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21 June 2010

 

2010-06-21

Picture of the Year results declared on Wikimedia Commons

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By Nilotpal42 and Tony1
2009 Picture of the Year – a Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India
The runner-up – Elakala Waterfalls in the Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia, USA, taken using long-exposure photography
In third position, the Russian military honour guard during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow
Wikimedia Commons is a media-file repository for public-domain and freely licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips). It acts as a common repository for Wikimedia Foundation projects.

The community chooses some of its finest photographs, computerized graphics, animated media, and related media as featured pictures. All pictures that are promoted to featured picture status are voted on at the Annual Wikimedia Photo of the Year competition. This time, 742 Wikimedians voted to select a Picture of the Year from 890 pictures that had been promoted to featured picture status during 2009. The results were declared last week, and The Signpost congratulates the three winners: User Paulrudd (1st), Forest Wander (2nd), and Chad J. McNeeley of the US Navy (3rd).

The Signpost interviewed Juliancolton and miya of the 2009 Organizing Committee to find out more about the Competition. Julian edited Commons on and off for about a year, mostly uploading pictures for enwiki articles. In April 2009, he voted on a few featured picture candidates, and he was promoted to administrator status shortly after, while his activity on the site was increasing. From March 2010, he has been a bureaucrat, and has made more than 15,000 edits at Commons and uploaded hundreds of his own photographs. "I feel Commons is one of the more successful Wikimedia projects – it's able to induce collaborative efforts between editors who barely even speak the same language, much less have the same interests." This was his first year participating in the Competition process. Miya arrived at Commons in 2005, looking for images to use in articles on the Japanese Wikipedia. "A little later, someone moved one of my photos from the Japanese Wikipedia to Commons; then I started to upload images directly to Commons by myself, mostly of plants, animals and building constructions in Japan. Categorizing images is one of my favorite activities, as well." This was miya's third year as a Competition organizer.

Both editors are impressed with the international aspects of Commons. Miya says, "Just as Commons is multilingual, the organizing team is strongly international. As you can see here, the team includes native speakers of Norwegian, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Finnish, German, Russian, and Czech, as well as English-speakers. Some people are more active in their native language (such as Kwj2772, MGA73, Kaganer, Jklamo, and myself), while others have more edits on English Wikipedia or meta than in their native-language wikis (such as Kanonkas and The Evil IP address). Native English-speakers [on Commons] are also active on English Wikipedia, such as Julian and Lx 121." Julian believes most established Commons contributors are active at other projects. He is well-qualified to judge: although he considers enwiki to be his "home" project, Commons is just one of around a dozen projects he edits or on which he has served as an administrator.

Julian says that Commons, like all large-scale Wikimedia projects, has received its fair share of criticism, "in some cases rightly so, based on the often-questionable quality of its content, [particularly our] unfortunate reputation for saving low-value content at all costs." He also points to recent media criticism regarding potentially explicit photography. The value of the Competition, and of featured pictures as a whole, is that they "showcase and distribute our most valuable, educational, and visually appealing images to both active contributors and outsiders. On the other hand, the Picture of the Day recognizes new high-quality images on a daily basis – allowing for content from more sources and photographers to be celebrated – although at a much quieter level than the Competition." To Miya, "the winning photographs stand as prominent symbols of the featured pictures at this huge site, selected by Wikimedians. Featured pictures in Commons are so wonderful, and the Competition is a chance to show them off. It's a great way to attract new people to the site."

The 2009 Competition faced significant technical hurdles. Miya says, "the checking process was tedious!" She recalls the history of the process: "In 2006, there were about 300 candidates. In 2007, there were about 500 candidates, and special voting software was prepared and implemented by the core members of the Organizing Committee. In 2008, there were about 500 candidates, but the voting software could not be prepared. As the result, checking votes manually became a big job. In 2009, there were nearly 900 candidates and again no software. Checking this many votes manually without software is really hard work! A team-member proposed that we use SecurePoll, but it was too late to adjust the rules; besides, SecurePoll doesn't support images. In the end, we had to run the Competition without voting software. Of course, Pathoschild's voter-eligibility checking tool was a great help. And there was also Kalan's script for voting buttons, which looks magical to me. Many thanks to both! If only we could compile these into an automatically checking tool!"

Julian is keen to see the Competition better organized next year. "It took several months to get 2009 off the ground, and several weeks of preparations and delays. We almost lost all interest and decided to scrap the idea, but nudges from a few contributors to Commons got the ball rolling once again. More automated tools and bots would be especially helpful, as I had to create over 900 voting pages semi-manually using AWB." Miya agrees that better organization in the future is very important. "Yet we believe the Competition will continue in some way or other. Why? Wouldn't you like to know which will become the picture of the year of all the featured pictures every year?" Julian stresses that the Competition is a year-round process. "If you think a particular image should be included next winter, help by nominating it for FPC at Commons, and voting on existing nominations."

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2010-06-21

Collaboration with the British Museum and in Serbia, Interaction with researchers, and more

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By Phoebe, Tilman Bayer and Mike Peel

Hoxne hoard challenge

Items from the Hoxne hoard

As part of the collaboration with the British Museum (earlier Signpost coverage: June 7, March 15) there will be an online and in-person challenge to improve the article Hoxne hoard this week, culminating on Friday, June 25. Editors will be meeting at the British Museum to work on the article, and remote online participation is also encouraged; you can sign up on the challenge page.

The underlying purpose of the event is to see whether it is possible to produce quality Wikipedia content in a short period of time, when all relevant authors, curators and subject area experts are in the room to assist (see list of professionals attending). If successful, the Hoxne challenge could be a model for encouraging the creation of quality Wikipedia content.

The article concerns a cache of Roman gold and silver pieces discovered in Britain in 1992; it is the largest and richest hoard ever found and is now held in the British Museum. According to the challenge page, the article was chosen because:

This is a high importance article, with high popular awareness and copious published sources and readily available experts at the BM, but it is of very low quality on Wikipedia (see also WP:GLAM/BM#Qualitative). Nevertheless, the article was one of the highest individual referral articles to the British Museum website last month.

The article was a stub when the challenge was announced and considerable progress has already been achieved, taking it from a 2 Kb to a 19 Kb article (diff). In recognition of the "Hoxne Challenge" the British Museum has updated its highlights page to now feature the most famous Hoxne item - the "Empress" pepper pot.[1].

Other ongoing British Museum collaborations are one-on-one collaborations between editors and museum curators; and the Featured article prize competition, in which prizes are awarded for new featured articles on topics related to the British Museum. In recognition of the high quality of Wikipedia's Featured Articles, the museum has also begun linking out to Featured Articles that are about objects in its collection.[2][3]

Billboards in Serbia, and new staff

Wikimedia Serbia is collaborating with an artistic group on a billboard campaign with images of cultural and scientific figures from Serbia, as well as figures from Wikimedia, including Jimmy Wales and Richard Stallman. The billboard images are simple, with a photograph of the person displayed, the project website and the Wikipedia logo. Preliminary photos can be seen here. The billboard space is being donated. The first image is of Radoje Domanovic (until this Tuesday); later images will be chosen by Wikimedians. The website for the project is likilink.org.

In other news from Wikimedia Serbia, Juliana Da Costa José has been hired as Chief of Office for Wikimedia Serbia, and will start her job after Wikimania. This will be an unpaid position to begin with, with salary contingent on successful fundraising for Wikimedia Serbia.

Pending changes roll-out continues

The roll-out of the Wikipedia:Pending changes trial (see coverage in the June 7 and June 14 Signpost issues) began as planned last week. As of 22:00 UTC on 21 June, 537 articles were using the feature, all except two (Massoud Barzani and Bosniaks) with Level 1 protection. Articles are being added in four batches per day from a queue. From the second week of the trial, whole categories can be nominated for Pending changes.

The roll-out was accompanied by media coverage and a debate about its significance for the Wikipedia's model of open collaboration. See this week's In the news section.

"Researcher" group added

Some weeks ago, the Foundation added a new user rights group called researcher to the English Wikipedia. Currently, it involves the right to search deleted pages (browsearchive), higher limits in API queries (apihighlimits), and the ability to view deleted history entries without their associated text (deletedhistory) – that is, a small subset of the rights of administrators. In an RfC, the Foundation's deputy director Erik Möller explained the rationale for the new group and suggested that the community should develop a process for deciding about new applications. However, most commenters preferred the Foundation to oversee this process. The user rights group was created following a request by User:DarTar, who is currently the only user listed in it. One other application was put on hold.

Outlook on user-experience improvements beyond the interface

In a blog post titled WikiDashboard revisited, Naoko Komura, the outgoing head of the Wikimedia Foundation's user-experience (UX) programs, wrote about a meeting between some Wikimedia staff members and researcher Ed Chi of the PARC Augmented Social Cognition Group. The Group's research gave rise to concern about the long-time health of the Wikipedia community last year (see Signpost coverage); previously, it had constructed the "WikiDashboard", a tool that can analyze editor contributions (in a manner discouraged on the Wikimedia Toolserver for privacy reasons). The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possibilities for making Wikipedia a "more social place", beyond the improvements in the user interface achieved in the now-concluding Stanton usability project. Without describing details, Komura said that "Ed shared his wisdom to focus on optimizing resources rather than focusing on growth, as a growth cannot be expected when the resources is not optimized." In her post – published shortly after her last workday at the Foundation (as announced at the end of last month, see Signpost coverage) – Komura noted that she "had been struggling with competing priorities, because collaborative open source development can be overwhelming just dealing with mounting immediate issues, and often times investing in opportunities for future is postponed due to immediate priorities to fix problems".

Briefly

2010-06-21

Wikipedia better than Britannica, Pending changes as a victory of tradition, and more

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By Tilman Bayer and Rod

"Wikipedia is better than Encyclopaedia Britannica"

Title page of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

As reported by the Spanish news agency EFE last week, Danish lexicographer Henning Bergenholtz, head of the Center for Lexicography at the Aarhus School of Business, said that the quality of Wikipedia surpasses that of the most prestigious traditional encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The article (titled Wikipedia es mejor que la Enciclopedia Británica, según un lexicólogo danés – "Wikipedia is better than the Encyclopaedia Britannica, according to a Danish lexicographer" – on the news portal Cortizalia.com – English translation), Bergenholtz also said that Wikipedia still has problems, in that certain articles use too many technical terms, and religious or political topics could contain partial or controversial opinions. In 2007, Bergenholtz had made a similar but more cautious statement about the reliability of Wikipedia, asserting that the site is more trustworthy than "most other" encyclopedic dictionaries [4].

However, Bergenholtz (himself the author of 30 dictionaries [5]) was more pessimistic about the quality of electronic dictionaries in general. He said that between 100,000 and 500,000 of them are available, but 99% should not be used because of their "very bad quality". The remarks were made on the occasion of Bergenholtz being awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Valladolid.

Pending changes – a victory for traditional models?

The trial of the Pending changes software feature generated most of the Wikipedia-centered media coverage last week. As noted in last week's "In the news", early reports – published before the feature became live – emphasized its potential to open up Wikipedia (as described in the Foundation blog post about the trial) rather than its interpretation as a move towards tighter editorial control (which had dominated media coverage of the proposed trial last August, see Signpost coverage: Misleading media storm over flagged revisions). On his "The Wikipedian" blog[6], User:WWB (William Beutler) listed further coverage - on ReadWriteWeb (Wikipedia to Loosen Controls Tonight), Slashdot (Wikipedia To Unlock Frequently Vandalized Pages), and in blogs, also noting that most of it emphasized the openness aspect, with only ComputerWorld (Wikipedia confronts downside of ‘Net openness') disagreeing.

However, in a June 18 panel discussion (Wikipedia: The Wisdom and the Folly of Crowds - starts around 07:45) on KCRW, a public radio station based in California, the latter viewpoint was strongly represented by Julia Angwin, Senior Technology Editor at the Wall Street Journal, whose article Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages had generated considerable controversy last fall, including a rebuttal by the Foundation (see Signpost coverage: 2009-11-23, 2009-11-30, 2009-12-07). The other panelists were Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado, author of "The Wikipedia Revolution"), Beutler and cultural critic Lee Siegel (introduced as author of "Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob"). Angwin interpreted the trial as a move away from "crowd sourcing" towards a more traditional structure - "it looks a little like clique sourcing" (10:15). Lih took a more balanced viewpoint (also described in his blog post about the panel), but noted the example of the German Wikipedia where the feature has been active in a much more restrictive form since 2008.

Siegel confessed to use Wikipedia "the way I eat things that I shouldn't and drink things that I shouldn't – it's there, so I have to use it" (20:40), but attacked it as inaccurate and misleading ("information, not knowledge"). As examples, Siegel cited a false allegation about Saul Bellow that had remained for a long time in the article despite being marked as missing a citation (22:30, since removed), and a distorting quote from Marlon Brando's autobiography (26:00, since corrected).

In the conclusion of the panel, Angwin was asked (41:45):

"Is crowdsourcing a threat to the Wall Street Journal, and other institutions of its kind?"
"First, you should probably ask Rupert Murdoch, who owns us, for his views, for he is very outspoken on how he thinks their industry is going to evolve. But the one thing that is interesting to me watching this Wikipedia derby play out is that they are moving towards the more traditional editing structure, by adding this layer of top editors who approve facts. It seems to me like the model that I grow up in is winning out. And it's true that there are still errors in Wikipedia [...but it] does seem like having a structure of editors does improve accuracy, which is good news for me."

Beutler also reflected about the panel on his blog, regretting that in his "battle" with Siegel about the downsides of anonymity with regard to the reliability of Wikipedia, politeness had prevented him to point out Siegel's own "notoriety" in that respect (Siegel had been suspended as a blogger at The New Republic in 2006, after using a sock puppet to write comments supporting himself, at one point under the heading "Siegel Is My Hero" [7]).

Briefly

2010-06-21

WikiProject U2

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By Mabeenot


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

WikiProject U2 is a small and enthusiastic project that focuses on the Irish rock band U2, formed by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. The project was started by Smithcool in June 2007, but became inactive a year later. Three editors came together in April 2010 to revive the project, and in less than two months it has seen the promotion of one new featured article and a major overhaul of the project's page. WikiProject U2 is currently home to four pieces of featured content: U2, City of Blinding Lights, No Line on the Horizon, and List of awards received by U2. An additional 16 good articles give the project's members plenty to be proud of, especially since its scope embraces only about 300 articles. The project maintains a to-do list which includes getting Achtung Baby through a featured article nomination, pushing Zoo TV Tour through the good article process, and preparing U2 360° Tour for a good article nomination. This week, we interviewed Melicans, Y2kcrazyjoker4, and Dream out loud.

What motivated you to revive WikiProject U2? How difficult has it been to rebuild the project and what are the biggest challenges currently facing WikiProject U2?

Melicans: I think it was Dream out loud who first made the attempt to revive the Wikiproject earlier this year. Since I was member in the WikiProject's first incarnation and the vast majority of my Wikipedia contributions have been to U2 articles, I jumped at the chance to be a part of it's rebirth. There are only four principal editors to the U2 articles (myself, Dream out Loud, Merbabu, and Y2kcrazyjoker4), and perhaps another two or three (Wasted Time R and Deliriousandlost come to mind) that help to build or review the occasional article and contribute to talk page discussion and debate. With so few contributors, I would say that the most difficult part has been group collaboration; while I worked on "City of Blinding Lights" and No Line on the Horizon, Merbabu and Y2kcrazyjoker4 focused on revamping The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby for example, so our attention has been split. The lack of members means that it is difficult for us to improve the vast majority of articles. With over 350 articles tagged as being part of the WikiProject only a few get the attention that they desperately need, and these are generally the more well-known songs and albums since they are more likely to be searched for. As a result of this, articles such as Original Soundtracks 1 and "Staring at the Sun" are in dire need of attention.
The U2 360° Tour stage
Y2kcrazyjoker4: It was Dream out loud who spent a lot of effort formally reviving the project - he did a lot of the grunt work like putting together the project page, adding the WikiProject templates to all relevant article and file pages. His interest in reviving the project stems from a renewed interest in collaborating on U2 articles. Within the last 8 months, there has been a lot of contributions to U2 articles and recently, we began a drive to promote several articles. We were mostly just tracking the status of these articles with a list on the U2 talk page, but after we began making lots of progress, Dream out loud probably felt it was time we formally organize our efforts. Rebuilding the project has not been too bad, as the project is relatively small in scope, and our regular members have been in regular communication with each other. Our biggest challenge is trying to dedicate the same level of attention to all articles. We have focused our efforts on improving a small subset of the project's articles at a time, and our low membership means that few other articles will see much attention until we have moved on from what we were working on.
Dream out loud: After WikiProject U2 was first created by Smithcool in June 2007, I had high hopes for the project to become really active. But less than a year later, the project really got nowhere, and I tagged the page as inactive at the end of 2008, around the same time Smithcool stopped contributing to Wikipedia. I continued to edit U2-related articles on here, but with the sudden "spike" of new U2-related articles and edits to old ones, I thought reviving the project would be a good idea. Since over 300 articles are within the scope of our project, I thought the project would be a great way to monitor the progress of those articles and collaborate with other editors on similar articles.


Several of the project's articles have recently been featured article candidates and good article nominees. Were you involved with promoting one of these articles? Were you successful?

Melicans: I'm proud to say that I was involved with several of the recent FAC's and GAN's. "City of Blinding Lights" is one of my favourite U2 songs, so when I visited the article last November I was disappointed to see it's condition. I gave it a complete revamp and, thanks to the additions and edits made by other members of the WikiProject, by early January it had been listed as a Good Article. By the end of February it had been promoted to Featured Article status thanks to the excellent replies, copyedits, and suggestions made by the reviewers, which was my first successful nomination. Only a few days ago No Line on the Horizon, which I spent a great deal of time on last year, was promoted on the third attempt. Although I did not nominate them, I also did a lot of work on the recent Good Articles "Moment of Surrender" and 1997 U2 concert in Sarajevo. My next goals are to bring Original Soundtracks 1 to GA, and to make No Line on the Horizon a good topic; the album article and "Moment of Surrender" are already at or past that level, and the other song articles aren't too far off. Several more song and album articles are getting close to the GA and FA thresholds, so it will be interesting to see how they fare.
Bono in 2009
Y2kcrazyjoker4: I was involved with several promotions. Merbabu and I collaborated on Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree—U2's most successful and well-known albums—and helped get these articles promoted to Good Article status. They are both very close to being nominated as Featured Articles. Our previous Featured Article nomination for Achtung Baby failed in January, but after roughly 5 months of improving, I believe it is ready for a re-nomination. I was also involved in several non-single song articles being promoted to Good Articles, including "Moment of Surrender" and "Zoo Station". I also helped push U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky to GA status, making it just the 2nd concert video in our project to be promoted. MelicansMatkin and I collaborated on 1997 U2 concert in Sarajevo, which was created, written, and promoted to GA status in a matter of weeks. I contributed to No Line on the Horizon at various points in its history, although I was involved very little with the FA push. I've done various copyediting on a wide range articles, several of which our project's members helped promote to Good and Featured Article status. Overall, I'm very pleased with the progress we've made.
Dream out loud: I have worked on several articles that have become good articles, my first of which was U2 3D. It's an extremely long and detailed article, which I wrote from scratch, almost entirely by myself. I say that not to brag, of course, because Wikipedia is all about collaboration, but rather to show what things were like before the project was revived. I wrote the article by myself because there weren't really any editors out there interested in writing it with me or who were willing to help. Of course, since then things have changed. "Zooropa" (song) has been greatly expanded, and I did get some help on that one to make it a good article. I also created U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky, and shortly afterwards Y2kcrazyjoker4 began work on the article and he made it into the good article it is currently. Right now, I hope to get all three of those to feature article status quite soon. Perhaps surprisingly, I didn't really contribute much to the U2 article, but other editors have gone a great job getting it to featured article status, as well as other articles such as "City of Blinding Lights" and No Line on the Horizon.


The project appears to be currently concentrating its attention on the article U2 360° Tour. Are there plans to send this article through the good article process? If so, what tasks are considered the most important for getting the article ready for a GAN?

Melicans: I've been hoping to get this article through the GAN process for a while now, but unfortunate events keep occurring which prevent it from happening! The first was the incomplete list of opening acts for the planned fourth leg in the second. No sooner were those announced then Rolling Stone completely overhauled their website, breaking all of their links that had not been manually archived. And then of course Bono threw his back out, resulting in the cancellation of the planned third leg; and although it was a slight inconvenience to us in terms of adding and structuring the information, it's naturally been much more problematic for the man himself!
As of right now I would say that the most important task is repairing the broken links, or finding alternate sources. The ever-essential copyedit is also needed to make sure the text is solid and cohesive. Once more information is known regarding the possible impact of Bono's injury on the next leg of the tour, I would say that we should be ready for GAN, with FAC a short way off.
Bono in 1983
Y2kcrazyjoker4: Events outside of our control have delayed any nominations. As mentioned, the North American leg postponement has necessitated some structural changes to the article, and many of our references to Rolling Stone's website went dead when they re-organized the site and put lots of content behind a paywall. These are probably the biggest obstacles in our way. In any case, this tour has been in the news a lot recently, and U2 have a reputation as a great live band, so I believe this is a topic that we should naturally concentrate on. It would be great to have articles for both No Line on the Horizon and its supporting tour promoted. Articles on an album and its tour both complement each other very well—one reason why I've also been trying to get Achtung Baby and Zoo TV Tour promoted.
Dream out loud: I haven't contributed a whole lot to this article, but I'm guessing this is our biggest focus right now because the tour is an ongoing event that will be lasting until sometime next year. We do want to get this to featured article status eventually, but our current goal is to get it to good article status first, which is on our "to do" list on the project page at the moment. I think its a well-written article, but I try to focus my edits on older articles that haven't had much attention lately and let them see the light of day, and let other editors work on the new material.


Has WikiProject U2 formed any close relationships with other WikiProjects?

Melicans: To a degree; naturally there is some overlap in our articles with WikiProject Songs and WikiProject Albums, and so occassionally a WikiProject U2 member will make a query on those respective talk pages about some matter. Occassionally requests will be made of those members for a quick copyedit on the prose, or pointers on what may be missing from the article. Outside of those, I wouldn't say that there are any particularly close relationships.
Y2kcrazyjoker4: Although a few articles have some relevance to the WikiProject Alternative music, we haven't had much contact with the project except for some of its members occasionally providing some help with GA and FA reviews. Most of our contact with other WikiProjects has been with WikiProject Songs and WikiProject Albums, just because most of the articles in the U2 area are songs and albums. I occasionally follow those projects' talk pages for any new developments on things like track listings, charting, and certification information. But I wouldn't say we've been closely involved with too many things.
The Edge in 2005
Dream out loud: WikiProject U2 is the only project I've actively been a part of since I've been an editor of Wikipeida. I have added my name to the list of other WikiProjects, but I never got too involved with them. Obviously, WikiProject U2 is a subproject of WikiProject Music, and I would love to get some active participants from other WikiProjects to help us out. I haven't currently attempted to form any relationships with other WikiProjects, but I think it's a great idea to do so, especially by contacting the ones the probably still think our project is inactive, or don't even know our project exists. For the U2 3D article, I did do some work with WikiProject Film since the article is more film-related than it is music-related. As big as their project it though, it has been a little difficult working with them. For example, I nominated U2 3D for A-Class and after making the suggested changes to the article, the review sat untouched for 3 months (despite being listed on the WikiProject Film page), and eventually one of the project members just listed the article as "failed". I really think that the article is ready for featured article status, but I'm just a little bit skeptical of nominating it because of issues I've dealt with in the past.


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

Melicans: I would say that the most immediately pressing needs are copyedits; with just four regular contributors the eyes quickly get accustomed to the prose, and so we often miss a lot of little spelling and grammatical errors that hold the articles back at GAN and FAC, as well as details that we have overlooked. New members are more than welcome to put look at the articles with their fresh eyes for these kinds of things. A full list of articles we hope to soon get to GA and FA can be found at Talk:U2#The drive to FA. In addition, building articles that are really lacking in information and content is also needed; little known songs such as "Electrical Storm" and "Love Is Blindness" and the articles on every band member not named Bono are just some examples of what need a lot of work.
Y2kcrazyjoker4: Our most pressing need is for more users. All of our current members are good writers that are well-informed on U2 and can craft excellent articles. Unfortunately, there's only a few of us and we can't cover as much ground as we would like. When this project initially existed a few years ago, there were dozens of members, but we haven't been able to match that membership yet since reviving the project. A new member can help today by expanding articles that haven't seen much attention. Many of the band's less popular singles are stubs, and most of the albums don't quite meet the same quality standards set by No Line on the Horizon, Achtung Baby, and The Joshua Tree. Most of the band's live videos have been all but ignored. Another matter that some users may be able to assist with (depending on their geographical dispersal) is helping us confirm charting/certification information for international locations, as chart archiving does not go as far back as the beginning of the band's career.
Dream out loud: Getting more people involved would be a great asset to our project, but it's about the quality of the members, not the number we have. When the project was first created, we had a large list of members who signed up, most of whom never contributed anything to the project. Now our list has just 3 members, and we've been more active than ever. I would really like to eventually, someday, see an article for just about every U2 song. There are plenty of sources out there (both online and print) about every U2 song to make them notable, and they can create a large contribution to Wikipedia as a whole. A lot of stubs have turned into redirects, which I think should be turned into B-Class articles. As long as U2 exists, there will always be new articles to create (new songs, new albums, new tours, etc.) but we can't forget about the old material that just sitting there untouched. Most people probably haven't heard of songs like "The Playboy Mansion", which is far from a hit U2 song, but could still potentially become a well-written article, up there with articles like "Running to Stand Still". We welcome new members, and anything they could possibly add to existing articles would be very beneficial.


Anything else you'd like to add?

Adam Clayton in 2005
Dream out loud: I don't remember where this discussion took place, but I remember someone commenting on our recently-revived project, stating how it should have been created into a taskforce, rather than a whole WikiProject. I think the reasoning had to do with the lack of members or something, but like I said earlier, its about the strength of the members you do have, not about how many members you have altogether. I never considered a taskforce, but with the amount of articles in our score, I think a WikiProject is appropriate and I really do have high hopes for the project. I can see it becoming very productive in the near future.
Melicans: Of all the interactions I have had on the WikiProject, I have found those on the U2 WikiProject to be among the most pleasant. Naturally there are disagreements (some quite long and drawn out), but you quickly get accustomed to each other's editing styles and the articles are both interesting to read and fun to build. Any interested users are encouraged to contribute; meet us at WP:WPU2 and join the fun!
Y2kcrazyjoker4: We appreciate having this opportunity for an interview, and we hope that it can give our WikiProject some much-needed attention!


Next week, we'll confuse port with starboard while desperately trying to tie a reef knot. Until then, sail over to the archive for some shore leave.

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2010-06-21

Approved this week

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By seresin
This week's TFPs
Man climbing a statue of a Buddhist idol at Borobudur
Atlantic coast at Porto Covo
Engorged Ixodes ricinus tick
Lunar phases
Scene from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Bad Hindelang
Prickles of a rose plant

Soap (nom), JamesBWatson (nom) and NativeForeigner (nom) were promoted to administrator.

The following seven featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article:

  • Sydney Newman, a Canadian film and television producer who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s
  • Grand Forks, the third-largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Grand Forks County
  • Robert Hues, an English mathematician and geographer who made observations of the variations of the compass off the coast of Newfoundland
  • Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, a 1980 American space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner
  • Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, a four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) introduced in the 1930s
  • Choral symphony, a musical composition for orchestra, choir and sometimes solo voices which in its internal workings and overall musical architecture adheres broadly to symphonic musical form
  • Funerary art, any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead.

Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status: Neil Brooks (nom), Douglas Jardine (nom), Fresh Blood (Supernatural) (nom), Ben Gascoigne (nom), Battle of Valcour Island (nom), Convention of 1833 (nom), David Lewis (politician) (nom), Battle of Bardia (nom), Sovetsky Soyuz class battleship (nom), Waddesdon Road railway station (nom), Golden-crowned Sifaka (nom), Pithole, Pennsylvania (nom) and Major urinary proteins (nom).

Seven lists were promoted to featured status: List of M*A*S*H episodes (nom), Timeline of the 2003–04 South Pacific cyclone season (nom), Phil Collins discography (nom), List of birds of Tasmania (nom), List of birds of Leicestershire and Rutland (nom), List of National Basketball Association season assists leaders (nom) and List of Governors of Utah (nom).

One topic was delisted this week: State highways in Marquette County, Michigan (nom).

Media features

Four featured sounds were promoted this week:

Lady Windermere's Fan – Act One(nom)
Lady Windermere's Fan – Act Two(nom)
Lady Windermere's Fan – Act Three(nom)
Lady Windermere's Fan – Act Four(nom)

Seven pictures were promoted to featured status:

Join, or Die Mycena interrupta 1880 Baxter process color plate illustrating Revelation 22:17
El Castillo, Chichen Itza Illustration of Psalm 23 Periclimenes imperator
Playbill for Arizona


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2010-06-21

Arbitration Report

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By Mabeenot & Ncmvocalist

Ncmvocalist will be covering the Arbitration Report for the Signpost in the future. Signpost staff wish Jéské Couriano all the best, and thank him for his work on the Arbitration Report since January.

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving two open.

Open cases

Motion

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2010-06-21

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

Toolserver IP addresses to be softblocked

IP addresses known to belong to the Toolserver are to be softblocked (only logged-in users can edit) from the English Wikipedia after a discussion at the Bot policy talkpage. The change, to be introduced after a 14-day period of grace that started on Friday, will prevent bots and other tools running from the Toolserver from accidentally editing while logged out (a practice explicitly banned by both local-bot and Toolserver policies). Until now, bots editing while logged out were dealt with case by case; this resulted in a certain amount of controversy, given that the IPs could not be hardblocked (no edits allowed) because they are shared among many high-profile bots.

Resource loader coming soon

Developer Roan Kattouw (User:Catrope) has said on the Foundation mailing list that work on a "Resource Loader" will start this week, to ease the "page weight" (size) of Wikimedia pages.


The size of a typical Wikipedia page has been increasing considerably as the site has grown more complex. In particular, developments aimed at improving the editing experience – by bringing the visual look and feel of Wikipedia into line with other, even more resource-hungry sites – have tended to boost page sizes.

While it is still well within the acceptable range for users on broadband connections (since the browser will "cache" – store – the result, meaning it only has to be loaded once), Roan's message came in response to user Yann Forget's concern that "page weight is a major hurdle for working on any Wikimedia sites affecting users who do not enjoy a broadband connection ... [For improving the reach of Wikimedia outside the Western world], improving the page weight should be a priority."

In brief

Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing, or may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

  • A problem has been fixed in which Wikipedia's own JavaScript (including wikEd, a common gadget) interfered with browsers' ability to cache ("remember") what had been entered into forms when a user accidentally navigated away from a page and hit their back-button to return (bug #22680).
  • Bug #23415 has been resolved, improving the interact of pending changes and image deletions.
  • Bots running from the Toolserver have been exempted from the CAPTCHA requirement even where it would be triggered for other users (bug #23982).
  • The Foundation is planning to set up a second data center in the U.S., probably in Virginia (Foundation mailing list).
  • A request has been put out for anyone who might be harbouring a full-text "dump" (backup) of the Dutch Wiktionary from the latter half of 2004 (Wikimedia Tech mailing list).

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