Foundation reports on research, Kenya trip, Mumbai Wikiconference; Canada, Hungary and Estonia; English Wikinews forked

The Wikimedia Foundation's report covering its activities during the month of August has been published on the Wikimedia blog. Among those items not to have received coverage in earlier editions of The Signpost is the publication of a final list of projects completed as part of the Wikimedia Summer of Research (WSoR) scheme, which ended in August (a Summary of Findings has since been compiled). In similar news, an update was given about the Kaggle Data competition, where teams were asked to "predict the number of edits a Wikipedia editor will make, based on a training dataset" in order to share in a cash prize (see previous Signpost coverage). According to the report, the competition, which is drawing to a close, has attracted "79 teams, 167 participants and 743 submissions".

The Foundation was also active in its pursuit of a more global editor base during August. For example, the report describes how the Head of Global South Relationships, Asaf Bartov, visited Kenya for four days. During the trip he delivered "five public talks on university campuses in Nairobi and Mombasa as well as a tech outreach talk at the Nairobi iHub". He also led a workshop for local Wikimedians and scouted out potential local partners for a more substantial expansion into Kenya. In addition, the WMF Engineering department investigated the possibilities of the USSD protocol in facilitating mobile browsing (an issue also covered in this week's "Technology report"). Meanwhile, the report announced the start of an Education Program in Canada, to which 1700 students are signed up, and a $40,000+ support package for a WikiConference in Mumbai in November (further information is available via foundation-l).

The monthly report also gives publicity to the activities of departments who do not otherwise receive it. For example, the human resources department noted that although it was still behind its target for hiring new staff, it has been able to close the gap, whilst it was also reported that the legal department would be receiving four legal interns, and it was "happy to have their support" in the next few months. According to the report, it has also recently engaged with two external firms: MarkMonitor, to help it track registration of trademark-infringing domain names (for example, cases of typosquatting; see previous Signpost coverage) and Californian law firm Hiaring Smith, to help it manage its existing portfolio of trademarks both in the United States and abroad. The legal teams also finalised the Foundation's internal legal policies during August.

• Wikinews is forked: In a rare occurrence for a Wikimedia project, a portion of the English Wikinews community has launched a fork of the project, Open Globe. Long-time Wikimedian Tempodivalse, who is one of those involved with the nascent fork cited as the proximate cause a split in the community last year when "about half of Wikinews' userbase left the project .... because of frustration over bureaucratic policy and hostile attitudes". Discussion on the Wikimedia Foundation's mailing list suggested that a lack of technical support from the Wikimedia Foundation and the developer community may have been a contributory factor to frustration among Wikinewsies.
• Wiki Loves Monuments hits 35,000 submissions and counting: On 6 September, the Wikimedia blog carried a post describing Wiki Loves Monuments 2011, the international photograph-contributing competition, which had resulted in some 15,000 uploads at that point. As of time of writing, over 38,500 files have been uploaded as part of the contest, which runs throughout September.
• Image filter discussions continue: The Foundation-l thread discussing the results of the image filter referendum held earlier this month has reached 175 posts. It is still unclear, however, what the next step will be; in the meantime, however, the Foundation is looking at ways "to extract ... data [enabling the results to be broken down by country or project] while still keeping the secrecy of a ballot intact", suggesting that a partial implementation could be on the cards.
• Canadian disease bounty: Wikimedia Canada has announced its Scholarship in Medicine for 2011/2012. It will be awarded to the best improvement to a disease-related article, weighted by the importance of the article and whether or not it achieves featured status; applications are open to those who are enrolled in Canadian secondary-level institutions. The program is backed by up to a thousand Canadian dollars.
• Nearly two thousand more files moved to Commons: The English Wikipedia's "Move to Commons" drive, the first of its kind on the project, has resulted in approximately ten percent of the nineteen thousand files hand picked for a move to Commons actually being transferred there. Participants also check licensing, description and categorisation issues during the transfer; the drive runs until the end of September and has already surpassed its initial target. Not all editors approve of the transfers; some ask that their files not be moved, whilst a handful have historically campaigned against other files being moved due to differences in policy and community between the wikis. The Guild of Copyeditors' September backlog elimination drive is also ongoing.
• Hungarian Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles, Estonian image donation: As reported by Wikimedia Hungary (in Hungarian), the Hungarian Wikipedia reached 200,000 articles on 10 September when an article about crankshafts was created. Wikimedia Estonia, meanwhile, has negotiated a donation of images of members of the Estonian Parliament, the Riigikogu (blog post in Estonian).
• Wikizine #127 published, format to be tweaked: According to the 127th edition of Wikizine, an "independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community" founded in 2005, its format is to be adjusted slightly by its new overseer User:Millosh over the coming weeks.
• Wikimedia UK seeks new Chief Executive: Following the lead of Wikimedia Deutschland's and others, British chapter Wikimedia UK have recently begun to hire professional staff members. Last week they appealed for local Wikimedians to travel to London to help them select a new Chief Executive at the London Wikimeet of 11 September. Their final decision is yet to be announced.

In addition to the Hungarian Wikipedia's 200,000 articles, mentioned above, the following projects also reached major milestones:

• The Avar Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Bashkir Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Armenian Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
• The Western Panjabi Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-12/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-12/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-12/In focus

2011-09-12

Ohconfucius sanctions removed, Cirt/Jayen466 closure, and a call for CU/OS applications

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By Jorgenev

Two cases are currently open:

• Senkaku Islands, which looks at the behavior of editors involved in a dispute over whether the naming of the articles Senkaku Islands and Senkaku Islands dispute is neutral, moved into its fourth week. It is alleged that the content dispute has been exacerbated by disruptive editing.
• Abortion, a dispute over the lead sentence of Abortion and the naming of abortion-related articles, also said to have been exacerbated by disruptive editing, similarly moved into its fourth week.

There are pending requests for clarification for three cases: Transcendental Meditation movement (since August 26), Digwuren (since August 24), and Ireland article names (since August 19). There are also two cases with pending requests for amendment: Race and intelligence (since September 3) and Russavia-Biophys.

Date-delinking case amended

The two-year-old date-delinking case, concerning the automated removal of date-autoformatting in articles while the relevant WP:MOSNUM guideline was still in flux, has now been amended. Ohconfucius, who was sanctioned in the original case, requested that the last remaining sanctions be removed, arguing they were outdated and that this was a matter of simple housekeeping. Arbitrator opinion was cautious: Jclemens wrote that "The last time we lifted sanctions on an editor sanctioned under this case, I regretted it, because the future behavior in the area was problematic." Risker was strongly of the view that "this should be going in the opposite direction". However, Xeno felt that, if there were any current issues, they appeared to be outside of the intent of the original sanctions and agreed with Ohconfucius that rescinding those was simply housekeeping—an opinion that carried the day 8 to 5.

Cirt and Jayen466 case closure update

In addition to the remedies covered last week, Cirt has also been desysopped (for "admitted violations of the neutral point of view and biographies of living people policies"), but may reapply for adminship by filing a new request for adminship at any time. This additional remedy eventually passed 6 to 5 in support; Cirt has since said that he is "not considering" applying for his admin bit back at this time.

Call for applications for CheckUser and Oversight

The committee announced today that they were seeking applications from suitably qualified users to serve on the CheckUser and Oversight teams. Editors were encouraged to self-nominate by emailing arbcom-en-blists.wikimedia.org. The application period is scheduled to close on 18 September 2011; then the committee will review the applications to decide which candidates will move forward to the community consultation phase. Of note, the committee indicated that due to "increasing activity from the South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Middle Eastern regions, CheckUser applications are particularly sought from people ... familiar with the ISPs and typical editing patterns of any of these regions." Further information on the process is available on a special 2011 CheckUser/Oversight appointments page. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-12/Humour

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