Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2009-05-25

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WP:POST/1

25 May 2009

License update results
Licensing vote results announced, resolution passed

News and notes
New board member, flagged revisions, Eurovision interviews

In the news
Wikipedia: threat or menace?

WikiProject report
WikiProject LGBT studies

Discussion report
Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations

Features and admins
Approved this week

Technology report
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Arbitration report
The Report on Lengthy Litigation

2009-05-25

Licensing vote results announced, resolution passed

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By Phoebe

Resolution passed

Less than a day after Rohde posted the results of the tally, Michael Snow, chair of the Foundation's Board of Trustees, announced on Foundation-l that the Board had unanimously passed a resolution stating that:

“

Whereas the Wikimedia community, in a project-wide vote, has expressed very strong support for changing the licensing terms of Wikimedia sites, and whereas the Board of Trustees has previously adopted a license update resolution requesting that such a change be made possible, the Board hereby declares its intent to implement these changes. Accordingly, the Wikimedia Foundation exercises its option under Version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License to relicense the Wikimedia sites as Massive Multiauthor Collaborations under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, effective June 15, 2009. The Board of Trustees hereby instructs the Executive Director to have all Wikimedia licensing terms updated and terms of use implemented consistent with the proposal at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update.

”

— Michael Snow, Foundation-l mailing list. Thu May 21 17:25:47 UTC 2009.

If the vote had received less than 50% support, it would have been referred back to the community for discussion rather than to the Board. The Board had previously stated^[2] that they supported the proposal.

Snow and Erik Moeller then followed up by thanking all of the people involved in the process, and Moeller stated that "This is a big day for free culture."^[3] The results were also noted with praise on the Creative Commons blog.^[4]

Notes

^ meta:Licensing update/Result
^ Michael Snow. Board position statement, Foundation-l mailing list. Tue Mar 24 05:54:42 UTC 2009.
^ Erik Moeller. Licensing resolution. Foundation-l mailing list. Thu May 21 18:33:51 UTC 2009.
^ Mike Linksvayer. Wikimedia Foundation board approves license migration. May 21, 2009.

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2009-05-25

New board member, flagged revisions, Eurovision interviews

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By Phoebe and Sage Ross

Two Wikimedia Foundation board members picked

On 22 May, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees announced the selection of two Wikimedians to fill the chapter-selected seats on the board. Pending formal approval by the board, these community seats will be held by Michael Snow, who currently holds a temporary appointed seat and is Chair of the board, and Arne Klempert, who is new to the board.

The Board of Trustees was restructured and expanded last year, with plans to have a ten-member board. According to the new structure, half of the board would be chosen by the community—three seats by election, and two chosen collectively by the local Wikimedia chapters—with an additional board-appointed "Community Founder" seat reserved for Jimmy Wales and four "specific expertise" seats to be chosen by the board. However, no process was specified for choosing the chapter-selected seats, so only now have the chapters made their choices.

From the announcement:

“

Arne Klempert is Head of Digital Communications at IFOK, a German consulting firm. He is one of the founders of the German chapter. He was involved in the development of Wikimedia Deutschland first as vice-chair and then as Executive Director, until September 2008.

Michael Snow has served on the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, and was chosen in July 2008 to be its chair. Michael is a lawyer and has been involved in Wikimedia for many years as Head of the Wikimedia Communications Committee and creator of the Wikipedia Signpost, amongst other roles.

”

Flagged revisions update

Wikinews features Eurovision interviews

During this year's Eurovision contest, Wikinews conducted a "Eurovision special," interviewing 13 past contestants, 6 of whom were past winners. The project also got freely licensed photos of the singers when possible. According to User:Mike Halterman, who conducted the interviews:

“

For my final interview set (with eight singers), I had countering systemic bias in mind. Half of the eight interviewed in the final piece are from Eastern Europe or the Caucasus (Tajci is from Croatia, Marie N is from Latvia, Ani Lorak is from Ukraine and Sirusho is from Armenia). Also, the interviews with the final eight in the series were translated into nine different languages (Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian), another first for Wikinews in terms of sheer cross-wiki collaboration and translation. Since unlike on Wikipedia, Wikinews has a "newsworthiness" time limit of only a few days, and the interview sets were VERY large, this was a big feat for all involved.

”

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2009-05-25

Wikipedia: threat or menace?

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By Sage Ross and Jarry1250

Toxicologists say Wikipedia better than mainstream media on chemical risk

According to a survey of American professional toxicologists (summary, full results), 45% rate Wikipedia as "accurate" in portraying the health risks posed by chemicals, while Wikipedia overstates risks according to 50% of respondents and understates them according to 5%. Among media sources, Wikipedia came in second in accuracy only to WebMD, which 56% of responding toxicologists consider accurate; national health magazines (10% said "accurate"), television news (3-5%), national newspapers (15%), news magazines (12%), and even public broadcasting (33%) are all seen as considerably less accurate than Wikipedia. These results are part of a wide-ranging survey of 937 members of the Society of Toxicology conducted by the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) and the Center for Health and Risk Communication, at George Mason University.

On a scale of 1 to 5, in which 1 indicates "strongly understates", 3 indicates "accurately states", and 5 indicates "strongly overstates", Wikipedia averaged a score of 3.5, the same as The Pew Charitable Trusts. This is slightly on the side of overstating risks when compared with government sources and professional bodies (3.0–3.3), but better than other media sources (3.8–4.3) and much better than environmental organizations (4.1–4.5). Industry-linked organizations such as the American Chemistry Council and the PhRMA were seen as understating chemical risk (2.3–2.4).

The survey also sought toxicologists' opinions on a range of other issues related to chemical risk. While most toxicologists seem to agree that the media and activists tend to overstate chemical risk, the survey found that opinion among toxicologists varies considerably when it comes to the risk posed by individual chemical and sources of chemicals; one in three toxicologists see food additives as a significant risk, one in four see cosmetics as a significant risk, and just over half say pesticides and endocrine disruptors pose significant risks.

The summary of the results, which were released on 21 May, include a reaction from Wikipedian Andrew Lih, who also blogged about the results with respect to Wikipedia. Lih and another media commentator conclude that it is the story-driven nature of journalism which causes the mainstream media to overstate chemical risk so badly.

Doctors rely on Wikipedia for medical info

A survey of American physicians finds that almost 50% of doctors who use the Internet for professional purposes use Wikipedia's medical articles. That so many physicians rely on Wikipedia is surprising, given the existence of freely accessible professional medical information sites. Naomi Freundlich of The Health Care Blog comments:

“

The irony of this situation is that doctors don’t have to resort to Wikipedia. There is a surfeit of more authoritative medical information that can be accessed electronically.

”

The survey of 1900 physicians, conducted by Manhattan Research, reports that 10% of doctors not only use Wikipedia, but also edit. If accurate, the survey results indicate that 1 in 5 physicians who use Wikipedia for professional reasons also edit; this is a significantly higher proportion than the typical rule-of-thumb estimates of the overall reader:contributor ratio in interactive media websites.

EU parliament members consult Wikipedia on legislative issues

A survey of Members of the European Parliament finds that 65% of MEPs turn to Wikipedia at least twice per week for information related to their legislative work. The survey, conducted by Fleishman-Hillard Brussels, found that Wikipedia was nearly as popular as online newspapers and almost twice as popular as blogs. Detailed results are available from the EP Digital Survey homepage.

The high rate of Wikipedia usage is perhaps unsurprising given another finding from the survey: 93% of MEPs "use search engines daily to understand legislative issues".

Catherine Crier lawsuit

Catherine Crier, a former judge and prosecutor from Dallas, Texas who went on to a career in television is suing a John Doe who anonymously edited her Wikipedia entry. According to Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer, Crier is suing over a number of false claims: that she has "been a murder suspect, a shoplifter, she's served jail time, she's been disbarred". The offensive details in the edits, which were traced to an IP from Richardson, Texas, were allegedly taken from a 2007 Dallas Morning News article about a different person, and the name was changed to tar Crier's reputation.

Obscene edits to children's book article

Some obscene vandalism to the article Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (a children's book) caught the attention of some Australian parents and the Sydney Morning Herald this week. "Parents warned of Wikiporn risk", reports the Herald. The vandalism, which added violence, rape, and other sexually explicit details to the plot summary, was only visible for about an hour, but the book is on the reading list for the Premier's Reading Challenge and has been getting about 400 page views per day in recent weeks.

The New South Wales Parents Council is advising parents to supervise their children's Internet usage.

BBC Radio 4 program Heresy pokes fun at Wikipedia

The question of whether to trust Wikipedia and other online information sources was explored in the BBC Radio 4 comedy talk show Heresy this week. The episode can be listened to here; the relevant segment begins at around 19 minutes 10 seconds.

Presenter Victoria Coren begins the segment commenting: "Sadly, false information is put up on Wikipedia by saboteurs who frankly should have better things to do with their time. Luckily, it's then taken down by a team of dedicated, round-the-clock, voluntary moderators who frankly should have better things to do with their time." Defending Wikipedia, guest David Mitchell replies "Wikipedia has become like a shortcut to a joke about it being rubbish, and that's not fair, because most things on Wikipedia are completely true... and also, it's worth remembering that no reference work - no book at all - is necessarily true... You should question everything you read."

The segment also purports to test the accuracy of Wikipedia by verifying surprising alleged facts about the show's guests (Mitchell, Euan Ferguson, and Clive James) that appear in their Wikipedia biographies.

Briefly

Computer scientist Dmitry Lizorkin explains a recent analysis he performed of Wikipedia articles' link structure as a way of identifying coherent groups of related articles, as a complement to the existing quasi-hierarchical category system.
AllYourTV.com editor Rick Ellis opines, "I've always been fascinated by Wikipedia's institutional crankiness about pop culture."
The BBC World Service radio program Digital Planet featured a segment this week with Andrew Lih, exploring the history of Wikipedia and trying to predict its future.
Humor site NewsBiscuit reports: "Judge directs scary obsessive towards Wikipedia".
The Globe and Mail reports that the sister of Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr and her new husband met through Wikipedia.

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2009-05-25

WikiProject LGBT studies

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By Cryptic C62

One of Wikipedia's greatest strengths as a non-paper encyclopedia is that it is better equipped to "roll with the times"—that is, to cover current issues as they unfold. Few wikiprojects demonstrate this capacity better than WikiProject LGBT studies, which has more than 250 members and more than 50 pieces of Featured Content. Here to discuss more about the project is Benjiboi, who has started, rescued, and expanded various LGBT-related articles, such as Dykes on Bikes and Diverse Harmony.

1. Recently, the fight for LGBT rights has endured both victories, such as the successful election of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and long, drawn-out defeats, such as the continued implementation of Don't ask, don't tell. How do these current events affect the project and its members, many of whom are LGBT?

I think you have to see lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) communities and movements through inter-related yet wildly different filters. Like a government's official recognition or criminalizing being gay. Or the filter of someone who is closeted at work but open in some social situations. Likewise how these filters impact the project and members varies considerably. The United States, in particular, has entrenched and politicized culture wars where discrimination against sexuality and gender minorities remain solid undercurrents. The path towards what many LGBTI people and supporters consider basic human rights; to love and marry who you wish, for equal opportunities and protection in employment, to protect and keep your families safe in regards to parental and medical coverage, etc. continues to be a steady source of news. Every time these issues arise public support has grown, often in tandem with someone they know coming out as being LGBTI. Meanwhile the harm discrimination does to LGBTI people themselves is also being more understood. Similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, LGBTI communities have suffered from issues of institutionalized homophobia and transphobia on a profound level. We know that our members get stressed and generally I think we try to support each other when we get frustrated and have to step back. It is also common to have someone trying to delete content, or even an article, or add some rather shockingly biased information. You simply have to disassociate enough to not take it personally. As members have energy for any project things progress; we have an astonishing range and volume of articles across all subject areas. Personally I believe part of the strength of both LGBTI communities and our project is that we are quite diverse. As Wikipedians we each have unique skills and I think we find ways to work with and support one another.

2. When you say that the project's members "try to support each other when [they] get frustrated", do you mean emotional support or collaborative efforts? Or both? How does one affect the other?

I think support in almost every form one can imagine and that certainly has led to offline friendships as well. I think at the end of it all Wikipedians look to a level of trust from each other. Members of LGBTI communities often go through extra stress because their lives are officially discounted in various ways. Although my experience may not match yours it is similar enough so we share that commonality. That might not translate into better collaborating but I believe it is shared enough that when someone is expressing frustration others do try to step in and see if there is some equitable resolution. We also disagree among ourselves at times so we each have our own projects and when someone asks for help we try to pitch in as time allows.

3. Biographies of LGBTI individuals are prone to very harmful vandalism. Do you think the project's biographies would benefit from the implementation of flagged or sighted revisions?

I can see some benefits in flagging article revisions and supported a trial implementation. On one hand this can curb a lot of nonsense vandalism, to me the downside is not being the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Some of the worst vandalism is when subtle slander is woven in and not caught or is otherwise masked as credible content. Our project's biggest issues tend to be editors removing content and context of a subject's sexuality and gender. We have to strike a balance based not just on truth but on reliable sources. With some biographies their sexuality is just another aspect of who they are, like if they grew up in a large family. It obviously plays some role but perhaps not as significant as an artist or activist whose career is focused on these issues. Often LGBTI people lead parallel lives to their non-LGBTI counterparts. They can be completely invisible to mainstream society unless they purposely are visible like at a pride parade and other community events. Similarly there exists entire media and entertainment structures for LGBTI communities including gay bars, newspapers and magazines. These were born out of necessity and remain an integral resource. In trying to source biographies these are invaluable for verification but most are not online and most small publishing businesses succomb to economic downturns closing them down. In the future I fully expect archives of these to be digitized and transcribed but until then we rely on researchers who do the unglamourous work of digging up these histories. To me the best way to counteract vandalism is to overwhelm with reliable sources and better writing. Ultimately this improves those articles.

4. Wikipedia's coverage of LGBTI-related topics seems to be expanding. So far in 2009, the number of articles tagged with the project's banner has risen by more than 300. Do you attribute this expansion to increased activity and progress within the LGBTI community or to Wikipedia's poor coverage of this area?

Both. LGBTI people are a fascinating minority worldwide and interest and news will continue to focus on issues of sexuality and gender variance. As such I anticipate more current events to be promulgated. Meanwhile there are quite a few museums and archives with impressive swaths of subject areas completely untouched by Wikipedia. Countering systemic bias on Wikipedia is also something we have to look to as more fringe communities and those whose work is in smaller communities where published LGBTI media are less likely can be overlooked. One of the real joys of Wikipedia is writing good articles that share information with people who are usually looking to be better informed. With LGBTI cultures Wikipedia has an abundance of stereotypical content and generally negative aspects like reducing transgender and intersex people to their body parts and LGB people in context of sexual practices. This is improving and someday sexuality and gender issues will simply not be a big deal anymore as much as a variance like the colour of one's eyes. On Wikipedia there are many articles that should be tagged but haven't been yet. For editors curious on adding {{LGBTProject}} to an article's talkpage my suggestion is to go ahead and add it as we can always remove it if our project has no involvement. We strive to be a resource to assist all Wikipedians so feel free to ask for help and clarification.

5. You have worked also on articles that are not related to LGBT culture. What do you find to be different or challenging about writing LGBT-related articles? What skills have you learned from your work in this subject area?

Like most non-mainstream subjects the challenge is sourcing. Wikipedia has plenty of subject areas that are outside the mainstream so finding reliable sourcing that will withstand the test of time seems to be the biggest challenge. A large part of that as well is that much of the LGBTI history is never a part of mainstream history books due to various research bias and cultural taboos. If LGBTI people are discussed it is often in less than positive context. In some cultures we know about numbers of men arrested for crimes related to sexual acts with other men and in some cases this is the extent of what is known about LGBTI culture in that place at that time. Likely this was not the extent of LGBTI culture. Transgender and intersex people are sometimes identified as such only when they die or are brutally murdered and then it is reported, often sensationalized, in the media. So we have to dig to find sourcing to fill in the context of their lives as the most mainstream sourcing focuses on their death which is often a hate crime. There is also a patriarchal cultural chasm that the sexuality of men who have sex with men is routinely criminalized, analyzed and discussed whereas women who have sex with women would seem nearly non-existent as though women's sexuality was not considered a matter of importance or consequence. Bisexual erasure is also at play that unless someone is specifically identified as bisexual they are presumed to be straight or gay. Like many people I feel there is a continuum of sexuality not just a eithor/or; issues of sexuality and gender are obviously very personal and can be intrinsicly tied to a person's outlook and world perspective. To go back to the Don't Ask Don't Tell aka "gays in the military" issue - when talking with actual military personel the men tend to be extremely worried that a gay guy would see them naked whereas the women tend to not be that concerned. When we get neutral research about these issues as well as what happens when you look at gender minorities in these context we see there are differences but they can align more to gender than sexuality or even be a mix of the two. These are all issues that compound the challenges of good writing and are recurring issues for the project.

I think some of the skills I've learned working in this subject area are a heightened awareness of dealing with vandalism, applying manual of style and policies to BLPs, dealing with point of view issues and navigating the issues of what and how we delete content. In particular I feel I've helped the encyclopedia by my contributions at the Article Rescue Squadron Wikiproject where I've learned to assess a bit more when content should be listified, merged or even deleted if it shows little promise of becoming a good article. I wouldn't have know about that project had it not been for several LGBTI articles being tagged for deletion. I think because of the subject area and the volume of articles watched by the project we almost always have several items slated for deletion.

6. Finally, how can inexperienced but eager editors help out with WikiProject LGBT studies?

I think visiting our project talkpage and posting a hello would be a good start. Every editor is different, whereas I do a little bit of everything. We have Moni3 who has recently overhauled lesbian, Harvey Milk, and Stonewall riots, among others to featured article status - she rocks! Other editors specialize on reverting vandalism, building historical and queer theory subjects, cleaning up our extensive categories, adding images, etc. Usually our work spills into all areas of the encyclopedia and likewise when we find a problem or solution that can benefit anyone else we are happy to collaborate and share. Personally I have some learning disabilities so I have to rely on others to do work I feel less than qualified for. We each can contribute significantly to the encyclopedia as we are able and we each have unique perspectives that indeed make the whole better as we build quality content. For any newer editor the starting step, in my opinion, is to help clean-up and do some "easy" fixing just to get the feel for editing here. Then as your comfort level increases, look at articles on which you feel well-informed, look to fixing any glaring mistakes. Not sure what to do? Learning how and where to ask for help is also part of the process. We were all new at one point and generally Wikipedians are quite friendly and helpful.

Correction: lesbian has indeed been rewritten but is presently at "good" article status in hopes that it will soon be a featured article.

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2009-05-25

Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Drilnoth and Dottydotdot

The following is a brief overview of discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

Proposals

"Wikipedia is not... plot" is currently disputed and its wording and inclusion in the policy are being discussed at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not.
Discussion continues over Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) and how it should be handled
There is discussion at the village pump about moving the edit link to an easier and more user-friendly position.

Requests for comment

Should Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ remain a policy? If not, what parts of it should be moved to the main policy page? See discussion.
There is an active discussion on whether Wikipedia should use "flu", "influenza", or a combination.
There is a discussion on whether or not Wikipedia:Upload should be changed to more strongly encourage uploading free media at Commons.
There is a proposal to stabilise the pagenames of articles on baronets by either forbidding the use of baronet titles in page names or making them universal.

Other discussions

Discussion on where deletion discussions should be held for disambiguation pages.

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2009-05-25

Approved this week

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By Garden

Administrators

One editor was granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: FlyingToaster (nom).

Bots

Eight bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Citation bot (task request), Chris G Bot (task request), DYKHousekeepingBot (task request), LivingBot (task request), ListasBot (task request), D'ohBot (task request), Locobot (task request) and LivingBot (task request).

Featured pages

Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status this week: 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash (nom), Gilbert Foliot (nom), La Cousine Bette (nom), Caversham, New Zealand (nom), Battle of Barnet (nom), Euclidean algorithm (nom), Shadow the Hedgehog (video game) (nom), Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo (nom), Economy of the Han Dynasty (nom), Gropecunt Lane (nom), Planescape: Torment (nom), Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (nom), Elwood Haynes (nom), Jerry Voorhis (nom), Posting system (nom), Carrington Moss (nom) and Richmond Bridge, London (nom).

Eleven lists were promoted to featured status this week: Worcester Ruby Legs all-time roster (nom), List of New York Mets seasons (nom), List of New Jersey County Colleges (nom), List of United States Military Academy alumni (Superintendents) (nom), Jessica Mauboy discography (nom), 29th Golden Raspberry Awards (nom), List of Tokyo Mew Mew characters (nom), List of birds of Maryland (nom), List of German submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (nom), List of Grade I listed buildings in Taunton Deane (nom) and St. Louis Wrestling Hall of Fame (nom).

One topic was promoted to featured status this week: Silver Slugger Award (nom).

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Malcolm X, Operation Uranus, LSWR N15 class, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Over the Edge, Edward VIII abdication crisis and United States Military Academy.

Former featured pages

Six articles were delisted this week: Defense of Sihang Warehouse (nom), William Monahan (nom), Ran (film) (nom), Prostitution in China (nom), Canadian Pacific Railway (nom) and Căile Ferate Române (nom).

No lists were delisted this week.

No topics were delisted this week.

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Cedar Key, Florida, 1884, Gordon Dam, Windsor Castle Upper Ward Quadrangle, Oregon Convention Center, Mount Cleveland, Migrant family of the Great Depression and Siege of Yorktown, Virginia, 1862.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

Two featured pictures were demoted this week: Bee in mid air and Lomatium parryi

Thirteen pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.

The Punishment of Loki
Cortinarius archeri
A Negress by Thomas Eakins
The Dalziel Brothers' engraving of Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman
Wellington Range
Lomatium parryi
Dry Tortugas Light
Nantes Cathedral
Rajputs
Great Sphinx of Giza
Rigidoporus laetus
Austroicetes frater
Pelopidas sp.

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2009-05-25

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Aude and Ipatrol

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Please note that some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Bug fixes

If a browser or web crawler opens a nonexistent page, the browser or crawler will receive a 404 error header (explanation) with the usual nonexistent page content. (r44919, bug 2585)

New features

There is a bug to implement the interlanguage extension which if enabled would radically change the handling of interlanguage links by creating an interlanguage link wiki. (bug 15607)
Anon-only IP blocks can now also include blocking e-mail. (r50871, bug 18860)
The date and time have been separated into two fields in Special:BlockList. (r50983, bug 17093)
Magic words {{CURRENTMONTH1}} and {{LOCALMONTH1}} have been introduced for displaying months without the leading zero. {{CURRENTMONTH2}} and {{LOCALMONTH2}} have also been added for consistency with other magic words. (r50811, bug:5755)

Other news

Extension:ABC, which allows embedding music scores on wiki pages, may soon be enabled on Wikimedia wikis. [1]

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2009-05-25

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By AGK

Miscellaneous developments

The Committee has affirmed by motion its standard operating procedure on CheckUser and Oversight permissions: CUs and OSs who do not use their tools for more than twelve months will have access to the tool/s and to the associated mailing list(s) removed; for arbitrators, the twelve-month inactivity clock starts on the day they leave office. (read more)
Arbitrator Sam Blacketer resigned from the Committee on 23 May by posting an open e-mail (sent to arbcom-l on 20 February) on his userpage and by posting the following announcement on the Committee noticeboard:
"Some months ago I decided to resign from the committee and return to article editing, notifying the committee privately on 20 February. That resignation now takes effect. Before joining the committee I had used the account Fys for editing which should have been disclosed." (Full notice.)
It was discovered at the same time that Sam had not disclosed the fact that he had previously edited under Fys (talk · contribs), an account desysopped for abuse of administrator functions, poor judgement, and edit warring by the Arbitration Committee in the Irishpunktom arbitration case.
The Committee released a statement yesterday morning (24 May 2009 (UTC)) on the matter, which indicated that it has removed Sam from the arbcom-l and functionaries-en mailing lists and that the "status of his adminship will be decided within the next 24 hours." Discussion is unfolding at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard.

The Arbitration Committee opened two cases and closed one this week, leaving eight open.

Evidence phase

A Man In Black: A case brought to examine the conduct of administrator A Man In Black.
ADHD: A case examining the dispute on the ADHD article and the conduct of the editors involved therein.
Mattisse: A case—brought when a recent Request for Comment failed to abate concerns regarding her behaviour—examining the conduct of User:Mattisse.
Tang Dynasty: A case about editing conflicts on Inner Asia during the Tang Dynasty.
Obama articles: A case opened to review behavior of editors of articles related to Barack Obama.

Voting

Macedonia 2: A case about naming disputes at the Macedonia article, and ChrisO's use of administrator tools in the dispute. Thirty-eight remedies have been proposed, most of which sanction editors involved in the dispute.
Date delinking: A case regarding the behavior of editors in the ongoing dispute relating to policy on linking dates in articles. An injunction has been issued prohibiting large-scale linking or delinking of dates until the case is resolved. Over 130 proposals have been presented, including remedies which restrict, ban, topic ban, or admonish certain parties. The case has only recently entered voting, and so none of the proposals presently pass.
Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case, COFS. Thirty-four remedies have been proposed.

Motion to close

There are presently no case with an active motion to close.

Recently closed

Ryulong: A case regarding Ryulong's use of his administrator tools. For misuse of his administrative tools, failure to address the community's concerns, and inappropriate off-wiki behavior, Ryulong is desysopped. Mythdon is: restricted and placed under mentorship for a period of 1 year; admonished for on- and off-wiki harassment; and directed to refrain from contacting Ryulong off-wiki and from seeking Ryulong's identity on- and off-wiki. All participants of WikiProject Tokusatsu are advised to work on producing a genuine guideline for the articles falling under the scope of the WikiProject, and are urged to work in collaboration with Mythdon while seeking outside advice and help.
Abd and JzG: A case brought regarding a dispute between Abd and JzG about the latter's use of administrative tools on Cold fusion. The Committee held that JzG is not an uninvolved administrator with respect to cold fusion articles, and admonished him to not use his administrator tools in any situation he is involved in. The Committee urged Abd to heed good-faith feedback when handling disputes, to incorporate that feedback, and to clearly and succinctly document previous and current attempts at resolution of the dispute before escalating to the next stage of dispute resolution; and advised Abd to heed good-faith feedback when handling disputes and to incorporate that feedback.
West Bank - Judea and Samaria: A dispute about editor behavior in discussions about naming conventions for certain Israel- and Palestine-related locations. The following users are banned from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing the dispute anywhere else on the project: Canadian Monkey, G-Dett, Jayjg, MeteorMaker, Nickhh, Nishidani, NoCal100, and Pedrito. The Committee stripped Jayjg of his status as a functionary and of all associated privileged access, including the CheckUser and Oversight tools and subscription to the checkuser-l, oversight-l, and functionaries-en mailing lists.
Aitias: A case regarding Aitias's use of his administrator tools. The suspension of Aitias's adminship—which had been in effect since a motion passed before the case was opened—was lifted (and Aitias is free to request at any time that a bureaucrat restore his tools). Aitias is admonished for inappropriate and unnecessarily sarcastic comments and is banned from Requests for rollback and its talk page for six months.

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Total votes cast and certified	17462
"Yes, I am in favor of this change"	13242	75.8%
"No, I am opposed to this change"	1829	10.5%
"I do not have an opinion on this change"	2391	13.7%