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User talk:WikiCopter/Archives/2013

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The Signpost: 31 December 2012

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

December 2012 Wikification Barnstars!

The WikiProject Wikify Badge  
Thankyou for your participation in the December 2012 drive! Wishing you a happy new year, benzband (talk) 17:19, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2013 WikiCup!

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

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

Overall, however, don't worry, and have fun. It doesn't matter if you make the odd mistake; these things happen. Questions can be asked on the WikiCup talk page. Good luck! J Milburn and The ed17 17:25, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

  • 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.

Wikipedia Ambassadors update

Hi! You're getting this message because you are or have been a Wikipedia Ambassador. A new term is beginning for the United States and Canada Education Programs, and I wanted to give you an update on some important new information if you're interested in continuing your work this term as a Wikipedia Ambassador.

You may have heard a reference to a transition the education program is going through. This is the last term that the Wikimedia Foundation will directly run the U.S. and Canada programs; beginning in June, a proposed thematic organization is likely to take over organizing the program. You can read more about the proposal here.

Another major change in the program will take effect immediately. Beginning this term, a new MediaWiki education extension will replace all course pages and Ambassador lists. (See Wikipedia:Course pages and Help:Education Program extension for more details.) Included in the extension are online volunteer and campus volunteer user rights, which let you create and edit course pages and sign up as an ambassador for a particular course.

If you would like to continue serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador — even if you do not support a class this term — you must create an ambassador profile. If you're no longer interested in being a Wikipedia Ambassador, you don't need to do anything.

Please do these steps as soon as possible

First, you need the relevant user rights for Online and/or Campus Ambassadors. (If you are an admin, you can grant the rights yourself, for you as well as other ambassadors.) Just post your rights request here, and we'll get you set up as quickly as possible.

Once you've got the ambassador rights, please set up at a Campus and/or Online Ambassador profile. You can do so at:

  • Special:CampusAmbassadorProfile
  • Special:OnlineAmbassadorProfile

Going forward, the lists of Ambassadors at Special:CampusAmbassadors and Special:OnlineAmbassadors will be the official roster of who is an active Ambassador. If you would like to be an Ambassador but not ready to serve this term, you can un-check the option in your profile to publicly list it (which will remove your profile from the list).

After that, you can sign on to support courses. The list of courses will be at Special:Courses. (By default, this lists "Current" courses, but you can change the Status filter to "Planned" to see courses for this term that haven't reached their listed start date yet.)

As this is the first term we have used the extension, we know there will be some bugs, and we know the feature set is not as rich as it could be. (A big wave of improvements is already in the pipeline. And if you know MediaWiki and could help with code review, we'd love to have your help!) Please reach out to me (Sage Ross) with any complaints, bug reports, and feature suggestions. The basic features of the extension are documented at Wikipedia:Course pages, and you can see a tutorial for setting up and using them here.

Communication and keeping up to date

In the past, the Education Program has had a pretty fragmented set of communication channels. We're trying to fix that. These are the recommended places to discuss and stay up-to-date on the education program:

  1. The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
  2. The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address.
  3. If you use IRC regularly, or need to try to reach someone immediately, the #wikipedia-en-ambassadors connect IRC channel is the place to find me and fellow Ambassadors.
Ambassador training and resources

We now have an online training for Ambassadors, which is intended to be both an orientation about the Wikipedia Ambassador role for newcomers and the manual for how to do the role. (There are parallel trainings for students and for educators as well.)

Please go through the training if you feel like you need a refresher on how a typical class is supposed to go and where the Ambassadors fit in, or if you want to review and help improve it. If there's something you'd like to see added, or other suggestions you have for it, feel free to edit the training and/or leave feedback. A primer on setting up and using course pages is included in the educators' training.

The Resources page of the training is the main place for Ambassador-related resources. If there's something you think is important as a resource that's not on there, please add it.

Finally, whether or not you work with any classes this term, I encourage you to post entries to the Trophy Case whenever you see excellent work from students or if you have great examples from past semesters. And, as always, let students (and other editors!) know when they do things well; a little WikiLove goes a long way!

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

IRC cloak request

Hi there. We had an IRC cloak request from a user called WikiCopter; I presume it was you. If it was not, please ignore this message! Unfortunately you filled out a request to change your cloak, and therefore some steps were not followed. We have your memo, but we just need to confirm that you were the one to file the request. An quick note on on my Meta-Wiki talk page would be best. Many thanks, PeterSymonds (talk) 18:17, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 January 2013

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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: Issue LXXXII, January 2013

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 12:55, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 January 2013

  • 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.

The Signpost: 28 January 2013

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

WikiCup 2013 January newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:21, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

February 2013 Wikification Drive

Hi there! I thought you might be interested in WikiProject Wikify's February Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive. We'll be trying to reduce the backlog size by over 500 articles and we need your help! Hard-working participants in the drive will receive awards for their contributions. If you have a spare moment, please join and wikify an article or tell your friends. Thanks!

The Signpost: 04 February 2013

  • 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.

The Signpost: 11 February 2013

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

The Signpost: 18 February 2013

  • 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: Issue LXXXIII, February 2013

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 07:10, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 February 2013

  • 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).
  • 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.

WikiCup 2013 February newsletter

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

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

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

Other contributors of note include:

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

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

A few final administrative issues. From now on, submission pages will need only a link to the article and a link to the nomination page, or, in the case of good article reviews, a link to the review only. See your submissions' page for details. This will hopefully make updating submission pages a little less tedious. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) J Milburn (talk) 01:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2013

  • 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.

The Signpost: 11 March 2013

  • 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.
  • 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.

The Signpost: 18 March 2013

  • 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: Issue LXXXIV, March 2013

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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) 03:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Wikify April Drive

Hi there! I thought you might be interested in WikiProject Wikify's April Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive. We'll be trying to reduce the backlog size by over 500 articles and we need your help! Hard-working participants in the drive will receive awards for their contributions. If you have a spare moment, please join and wikify an article or tell your friends. Thanks!

-- Message delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 22:02, 31 March 2013 (UTC) on behalf of WikiProject Wikify.

WikiCup 2013 March newsletter

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

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

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

A quick reminder: now, submission pages will need only a link to the article and a link to the nomination page, or, in the case of good article reviews, a link to the review only. See your submissions' page for details. This will hopefully make updating submission pages a little less tedious. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) J Milburn (talk) 22:16, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 April 2013

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

The Signpost: 08 April 2013

  • 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.

The Signpost: 15 April 2013

  • 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.

The Bugle: Issue LXXXV, April 2013

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The Signpost: 22 April 2013

  • 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.
  • 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.

The Signpost: 29 April 2013

  • 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:".

WikiCup 2013 April newsletter

We are a week into Round 3, but it is off to a flying start, with Republic of Rose Island Sven Manguard (submissions) claiming for the high-importance Portal:Sports and Portal:Geography (which are the first portals ever awarded bonus points in the WikiCup) and Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) claiming for a did you know of sea, the highest scoring individual did you know article ever submitted for the WikiCup. Round 2 saw very impressive scores at close; first place New South Wales Casliber (submissions) and second place Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) both scored over 1000 points; a feat not seen in Round 2 since 2010. This, in part, has been made possible by the change in the bonus points rules, but is also testament to the quality of the competition this year. Pool C and Pool G were most competitive, with three quarters of participants making it to Round 3, while Pool D was the least, with only the top two scorers making it through. The lowest qualifying score was 123, significantly higher than last year's 65, 2011's 41 or even 2010's 100.

The next issue of The Signpost is due to include a brief update on the current WikiCup, comparing it to previous years' competitions. This may be of interest to current WikiCup followers, and may help bring some more new faces into the community. We would also like to note that this round includes an extra competitor to the 32 advertised, who has been added to a random pool. This extra inclusion seems to have been the fairest way to deal with a small mistake made before the beginning of this round, but should not affect the competition in a large way. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact one of the judges.

A rules clarification: content promoted between rounds can be claimed in the round after the break, but not the round before. The case in point is content promoted on 29/30 April, which may be claimed in this round. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 15:41, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 May 2013

  • 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.

The Signpost: 13 May 2013

  • News and notes: WMF–community ruckus on Wikimedia mailing list
    The removal of administrator rights from all volunteers on the Wikimedia Foundation's official website sparked a highly emotional reaction on the Wikimedia-l mailing list—one of the largest off-wiki methods of communication for the Wikimedia movement.
  • WikiProject report: Knock Out: WikiProject Mixed Martial Arts
    This week, we spent some time watching WikiProject Mixed Martial Arts, which was started in August 2005 and has grown to include 12 Good Articles and a Featured List.

The Bugle: Issue LXXXVI, May 2013

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Your Military History Newsletter

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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) 12:56, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 May 2013

  • WikiProject report: Classical Greece and Rome
    This week, we traveled to WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. The project was started in May 2006 and has 37 featured articles.
  • In the media: Qworty incident continues
    Salon.com published another article detailing the ongoing incidents with Wikipedia user Qworty, who has identified himself as Robert Clark Young. It documents Qworty's role in the controversy involving Amanda Filipacchi's op-ed, which kindled a debate on Wikipedia sexism as it relates to categories, where Qworty was responsible for a series of revenge edits against Filipacchi in the days after she released her op-ed.
  • Featured content: Up in the air
    Nine articles, six lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

The Signpost: 27 May 2013

  • News and notes: First-ever community election for FDC positions
    Alongside the Signpost's interviews with the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) Board of Trustees candidates, the Signpost asked the candidates for the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and its Ombudsperson position a series of questions relating to the positions they may be taking on. For the FDC candidates, this will include specific recommendations to the WMF on how to disburse over US$11 million in donors' funds to affiliate organizations, something which appears to have garnered little attention from the editing community at large so far.
  • In the media: Pagans complain about Qworty's anti-Pagan editing
    In the continuing saga of User:Qworty's outing as author Robert Clark Young, several blogs and websites covered the now-banned user's anti-Pagan editing. In an article published on 22 May 2013, TechEye described Qworty's edits as a "reign of terror" and were pleased to find that he had not succeeded in removing several prominent Pagan biographies from the encyclopedia.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Geographical Coordinates
    This week, we plotted out the demarcations of WikiProject Geographical Coordinates, which aims to create a single standard of handling coordinates in Wikipedia articles.
  • Featured content: Life of 2π
    Twelve articles, four lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Technology report: Amsterdam hackathon: continuity, change, and stroopwafels
    Second only to the technical track of Wikimania in terms of numbers, the Berlin Hackathon (2009–2012) provided those with an interest in the software that underpins Wikimedia wikis and supports its editors a place to gather, exchange ideas and learn new skills.

The Signpost: 05 June 2013

  • From the editor: Signpost developments
    I am excited to announce that a Portuguese-language journal, Correio da Wikipédia has been launched by Vitorvicentevalente. It has just published its third edition, and I encourage readers who speak the language to read and contribute to its already-expansive coverage of the Portuguese Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement.
  • Featured content: A week of portraits
    Five articles, four lists, and thirteen images were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
  • Discussion report: Return of the Discussion report
    This is mostly a list of requests for comment believed to be active on 4 June 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC or watchlist notices.
  • In the media: China blocks secure version of Wikipedia
    An article on TheNextWeb.com says that the Chinese Government has effectively blocked Wikipedia by cutting off access to the HTTP Secure (https) "workaround", almost completely cutting off access to those in China.
  • WikiProject report: Operation Normandy
    This week, we reflect on the anniversary of D-Day by storming the shores of Operation Normandy, a special initiative of WikiProject Military History.

WikiProject Good Articles Recruitment Centre

Hello! Now, some of you might have already received a similar message a little while ago regarding the Recruitment Centre, so if you have, there is no need to read the rest of this. This message is directed to users who have reviewed over 15 Good article nominations and are not part of WikiProject Good articles (the first message I sent out went to only WikiProject members).

So for those who haven't heard about the Recruitment Centre yet, you may be wondering why there is a Good article icon with a bunch of stars around it (to the right). The answer? WikiProject Good articles will be launching a Recruitment Centre very soon! The centre will allow all users to be taught how to review Good article nominations by experts just like you! However, in order for the Recruitment Centre to open in the first place, we need some volunteers:

  • Recruiters: The main task of a recruiter is to teach users that have never reviewed a Good article nomination how to review one. To become a recruiter, all you have to do is meet this criteria. If we don't get at least 5-10 recruiters to start off with (at the time this message was sent out, 2 recruiters have volunteered), the Recruitment Centre will not open. If interested, make sure you meet the criteria, read the process and add your name to the list of recruiters. (One of the great things about being a recruiter is that there is no set requirement of what must be taught and when. Instead, all the content found in the process section is a guideline of the main points that should be addressed during a recruitment session...you can also take an entire different approach if you wish!) If you think you will not have the time to recruit any users at this time but are still interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still add your name to the list of recruiters but just fill in the "Status" parameter with "Not Available".
  • Co-Director: The current Director for the centre is me (Dom497). Another user that would be willing to help with some of the tasks would be helpful. Tasks include making sure recruiters are doing what they should be (teaching!), making sure all recruitments are archived correctly, updating pages as needed, answering any questions, and distributing the feedback form. If interested, please contact me (Dom497).
  • Nominators, please read this: If you are not interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still help. In some cases a nominator may have an issue with an "inexperienced" editor (the recruitee) reviewing one of their nominations. To minimize the chances of this happening, if you are fine with a recruitee reviewing one of your nominations under the supervision of the recruiter, please add your name to the list at the bottom of this page. By adding your name to this list, chances are that your nomination will be reviewed more quickly as the recruitee will be asked to choose a nomination from the list of nominators that are OK with them reviewing the article.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to seeing this program bring new reviewers to the Good article community and all the positive things it will bring along.

A message will be sent out to all recruiters regarding the date when the Recruitment Centre will open when it is determined. The message will also contain some further details to clarify things that may be a bit confusing.--Dom497 (talk)

This message was sent out by --EdwardsBot (talk) 14:50, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

|}

The Signpost: 12 June 2013

  • News and notes: How Wikimedia affiliates are spending $8.4 million; PRISM scandal
    Late last year, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) awarded $8.4 million in donors' money to 11 Wikimedia entities, including the Wikimedia Foundation and 10 nationally defined chapters. Under this arrangement, these organisations are required to issue quarterly reports on how far they have progressed towards their declared programmatic and financial goals. The FDC has now announced that all 11 completed and submitted their reports by the 1 April deadline, and have responded to each.
  • Featured content: Mixing Bowl Interchange
    Seven articles, two lists, five pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • In the media: VisualEditor will "change world history"
    In an article published by the Huffington Post's United Kingdom edition, writer Thomas Church asserts that the new VisualEditor will change history, literally. It says that Wikipedia's mark-up language has been to its advantage, as most people didn't bother trying to learn it
  • Op-ed: The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons
    I've long thought that we should get rid of the Wikimedia Commons as we know it. Commons has evolved into a project with interests that compete with the needs of the primary users of Commons and the reason it was created. It's also understaffed, which results in poor curation, large administrative backlogs, and poor policy development.
  • Traffic report: Who holds the throne?
    Last week's most popular article list on the English Wikipedia was dominated by the massively popular TV series Game of Thrones, which claimed six slots in the top 25, including the top three. Its popularity was likely stoked by the most recent episode, The Rains of Castamere. Bollywood continued to increase its share of views as well, aided by the tragic suicide of star Nafisa Khan.
  • WikiProject report: Processing WikiProject Computing
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Computing. Started in October 2003, the project has grown to include 17 featured articles, 11 featured lists, 3 pieces of featured media, and 80 good articles.

The Signpost: 19 June 2013

  • Op-ed: Two responses to the 'Tragedy of Wikipedia's Commons'
    Following last week's op-ed by Gigs ("The Tragedy of Wikipedia's Commons"), the Signpost is carrying two contrary opinions from MichaelMaggs, a bureaucrat on Wikimedia Commons, and Mattbuck, a British Commons administrator.
  • Traffic report: Most popular Wikipedia articles of the last week
    The season finale of Game of Thrones ensured that the epic high fantasy series would dominate the top 10 again last week; however, it was joined by Maurice Sendak and Man of Steel.
  • News and notes: Swedish Wikipedia's millionth article leads to protests; WMF elections—where are all the voters?
    With erysichton elaborata, the Swedish Wikipedia passed the one million article Rubicon this week. While this is a mostly symbolic achievement, serving as a convenient benchmark with which to gain publicity and attention in an increasingly statistical world, the particular method by which the Swedish site has passed the mark has garnered significant attention—and controversy.
  • Featured content: Cheaper by the dozen
    Eleven articles, twelve lists, and eleven pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Technology report: May engineering report published
    The WMF's engineering report for May was published recently on the Wikimedia blog and on the MediaWiki wiki ("friendly" summary version), giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.
  • Arbitration report: The Farmbrough amendment request—automation and arbitration enforcement
    Richard Farmbrough was set to have his day in court, but as events transpired, this was not to be so. On 25 March 2013, an accusation was made against Farmbrough at Arbitration Enforcement (AE), claiming that he violated the terms of an automated edit restriction. Within hours, Farmbrough had filed his own request with the arbitration committee, citing the newly filed AE request and claiming that the motion was being used "in an absurd way" in the filing of enforcement requests: "I have not made any edits that a sane person would consider automation."

The Bugle: Issue LXXXVII, June 2013

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The Signpost: 26 June 2013

  • Traffic report: Most-viewed articles of the week
    With most TV shows on hiatus for the summer, attention has turned to movies, celebrity and sports. The dramatic events at the 2013 Confederations Cup drew massive attention, as did summer blockbusters like Man of Steel and World War Z. But the most searched event of the week was the tragic and unexpected death of popular actor James Gandolfini on June 19.
  • News and notes: Election results released
    Less than three days after the close of voting, the volunteer election committee posted the results on Meta. The worldwide Wikimedia movement has elected three WMF trustees for two-year terms on the 10-seat Board: Samuel Klein (supported by 43.5% of voters), Phoebe Ayers (38.3%), and María Sefidari (35.6%). The new trustees will take their seats at a critical time for the movement: one of the first tasks in their terms will be to help the Board to find and approve the new executive director to take up the top job when Sue Gardner departs.
  • Featured content: Wikipedia in black + Adam Cuerden
    This week, the Signpost interviews Adam Cuerden, a Wikimedian who has been for years gathering featured pictures, and who constantly participates in what could be his favourite part of the project. Cuerden dedicates most of his time to scanning and restoring old, valuable illustrative works. He explains to us how the featured process works, its relation with other parts of the encyclopedia, and how pictures evolve before reaching featured status.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Fashion
    This week, we walked the runway with WikiProject Fashion. Started in March 2007, the project is home to 4 Featured Articles and 41 Good Articles. The project has a lengthy list of how you can help and a list of Article Alerts.

WikiCup 2013 June newsletter

We are down to our final 16: the 2013 semi-finals are upon us. A score of 321 was required to survive round 3, further cementing this as the most competitive WikiCup yet; round 3 was survived in 2012 with 243 points, in 2011 with 76 points and in 2010 with 250 points. The change may in part be to do with the fact that more articles are now awarded bonus points, in addition to more competitive play. Reaching the final has, in the past, required 573 points (2012, a 135% increase on the score needed to reach round 4), 150 points (2011, a 97% increase) and 417 points (2010, a 72% increase). This round has seen over a third of participants claiming points for featured articles (with seven users claiming for multiple featured articles) and most users have also gained bonus points. However, the majority of points continue to come from good articles, followed by did you know articles. In this round, every content type was utilised by at least one user, proving that the WikiCup brings together content contributors from all corners of the project.

Round 3 saw a number of contributions of note. Idaho Figureskatingfan (submissions) claimed the first featured topic points in this year's competition for her excellent work on topics related to Maya Angelou, the noted American author and poet. We have also continued to see high-importance articles improved as part of the competition: Wyoming Ealdgyth (submissions) was awarded a thoroughly well-earned 560 points for her featured article Middle Ages and 102 points for her good article Battle of Hastings. Good articles James Chadwick and Stanislaw Ulam netted Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions) 102 and 72 points respectively, while 72 points were awarded to Poland Piotrus (submissions) for each of Władysław Sikorski and Emilia Plater, both recently promoted to good article status. Collaborative efforts between WikiCup participants have continued, with, for example, New South Wales Casliber (submissions) and Canada Sasata (submissions) being awarded 180 points each for their featured article on Boletus luridus.

A rules reminder: content promoted between rounds can be claimed in the round after the break, but not the round before. The case in point is content promoted on the 29/30 June, which may be claimed in this round. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. We are currently seeing concern about the amount of time people have to wait for reviews, especially at GAC- if you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 09:46, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Amusement Park Quarter 3, 2013 Newsletter

WikiProject Amusement Parks Newsletter

Quarter 3, 2013

 463 124 5.13 50 30% »
Full edition
Unassessed Articles Coordinates Needed WikiWork Load Project Members B&M articles are GA or FA
22:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 July 2013

  • In the media: Jimmy Wales is not an Internet billionaire; a mass shooter's alleged Wikipedia editing
    Amy Chozick's profile of Jimmy Wales in the New York Times sparked significant controversy in international news outlets this week. Chozick's profile covered Wales's personal life, including his 12-year-old daughter, ex-wife, and current wife Kate Garvey, describing Wales himself as "a well-groomed version of a person who has been slumped over a computer drinking Yoo-hoo for hours." Chozick described his current role in Wikipedia as "Benevolent Dictator for Life", a statement which garnered conflict from all corners of the web, including from Wales, who responded to the piece as a whole with a lengthy talk page statement.
  • Featured content: Queen of France
    Four articles, four lists, and fifteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
  • WikiProject report: Puppies!
    This week, the Signpost went to the kennel and interviewed WikiProject Dogs. The project has several featured and good articles, along with a large number of "Did you know" entries. We asked three project members about the challenges of creating, curating, and maintaining canine content in an increasingly dog-obsessed world.
  • News and notes: Wikipedia's medical collaborations gathering pace
    The key annual event in the Wikimedia calendar, Wikimania 2013, will be held in Hong Kong in just five weeks' time. Among the events will be a presentation by two people who are working to promote the development of medical content on Wikimedia projects. One is James Heilman of Wiki Project Med, a non-profit dedicated to making "clear, reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date educational resources and information in the biomedical and related social sciences freely available to all people in the language of their choice". The other is Lori Thicke, president of Translators Without Borders (TWB), the Connecticut-based organisation set up in 2010 to provide pro-bono translation services for humanitarian non-profits
  • Technology report: VisualEditor in midst of game-changing deployment series
    The VisualEditor extension has gone live by default to registered users on the English Wikipedia, marking a huge milestone in a project that has taken the best part of a decade to reach fruition. The extension was previously described as "the biggest and most important change to our user experience we’ve ever undertaken" by the WMF team behind it.
  • Traffic report: Yahoo! crushes the competition ... in Wikipedia views
    The real world made a strong showing in the top 10 last week, as news stories such as Yahoo!'s purchase of Tumblr, the murder of Odin Lloyd, the continuing drama over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ill-health of Nelson Mandela crowded out the usual roster of TV shows, movies, websites and video games. Not that they were entirely excluded, of course.
  • Arbitration report: Tea Party movement reopened, new AUSC appointments
    Following a one-month period of moderated discussion, Tea Party movement has been reopened by the Committee. The proposed decisions are currently being voted upon. Race and politics remains suspended pending the return of User:Apostle12.

The Signpost: 10 July 2013

  • News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation Board appoints world expert in women's issues, global south
    In apparent acknowledgment of the urgency of two issues facing the Wikimedia movement—the need to engage both women and the global south—the WMF Board has appointed Ana Toni as one of its four expert members. Toni will bring rare expertise to the movement, and the Signpost understands that her skills in advocacy and her key roles in international NGOs are likely to be a natural match with the WMF as the hub of disseminating free knowledge around the world.
  • Dispatches: Infoboxes: time for a fresh look?
    The fundamental idea of an infobox is clear: keep it simple and limited to essentials. At some point, however, these basic principles seem to have been abandoned, in favour of an approach akin to "the more the merrier".
  • Featured content: The week of the birds
    Five articles, six lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

The Signpost: 17 July 2013

  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Square Enix
    This week, we explored the fantasy worlds of video game developer Square Enix by interviewing WikiProject Square Enix. The project began in September 2006 as a spin-off of WikiProject Final Fantasy, but today covers that, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and a variety of other game series, with exceptions explained in the interview below. The project is home to 32 pieces of Featured material and 104 Good and A-class articles.
  • News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation's new plans announced
    Last week the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual plan for July 2013 to June 2014. It provides a surprisingly frank view—of past achievements and failures, and future goals and risks—that could be afforded only by a non-profit that is confident and beholden to no commercial or political interests.
  • Featured content: Documents and sports
    Four articles, five lists, and sixteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

The Bugle: Issue LXXXVIII, July 2013

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The Signpost: 24 July 2013

  • In the media: Wikipedia flamewars
    The Washington Post reported Tuesday on the most controversial articles on various language Wikipedias as determined by a cross-continental research group.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Religion
    This week, the Signpost delved into the vast and complex areas of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that make up religion. WikiProject Religion has been around since 2005 and has a complex scope, in that it only takes articles that deal with religion in a non-sectarian sense, along with any articles that do not have a dedicated daughter project.
  • News and notes: Wikivoyage turns ten, but where to now?; Wikipedia Zero expands into India
    Contributors to Wikivoyage, the sister project adopted by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, are celebrating their 10th anniversary this week. ... The Wikimedia Foundation has announced via press release that it has partnered with Aircel to provide free mobile access to Wikipedia.
  • Traffic report: Gleeless
    Death hangs over the top 10 this week, as tragic deaths both past and present continued to cast their pall over an already troubled world. The death of Corey Monteith led to a spike in interest in the man himself, his girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele, and the show that made them both famous, Glee.
  • Featured content: Engineering and the arts
    Twelve articles, seven lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • Arbitration report: Infoboxes case opens
    The case Infoboxes was opened. The evidence phase continues in Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds. Voting on the proposed decision continues in the Tea Party movement case.

WikiCup 2013 July newsletter

We're halfway through this year's penultimate round, and the competition is moving along well. Pool A's Canada Sasata (submissions) currently leads overall, while Pool B's Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) is second. Both leaders are WikiCup veterans, and both have already scored over 600 points this month. If the round were to end today, London Miyagawa (submissions), with 274 points, would be the lowest-scoring participant to make it through. This indicates that participants will need a score comparable to last year's (573, the highest ever) to qualify for the final. The high scores this year are a testament both to the quality of participants and to the increased focus on significant content (eligible for bonus points) in this year's competition. So far this round, both Sasata and Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) have made up over half of their score through bonus points, with, for example, high importance FA koala earning Sasata a total of 440 points (from a multiplier of 4.4) and high-importance GA sea earning Cwmhiraeth a total of 216 points (from a multiplier of 7.2). Other articles on important topics submitted this round include a featured article on the Norman conquest of England by Wyoming Ealdgyth (submissions), and good articles on Nobel laureate in literature Henryk Sienkiewicz, Nobel laureate in physics Hans Bethe, and the noted Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryū. These articles are by Poland Piotrus (submissions), Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions) and Sturmvogel_66 respectively.

Other than that, there is not much to report! If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 23:11, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 July 2013

  • Op-ed: The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change
    One of the narratives I've heard a lot is that Wikipedia is unable to change, that it's too stagnant, too poorly resourced, too inherently resistant to change. I don't believe that at all.
  • Traffic report: Bouncing Baby Brouhaha
    Somewhat predictably, the birth of a new heir to the House of Windsor on 22 July led the English-speaking world to suddenly embrace Monarchism. In honour of this occasion, the Traffic report will be assiduously employing British spelling and dating conventions. Cheers.
  • WikiProject report: Babel Series: Politics on the Turkish Wikipedia
    This week, we visited the Turkish Wikipedia for an interview with VikiProje Siyaset (WikiProject Politics). The project began in April 2010 and has sustained a small but enthusiastic group of editors focusing on both the domestic politics of Turkey and international politics. The basics for article quality and importance ratings have been determined, but tracking this data has not yet become widespread on the Turkish Wikipedia. The project maintains a portal, a variety of resources, and a rotating selection of images to spruce up the project's page.
  • News and notes: Gearing up for Wikimania 2013
    The ninth annual Wikimania conference will open in just over a week at the Jockey Club Auditorium, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Wikimania is for people worldwide who have an interest in Wikimedia Foundation projects. It features presentations and discussions on those projects, on free knowledge and content, and on related social and technical issues.

The Signpost: 07 August 2013

  • Arbitration report: Fourteen editors proposed for ban in Tea Party movement case
    Fourteen editors have been proposed for a six-month page ban in the Tea Party movement case. In the Infoboxes and Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds cases, the workshop and evidence phases have closed, and proposed decisions are scheduled to be posted.
  • Traffic report: Greetings from the graveyard
    It's crickets and tumbleweeds this week, as the top 10 sees its lowest view-count since the project began. If Wikipedia were selling anything, we'd be having a fire sale by now.
  • News and notes: Chapters Association self-destructs
    The opening days of the annual Wikimania, referred to as the "pre-conference", are not typically newsworthy. This changed dramatically when the Chapters Association council met on Thursday.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Freedom of Speech
    This week, we journey into a WikiProject that focuses about what keeps Wikipedia running, the freedom of speech.

The Signpost: 14 August 2013

  • News and notes: "Beautifully smooth" Wikimania with few hitches
    About a thousand Wikimedians journeyed to Hong Kong this week for the annual Wikimania conference, the annual gathering of the Wikimedia movement. Wikimania, which has been held since 2005, serves as the principal physical meetup for Wikimedians around the world.
  • In the media: Chinese censorship
    One major story that came out of Wikimania was Jimmy Wales' statements at the conference that he would prefer to have Wikipedia banned entirely in mainland China than censored as it is currently.
  • Featured content: Wikipedia takes the cities
    The week's newest featured content includes seven articles, four lists, and twelve pictures.
  • Special report: Jimmy Wales: media favors entertainment over raising public awareness
    Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and its public face to most of the media, has declared that media organizations are missing out on the "opportunity of the century" by not conducting true investigative reporting into American surveillance practices, a debate kindled by information leaked by Edward Snowden.
  • Arbitration report: Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case closes
    The Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case has closed, with a unanimous decision to desysop a Wikimedia Foundation employee and indefinitely ban another editor. The Tea Party movement case has stalled yet again, in the wake of a controversial proposal to ban 14 editors. A proposed decision in the Infoboxes case was scheduled to be posted on 14 August.

The Bugle: Issue LXXXIX, August 2013

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The Signpost: 21 August 2013

  • Recent research: WikiSym 2013 retrospective
    98 registered participants attended the annual WikiSym+OpenSym conference from August 5-7 at Hong Kong's Cyberport facility.
  • WikiProject report: Loop-the-loop: Amusement Parks
    This week, we secured free admission for WikiProject Amusement Parks, the project dedicated to amusement rides, roller coasters, theme parks, traveling carnivals, and funfairs.
  • Traffic report: Reddit creep
    The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.
  • Featured content: WikiCup update, and the gardens of Finland
    The 2013 WikiCup competition is entering its final round. Eleven articles and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • News and notes: Looking ahead to Wiki Loves Monuments
    Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia's annual volunteer-driven and the world largest photo contest, is gearing up to be conducted throughout September 2013. The event, originally developed in the Netherlands in 2010, has gone global with 34 countries taking part last and 49 this year.
  • Technology report: Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia
    Wikipedia's traditional image gallery format, produced by the markup, has remained largely unchanged for years. The resulting layout, seen below, does not adapt well to variations in image size, and has been characterized by some critics as aesthetically unappealing.

WikiCup 2013 August newsletter

This year's final is upon us. Our final eight, in order of last round's score, are:

  1. Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions), a WikiCup newcomer who has contributed on topics of military history and physics, including a number of high-importance topics. Good articles have made up the bulk of his points, but he has also scored a great deal of bonus points. He has the second highest score overall so far, with more than 3000 points accumulated.
  2. New South Wales Casliber (submissions), another WikiCup veteran who reached the finals in 2012, 2011 and 2010. He writes on a variety of topics including botany, mycology and astronomy, and has claimed the highest or joint highest number of featured articles every round so far this year. He has the third highest score overall, with just under 3000 points accumulated.
  3. Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions), 2012 WikiCup champion, who writes mostly on marine biology. She has also contributed to high-importance topics, seeing huge numbers of bonus points for high-importance featured and good articles. Previous rounds have seen her scoring the most bonus points, with scoring spread across did you knows, good articles and featured articles.
  4. Canada Sasata (submissions), a WikiCup veteran who finished in second place in 2012, and competed as early as 2009. He writes articles on biology, especially mycology, and has scored highly for a number of collaborations at featured article candidates.
  5. Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions), the winner of the 2010 competition. His contributions mostly concern Naval history, and he has scored a very large number of points for good articles and good article reviews in every round. He is the highest scorer overall this year, with over 3500 points in total.
  6. Wyoming Ealdgyth (submissions), who is competing in the WikiCup for the second time, though this will be her first time in the final. A regular at FAC, she is mostly interested in British medieval history, and has scored very highly for some top-importance featured articles on the topic.
  7. London Miyagawa (submissions), a finalist in 2012 and 2011. He writes on a broad variety of topics, with many of this year's points coming from good articles about Star Trek. Good articles make up the bulk of his points, and he had the most good articles back in round 2; he was also the highest scorer for DYK in rounds 1 and 2.
  8. Scotland Adam Cuerden (submissions) has previously been involved with the WikiCup, but hasn't participated for a number of years. He scores mostly from restoration work leading to featured picture credits, but has also done some article writing and reviewing.

We say goodbye to eight great participants who did not qualify for the final: Poland Piotrus (submissions), Idaho Figureskatingfan (submissions), Ohio ThaddeusB (submissions), Michigan Dana boomer (submissions), Prince Edward Island Status (submissions), United States Ed! (submissions), Florida 12george1 (submissions), England Calvin999 (submissions). Having made it to this stage is still an excellent achievement, and you can leave with your heads held high. We hope to see you all again next year. Signups are now open for the 2014 WikiCup, which will begin on 1 January. All Wikipedians, whatever their interest or level of experience, are warmly invited to participate in next year's competition.

This last month has seen some incredible contributions; for instance, Cwmhiraeth's Starfish and Ealdgyth's Battle of Hastings—two highly important, highly viewed pages—made it to featured article status. It would be all too easy to focus solely on these stunning achievements at the expense of those participants working in lower-scoring areas, when in fact all WikiCup participants are doing excellent work. A mention of everything done is impossible, but here are a few: Last round saw the completion of several good topics (on the 1958, 1959 and 1962 Atlantic hurricane seasons) to which 12george1 had contributed. Calvin999 saw "S&M" (song), on which he has been working for several years, through to featured article status on its tenth try. Figureskatingfan continued towards her goal of a broad featured/good topic on Maya Angelou, with two featured and four good articles. ThaddeusB contributed significantly to over 20 articles which appeared on the main page's "in the news" section. Adam Cuerden continued to restore a large number of historical images, resulting in over a dozen FP credits this round alone. The WikiCup is not just about top-importance featured articles, and the work of all of these users is worthy of commendation.

Finally, the usual notices: If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 05:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 August 2013

  • Recent research: WikiSym 2013 retrospective
    98 registered participants attended the annual WikiSym+OpenSym conference from August 5-7 at Hong Kong's Cyberport facility.
  • WikiProject report: Loop-the-loop: Amusement Parks
    This week, we secured free admission for WikiProject Amusement Parks, the project dedicated to amusement rides, roller coasters, theme parks, traveling carnivals, and funfairs.
  • Traffic report: Reddit creep
    The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.
  • Featured content: WikiCup update, and the gardens of Finland
    The 2013 WikiCup competition is entering its final round. Eleven articles and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
  • News and notes: Looking ahead to Wiki Loves Monuments
    Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia's annual volunteer-driven and the world largest photo contest, is gearing up to be conducted throughout September 2013. The event, originally developed in the Netherlands in 2010, has gone global with 34 countries taking part last and 49 this year.
  • Technology report: Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia
    Wikipedia's traditional image gallery format, produced by the markup, has remained largely unchanged for years. The resulting layout, seen below, does not adapt well to variations in image size, and has been characterized by some critics as aesthetically unappealing.

The Signpost: 04 September 2013

  • In the media: Manning "put back in the closet"; State involvement in Azerbaijani Wikipedia
    After media praise for Wikipedia's decision to move the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning, the reversion of that page move on August 31, after a discussion in which several hundred Wikipedians participated, has so far triggered less favourable feedback, as well as a blog post from Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner expressing her disappointment with the decision.
  • News and notes: Privacy policy debate gears up
    On September 3, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the second stage of the process to improve the privacy policy implemented on most Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia and its sister projects, by publishing a policy draft.
  • Discussion report: Arbcom election procedures, Wiki Loves Monuments, Privacy policy, FDC, and more
    As mentioned in "In the news" on Wikipedia's main page, the Library of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has opened. This interior photo was taken a week before opening. The article reports that the library "has been described as the largest public library in the United Kingdom, the largest public cultural space in Europe, and the largest regional library in Europe."
  • WikiProject report: Writing on the frontier: Psychology on Wikipedia
    This week, we spent some time with the minds behind WikiProject Psychology. The project was created in March 2006 and has grown to include 14 Featured Articles and 43 Good Articles.
  • Technology report: Making Wikipedia more accessible
    In this week's "Technology report", we explore ways of making Wikipedia more accessible to users of screen readers. Graham87 is a highly active contributor who is also blind and accesses the site through a screen reader.

The Signpost: 11 September 2013

  • Featured content: Tintin goes featured
    Four articles, eight lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
  • News and notes: As deadline approaches, Individual Engagement Grants looks for ideas
    The deadline for proposals to the Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) volunteer committee on Meta will pass on 30 September. The program is designed to fund projects that tackle long-term problem and have a significant editing community impact; it has previously supported solutions like The Wikipedia Library, which improves Wikipedian access to online reference sources like JSTOR (see Signpost coverage).
  • Traffic report: Syria, celebrities, and association football: oh my!
    While the Syrian Civil War crept its slow way into the minds of the public, with a new fourth related entry in the top 25, the top 10 remained dominated by celebrity, mainly sports and music. Two megabucks transfers stimulated public interest in football/soccer ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, while Lil Wayne's public apology ahead of his latest album release sent him to the top.
  • Arbitration report: Workshop phase opens in Manning naming dispute ; Infoboxes case closes
    Discussion over the Manning title dispute was off to a running start as evidence and workshop phases continued in the Bradley/Chelsea Manning naming dispute. The Infoboxes case closed with topic bans for two users, and a recommendation for community discussion of infoboxes.

WikiProject Military history coordinator election

Greetings from WikiProject Military history! As a member of the project, you are invited to take part in our annual project coordinator election, which will determine our coordinators for the next twelve months. If you wish to cast a vote, please do so on the election page by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September! Kirill [talk] 16:16, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 September 2013

  • News and notes: Third time's the charm: the FDC's newest round of funding requests
    The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the volunteer-led body that evaluates chapter and (for the first time) thematic organizational annual plan grant requests to the Wikimedia Foundation, is preparing for its third round of public proceedings to deliberate on the distribution of several million US dollars of Wikimedia movement funds.
  • WikiProject report: 18,464 Good Articles on the wall
    This week, the Signpost headed to WikiProject Good Articles. As of publishing time, out of the 4,331,477 articles on Wikipedia, only 18,464 are rated as "good" (about 1 in 235).
  • Featured content: Hurricane Diane and Van Gogh
    Thirteen articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status last week on the English Wikipedia.
  • Technology report: What can Wikidata do for Wikipedia?
    In this week's "Technology report", we look at how the growth of Wikidata can benefit Wikipedia. Gerard Meijssen is a highly active contributor and frequent blogger about Wikidata. We asked him to share his thoughts on how the new project benefits Wikipedia.
  • Traffic report: Twerking, tragedy and TV
    The top 10 is bookended by unlucky dates, as Friday the 13th fell just after the anniversary of 9/11. Breaking Bad's final season continued to draw attention, while interest in Miley Cyrus's youthful exuberance is fading only slowly.

The Bugle: Issue LXXXXX, September 2013

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The Signpost: 25 September 2013

  • Op-ed: Q&A on Public Relations and Wikipedia
    Over the last year, there's been extensive debate about whether public relations professionals and other corporate representatives should participate on Wikipedia and, if so, to what extent and what kinds of rules should be followed.
  • Traffic report: Look on Walter's works
    The saga of Walter White, chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin, as told in the critically adored television series Breaking Bad, has been a water-cooler necessity for years, and now, as it nears its end, audiences are feverishly following every plot thread to guess what the finale will reveal.
  • News and notes: Last call for Wiki Loves Monuments; Community–WMF tension over VisualEditor
    On 30 September, Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the Wikimedia community's global photo competition, will reach to the end of its submission period. The proceedings have been underway since the first of this month; national juries will start reviewing submissions for the first round of selections after it closes ... Community aggravation with one of the Wikimedia Foundation's signature initiatives, the VisualEditor, came to the fore again this week with the announcement and implementation of code blocking the tool.
  • WikiProject report: Babel Series: GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!
    This week, we continued our exploration of other language editions of Wikipedia by visiting the Spanish Wikipedia's Wikiproyecto Fútbol (WikiProject Football).
  • Featured content: Wikipedia takes the stage
    Twelve articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

October 2013 Wikification Drive

This message was delivered on behalf of WikiProject Wikify. To stop receiving messages from WikiProject Wikify, remove your name from the recipients page. -- EdwardsBot (talk) 18:56, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

WikiCup 2013 September newsletter

In 30 days, we will know the identity of our 2013 WikiCup champion. Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) currently leads; if that lead is held, she will become the first person to have won the WikiCup twice. Canada Sasata (submissions), Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions)—who has never participated in the competition before—and New South Wales Casliber (submissions) follow. The majority of points in this round have come from a mix of good articles and bonus points. This final round is seeing contributions to a number of highly important topics; recent submissions include Phoenix (constellation) (FA by Casliber), Ernest Lawrence (GA by Hawkeye7), Pinniped, and red fox (both GAs by Sasata).

The did you know (DYK) eligibility criteria have recently changed, meaning that newly passed good articles are accepted as "new" for did you know purposes. However, in the interests of not changing the WikiCup rules mid-competition, please note that only articles eligible for DYK under the old system (that is, newly created articles or 5x expansions) will be eligible for points in this year's WikiCup. We do, however, have time to discuss how this new system will work for next year's competition; a discussion will be opened in due course. On that note, thoughts are welcome on changes you'd like to see for next year. What worked? What didn't work? What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of? All Wikipedians, new or old, are also warmly invited to sign up for the 2014 WikiCup.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 22:37, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 October 2013

  • Op-ed: Commons medical diagnostic images under threat from unresolved ownership
    Medical images have transformed many aspects of modern medicine. Over the past two decades the increasing sophistication of MRI, CT-scanning, and X-ray techniques has made these technologies the cornerstone of diagnosing a range of conditions, replacing what used to be largely guesswork by doctors. They can be the difference between life and death for a patient, and their importance is underlined by the tens of billions of dollars spent on them annually just in North America. For Wikimedia Foundation projects, advanced images are now a powerful tool for describing and explaining, and educating our worldwide readership of medical articles.
  • News and notes: WMF signals new grantmaking priorities
    In what will be remembered as a game-changing week for Wikimedia grantmaking, the Foundation's executive director, Sue Gardner, published a forthright and in places highly critical statement, Reflections on the FDC process, and grantmaking staff revealed that the WMF will significantly strengthen its targeting of optimal impact in funding.
  • Arbitration report: Infoboxes: After the war
    Editor's note: To go beyond the mere facts of cases, the "Arbitration report" invited several editors who participated in the recent Infoboxes case to comment on infoboxes: what they are, where new users can go to find out about them, specifications and protocols, best practices, and how the upcoming community discussion recommended by the Committee in the case decision should be framed.
  • WikiProject report: U2 Too
    This week, we revisited the enthusiastic editors at WikiProject U2. Started in June 2007, the project has grown in spurts, resulting in a collection of 8 Featured Articles and 24 Good Articles. The project maintains a to do list, portal, and a list of references.

The Signpost: 09 October 2013

  • Traffic report: Shutdown shenanigans
    If you're living in the United States, what did you do during the government shutdown? Well, it seems most people watched the final episode of Breaking Bad.
  • WikiProject report: Australian Roads
    This week, we moved to the esoteric world of Australian roads.
  • Featured content: Under the sea
    Seven articles, six lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
  • News and notes: Extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed
    An investigation by the English Wikipedia community into suspicious edits and sockpuppet activity has led to astonishing revelations that Wiki-PR, a multi-million-dollar US-based company, has created, edited, or maintained several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients using a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts.
  • In the media: College credit for editing Wikipedia
    The University of California, San Francisco attracted substantial media attention over its new course offering that will give credit to fourth year medical students for editing Wikipedia articles about medicine.

The Signpost: 16 October 2013

  • News and notes: Vice on Wiki-PR's paid advocacy; Featured list elections begin
    Media coverage on Wiki-PR, the multi-million-dollar US-based company that has broken several policies and guidelines on the English Wikipedia in its quest to create and maintain thousands of articles for paying clients, continued this week with a feature story by Martin Robbins in the British edition of Vice magazine.
  • Traffic report: Peaceful potpourri
    A slow week, with low overall views and the Top 10 dominated by longstanding pages. Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's outer space-set action art film, not only held its position at the top of the US box office but climbed to the top of the Wikipedia chart as well, showing that it has become a major talking point.
  • WikiProject report: Heraldry and Vexillology
    This week, we studied coats of arms and flags with the folks at WikiProject Heraldry and Vexillology. Started in September 2006, the project has grown to include 20 Featured Articles and nearly 50 Good Articles. The project maintains a portal, a list of resources, and a variety of images and templates.
  • Featured content: That's a lot of pictures
    Six articles, two lists, and thirty-three pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
  • Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute case closes
    The Manning naming dispute case has closed, with a strong and unanimous statement by the Committee against disparaging references to transgendered persons. Sanctions were enacted against six editors.

The Bugle: Issue XCI, October 2013

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Your Military History Newsletter

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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) 22:14, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 October 2013

  • News and notes: Grantmaking season—rumblings in the German-language community
    The next twice-yearly round of Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) grantmaking is soon to close for community questioning and commentary. Ten nation-based Wikimedia chapters and one thematic organisation are asking for a total of more than US$5M of donors’ money from the Foundation’s renamed annual plan grant process. Aside from Wikimedia UK ($708k), the three biggest asks are from the German-speaking chapters: Wikimedia Germany is asking for $2.4M and Wikimedia Austria $311k; and the German-language-related Swiss chapter is applying for $500k.
  • WikiProject report: Elements of the world
    This week, we headed to an elementary subject with WikiProject Elements. Founded by Mav in 2002, this project has grown to have 19 featured articles, 2 featured topics, and 68 good articles. The project also has a list of templates, and a periodic table of elements filled with pictures.

WikiCup 2013 October newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our champion, for the second year running, is Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions). Our final nine were as follows:

  1. Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions)
  2. Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions)
  3. Canada Sasata (submissions)
  4. Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions)
  5. New South Wales Casliber (submissions)
  6. Scotland Adam Cuerden (submissions)
  7. London Miyagawa (submissions)
  8. Poland Piotrus (submissions)
  9. Wyoming Ealdgyth (submissions)

All those who reached the final win prizes, and prizes will also be going to the following participants:

  • New South Wales Casliber (submissions) wins the FA prize, for four featured articles in round 4, worth 400 points.
  • Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) wins the GA prize, for 20 good articles in round 3, worth 600 points.
  • Portland, Oregon Another Believer (submissions) wins the FL prize, for four featured lists in round 2, worth 180 points.
  • Scotland Adam Cuerden (submissions) wins the FP prize, for 23 featured pictures in round 5, worth 805 point.
  • Republic of Rose Island Sven Manguard (submissions) wins the FPo prize, for 2 featured portals in round 3, worth 70 points.
  • Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions) wins the topic prize, for a 23-article featured topic in round 5, worth 230 points.
  • Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 79 did you know articles in round 5, worth 570 points.
  • Ohio ThaddeusB (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 23 in the news articles in round 4, worth 270 points.
  • United States Ed! (submissions) wins the GAR prize, for 24 good article reviews in round 1, worth 96 points.
  • The judges are awarding the Oddball Barnstar to British Empire The C of E (submissions), for some curious contributions in earlier rounds.
  • Finally, the judges are awarding Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) the Geography Barnstar for her work on sea, now a featured article. This top-importance article was the highest-scoring this year; when it was promoted to FA status, Cwmhiraeth could claim 720 points.

Prizes will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Congratulations to everyone who has been successful in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and a particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition. While it has been an excellent year, errors have opened up the judges' eyes to the need for a third judge, and it is with pleasure that we announce that experienced WikiCup participant Miyagawa will be acting as a judge from now on. We hope you will all join us in welcoming him to the team.

Next year's competition begins on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; it is open to all Wikipedians, new and old. Brainstorming and discussion remains open for how next year's competition will work, and straw polls will be opened by the judges soon. Those interested in friendly competition may also like to keep an eye on the stub contest, being organised by Casliber. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2014 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 October 2013

  • Traffic report: 200 miles in 200 years
    The top 10 encapsulates the history of human aviation; at #1, a Google Doodle celebrating the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump; at #10, the enduringly popular scifi film Gravity, a paean to human spaceflight. It's odd to think it's taken us 200 years to travel about that many miles up.
  • In the media: Rand Paul plagiarizes Wikipedia?
    While giving a speech on behalf of a gubernatorial candidate, Paul advocated his pro-life position, and compared allowing unrestricted abortions to the film Gattaca. He went on to use strikingly similar language and phraseology in his speech to what the Wikipedia page reads. The Washington Post's article conceded that Wikipedia is a widely used source for trivial information, but mocked the fact that a politician would view it as a reliable source.
  • News and notes: Sex and drug tourism—Wikivoyage's soft underbelly?
    In January we raised several potentially troublesome issues for the Wikimedia movement in taking on Wikivoyage, including the apparent inadequacy of the English Wikivoyage sex-tourism policy, hurriedly strengthened against mention of child sex after our inquiries. However, both sex-tourism and illegal-activities policies remain equivocal about how the site should treat entries about sex tourism more generally, and drugs that are classed as illicit in almost every country. Yet the Signpost has found it remarkably easy to locate material in Wikivoyage that violates both the spirit and the letter of the policies.
  • Featured content: Wrestling with featured content
    This year's WikiCup competition has finished, while three articles, five lists, and six pictures, were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
  • Recent research: User influence on site policies: Wikipedia vs. Facebook vs. Youtube
    Laura Stein, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, has concluded that, based on her comparison of user policy documents (including the Terms of Service) of YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, Wikipedia offers the highest level of participation power overall.
  • WikiProject report: Special: Lessons from the dead and dying
    With Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and other gloomy celebrations this week, we're taking a look at Wikipedia's dead and dying. For some dead WikiProjects, the sole purpose of their life was simply to serve as a warning to others. Some of these projects may still be salvageable, but for most, a revival is unlikely. Here are some projects that never got off the ground and the lessons that can be gleaned from their follies

Titan's Cross nomination

As you are listed as a member of Operation Majestic Titan, you are receiving this message to notify you that a new Titan's Cross nomination has been opened. You are therefore cordially invited to iVote or offer your opinion on the nomination. Sincerely, TomStar81 (Talk) 05:44, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 November 2013

  • News and notes: Alleged "outing" of editor's personal information leads to Wikipedia ban
    As part of the second major "outing" controversy to hit the English Wikipedia in less than a year, the Chelsea/Bradley Manning naming dispute was dragged into the spotlight yet again when the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee ruled by motion to remove the administrator tools from and ban long-time Wikipedia contributor Phil Sandifer.
  • Traffic report: Danse Macabre
    It's fair to say that commemorating death was a strong theme this week, with Lou Reed's passing generating interest, as well as a Google Doodle celebrating the costume designer Edith Head. And of course, the world's greatest celebrations of the dead, Halloween and the Day of the Dead, were also popular this week.
  • Featured content: Five years of work leads to 63-article featured topic
    HMS Hood, one of the most famous warships of the Second World War, was a battlecruiser and therefore part of what is now the largest featured topic on Wikipedia: "Battlecruisers of the world". The topic was promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week alongside eleven articles, three lists, four pictures, and two other topics.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Accessibility
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Accessibility, a project that strives to make Wikipedia accessible for users with disabilities. The project improves Wikipedia's guidelines and Manual of Style, collects useful templates and scripts, and provides support to impaired Wikipedians.
  • Arbitration report: Ebionites 3 case closed
    The Ebionites 3 case has closed with an interaction ban for the two editors involved in the dispute.

WikiCup award

In recognition of your participation in the 2013 Wikipedia:WikiCup. J Milburn (talk · contribs) and The ed17 (talk · contribs) 15:29, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

WikiCup award

In recognition of your participation in the 2013 Wikipedia:WikiCup. J Milburn (talk · contribs) and The ed17 (talk · contribs) 15:30, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 November 2013

  • Traffic report: Google Doodlebugs bust the block
    The numbers this week are beyond anything that has been seen since this report began. The top view count beats the average by an order of magnitude. Usually the appearance of numbers this big on the list is due to spamming, but in this case it seems they are due to honest interest; more specifically, Google Doodles, which for the first time claimed all five top slots. This column has raised numerous times the power of a Google Doodle to shine light on Wikipedia, but the wattage has never been as high as this.
  • Special report: FDC staff raise the benchmarks for activities, impact, planning, and governance
    The supporting staff of the Wikimedia Foundation’s powerful volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) have released their assessments for the third half-yearly round of funding applications. The applications for the newly named annual plan grants were submitted by affiliated entities on 1 October, and comprise a total of more than US$5M in bids.

The Bugle: Issue XCII, November 2013

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 05:15, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2013

  • From the editor: The Signpost needs your help
    As I said in August, contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement, not to mention the English Wikipedia.
  • Book review: Peter Burke's Social History of Knowledge—ambitious, fascinating, and exhaustive
    Peter Burke's A Social History of Knowledge: Volume II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia is a broad and wide-ranging look at how knowledge has been created, acquired, organized, disseminated, and sometimes lost in the Western world over the last two and a half centuries, a sequel to his 2000 book covering the prior three centuries, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot.
  • Featured content: Rockin' the featured pictures
    Four articles, five lists, and thirty-four pictures were promoted to 'featured status' this week, including an image of a small fraction of the 18,000 taxis that serve Hong Kong.
  • WikiProject report: Score! American football on Wikipedia
    This week, we headed over to WikiProject National Football League. With 10 Featured Articles, 61 Featured Lists, and 142 Good Articles (as of publication), this WikiProject has done a lot of work improving American football articles.
  • News and notes: Foundation to Wiki-PR: cease and desist; Arbitration Committee elections starting
    The Wikimedia Foundation has sent a formal cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR—the public relations agency accused of breaking Wikipedia policies and guidelines by creating, editing, and maintaining several thousand articles for paying clients through a sophisticated array of accounts. The Foundation's attorneys, Cooley LLP, have demanded that Wiki-PR's employees abide by the site's Terms of Use and the language of a community ban from the English Wikipedia.
  • Traffic report: Ill Winds
    It's not hard to guess which event is leading interest in the top 25 this week. The sheer scale of Typhoon Haiyan is staggering; estimates place its maximum windspeed upon first landfall in the Philippines on November 6 at 315 km/h, which would make it the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to reach land. To date, the storm has killed nearly 4000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 4 million homes.
  • Arbitration report: WMF opens the door for non-admin arbitrators
    Back in March, when the March 25 Arbitration Report covered the Audit Subcommittee appointment discussion, a statement from the WMF legal division clarified its position that access to deleted revisions required an RFA or RFA-identical process; therefore AUSC committee appointments were not open to non-admins. The WMF legal team has now further clarified its position, saying that running for and winning an election for arbitrator would qualify as the type of rigorous community selection process required for the checkuser and oversight rights held by arbitrators.

WikiProject Wikify: November Newsletter and December Drive

Delivered on behalf of WikiProject Wikify. To unsubscribe remove your username from this list. EdwardsBot (talk) 22:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 December 2013

  • Traffic report: Kennedy shot Who
    Summary:Doctor Who nearly got cancelled in its first week because its premiere was swamped by coverage of the JFK assassination, which happened the same day. Thankfully, producers saw fit to rerun it the next day, which is now its official anniversary date.
  • News and notes: One decade of Wikisource; FDC recommendations raise serious questions
    The sister project Wikisource, the digital library that hosts free-content primary sources, is now a decade old. Wikisource, which now has versions in 63 languages, is the sixth type of project to reach ten-year milestone and will be the last until 2016. The Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations to the Board of Trustees on 11 new applications for annual grants by 11 WMF-affiliated organisations. The maximum total budget for the current and upcoming March rounds is US$6M.
  • WikiProject report: Electronic Apple Pie
    This week, we returned to WikiProject Apple Inc. for a peek at their newest articles about the latest in gadgets and software. The last time we took a bite out of WikiProject Apple, they had just finished merging WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject iPhone OS. Today, the project is hard at work rewriting their primary article, improving the subject's outline, and adding to the project's list of 25 Good Articles and 6 Featured Articles.
  • Featured content: F*&!
    Seventeen articles, four lists, and twenty-eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status in the last two weeks.

The Signpost: 11 December 2013

  • Traffic report: Deaths of Mandela, Walker top the list
    When one edits this page for too long, one is tempted to appoint oneself as the psychoanalyst for the human race, or at least the English-speaking portion thereof. Since nearly everyone uses Wikipedia, the constant stream of TV updates, pointless celebrity scandals, and inquiries after who has died can seem like a dreary peek into humanity's surprisingly banal collective consciousness.
  • In the media: Edward Snowden a "hero"; German Wikipedia court ruling
    Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales caught headlines last week when he referred to former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden ... Loek Essers of the International Data Group, (IDG) News Service is reporting that a German court has held Wikipedia liable for its content, but still does not have to fact check the information in advance.
  • News and notes: Wiki Loves Monuments—winners announced
    Amid great anticipation the international prize winners have just been announced for the fourth annual Wiki Loves Monuments, now the world's largest photographic competition and one of the biggest events on the Wikimedia movement's calendar. ... The first prize has gone to David Gubler's photograph of a Swiss train crossing a viaduct.
  • WikiProject report: WikiProject Wine
    This week, the Signpost interviewed the Wine WikiProject.
  • Interview: Wikipedia's first Featured Article centurion
    On 7 December, Wikipedia editor Wehwalt reached the momentous milestone of 100 featured articles with History of Chincoteague, Virginia. Quite apart from the reading and research, that's around three-quarters of a million words of finalised text, not counting footnotes, image captions and the rest.
  • Featured content: Viewer discretion advised
    Three articles, one list, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
  • Technology report: MediaWiki 1.22 released
    On 6 December, the latest version of the MediaWiki software was released. In development from March 2013 through October 2013, the release featured anti-spam and counter-vandalism improvements.

The Bugle: Issue XCIII, December 2013

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Your Military History Newsletter

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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) 23:59, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 December 2013

  • Traffic report: Hopper to the top
    An animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.
  • News and notes: Nine new arbitrators announced
    A little more than six days after the close of voting, the results of the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced. Of the 22 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, though only one gained the support of more than half of the voters. Eight were elected to two-year terms, and a ninth will serve for one year.
  • Technology report: Introducing the GLAMWikiToolset
    This week, the GLAMWikiToolset, or GWToolset, is being deployed to the Wikimedia Commons. It allows for GLAM organizations to batch upload content based on various metadata stored in an XML schema. In the past this has been done by various bots, but now it will be easier for GLAMs to do it directly.

The Signpost: 25 December 2013

  • WikiProject report: More Great WikiProject Logos
    We saved one last special report for 2013. After our well-received review of great WikiProject logos a couple years ago, it was only a matter of time before we collected a new batch of interesting iconography that showcases the creativity of the Wikipedia community. Hopefully, these logos will also inspire other projects to liven up their drab pages.
  • News and notes: IEG round 2 funding rewards diverse ambitions
    A significant move by the Wikimedia Foundation has been to broaden the types of activities it funds to develop several different programs for judging and allocating that funding, and to set up volunteer committees that initially assess applications for funding.
  • Technology report: OAuth: future of user designed tools
    Last month, the OAuth extension was deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. OAuth is a standard used for allowing users to authenticate third-party applications, also known as consumers, to take actions on their behalf.

Related Articles

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