Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2012-01-09
2011's technological achievements in review, and what 2012 may hold
Jarry1250 is the regular writer of The Signpost's weekly "Technology report", which covers technological developments as they happen. Here, he gives his roundup of the past year as a whole, and what might happen in the year ahead. The usual "Technology report", focussing on the events of the past 7 days, is available separately.
With 2012 now in full swing, it becomes possible to review the year gone in terms of its technological developments, particularly when compared with the predictions The Signpost made in January 2011. Of course, it is also possible to look ahead and make fresh predictions about 2012 and what it might have in store.
2011 in review
After the Vector rollout, and with the Usability Initiative coming up for renewal, further usability improvements to the main (desktop) interface of MediaWiki seemed to be in the pipeline. Although improvements to the editing interface never made it into the 2011 programme of deployments, the ease with which files could be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons took a major step forward in May 2011 with the rollout of a new UploadWizard. Arriving in late June, Extension:WikiLove was more controversial but is now in use on an increasing number of wikis. The Moodbar extension, deployed in July, was also a notable development in the field of new user integration; perhaps as a result of it and projects like it, the overall downward trend in the number of active editors on projects such as the English Wikipedia seemingly slowed during 2011. Taken as a whole, Wikimedia wikis received 2.2 page views for every human on the planet during 2011.
The mobile site took a greater than expected role, with the deployment of a new mobile site in September, allowing developers familiar with the main site to start transferring over functionality. Elsewhere, the creation of a "Localisation team" at the WMF helped to contribute to an internationalisation boom that included the deployment of the WebFonts and Narayam extensions to help the display and input of non-Latin characters, and the deployment and release of MediaWiki 1.18 (the second of two MediaWiki releases in 2011), which helped resolve directionality-related display issues on right-to-left wikis. Other headline issues fixed by MediaWikis 1.17 and 1.18 included the ease of installing MediaWiki, the rollout of a new "Resource Loader", improvements to category sorting, gender-specific page headings, and protocol-relative URLs.
Existing extensions also saw considerable development time; for example, the ArticleFeedback extension is now in its fifth version and has a full plan of action prepared for 2012. On the other hand, the LiquidThreads extension, which had been experiencing a lack of developer attention in late 2010, did not resurface in 2011, although a large amount of work was done behind the scenes to make it more deployable. The staff–volunteer divide that was highlighted last year continued to be a source of tension in during 2011, and long times for code review (which had been blamed for exacerbating matters) remained firmly on the agenda (surfacing separately in March, July, and even as recently as three weeks ago).
In sum, the "core" MediaWiki codebase received 7344 revisions in the 12-month period to December 2011, up 30 per cent year-on-year. Similarly, the official SVN repository, which includes both core code and a large number of extensions, was updated some 30 thousand times in 2011, compared with fewer than 20 thousand similar revisions in 2010. Although the figures alone do not capture the value of the programming work done during 2011, they do suggest that more developer hours were devoted to improving the software behind Wikimedia wikis in 2011 than in 2010, a finding supported by the leap in the number of bugs fixed during the year, up from from 2183 in 2010 to 3584 last year. In this area, hopes are high for Wikimedia Labs and the move to Git, to allow new developers to more easily integrate into the community.
Plans for 2012
With the aid of the current MediaWiki roadmap (as of time of writing) it is possible to sketch out details of the year ahead, although the dates will inevitably change.
As reported in this week's "Technology report", the cutoff for features development (and other major work) for inclusion in MediaWiki 1.19 has now passed. About 350 revisions are scheduled for review before the end of January, when a release branch will be "cut" from the main development version. A deployment to Wikimedia wikis is expected in February. Although this will be from the MediaWiki Subversion repository, it is likely to be the last of its kind, with 1.20 pencilled in as a release from competitor system Git. The move to Git will naturally need to be accompanied by discussion over how code review processes will work under it, which could prove to be a contentious issue if the new policy is seen to formalise existing differences in the way developer and volunteer code tends to be treated.
January is expected to be a busy month for Wikimedia mobile development, with the imminent market release of a general-use Android app, the testing of Wikipedia Zero on the Orange Tunisia mobile network (and "maybe others"), and potentially the deployment of a "mobile web upload" facility (a full "mobile upload" is planned for later in the year). Mobile-friendly editing is scheduled to follow in March, while work will continue throughout the year to allow thousands of users in Asia and Africa without full web access to browse via SMS and USSD.
Other things to look out for in 2012 include a "new page triage" special page (to replace Special:NewPages), the launch of the much-hyped Visual Editor (tentatively slated for April; see previous Signpost coverage for context), and the deployment of a series of video playback enhancements currently bundled as the TimedMediaHandler extension. Once again, a resurgence in the LiquidThreads projects is on the cards, although given its long, complex and difficult development history, exactly how and when this might happen is very difficult to pin down. Indeed, there is still time for the whole LT project to rise and fall in 2012, and hence still time for communities to shape how the software behind a top-ten website develops over the course of the next 12 months.
Reader comments
Fundraiser 2011 ends with a bang
Fundraiser 2011 concludes, shatters records, obsoletes blink tag jokes
The Wikimedia Foundation is the only leading online entity to sustain itself entirely on donations. The Foundation's annual fundraiser is its biggest single source of income, having grown with the project since early efforts from 2004 and 2003. This year, a goal of $20M was set (up from $16M last year), making up the bulk of the Foundation's $28.3M 2011–12 budget.
As with last year's drive, this year's event kicked off with Jimbo Wales' "personal appeal", which consistently received the highest feedback in previous drives and it has again this year (see previous Signpost coverage), with a new green banner curiously gathering increased contributions. The appeals featured then shifted their focus to the community, turning the spotlight on appeals from individual Wikimedians over the past few weeks.
That effort concluded successfully this week, with the $20M goal reached on 2 January 2012. According to Sue Gardner, who graced the CentralNotice banner for some time following the windfall, "Ordinary people use Wikipedia and they like it, so they chip in some cash so it will continue to thrive. That maintains our independence and lets us focus solely on providing a useful public service ... I promise them we will use their money carefully and well."
Although the average donor contribution has remained steady, the number of contributors has been rapidly expanding, increasing ten-fold since 2008.
What will the money be spent on? The 2011–12 annual financial plan outlines operating costs through mid-2012, with $12.4M (44%) going to tech support, $6.9M (24%) to finance and administration, $6.5M (23%) to special programs, $2.2M (8%) to fundraising, and $300K (1%) to governance.
The Sakha Wikipedia reaches 8,000 articles after a successful publicity campaign
The Sakha language Wikipedia reached the 8,000-article mark three minutes before the New Year, at the conclusion of a "Marathon 8,000", announced just two days before the year ended. At the time, the wiki needed just 102 articles to achieve this milestone; nonetheless, organizers stressed quality over quantity in the drive, and aimed to attract the Sakha-speaking community to contribute to the Sakha Wikipedia, one of the few international projects that supports the Sakha language online. Despite the short timeframe, Marathon 8,000 proved successful, with a sum total of 109 new articles written within two days.
The Sakha Wikipedia's Bureaucrat, Nikolai Pavlov, advertised the campaign in his and his friends' blogs and in announcements in the forums on Ykt.ru, the most popular news and forums portal of Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha Republic. In the announcements he appealed to regular Sakha-speaking web surfers and called them to join Wikipedia in their language and to get their children to write, too. Surprisingly, just a few hours after publishing, the moderator of the forums removed the notices as inappropriate, putting the whole campaign in danger. The posts were restored after a personal request from the organizers; Pavlov said that he is sure that this was not an intentional disruption, but a misunderstanding and that he is confident that Ykt.ru will keep supporting the project, as it has done since its first steps.
The response to the campaign was immediate: dozens of editors, many of whom had never edited Wikipedia before, created new articles. The 8,000th article was about Mylajyn (Мылаадьын), a Sakha soldier in the Russian Civil War. Another marker of the campaign's success was that 1 and 2 January saw 20 new articles created by the new writers, an increase from normal levels and an "aftershock" of the campaign.
According to the Marathon's rules, the three winners are awarded an honorary title (in Sakha, "Марафон 8000 кыайыылааҕа"), and are entitled to display a badge on their user page as well as a framed certificate and a prize. The final results of the contest will be announced by 14 January.
Wikimedia UK hosts OTRS workshop
Wikimedia UK hosted a workshop this past weekend for Wikimedia OTRS volunteers which was attended by a number of active OTRS agents and one OTRS admin. OTRS volunteers handle e-mails sent to the various e-mail addresses for different Wikimedia projects, and their work includes answering questions and concerns from readers, BLP issues, complaints about copyright and permissions to reuse images and text. At the event, a variety of issues with the current OTRS setup were discussed including how to improve governance of the OTRS system, improving the somewhat infuriating interface, recruiting more active Wikimedians to participate in OTRS, and better handling of difficult or angry people e-mailing the community.
Difficulties faced by OTRS users include handling cross-wiki issues like notability or BLP policies on different language versions of Wikipedia and explaining international copyright policies to correspondents. Better training and mentoring of OTRS volunteers is something that people at the workshop have committed to, as well as considering how practical it would be to try to institute a requirement that e-mails be responded to in under seven days.
U.S. National Archives ExtravaSCANza!
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) hosted a dozen Wikimedians this past week for a NARA ExtravaSCANza at their College Park, Maryland facility. The ExtravaSCANza was organized by Dominic McDevitt-Parks, the National Archives Wikipedian-in-Residence, culminating his 8-month stint at NARA.
In the evening on Wednesday, January 4, Wikimedians scanned NASA photos. The focus on Thursday was women’s suffrage and rights. On Friday and Saturday, Wikimedians worked on photos of Chile, along with battleship photos on Saturday. Wikimedians also helped out with the FedFlix project, digitizing videos, and experimenting with sound recordings. Highlights include radio broadcasts that encouraged Americans to answer questions from census-takers for the 1940 United States Census. Photos are being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and help is needed to categorize them.
Although NARA will be without a Wikipedian-in-Residence in the months ahead, collaborations will continue, including more scan-a-thon events.
Brief notes
- In Memoriam: Dutch Wikipedians have marked the passage of GerardusS, whose death was announced on his talk page. Gerard was noted for his ability to motivate others to write about art and photography; he suffered from severe migraines, and editing Wikipedia gave him the ability to cope with his condition. Gerard made more than 45,000 edits to Wikimedia Commons alone, and wrote more than 1100 articles on sculptors in several languages. For more information on his work, see his Dutch Wikipedia user page.
- Wikimedia New York City: The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has officially determined the Wikimedia New York City chapter to be a non-profit 501(c)(3) charity. The determination letter, dated December 22, 2011, grants tax exemption effective retroactively back to July 7, 2009, which is when the chapter was officially established. Wikimedia New York City accepts tax-deductible donations online via PayPal and also accepts Bitcoins.
- The Spanish Report: Wikimedia España has published its October–December chapter report, outlining the charter's activities over the last three months.
- Now we're talking: After an RfC held on the village pump, the "Discussion" tab has now changed to "Talk", one of the reasons being that "Talk" would be much easier for new editors to find when directed by others to go to the "talk page".
- Project milestones: This week, the Italian Wikipedia reached 50,000,000 page edits, the Lithuanian Wiktionary reached 600,000 articles, the Malagasy Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles, and the Marathi Wikipedia reached 100,000 total pages.
Reader comments
Wikipedia ends annual fundraising drive; Monmouthpedia launches
Wikipedia ends annual fundraising drive
Wikipedia raised $20 million thanks to Wikipedia donators during a fundraising campaign that ended on January 1, 2012. According to Sue Gardner, Wikimedia's executive director, it is the most successful campaign ever. MSNBC reports that Wikimedia told them that the money will be used for "servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers."
According to Business Review USA, Wikimedia plans to spend $28.3 million with the remaining amount coming from grants, institutions, and other year-round donations.
Monmouthpedia - the first local Wikipedia project launches
Wales Online reports that Monmouthpedia is the first Wikipedia project to cover a single town. Monmouthpedia documents the "notable places, people, artifacts, flora and fauna" of the Welsh town of Monmouth. Monmouthpedia aims to use QRpedia (QR Code barcodes linking to Wikipedia articles, that can be read by smart phones). It is planned to have articles in 25 languages and 1,150 QR codes placed around Monmouth by May. The project was started by John Cummings who was inspired by the Derby Museum - GLAM/Wiki collaboration during a Wikipedia talk.
According to Digital Spy, Cummings said that "the project is already working with a variety of local groups", but he also advised that anyone with an interest in Monmouth local history can contribute.
Monmouth was chosen because of its "rich industry", first appearing in the Domesday Book.
In brief
- Editor interview: Wikipedia editor and owner of TheWikipedian.net, William Beutler, was interviewed in C-SPAN's Q&A session.
- Jimmy Wales: The Suit Magazine wrote a story about Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia.
- Sackville student assignments: Canada East did a story on a Sackville class of anthropology students who wrote articles for Wikipedia. The articles received many views, one of the articles was featured on DYK, and one of the students received a barnstar.
- Rachel Crow's hometown: An article from Times-Call said that Rachel Crow's article's had her hometown wrong. The article said Boulder, Colorado until it was changed to Mead, Colorado by an IP editor on January 3.
- Thief Justice: GMA News reported on vandalism which had Renato Corona's profession changed from Chief Justice to Thief Justice.
Reader comments
From Traditional to Experimental: WikiProject Jazz
- The new WikiProject Bivalves is seeking members.
- WikiProject PipeOrgan is being revived. Interested Wikipedians are invited to participate.
- The Guild of Copy Editors' first copy edit drive of 2012 has begun. Signup and participate to earn barnstars.
- WikiProject Images and Media is holding a drive this month to move free images to Commons. There are lots of prizes to earn. Sign up now!
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This week, we sat down for a jam session with Gyrofrog, a member of WikiProject Jazz. Started in July 2006, WikiProject Jazz has grown to include 15 pieces of featured content and 27 Good Articles. The project maintains a portal, a list of resources, a lengthy to-do list, and a variety of templates and categories.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Jazz?
- I would say that it has been a good way to coordinate efforts, solicit feedback, and alert fellow editors to any issues concerning jazz-related articles.
Do you prefer a specific subgenre of jazz?
- I listen to jazz from all eras, though I have increasingly found myself working my way back through the music's history. I might listen to Jelly Roll Morton one day, Clifford Brown on another, and Edward Vesala on another.
Who is your favorite musician?
- I don't think I can, or want, to answer that. At some level my favorite artist is the one I happen to be currently hearing.
Do you feel jazz is as well represented on Wikipedia as other music genres?
- Probably not: although I'm interested in other types of music, my assumption is that they have more fans, and that this will correspond to a higher level of involvement on Wikipedia (see WP:CSB). Thus I feel like my efforts are better spent on jazz topics, because my assumption is that it's less likely that someone else will pitch in. (However, this might not be fair for me to say, as there are other WP:JAZZ participants who I believe put in a lot more time and effort than I do.)
Does the project maintain a style guide, infobox, or any other standardization for jazz articles?
- For articles about jazz albums, I think we generally inherit stylistic guidelines from WP:ALBUM. As far as standardization goes, the one thing that comes to mind is a discussion we had about what was considered within the scope of WP:JAZZ, and what was not (the latter including the King of Thailand and Charlie Daniels). The guideline was that WP:JAZZ is not really an article categorization scheme (after all, we have categories for that). The analogy I liked to use was, "would I find this album, or recordings by this musician, in the jazz section of a record store?" The problem with that was that fewer and fewer people know what a record store is, much less that some of them had jazz sections. A better rule-of-thumb, perhaps, is that if we were building a (print) jazz encyclopedia, how important would it be to include a particular subject?
How well do broader style guides for music cover the needs of WikiProject Jazz?
- For the most part I think they're more than adequate, and why make things harder for ourselves by re-inventing the wheel? One instance where I saw a difference, though, was with {{Infobox album}}. The guideline was to (generally) omit live recordings from album chronologies; however, some jazz artists' discographies consist of large numbers of live albums (compared with other styles of music). (This wasn't a big deal; just wanted to identify where I had seen a difference.)
How does the project handle biographical articles about jazz musicians? Has the project dealt with any issues about biographies of living people?
- I think we've found ourselves trying to overcome obscurity on the one hand (this stuff generally doesn't show up in, say, Parade) and truly establishing notability on the other. I don't want to cite specific examples but we've seen issues where it was evident that the editor had some kind of relationship with the subject (or was the subject) and/or cited heavily from the subject's own website.
Does WikiProject Jazz collaborate with any other projects?
- WP:ALBUM, for one – maybe not a formal collaboration, but often I'll see an issue that would be of concern to both WikiProjects. Speaking for myself, when I work on an album article I figure I'm working on behalf of both projects. Also WP:RSM but, again, nothing formal.
What are WikiProject Jazz's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
- We could always use help with the Cleanup listing for WikiProject Jazz. Currently, approximately one-half of all WP:JAZZ articles are tagged for cleanup. More than half of the WP:JAZZ articles are stub-class and need expansion (see Category:Stub-Class Jazz articles); another 3,000 need assessment (Category:Unassessed Jazz articles).
Next week, we'll toss back a cold one. Until then, see what else has been brewing in the archive.
Reader comments
Contentious FAC debate: a week in review
The featured article process was rocked this week by several lengthy and contentious discussions. Most were centered on a single issue: whether the positions of featured article (FA) director and delegate should be elected, or if the delegates should continue to be appointed by current FA director Raul654. In the midst of this, a shock came with the unrelated resignation of longtime FA delegate SandyGeorgia.
The discussions spawned from a lengthy post by SandyGeorgia, where she laid out points which she felt needed discussion based on feedback from the previous year. The section quickly became a heated debate between supporters and opposers of the FAC delegate selection system.
This should be understood with a consideration of the history behind the current FA setup. The term "featured articles" replaced "brilliant prose" in January 2004, and around this time Raul654 suggested that these articles should appear on the main page, which looked like this before. In late February 2004, this was done, and the now-standard main page setup of a featured article, in the news, did you know, and on this day were seen for the first time, though featured pictures were not yet included.
With the new system of selecting "featured" articles over "brilliant prose", Raul became the de facto FA director in mid-2004 and was officially recognized in August. Over the next several years, he was in charge of promoting or not promoting FA candidates (FACs) and scheduling articles for the main page (through Today's Featured Article). As traffic increased on the pages, he delegated some of the work at FAC to SandyGeorgia in November 2007, though there were some concerns over the process. Over time, Raul stepped further away from FA areas, adding new delegates in March 2009, November 2010, and current delegate Ucucha in August 2011, along with a TFA delegate in June 2011.
According to Raul, vacancies are filled in a consultative process between the FA director and the featured process (FAC, FAR, TFA) needing a delegate. Raul asks the current delegates for a short list of candidates, from which he picks an editor and gauges their interest. If they decline, he repeats the process with another editor on the list. When one accepts, Raul puts his choice on the process' talk page and assesses community reaction to his choice. So far, none of his choices have received sufficient opposition to warrant withdrawing their name. Delegate removals operate with a similar process, though the only reason serious enough to warrant removal in the last four years has been a lack of activity on-wiki.
Opposers of this system tend to believe that having one editor in such a position is at a disconnect with other processes that hold annual elections for leadership positions. Supporters counter that such a system insulates delegates from having to worry about an upcoming election when closing FACs.
A straw poll and RfC on the election issue were opened, but both were strongly opposed by editors with objections and concerns over the process, with a planned RfC drafted by editor Mike Christie (who managed the 2010 FAC RFC) coming in a few days. The first topic to be tackled in this RfC was left open to a straw poll, and it appears that leadership at FAC – whether it should be left to the current system or a voting procedure – will be examined first.
While these discussions were taking place, SandyGeorgia – a featured article delegate since 2007 and a reviewer for some time before that – tendered her resignation on 8 January, though she will continue to serve for thirty days or until another delegate is appointed to ease the transition. Before becoming a delegate, Sandy was a frequent editor of medical articles; with increasing problems of ensuring accuracy within this topic, along with POV issues in her other topic of choice, Venezuela-related articles, she believed it was time to resign to devote her editing to improving these areas.
Featured articles
Eight featured articles were promoted this week.
- Mathew Charles Lamb (nom) by Cliftonian. Lamb, born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, on 5 January 1948, was arrested in June 1966 for the murder of two people and the wounding of another two. Found legally insane by the court, Lamb was sentenced to indefinite internment at a mental hospital but was released in 1973. Later that year he joined the Rhodesian Security Forces. He died from friendly fire on 7 November 1976 and was given a "hero's funeral" in Salisbury, with his ashes returned to Windsor.
- Typhoon Gay (1992) (nom) by Hurricanehink. In the succinct words of the nominator, "A gay typhoon blew saltwater to turn plants brown, curiously ignoring gymnosperms". The Signpost notes that there have been four Gay blows, with the new featured article the most recent.
- Nicky Barr (nom) by Ian Rose. Nicky Barr was born on 10 December 1915 in Wellington, New Zealand, but moved to Australia in 1921. In 1939 he joined the Wallabies, the Australian national rugby team. However, after failing to play against the United Kingdom due to the outbreak of World War II, on 4 March 1940 he joined the Australian air force. As a pilot, he was posted to North Africa with No. 3 Squadron, eventually taking lead in May 1942; shortly afterwards, he was shot down and brought to Italy. He escaped, was repatriated to England, and helped with the invasion of Normandy. He died on 12 June 2006.
- Titchwell Marsh (nom) by Jimfbleak. Titchwell Marsh (portion above), in Norfolk, England, between the villages of Titchwell and Thornham, is a nature reserve owned and managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Covering 171 hectares (423 acres), the marsh includes reed beds, salt marshes, a freshwater lagoon and a sandy beach, and is an important breeding site for some scarce birds. Artefacts found in the marsh date back to the Upper Paleolithic, and there are some abandoned military constructions scattered throughout it.
- German battleship Tirpitz (nom) by Parsecboy. The Tirpitz (above) was the second of two Bismarck-class battleships built by the German navy during World War II. It was laid in November 1936 and completed in February 1941. Immediately commissioned, the Tirpitz initially served as the centrepiece of the Baltic Fleet, later to be sent to Norway to serve as a fleet in being. The ship used its guns in anger the first time in September 1943, bombarding allied positions at Spitzbergen. After attacks by mini submarines and several air raids, the Tirpitz was sunk on 12 November 1944.
- HMS New Zealand (1911) (nom) by Sturmvogel 66. HMS New Zealand was launched in 1911 and given to Britain as a gift by the government of New Zealand. One of three Indefatigable-class battlecruisers, the ship was commissioned in 1912 and spent 10 months on a tour of the British Dominions. Back in British waters by the start of World War I, New Zealand went on to participate in all three of the major North Sea battles of World War I and received no casualties. After the end of the war and another world tour, the ship was scrapped in 1922.
- Boeing 767 (nom) by SynergyStar. The Boeing 767 (example above) is a mid-size, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner built by the transnational company Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The plane, with a range of 3,850–6,385 nautical miles (7,130–11,825 km) and a capacity of 181–375 persons depending on variant, had its maiden flight in in 1981 and was first flown commercially on 8 September 1982. By the 1990s it had become the most frequently used airliner for transatlantic flights between North America and Europe. As of July 2011, there are 837 Boeing 767s in service; the 767-300ER is the most popular variant.
- Blonde on Blonde (nom) by Mick gold, I.M.S., Allreet, and Moisejp. The album Blonde on Blonde, American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's seventh, was released in May or June 1966 after more than six months of production. The last release in a trilogy of rock albums, Blonde on Blonde's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, with the lyrics once called "a unique blend of the visionary and the colloquial." One of the first double albums in rock history, it peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, while in the UK it reached No. 3; two of its songs were selected by Rolling Stone for their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Featured lists
Four featured lists were promoted this week:
- List of Afghanistan T20I cricketers (nom) by Vibhijain. Thirteen players have represented the Afghanistan national cricket team in eight Twenty20 International (T20I) matches (matches between two teams with T20I certification) since their certification in 2010. The Afghan team has played in 8 T20I matches; eight players have played in all eight matches. Noor Ali is the leading run-scorer with 199 runs.
- Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals (nom) by Albacore. The Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals—historically also known as the Best Country Vocal Performance, Duet, and later Best Country Vocal Collaboration—was a Grammy Award for two or more country singers who collaborated on a song. In 2011 it was merged with two other categories to "tighten the number of categories" at the awards. Alison Krauss, with five wins, holds the most awards in this category; seven others have two. The most nominated are Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson, with nine nominations apiece.
- List of monarchs of East Anglia (nom) by Amitchell125. The independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, consisting of what is now the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk (and perhaps the eastern part of the Fens), was ruled by up to 32 kings over its approximately 400 years of existence. The original rulers were members of the Wuffingas dynasty, while later rulers were either overlords of the conquering Mercians, of unknown descent, or of Danish descent.
- List of 1964 Winter Olympics medal winners (nom) by Courcelles. At the 1964 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, 1,095 athletes representing 36 National Olympic Committees competed in 34 events across 10 disciplines. The most successful country in total number of medals was the USSR, with 25 medals (11 of them gold), followed by Norway in second position and Austria in third. Two competitors, British luge competitor Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski and the Australian alpine skiier Ross Milne, died in training.
Featured pictures
Three featured pictures were promoted this week.
- Salman Khurshid (nom; related article) by Muhammad Mahdi Karim. The new featured picture (above) depicts Indian politician Salman Khurshid, cabinet minister of the Ministry of Law and Justice and Ministry of Minority Affairs of India. Khurshid (born 1953) began his career in politics as an officer on special duty under Indira Gandhi. The new featured picture was shot when the minister was to have a photoshoot with other VIPs.
- Sunset at Porto Covo (nom; related article) by Alvesgaspar. The new featured picture (below), used in both Sunset and Sunset (color), depicts a sunset over Porto Covo in Portugal. Sunsets are generally more colourful than sunrises because evening air contains more particles to refract the sunlight than morning air. In most places, the earliest sunsets are after the winter solstice and the latest after the summer solstice.
- Great Crested Grebe at Lake Dulverton (nom; Related article) by JJ Harrison. The Great Crested Grebe (above), a bird 46–51 centimetres (18–20 in) long, found throughout the old world and Oceania, breeds in vegetated areas of freshwater lakes. It feeds on fish, crustaceans, insects, and frogs, and is classified as least concern.
Reader comments
Four open cases, proposed decision in Betacommand 3
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases this week, and closed no cases, leaving four open.
Open cases
Betacommand 3 (Week 10)
A proposed decision was posted by arbitrator Kirill Lokshin on 3 January. The proposed principles included a discussion of community sanctions and recidivism. A large amount of discussion by arbitrators has centered around the remedy and the restrictions to be imposed on Betacommand. Proposals have ranged from a one year ban to offering Betacommand a clean start. No remedy has received a majority of support as of publication.
Civility enforcement (Week 2)
This open case, which has already attracted a great deal of attention (see previous Signpost coverage), entered its second week of evidence submissions. A total of 39 editors have submitted evidence, totalling more than 270 diffs. Due to the complexity of the case, arbitrator Risker has suggested extending the evidence deadline to 15 January (next Sunday). In parallel with the great deal of evidence, 21 users have offered proposals on the workshop page.
The current date set for the posting of a proposed decision is 26 January.
Muhammad images (Week 3)
This case is moving towards the workshop phase, with the first-ever public posting of an arbitrator's viewpoints during the case itself. Drafter AGK posted this summary which contained his view as to what a final decision should look like. "In the decision", AGK wrote, "we will give some guidance to the disputants for engaging in similar content disputes in the future, and we will sanction a small number of [disruptive] editors." However, he cautioned that a decision on the inclusion (or not) of Muhammad images would remain subject to resolution by "the wider community". A discussion of the summary then began on the workshop talk page.
Wednesday January 11 is the deadline for evidence submissions.
TimidGuy ban appeal (Week 4)
This open case is close to the posting of a proposed decision by one of the drafters. Arbitrator Roger Davies wrote on the workshop talk page that a proposed decision will be posted in the coming days. He indicated that the proposal will eventually be opened for "public comment" before the start of voting.
Other requests and committee action
- A Request for Amendment, seeking to modify the remedy in the Abortion case, remains pending.
- The Committee voted (12-0) to desysop User:Malcolm due to disruptive socking.
- Worm That Turned was named a new trainee Arbitration clerk.
Reader comments
December in more detail; and why the MediaWiki codebase was "slushed" this week
December engineering report published
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for December 2011 was published last week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. The three projects of particular note (WebFonts, Visual Editor, and ArticleFeedback version 5) were covered in the previous issues of The Signpost; however, the report did contain several items of note that were not.
The report contained updates on a number of events fixed for January and February: the San Francisco hackathon (21–22 January 2012, an "outreach-focused" weekend aimed at developers, with activities focusing on "mobile, the web-accessible API and our framework for JavaScript feature development", with 70 registrations at the time of writing); a similar hackathon in Pune, India (10–12 February 2012, with about 70 participants expected and a focus on "the gadgets framework, mobile Wikimedia access, and internationalization"), and GLAMcamp DC (10–12 February 2012, a GLAM conference with a technical track focussing on "mass upload and analytics functionality"). Elsewhere, more projects have taken up residence within the Wikimedia Labs infrastructure; and two new projects have joined the list of WMF-sponsored proposals: one to improve GPS storage and retrieval, a "critical component of the mobile projects [that] will replace our existing use of GeoNames.org and can also supplement GeoHack", and a second to "expose featured articles, In the news, and other main page content" via RSS feed, such that "our partners can better re-use our data".
MediaWiki codebase "slushed"
Managing the release cycle for any software is difficult, and with a geographically distributed, part-volunteer contributor base this is even more the case. This week, a code "slush" was called to help temporarily simplify matters ahead of the branching of 1.19 (wikitech-l mailing list). The move closes the central repository to major changes, allowing time for code reviewers to catch up on the backlog before a release snapshot ("branch") is taken later in the month. After branching, the repository will be opened to major code changes and additions again, while the branch will receive only bug fixes.
In previous versions, branching had been performed relatively early, opening up the central repository to changes earlier, but this has proved "hard to manage", according to Brion Vibber, the Foundation's lead software architect. The pre-branch code "slush" (essentially a code freeze but with greater discretion) is likely to focus minds on code review, which has been lagging until relatively recently. If it proves insufficient, further code freezes may be required; these would help contribute to greater levels of testing at a small cost in terms of the level of active development undertaken.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
- Full roundup of 2011: This issue of The Signpost includes a full roundup of the technology developments of 2011, and an extensive description of the current deployment plans for the first quarter of 2012.
- Workshop for extension developers: Using the model set by Wikimedia staff IRC office hours, Mediawiki.org's WikiProject Extensions will hold an IRC meeting for developers (volunteer and staff) on 13 January. The workshop will focus on preparing extensions for MediaWiki 1.19 and will be held in #wikimedia-dev (wikitech-l mailing list).
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