and the project has also received significant outside donations of content. And many of the files are entirely new since the launch of Commons, with the project receiving on average over 2,000 new files per week.

In honor of the milestone, Brianna Laugher had suggested creating a photographic mosaic to resemble the logo of the Wikimedia Foundation. With the help of Larry Pieniazek, a project was set up to facilitate arranging the images to form this mosaic. The photographs (along with a handful of animations) are laid out in a 30x40 grid for a total of 1200 images used. You can also watch an animation of how the mosaic was developed.

Board meeting and fundraiser

The next Wikimedia fundraiser was one of the items mentioned by Florence Devouard, reporting on a meeting of the Board of Trustees last week. She indicated that the fundraiser is planned to start on Friday, 8 December, with more information to come shortly. Some preparations are still being made, so the date is not yet absolutely firm and could be delayed by a few days. The last official Wikimedia fundraising drive was held nearly a year ago.

Previous discussions had contemplated having fundraisers as often as quarterly. That has not proved necessary for the past year, while still operating on a skeleton staff, but at the same time supporting the Wikimedia projects has stretched the Foundation's technical resources of late. The upcoming fundraiser will involve prominent use of the sitenotice message, as in past efforts.

The board meeting in question was held at the Wikimedia Foundation offices in St. Petersburg, Florida, from November 29-30. Other topics discussed included expansion of the Board of Trustees, possibly up to 11 members, which will include replacing Tim Shell, along with creating a separate advisory board. An audit of the Foundation's books for its first three years of existence was completed, with a report due "very soon", and an agreement also reached on a revision of the bylaws.

Most notably, three new board members have been chosen for appointment; these members are being contacted to confirm their interest in a position. The board also decided that positions made by appointment will expire after one year or less, meaning that the terms of the new members, as well as current board members Jimbo Wales and Michael Davis will be up for re-appointment in 2007. Board Chairperson Florence Devouard's term was extended to 2008 to provide stability, with the board planning elections for up to three new board members in 2007.

The board also discussed the position of Executive Director; currently, the position is held by Foundation legal counsel Brad Patrick on an interim basis. The board is currently considering ways to handle a search process. A full report of the meeting's notes, provided by Devouard, can be found on the Foundation-l mailing list.

The Wikimedia Commons celebrating the addition of its one-millionth file was not the only significant accomplishment among Wikimedia projects last week. Wikipedia also achieved some recognition in Russia with a national prize for internet content.

Meanwhile, Iran has joined the list of countries that have apparently blocked Wikipedia at some point, a group that also includes Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Pakistan. The situation in mainland China is the best-known instance and has generally had the greatest long-term impact. Like most of the others, the Iranian block appears to have been a more temporary disruption, as a later report indicated that it had been lifted.

Russian internet award

The Russian Wikipedia received a national award last week from the Russian Federation for internet sites in the category "science and education". The award, known as the Runet Prize, was presented in a Moscow ceremony on 29 November. A group of Wikipedia editors attended to receive the prize on behalf of the site.

In recognition of this achievement, the Russian Wikipedia currently sports a modified Wikipedia logo that includes a drawing of the Runet trophy. A banner was also posted about the news on its Main Page. Contributor Alexander Sigachov said he hoped the publicity would attract new participants to the project.

The Runet Prize is an award that has been given out since 2004 with the support of UNESCO. The name of the award is a reference to the .ru domain for Russia, so the Russian internet collectively is often called Runet. A monetary prize is sometimes included, but not in this instance; Sigachov indicated that they were not sure what they would have done with it anyway. A local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation has not yet been organized in Russia.

Blocked in Iran

The Guardian reported on 4 December that Iran blocked access to a number of popular websites, Wikipedia among them. The action was reportedly part of a stepped-up government campaign against foreign media deemed corrupt or immoral. Also listed as blocked were such sites as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Amazon.com, YouTube, and the New York Times website.

By the time the story was published, it seems that the block may already have been lifted, according to a report from Roozbeh Pournader, a Wikipedia editor based in Tehran. He indicated that access was cut off on 1 December and restored on 3 December. As with the blocks in China, no official explanation has been provided. Pournader notes that the Kurdish Wikipedia is still blocked in Iran, but this has been the case for a long time.

Next to the People's Republic of China, Iran is regularly mentioned as one of the countries that most actively filters the internet to prevent its citizens from accessing particular sites. This seems to be the first report of Wikipedia being blocked there, and previous indications would suggest that the project enjoys some popularity there. The official language of Iran, Persian, has an active Wikipedia with over 16,000 articles, comparable in size to Greek.

In fact, Alexa indicates that Wikipedia is more popular in Iran, where it was blocked, than in Russia, where it just won an award. (On the other hand, the Russian Wikipedia, which is approaching 120,000 articles, is significantly larger than the Persian Wikipedia.) Alexa ranks Wikipedia #16 among websites with the most traffic from users in Iran, while it ranks #27 in traffic from Russian users. While the usefulness of Alexa data has been questioned because of its methodology, publicly available information focused on these specific countries is scarce as compared to Western Europe and the US, so Alexa seems the best way to compare.

Of the sites The Guardian said were being blocked, Wikipedia is the most popular in Iran according to Alexa. IMDb is eleven spots behind Wikipedia at #27, followed by Amazon.com at #33 and YouTube at #39. The New York Times does not appear in the top 100. It is not clear whether any of these sites are still blocked, or if access to them was restored along with Wikipedia.

In recounting attempts to deal with the situation, Pournader focused on contacts with ISPs and personal connections, some of whom felt the block was some type of mistake. He discouraged protests and other public gatherings designed to put pressure on the government. Similarly, Andrew Lih was recently critical of the "moral righteousness" from some external critics, arguing that establishing the mutual benefits of openness would be more productive.

Steward elections continue

Voting in the steward elections continued this week. Voting, along with the chance to confirm the current stewards, will last until 15 December. As of press time, there remained 15 candidates in the election, unchanged from last week, with every candidate confirmed by the Foundation already.

Milestones, creations

Wikipedia became the 12th most visited site this week, according to Alexa. During the week, the French Wikiversity and the Tamil Wikinews were also created, and the French Wikiquote was reopened, with Board of Trustees approval. The French Wikiquote was temporarily closed in April of this year (see archived story) following potential legal issues.

List service begins

List Summary Service, or LSS, began in late September; its goal is to summarize threads on Wikimedia mailing lists in multiple languages. It initially only summarized the Foundation-l mailing list, but has now expanded to four languages and includes the Wikipedia-l list and the Wikien-l list, used for the English Wikipedia.

Briefly

• The French Wikipedia has reached 400,000 articles.
• The Portuguese Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
• The Nahuatl Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.

• The Finnish Wikipedia has reached 40,000 registered users.
• The Thai Wikipedia has reached 15,000 registered users.
• The Korean Wikipedia has reached 10,000 registered users.
• The Yiddish Wikipedia has reached 500 registered users.

• The Vietnamese Wiktionary has reached 500 registered users.
• The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 5,000 media files.
• The Wikipedia of Ripuarian languages has reached 100,000 pages.
• The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 40,000 edits.

Two presentations of China

In a story first published in the International Herald Tribune (later reprinted in The New York Times and also covered in a blog by CBS News), Howard W. French exposes the varied coverage by different language versions of Wikipedia. " Chinese-language Wikipedia presents different view of history" compares the coverage of Mao Zedong, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and notes that the Chinese version "sometimes reads as if it were approved by the censors themselves." The article speculates on how collaboration has resulted in a different worldview in Chinese than in English, and reviews the consensus process. The article also mentions that many of the articles in Baidu Baike (a collaborative encyclopedia hosted by major Chinese search engine Baidu), "appear to be copied directly from Wikipedia." The article received wide coverage with commentary from South Africa's Mail&Guardian and SlashDot.

Several Chinese Wikipedia contributors objected rather strongly to the premise of the article. They argued that the neutral point of view policy is taken seriously, and denied that "self-censorship" is taking place. One point made was that while French cited a debate over whether to emphasize death tolls in the Chinese Wikipedia article on Mao, some of the positive aspects of Mao's rule are equally omitted in that version.

Wikipedia blocked in Iran

The news of Wikipedia being blocked by Iran ( see related story) was also covered by: the Persian Journal, The Sydney Morning Herald, and in an article published by National Council of Resistance of Iran's Foreign Affairs Committee.

Wales and Wikipedia history profiled in two major Newspapers

Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia history were profiled in two articles this week. The Chicago Sun-Times article focused on Wales's history as a trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It also includes a short bio information on Wales.

Newsday profiled two internet pioneers: Jimmy Wales and Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist). The article provides a history of Wikipedia and quotes Larry Sanger as saying, "Jimmy was a very, very hands-off manager, so he's taken credit for a lot of my work." The article also points out that what critics identify as one of Wikipedia's weakness, the use of amateurs, is also its strength because it provides the ability for Wikipedia to be updated quickly.

Seigenthaler repercussions

In an Editorial on the "anniversary" of Seigenthaler's report on finding misinformation about himself ( see related story), the Yakima Herald-Republic advocates government oversight of potentially libelous statements made on the Internet. "The most frightening aspect is not that this happened to John Seigenthaler. It's that without congressional repair of a flawed federal act, this could happen to any of us." Ironically, The Dominion carried an article this week where Alexander M.C. Halavais purposely inserted various false information into Wikipedia articles. Halavais reported that he was surprised when "less than three hours after he posted them, all of his false facts had been deleted."

Philadelphia Indy covers Wikipedia Meet-up

Independent weekly paper, The Philadelphia City Paper covered the November 2nd Meetup in Philadelphia. The article highlights the different backgrounds of the Wikipedians including: two Drexel undergrads, a biochemical engineer, someone with medical expertise, railfans, and a Ph.D. candidate. User:Evrik is quoted as saying, "People have been writing history since they painted images on walls — Wikipedia is an opportunity for people to write their history as they see it."

Small study finds Wikipedia credible

First Monday released a study it conducted on Wikipedia Quality. In the study, 53 of 258 surveyed research staff responded to a request to "assess [the] credibility [of an article], the credibility of its author and the credibility of Wikipedia as a whole." The survey found that "experts found Wikipedia’s articles to be more credible than the non–experts." This surprising result was reported by arstechnica, TechSpot, and SlashDot.

Wikipedia helping to change nature of authority

Dr. Peter J. Nicholson, speaking at the University of Waterloo, identified Wikipedia as the 'single best example' of [an] authoritative paradigm shift." In a speech addressing the changing nature of information and authority, and claims Wikipedia's success is due to it being "in synch with Web culture."

Wikipedia as a source for school assignments

• University of Nebraska-Omaha's The Gateway reports an instructor's advice that Wikipedia not be used because some articles are not referenced, there is no "peer-review", and it is a general encyclopedia which shouldn't be a source anyway. "Students should aim to exceed all encyclopedic resources at the college level."
• Luther Colleges' Chips gives background of Wikipedia, talks about the Nature article, and quotes two professors: one discourages users from using Wikipedia, but another one says Wikipedia is a good place to start one's research.
• In Iowa City, the local paper, Iowa City Press-Citizen interviews University of Iowa professor, Frank Durham. Durham says Wikipedia "demonstrates how online information may be manipulated and therefore must be questioned." But he says, Wikipedia "is a fine entry point, but it shouldn't be the stopping point. I don't think Wikipedia is firm ground."
• The Wisconsin State Journal discusses the use of Wikipedia in Schools. The article advises students to check sources for any encyclopedia including Wikipedia. However, the feeling from students is that professors don't like students to use Wikipedia as a source.

Wikipedia Quality

In addition to the above articles on Wikipedia's quality, Renew America interviews Dr. Judith A. Reisman who criticises her Wikipedia biography. WBRZ-TV reports that ETS (formerly the Educational Testing Service) has been testing the ability of students to "correctly judge the objectivity of a Web site." ETS evaluated "the responses of 6,300 college and high school students" and found "just 52 percent of test takers could" do so. Wikipedia is identified as one site students need to question.

Wikipedia Processes

The Washington Post covers the AfD process including quotes from several Wikipedians who give examples of discussions on specific AfD discussions. The Post also noted that the discussions are generally courteous. In response to the Post's somewhat "snickering" tone, a blog from Network World discusses "Our love/hate relationship with Wikipedia."

Wikipedia as source

• The Villages Daily Sun references Wikipedia for background on Budd Company, "a railroad legend".
• Lodi News references the town's article as being an "authentic piece of Alabama in California's Central Valley." (Interestingly, this information was added by 74.61.234.97 and remained for 26 minutes before being reverted).
• Jurist references Wikipedia as a source for background info on former Mexican President Luis Echeverria.
• An Orlando Sentinel blog sources Wikipedia for background on Saint Joseph.
• The New Scientist uses two diagrams ( Image:LevyFlight.png and Image:BrownianMotion.png) from Lévy flight to illustrate an article on Locating (Online version requires subscription).
• Shenandoah Valley uses Wikipedia to define Podcast.
• Tonight (an Independent news source in South Africa) sources Wikipedia for background on David Attenborough.
• The Toronto Star sources Wikipedia for a definition of cocktail rings and dinner rings.
• The Sante Fe New Mexican sources Wikipedia for background on Retail therapy
• Persian Journal sources Wikipedia for background on the Baha'i faith.
• Oh My News (a South Korean online news source) references Wikipedia for the influence of Basketball.
• Media Post Publications uses Wikipedia as a source for the definition of and an example of a " wiki."
• Houston Chronicle blog credits Wikipedia for helping him find, within 20 seconds, an image from "the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by the artist Michelangelo in the 16th century. Caption under the picture calls the painting 'a classic conception of the Christian God.'"

Other news

• Glossy News advocates that Wikipedia should generate revenue through allowing users to choose to see ads (opt-in).
• SmartBiz instructs businesses that they should consider Wikipedia as free Web space to help advertise their business.
• The New York Times profiles Matthew Burton and the use of Wikipidia technology in the intelligence community.
• Internet Business Law Services uses the example of Wikipedia article History of virtual learning environments to show how Wikipedia helped the Software Freedom Law Center find evidence of prior art in a patent infringement case.
• The Washington Post blog uses Wikipedia as an example of a rising instability where "new, small players can get unprecedented power."
• The Age carries an article which is an edited version of the comprehensive article in The New Yorker earlier this year.

Administrators

Seven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Daveydweeb ( nom), Gogo Dodo ( nom), Sandstein ( nom), HighInBC ( nom), Renesis13 ( nom), Nae'blis ( nom), and Viridae ( nom).

Featured content

Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: History of Solidarity, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, Ian Thorpe, 2005 United States Grand Prix, Jocelin, Thylacine, Weymouth, Cyclol, Joseph W. Tkach, Scottish Parliament, Indian Standard Time, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Bacteria, Minnesota, and Tropical Storm Bonnie (2004).

The month of November set a record for most featured articles promoted, with 65. Previously, the record was held by July 2006 (53 articles), and before that, September 2004 (48 articles).

Eight articles were de-featured last week: Mark Antony, Mixed-breed dog, Celtic Tiger, Pashtun people, Bodyline, Supply and demand, Propaganda, and Super Mario 64.

No portals reached featured status last week.

Three lists were featured last week: List of major opera composers, List of Saskatchewan general elections, and 2003 NFL Draft.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Stegosaurus, Great Fire of London, Jaws (film), History of erotic depictions, Extratropical cyclone, Battle of Austerlitz, and Demosthenes. History of erotic depictions fell short of a FA record with 421 edits while on the Main Page; the record is The Lord of the Rings, with 453 edits while on the Main Page in October.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Infrared photograph, Zuni, Rogue River, Orion Nebula, Child Labor, Northern Gannets, and Zipper.

Ten pictures were featured last week:

• 
  Richat Structure
• 
  Embryo
• 
  Richard's Pipit

• 
  Color photography
  (First color photograph ever taken)
• 
  Hoverfly
• 
  P-51 Mustang

• 
  Carta marina
• 
  B-25 Mitchell
• 
  Australian Pelican

• 
  Supermarket

More work on a Single User Login was done this week. Brion Vibber made some modifications to the Central Auth code and tested the cross-wiki username merging for how long it would take. See the mailing list post for more details.

A new ParserFunction, {{ #rel2abs}}, was added this past week. Given a relative page name such as /Subpage, it will return a fully qualified page name such as Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-12-04/SPV/Subpage. This can be used as input for other functions, such as {{ #ifexist}} or {{ localurl}}. ( Carl Fürstenberg and Tim Starling, bug 8021, r17979)

Automatically-linked ISBNs can now contain spaces. ( Ilmari Karonen, bug 8110, r18074)

A few interface changes were made:

• Multiple left-aligned images placed near each other will now stack vertically, not horizontally, just as right-aligned images do. ( Simetrical, bug 6016, r17986)
• The interface for the undo option, introduced last week, has been improved. An automatic summary (which can be changed) is now filled in on the edit screen, and a message has been added to the top of the undo screen to make it clearly distinct from a regular edit screen. ( Andrew Garrett, r17988)
• A "next page" link was added to the bottom of Special:Allpages/ in addition to the link at the top. ( Rob Church, bug 1331, r18064)
• There is a new preference to have the "E-mail me a copy of my message" set by default on the e-mail form. ( Rob Church, bug 8024, r18094)

Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:

• Finnish (thanks to Ilmari Karonen)
• Frisian (thanks to Dirk Beetstra)
• Hebrew (thanks to Rotem Liss)
• Italian (thanks to BrokenArrow)
• Lithuanian (thanks to Edgaras)
• Portuguese (thanks to 555)
• Slovak (thanks to helix84)
• Vietnamese (thanks to Minh Nguyễn and Niklas Laxström)
• Volapük (thanks to Smeira and Manie)

Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.

The Arbitration Committee opened two case this week, and closed three cases.

Closed cases

• Pseudoscience: A case involving the actions of ScienceApologist, Ian Tresman and others, involving the insertion and removal of so-called "pseudoscience" on various articles. As a result of the case, Tommysun was banned from science- and pseudoscience-related articles, Elerner was banned from articles relating to his real-life work, Iantresman was placed on probation, and ScienceApologist was "cautioned".

• Non-Notability: A case regarding actions on Wikipedia:Non-notability (not to be confused with Wikipedia:Notability). As a result of the case, a remedy was enacted, allowing Fresheneesz to be placed on probation if he "continues to disrupt policy pages".

• Rachel Marsden: A case involving the actions of Arthur Ellis, Rachel Marsden, Bucketsofg and others on the Rachel Marsden page. The arbitration committee has adopted several proposals guiding editing of articles about living persons, and directs that Rachel Marsden may be stubbed if it does not conform to WP:BLP. Bearcat and Bucketsofg are expected to conform to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons rather than the liberal interpretation they have applied. Arthur Ellis is banned for one month for violating a previous article ban.

New cases

• Seabhcan: Various parties, principally MONGO, allege that Seabhcan has engaged in repeated incivility, but he claims that the incidents occurred such a long time ago as to be moot, and that MONGO and others have acted aggressively in the course of the dispute, alleging that "what they want is blood".

• Sex Tourism: A case involving a revert war on the Sex tourism article.

Evidence phase

• Waldorf education: A case on Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf education and related pages.

• RPJ: Various users allege that RPJ edits disruptively (although in good faith) on various articles related to conspiracy theories, such as John F. Kennedy Assassination. In response, he denies the allegations, and raised some "practical concerns about arbitration", which seem to regard the legitimacy of the Arbitration Committee bindingly to resolve disputes.

• Iran-Iraq War: A case referred by the mediation committee regarding a dispute on the Iran-Iraq War page.

Voting phase

• ScienceApologist: A case brought by User:Asmodeus alleging that User:ScienceApologist and others are harassing him in regards to Asmodeus' real life identity, as well as biased editing of Christopher Michael Langan and related articles. Several editors have alleged that Asmodeus is an aggressive editor and that Asmodeus and User:DrL have conflicts of interest regarding Christopher Michael Langan and related articles. Proposed remedies, currently supported by four arbitrators, include banning Asmodeus and DrL from editing articles related to Christopher Michael Langan and his ideas and placing Asmodeus and DrL on probation, banning User:Haldane Fisher indefinitely as an attack account, and "counseling" ScienceApologist and FeloniusMonk.

• Konstable: A case involving the actions of Konstable, an administrator who left the project, but then returned and created an alternative account, which some allege was used for disruption. This was then blocked, and he used his sysop tools to unblock it, causing some to call for his desysopping. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies banning Konstable for one month, but allowing him to return under a new name if he wishes, but these have been opposed by Dmcdevit, who has proposed a conter-remedy formally desysopping Konstable. A motion has been proposed to recuse Dmcdevit, supported by Fred Bauder, but opposed by Charles Matthews, who feels that recusal should be a personal decision.

• Hkelkar: A case involving the actions of Hkelkar, a probable sockpuppet of Subhash bose, on various articles. The case has expanded to consider the behavior of a number of other editors including User:BhaiSaab, User:TerryJ-Ho and User:Bakasuprman. Remedies have been proposed banning Hkelkar, BhaiSaab and TerryJ-Ho for one year, and placing them on probation.

Motion to close

• Elvis: A case involving the actions of Lochdale and Onefortyone on the Elvis Presley article. If closed, Lochdale would be banned from the article indefinitely, and Onefortyone kept on probation.

• Protecting children's privacy: A case involving a policy proposal on the Wikipedia:Protecting children's privacy page. The committee was asked to determine whether the proposed policy has consensus and should be adopted, but they have declined to rule on this issue. Instead, by a 5-0 vote, they have encouraged the community to continue working on the proposal with the goal of achieving consensus, and have voted to affirm the practice of counseling children not to disclose personal information and to delete such information in appropriate cases.