User talk:Redalert2fan/Archive 2

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 09:23, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

• News and notes: Debates on Meta sparking along—grants, new entities, and conflicts of interest
  As part of its new focus on core responsibilities, the Wikimedia Foundation is reforming its grant schemes so that they are more accessible to individual volunteers. The community is invited to look at proposals for a new scheme—for now called Individual engagement grants (IEGs)—which is due to kick off on January 15. On Meta, the community is once again debating the two new offline participation models—user groups (open membership groups designed to be easy to form) and thematic organizations (incorporated non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work on a specific theme within or across countries). In a consultation process on Meta that will last until January 15, the community will be discussing WMF proposals for a new guideline on conflicts of interests concerning Wikimedia resources. The draft covers COI issues for both volunteers and organizations across the movement.

• WikiProject report: A Song of Ice and Fire
  This week, we spent some time with WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire, which focuses on the eponymous series of high fantasy literature, the television series Game of Thrones, and related works by George R. R. Martin. The project was started in July 2006 and has grown to include 11 Good Articles maintained by a small yet enthusiastic band of editors.

• Featured content: Battlecruiser operational
  Seven articles and two lists were promoted to 'featured' status this week, including List of battlecruisers. The article covers all of the battlecruisers—which were a type of warship similar in size to a battleship but with several defining characteristics—ever planned or constructed. The last British battlecruiser built, HMS Hood, is pictured at right.

• Technology report: Efforts to "normalise" Toolserver relations stepped up
  Efforts were stepped up this week to sow a feeling of trust between the major parties with an interest in the future of the Toolserver. The tool- and bot-hosting server – more accurately servers – are currently operated by German chapter, Wikimedia Germany, with assistance from the Foundation and numerous volunteers, including long-time system administrator Daniel Baur (more commonly known by his pseudonym DaB). However, those parties have more recently failed to see eye-to-eye on the trajectory for the Toolserver, which is scheduled to be replaced by Wikimedia Labs in late 2013, with increasing concern about the tone of discussions.

• From the editor: Wikipedia, our Colosseum
  In the impersonal, detached Colosseum that is Wikipedia, people find it much easier to put their thumbs down. As such, many people active in the Wikimedia movement have witnessed a precipitous decline in civil discourse. This is far from a new trend, yet many people would agree that it all seemed somehow worse in 2012.

• In the media: Is the Wikimedia movement too 'cash rich'?
  A recent, poorly researched and poorly written story in the Register highlighted the perceived "cash rich" status of the Wikimedia movement. ... The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are multiple links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party non-democratic state.

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser a success; Czech parliament releases photographs to chapter
  On 27 December the Wikimedia Foundation announced the conclusion of their ninth annual fundraiser, which attracted more than 1.2 million donors. The appeal reached its goal of US$25 million, even though fundraising banners ran for only nine days.

• Technology report: Looking back on a year of incremental changes
  In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.

• Discussion report: Image policy and guidelines; resysopping policy
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...

• Interview: Interview with Brion Vibber, the WMF's first employee
  Brion Vibber has been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 11 years and was the first person officially hired to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. He was instrumental in early development of the MediaWiki software and is now the lead software architect for the foundation's mobile development team.

• Featured content: Whoa Nelly! Featured content in review
  At the beginning of the year, we began a series of interviews with editors who have worked hard to combat systemic bias through the creation of featured content; although we haven't seen six installments yet, we've also had some delightful interviews with people who write articles on some of our most core topics. Now, as we close the year, I would like to present some of my own musings on the state of featured content—especially as it pertains to systemic bias and core topics.

• WikiProject report: New Year, New York
  This week, we're celebrating the New Year from Times Square by interviewing WikiProject New York City. Since December 2004, WikiProject NYC has had the difficult task of maintaining articles about the largest city in the United States, many of which are also among the the most viewed articles on Wikipedia. The project is home to 22 Featured Articles, 7 Featured Lists, 32 pieces of Featured Media, and a lengthy list of Did You Know? entries.

• Recent research: Wikipedia and Sandy Hook; SOPA blackout reexamined
  Northeastern University researcher Brian Keegan analyzed the gathering of hundreds of Wikipedians to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. ... A First Monday article reviews several aspects of the Wikipedia participation in the 18 January 2012, protests against SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA. The paper focuses on the question of legitimacy, looking at how the Wikipedia community arrived at the decision to participate in those protests.

• Op-ed: Meta, where innovative ideas die
  Meta is the wiki that has coordinated a wide range of cross-project Wikimedia activities, such as the activities of stewards, the archiving of chapter reports, and WMF trustee elections. The project has long been an out-of-the-way corner for technocratic working groups, unaccountable mandarins, and in-house bureaucratic proceedings. Largely ignored by the editing communities of projects such as Wikipedia and organizations that serve them, Meta has evolved into a huge and relatively disorganized repository, where the few archivists running it also happen to be the main authors of some of its key documents. While Meta is well-designed for supporting the librarians and mandarins who stride along its corridors, visitors tend to find the site impenetrable—or so many people have argued over the past decade. This impenetrability runs counter to Meta's increasingly central role in the Wikimedia movement.

• WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Episode IV: A New Year
  The dawning of a new year offers both a fresh slate and an opportunity to revisit our previous adventures. 2012 marked the fifth anniversary of the WikiProject Report and was the column's most productive year with 52 articles published. In addition to sharing the experiences of Wikipedia's many active projects, we expanded our scope to highlight unique projects from other languages of Wikipedia, and tracked down all of the former editors-in-chief of the Signpost for an introspective interview ... While last year's "Summer Sports Series" may have drawn yawns from some readers, a special report on "Neglected Geography" elicited more comments than any previous issue of the Report. Following in the footsteps of our past three recaps, we'll spend this week looking back at the trials and tribulations of the WikiProjects we encountered in 2012. Where are they now?

• News and notes: 2012—the big year
  The past 12 months have seen a multitude of issues and events in the Wikimedia foundation, the movement at large, and the English Wikipedia. The movement, now in its second decade, is growing apace in its international reach, cultural and linguistic diversity, technical development, and financial complexity; and many factors have combined to produce what has in many ways been the biggest, most dynamic year in the movement's history. Looking back at 2012, we faced a difficult task in doing justice to all of the notable events in a single article; so the Signpost has selected just a few examples from outside the anglosphere, from the English Wikipedia, and from the Wikimedia Foundation, rather than attempting to cover every detail that happened.

• Featured content: Featured content in review
  Over the past year, 963 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured article candidates (FAC), which promoted an average of 31 articles a month. This was followed by featured picture candidates (FPC; 28 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 20 a month). Featured topic and featured portal candidates remained sluggish, each promoting fewer than 20 items over the year.

• Technology report: Looking ahead to 2013
  Following on from last week's reflections on 2012, this week the Technology report looks ahead to 2013, a year that will almost certainly be dominated by the juggernauts of Wikidata, Lua and the Visual Editor.

• Investigative report: Ship ahoy! New travel site finally afloat
  After six years without creating a new class of content projects, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has finally expanded into a new area: travel. Wikivoyage was formally launched—though without a traditional ship's christening—on 15 January, having started as a beta trial on 10 November. Wikivoyage has been taken under the WMF's umbrella on the argument that information resources that help with travel are educational and therefore within the scope of the foundation's mission.g

• News and notes: Launch of annual picture competition, new grant scheme
  On January 16, voting for the first round of the 2012 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest will begin. Wikimedia editors with 75 edits or one project are eligible to vote to select their favorite image featured in 2012. ... On January 15, the foundation launched its latest grant scheme, called Individual Engagement Grants (IEG).

• WikiProject report: Reach for the Stars: WikiProject Astronomy
  This week, we set off for the final frontier with WikiProject Astronomy. The project was started in August 2006 using the now-defunct WikiProject Space as inspiration. WikiProject Astronomy is home to 101 pieces of Featured material and 148 Good Articles maintained by a band of 186 members. The project maintains a portal, works on an assortment of vital astronomy articles, and provides resources for editors adding or requesting astronomy images.

• Discussion report: Flag Manual of Style; accessibility and equality
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• Special report: Loss of an Internet genius
  Comforting those grieving after the loss of a loved one is an impossible task. How then, can an entire community be comforted? The Internet struggled to answer that question this week after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a celebrated free-culture activist, programmer, and Wikipedian at the age of 26.

• Featured content: Featured articles: Quality of reviews, quality of writing in 2012
  Continuing our recap of the featured content promoted in 2012, this week the Signpost interviewed three editors, asking them about featured articles which stuck out in their minds. Two, Ian Rose and Graham Colm, are current featured article candidates (FAC) delegates, while Brian Boulton is an active featured article writer and reviewer.

• Arbitration report: First arbitration case in almost six months
  The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.

• Technology report: Intermittent outages planned, first Wikidata client deployment
  The Wikidata client extension was successfully deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia on 14 January, its team reports. The interwiki language links can now come from wikidata.org, though "manual" interwiki links remain functional, overriding those from the central repository.

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 13:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

• News and notes: Requests for adminship reform moves forward
  The English Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process has entered another cycle of proposed reforms. Over the last three weeks, various proposals, ranging from as large as a transition to a representative democracy to as small as a required edit count and service length, have been debated on the RfA talk page. The total number of new administrators for 2012 was just 28, barely more than half of 2011's total and less than a quarter of 2009's total. The total number of unsuccessful RfAs has fallen as well. These declining numbers, which were described in what would now be considered a successful year (2010) as an emerging "wikigeneration gulf", have been coupled with a sharp decline in the number of active administrators since February 2008 (1,021), reaching a low of 653 in November 2012.

• WikiProject report: Say What? — WikiProject Linguistics
  This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Linguistics. Started in January 2004, the project has grown to include 7 Featured Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 2 A-class Articles, and 15 Good Articles maintained by 43 members. The project's members keep an eye on several watchlists, maintain the linguistics category, and continue to build a collection of Did You Know? entries. The project is home to six task forces and works with WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Writing Systems.

• Featured content: Wazzup, G? Delegates and featured topics in review
  This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured topics. We interviewed Grapple X and GamerPro64, who are delegates at the featured topic candidates.

• Arbitration report: Doncram case continues
  The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.

• Technology report: Data centre switchover a tentative success
  On 22 January, WMF staff and contractors switched incoming, non-cached requests (including edits) to the Foundation's newer data centre in Ashburn, Virginia, making it responsible for handling almost all regular traffic. For the first time since 2004, virtually no traffic will be handled by the WMF's other facility in Tampa, Florida.

• In the media: Hoaxes draw media attention
  On New Year's Day, the Daily Dot reported that a "massive Wikipedia hoax" had been exposed after more than five years. The article on the Bicholim conflict had been listed as a "Good Article" for the past half-decade, yet turned out to be an ingenious hoax. Created in July 2007 by User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a, the meticulously detailed piece was approved as a GA in October 2007. A subsequent submission for FA was unsuccessful, but failed to discover that the article's key sources were made up. While the User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a account then stopped editing, the hoax remained listed as a Good Article for five years, receiving in the region of 150 to 250 page views a month in 2012. It was finally nominated for deletion on 29 December 2012 by ShelfSkewed—who had discovered the hoax while doing work on Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs—and deleted the same day.

• Recent research: Lessons from the research literature on open collaboration; clicks on featured articles; credibility heuristics
  A special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist is devoted to "open collaboration".

• WikiProject report: Checkmate! — WikiProject Chess
  When we challenged the masters of WikiProject Chess to an interview, Sjakkalle answered our call. WikiProject Chess dates back to December 2003 and has grown to include 4 Featured Articles and 15 Good Articles maintained by over 100 members. The project typically operates independently of other WikiProjects, although the project would theoretically be a child of WikiProject Board and Table Games (interviewed in 2011). WikiProject Chess provides a collection of resources, seeks missing photographs of chess players, and helps determine ways that Wikipedia's coverage of chess can be expanded.

• Discussion report: Administrator conduct and requests
  New discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• News and notes: Khan Academy's Smarthistory and Wikipedia collaborate
  To many Wikimedians, the Khan Academy would seem like a close cousin: the academy is a non-profit educational website and a development of the massive open online course concept that has delivered over 227 million lessons in 22 different languages. Its mission is to give "a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere." This complements Wikipedia's stated goal to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge", then go and create that world. It should come as no surprise, then, that the highly successful GLAM-Wiki (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) initiative has partnered with the Khan Academy's Smarthistory project to further both its and Wikipedia's goals.

• Featured content: Listing off progress from 2012
  This week, the Signpost featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured lists. We interviewed FLC directors Giants2008 and The Rambling Man as well as active reviewer and writer PresN.

• Arbitration report: Doncram continues
  The Doncram case has continued into its third week.

• Technology report: Developers get ready for FOSDEM amid caching problems
  As reported in last week's "Technology Report", the WMF's data centre in Ashburn, Virginia took over responsibility for almost all of the remaining functions that had previously been handled by their old facility in Tampa, Florida on 22 January. The Signpost reported then that few problems had arisen since handover. Unfortunately that was not to remain the case, with reports of caching problems (which typically only affect anonymous users) starting to come in.

• Special report: Examining the popularity of Wikipedia articles
  On February 12, 2012, news of Whitney Houston's death brought 425 hits per second to her Wikipedia article, the highest peak traffic on any article since at least January 2010. It is broadly known that Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website on the Internet, but the English Wikipedia now has over 4 million articles and 29 million total pages. Much less attention has been given to traffic patterns and trends in content viewed.

• News and notes: Article Feedback Tool faces community resistance
  Article feedback, at least through talk pages, has been a part of Wikipedia since its inception in 2001. The use of these pages, though, has typically been limited to experienced editors who know how to use them.

• WikiProject report: Land of the Midnight Sun
  This week, we took a trip to WikiProject Norway. Started in February 2005, WikiProject Norway has become the home for almost 34,000 articles about the world's best place to live, including 16 Featured Articles, 19 Featured Lists, and nearly 250 Good Articles. The project works on a to do list, maintains a categorization system, watches article alerts, and serves as a discussion forum.

• Featured content: Portal people on potent potables and portable potholes
  This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured portals, a small yet active part of the project. We interviewed FPOC directors Cirt and OhanaUnited.

• In the media: Star Trek Into Pedantry
  On 30 January 2013, Kevin Morris in the Daily Dot summarised the bitter debates in Wikipedia around capitalisation or non-capitalisation of the word "into" in the title of the upcoming Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness.

• Technology report: Wikidata team targets English Wikipedia deployment
  Following the deployment of the Wikidata client to the Hungarian Wikipedia last month, the client was also deployed to the Italian and Hebrew Wikipedias on Wednesday. The next target for the client, which automatically provides phase 1 functionality, is the English Wikipedia, with a deployment date of 11 February already set.

• Op-ed: An article is a construct – hoaxes and Wikipedia
  Wikipedia has a long, daresay storied history with hoaxes; our internal list documents 198 of the largest ones we have caught as of 4 January 2013. Why?

• Featured content: A lousy week
  Six articles, one list, and fourteen pictures were promoted to "featured" states this week on the English Wikipedia.

• WikiProject report: Just the Facts
  This week, we got the details on WikiProject Infoboxes.

• In the media: Wikipedia mirroring life in island ownership dispute
  Foreign Policy has published a report on editing of the Wikipedia articles on the Senkaku Islands and Senkaku Islands dispute. The uninhabited islands are under the control of Japan, but China and Taiwan are asserting rival territorial claims. Tensions have risen of late—and not just in the waters surrounding the actual islands.

• News and notes: UK chapter governance review marks the end of a controversial year
  Wikimedia UK, the non-profit organization devoted to furthering the goals of the Wikimedia movement in the United Kingdom, has published the findings of a governance review conducted by Compass Partnership.

• Discussion report: WebCite proposal
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• Technology report: Wikidata client rollout stutters
  The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week.

• WikiProject report: Thank you for flying WikiProject Airlines
  This week, we put our life in the hands of WikiProject Airlines. Starting in July 2005, the project has improved articles relating to airline companies, alliances, destination lists, and travel benefit programs. WikiProject Airlines has accumulated over 4,000 pages, including 4 Featured Articles and 26 Good Articles.

• Technology report: Better templates and 3D buildings
  As of time of writing, twenty wikis (including the English, French and Hungarian Wikipedias) are in the process of getting access to the Lua scripting language, an optional substitute for the clunky template code that exists at present.

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation declares 'victory' in Wikivoyage lawsuit
  On February 15, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) declared 'victory' in its counter-lawsuit against Internet Brands (IB), the owner of Wikitravel and the operator of several online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The lawsuit clears the last remaining hurdles for the WMF's new travel guide project, Wikivoyage.

• In the media: Sue Gardner interviewed by the Australian press
  Sue Gardner's visit to Australia sparked a number of interviews in the Australian press. An interview published in the Daily Telegraph on 12 February 2013, titled "Data plans 'unnerving': Wikipedia boss", saw Gardner comment on Australian plans to store personal internet and telephone data. The planned measure, intended to assist crime prevention, would involve internet service providers and mobile phone firms storing customer usage data for up to two years.

• Featured content: Featured content gets schooled
  Two articles, nine lists, and thirteen pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 07:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

• In the media: Ex-WMF trustee creates "Wikipedia Corporate Index" for PR agency
  On 13 February 2013, PR Report, the German sister publication of PR Week, published an article announcing that PR agency Fleishman-Hillard was offering a new analysis tool enabling companies to assess their articles in the German-language Wikipedia: the Wikipedia Corporate Index (WCI).

• Recent research: Wikipedia not so novel after all, except to UK university lecturers
  "Wikipedia and Encyclopedic Production" by Jeff Loveland (a historian of encyclopedias) and Joseph Reagle situates Wikipedia within the context of encyclopedic production historically, arguing that the features that many claim to be unique about Wikipedia actually have roots in encyclopedias of the past.

• News and notes: "Very lucky" Picture of the Year
  The Wikimedia Commons 2012 Picture of the Year contest has ended, with the winner being Pair of Merops apiaster feeding, taken by Pierre Dalous. The picture shows a pair of European Bee-eaters in a mating ritual—the male bird (right) has tossed the wasp into the air, and he will eventually offer it to the female (left).

• Discussion report: Wikivoyage links; overcategorization
  Current discussions include...

• Featured content: Blue birds be bouncin'
  Six articles, three lists, and twelve images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this month.

• WikiProject report: How to measure a WikiProject's workload
  How can we measure the challenges facing a project or determine a WikiProject's productivity? Several prominent projects have been doing it for years: WikiWork.

• Technology report: Wikidata development to be continued indefinitely
  Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) this week committed itself to funding the Wikidata development team, ending fears that phase three would be abandoned.

• Op-ed: We must do more to turn readers into editors
  Recently I was having a casual conversation with a friend, and he mentioned that he spent too many hours a day playing video games. I responded with a comment that I, too, spent way too much time on an activity of my own – Wikipedia. In an attempt to reply with a relevant remark, he offered something along the lines of: "So have you ever written anything?" After a second, I quickly answered yes, but I was still in shock over his question. It seemed to be rooted in a belief on his part that using Wikipedia meant just reading the articles, and that editing was something that someone, hypothetically, might do, but not really more likely than randomly counting to 7,744.

• News and notes: Outing of editor causes firestorm
  "WP:OUTING", the normally little-noticed policy corner of the English Wikipedia that governs the release of editors' personal information, has suddenly been brought to wider attention after long-term contributor and featured article writer Cla68 was indefinitely blocked last week. This snowballed into several other blocks, a desysopping by ArbCom, and a request for arbitration.

• Featured content: Slow week for featured content
  Three articles, six lists, and three pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including the article on "Laura Secord", who was a Canadian heroine of the War of 1812 best known for warning the British of an impending American attack.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Television Stations
  This week, we tuned to WikiProject Television Stations, a project that dates back to March 2004. WikiProject Television Stations primarily focuses on local stations, national networks, television markets, and other topics related to television channels in North America, the Caribbean, and some Pacific countries. The project has a fair bit of work ahead of them with over 4,000 unassessed articles and only one Good Article out of 626 assessed articles, giving the project a relative WikiWork rating of 5.262.

• From the editor: Signpost–Wikizine merger
  I am pleased to announce that the Signpost and Wikizine have reached an in-principle agreement that will see Wikizine published as a special Signpost section at the beginning of each month.

• News and notes: Finance committee updates
  During March, three of the Wikimedia Foundation's grantmaking schemes on Meta will reach important crossroads, which will shape how both the editing communities and Wikimedia institutions handle the distribution of donors' money across the movement.

• Featured content: Batman, three birds and a Mercedes
  Twelve articles, five lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including an image of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, a front-engine, 2-seat luxury grand tourer automobile developed by Mercedes-AMG.

• Arbitration report: Doncram case closes; arbitrator resigns
  There are three open cases, and a final decision has been given in the Doncram case.

• WikiProject report: Setting a precedent
  This week, we spent some time with WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases.

• Technology report: Article Feedback reversal
  The WMF has aborted a plan to deploy version 5 of the Article Feedback tool (AFTv5) rolled out to all English Wikipedia articles.

• News and notes: Resigning arbitrator slams Committee
  Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. At the heart of a strongly worded statement, posted both on his talk page and the arbitration notice board, was the claim that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for".

• WikiProject report: Making music
  This week, we composed a tribute to WikiProject Composers. The project was created during the final hours of 2004 and finalized in early January 2005. It has grown to encompass over 8,000 pages, including 26 Featured Articles and 23 Good Articles. WikiProject Composers faces a difficult workload, with a relative WikiWork rating of 5.45.

• Interview: Meeting in the middle: Wikipedia and libraries
  Ask librarians what they think about Wikipedia and you might get some interesting answers. Some will throw up their hands about the laziness of the Google generation and their overdependence on Wikipedia. Some see it as the "competition". And some will tell you it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

• Featured content: Wikipedia stays warm
  Nine articles, seven lists, eleven images, and one topic were promoted to "featured status" this week on the English Wikipedia.

• Arbitration report: Richard case closes
  On Thursday, arbitrator Coren resigned, following closely on the heels of Hersfold's resignation on Wednesday. There are two open cases. A final decision has been given in the Richard case.

• Technology report: Visual Editor "on schedule"
  The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 04:07, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• WikiProject report: The 'Burgh: WikiProject Pittsburgh
  Our travels have brought us to Pittsburgh, the American city known for steelworks and bridges.

• Featured content: One and a half soursops
  Seven articles, one list, six pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Arbitration report: Two open cases
  This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute over transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.

• News and notes: Sue Gardner to leave WMF; German Wikipedians spearhead another effort to close Wikinews
  Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, has announced her plans to leave the position when a successor is recruited. Ranked as one of the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine, Sue Gardner is widely associated with the rise of the Wikimedia movement as a major custodian of human knowledge and cultural products.

• Technology report: The Visual Editor: Where are we now, and where are we headed?
  Since its inception in May 2011, the Foundation's Visual Editor project has grown to become one of its main focuses. As the project nears its two-year birthday, the Signpost caught up with Visual Editor project manager James Forrester to discuss the progress on the project.

• Recent research: "Ignore all rules" in deletions; anonymity and groupthink; how readers react when shown talk pages
  A paper presented at last month's CSCW Conference observes that "Mass collaboration systems are often characterized as unstructured organizations lacking rule and order", yet Wikipedia has a well developed body of policies to support it as an organization.

• Special report: Who reads which Wikipedia?
  The Wikimedia Foundation has released its latest report card for the movement's hundreds of sites. The WMF has published statistics about the sites since 2009, but only recently have these been expanded in scope and depth to provide a rich source of data for investigating the movement and the world it serves. Dutch-born Erik Zachte is the driver of the WMF's statistical output, and he writes that the report card and accompanying traffic statistics comprise "enough tables, bar charts and plots to keep you busy for a while".

• WikiProject report: Special: FAQs
  This week's Report is dedicated to answering our readers' questions about WikiProjects. The following Frequently Asked Questions came from feedback at the WikiProject Report's talk page, the WikiProject Council's talk page, and from previous lists of FAQs.

• Featured content: What the ?
  The Signpost interviewed prolific featured content creator and former Signpost "featured content" report writer Crisco 1492 about ? and Indonesian cinema. ? was the "Today's featured article" for 1 April 2013. 1 April is popularly known as April Fools' Day in many countries.

• News and notes: Grants given for Wikipedia Library, six others; April Fool's Day ructions
  The first round of individual engagement grants (IEGs) have been awarded, disbursing about $55.6k (€42.7k) to seven applicants.

• Arbitration report: Three open cases
  A case brought by Lecen involves several articles about former Argentinian president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).

• Technology report: Wikidata phase 2 deployment timetable in doubt
  Users of ten Wikipedias got access to phase 2 of Wikidata following its first rollout to production wikis.

• Wikizine: WMF scales back feature after outcry
  Numerous Wikimedia Commons editors have chimed in on the Wikimedia Foundation's deployment of a new feature to its mobile website. Allowing anonymous users to register and upload pictures for use in an article, the feature was placed prominently at the top of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.

• WikiProject report: Earthshattering WikiProject Earthquakes
  This week, we felt the world tremble in the presence of WikiProject Earthquakes. The project was started in May 2008 to deal with articles about earthquakes, aftershocks, seismology, seismologists, plate tectonics, and related articles. While the project has seen success building 14 Featured Articles, one A-class Article, and 21 Good Articles, a fairly heavy workload remains, with a relative WikiWork rating of 4.94. WikiProject Earthquakes maintains a portal, a list of open tasks, a popular pages listing, and an article alerts watchlist.

• News and notes: French intelligence agents threaten Wikimedia volunteer
  Last Friday, the Wikimedia movement awoke to news that one of their number—Rémi Mathis, a French volunteer editor—had been summoned to the offices of the interior intelligence service DCRI and threatened with criminal charges and fines if he did not delete an article on the French Wikipedia about a radio station used by the French military.

• Arbitration report: Subject experts needed for Argentine History
  The arbitration committee is looking for expertise in Argentina and the Spanish language for a case involving former Argentinean president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).

• Featured content: Wikipedia loves poetry
  Four articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Technology report: Testing week
  The deployment of phase 2 of Wikidata to the English Wikipedia, originally scheduled for 8 April but delayed due to technical problems, may be rescheduled again as the result of community resistance.

• Op-ed: How do we fix RfA inactivity?
  The RfA process is widely discussed here on the English Wikipedia and it has been well documented that less and less new Requests for adminship are being filed. There are an abundance of bytes devoted to the discussion and analysis of this situation and plenty of hands have been wrung over the matter. Various RfCs have attempted to find a way to fix the problem. Many proposals have been made offering solutions, some more potentially drastic than others, with the goal of making the changes necessary to kick–start RfA back into regular action. However, Wikipedia operates based on consensus and, to this point, there are have simply been too many disagreeing views for us to reach a consensus on how to increase RfA activity.

• WikiProject report: Unity in Diversity: South Africa
  This week, we ventured to WikiProject South Africa. The project was started in February 2005 and is home to thirteen pieces of featured material, two A-class articles, and twenty-one good articles.

• News and notes: Another admin reform attempt flops
  The most recent move to reform the requests for adminship process on the English Wikipedia has failed, after a complex and drawn-out three-step procedure for community input was subject to decreasing participation as time wore on and came up with no clear consensus.

• Featured content: The featured process swings into high gear
  Four articles, twelve lists, and seven pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 15:31, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

• In the media: Wikipedia inaccurate, says Florence; New Wikipedia app for breaking news
  An article by John Sweeney published on 22 April 2013 on scnow.com, the website of the Florence, South Carolina Morning News, reported that Florence city officials have taken to monitoring and correcting the Wikipedia article on their city.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Editor Retention
  This week, we spent some time with a project that develops tools and methods for improving the user experience in the hope that new users will continue editing the encyclopedia. The project was started in July 2012 and has grown to include 124 members. The project's members partner with the Teahouse and the Welcoming Committee to spread WikiLove, welcome new users, encourage civility, and other related activities.

• News and notes: Milan conference a mixed bag
  The Wikimedia Conference is an annual meeting of the chapters to discuss their status and the organisational development of the Wikimedia movement. For the first time it included groups that wish to be considered for WMF affiliation as thematic organisations and one of the three groups that was recently affiliated as a user group. The conference was also attended by members of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) Board of Trustees, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the WMF Affiliations Committee, and a representative of the Wikivoyage Association.

• Featured content: Batfish in the Red Sea
  Nine articles, four lists, eight pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.

• Arbitration report: Sexology case nears closure after stalling over topic ban
  The Sexology case is nearing completion after arbitrators were unable to agree on a topic ban for one of the participants.

• Technology report: A flurry of deployments
  On Monday, the English Wikipedia became the 12th wiki to be able to pull data from the central Wikidata.org repository, with other wikis scheduled to receive the update on Wednesday.

• News and notes: Chapter furore over FDC knockbacks; First DC GLAM boot-camp
  The Funds Dissemination Committee released its recommendations to the WMF board last Sunday. The news that the Hong Kong chapter's application for US$212K had failed was followed by a strongly worded resignation announcement by Deryck Chan on the public Wikimedia-l mailing-list.

• In the media: Wikipedia's sexism; Yuri Gadyukin hoax
  On 24 April 2013, novelist Amanda Filipacchi published what turned out to be an influential op-ed in the New York Times; illuminating the unusual background of the Yuri Gadyukin hoax.

• Featured content: Wiki loves video games
  Nine articles, three lists, three pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" this week.

• WikiProject report: Japanese WikiProject Baseball
  This week, we traveled to the Japanese Wikipedia's WikiProject Baseball for perspectives from a version of Wikipedia that treats WikiProjects as their own unique namespace (プロジェクト:) independent of "Wikipedia:".

• Traffic report: Most popular Wikipedia articles
  The WP:TOP25 and WP:5000 reports chronicle the most popular Wikipedia articles on a weekly basis.

• Arbitration report: Sexology closed; two open cases
  The Sexology case closed shortly after publication with no changes.

• Recent research: Sentiment monitoring; UNESCO and systemic bias; and more
  A report on an online service which was created to conduct real-time monitoring of Wikipedia articles of companies, and more.

• Technology report: New notifications system deployed across Wikipedia
  This week saw the deployment of the Echo extension, also known as "notifications".

• News and notes: Candidates nominating for Foundation elections; Looking ahead to Wikimania 2014
  Although not yet in great numbers, candidates are coming forward for Wikimedia Foundation elections, which will be held from 1 to 15 June. The elections will fill vacancies in three categories, the most prominent of which will be the three community-elected seats on the ten-member Board of Trustees (or the first Board meeting after the election results are announced, if sooner). The current two-year terms for these trustee positions ends on 1 September.

• Technology report: Foundation successful in bid for larger Google subsidy
  The Wikimedia Foundation will be receiving more than $100,000 worth of free developer time courtesy of internet giant Google, it was announced this week. The funds, allocated as part of Google's Summer of Code programme, will support up to 21 student developers through three months of coding time.

• Featured content: WikiCup update: full speed ahead!
  May sees the beginning of Round 3 of the 2013 WikiCup, with 33 of the original 127 competitors remaining. ... six articles, ten pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• In the media: New Wikipedia for Schools edition; Anders Behring Breivik's Wikipedia contributions
  The SOS Children's Villages news service advised on 3 May 2013 that Wikipedia for Schools 2013 is nearly ready for release. ... On 26 April 2013, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation published an article reviewing Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's edits to the English Wikipedia, where it revealed the name of Breivik's English Wikipedia account.

• WikiProject report: Earn $100 in cash... and a button!
  This week's English Wikipedia project, WikiProject Biophysics, is home to several experts in their fields and a collaboration with the Biophysical Society. The project is hosting a contest through July 15 with six contributors winning $100 in cash and given the opportunity to attend the 2014 meeting of the Biophysical Society in San Francisco. Other strong entries will be awarded barnstars online and everyone who contributes can receive a physical button mailed out to them.