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The Signpost: 03 December 2012

The global jury of Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the world’s largest photo contest, announced its results on 3 December.
Three articles, two lists, and four images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
Deployments of MediaWiki 1.21wmf5 cause widespread problems for users across wikis when HTML and CSS updates came temporarily out of sync. On the first wikis targeted for deployment, this was caused by the different cache invalidation rates for HTML (typically one month) and CSS (typically five minutes). The retrospective on the problem highlighted the fact that that the test wiki – the WMF's answer to a production environment that individual developers can no longer practically emulate themselves – actually demonstrated the exact problem that would later manifest itself on production wikis. It went unnoticed.
This week, we went searching for white roses in the lands of WikiProject Yorkshire. The project began in May 2007 as a way to improve articles about the historic English county of Yorkshire and its modern-day administrative divisions and cities. Since then, the project has accumulated 31 Featured Articles, 14 Featured Lists, 91 Good Articles, and a monstrous list of Did You Know entries. Despite all of the effort improving Yorkshire articles, the project has experienced waning participation in the last few years. The project still publishes a newsletter each month, monitors the popularity of and recent changes to its articles, maintains a portal, and collects resources for contributors to use.

Coverton

I just want to alert you to an ongoing discussion on a topic relating to Christian music.HotHat (talk) 00:10, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 December 2012

At the time of writing, this year's election has just closed after a two-week voting period. The eight seats were contested by 21 candidates. Of these, 15 have not been arbitrators (Beeblebrox, Count Iblis, Guerillero, Jc37, Keilana, Ks0stm, Kww, NuclearWarfare, Pgallert, RegentsPark, Richwales, Salvio giuliano, Timotheus Canens, Worm That Turned, and YOLO Swag); four candidates are sitting arbitrators (David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, Jclemens, and Newyorkbrad); and two have previously served on the committee (Carcharoth and Coren). Four Wikimedia stewards from outside the English Wikipedia stepped forward as election scrutineers: Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia; Teles, from the Portuguese Wikipedia; Quentinv57, from the French Wikipedia; and Mardetanha, from the Persian Wikipedia. The scrutineers' task is to ensure that the election is free of multiple votes from the same person, to tally the results, and to announce them. The full results are expected to be released within the next few days and will be reported in next week's edition of the Signpost.
Eight articles, four images, six lists, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
The Visual Editor project – an attempt to create the first WMF-deployable WYSIWYG editor – will go live on its first Wikipedias imminently following nearly six months of testing on MediaWiki.org. A full explanatory blog post accompanied the news, explaining the project and its setup. Once a user has opted-in, the editor can handle basic formatting, headings and lists, while safely ignoring elements it is yet to understand, including references, categories, templates, tables and images. At the last count, approximately 2% of pages would break in some way if a user tried the Visual Editor on them; it is unclear whether any specific protection will be put in place beyond relying on editors to spot problems.
In celebration of Human Rights Day, we checked out WikiProject Human Rights. Started in February 2006, the project has grown to include over 3,000 articles, including 12 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, 66 Good Articles, a large collection of Did You Know entries, and a few mentions "in the news". The project monitors listings of popular pages and cleanup tags. We interviewed Khazar2, Cirt, and Boud.

Chuckles

"The idea that 9/11 was a false-flag operation flies in the face of all evidence in the topic and is nothing more than nonsense promoted by a lunatic fringe."...I concur. I think the evidence for Bigfoot, the Yeti, UFO's, Loch Ness Monster and the Boogy Man are more compelling than any 9/11 CTs. It's right there in everybody's face, the evidence is recent, first hand, video taped from many different directions....here...the segment beginning at 22:30 minutes is particularly hard to watch....by that time, dozens of cameras were focused on the towers.--MONGO 02:22, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Dear God that view is just horrible. Probably the worst one of those is the phone call from a guy in the tower - you can hear everything end as the tower collapses and he screams. Just thinking about how thousands of people died in just a few seconds that brings up a lot of emotions - I was maybe seven when the planes hit the towers, but even though my memory of it is fuzzy I know we had a great teacher who handled it excellently. I believe we listened to radio about it and school was let out early. I didn't fully grasp understand what happened then, but I do now and it is just bad.
I think it is pretty clear from all the evidence what caused the towers to collapse and why they were attacked. It is the duty of everyone to find out the truth for themselves, out of respect of who died that day and just to know what caused it and why it happened. Ignorance is not respectful of the dead, and neither are crackpot theories. It is just like Kennedy conspiracists in that people want there to be some conspiracy, when really what happened is lunatics who have enough intelligence to pull something horrific off. The fact that everything in life is not some planned action on the part of world leaders is hard for some people to grasp, but it is the truth. Toa Nidhiki05 03:02, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
The horrific part of the Wikipedia article is that the radicals want to talk about "torture" which the evil Americans did at GITMO after the event (we waterboarded 3 and a few other things), yet have fought to keep any of the documented testimonies of torture experienced by those on the planes, in the towers or the mental anguish people experienced afterwards due to lost loved ones, or after watching all the events that day.suffer even now with PTSD.MONGO 17:59, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
I seriously cannot get the idea that KSM's "rights" were violated by waterboarding when, by his own admission, he ordered the killing of thousands and personally chopped the head off of somebody. That man has no rights at this point since he ruthlessly took the right to live away from so many innocents of all ages, races, and genders. America went through hell on 9/11, but god forbid we bring some hell to the terrorists. Toa Nidhiki05 18:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Well...as they say, two wrongs don't make a right...but I can think of a lot worse forms of torture than was used at GITMO. The radicals say they have proof of worse torture done in CIA holding facilities. While all that may be true, its a bit weird that the article strays into peripheral issues at all, when it should be almost exclusively about that day. In it is going to be full of everything, then I say we should have cell phone transcripts and related material too.MONGO 18:59, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, all it boils down to is that any sort of punishment restricts rights. The punishment just needs to fit the crime. But waterboarding isn't even a moderately bad form of torture as compared to electrocution, Chinese water torture, bamboo torture, or many of the atrocities committed by Germany/Japan in WWII.
But yeah, it is odd it goes into that detail but not into the transcripts of Betty Ong or Kevin Cosgrove. It really should, at least in the side in a box in the 'victims' section. Toa Nidhiki05 19:05, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
I believe what you mention used to be in the article, but there were too many complaints about the article being a "memorial" by the radicals. So I think it was removed but links to idiotic conspiracy theories and about the wars and Gitmo stayed...its all part of the radical philosophy that we somehow deserved the event...the "chickens coming home to roost" nonsense, since the U.S. is obviously evil, etc.MONGO 20:04, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
How are factual accounts of victims 'memorials'? They corroborate inside information on what was going on inside the planes and buildings. GITMO and the wars are indirect responses that should have one section at most, along with immediate and direct effects (such as economic harm, toxic materials released into NYC, and immediate cultural impact). It's a shame how messy this article is and how it will never get better because the CTers and sympathizers would reject it. Toa Nidhiki05 20:34, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
After working on 9/11 topics for almost 7 years, I've reached a conclusion that major improwements aren't possible...parly because so much time is wasted wrestling off the CTers. Even if it weren't for them, the radicals would be crying about the lack of coverage about Gitmo and the wars and "lack of fighter plane interception"...the last point I disqualified after doing research. When I saw AQFK working so hard to try and get the article to GA and then FA, I felt inspired, but even his diligent efforts were crapped on. I'm surprised he maintained his cool and has continued editing since most people would have retired.MONGO 21:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
It is a shame at that, AQFK had a very solid plan. The problem is, it would never get past the censors, justifiers ("the US brought it upon themselves!"), Truthers, and truther-sympathizers... They have a bigger internet presence than the average people, who reject such nonsense, condemn the attacks and wish to create an informative article on the horrible attacks and their direct and indirect impact. Such an important topic needs to be made into a good page simply to inform people and present what happened as opposed to whatever fantasy world commentators created. Toa Nidhiki05 02:06, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Greetings. I must agree, the 9/11 articles are a nightmare. Seems like once an article/topic gets overrun by POV pushers it is very difficult to bring them back. So, I've been thinking...What do you think of building up Collapse of 7 World Trade Center in user space? The idea being we could then us it as a model for recovering the other articles. I've start some basic sourcing here with an eye towards pre-building citation templates. Thought? — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 00:07, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
I normally build articles that way and have quite a few that I am working on in that manner, so that seems like a fantastic idea. That's a great method, and if we can get a few other interested users to help we could get it done quickly and in a way that most errors are eliminate. Getting the citations ready is a big deal, so perhaps we could work on getting them built while also deciding the basic format or the article (ie. which headers and subheaders go where). I'm not a huge scientific expert, but I'd be more than glad to help in any manner necessary - the topic is just too important to keep in such a bad state. Toa Nidhiki05 00:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Cool. I'll organize some user space pages over the next few days (e.g., sources, citation examples, outlines, image farm, drafts, etc) and post the links here. You might also be pleased to know that papers from the NIST report are starting to show up in peer-reviewed journals (for example here, here, and here). This should help in overcoming the "That's only the 'official story', you can use it but only if you attribute it." Which leads to garbage like "The NIST says...", "According to the NIST...", giving the impression the that the report is only what the NIST, and them alone, believes and thus is not really reliable for anything in Wikipedia's voice. I hate that. Anyway, with holiday insanity upon us things might be a little slow for me in the near term.You can't fool me, there ain't no sanity clause. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 19:13, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Alright, cool - whenever they are ready I can do whatever is needed to help. Best of luck in dealing with whatever holiday madness befalls you. Toa Nidhiki05 01:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

Seven days after the close of voting, the results of the recent Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced by two of the four stewards overseeing the election, Mardetanha and Pundit. Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain positive support-to-oppose ratios, and the top eight will be appointed to two-year terms on the committee by Jimbo Wales, exercising one of his traditional responsibilities.
In the past year, we've tried to expand our horizons by looking at how WikiProjects work in other languages of Wikipedia. Following in the footsteps of our previously interviewed Czech and French projects, we visited the German Wikipedia to explore WikiProjekt Computerspiel (WikiProject Computer Games). The project dates back to November 2004 and has become the back-end of the Computer Games Portal, which covers all video games regardless of platform. Editors writing about computer games at the German Wikipedia deal with unique cultural and legal challenges, ranging from a lack of fair use precedents to the limited availability of games deemed harmful for youths to strong standards for the inclusion of material on the German Wikipedia.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
This week's big story on the English Wikipedia is obviously the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (which, by the time you read this, may be renamed 2012 Connecticut school shooting). Quickly created and nominated for deletion not once but twice, and both times speedily kept, the article saw the expected flurry of edits (a look at the history suggests an average of at least one a minute over the first day and a half) and more than half a million page views on the first full day.
Four articles, three lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week, including a picture of a three-week old donkey (also known as an 'ass').
MediaWiki users (including Wikimedians) can now organise themselves into groups, receiving recognition and support-in-kind from the Wikimedia Foundation. The project, backed by new Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, has seen five proposals lodged in its first week of operation. The idea of MediaWiki groups mimics that of Wikimedia User Groups.

Happy holidays!

Happy Holidays!
From the frozen wasteland of Nebraska, USA! MONGO 12:15, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

As part of its new focus on core responsibilities, the Wikimedia Foundation is reforming its grant schemes so that they are more accessible to individual volunteers. The community is invited to look at proposals for a new scheme—for now called Individual engagement grants (IEGs)—which is due to kick off on January 15. On Meta, the community is once again debating the two new offline participation models—user groups (open membership groups designed to be easy to form) and thematic organizations (incorporated non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work on a specific theme within or across countries). In a consultation process on Meta that will last until January 15, the community will be discussing WMF proposals for a new guideline on conflicts of interests concerning Wikimedia resources. The draft covers COI issues for both volunteers and organizations across the movement.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire, which focuses on the eponymous series of high fantasy literature, the television series Game of Thrones, and related works by George R. R. Martin. The project was started in July 2006 and has grown to include 11 Good Articles maintained by a small yet enthusiastic band of editors.
Seven articles and two lists were promoted to 'featured' status this week, including List of battlecruisers. The article covers all of the battlecruisers—which were a type of warship similar in size to a battleship but with several defining characteristics—ever planned or constructed. The last British battlecruiser built, HMS Hood, is pictured at right.
Efforts were stepped up this week to sow a feeling of trust between the major parties with an interest in the future of the Toolserver. The tool- and bot-hosting server – more accurately servers – are currently operated by German chapter, Wikimedia Germany, with assistance from the Foundation and numerous volunteers, including long-time system administrator Daniel Baur (more commonly known by his pseudonym DaB). However, those parties have more recently failed to see eye-to-eye on the trajectory for the Toolserver, which is scheduled to be replaced by Wikimedia Labs in late 2013, with increasing concern about the tone of discussions.

Notification

File:Yes
The Arbitration Committee has permitted administrators to impose discretionary sanctions (information on which is at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions) on any editor who is active on pages broadly related to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Discretionary sanctions can be used against an editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, satisfy any standard of behavior, or follow any normal editorial process. If you continue to conduct yourself as you have at Talk:September 11 attacks, you may be placed under sanctions, which can include blocks, a revert limitation, or an article ban. The Committee's full decision can be read at the "Final decision" section of the decision page.

Please familiarise yourself with the information page at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, with the appropriate sections of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures, and with the case decision page before making any further edits to the pages in question. This notice is given by an uninvolved administrator and will be logged on the case decision, pursuant to the conditions of the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions system. Please see the section of the case on Decorum, specifically regarding personal attacks, and be mindful of WP:BLPTALK.

--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 17:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

TDA...hum...1). I am sure Toa is aware of the arbcom case. 2). You're definitely not an admin 3). You've been twice topic banned from this topic so you're hardly in a position to judge. Feel free to take it to arbcom enforcement and see what happens. (Actually, don't do that because I already know what will happen and that will be 3 strikes and yer out).--MONGO 18:09, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Any editor can notify someone and log the notification. That is not a matter reserved for admins or "good" editors and it is good to have it on the record. Say whatever you like about me, but none of it excuses Toa's actions. He, all of you really, should stop engaging in this type of conduct. Article talk pages are not the place for you guys to rag on other editors or conspiracy theorists, especially not people you merely suspect to be conspiracy theorists.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 19:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
This is just plain silly - I was considering deleting this but this is just too ridiculous to delete. Apparently saying something about Ron Paul that is backed up is now a BLP violation, and calling a duck a duck is now a personal attack. My comments about CTers do not violate any policy because Louis acted like a CTer and the duck policy allows me to make that allegation. Calling CTs out as the garbage they are is not a violation of policy, it is calling a spade a spade and I will never apologize for it. I have no respect for people who implicate hundreds of thousands of people in mass murder to justify their own sensibilities. Toa Nidhiki05 19:22, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
TDA...I happen to like you for some odd reason...and I am generally not opposed to anyone that comments in various articles aout sometimes off the wall issues, as you have done. Its both entertaining and maybe even sometimes enlightening. But honestly, the AE admins were gracious to allow to to return to the 9/11 articles and so far you've caused no major issues, but this "reminder" about the arbcom case is almost trollish to be honest. No go forth and sin no more.--MONGO 19:27, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
I would have to say I think you have done a lot of good work outside of the 9/11 CT topic and have found you quite friendly outside of it as well, such as when you reviewed a GAN of mine. I don't see a need for the notice, however, or for warning me about my comments toward CTers. If they go over the edge and violate rules, I will rightfully be blocked, which is good enough incentive alone because I don't ever want to be blocked again. Toa Nidhiki05 19:41, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

WikiCup 2013 starting soon

Hi there; you're receiving this message because you have previously shown interest in the WikiCup. This is just to remind you that the 2013 WikiCup will be starting on 1 January, and that signups will remain open throughout January. Old and new Wikipedians and WikiCup participants are warmly invited to take part in this year's competition. (Though, as a note to the more experienced participants, there have been a few small rules changes in the last few months.) If you have already signed up, let this be a reminder; you will receive a message with your submissions' page soon. Please direct any questions to the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! J Milburn 19:17, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2013 WikiCup!

Hello Toa Nidhiki05, and welcome to the 2013 WikiCup! Your submissions' page is here. The competition begins at midnight UTC. The first round will last until the end of February, at which point the top 64 scorers will advance to the second round. We will be in touch at the end of every month, and signups are going to remain open until the end of January; if you know of anyone else who may like to take part, please let them know! A few reminders: *The rules can be found here. There have been a few changes from last year, which are listed on that page. *Anything you submit must have been nominated and promoted in 2013, and you need to have completed significant work upon it in 2013. (The articles you review at good article reviews does not need to have been nominated in 2013, but you do need to have started the review in 2013.) We will be checking. *If you feel that another competitor is breaking the rules or abusing the competition in some way, please let a judge know. Please do not remove entries from the submissions' pages of others yourself. *Don't worry about calculating precisely how many points everything is worth. The bot will do that. The bot may occasionally get something wrong- let a judge know, or post on the WikiCup talk page if that happens. *Please try to be prompt in updating submissions' pages so that they can be double-checked. Overall, however, don't worry, and have fun. It doesn't matter if you make the odd mistake; these things happen. Questions can be asked on the WikiCup talk page. Good luck! J Milburn and The ed17 18:11, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I have been pleasantly chatting

with you elsewhere, and, checked out your user page as is sometimes my want, and from there jumped over to Legalism (theology) because I was not familiar with the term. In the first sentence or two of that article I added my first ever citation needed tag, a tag that I frequently am contemptuous of. Anyway, if you are an editor in that article you might want to add a reference, remove my tag or do something else, or do nothing. Lots of choices, but then . . . . ............ Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 20:12, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I now feel that the tag was probably a sort of legalism on my part, so removed it. Whether that makes me a citation tag virgin again is unclear. Carptrash (talk) 21:01, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2013 WikiCup

Hello, Toa Nidhiki05, and welcome to the 2013 WikiCup! Your submissions' page is here. The first round will last until the end of February, at which point the top 64 scorers will advance to the second round. We will be in touch at the end of every month, and signups are going to remain open until the end of January; if you know of anyone else who may like to take part, please let them know! A few reminders:

  • The rules can be found here. There have been a few changes from last year, which are listed on that page.
  • Anything you submit must have been nominated and promoted in 2013, and you need to have completed significant work upon it in 2013. (The articles you review at good article reviews does not need to have been nominated in 2013, but you do need to have started and completed the review in 2013.) We will be checking.
  • If you feel that another competitor is breaking the rules or abusing the competition in some way, please let a judge know. Please do not remove entries from the submissions' pages of others yourself.
  • Don't worry about calculating precisely how many points everything is worth. The bot will do that. The bot may occasionally get something wrong- let a judge know, or post on the WikiCup talk page if that happens.
  • Please try to be prompt in updating submissions' pages so that they can be double-checked.

Overall, however, don't worry, and have fun. It doesn't matter if you make the odd mistake; these things happen. Questions can be asked on the WikiCup talk page. Good luck! J Milburn and The ed17 12:56, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 December 2012

In the impersonal, detached Colosseum that is Wikipedia, people find it much easier to put their thumbs down. As such, many people active in the Wikimedia movement have witnessed a precipitous decline in civil discourse. This is far from a new trend, yet many people would agree that it all seemed somehow worse in 2012.
A recent, poorly researched and poorly written story in the Register highlighted the perceived "cash rich" status of the Wikimedia movement. ... The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are multiple links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party non-democratic state.
On 27 December the Wikimedia Foundation announced the conclusion of their ninth annual fundraiser, which attracted more than 1.2 million donors. The appeal reached its goal of US$25 million, even though fundraising banners ran for only nine days.
In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
Brion Vibber has been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 11 years and was the first person officially hired to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. He was instrumental in early development of the MediaWiki software and is now the lead software architect for the foundation's mobile development team.
At the beginning of the year, we began a series of interviews with editors who have worked hard to combat systemic bias through the creation of featured content; although we haven't seen six installments yet, we've also had some delightful interviews with people who write articles on some of our most core topics. Now, as we close the year, I would like to present some of my own musings on the state of featured content—especially as it pertains to systemic bias and core topics.
This week, we're celebrating the New Year from Times Square by interviewing WikiProject New York City. Since December 2004, WikiProject NYC has had the difficult task of maintaining articles about the largest city in the United States, many of which are also among the the most viewed articles on Wikipedia. The project is home to 22 Featured Articles, 7 Featured Lists, 32 pieces of Featured Media, and a lengthy list of Did You Know? entries.
Northeastern University researcher Brian Keegan analyzed the gathering of hundreds of Wikipedians to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. ... A First Monday article reviews several aspects of the Wikipedia participation in the 18 January 2012, protests against SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA. The paper focuses on the question of legitimacy, looking at how the Wikipedia community arrived at the decision to participate in those protests.

The Royal Royal

You may want to have your say.HotHat (talk) 05:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Christianity Barnstar
For perseverance in improving many Christian-music-related articles to good and featured quality, I award you this barnstar. Don't give up hope on Revelation (Third Day album) and Casting Crowns (album); you ran some valiant FACs and I am confident that you can run successful ones in the future. Neelix (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

Meta is the wiki that has coordinated a wide range of cross-project Wikimedia activities, such as the activities of stewards, the archiving of chapter reports, and WMF trustee elections. The project has long been an out-of-the-way corner for technocratic working groups, unaccountable mandarins, and in-house bureaucratic proceedings. Largely ignored by the editing communities of projects such as Wikipedia and organizations that serve them, Meta has evolved into a huge and relatively disorganized repository, where the few archivists running it also happen to be the main authors of some of its key documents. While Meta is well-designed for supporting the librarians and mandarins who stride along its corridors, visitors tend to find the site impenetrable—or so many people have argued over the past decade. This impenetrability runs counter to Meta's increasingly central role in the Wikimedia movement.
The dawning of a new year offers both a fresh slate and an opportunity to revisit our previous adventures. 2012 marked the fifth anniversary of the WikiProject Report and was the column's most productive year with 52 articles published. In addition to sharing the experiences of Wikipedia's many active projects, we expanded our scope to highlight unique projects from other languages of Wikipedia, and tracked down all of the former editors-in-chief of the Signpost for an introspective interview ... While last year's "Summer Sports Series" may have drawn yawns from some readers, a special report on "Neglected Geography" elicited more comments than any previous issue of the Report. Following in the footsteps of our past three recaps, we'll spend this week looking back at the trials and tribulations of the WikiProjects we encountered in 2012. Where are they now?
The past 12 months have seen a multitude of issues and events in the Wikimedia foundation, the movement at large, and the English Wikipedia. The movement, now in its second decade, is growing apace in its international reach, cultural and linguistic diversity, technical development, and financial complexity; and many factors have combined to produce what has in many ways been the biggest, most dynamic year in the movement's history. Looking back at 2012, we faced a difficult task in doing justice to all of the notable events in a single article; so the Signpost has selected just a few examples from outside the anglosphere, from the English Wikipedia, and from the Wikimedia Foundation, rather than attempting to cover every detail that happened.
Over the past year, 963 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured article candidates (FAC), which promoted an average of 31 articles a month. This was followed by featured picture candidates (FPC; 28 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 20 a month). Featured topic and featured portal candidates remained sluggish, each promoting fewer than 20 items over the year.
Following on from last week's reflections on 2012, this week the Technology report looks ahead to 2013, a year that will almost certainly be dominated by the juggernauts of Wikidata, Lua and the Visual Editor.

Worship Leader

I hope this does not backfire on me.HotHat (talk) 06:31, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 14 January 2013

After six years without creating a new class of content projects, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has finally expanded into a new area: travel. Wikivoyage was formally launched—though without a traditional ship's christening—on 15 January, having started as a beta trial on 10 November. Wikivoyage has been taken under the WMF's umbrella on the argument that information resources that help with travel are educational and therefore within the scope of the foundation's mission.g
On January 16, voting for the first round of the 2012 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest will begin. Wikimedia editors with 75 edits or one project are eligible to vote to select their favorite image featured in 2012. ... On January 15, the foundation launched its latest grant scheme, called Individual Engagement Grants (IEG).
This week, we set off for the final frontier with WikiProject Astronomy. The project was started in August 2006 using the now-defunct WikiProject Space as inspiration. WikiProject Astronomy is home to 101 pieces of Featured material and 148 Good Articles maintained by a band of 186 members. The project maintains a portal, works on an assortment of vital astronomy articles, and provides resources for editors adding or requesting astronomy images.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
Comforting those grieving after the loss of a loved one is an impossible task. How then, can an entire community be comforted? The Internet struggled to answer that question this week after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a celebrated free-culture activist, programmer, and Wikipedian at the age of 26.
Continuing our recap of the featured content promoted in 2012, this week the Signpost interviewed three editors, asking them about featured articles which stuck out in their minds. Two, Ian Rose and Graham Colm, are current featured article candidates (FAC) delegates, while Brian Boulton is an active featured article writer and reviewer.
The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
The Wikidata client extension was successfully deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia on 14 January, its team reports. The interwiki language links can now come from wikidata.org, though "manual" interwiki links remain functional, overriding those from the central repository.

Endash

Hi mate, I suggest you re-familiarise yourself with the usage rules for endashes, per the changes you've made to List of NFL champions (1920–1969). "Regular-season" should use a hyphen (as I have written it), not an endash. – PeeJay 12:03, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'm not the most familiar with that policy but I will look them over again. :) Toa Nidhiki05 17:30, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Truth Movement: Adherents section

It is not "disruptive" editing to remove references to various essays and articles speculating about the "type" of person who belongs to the truth movement and to replace these references with a list of notable members of the truth community. 9/11 truth websites are reliable sources of information as far as describing who their own members are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saurus68 (talk • contribs) 16:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is. The material is well-cited from multiple reliable sources. Further, 9/11 Truther blogs are simply not reliable sources for anything. Period. We have a pretty well-set policy on self-published blogs by non-experts. Toa Nidhiki05 16:44, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for doing that review. I appreciate it. Still need 32 more GAs to catch up to you, though . Go Phightins! 03:12, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not the number of good articles you have that matters, and BLPs are pretty hard to get to GA. :) Toa Nidhiki05 03:20, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
I know; three of my GAs were BLPs. In the end, Wikipedia wins! Go Phightins! 03:21, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
Yep, and that's the great part - plus, with WikiCup going on, there is a lot of incentive for people to improve content as well. Most of my GAs came during last WikiCup and that was enough to get into the semi-finals, but it wasn't enough to get all the way and that is the impressive part. Toa Nidhiki05 03:31, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
I had some GAs right at the end of last year (poor planning on my part), but this was my first that I can count for the WikiCup. I'm hoping to make two cuts. Go Phightins! 03:32, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
I had the same issue last year, plus I joined midway through the first round and thus couldn't count several GAs I had made during the cycle but before I had joined. An easy way to get points is to improve articles that are on multiple Wikipedias - I got 84 bonus points off of American football on top of the standard 30 because it is on a crapload of Wikipedias. Bonus points are really invaluable in WikiCup. Featured lists are another really good way to get points Toa Nidhiki05 03:38, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 21 January 2013

The English Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process has entered another cycle of proposed reforms. Over the last three weeks, various proposals, ranging from as large as a transition to a representative democracy to as small as a required edit count and service length, have been debated on the RfA talk page. The total number of new administrators for 2012 was just 28, barely more than half of 2011's total and less than a quarter of 2009's total. The total number of unsuccessful RfAs has fallen as well. These declining numbers, which were described in what would now be considered a successful year (2010) as an emerging "wikigeneration gulf", have been coupled with a sharp decline in the number of active administrators since February 2008 (1,021), reaching a low of 653 in November 2012.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Linguistics. Started in January 2004, the project has grown to include 7 Featured Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 2 A-class Articles, and 15 Good Articles maintained by 43 members. The project's members keep an eye on several watchlists, maintain the linguistics category, and continue to build a collection of Did You Know? entries. The project is home to six task forces and works with WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Writing Systems.
This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured topics. We interviewed Grapple X and GamerPro64, who are delegates at the featured topic candidates.
The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
On 22 January, WMF staff and contractors switched incoming, non-cached requests (including edits) to the Foundation's newer data centre in Ashburn, Virginia, making it responsible for handling almost all regular traffic. For the first time since 2004, virtually no traffic will be handled by the WMF's other facility in Tampa, Florida.

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The Signpost: 28 January 2013

On New Year's Day, the Daily Dot reported that a "massive Wikipedia hoax" had been exposed after more than five years. The article on the Bicholim conflict had been listed as a "Good Article" for the past half-decade, yet turned out to be an ingenious hoax. Created in July 2007 by User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a, the meticulously detailed piece was approved as a GA in October 2007. A subsequent submission for FA was unsuccessful, but failed to discover that the article's key sources were made up. While the User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a account then stopped editing, the hoax remained listed as a Good Article for five years, receiving in the region of 150 to 250 page views a month in 2012. It was finally nominated for deletion on 29 December 2012 by ShelfSkewed—who had discovered the hoax while doing work on Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs—and deleted the same day.
A special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist is devoted to "open collaboration".
When we challenged the masters of WikiProject Chess to an interview, Sjakkalle answered our call. WikiProject Chess dates back to December 2003 and has grown to include 4 Featured Articles and 15 Good Articles maintained by over 100 members. The project typically operates independently of other WikiProjects, although the project would theoretically be a child of WikiProject Board and Table Games (interviewed in 2011). WikiProject Chess provides a collection of resources, seeks missing photographs of chess players, and helps determine ways that Wikipedia's coverage of chess can be expanded.
New discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
To many Wikimedians, the Khan Academy would seem like a close cousin: the academy is a non-profit educational website and a development of the massive open online course concept that has delivered over 227 million lessons in 22 different languages. Its mission is to give "a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere." This complements Wikipedia's stated goal to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge", then go and create that world. It should come as no surprise, then, that the highly successful GLAM-Wiki (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) initiative has partnered with the Khan Academy's Smarthistory project to further both its and Wikipedia's goals.
This week, the Signpost featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured lists. We interviewed FLC directors Giants2008 and The Rambling Man as well as active reviewer and writer PresN.
The Doncram case has continued into its third week.
As reported in last week's "Technology Report", the WMF's data centre in Ashburn, Virginia took over responsibility for almost all of the remaining functions that had previously been handled by their old facility in Tampa, Florida on 22 January. The Signpost reported then that few problems had arisen since handover. Unfortunately that was not to remain the case, with reports of caching problems (which typically only affect anonymous users) starting to come in.

WikiCup 2013 January newsletter

Signups are now closed; we have our final 127 contestants for this year's competition. 64 contestants will make it to the next round at the end of February, but we're already seeing strong scoring compared to previous years. Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) currently leads, with 358 points. At this stage in 2012, the leader (Irish Citizen Army Grapple X (submissions)) had 342 points, while in 2011, the leader had 228 points. We also have a large number of scorers when compared with this stage in previous years. Florida 12george1 (submissions) was the first competitor to score this year, as he was last year, with a detailed good article review. Some other firsts:

Featured articles, portals and topics, as well as good topics, are yet to feature in the competition.

This year, the bonus points system has been reworked, with bonus points on offer for old articles prepared for did you know, and "multiplier" points reworked to become more linear. For details, please see Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring. There have been some teething problems as the bot has worked its way around the new system, but issues should mostly be ironed out- please report any problems to the WikiCup talk page. Here are some participants worthy of note with regards to the bonus points:

  • United States Ed! (submissions) was the first to score bonus points, with Portland-class cruiser, a good article.
  • Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions) has the highest overall bonus points, as well as the highest scoring article, thanks to his work on Enrico Fermi, now a good article. The biography of such a significant figure to the history of science warrants nearly five times the normal score.
  • Chicago HueSatLum (submissions) claimed bonus points for René Vautier and Nicolas de Fer, articles that did not exist on the English Wikipedia at the start of the year; a first for the WikiCup. The articles were eligible for bonus points because of fact they were both covered on a number of other Wikipedias.

Also, a quick mention of British Empire The C of E (submissions), who may well have already written the oddest article of the WikiCup this year: did you know that the Fucking mayor objected to Fucking Hell on the grounds that there was no Fucking brewery? The gauntlet has been thrown down; can anyone beat it?

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:29, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

DYK for Anna Cohí

Lord Roem ~ (talk) 00:04, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 February 2013

On February 12, 2012, news of Whitney Houston's death brought 425 hits per second to her Wikipedia article, the highest peak traffic on any article since at least January 2010. It is broadly known that Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website on the Internet, but the English Wikipedia now has over 4 million articles and 29 million total pages. Much less attention has been given to traffic patterns and trends in content viewed.
Article feedback, at least through talk pages, has been a part of Wikipedia since its inception in 2001. The use of these pages, though, has typically been limited to experienced editors who know how to use them.
This week, we took a trip to WikiProject Norway. Started in February 2005, WikiProject Norway has become the home for almost 34,000 articles about the world's best place to live, including 16 Featured Articles, 19 Featured Lists, and nearly 250 Good Articles. The project works on a to do list, maintains a categorization system, watches article alerts, and serves as a discussion forum.
This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured portals, a small yet active part of the project. We interviewed FPOC directors Cirt and OhanaUnited.
On 30 January 2013, Kevin Morris in the Daily Dot summarised the bitter debates in Wikipedia around capitalisation or non-capitalisation of the word "into" in the title of the upcoming Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Following the deployment of the Wikidata client to the Hungarian Wikipedia last month, the client was also deployed to the Italian and Hebrew Wikipedias on Wednesday. The next target for the client, which automatically provides phase 1 functionality, is the English Wikipedia, with a deployment date of 11 February already set.

Apologies

With regards to the notification I left a while back, I just noticed that the template made a bizarre claim that I was an uninvolved administrator. This was definitely not my intent and was due to a change that had been made to the template since I last used it. Obviously, I am a moron.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 01:37, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I didn't even notice it, but I appreciate the apology - no hard feelings. We all make mistakes, so it isn't a huge deal or anything :) Toa Nidhiki05 01:40, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:CHARLOTTE

Let me know if you'd be interested in helping to re-activate the Queen City's WikiProject! Cdtew (talk) 22:42, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 February 2013

Wikipedia has a long, daresay storied history with hoaxes; our internal list documents 198 of the largest ones we have caught as of 4 January 2013. Why?
Six articles, one list, and fourteen pictures were promoted to "featured" states this week on the English Wikipedia.
This week, we got the details on WikiProject Infoboxes.
Foreign Policy has published a report on editing of the Wikipedia articles on the Senkaku Islands and Senkaku Islands dispute. The uninhabited islands are under the control of Japan, but China and Taiwan are asserting rival territorial claims. Tensions have risen of late—and not just in the waters surrounding the actual islands.
Wikimedia UK, the non-profit organization devoted to furthering the goals of the Wikimedia movement in the United Kingdom, has published the findings of a governance review conducted by Compass Partnership.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week.

The Signpost: 18 February 2013

This week, we put our life in the hands of WikiProject Airlines. Starting in July 2005, the project has improved articles relating to airline companies, alliances, destination lists, and travel benefit programs. WikiProject Airlines has accumulated over 4,000 pages, including 4 Featured Articles and 26 Good Articles.
As of time of writing, twenty wikis (including the English, French and Hungarian Wikipedias) are in the process of getting access to the Lua scripting language, an optional substitute for the clunky template code that exists at present.
On February 15, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) declared 'victory' in its counter-lawsuit against Internet Brands (IB), the owner of Wikitravel and the operator of several online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The lawsuit clears the last remaining hurdles for the WMF's new travel guide project, Wikivoyage.
Sue Gardner's visit to Australia sparked a number of interviews in the Australian press. An interview published in the Daily Telegraph on 12 February 2013, titled "Data plans 'unnerving': Wikipedia boss", saw Gardner comment on Australian plans to store personal internet and telephone data. The planned measure, intended to assist crime prevention, would involve internet service providers and mobile phone firms storing customer usage data for up to two years.
Two articles, nine lists, and thirteen pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

Started an RfC on Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012

You can find it here. Lets get some outside views and debate it before it is added (or not added). Casprings (talk) 16:21, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for opening it, I agree with the move. Toa Nidhiki05 16:27, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I would like to get this done. I don't want to violate the WP:Canvassing rule, but I would like to get some un-involved attention on this. Any thoughts? Casprings (talk) 04:33, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Well, short of alerting all tagged WikiProjects there isn't much I can think of. Alerting each project, while certainly not a 100% impartial method, is better than getting no outside input at all. Toa Nidhiki05 05:12, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
I think a reasonable solution had benn proposed.

I am going to leave the RFC open to see what others think. I think the change could make the article become unruly if people keep making comments. However, I am fine with seeing how it develops. Casprings (talk) 01:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 25 February 2013

On 13 February 2013, PR Report, the German sister publication of PR Week, published an article announcing that PR agency Fleishman-Hillard was offering a new analysis tool enabling companies to assess their articles in the German-language Wikipedia: the Wikipedia Corporate Index (WCI).
"Wikipedia and Encyclopedic Production" by Jeff Loveland (a historian of encyclopedias) and Joseph Reagle situates Wikipedia within the context of encyclopedic production historically, arguing that the features that many claim to be unique about Wikipedia actually have roots in encyclopedias of the past.
The Wikimedia Commons 2012 Picture of the Year contest has ended, with the winner being Pair of Merops apiaster feeding, taken by Pierre Dalous. The picture shows a pair of European Bee-eaters in a mating ritual—the male bird (right) has tossed the wasp into the air, and he will eventually offer it to the female (left).
Current discussions include...
Six articles, three lists, and twelve images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this month.
How can we measure the challenges facing a project or determine a WikiProject's productivity? Several prominent projects have been doing it for years: WikiWork.
Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) this week committed itself to funding the Wikidata development team, ending fears that phase three would be abandoned.

Don't waste your breath

He's a troll, ignore him and he will go away. No one takes him seriously anyways.  little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  01:33, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Eh, I'm really just humoring him right now because I am bored. You're probably right though, he clearly isn't here for legitimate purposes - if he was, he'd be working day and night on an RfC for all the evil actions made by WP:CONSERVATISM, real or imagined. Toa Nidhiki05 01:38, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

List of awards and nominations received by Scissor Sisters

This list is among the oldest at FLC at the moment. Would you happen to have a few minutes to take a look and see if you can find any issues? --Another Believer (Talk) 16:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I'll check over it. Toa Nidhiki05 17:41, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

WikiCup 2013 February newsletter

Round 1 is now over. The top 64 scorers have progressed to round 2, where they have been randomly split into eight pools of eight. At the end of April, the top two from each pool, as well as the 16 highest scorers from those remaining, will progress to round 3. Commiserations to those eliminated; if you're interested in still being involved in the WikiCup, able and willing reviewers will always be needed, and if you're interested in getting involved with other collaborative projects, take a look at the WikiWomen's Month discussed below.

Round 1 saw 21 competitors with over 100 points, which is fantastic; that suggests that this year's competition is going to be highly competative. Our lower scores indicate this, too: A score of 19 was required to reach round 2, which was significantly higher than the 11 points required in 2012 and 8 points required in 2011. The score needed to reach round 3 will be higher, and may depend on pool groupings. In 2011, 41 points secured a round 3 place, while in 2012, 65 was needed. Our top three scorers in round 1 were:

  1. Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions), primarily for an array of warship GAs.
  2. London Miyagawa (submissions), primarily for an array of did you knows and good articles, some of which were awarded bonus points.
  3. New South Wales Casliber (submissions), due in no small part to Canis Minor, a featured article awarded a total of 340 points. A joint submission with Alaska Keilana (submissions), this is the highest scoring single article yet submitted in this year's competition.

Other contributors of note include:

Featured topics have still played no part in this year's competition, but once again, a curious contribution has been offered by British Empire The C of E (submissions): did you know that there is a Shit Brook in Shropshire? With April Fools' Day during the next round, there will probably be a good chance of more unusual articles...

March sees the WikiWomen's History Month, a series of collaborative efforts to aid the women's history WikiProject to coincide with Women's History Month and International Women's Day. A number of WikiCup participants have already started to take part. The project has a to-do list of articles needing work on the topic of women's history. Those interested in helping out with the project can find articles in need of attention there, or, alternatively, add articles to the list. Those interested in collaborating on articles on women's history are also welcome to use the WikiCup talk page to find others willing to lend a helping hand. Another collaboration currently running is an an effort from WikiCup participants to coordinate a number of Easter-themed did you know articles. Contributions are welcome!

A few final administrative issues. From now on, submission pages will need only a link to the article and a link to the nomination page, or, in the case of good article reviews, a link to the review only. See your submissions' page for details. This will hopefully make updating submission pages a little less tedious. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) J Milburn (talk) 17:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2013

Recently I was having a casual conversation with a friend, and he mentioned that he spent too many hours a day playing video games. I responded with a comment that I, too, spent way too much time on an activity of my own – Wikipedia. In an attempt to reply with a relevant remark, he offered something along the lines of: "So have you ever written anything?" After a second, I quickly answered yes, but I was still in shock over his question. It seemed to be rooted in a belief on his part that using Wikipedia meant just reading the articles, and that editing was something that someone, hypothetically, might do, but not really more likely than randomly counting to 7,744.
"WP:OUTING", the normally little-noticed policy corner of the English Wikipedia that governs the release of editors' personal information, has suddenly been brought to wider attention after long-term contributor and featured article writer Cla68 was indefinitely blocked last week. This snowballed into several other blocks, a desysopping by ArbCom, and a request for arbitration.
Three articles, six lists, and three pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including the article on "Laura Secord", who was a Canadian heroine of the War of 1812 best known for warning the British of an impending American attack.
This week, we tuned to WikiProject Television Stations, a project that dates back to March 2004. WikiProject Television Stations primarily focuses on local stations, national networks, television markets, and other topics related to television channels in North America, the Caribbean, and some Pacific countries. The project has a fair bit of work ahead of them with over 4,000 unassessed articles and only one Good Article out of 626 assessed articles, giving the project a relative WikiWork rating of 5.262.

The Signpost: 11 March 2013

I am pleased to announce that the Signpost and Wikizine have reached an in-principle agreement that will see Wikizine published as a special Signpost section at the beginning of each month.
During March, three of the Wikimedia Foundation's grantmaking schemes on Meta will reach important crossroads, which will shape how both the editing communities and Wikimedia institutions handle the distribution of donors' money across the movement.
Twelve articles, five lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including an image of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, a front-engine, 2-seat luxury grand tourer automobile developed by Mercedes-AMG.
There are three open cases, and a final decision has been given in the Doncram case.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases.
The WMF has aborted a plan to deploy version 5 of the Article Feedback tool (AFTv5) rolled out to all English Wikipedia articles.

The Signpost: 18 March 2013

Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. At the heart of a strongly worded statement, posted both on his talk page and the arbitration notice board, was the claim that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for".
This week, we composed a tribute to WikiProject Composers. The project was created during the final hours of 2004 and finalized in early January 2005. It has grown to encompass over 8,000 pages, including 26 Featured Articles and 23 Good Articles. WikiProject Composers faces a difficult workload, with a relative WikiWork rating of 5.45.
Ask librarians what they think about Wikipedia and you might get some interesting answers. Some will throw up their hands about the laziness of the Google generation and their overdependence on Wikipedia. Some see it as the "competition". And some will tell you it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Nine articles, seven lists, eleven images, and one topic were promoted to "featured status" this week on the English Wikipedia.
On Thursday, arbitrator Coren resigned, following closely on the heels of Hersfold's resignation on Wednesday. There are two open cases. A final decision has been given in the Richard case.
The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.

The Signpost: 25 March 2013

Our travels have brought us to Pittsburgh, the American city known for steelworks and bridges.
Seven articles, one list, six pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute over transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, has announced her plans to leave the position when a successor is recruited. Ranked as one of the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine, Sue Gardner is widely associated with the rise of the Wikimedia movement as a major custodian of human knowledge and cultural products.
Since its inception in May 2011, the Foundation's Visual Editor project has grown to become one of its main focuses. As the project nears its two-year birthday, the Signpost caught up with Visual Editor project manager James Forrester to discuss the progress on the project.
A paper presented at last month's CSCW Conference observes that "Mass collaboration systems are often characterized as unstructured organizations lacking rule and order", yet Wikipedia has a well developed body of policies to support it as an organization.

WikiCup 2013 March newsletter

We are halfway through round two. Pool A sees the strongest competition, with five out of eight of its competitors scoring over 100, and Pool H is lagging, with half of its competitors yet to score. WikiCup veterans lead overall; Pool A's Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) (2010's winner) leads overall, with poolmate London Miyagawa (submissions) (a finalist in 2011 and 2012) not far behind. Pool F's New South Wales Casliber (submissions) (a finalist in 2010, 2011 and 2012) is in third. The top two scorers in each pool, as well as the next highest 16 scorers overall, will progress to round three at the end of April.

Today has seen a number of Easter-themed did you knows from WikiCup participants, and March has seen collaboration from contestants with WikiWomen's History Month. It's great to see the WikiCup being used as a locus of collaboration; if you know of any collaborative efforts going on, or want to start anything up, please feel free to use the WikiCup talk page to help find interested editors. As well as fostering collaboration, we're also seeing the Cup encouraging the improvement of high-importance articles through the bonus point system. Highlights from the last month include GAs on physicist Niels Bohr (Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions)), on the European hare (Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions)), on the constellation Circinus (Alaska Keilana (submissions) and New South Wales Casliber (submissions)) and on the Third Epistle of John (Indiana Cerebellum (submissions)). All of these subjects were covered on at least 50 Wikipedias at the beginning of the year and, subsequently, each contribution was awarded at least three times as many points as normal.

Wikipedians who enjoy friendly competition may be interested in participating in April's wikification drive. While wikifying an article is typically not considered "significant work" such that it can be claimed for WikiCup points, such gnomish work is often invaluable in keeping articles in shape, and is typically very helpful for new writers who may not be familiar with formatting norms.

A quick reminder: now, submission pages will need only a link to the article and a link to the nomination page, or, in the case of good article reviews, a link to the review only. See your submissions' page for details. This will hopefully make updating submission pages a little less tedious. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) J Milburn (talk) 22:23, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

File:03 Who Am I.ogg listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:03 Who Am I.ogg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Toa Nidhiki05 23:24, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 April 2013

The Wikimedia Foundation has released its latest report card for the movement's hundreds of sites. The WMF has published statistics about the sites since 2009, but only recently have these been expanded in scope and depth to provide a rich source of data for investigating the movement and the world it serves. Dutch-born Erik Zachte is the driver of the WMF's statistical output, and he writes that the report card and accompanying traffic statistics comprise "enough tables, bar charts and plots to keep you busy for a while".
This week's Report is dedicated to answering our readers' questions about WikiProjects. The following Frequently Asked Questions came from feedback at the WikiProject Report's talk page, the WikiProject Council's talk page, and from previous lists of FAQs.
The Signpost interviewed prolific featured content creator and former Signpost "featured content" report writer Crisco 1492 about ? and Indonesian cinema. ? was the "Today's featured article" for 1 April 2013. 1 April is popularly known as April Fools' Day in many countries.
The first round of individual engagement grants (IEGs) have been awarded, disbursing about $55.6k (€42.7k) to seven applicants.
A case brought by Lecen involves several articles about former Argentinian president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).
Users of ten Wikipedias got access to phase 2 of Wikidata following its first rollout to production wikis.

Lists at FLC

If you have time or interest, feel free to take a look at my two lists at FLC: List of awards and nominations received by Fiona Apple and List of songs recorded by Pink Martini. Thanks so much! --Another Believer (Talk) 15:57, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 April 2013

Numerous Wikimedia Commons editors have chimed in on the Wikimedia Foundation's deployment of a new feature to its mobile website. Allowing anonymous users to register and upload pictures for use in an article, the feature was placed prominently at the top of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.
This week, we felt the world tremble in the presence of WikiProject Earthquakes. The project was started in May 2008 to deal with articles about earthquakes, aftershocks, seismology, seismologists, plate tectonics, and related articles. While the project has seen success building 14 Featured Articles, one A-class Article, and 21 Good Articles, a fairly heavy workload remains, with a relative WikiWork rating of 4.94. WikiProject Earthquakes maintains a portal, a list of open tasks, a popular pages listing, and an article alerts watchlist.
Last Friday, the Wikimedia movement awoke to news that one of their number—Rémi Mathis, a French volunteer editor—had been summoned to the offices of the interior intelligence service DCRI and threatened with criminal charges and fines if he did not delete an article on the French Wikipedia about a radio station used by the French military.
The arbitration committee is looking for expertise in Argentina and the Spanish language for a case involving former Argentinean president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).
Four articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
The deployment of phase 2 of Wikidata to the English Wikipedia, originally scheduled for 8 April but delayed due to technical problems, may be rescheduled again as the result of community resistance.

DYK for Already There

PanydThe muffin is not subtle 15:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

DYK for American Dream (Casting Crowns song)

PanydThe muffin is not subtle 00:03, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Who Am I (Casting Crowns song), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Digital download (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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The Signpost: 15 April 2013

The RfA process is widely discussed here on the English Wikipedia and it has been well documented that less and less new Requests for adminship are being filed. There are an abundance of bytes devoted to the discussion and analysis of this situation and plenty of hands have been wrung over the matter. Various RfCs have attempted to find a way to fix the problem. Many proposals have been made offering solutions, some more potentially drastic than others, with the goal of making the changes necessary to kick–start RfA back into regular action. However, Wikipedia operates based on consensus and, to this point, there are have simply been too many disagreeing views for us to reach a consensus on how to increase RfA activity.
This week, we ventured to WikiProject South Africa. The project was started in February 2005 and is home to thirteen pieces of featured material, two A-class articles, and twenty-one good articles.
The most recent move to reform the requests for adminship process on the English Wikipedia has failed, after a complex and drawn-out three-step procedure for community input was subject to decreasing participation as time wore on and came up with no clear consensus.
Four articles, twelve lists, and seven pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

DYK for Who Am I (Casting Crowns song)

The DYK project (nominate) 00:03, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Better source request for some of your uploads

Thanks for your uploads to Wikipedia. There is an issue with some of them, specifically:

You provided a source, but it is difficult for other users to examine the copyright status of the images because the source is incomplete. Please consider clarifying the exact source so that the copyright status may be checked more easily. It is best to specify the exact Web page where you found the images, rather than only giving the source domain or the URL of the image files themselves. Please update the image descriptions with URLs that will be more helpful to other users in determining the copyright status.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source in a complete manner. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page or me at my talk page. Thank you. Message delivered by Theo's Little Bot (opt-out) 21:23, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

License tagging for File:App-Michigan Scoreboard.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:App-Michigan Scoreboard.jpg. You don't seem to have indicated the license status of the image. Wikipedia uses a set of image copyright tags to indicate this information.

To add a tag to the image, select the appropriate tag from this list, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the tag to the image's description. If there doesn't seem to be a suitable tag, the image is probably not appropriate for use on Wikipedia. For help in choosing the correct tag, or for any other questions, leave a message on Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Thank you for your cooperation. --ImageTaggingBot (talk) 21:05, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

2007 Appalachian State vs. Michigan football game (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Mike Hart
George W. Bush (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to The Hill

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