Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-04-16/News and notes

News and notes

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Jan eissfeldt (talk) 09:39, 13 April 2012 (UTC): stuff that could be done:

in brief: the terms of use update will be legally announced on April 15, stuff otherwise INT: the bbc & the world bank a little bit more free

Help page clean-up

-> Tony

Wikipedia:Help pages redesign project /

announcement,

blog

WikiTravel debate

A WikiTravel merger was at the center of considerable debate on Meta last week.

A debate whether to integrate WikiTravel, or parts of it, into the Wikimedia universe unfolded over the last week on Meta and the Wikimedia-l (I, II, III). The project aims to create a free collaborative travel guide, and its main language version, English, provides around 25,000 articles. Another possibly affected project could be Wikivoyage, a longstanding WikiTravel fork run by the German community.

The proposal is backed by significant parts of the WikiTravel-community, including the project founders Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins, as well as Stefan Fussan, the chairman of the board of the Wikivoyage association. It also commands some support in parts the Wikimedia-community, lead by Doc James.

Proponents of the idea argue that taking WikiTravel on board would be mutually beneficial, since Wikimedia would broaden its scope of educational material on the one hand and the possible new member of the family would benefit from improved software (the project currently runs on an older version of Mediawiki), as well as new funding environment.

However, to date there has been no official statement addressing the points raised in the discussion from Internet Brand, the entity which owns the trademarks to and runs WikiTravel. Additionally, several commenters on wikimedia-l raised concerns in regard to the neutrality of the content, and questioned the purported educational nature of travel guides in principle. Another aspect discussed was possible new forms of conflicts of interests (WP:COI) that might come from adopting such a project format.

A roadmap of the process of evaluating the workability and technical aspects of merging between now and June is outlined on Meta. The case is being discussed as the new Sister Projects Committee (see Brief notes) gets off the ground with discussing procedures affecting the possible merger.

French outreach

-> Tony

french outreach-story

HighBeam 2.0

The first round of handing out free HighBeam accounts to the community for one year (Signpost coverage) ended on April 9. The partnership-project handed out several hundred of the originally agreed 1000 accounts so far and should be, according to schedule, deployed by April 16.

A second round of applications will open on Monday, April 16, with the same requirements – a 1 year old account with 1000 edits – as the first round. Editors interested in scientific sources may also be interested in a project hoping to facilitate access to JSTOR, which the Foundation is working on together with Raul654.

Brief notes

• Terms of Use update: The efforts to update Wikimedia's Terms of Use (Signpost coverage) reached a new phase on April 15 as the newly updated version was legally announced. The new terms will not come into effect until the notice period has finished. The accompanying statement can be read on the Foundation wiki.
• Sister Projects Committee: The Sister Projects Committee on Meta, aiming at improving the regulation of the new project process, was announced on April 10.
• WMF March report: The Wikimedia Foundation's activity report for March 2012, highlighting Mobile, Arabic outreach and MediaWiki development, has been published on Meta.
• IRC office hour: The log of the first IRC office hour held by the WMF's chief of finance and administration, Garfield Byrd (on April 12), which tackled issues such as donations in different currencies and the preparations for the new Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), has been published on Meta.
• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes our new administrators,
• Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones this week:

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For the record, the comment about the Terms of Use jumped the gun a little bit. The actual announcement will be on or about 4/20, with the implementation one month after that. You won't miss the announcement - we'll be using site banners to do it. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:01, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

thanks for the update Philippe, i fixed the note accordingly, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 23:11, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

"Language has never been the subject of public policy in Anglophone countries" -- what about Wales in the 20th and 21st centuries... come to think of it, and particularly appropriate given the focus of the section, what about modern Canada? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Many, if not most, US states have policies on language. e.g. In California, elementary and high schools must offer courses taught in the language of the students - even if that means teaching courses in many, many languages. In Florida, government information must be offered in Spanish and English. Mathew Townsend (talk) 01:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

What was meant, I think, was content of a language, rather than choice among languages. For example, the French and Quebec governments have separately fought against the introduction of English words into the French language (Franglais), while the United States government could not care less should a previously non-English word become au courant in the English language. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:43, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

John, you hit the nail on the head. If there's a better way I could have expressed it, please let me know. Tony (talk) 06:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I read the updated Terms of use (wow, rather scary) which include provisions against "Harassing and Abusing Others". How will they determine what is "Engaging in harassment" if they don't consider content? Mathew Townsend (talk) 03:22, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Can you please repeat that question at meta:Talk:Terms_of_use. You won't receive a proper response by asking it over here. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 11:53, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I have the impression that a lot of Web/tech/new media terminology catches on first in Quebec and then is eventually recognized by the French government. I could very well be wrong on that. This looks like an interesting collaboration, anyway, I'll be interested in seeing if the various regional language and editing perspectives can cooperate. OttawaAC (talk) 04:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• Re New Page Triage; no, users should suggest them on the WP:NPT talkpage. Suggestions being emailed to me completely undermines the point of holding this process in the open :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• For example, the French and Quebec governments have separately fought against the introduction of English words into the French language (Franglais), while the United States government could not care less should a previously non-English word become au courant in the English language. — Such as the word CHAUVINISM, for example. Carrite (talk) 15:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC) nerk! nerk!

Hello. Is there any chance that this news column could cover significant changes to the Manual of Style? This document impacts many editors, so a summary of revisions would be helpful. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

It's possible, I suppose, but first, are there many significant changes nowadays? Second, it's probably not regarded by many readers as newsworthy. What kind of changes did you have in mind (say, over the past six months)? Tony (talk) 03:06, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• A regular update of major MOS changes would be useful. quarterly? I have no idea what changes would be included because .. I have no idea what changes have happened. Signpost, please educate me. ;-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:47, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• I'm slightly surprised to read that "Language has never been the subject of public policy in Anglophone countries". There are plenty of interesting counterexamples; such as the current controversies over Spanish language use in the USA [1], some interesting quirks of Britain's colonial policies in the past, a can of worms in Canada, the Welsh Not, and even the origin of the King James Version of the bible, or the Book of Common Prayer... bobrayner (talk) 09:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC) (Disclaimer: Both my inlaws are anglophone teachers in a country where the language of instruction has been surrounded by controversy, up to and including riots).

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