From the editor
Wikipedia is communism!
As an increasing number of people have been clamouring for the appearance of the Signpost this week, we are adopting a kind of 'rolling publication' model this week, with more articles currently in development. Thanks to Worldtraveller for pushing to release this issue on time, and for contributing so much content to recent Signpost editions in Michael Snow's absence.
From Worldtraveller's earlier comments here: It's clear that the community values the Signpost, and that the English Wikipedia has grown so large that some kind of digest of all the latest happenings is now fairly essential. An increasing number of editors have contributed articles and tips, but there is always a need for more. We now have an increasing number of good suggestions on what needs covering in the newsroom - more suggestions than those who have been writing have been able to cover so far. If you want to help ensure the Signpost covers all the important news around the projects, please dive in and write a few lines, leave a note on the newsroom page, or contact me or prodigal editor Michael Snow.
-- Samuel Klein (filling in for Michael Snow)
News and notes: Features and new administrators
Article on Wikipedia finally receives featured status
After two peer review requests which gained limited feedback, and two previously failed FAC nominations by 119 and Raul, Wikipedia finally received its featured status last week after being nominated again by 119. The only objection it received was by PedroPVZ, who claimed the article had too many references. Eight others showed their support which was enough to get it through in the end.
Its promotion didn't stop the article from being vandalised. After several minor cases which got quickly reverted, it was moved by Wikipedia is Communism on Sunday evening around 20:00 UTC. Fixing this move was delayed for several minutes when a replication lag caused the database to be locked. The article has since been protected from page moves.
Older featured articles being properly referenced
During a November 2004 debate over removing featured status from articles that did not cite their sources, it was found that almost 200 featured articles had no explicit references (early criteria for featured status did not require a References section). Some of these articles have slowly acquired references, but as of the end of March, 153 featured articles still appeared to have no references. On April 21 and 22, a request to cite sources was made on the talk pages of the remaining unreferenced articles. At least 20 of them were referenced within a week of these requests. Substantial progress is now being made, with 106 articles left on the list.
One of Wikipedia's most common criticisms is that the material is not reliable and that it cannot be trusted if anyone can edit it. The verifiability policy is aimed at addressing this issue through the primary method of citing sources. The issue is seen by many editors as particularly important for featured articles since they are held up as the best of Wikipedia.
New featured content
The flow of featured content steadied last week. As in the week before, 8 articles reached featured status. Along with Wikipedia, these were Civil Air Patrol, Rebecca Clarke, Dalek, Three Laws of Robotics, Technetium, Elagabalus, and Geology of the Death Valley area.
Six images were featured, slightly fewer than the preceding week:
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Incandescent Pahoeoe Fountain -
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New administrators
Despite Requests for adminship being unusually busy (see archived story) only 5 users were promoted to administrator status last week. JRM, Rama, Evercat, Worldtraveller and El C all received the coveted mop and bucket after their period of voting.
Evercat was reinstated as an administrator with 44 support votes four months after his voluntary stepping down following a disputed block on Libertas who disagreed with Evercat revealing information based on his IP address.
JRM and Rama received the most support with a massive 71 and 52 support votes respectively. JRM only received one opposing vote, while Rama received none.
In the news this week
LA times overflows with praise
An LA Times op-ed this week took a look at Wikipedia (copy at another location), and formed a very positive view of the project. Columnist Crispin Sartwell, a political philosophy lecturer, described Wikipedia as "magnificent", and said it represented an exciting future for encyclopaedias. He said its entirely editable, entirely open nature was a "brilliant conception".
Noting that such a concept was "completely antithetical to the encyclopedic tradition", Sartwell considered the drawbacks of a wiki-based encyclopaedia. Acknowledging that errors and vandalism are certainly not uncommon ("In one brief instance, a character from ' Star Wars' was labeled Benedict XVI"), he noted the ease with which bad edits can be reverted, and said they were the exception, not the rule.
"So is it to be trusted? Does it have the credibility of Britannica?", asked Sartwell, a question that has been discussed frequently over the last few months as Wikipedia's profile has risen. Considering articles on subjects on which he is knowledgeable, Sartwell said they were "almost invariably accurate", and noted the improvement over time of many. Not only did Sartwell consider Wikipedia basically accurate and increasingly comprehensive, he also said that an open model was "in some sense the only possible way" to create an encyclopaedia representing the state of human knowledge in real time.
Sartwell concluded that allowing everyone to work on a project like this was a grand test of human nature. "If it is in the long run successful, it would show that people can make amazing things together without being commanded, constrained, taxed, bribed or punished", he said.
Professor of information science derides bloggers and Wikipedians
After the LA Times' fulsome praise, technology magazine Silicon Valley brought Wikipedians back down to Earth when they reported [1] that a university lecturer from Indiana had launched a tirade against bloggers and Wikipedians [2]. Blaise Cronin, Dean of the School of Library and Information Services at Indiana University, raged against the "narcissism and banality" of most blogs and wondered what impelled people to share their "unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives" with the world.
"Undoubtedly, these are the same individuals who believe that the free-for-all, communitarian approach of Wikipedia is the way forward", said the Dean, claiming that " librarians, of course, know better". Presumably, he believes that Wikipedia is not the way forward, but did not elaborate on why.
Rush Limbaugh mistreats Wikipedia
Right wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh this week tried to push a point of view on Wikipedia. In a column on his website on 3 May, the conservative firebrand accused left-wingers of the sort of thing he usually accuses them of [3]. Perceiving some kind of conspiracy, he said he would put the word afristocracy on Wikipedia, to 'spread it around'. He also promoted the word ghettocracy.
On 4 May, Afristocracy duly appeared, with Ghettocracy following on 5 May. However, they were both nominated for deletion early on 5 May, and at the time of writing the emerging consensus seems to be to delete the articles. Limbaugh himself appears not to have created them, with users located in Sioux City, Iowa and San Juan, Puerto Rico instead being responsible.
NB: This correspondent is unwilling to pay an exorbitant fee to access the full version of the article on Rush Limbaugh's website, and has therefore relied on a two-line summary available via Google News [4] and his own personal prejudices to write this section.
Licensing issues
The raison d'être of Wikipedia is to create an open source, freely distributable encyclopaedia. While many sites have taken advantage of the permissive terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, under which all Wikipedia content is licensed, an article in marketing magazine Affiliate Tip indicates that some people still find the license too restrictive [5].
The article discussed the need for affiliates to have unique content on their websites to ensure a high google ranking. Discussing sources for content which people can adapt to their own needs, the article noted that 'Wikiepedia' [sic] allows content to be modified and redistributed, but said that the permission to do so came with "a few strings attached", and suggested that there were a "fair number of requirements" before content could be re-used.
Citations
The phrase "According to Wikipedia" is an increasingly common refrain, and now gets over 22,000 google hits. According to Wikipedia this week: Bluesnarfing is the theft of data via Bluetooth (Macworld, 4 May [6]); Eminent domain is the enforced appropriation of property by the state (New York paper Gothamist, 3 May [7]); a rave party is usually held in a warehouse (The Winchester Star, 5 May [8]); and an opinion leader may lead in one area while they follow in others (The Global Politician, 6 May [9]). Also, fresh from declaring Wikipedia a reliable source, the LA Times used unstated Wikipedia articles as sources for a detailed examination of Shia Islam in Iraq on 8 May [10], and The Skeptical Enquirer ("Magazine for science and reason") also recommended Wikipedia as "a good, neutral introduction to the theory and controversy" in an article considering the merits of the Gaia theory.
And finally...
Wikipedia this week made its first appearance in popular US comic strip Foxtrot [11], which is syndicated across the United States. The strip depicted two children vandalising the article on warthogs, before moving on to rabies. Following the publication of the strip on 7 May, Warthog was subject to repeated vandalism, having not previously seen an edit since 24 March. The vandalism eventually led to the page being temporarily protected from editing. Rabies seems to have escaped a similar fate, for the time being.
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Plagiarism suspected in Brockhaus article
The German Wikipedia and German newswires have been buzzing recently about the suspected plagiarism of a Wikipedia article by a Brockhaus freelancer. The article in question, about Pope Benedict XVI, is quite similar to one submitted to Brockhaus Online on April 27 by a freelance writer. The similarities increase if one compares the Brockhaus article to a version of the German article from April 26. In this case, one can observe long identical passages, and entire paragraphs that are changed only minimally.
Discovery and complaint timeline
The initial discovery of the similarities, by de:Benutzer:Mathias Schindler on April 28, led to a polite letter to Brockhaus Online, informing them of the similarities and asking them how they wished to proceed. The first response from Brockhaus was "we'll check with our contributor;" the freelancer denied copying material from Wikipedia. Early efforts to compare the two articles yielded a suggestive copyscape diff. Wikipedians then checked the version of the Wikipedia article that existed at the time of the submission to Brockhaus Online, producing this diff via MediaWiki, clearly highlighting lengthy identical passages.
The obvious response to these claims is that both articles may have used the same underlying sources. Rather than checking their respective bibliographies, Schindler identified individual sentences which were the product of edits and modifications by multiple users, which were identical in both essays. For a few days after this was discovered, Brockhaus exchanged private correspondence with Wikipedia editors about the matter; but took no action. On May 3, a discussion about the matter was initiated on the German Wikipedia mailing list. Unfortunately, despite strong requests that the discussion not be repeated beyond the boundaries of the list, a journalist for PC Welt discovered that thread and leaked the potential scandal in a four-page news item on May 5, referencing discussions about the matter on the public list.
According to PC Welt, Klaus Holoch, head of the Brockhaus PR department, claimed that the Ratzinger article was ready even before the result of the papal election. According to a colleague at Brockhaus, however, Holoch denies this; saying only that the freelancer was working on the article on the 21st of April.
On Friday, May 6, Holoch commented publicly that "mistakes had probably been made," and that "in the coming week we will have a discussion with the author of the article," in the hopes of clarifying the matter. Brockhaus removed the controversial article from their site. However, the article text remained available for purchase from elsewhere on brockhaus.de for 2.5 Euros. According to Schindler, Brockhaus changed the content of the purchasable article on May 9th, upon being informed that it also contained the suspect text.
Blog coverage and comparison with similar complaints about Wikipedia
Comments on German weblogs about this event included complaints that this was a case of "man bites dog," which would hardly be newsworthy the other way around, as Wikipedia contributors plagiarize from other sources all the time; not knowing or not caring enough to properly reference their research, or engaging in wholesale copyright violation which is only caught with great vigilance (or, worse yet, only when the original author complains).
On the other hand, Wikipedia takes every claim of copyright violation extremely seriously, and acts immediately to take down alleged copyvios while investigating their copyright status. The OTRS ticket system and a newly created legal mailing list, exist for processing such requests quickly, even when submitted by apparent trolls. In contrast, it took Brockhaus eight days to respond to this complaint.
Blogs reporting on the event include industrial technology and witchcraft, an A-list German tech-blog, heise.de, and Schindler's own Recentchanges. Heise contributor Hal Faber commented at the end of his weekly news column on Friday, that this exchange between Brockhaus and Wikipedia is becoming exciting. "Currently it stands 1:0 for Wikipedia. Which brings up the question: Why can't Brockhaus just use Wikipedia, with full acknowledgment of its license?"
Recent meetings and events
Wikipedians of the East Coast gathering
Wikipedians from up and down the eastern coast of the United States met this weekend in Washington, DC for a Wikipedians of the East Coast field trip and gathering. A dozen Wikipedians from Georgia to Massachusetts met in the capital on May 7, went on photographic scavenger hunts for embassy buildings, museum exhibits, and animals; and were introduced to some of the city's nightlife around Dupont Circle Saturday evening. A few met again on Sunday to visit the city's famous zoo.
The group had asked for photograph requests before the gathering, and worked diligently to fulfill them. They produced a sizeable category of embassy photos, for instance. An evening discussion turned to setting up a US Chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. In particular, the potential activities of such a chapter, and special difficulties involved in coordinating meetings with people from all parts of the US, were discussed. Phyzome took down the names of those present and set up an informal mailing list to continue the discussion.
Earlier in the week, on May 5, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales spoke at a conference for sponsors of MIT's Digital Life Consortium at the MIT Media Lab.
Events in April : Mysql award, Pretoria conference, and Cyberarts festival
The week of April 18 was a busy one for Wikipedia-related events. Wikipedia was invited to the annual MySQL Users Conference in mid-April, where it was honored on April 20 as one of three MySQL Applications of the Year. Both Jimmy Wales and long-time MediaWiki developer Jamesday were present to receive the award.
At the same time, Wikimedia Trustee Angela Beesley and Eloquence were in Pretoria, South Africa, attending the three-day "Free/Libre and Open Source Software" (FLOSS) and Free Knowledge Workshop. Angela later summarized the event on meta. Angela had been invited to speak about "Wikipedia – A Vision in the Making". Eloquence had a chance to give a wiki technology workshop.
On the third day of the event, Wednesday April 20, Angela and Eloquence took part in an extended discussion of e-Learning, which is a major focus in Africa. This discussion including potential plans for Wikiversity, relevant extensions to MediaWiki, ways to work with a Bridges to the Future project and the CSIR Open Source Centre, who hosted the conference. Other ideas that came up during the conference included an audio interface to Wikipedia via cell phones, and ways to produce static HTML dumps and update-feeds to assist the use of Wikipedia in local schools, something which is already happening regularly. There was particular interest in this last idea from Wikiwizzy and a representative from the Shuttleworth Foundation. Wikimedia was encouraged to send someone to the 8th World Conference on Computers in Education in Capetown in early July, but currently no one is planning to attend.
Wednesday evening saw the first African Wikipedian meetup, in Pretoria, with seven Wikipedians in attendance. Angela noted that it "lasted about 3 hours and was very enjoyable." People discussed ways to increase interest in the Afrikaans Wikipedia, machine translation into African languages, and more e-Learning ideas.
That Thursday, Wikipedians in Boston put on an audiovisual presentation of Recentchanges at the launch party of the Boston Cyberarts Festival. Sj set up a display table and an array of speakers at the event with the help of Wikinewsie Pingswept; they then broadcast a real-time map of Recentchanges to birdsong and other nature sounds, while displaying a colorful real-time RC feed on the display. This was done with the software package rcbirds, a creation of German Wikipedian Datura, which relies on the IRC version of Kate's RC-bot. Stephen Wolfram was in attendance, and noted that he was watching Wikipedia for ideas about how to improve projects like MathWorld and PhysicsWorld.
Jimmy Wales visits Harvard as Berkman Fellow
Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society recently made Wales their latest non-resident Fellow, one of a score of academics and luminaries across the country who are affiliated with the Center.
On April 25 and 26, Wales made his first visit to Boston as a Fellow, to meet his Berkman Center colleagues. He spoke in two law classes taught by professor Jonathan Zittrain, and described Wikipedia at a packed Berkman lunch presentation which went half an hour beyond the normal stopping-point.
At the end of his second day in Boston, Wales gave a presentation about Wikipedia and the Developing World to a mixed audience in Pound Hall on the Harvard Law School campus. It was as much a discussion and long Q & A session as a presentation; he spoke for only 20 minutes before asking for comments and fielding the first question. Various ideas about reaching out to the third world were put forward by the audience, and the presentation lasted for almost 90 minutes. The event was reported in real time on Wikinews. A dozen people got together afterwards for a drink before heading home.
The following day, Wales spoke at Collection at
Haverford College, before travelling to Manhattan to speak about the Wikipedia user experience at the elegant
GEL 2005 conference. In March, he had been
interviewed on the Good Experience blog kept by GEL organizer Mark Hurst.
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