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Wikimania 2009 to be held in Buenos Aires
After over a month of deliberations, the Wikimania jury announced on Friday that Buenos Aires, Argentina would serve as the site of Wikimania 2009, to be held in August 2009, defeating finalist Toronto in the final round of voting.
In an announcement on Friday, jury moderators Phoebe Ayers, Cary Bass and James Forrester noted the strengths of both Buenos Aires and Toronto, and explained why Buenos Aires received the nod over Toronto:
The jury was particularly excited by a few parts of the Buenos Aires bid:
- A strong, organized team, with division of labor already underway and support from Wikimedia Argentina. Many people contributed to the bid, with obvious enthusiasm for organizing the conference and quick responses to inquiries.
- A detailed budget proposal and planning schedule. Many major expenses are being covered by the provider. The total budget is similar to Wikimania 2007's, including a larger travel scholarship fund, and they have provided detailed charts ahead of time.
- A significant number of sponsors already lined up, with some already confirmed. They hope to cover half the accommodation and $60k in travel scholarships, which will help to ease travel costs for participants from far away.
- A solid venue : as with Toronto, this was situated within a well-maintained cultural center in a major international city, near an airline hub; culturally open, and an international melting pot.
- Relaxed visa rules, and easy entry from South American countries.
- Good Spanish-language media contacts, with the promise of outreach to and the opportunity to work with the Spanish-language Wikimedia communities.
Toronto, the runner up, also provided a great bid. The jury was especially excited by:
- Strong English-language press in the area, and media experience among the bid team
- A very accessible venue, especially for US/European attendees.
- An excellent venue : a university campus, with dorms directly at the venue. As with Buenos Aires, it was situated within a well-maintained cultural center in a major international city, near an airline hub; culturally open, and an international melting pot.
- Extensive budget accommodation in the dorms; with many options for casual social space.
- A dedicated bid team, with the hope of Wikimedia Canada being formed in time to help coordinate.
However, the jury felt that Buenos Aires' bid showed stronger organization overall. Additionally, much of the information in the Toronto bid was carried over from previous bids, and it was unclear how much of a commitment for the University of Toronto facilities there was specifically for 2009.
Argentina will become the first South American country and the first Spanish-language country to host Wikimania. Wikimania 2009 will be the fifth annual conference, and each conference has been held on a different continent:
- 2005: Europe — Frankfurt, Germany
- 2006: North America — Boston, United States
- 2007: Asia — Taipei, Republic of China
- 2008: Africa — Alexandria, Egypt
- 2009: South America — Buenos Aires, Argentina
The choice was not without criticism, although the decision raised much less controversy than the choice of Alexandria for Wikimania 2008. Some users, including David Gerard and Dan Rosenthal, noted that an assertion made by Ayers, that "strong bids from [Europe and North America] would be welcome for 2010's Wikimania," could be read to mean that Toronto's bid may have been unwelcome due to a wish to keep Wikimania out of Europe and North America until 2010. Ayers explained her wording:
This jury isn't/wasn't in the business of deciding anything whatsoever about 2010. The statement that strong bids from North America and Europe are welcome should be taken with good faith at face value and not as an Oracle of Things To Come or a Veiled Comment on Things Past. If you have to read anything into it, read into it an acknowledgment that we can't win when it comes to picking locations! Apparently everywhere makes *someone* unhappy, and if we don't have a conference in Europe/North America soon there will be much complaining.
Jury member Michael Snow started a discussion on Monday, on what Wikimania should be. He noted that "Wikimania is being pulled in too many directions, and it cannot be all things to all people", and noted that such a discussion may be necessary in order to weigh where Wikimania should be located:
Wikimania could be bigger or smaller, reach the developing world or only the already-developed, more expensive or less so, rotated widely or narrowly. Leaving aside the security concerns specific to Alexandria, the choice of options would have the following undesirable consequences, depending on which course is taken:
- Complaints that the event is impersonal, lacks a sense of community, or is merely a stage-managed public relations show
- After a cycle or two, it seems to be pretty much just the same group of people getting together every few years
- Objections that the amount being spent is a poor use of foundation funds (depending on how it works out, this would be about either the size of the event or the travel costs incurred by the foundation itself, making distance from San Francisco a factor)
- Inability to accommodate anyone beyond the local audience, thus being hardly different from a random meetup and failing to reflect the diverse character of Wikimedia participants
- Rumors and misperceptions of unfairness in timing of when registration is opened or how tickets are allocated
- Outrage over high admission charges, resembling more closely a "professional" conference
... I fear an end result of the fights over this would be to either abandon the idea of Wikimania, or simply to hold it in the Moscone Center every year like Macworld. Before we get there, let's hear some better alternatives.
Sister Projects Interview: Wikisource
This is the first of a series of interviews about Wikimedia Foundation sister projects. The aim is to help Wikipedia editors understand these projects, with the hopes that more will be interested in participating. (We are still looking for interviewees for Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, and Wikinews. You can find more details on this page.)
This week, we're very fortunate to have BirgitteSB, who is a bureaucrat at Wikisource, to discuss that project.
Can you describe what Wikisource is? What is its history? Any aims and objectives?
Wikisource is a library of free-content artistic and intellectual writings. Wikisource began more like Commons, with all languages together, but eventually split off into separate subdomains as Wikipedia did. However, Wikisource subdomains are often broader than Wikipedias. The English subdomain hosts texts in languages that would be inappropriate on the English Wikipedia, such as Old and Middle English as well as Scots dialect. Since Wikisource presents texts as they were published, there is no need to make some of the finer distinctions that the Wikipedias do. Wikisource aims to stand out from other similar collections online by the use of wikilinks to give context and background information. Wikilinks allow information to link to Wikipedia articles or Wikitionary entries without being as obtrusive as margin notes, nor as difficult to follow as footnotes. And those who just want the straight text can more easily ignore wikilinks.
An example of how wikilinks can be used on Wikisource is Fuzzy-Wuzzy, which was one my first projects when joining Wikisource. My intention with the wikilinks was to offer the background information that a reader of the Scots Observer in 1890 would have likely known. Of course a good portion readers today will instantly understand what is meant by the "Khyber Hills" and the reference to "Tommy", but there will also be people who do not understand the significance of either, and I doubt a significant number of modern readers would realize "Martinis" refer to a type of rifle rather than a drink from the wordplay in the poem. The beauty of wikilinks is that I can provide adequate information for the completely uninformed reader without annoying the military history buff with footnotes full of information he would find simplistic but can't avoid reading. However, Wikisource is generally far from the most sophisticated work of collaborating with the authors of Wikipedia articles to make this all more subtle. Currently, work is mostly focused on getting the texts themselves set-up on the wiki and proofread.
I felt that Wikisource is a mix of both Wikibooks and Wikiquote. So how is Wikisource different from these 2 projects?
Wikibooks is about creating new texts while Wikisource is only interested in previously existing texts. Contributors to Wikibooks are true authors while at Wikisource contributors are more like traditional editors. Wikisource does not create new content. Wikiquote on the other doesn't have complete texts at all, but short excerpts. Wikisource requires texts to be presented as they were published and doesn't allow excerpting or heavy editing by contributors.
Follow-up question: So if I want to read the manuscripts of Beethoven during his last few years when he had gone completely deaf, that would be in the scope of Wikisource?
It would definitely be within the scope of Wikisource. However sheet music is currently a technological issue. Brion is not implementing the lilypond extension for any Wikimedia wiki due to security problems and there is no real alternative for editing sheet music on a wiki. Hopefully this will be resolved in the future. If anyone has creative ideas on how transcribe such a manuscript they would certainly be welcome to work on this, but I don't think someone coming to Wikisource and asking how to add sheet music would find many answers.
Ok, I'm a newcomer to Wikisource. What can I write?
Well, we don't write things like Wikipedia does. There is not much of a place for writing new material at Wikisource.
However a new contributor would be welcome to transcribe texts onto Wikisource. You could add works entirely new to the wiki; this week's collaboration is on the works of Karl Marx. Or you could help with continuing the transcription of works in progress, like The New Student's Reference Work. Some of the more recent texts are set up with the ProofreadPage extension which turns the transcription task into more of a proofreading task from OCR. While many of us are excited to be using this to work off djvu files from Commons, it is a big transition for the project with more logistical issues than you might imagine. Other texts needing proofreading can be found at Wikisource:Proofreading. Besides these options there is always a place for the creation of new translations.
Also some of the texts need image extractions done from the files of scanned pages. For the more expert contributor there is also the wikilinking that gives Wikisource texts that added value not found in similar projects across the Internet. So there are lots of tasks that go into producing Wikisource texts even without original writing!
What are some of the tasks done by administrators?
Besides the obvious tasks like deleting pages and blocking vandals, I think administrators tend to take on the task of looking for potential problems and finding answers to questions such as "Is this newcomer formatting things properly and choosing the correct names?", "Do these new texts have any copyright concerns?", or "Do we have the information of who translated this edition?". Researching copyright seems to be a good part of the role at times. But I think everyone has a slightly different experience in what they focus on.
On Wikipedia we have "Featured Article" to show its best selection of articles. Is there similar scheme for Wikisource?
We have a featured text that appears on the Main Page monthly instead of daily. The most difficult requirement for featured texts is a high level of proofreading. Although they can be opposed for style issues as well.
Being one of the smaller sister projects (comparing to others such as commons or meta), does the project have any plans to encourage more people registering and contributing?
Of course I have only been talking about the English subdomain of Wikisource. Meta and Commons are not divided among languages and Meta is actually smaller by some measurements.
I would welcome anyone wishing to contribute to Wikisource, but there is no sort of organized effort to round up people. Anyone who is interested, but is not sure where to start, can leave a note at Wikisource:Scriptorium or join the #wikisource IRC channel.
WikiWorld: "Hammerspace"
- This comic was produced in November 2006, but, due to an oversight, was never featured in the Signpost.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Magic satchel". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
10,000,000 articles
On Thursday, the 10,000,000th article was created. A press release circulated by the Foundation on Friday declared the 10,000,000th article to be the Hungarian article on painter Nicholas Hilliard, created by user Pataki Márta.
Of the 10,000,000 articles, 23% are in English, 7.2% are in German, and 6.4% are in French. The top 10 Wikipedias (English, German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish) compose about 64.9% of all articles, while about 240 other Wikipedias combine for the remaining 35.1%.
Wikimedia receives $500,000 donation
On the heels of receiving a three-year grant worth US$3 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (see archived story), the Wikimedia Foundation announced last week an additional $500,000 donation from philanthropists Vinod and Neeru Khosla. Vinod Khosla is a venture capitalist, best known for co-founding Sun Microsystems. The donation was announced in a press release on Thursday.
Briefly
- First deleted in March 2006, and a perennial deletion review candidate, The Game (game) was recreated after a successful deletion review, using new sources. The article has since been moved to The Game (mind game).
- The Ukrainian Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles.
- The Min Nan Wiktionary has reached 25,000 edits.
- The Haitian Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
- The Min Nan Wikipedia has reached 3,000 articles.
- The Manx Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Sinhalese Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
Dispatches: Featured content overview
One of the holy grails of contributing to Wikipedia is writing a featured article. Featured articles are considered to be our best work, being well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable. They can be de-featured if they no longer meet standards. However, if you are not a great article writer, don't panic! There are other ways you can contribute featured content to the encyclopedia.
Featured pictures
Featured pictures represent the most encyclopedic images Wikipedia has to offer. This is not the same as featured pictures on Commons, which aims to select what is best described as the prettiest pictures. Wikipedia featured pictures should also be of the highest technical quality possible.
Any freely licensed picture is eligible for featured status, however minimum size requirements are enforced for static media. Video files can be nominated for featured picture status, because they are considered to be moving pictures (hence the word movie). To become a featured picture, an image must meet the featured picture criteria and obtain consensus for promotion at Featured picture candidates in roughly seven days. There are currently 1163 featured pictures, approximately 0.04% of the eligible pictures that are here and on Commons. In comparison, there are 6642 featured articles.
Featured pictures are displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day (POTD) under the section "Today's featured picture". Commons also runs a POTD.
Pictures also have a good article equivalent on Commons, called Quality images. However, eligibility is restricted to photos taken by Wikimedians. Additionally, Valued images (not yet stable) aims to find the most encyclopedic images without putting too much emphasis on pretty pictures.
Pictures have their own peer review process at Picture peer review. In addition, the Graphic Lab can help you to improve your images. They also have a chapter on Commons, as well as the French, German, Spanish and Luxembourgish Wikipedias.
- Examples
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View from the Window at Le Gras, by Nicéphore Niépce - the earliest surviving photograph -
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Hoverflies mating in midair, by Fir0002 -
Killing of "suspected Iraqi insurgents", by the US Department of Defense
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Steam turbine, by Siemens Pressebild -
USS Shaw exploding during the attack on Pearl Harbor, by US Department of Defense -
Featured lists
- See Featured lists, criteria, candidates and peer review
We intuitively know what a list is. A featured list is one that enumerates articles whose subjects satisfy a certain encyclopedic criterion in a useful, comprehensive, factually accurate and well-constructed manner. To become featured, a list must undergo a ten-day featured list candidacy and emerge with a consensus to promote. There are currently 636 featured lists.
Lists are not eligible for good article status.
Various proposals relating to a "today's featured list" item on the Main Page have been made, some of which would require the appointment of a featured list director (for example Today's featured list proposal, another featured list proposal and List of the day), but discussion appears stalled.
Lists go through the same peer review process as articles.
- Examples
- List of snow events in Florida
- List of Indonesian volcanoes
- List of English words containing Q not followed by U
- List of molecules in interstellar space
- List of countries without armed forces
Featured portals
- See Featured portals, criteria, candidates and peer review
A portal serves as a miniature version of the Main Page for a broad subject area. Featured portals showcase Wikipedia's best content in that subject, although such content need not be featured. They should also be aesthetically pleasing, ergonomic, well-maintained and encourage contributions in the subject area per the featured portal criteria. Portals must also obtain consensus for promotion at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates in order to be featured. There are currently {{Featured portals number}} featured portals, comprising approximately 20% of the total portal population.
Besides featured articles, whose director is Raul654, featured portals are the only other featured content process to have formal directors, who are Dihydrogen Monoxide, OhanaUnited and Rudget.
Portals have their own peer review process.
- Examples
- Amusement parks portal
- Library and information science portal
- Business and economics portal
- Photography portal
- Physics portal
Featured topics
- See Featured topics, criteria and candidates
This is fairly self-explanatory – a featured topic is a set of exemplary articles that are somehow related. However, there is no glossing over the puny little stub on a subject that is a major part of the topic – all articles should be good articles with at least two, or 1 in 5 (whichever is greater) being featured articles or lists per the featured topic criteria (exceptions can be made for articles of limited scope). To become featured, the topic must also obtain consensus to promote at Featured topic candidates and be listed there for more than 10 days. Changes to featured topics (e.g. adding an article) should also be made through FTC. There are currently 36 featured topics encompassing 323 unique articles.
There is no such thing as "topic peer review"; individual articles can be reviewed at peer review.
- Examples
Featured sounds
- See Featured sounds, criteria and candidates
The newest of the featured content processes, featured sounds, aims to highlight the most encyclopedic audio recordings. Any freely licensed audio file that is not a spoken article is eligible for nomination at Featured sound candidates, where it is checked against the featured sound criteria. Unfortunately, the featured sound process currently suffers from a lack of participation and nomination periods are lengthy. There are currently 14 featured sounds.
A media file, usually a sound (but usually not a featured sound), appears on the Commons Main Page as Media of the day. However, there is no featured sound designation on Commons – MOTDs are simply repeated each year unless someone changes them.
There is currently no specialized peer review venue for sounds.
- Examples
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"One small step for (a) man...", by Neil Armstrong
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WikiProject Report: Australia
This week we interviewed a number of members from the renowned Australia WikiProject (Matilda, Dihydrogen Monoxide, Blnguyen, Orderinchaos, Gnangarra, Lankiveil, SatuSuro and Moondyne). A project (with its own 'cabal' and portal) that has been going since 5 June 2006, it is one of the foremost groups on Wikipedia. An umbrella–project for all the sub-groups which attend to all aspects of Australia, it is a group with numerous editors and many departments. The Australians (Ozzies or Aussies) have covered all bases with the project with nearly 56,000 articles tagged with project–notices. The scale of the WikiProject can be seen by considering that although it has 98 featured articles and lists, they only make up around 0.2% of all articles within the project's scope. The project has (in addition to 98 featured articles or featured lists) nine A-class articles and one hundred and forty five good articles.
- Questions
- What is the main aim of the project? Does it focus more towards one niche more than the others?
- Orderinchaos : I think our aim is necessarily broad - as a community with varied interests, opinions and expertise, we are trying to create an accurate, comprehensive, encyclopaedic profile of Australia on Wikipedia. This takes in topics such as history (both Aboriginal and European), geography, politics and government, transport, geology, flora & fauna, education, culture (e.g. music, film/TV, festivals and Indigenous) and major events. Obviously we cannot cover everything so we try to identify what is most needed, and what we're most capable of producing given who we have on board.
- Have there been any discussions about the project that have helped it in any way? If not, where could the project improve?
- Moondyne : About 9% of the project's 52,000+ articles are still unassessed for quality and importance, and about 55% are unassessed for importance alone. An assessment drive to help clear the backlog may be a worthwhile exercise.
- Matilda : In my view the noticeboard helps the project immeasurably and the focus of the discussions on the noticeboard have helped the project to grow constructively and with little (if any) rancour. The noticeboard started in September 2004 with Rebecca suggesting a template. The elements in that template are still critical to the project today: it featured a collaboration, suggested articles to create, expand, verify, ... by theme - and those themes have held reasonably true today. The first 50 edits to the page feature a high proportion of editors who are still participating in the project ( Chuq , Lacrimosus , Ta bu shi da yu, Robert Merkel ) - it might be presumptuous to suggest it is because of the noticeboard, but certainly in my view the noticeboard helps to support contributors to the project. I also think the noticeboard's creation is the real start date of the project :-)
- With so many articles within scope, how can you define which ones are of higher priority?
- Matilda : A lot of the sub-projects focus on article improvement. There is no strategy to article improvement (that I can see) but we do invite suggestions for collaboration at WP:ACOTF and we have had a diverse range of topics nominated and result in successful collaborations for improvement. The assessment department rates articles on their importance and quality, but in my view, apart from participation in the nominated article for collaboration each fortnight, attention is generally paid to articles based on individual contributors' enthusiasm rather than an organised priority approach.
- Orderinchaos : WikiProject Australia is seen as an "umbrella" project, so each subproject within it, with a substantially smaller scope and a more focussed group of editors, has its own set of priorities. Coordination between projects are done through the community noticeboard, and is assisted greatly by cross-participation of editors between subprojects.
- Does 'the cabal' play an influence in the project?
- Gnangarra : Strewth some drongo has messed up, the Aus-cabal aint nothing like what they got there. Let me put you straight, Sarah is the pretty Sheila out front to keep every body distracted while Mark and Alphax fleece you at the Two-up schools. They are also the local Bookies with odds available for all RfA's ARBCOM elections and Jimmy Wales next girlfriend being Elle McFeast. Like all good betting agencies they dont have any influence at all <cough>
- Blnguyen : A look at the history of Australian RfAs at WP:AWNB/A will show that a lot of Australian RfAs have been scuppered by other Australians pointing out certain evidence. Compared to some other national WikiProjects, Australians are less partisan. On FACs as well, quite a lot of them get more objections (percentage wise) than from non-Australians, whereas I can think of at least one nation-state WikiProject that has a 100% support rate from members on all of its FACs, even though some of them had entirely unsourced sections. So I'd say Australians are more honest with their performance than a lot of other nation-state WikiProjects.
- Satusuro : What cabal? - clearly the inter-subproject rivalries is taken more seriously.
- Dihydrogen Monoxide : There is no cabal, despite what the New Zealand cabal will tell you.
- Has the project, in your opinion, influenced any others? And if so, how?
- Moondyne : Yes, see our archenemy's action plan.
- Orderinchaos : I think we have influenced other region projects in our region such as Indonesia, New Zealand and Melanesia in different ways, although each has their own emphasis and views. One of the WikiProject Reform people noted ourselves and WikiProject India as examples for structuring general-topic projects with large scopes and content areas.
- Gnangarra : The template {{WP Australia}} has been copied and reconfigured to suit the requirements of many projects
- Blnguyen : This was one of the first projects to based on a nation-state
Number of featured articles produced as of March 2008 
Number of good articles produced as of March 2008 
Cumulative growth of recognised content
- Does the project's success reflect the dedication which has been displayed in the past?
- Dihydrogen Monoxide : Yes, definitely, the number of quality articles produced by the project is a sign of the dedication and hard work by many project members. For instance, towards the end of 2007, a challenge was put forward for the project to have 100 good articles by the end of the year. Multiple users got to work after the initial challenge, followed by a good deal of teamwork and collaboration as the count rose steadily. When the goal of 100 was reached, there was much rejoicing, demonstrating the dedication and hard work of project members.
- Orderinchaos : I believe we owe a considerable debt to those who started the project and thought out many of the things we now take for granted - there were more than a few but Longhair, Matilda, CJ and ScottDavis should be mentioned in particular. In addition the early participants of the noticeboard (which preceded the project by about two years) and WP:ACOTF, as well as some of the subproject maintainers/contributors, helped foster a sense of community.
- Blnguyen : In addition to what Orderinchaos mentioned above, I think the earlier crop before my time had particularly strong characters in taking the initiative, especially in dealing with incidents of troublemaking, usually on controversial articles such as politics. They were never afraid to take a stand and I think that is why there is a more of a culture in this WikiProject to tackle campaigns of disruption. In many other WikiProjects, there is more of a culture to for everyone to avoid conflict, look away and hope someone else will deal with a troublemaker, to keep high approval ratings, which can lead to lawlessness and run-down articles. So I think they have created a culture that will keep the project structurally strong with good growth prospects, long after they have retired.
- SatuSuro : One of the project strengths that may well have trickled throughout wikipedia is our high standard of project management - the behind the scenes work on categories, templates, and project management that Moondyne, Longhair, CJ, ScottDavis and others have worked upon. Not so obvious perhaps, but the Australian project is one of the few that has the minimal occurrence of the red discussion/talk page header on project article pages. It makes for a project that knows what is there and how.
- Matilda : Before the project formalised itself as such but was just a group of editors who linked together via the noticeboard, there were large numbers of high quality focussed contributions on particular themes. For example User:Adam Carr (who no longer edits here) was incredibly prolific, particularly when it came to Australian politics and history, and his contributions were of a very high standard; I am sure Adam helped to set a high standard of quality and a focus on content by example. Similarly Hesperian focussed on history and flora of Western Australia well before any wikiprojects were thought of.
- Does the Project have any weak points? Too many sub-projects for example?
- Orderinchaos : We have about the right number of subprojects. Occasionally one will get created by someone without thinking carefully about the scope or without seeking to make it a community project by involving others, and it becomes dormant when the person leaves or loses interest. A small group of us do watch these sorts of developments and usually seek to either merge the project into a successful one, or expand the scope to make it a realistic prospect.
- Blnguyen : Needless to say, there are a lot of areas where the coverage is not strong and needs to be improved. Even for a relatively strong section like Australian cricket (10 FAs, 18 GAs), which is the strongest of the Australian sports on Wikipedia, the vast majority of articles are far from being complete. Even the biggest projects like military history are vastly underdeveloped, so one should never be complacent.
- SatuSuro : Despite the apparent quietness on the less utilised sub-projects, there are surprises when an editor might find an area that need to be worked on, and the subsequent flow-on will encourage others to check out the more dormant projects and re-invigorate them. Maritime History, Exploration, and Tasmania are three 'quiet projects', but nevertheless there are regular additions of articles, and continued edits in those areas.
- Apart from the outreach department, are there any other ways non-members can get involved?
- Matilda : I would have to say that I don't think our outreach department is necessarily very strong. We do have a variation of the welcome template which draws attention to the project while incorporating the basic elements of a wikipedia welcome and which we use for new editors contributing to Australian articles. Our articles are tagged on the talk pages. Most of the pan-Australian discussion happens at our noticeboard - WP:AWNB which is the best way to gain the attention of the majority of Australian editors. Specific issues like politics have their own sub-projects and a discussion may continue there. We try to be open in our discussions and invite people who may not otherwise contribute to the noticeboard to join a discussion there if they seem to be an involved editor with an issue under discussion. Non-Australians have also raised issues with Australian wikipedians as a group through the noticeboard quite successfully in the past.
- Lankiveil : The Australian Wikipedians' notice board is probably the best place to start for any interested editors. It's quite active, and really serves as the focus point for our work on improving Australian articles. Plus, the occasional tomfoolery and silliness means that it's never a dull place to be!
Features and admins
Administrators
Three users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Jonny-mt (nom), Stwalkerster (nom), and Cobaltbluetony (nom).
Bots
Six bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: SoxBot (task request), EjsBot (task request), Werdnabot (task request), RoboMaxCyberSem (task request), AkhtaBot (task request), and LatitudeBot (task request).
Featured pages
Twenty three articles were promoted to featured status last week: Tropical Storm Vamei (nom), Clem Hill (nom), Giants: Citizen Kabuto (nom), Genetics (nom), USS Bridgeport (AD-10) (nom), University of California, Riverside (nom), Choe Bu (nom), Timor Leste Defence Force (nom), Grim Fandango (nom), Flag of Germany (nom), Ernie Toshack (nom), Silverchair (nom), SS Christopher Columbus (nom), Double Seven Day scuffle (nom), Ancient Egypt (nom), Ima Hogg (nom), Spyro: Year of the Dragon (nom), Komodo dragon (nom), Cannon (nom), Anarky (nom), Irreplaceable (nom), Jacques Plante (nom), Diocletian (nom).
Seventeen lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of WCW Hardcore Champions (nom), Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office (nom), List of Scripps National Spelling Bee champions (nom), List of Birmingham City F.C. managers (nom), List of UEFA Super Cup winning managers (nom), Green Wing (series 1) (nom), List of tallest buildings in New Orleans (nom), List of UEFA club tournament winning managers (nom), Liverpool F.C. seasons (nom), List of awards and nominations for Lost (nom), 2007 Cricket World Cup warm-up matches (nom), Tenacious D discography (nom), List of 30 Rock episodes (nom), Regions of Peru (nom), List of Victoria Cross recipients of the Royal Navy (nom), List of Super Bowl champions (nom), and List of Green Bay Packers head coaches (nom). The 65 featured lists in March is a record, far outstripping the 46 lists featured in January 2008.
No topic was promoted to featured status last week.
No portal was promoted to featured status last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Sea otter, Technology of the Song Dynasty, Flag of Armenia, 1933 Atlantic hurricane season, E. Urner Goodman, Free Association of German Trade Unions and December to Dismember (2006).
Former featured pages
Two articles were delisted recently: Voynich manuscript (nom) and Reginald Maudling (nom).
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Tugboat, Emperor Tamarin, Chris Young, The School of Athens, Louvre, Olympic Stadium (Montreal) and Cessna 182.
No sounds were featured last week.
Six pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
-edit3.jpg){kind=link}
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
Fixed bugs
- Use of the CSS markup
!importantis no longer broken by automatic conversion of spaces to non-breaking spaces. (r32377, bug 11874) - Deleting or creating a talk page now correctly turns its link on the corresponding article page red or blue respectively to the view of anonymous users. (r32390, bug 344)
- Image captions are now no longer confused with image dimensions in some cases, such as an image caption ending in 'px'. (This fix led to the Wikipedia:ClickFix problem, where image dimensions written with pxpx are no longer valid.) (r32394, bug 13436)
- API queries for list=users now work correctly even when all the usernames specified are actually IP addresses. (r32476, bug 13517)
- API output in YAML no longer has trailing spaces. (r32485, bug 11719)
- The upload form no longer appears blank when the user does not specify a filename but tries to upload anyway. (r32569, bug 13556)
New features
- The software now correctly decodes headings in the section=new 'Headline/Title' box when the user accidentally types the == signs in manually, even though they are automatically provided by the software. (r32376, bug 1600)
- Confirmation emails now have a link to reject confirmation, as well as a link to carry out confirmation. (r32499, bug 13450)
- Special:Upload now states what the maximum allowed file size to upload is. (r32516, bug 13490)
- The API action=parse now allows a revision ID to be specified as a parameter to the query. (r32541, bug 13544)
Other technology news
- All Wikimedia wikis except Commons now have upload of images, and other files, restricted to autoconfirmed users (those with an account over 4 days old). (bug 12556)
Ongoing news
- Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week.
New case
- International Churches of Christ: A case involving disputes concerning the article on International Churches of Christ.
Voting phase
- Prem Rawat: A case involving the actions of editors on Prem Rawat and related articles. Remedies proposed by bainer, and not voted on by any other arbitrators, would place Rawat-related articles on article probation, advise Jossi to maintain his February commitment not to edit articles related to the Rawat movement, and encouraging editors to seek the help of neutral editors in resolving disputes.
- Betacommand 2: A case involving the actions of Betacommand and others in relation to BetacommandBot, a controversial bot which tags some non fair use compliant images. Betacommand's actions had previously been discussed on a subpage of WP:AN. The main remedy, supported by four arbitrators, would instruct Betacommand to remain civil, refrain from making personal attacks, operate BetacommandBot within the scope of policies, and refrain from "further instances of untoward conduct"; an alternate remedy, with three supporting and one abstaining, would extend the remedy to require Betacommand to allow a method of opting out of user talk-page messages. Other remedies proposed, and supported by four arbitrators, would urge Betacommand to be more responsive to good-faith questions, advise editors that images and media may be periodically reviewed for compliance with non-free content criteria, and ask the community to re-examine policies regarding image deletion, bot-directed and otherwise.
- September 11 conspiracy theories: A case involving the actions of some editors on articles related to the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly in relation to 9/11 conspiracy theories. A unanimous remedy, with a majority of six users supporting, would allow any uninvolved administrator to impose sanctions on editors working on articles related to the events of September 11; such sanctions could be appealed to the imposing administrator, the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, or the Arbitration Committee itself.
Motion to close
- Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject. If closed as-is, only a remedy counseling editors to consider contributing outside of disputed articles would pass, though an additional remedy, advising WikiProject U.S. Roads to refer to prior debates when explaining prior consensus, has recently been proposed.