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Philosophers analyze Wikipedia as a knowledge source

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By Sage Ross

The philosophy journal Episteme has published a new issue that focuses on Wikipedia from the perspective of social epistemology. It contains four articles that examine various aspects of Wikipedia as a source of knowledge, including one by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger.

The issue is introduced by University of Arizona philosopher Don Fallis, who recently authored an article in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, "Toward an Epistemology of Wikipedia", arguing that on the whole Wikipedia has good "epistemic consequences" and that its virtues outweigh its flaws. In his introduction on "The Epistemology of Mass Collaboration", Fallis presents some of the epistemological issues raised by Wikipedia's success—chief among them "whether large collaborative projects, such as Wikipedia, can be reliable sources of information."

Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony

The first article, University of Memphis philosopher Deborah Perron Tollefsen's "Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony", explores the concept of group testimony as a possible basis for understanding Wikipedia's authority. It builds on her earlier work, in which she argues that group testimony is fundamentally different from the testimony of an individual, since the testimony of the group itself may be different from the testimony of the individuals who make it up.

Tollefsen's conclusion is that some Wikipedia articles might be considered a form of group testimony, particularly when they are "mature" and represent the consensus of many editors and reflect the norms of the community, but others are better thought of as the individual testimony of their main author or authors. She goes on to characterize Wikipedia as "an immature epistemic agent", the claims of which—like a child's testimony—ought to be scrutinized carefully, rather than given the benefit of the doubt like the testimony of an adult. However, she finds that the traditional methods of scrutinizing face-to-face testimony do not translate well to Wikipedia and other virtual testimony. Instead, she argues, "receiving testimony from a source such [as] Wikipedia involves trusting not the man, but the system." According to another view of testimony, it is not the testifier's reliability but the testimony itself that should be scrutinized, by comparing it to other sources and to the "vast backdrop of beliefs the hearer has acquired" beforehand. This view of the epistemology of testimony is easy to extend to Wikipedia, Tollefsen argues.

The Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia: A Comparison

The second Wikipedia-focused article is "The Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia: A Comparison", by State University of New York at Oswego philosopher K. Brad Wray. In it, Wray considers Wikipedia as a community focused on inquiry and knowledge production, analogous to the scientific community. However, he draws sharp contrasts between the norms of science and motivations of scientists, on the one hand, and the norms of Wikipedia and motivations of its editors on the other. Although both science and Wikipedia are collaborative knowledge projects, they have very different "epistemic cultures".

Wray posits that one possible justification for trusting Wikipedia is an "invisible hand" argument: although no identifiable individual or group of individuals ensures the quality of information on Wikipedia, "the knowledge-market will take care of itself, and poor articles reporting false claims will be rooted out." According to Wray, while science does have a viable invisible hand, in the form of a reputation system that relies on peer-review, Wikipedians "lack the sorts of incentives that keep science in good working order", and face few or no consequences for mistakes.

Wray also explores what he calls the Wikipedia's "puckish culture", prone to gossip and practical jokes. He recounts the Seigenthaler incident, and contrasts it to the sober culture of science. In science, he says, "the closest incident to such a joke is the Sokal affair"; however, the Sokal affair should not be considered a joke, but rather a demonstration of "the editors’ appalling ignorance of science". This regrettable aspect of Wikipedia's culture, he suggests, might be absent if—as in science—"one had to wait months before one’s contribution is posted". Finally, against the argument of Deborah Perron Tollefsen's article, Wray argues that even when considered as a form of testimony, Wikipedia is a flawed source of knowledge, precisely because of the failings in its "epistemic culture".

Despite his negative assessment, Wray does find one ray of hope: "What Wikipedia can do for us is to draw greater attention to epistemology and its relevance to our place in the social world. Though we live in a time in human history when knowledge may be easier to obtain than ever before, we are in desperate need of means to sort and evaluate what passes for knowledge."

The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia

A third article about Wikipedia comes from philosopher Lawrence M. Sanger—i.e., Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who is also the founder and editor-in-chief of wiki encyclopedia Citizendium. In "The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia", Sanger explores the paradoxes and shortcomings of Wikipedia's relationship with experts and expertise, and suggests that Citizendium, a project that explicitly grants authority to expert contributors, is a better alternative.

Sanger describes Wikipedia's success as an egalitarian and open knowledge project, and then poses the question of how to reconcile the project's successes—both real and potential—with its lack of "any special role for experts or any expert approval process". One implication from such success might be that special roles for experts are not necessary in the rest of society either. However, Sanger shows this to be self-contradictory, in part because evaluating the success of Wikipedia requires expertise to compare it against, and in part because of Wikipedia's indirect reliance on expertise.

Sanger goes on to explore the actual roles of expert editors on Wikipedia, and whether Wikipedia itself could become an authoritative source without granting a special role for experts. He asserts that "Wikipedia is nothing like the egalitarian utopia its most radical defenders might have us believe", and that in practice experts are often given deference. This, according to Sanger, is the key to what success Wikipedia has had in creating authoritative articles on some topics. However, problems arise when such deference breaks down, as is likely to occur for non-technical topics. As an a priori hypothesis, Sanger suggests that "Over the long term, the quality of a given Wikipedia article will do a random walk around the highest level of quality permitted by the most persistent and aggressive people who follow an article." He argues that Citizendium's model, in which subject-matter experts are given final authority over content in their areas of expertise, can surmount such problems caused by persistent and aggressive non-experts.

Sanger's article has attracted some press attention and blog discussion, especially for his idea about the limits of quality on Wikipedia. It was discussed on Slashdot, although Sanger suggested on the Citizendium Blog that many commentators did not "RTFA". Sanger's contribution was also discussed by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

On Trusting Wikipedia

The final Wikipedia-focused article is "On Trusting Wikipedia", by State University of New York at Albany philosopher P. D. Magnus. Given the wide variability in article quality on Wikipedia, Magnus sets out to identify strategies for assessing reliability and to examine how well those strategies apply to Wikipedia.

Magnus describes five common strategies for assessing the reliability of other online knowledge sources, all of which fail to some extent when applied to Wikipedia.

  • Authority may be a good basis for evaluating online sources when the individual or institutional authors have relevant connections or reputations; for the Wikipedia, this breaks down because of the anonymity of many authors, as well as the changing nature of articles that have been vouched for by outside authorities at a particular point in time.
  • Plausibility of style—whether or not an author seems to understand the style and terminology of the topic at hand—can be a useful indicator of reliability; on Wikipedia, this is confounded by collaborative copy-editing, which may improve only the style of bad content or introduce implausible elements of style in otherwise good content.
  • Plausibility of content—watching out for things that are obviously wrong—similarly fails on Wikipedia, because the most egregious errors, which might serve as a warning against additional subtle errors, are also the most likely to be corrected—leaving undetected errors behind.
  • Calibration—testing a subset of claims against an independent source of known reliability to gauge a source's overall accuracy—is also difficult for Wikipedia content, since easily-checked claims are also the ones most likely to have been checked by other Wikipedia users, while harder-to-check claims may be less reliable.
  • Sampling—checking any given claim against multiple other sources—can also sometimes be misleading with Wikipedia content, since Wikipedia is widely reproduced and changes frequently; two seemingly independent sources may both be derived from the same Wikipedia content and contain the same errors.

Magnus concludes that "teaching people to engage Wikipedia responsibly will require getting them to cultivate a healthy scepticism, to think of it differently than they think of traditional sources, and to learn to look beyond the current articles".

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An automated article monitoring system for WikiProjects

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By Headbomb

Increasing participation in Wikipedia's various reviewing processes, such as peer reviews, Good article nominations, and Articles for deletion, has always been a concern for the Wikipedia community. This is especially true when it comes to processes such as Proposed deletions, where low-traffic articles can be deleted simply because no one is aware that they have been proposed. Valuable time is spent monitoring process pages, when it could instead be spent on improving and reviewing articles. This situation inspired three editors, Headbomb, B. Wolterding, and Legoktm, to develop a tool designed to increase awareness of what is going on in the various reviewing processes of Wikipedia: Article Alerts.

Article Alerts is a fully automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles tagged by their banner enter a workflow such as Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, and Peer review (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report is given at the end of this article (from WikiProject Physics).

The alert system was originally suggested in mid-July 2008[1] and ArticleAlertbot was subsequently coded by B. Wolterding.[2] Since the bot runs on the tool server, and that B. Wolterding did not wish to disclose personal information required to operate a bot on the tool server,[3] Legoktm volunteered himself to be the bot operator.[4] The bot has been fully-operational since late-October 2008.[5] At the time of writing, about 65 WikiProjects and Taskforces, out of more than a thousand,[note 1] were subscribed to Article Alerts (list of current subscribers), generating very positive feedback.[6][7] Although the original idea was to help WikiProjects keep track of their articles in the wikijungle,[1] it will be interesting to see if this tool increases the participation in the various reviewing processes.[note 2]

It is the hope of the maintainers of Article Alerts that all active WikiProjects be subscribed to Article Alerts by the end of 2009.[note 3] Those interested in setting up Article Alerts for their WikiProject or Taskforce can visit Wikipedia:Article alerts#Subscribing for instructions.

Article alerts for WikiProject Physics

Did you know

Articles for deletion

Proposed deletions

Categories for discussion

Templates for discussion

Redirects for discussion

Miscellany for deletion

Featured article candidates

Featured article reviews

Good article reassessments

Requested moves

Articles to be merged

Articles to be split

Articles for creation

(30 more...)

Notes

  1. ^ About 1,500 Projects and Taskforces are listed at the W.P 1.0 Editorial Team Index, but not all of them are active.
  2. ^ See the 16 February 2009 article by Dr pda for a report on the participation levels of reviewing processes such as Featured and Good article nominations and peer review.
  3. ^ First expressed here by the author of this Signpost article.

References

  1. ^ a b Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 22#Bot for WikiProject News (WPNBot?)
  2. ^ Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ArticleAlertbot
  3. ^ Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Archive 1#finding "who nominated" (bottom of section)
  4. ^ User talk:Legoktm/September 2008#Alert bot
  5. ^ Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Archive 1#Open for subscriptions
  6. ^ "I recently discovered this service, and fell in love with it immediately." – G.A.S
  7. ^ "Wow!!!!!!!!!!!! That looks great." – TonyTheTiger, about the Article Alerts for WikiProject Chicago


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Wikimania, usability, picture contest, milestones

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By Sage Ross

Wikimania 2009 Call for Participation

Wikimania 2009, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, posters, open space discussions, and artistic works related to the Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. The conference will be held from August 26–28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For more information, see the official Call for Participation.

Wikimedia Usability Initiative wiki

Earlier this month, the Wikimedia Foundation launched usability.wikimedia.org, a wiki for testing extensions and configurations to improve the usability and user interface of Wikipedia and other projects, as part of the Wikipedia Usability Initiative funded by a recent grant (see earlier coverage).

Wikinews Picture of the Year contest underway

Wikinews is in the midst of its first Picture of the Year contest (not to be confused with the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year competition that is also ongoing). The second (and likely final) round of voting is underway until February 28, with 11 possible candidates for Wikinews Picture of the Year 2008. Any Wikimedian from any project (including Wikipedia) with over 50 edits may vote.

Briefly

Milestones

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Lessons for Brits, patent citations

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By Cryptic C62 and Sage Ross

Words of praise from David Mitchell

In an article published on guardian.co.uk, actor and comedian David Mitchell praised Wikipedia as being "brilliant." Mitchell defended Wikipedia against criticisms of inaccuracy, writing "readers should always question the veracity of what they read and the motives of whoever wrote it, and in the internet age more than ever.... And if Wikipedia, while being very informative in most cases, teaches a few lessons about questioning sources, then that's all to the good." Mitchell also criticized the UK Conservative Party for manipulating the Titian entry (see related story).

ZDNet UK interviews IWF chief Peter Robbins

See also: Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia
See also: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-03/Virgin Killer

ZDNet UK conducted an interview with IWF chief Peter Robbins in response to the Virgin Killer incident. Robbins discussed the purpose of the foundation, the technology issues related to the incident, and what he believed to be an "unfair level of criticism." Robbins concluded the interview with "We learnt lessons from this."

Wikipedia references in patents on the rise

According to The Patent Librarian's Notebook, a blog by librarian Michael White, citations to Wikipedia have been on the rise in U.S. patents. Wikipedia citations by patent examiners were banned in 2006, but references to Wikipedia by both applicants and examiners have nevertheless been on the rise. 477 patents issued in 2008 mentioned Wikipedia, compared to 297 in 2007 and 108 in 2006.

Briefly

SPV

Hundredth Featured sound approaches

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By Shoemaker's Holiday
Walking on singing sand
A featured sound: Walking on singing sand.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

As of the moment of writing, there are 97 Featured sounds (FS) on Wikipedia. And yet, less than a year ago, in the 26 May 2008 issue of the Signpost, we wrote:


2009 - Barack Obama's inauguration speech
Barack Obama's inaugural address was recently made a featured sound.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

A revolution happened to Featured sounds in July 2008, as several dedicated Wikipedians, including Durova, Gonzo fan2007, Mitchazenia, Ragesoss, Centy and Shoemaker's Holiday descended on Featured sounds, with the intent of making it into a viable process.

Un ballo in maschera: È scherzo od è follia
A restoration of an all-star 1915 recording of Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

The effort proved successful: in August, September, and October, more sounds of featured quality were created, found, or otherwise discovered in a single month than had been promoted in the entire 17-month history prior to July. As well, innovations were created: in July, a three-part recording of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata became the first set of featured sounds to be promoted. Several additional sets have been promoted since, including sonatas, symphonies, and an entire ballet.

The process slowed temporarily in the last two months of 2008, but 2009 marked a relaunch, and 15 files—a number this time "merely" equal to all the featured sounds promoted in the first 16 months of the project's history—were found to meet the criteria and were promoted.

1920 – Crazy Blues
Mamie Smith's performance of Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues" in 1920 was the first recording of vocal blues music by an African-American singer, and was very featurable.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

However, Featured sounds has not yet fully created the community of reviewers and content creators, restorers, and seekers necessary for it to move on to the next level. While much healthier than it was a year ago, low numbers of reviewers can cause undue delays; little content creation is, as yet, occurring (though numerous historic files have been found and restored), and the same names come up as nominators over and over. While this is normal for the early stages of a featured content process, sounds are one of the things Wikipedia can do—and do well—which traditional encyclopedias cannot, and which other web encyclopedias have, as yet, neglected. Sounds are thus one of the true opportunities of Wikipedia, and if we can do them well, we will lead the way for other encyclopedias.

You can help!

  • Review some Featured sounds: There are frequently quite good historic recordings of classical music, opera, and popular songs—though, of course, copyright somewhat limits us mainly to older music—and of historic speeches.
  • Record something: Have some talent? Why not show the world and record your performance? Like to go out into nature? Why not make some field recordings? Interesting environmental noises near you? Probably not so near other people. Why not record the sounds of a train, or a foghorn, or any other encyclopedic sounds?
  • Seek out high-quality content: There's still a lot of material out there. Many gems still await discovery and featuring.
  • Learn to do sound restoration: Contact Shoemaker's Holiday on his talk page for more information for now; a basic guide will form a future dispatch.

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WikiProject Islam

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By Cryptic C62

In an effort to move away from science, sports, and the Simpsons, and to improve the WikiProject Report's coverage of religion-based projects, this week's Report is on WikiProject Islam. Here to tell us more about this project is Itaqallah.

  1. First off, tell us about your history on Wikipedia and WikiProject Islam.
    I've been an editor on Wikipedia for several years now, having joined in March 2006. In that time I've edited quite a few articles, most of them within the scope of Islam-related issues. My main area of focus has always been improving content quality currently-existing articles by ensuring that it conforms to content policies, is coherent and well-balanced, and uses appropriate references. In that regard I've helped to produce a number of Good Articles, such as Jesus in Islam, Battle of Uhud, and Fustat. I also brought Muhammad - an article so contentious that it had been reported on in mainstream media - up to Good Article status after it having seemed highly unlikely given the controversy. The contribution I'm most pleased with however is having taken Islam, from a contentious B-class article, up to GA-class, and then all the way to Featured Article status. It also received an external peer review from an expert in Islamic studies while we were still developing it, and it was quite a positive appraisal. I've also contributed a few Did you know 'Did you know?' articles as well, such as Al-Hurr ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Thaqafi, Global Peace and Unity and Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism, among others. I'm also interested in XfD discussions and help to maintain the Deletion Sorting/Islam page.
    Wikiproject Islam is one of the many Wikiprojects on Wikipedia, and represents a collaborative effort to help improve Islam-related articles. A few of us regularly monitor the Wikiproject talk page to see if any articles or disputes require attention. My main contribution to the project has been to help establish a standard with regards to the kind of sourcing that is/isn't acceptable on Islam-related articles. Given the vast amount of sources available on Islamic topics and their varying quality or reliability, setting down a uniform standard to be applied on all respective articles has always been extremely important, and it's something we discuss often. I've also helped to get the assessment and peer-review departments up and running, as well as reviewing articles needing quality and importance ratings, or tagging article talk pages with the Wikiproject template where necessary.
  2. It says on your user page that you are Muslim. How does this affect your work within WP Islam?
    In Islam, we are told to seek knowledge. As a Muslim and as a human being, imparting knowledge to others is something I find extremely gratifying. Wikipedia's aim of collecting the sum total of human knowledge is something I appreciate a lot. So I try to ensure that my work is genuinely educational, beneficial and will increase readers' knowledge and understanding of the subject. Helping the collaborative effort over at Wikiproject:Islam means that this shared aim of providing information, spreading knowledge, improving article quality and so on can be realised more efficiently.
    While you may find people wanting to spread views of a particular skew (pro-Muslim, anti-Muslim, etc.), I feel that the most appropriate approach is simply to present the facts in an objective and impartial manner. Let people read the facts and make their own judgement, but don't skew the way in which you present it. Now, more than ever, people are looking for objective sources about Islam and Islamic topics, and I believe it's our responsibility as editors that we make Islam-related articles as scholarly, professional and clinical as possible.
  3. What about your knowledge of the Arabic and Urdu languages? Do you ever use them to read non-English sources or to translate your work?
    To date I haven't relied upon it much. I believe that a feature of good citation is that it should be easily verifiable, so that a person can check for themselves how the source has been represented without too much difficulty or having to translate texts for themselves. For this reason, the sources I use in articles are usually written in English. One issue that often crops up is to what extent non-Western scholarship should be used and in what way. Other institutions around the world (i.e. Al-Azhar University, University of Madinah) maintain their own standards of scholarship and have curricula which are quite different from what you get in the West. While I'm aware that there's a vast amount of quality material within Arab-Islamic scholarship, the key points often feature in Western scholarship as well as they rely upon the former to varying degrees. I'm not exactly fluent in either language anyway, and it's important to be absolutely precise in the way you represent a source. I think some of my work has been translated to other wikis, but it isn't something I've ever tried myself.
  4. During the FAC for Battle of Badr, Palm dogg said, "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to write a good NPOV article on Islam." Do you agree with his sentiments?
    To a degree, yes. Islam and Islam-related issues have increasingly become topics of discussion, analysis, and debate on a global scale. So you'll have a lot of passionate opinions of all flavours and perspectives, and I'm sure this is the case when it comes to other contentious issues on Wikipedia. Not only will many sources be strongly opinionated, but it's sometimes the case that editors will be as well. There will be often be intense disputes on content, style and presentation - even about things which on other articles may be no-brainers. I think anybody who regularly edits Islam-related articles knows just how stressful and frustrating it can be.
    But writing a good article isn't impossible. You may not get far if someone opposes your every mouse-click, but it's important to deal with things in a steady and patient manner, utilising all methods of dispute resolution. Stick to the core content policies, ensure material is balanced and of good quality, get more eyes on the issue, and don't be afraid to reconsider your arguments or make changes to what you propose. So long as your interest is in dispassionately representing the academic sources, and paying close attention to article balance, then you're on the right tracks. Ultimately, while Islam related articles present a different set of challenges, the experience of getting a low-quality contentious piece to something befitting an encyclopaedia can feel highly rewarding. And I say that as someone who has been in a fair few disputes!
  5. WikiProject Islam has the somewhat rare distinction of having its central article (Islam) at the Featured Article level. Its successful FAC was a whopping 53 kilobytes long with comments from more than 15 editors. What was it like working on this highly viewed and highly contentious article?
    Getting a high-traffic article like this up to Featured Article status requires a good deal of collaboration, and requires a lot of talk page discussion. I'm glad I was able to work alongside User:Aminz and User:Merzbow, two highly competent editors, in making substantive changes to the article. We all had to be flexible and open-minded, open to suggestion, willing to compromise where necessary. This was especially the case when trying to work on potentially divisive areas within the article. The level of scrutiny we applied to the article with regards to balance and neutrality was something I'll always remember. There were countless discussions about the respective weight we would try to give to different themes within the article. Even in writing a single paragraph, we had to ensure the balance was just right: not too many or too few sentences about that specific sub-topic. The risk was that there was so much to talk about and so many different aspects that we would end up bloating the article. At one point at the article size was around the 130k mark, even though all of the content was brief, concisely written and relevant. We had to make some tough decisions and it meant removing some aspects, merging others, or summarising several paragraphs into a few sentences. So a lot of our work was about paying attention to detail, as we knew how rigorous the FAC process could be. Looking back on that experience, it's one I enjoyed thoroughly even though there were often quite high-pressure situations and disputes. As one would expect, disruption attempts increased as the article was approaching its scheduled date to feature on the main page. So I would say that getting an important and highly viewed article like Islam up to FA status is one thing, but keeping it there in the weeks, months and years afterwards is also a challenge in itself. And I intend to help Wikiproject:Islam to get other core Islam-related articles up to the same standard as well.
  6. Are there any major articles in particular that you or the other project members plan on improving in the near future?
    There's quite a few important articles that need some attention. Qur'an, God in Islam, Fiqh and Sharia are most probably the highest priority articles needing improvement, and it would be great if we could get them to GA status and above. Muslim history and associated daughter articles spring to mind as well. To be honest, while WP Islam has produced some good work in the past, there's still plenty to be done on most articles to bring them up to a respectable standard. But the ones I've mentioned are certainly at the top of the to-do list.
  7. WP Islam has another unusual feature: in addition to its lengthy participant list, it also has an Islamic experts list designed to help Wikipedians find answers for specific Islam-related questions. Can you tell us a little about this page?
    There's lots of sub-topics when it comes to Islam articles, and it's often the case that people have their own specific areas of interest or focus where they happen to be more experienced. The list allows editors to identify these areas for the convenience of non-project editors, who might be seeking assistance for an article they're working on. For example, if someone's writing about the Mongol invasions, they might be interested in finding editors who are familiar with Muslim history. So it ultimately helps project members put their skills to better use. Putting yourself on the list is optional, and another way to find assistance is simply to post on the project talk page.
  8. In closing, how can those editors with little knowledge of Islam or who shy away from heavy disputes help out with the project?
    It's not necessary to know much about a subject to be intimately involved in the editorial process. A lot of Islam-related articles require copyediting to assist readability and clarity. An article might cover all the important points, but it cannot become great until the style and presentation is improved. The project also focuses on article assessment and rating, categories, adding project tags to talk pages, updating to-do tasks, helping out with standardising citations, maintaining the recently-featured Portal:Islam, and so on. Obtaining, producing or taking pictures and adding them to the Commons so that they can be used in Islam-related articles is also extremely useful. Thus you don't have to be knowledgeable about Islam or spend hours in dispute resolution in order to be involved and make a difference. Even then, a lot of the basic knowledge about Islam is easily available in some of the introductory academic texts available on websites like Google Books, and often it's the very basic information that's actually missing from articles. So involvement is possible on all levels, and we're always happy for members to simply do what they're comfortable with, as much or as little as that might entail! It's a project open to everyone, and the more people involved in improving Islam-related articles, the better!

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Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Hermione1980 and §hep

The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.

Centralized discussions

A Request for bot approval was opened by Neurolysis on 14 February requesting that his bot NeuRobot be granted approval to automatically resize non-free images that are too large. Per the Non-free content criteria an oversize non-free image should be replaced with a smaller version to comply with Wikipedia's non-free content policy and United States copyright law. According to Wikipedia's policy for non-free content, the amount of copyrighted work used under fair use should be as little as possible. In particular, non-free media on Wikipedia should not be usable as substitutes for the original work. This bot will resize images in Category:Non-free image size reduction request to 400px on their longest side. The bot will only modify PNGs and JPG/JPEGs using PS, OptiPNG, and ADVPNG. As the request has been met with general approval, the bot is approved for a 1 week trial or 500 image modifications, whichever comes first.
Questions were raised at WP:NOT regarding whether or not Wikipedia is a bureaucracy. Aseld started the conversation by stating:

We have a codified system of formal guidelines and a clear authoritarian heirachy, [sic] as well as formal dispute resolution processes. We even have bureaucrats!

The policy section WP:BURO was tagged with {{Policycontroversy}} while discussions continue. Current comments have shown a consensus that having some bureaucratic processes does not make Wikipedia a bureaucracy.
Following multiple discussions beginning in October 2008 Wikipedia:Build the web was merged and redirected to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links). After the move was made it was disputed by a few editors who are currently outweighed by others who agree with the move. A set of proposed actions was laid out as a compromise that would:
  1. Restore WP:Build the web as a historical page
  2. Place a prominent message on that page directing people to the current guideline on that subject, which is this page [MOSLINK]
  3. Rename this page [MOSLINK to] Wikipedia:Linking
The actions have been met with general objection from the parties involved.
A proposal has been made to allow bureaucrats the ability to desysop accounts. According to the proposal:

Currently, all desysoppings are carried out by members of the Steward user group. Questions have been raised whether or not "outsourcing" all of our desysoppings to Meta, rather than keeping them in en.wikipedia, is such a good idea.

Support for the proposal outweighs the opposition by approximately a 2:1 margin, with WilyD noting, "From the 'this is a wiki' argument - what can be done should be able to be undone." Opponents say that such a move would create a mess in the desysopping logs, since some desysoppings would take place locally on the English Wikipedia, and some would still be done by stewards on Meta. Additionally, opponents expressed a desire for a "second set of eyes" (namely, that of an uninvolved steward) on potentially controversial desysoppings.
A meeting was held on IRC channel #wikipedia-1.0 on 21 February at 1900h UTC to discuss a good mechanism for getting WikiProjects engaged in A-Class peer review; how to clarify the difference between community reviews from WikiProject reviews; whether it should be allowed for an article to be both A and FA, or A and GA, or B and GA. After conclusions they were to discuss if the assessment team should try out the proposed courses of action, should they abandon A-Class reviews, or whether they should leave community and WikiProject reviews merged together as they are now. The discussion was to last no longer than 2100h UTC, setting another date to meet if they had not yet come to a consensus. The discussion resulted in consensus that GA and FA assessments should be separated from the rest on WikiProject banners (an incremental step towards the goal of having separate scales for project-wide and site-wide assessments), so that, for example, Dungeons & Dragons would be a Featured A-Class article. Secondly, there is going to be a work group dedicated to better organization between WikiProjects, with its first goal being to help coordinate A-Class reviews and assessments for each interested project. A summary is available here and the complete discussion has been archived here.

Proposals

Close paraphrasing is currently an essay, but Dcoetzee proposed making it a guideline. The page is currently linked on {{Close paraphrase}}, and the idea is to make it more enforceable. Little discussion has taken place, but the main issue that opponents of the proposal have pointed out is that the page, as it is written, is too ambiguous to be a guideline.
It was proposed to standardize the italicization of titles through parameters in infoboxes. This is being done at some pages (example), and it was argued that its use should be encouraged in such cases as film and book titles. The discussion was archived before reaching a clear consensus, though there was significant support for the proposal.
On 16 February, a proposal was brought to the technical village pump regarding the removal of the LyricWiki interwiki link. It was brought to attention that the correct forum to discuss the removal was Meta. A request was filed at Meta on 30 December to remove the interwiki link. It has been assumed that the interwiki will be removed when the global Interwiki map is updated.
A draft proposal has been setup to replace the current system of selecting featured articles (the system at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, better known as WP:FAC) with a new system based around the assessment work already done by WikiProjects. The proposal has eight points stating:
  1. Every three months, the WikiProjects should be invited to submit proposals for articles to be featured on the Main Page.
  2. The proposals should be made publicly, and at least one month before any of the proposed articles actually appears. To give an example, proposals for articles to appear on the Main Page between 1 July and 30 September should be made by 23:59 UTC 31 May at the latest.
  3. An article which has already appeared on the Main Page may not be proposed. However, WikiProjects may keep the same Proposed Article through several quarters, if they so wish and if it has not yet appeared on the Main Page.
  4. WikiProjects are invited to bear in mind the existing featured article criteria when proposing articles. However, the overriding criterion in their choice should be that the article represents the best work in their field.
  5. The proposals should be made on a dedicated page, for example Wikipedia:Proposed featured articles/2009, 3rd quarter. WikiProjects could include a brief gloss with the article name, to indicate (for example) that a given article is particularly appropriate for a given day.
  6. The system should aim to have 150–200 Proposed Articles per quarter, from fields which reflect the general distribution of articles on English Wikipedia. In the case of the smaller WikiProjects, who may not have an article they feel is good enough to represent their subject area on the Main Page, they are still invited to have a "Best Article" system with which they can advertise the article(s) which they think are their best, and so not leave any decision or improvement until the last minute.
  7. Editors who feel that an article is "not good enough" to appear on the Main Page are strongly invited to improve it, while respecting the work and opinions of other editors.
  8. The article which appears on the Main Page on any given day will be chosen by WP:TFA, as occurs at present.
Current discussions involve the ability of WikiProjects to be trusted to do this work, especially the smaller ones. As the proposal is a draft a final Rfc has not yet been opened.
A proposition to give BAG members the technical ability to grant and revoke bot flags is currently underway. While there is almost no support for the proposal, it has been stated that users would agree to give BAG members the ability to remove bot flags. Many of the opposers add to their comments that this proposal is "a solution looking for a problem". As it stands only bureaucrats who have the technical ability to flag and deflag bots.

Requests for comment

An Rfc was opened to decide if sports infoboxes should use team colors, and if used, whether those colors should conform to WP:Color. There is general opposition to removing team colors from infoboxes and marginally equal support for making the colors compliant to WP:COLOR. The request arose from concerns that the use of colors could possibly cause accessibility problems.
It has been proposed to make Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia a policy or guideline. The proposed text states that:

While articles should not endorse any perspective, fringe or orthodox, the perspective of a consensus of experts will be presented most prominently.

Current comments have been to mark the proposal as an essay; citing that it contradicts WP:NPOV or that it is a simplified version of WP:UNDUE. Proponents of the proposal state that it is supplementary to or parallels NPOV and would finally state that Wikipedia is a serious encyclopedia.

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SPV

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: S@bre (nom) and Amalthea (nom).

Bots

Six bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Addbot (task request), LivingBot (task request), Addbot (task request), Thehelpfulbot (task request), Thehelpfulbot (task request) and anybot (task request).

Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status this week: Ealdred (archbishop) (nom), These Are the Voyages... (nom), Nico Ditch (nom), William McGregor (nom), John Whittle (nom), Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3 (nom), Murray Maxwell (nom), Henry Cornelius Burnett (nom), Peter Jones (missionary) (nom), 2008 ACC Championship Game (nom), SS Kroonland (nom), Ozzie Smith (nom), USS Connecticut (BB-18) (nom), Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (nom), Radcliffe, Greater Manchester (nom), 2008 Humanitarian Bowl (nom) and Dreadnought (nom).

Fourteen lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of awards and nominations received by Amy Winehouse (nom), List of FIFA World Cup finals (nom), Hughes Medal (nom), List of Baltimore Orioles Opening Day starting pitchers (nom), Scheduled Monuments in Greater Manchester (nom), List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Kriegsmarine (nom), Timeline of the 1972 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), List of Memphis Grizzlies head coaches (nom), List of number-one singles from the 2000s (UK) (nom), BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award (nom), List of Philadelphia Phillies Opening Day starting pitchers (nom), Spike Lee filmography (nom), List of valkyrie names in Norse mythology (nom) and Triple Gold Club (nom).

Four topics were promoted to featured status this week: Halo media (nom), Yamato class battleships (nom), Nine Inch Nails (nom) and Iowa class battleships (nom).

One portal was promoted to featured status this week: Portal:Islam (nom).

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Order of the Thistle, Third Battle of Kharkov, Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, University of California, Riverside, USS Connecticut and Plutonium.

Three articles were delisted this week: Automatic number plate recognition (nom), Zambezi (nom) and Nellie Kim (nom).

One list was delisted this week: Golden Globe Award for Best Director (nom).

No topics were delisted this week.

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Harriet Tubman, Vaccine controversy, Reduviidae, The Taming of the Shrew, Ramallah woman, Discovery of the Land.

Three media files were featured this week:

Faust - "O merveille! ... A moi les plaisirs"(nom)
First Inaugural address of Ronald Reagan(nom)
Otello - Sì, pel ciel marmoreo giuro!(nom)

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

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



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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Aude

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that some changes described here have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.3 (b4aac1f), 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.

This past week, the developers rolled out an update of MediaWiki to r47457. A number of new features and bug fixes are now live. [1]

Fixed bugs

  • If an admin resubmits a block request without changing the block settings, a new block log entry will now not be added if the block settings are actually not changed. (r47604, bug 16436)
  • Special pages that are updated using the updateSpecialPages.php script as a cron job were not working since early February. The code has been fixed and the scripts were manually run on the small wikis to make sure things have been fixed properly. (bug 17534)
  • When moving a page over a redirect, the redirect from the old title to the new page was not working. This problem has been resolved. (r46424, bug 17300)

New features

  • The __NONEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word has been added so that the new section link can be hidden on a page-by-page basis. (r47522, bug 16335)

Other news

  • The Wikimedia servers were down from 00:50 to 01:50 UTC on February 21, due to a failed fileserver which triggered additional failures. Changes have since been made so that the servers are not as dependent on the fileservers. [2]
  • A new gateway for mobile users of Wikipedia has been launched and is in testing. Some JavaScript code has been added to the English Wikipedia, to allow browser detection for users on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android-based device, giving them the link to the new mobile site. The interface on the new mobile site has been cleaned up substantially, with sections that can be expanded and collapsed. [3]
  • The AbuseFilter extension is now enabled on mediawiki.org, allowing wider testing of the extension.

Ongoing news

SPV

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By seresin

The results of the Checkuser and Oversight elections were announced.

The Arbitration Committee opened one case and closed none, leaving six open.

Evidence phase

  • Prem Rawat 2: A case concerning the continued behavioral problems on the pages about Prem Rawat, and related articles. A previous case, Prem Rawat, was closed in May of last year.
  • SemBubenny: A case about the communication behavior of SemBubenny (formerly Mikkalai), and his use of administrator tools in disputed deletions.
  • Ayn Rand: A case about editorial behavior, such as alleged POV-pushing and bad faith, in relation to the Ayn Rand article. The Arbitration Committee accepted the case as they found that all other avenues of dispute resolution had failed to resolve 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.
  • Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS.

Motion to close

  • Fringe science: A case initially filed about the behavior of ScienceApologist, but opened to look at editing in the entire area of fringe science, and the behavior of editors who are involved in the area of dispute. In a proposed decision now being voted on by arbitrators, Coren has proposed the creation of a new type of arbitration remedy, "supervised editing", which an editor may be placed under when he or she does not "engage other editors or the editorial process appropriately". A designated supervisor would be permitted to revert or refactor the edits of the other editor at his or her discretion, ban the editor from articles, or require that the editor propose any substantial content edits to the supervisor, who will make the edits on his behalf. After the period of supervision terminates, the supervisor will submit a report to the committee who will revise the remedy that placed the editor under supervision. Other remedies include placing ScienceApologist under such supervision, restricting Martinphi from editing policy and guideline pages, admonishing Pcarbonn, and issuing general warnings to behave and seek mediation. Arbitrator voting is in progress.

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