Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-07-18/News

and notes
< Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost | 2011-07-18

NEWS AND NOTES

WMF Annual plan; Article Feedback tool;

university outreach; brief news
By HaeB, Pigsonthewing, Rock drum, SarahStierch, Skomorokh, and Tom Morris

WMF Annual Plan, rollout of Article Feedback

The Wikimedia Foundation published the 2011–12 Annual Plan. Three of the seven stated goals for the year ahead
relate to increasing editor numbers: overall, increasing active editors from 90,000 in March 2011 to 95,000 by June
2012. Over the same period, the Foundation seeks to increase the number of editors from the Global South from
15,700 to 19,000 and the number of female editors from 9,000 to 11,700. The plan includes a target to increase the
number of page views from mobile devices from 726 million to two billion. Other planned improvements include
increasing read uptime from 99.8% to 99.85%, creating a new development sandbox, and developing the visual
editor for initial test deployment in December 201
1. Full details are available onthe Foundation wiki.

Interface of the Article Feedback Tool

In unrelated news, the Foundation blogged about the new Article Feedback tool, advising that it is now in the
process of being rolled out to all articles on English Wikipedia. The tool was first set up in September and has been
slowly rolled out, being added to a total of 100,000 articles in May before the latest expansion. Now 370,000
articles will be added every day until all articles have been covered. According to research findings published in
the blog post, one of the benefits of the tool is its increase in the number of people editing. The tool appears to
provide a useful measure of quality for the criteria "completeness" and "trustworthiness", despite concerns that the
system might be gamed by partisan editors or just misused by people to express their love or contempt for the topic
rather than the quality of the article itself. Marshall Kirkpatrick at the technology blog ReadWriteWeb sums up the
case for the change: "Rating articles looks like an even easier way for people to give feedback - and once you've
started contributing that much, why not go a step further and improve the article you just rated?"
Wikipedia's emergence as an educational tool
In the aftermath of the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit held in Boston two weeks ago (see previous
Signpost coverage), editor Adam Hyland (User:Protonk) wrote a retrospective on his experiences over the past year
as an ambassador in the university outreach program. He highlighted the importance of the project in repairing the
rift between the Wikimedia movement and the traditional educational establishment of libraries and universities,
saying of the encyclopaedia's early days: "Wikipedia was a triple threat: a new technology, a potential competitor
for traditional silos of information and a shorthand for what professors thought the web was doing to their new
cohorts of students". Adam proposed that not only had Wikipedia become a complementary educational project to
such institutions, but that with the outreach program had "engage[d] students with the production of knowledge
itself ... [s]tudents who write these articles know that they face a critical audience and that quality matters." This
was highlighted by one student's creation, the National Democratic Party of Egypt, a "homework assignment"
which this year so far has drawn the attention of100,000 pairs of eyes.

The week in GLAM: the stuffed pigeon of Derbyshire, gift packs for
freedom, and a backstage pass to the secrets of the American arts
At the recent LocalGovCamp unconference in Birmingham,
Wikipedia editor Andy Mabbett spoke about the GLAM-WIKI
project, the relevance of Wikipedia for local government, his
challenge to local councils to start articles about themselves, his
interest in becoming a GLAM Ambassador or Wikipedian-in-
residence (he's since been appointed Wikipedia Outreach
Ambassador to ARKive) and a certain dead pigeon – The King of
Rome, whose Wikipedia article he wrote as a result of a
GLAMDerby backstage pass event in April. The King of Rome
was a famous racing pigeon, the only one to survive a 1000 mile
race; its skin is preserved in Derby Museum and the bird is also
the subject of a folk song made famous by June Tabor. Tom
The King of Rome – first new article
Phillips, who attended the event, later wrote an impassioned
written after the backstage pass for
account of the session in an Amazon book review. The Wright Wikimedians to the Derby Museum
Challenge has two months to go, and it's hoped that the 800 and Art Gallery.
articles about objects in Derby Museum can be far surpassed in
that time.

The U.S. National Archives GLAM project has announced a featured content contest aimed at increasing the
online profile of and educating the public about the Archives' core documents. Editors who succeed in getting to
featured status any of the three articles relating to the Charters of Freedom: United States Declaration of
Independence, United States Constitution, or United States Bill of Rights (in any language), will be rewarded with
a gift package.

In other GLAM news, the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art will be holding a special backstage
pass event for a select group of 10 Wikimedians on July 29. The initiative, which is being coordinated by
Wikimedian-in-Residence Sarah Stierch, will offer a behind-the-scenes insight into the original documents and
untold stories housed by the world’s largest and most widely used research center dedicated to the history of visual
arts in America. In Baltimore, Maryland, the Walters Art Museum and Baltimore Heritage are sponsoring a
gathering of the Wiki and GLAM minds from July 22–23. The weekend will launch with the Young
Preservationists Happy Hour where Sarah Stierch is presenting about GLAMWIKI, and is followed by an
afternoon of talks by Sarah and Aude followed by break out sessions with GLAM representatives and
Wikimedians.
Brief news
Wikimedia in Higher Ed documentation: Various
media from the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit
have been published online. They include videos of
Sue Gardner's keynote, the student panel discussion
and slides of the talks.
Wikimedia UK seek chief executive: The British
chapter of the Wikimedia movement haveplaced an
advert for the organisation's first Chief Executive. The
successful candidate should have "exceptional
communication and relationship building abilities" and
is expected to represent and promote the chapter to the
wider world. The search was also declared on the Frank Schulenburg's presentation at
wikimediauk mailing list; applications close on August the Wikipedia in Higher Education
1. Summit was filmed and put online.
Israel anticipates Wikimania: The Israeli Ministry for
Foreign Affairs issued a press releaseahead of the
annual Wikimania event, due to be held this year in Haifa from August 4-7. Describing the event as
a coup for the city, the statement focused onthe achievements of the Hebrew Wikipedia and
Wikimedia Israel, as well as highlightingan initiative to donate to Cameroon and Benin computers
preloaded with a static copy of the French Wikipedia for classrooms without Internet access.
Plagiarists have to fear Wikipedians: An academic plagiarism case that was discovered in March
by German Wikipedians while examining two medical dissertations as references for a Wikipedia
article has now led theUniversity of Münster to revoke a doctoral degree, as reported in the Kurier"
"
(the Signpost's sister publication on the German Wikipedia) and several local newspapers. In the
university's press release, the dean of the medical faculty, professor Wilhelm Schmitz, expressed
his gratitude for the Wikipedians' notice (to which he had replied personally within three hours), and
observed that "in the Internet age, plagiarists now have to fear a new source of exposure". The case
comes at a time where the doctoral titles of several high-profile German politicians including former
defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberghave been rescinded due to plagiarism documented
via dedicated Wikia-hosted wikis (cf. previousSignpost coverage: "Citations needed in minister's
thesis and elsewhere", "Jimmy Wales on wikis and plagiarism", see also VroniPlag Wiki).
Wikimedia Research Index: Dario Taraborelli, a Senior Research Analyst for the Foundation,
blogged about a new Wikimedia Research Index, designed to "centralize documentation on
research of Wikimedia projects, but also to create a place for the community to discuss and learn
about this research" (the index itself).

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"Article Feedback" - I hope that it can be stopped from entering on plwiki (In the worst case it can be hidden in all
skins) Bulwersator (talk) 07:25, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

"one of the benefits of the tool is its increase in the number of people editing" -> "Once users have successfully
submitted a rating, a randomly selected subset of them are shown an invitation to edit the page. Of the users that
were invited to edit, 17% attempted to edit the page." - so maybe invitations caused this effect? Bulwersator (talk)
07:27, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah! I've always been a fan of article feedback. We'll have it on every article in no time. --Nathan2055talk 17:19,
20 July 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "attempted to edit" is a little worrying.Rich Farmbrough, 09:12, 21 July 2011 (UTC).
 I've come across this before, I think it means we have stats on people who
click on edit, but not everyone who does so successfully saves. For busy
articles such as brand new ones that could mean edit conflicts, popular wisdom
has it that a large proportion off those who click edit but don't save are thrown
by the html. Some of course will simply be defeated by the slow connection
speeds, particularly in parts of the world where Wikipedia access is slowest. I
hope quite a few are dissuaded by the editfilters, and of course some people
will have second thoughts and decide that maybe the existing wording is the
least inelegant way to express something. I don't think we should expect that
every time someone clicks edit they will go on to click save, but its good to see
that for this group it is a large majority. ϢereSpielChequers 12:26, 24 July
2011 (UTC)

Media coverage of the feedback tool: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1030099--you-can-now-rate-

wikipedia-entries-not-everyone-is-pleased?bn=1— Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.88.10.35 (talk) 11:12, 26 July
2011 (UTC)

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18 JULY 2011

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