Wikimedia-l October 2010

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

132 participants
136 discussions

[Foundation-l] Evil Book
by Fred Bauder 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

There is a book review of a 98 page book supposedly about Ukita Kōkichi (who apparently prematurely invented the hang glider) http://blog.seattlepi.com/travelforaircraft/archives/226709.asp Which consists of this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukita_K%C5%8Dkichi and a few others Listed on Amazon for 50 bucks: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6131076278/ together with a bevy of other sellers: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/6131076278/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&co… Fred

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Re: [Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 31 Oct '10

31 Oct '10

In a message dated 10/24/2010 8:53:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, wiki-list(a)phizz.demon.co.uk writes: > Secondly an assessment on what constitutes encyclopaedic information. > Does an article absolutely have to mention each and every rumour, > half-truth, or crackpot opinion? Encyclopaedic information doesn't > change from day to day or even from month to month. >> > Straw man argument again. No one is arguing the contrary side, so you win, which is your point. But it's not related to what we're actually doing. And you're trying to paint your *opponents* of which your straw man creates none, with a broad brush. Stick to what's actually occurring. What sources would be deemed reliable for an article on Statin or Flu Virus or Joan of Arc ? When you go off careening off the walls, no one listens. W

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Audited Financial Statements for 2009-10 Fiscal Year Now Available
by Erik Zachte 31 Oct '10

31 Oct '10

This thread drifted off topic into a discussion about how me measure our editor base. [Summary: editor stats will never be precise, but filtering duplicates will be a good next step] Some earlier comments noted how the count is inaccurate, or even skewed systemically. I agree with most comments. I have little hope that an accurate count will ever be possible. We can try to get to a more robust and realistic (and certainly lower) approximation. Let me first explain two reasons why we present a count of +/- 85,000 active editors compared to 100,000 some months ago. 1st: In July a bug fix stopped double counting of editors on Commons (for a while Commons wiki had been listed on two queues) Since wikistats always regenerates counts for all months no trace of this bug has been left. [1] 2nd: Starting August editors on Commons are no longer included at all in overall editor total, on the assumption that most editors on Commons also edit on one or more other projects. [2] Of course this very rough way to get to a more conservative editor count is less ideal to say the least, but pending better analysis of our user tables, this is a step closer to a count of unique registered human contributors. What we really need to do is to ignore confirmed duplicates, Only since Single User Login (where many users have formally merged accounts from multiple wikis) there is this possibility to check whether user John Doe on English Wikipedia and user John Doe on German Wikipedia are really the same person. Once private SUL dumps are available (a long standing request) this will be looked into asap. Caveats: the user may have left before SUL was introduced, or decided not to merge accounts for whatever reason. [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_07_synopsis.html [2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_08_synopsis.html --------------------------- As mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, the total number of active editors that participated 5+ edits at least in one month of the year will be higher than for any month alone, as e.g. Mr X only qualifies on odd months and Mrs Y only on even months. True but in the context of this thread statusses at end of consecutive budget years matter most. We do have a metric that counts total registered editors *for all time*, albeit with a different threshold: editors need to have at least 10 edits, not necessarily in same month. For English Wikipedia alone end June 2010 already 608,000 accounts qualified. This metric and the one discussed above (5+ edits in any given month) are apples and oranges. -------------------------- To which extent certain persons made multiple accounts on the same wiki (so called sock puppets) is not known. Yet another reason to work towards a conservative estimate. ------------------------- Anonymous editors are no longer counted at all. This would have resulted in millions of addresses (nowhere near the 75,000 someone stated earlier in this thread). Add to this the difficulties to match people and unique editors - One ip address can serve a whole school of cafe - Some providers send a new temporary ip address on every session - Many users edit from different PC's over time (e.g. work , home) We can however follow anonymous edits over time, rather than editors See e.g. http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/PlotsPngEditHistoryTop.htm ---------------------------- Bottom line: Given all ambiguities in our data, and arbitrary thresholds, and architectural changes, we will never have an accurate count of number of active editors. Personally I would rather publish a conservative estimate than an inflated one. We aren't there yet. I think it is even more important that any definition stays simple, and any methodology is consistent over time. The latter in particular is needed to allow meaningful trend analysis. Erik Zachte

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[Foundation-l] Truth in Numbers? Everything, According to Wikipedia
by Fred Bauder 29 Oct '10

29 Oct '10

The movie, on line at: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/truth_in_numbers_everything_according_… Fred

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[Foundation-l] "Bullshit, amen, okay"; available in a library near you
by John Vandenberg 29 Oct '10

29 Oct '10

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/wikipedia-kompilationen-bullshit-amen-oka…

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[Foundation-l] Swedish videos
by Lennart Guldbrandsson 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

Hello, I know that many of you don't speak Swedish (yet :-)...), but perhaps you can enjoy these anyway. During the Gothenburg Book Fair, Wikimedia Sverige had a stand. Among other things, we interviewed a couple of people on film. The result can be seen below: 1. File:Skugge.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skugge.ogv?userlang=sv> 2. File:Stefan hogberg01.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stefan_hogberg01.ogv?userlang=sv> 3. File:Stefan hogberg02.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stefan_hogberg02.ogv?userlang=sv> 4. File:Mathias klang.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mathias_klang.ogv?userlang=sv> 5. File:Erik johansson.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erik_johansson.ogv?userlang=sv> 6. File:Kristina alexanderson.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kristina_alexanderson.ogv?userlang=sv> 7. File:Lennart kvalitetshantering.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lennart_kvalitetshantering.ogv?userl…> 8. File:Einar spetz.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Einar_spetz.ogv?userlang=sv> 9. File:Axel pettersson.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Axel_pettersson.ogv?userlang=sv> 10. File:Lars aronsson.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lars_aronsson.ogv?userlang=sv> 11. File:Jan ainali.ogv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_ainali.ogv?userlang=sv> The first one, Linda Skugge, is a famous Swedish author and journalist, and files 2 and 3 are interviews with the guy who's behind the donation from Regionarkivet. 4 is with the Swedish Creative Commons guy. And so on. We are now debating on Swedish Wikipedia how to handle these interviews in the Wikipedia articles. I will let you know what we come up with. Are other chapters or volunteers doing similar stuff? Best wishes, Lennart -- Lennart Guldbrandsson, chair of Wikimedia Sverige and press contact for Swedish Wikipedia // ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige och presskontakt för svenskspråkiga Wikipedia

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[Foundation-l] Use labels in Commons and increase coverage
by Gerard Meijssen 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

Hoi, I am writing a series of blog posts about Commons. My aim is to identify the issues that I have with how it functions. There are several and I do not bother to write about the ones that are being tackled by the team around Guillaume (as far as it is clear to me what they are doing). The latest blog is about the difficulty of finding pictures, I am also of the opinion that we have the opportunity to be more of a resource of stock images that are freely licensed. We should stimulate this. Yes Commons is growing rapidly. Its coverage leaves a lot to be desired. In my opinion we need to concentrate on search and coverage to make Commons truly kick ass. Thanks. GerardM http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/search/label/Commons

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[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales on WikiLeaks, Accuracy and Asia
by Fred Bauder 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

Two short videos with short interviews of by the Wall Street Journal of Jimmy Wales in Hong Kong: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/10/28/jimmy-wales-on-wikileaks-accuracy-an… Fred

1 0

[Foundation-l] Controversial Content a feature to allow.....
by geni 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

So apparently part of the fallout from the Controversial Content study is a recommendation "that the Wikimedia Foundation develop a feature to allow Wikimedia project users to opt into a system that would allow them to easily hide classes of images from their own view" Rather than developing a significant new feature I would suggest using Adblock Plus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus Adblock Plus is under the MPL so a stripped down or streamlined version could be produced if required. Adblock Plus already makes it easy to block predefined sets of images. For example if a user were to dislike pictures of giant isopods they could download the filter that blocked all the giant isopod images. If these filters were to be stored localy we would probably need a new namespace or perhaps project. In the case of the giant isopod filter the content of the filter would look something like: [Adblock] ! Checksum: l4nEGmZz7f1kh8Pfszr2rg *Giant_isopod.jpg* *Bathynomus_giganteus.jpg* *Bathynomus_giganteus_NOAA.jpg* *Front_View_Isopod_West_Sirius_Rig_GOM.JPG* *Isopod_from_West_Sirius_Rig_GOM.JPG* although the average user should never see that. There are a number of advantages to this approach: 1)It is entirely under the users control. They can chose what filters to install, edit any filters they install and turn them off on a page by page basis 2)It doesn't require logging in. So it doesn't suddenly stop working when someone is logged out for whatever reason 3)It allows for a potentially unlimited number of filtering lists 4)The lists don't have to be hosted on wikipedia allowing groups to set up common filters without having to work through us 5)This literally works right now. You could drop that list into an Adblock Plus install and see no giant isopods. The downside: 1)We would need to check how compatible the filters are with equivalent software on chrome and opera 2)There is no equivalent for internet explorer 3)Phones could be a problem although if there is actual demand I assume someone will produce an app. -- geni

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[Foundation-l] Rethinking Wikipedia contributions rates
by Fred Bauder 28 Oct '10

28 Oct '10

http://eaves.ca/2010/10/27/rethinking-wikipedia-contributions-rates/ Fred

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Wikimedia-l October 2010