User talk:Makecat/Archive5

• Traffic report: Shutdown shenanigans
  If you're living in the United States, what did you do during the government shutdown? Well, it seems most people watched the final episode of Breaking Bad.

• WikiProject report: Australian Roads
  This week, we moved to the esoteric world of Australian roads.

• Featured content: Under the sea
  Seven articles, six lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• News and notes: Extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed
  An investigation by the English Wikipedia community into suspicious edits and sockpuppet activity has led to astonishing revelations that Wiki-PR, a multi-million-dollar US-based company, has created, edited, or maintained several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients using a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts.

• In the media: College credit for editing Wikipedia
  The University of California, San Francisco attracted substantial media attention over its new course offering that will give credit to fourth year medical students for editing Wikipedia articles about medicine.

• Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute and Ebionites 3 cases continue; third arbitrator resigns
  A proposed decision has been posted in the Manning naming dispute. The workshop phase of the Ebionites 3 case closes 13 October. Arbitrator NuclearWarfare has resigned.

• News and notes: Vice on Wiki-PR's paid advocacy; Featured list elections begin
  Media coverage on Wiki-PR, the multi-million-dollar US-based company that has broken several policies and guidelines on the English Wikipedia in its quest to create and maintain thousands of articles for paying clients, continued this week with a feature story by Martin Robbins in the British edition of Vice magazine.

• Traffic report: Peaceful potpourri
  A slow week, with low overall views and the Top 10 dominated by longstanding pages. Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's outer space-set action art film, not only held its position at the top of the US box office but climbed to the top of the Wikipedia chart as well, showing that it has become a major talking point.

• WikiProject report: Heraldry and Vexillology
  This week, we studied coats of arms and flags with the folks at WikiProject Heraldry and Vexillology. Started in September 2006, the project has grown to include 20 Featured Articles and nearly 50 Good Articles. The project maintains a portal, a list of resources, and a variety of images and templates.

• Featured content: That's a lot of pictures
  Six articles, two lists, and thirty-three pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute case closes
  The Manning naming dispute case has closed, with a strong and unanimous statement by the Committee against disparaging references to transgendered persons. Sanctions were enacted against six editors.

• Discussion report: Ada Lovelace Day, paid advocacy on Wikipedia, sidebar update, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• News and notes: Grantmaking season—rumblings in the German-language community
  The next twice-yearly round of Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) grantmaking is soon to close for community questioning and commentary. Ten nation-based Wikimedia chapters and one thematic organisation are asking for a total of more than US$5M of donors’ money from the Foundation’s renamed annual plan grant process. Aside from Wikimedia UK ($708k), the three biggest asks are from the German-speaking chapters: Wikimedia Germany is asking for $2.4M and Wikimedia Austria $311k; and the German-language-related Swiss chapter is applying for $500k.

• Traffic report: Your average week ... and a fish
  Media, sports and Google Doodles dominate, though a very odd fish decided to crash the party.

• Featured content: Your worst nightmare as a child is now featured on Wikipedia
  Twelve articles, four lists, and four pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including the article on cabbage.

• Discussion report: More discussion of paid advocacy, upcoming arbitrator elections, research hackathon, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• In the media: The decline of Wikipedia; Sue Gardner releases statement on Wiki-PR; Australian minister relies on Wikipedia
  MIT Technology Review published a long article on what it called "The decline of Wikipedia". Editor involvement has decreased since 2007; according to the article, this has had an adverse qualitative effect on content, particularly on issues pertinent to non-British and American male geeks.

• WikiProject report: Elements of the world
  This week, we headed to an elementary subject with WikiProject Elements. Founded by Mav in 2002, this project has grown to have 19 featured articles, 2 featured topics, and 68 good articles. The project also has a list of templates, and a periodic table of elements filled with pictures.

Greetings Wikipedia Library members! Welcome to the inaugural edition of Books and Bytes, TWL’s monthly newsletter. We're sending you the first edition of this opt-in newsletter, because you signed up, or applied for a free research account: HighBeam, Credo, Questia, JSTOR, or Cochrane. To receive future updates of Books and Bytes, please add your name to the subscriber's list. There's lots of news this month for the Wikipedia Library, including new accounts, upcoming events, and new ways to get involved...

New positions: Sign up to be a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, or a Volunteer Wikipedia Librarian

Wikipedia Loves Libraries: Off to a roaring start this fall in the United States: 29 events are planned or have been hosted.

New subscription donations: Cochrane round 2; HighBeam round 8; Questia round 4... Can we partner with NY Times and Lexis-Nexis??

New ideas: OCLC innovations in the works; VisualEditor Reference Dialog Workshop; a photo contest idea emerges

News from the library world: Wikipedian joins the National Archives full time; the Getty Museum releases 4,500 images; CERN goes CC-BY

Announcing WikiProject Open: WikiProject Open kicked off in October, with several brainstorming and co-working sessions

New ways to get involved: Visiting scholar requirements; subject guides; room for library expansion and exploration

Read the full newsletter

Thanks for reading! All future newsletters will be opt-in only. Have an item for the next issue? Leave a note for the editor on the Suggestions page. --The Interior 21:48, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

• Traffic report: 200 miles in 200 years
  The top 10 encapsulates the history of human aviation; at #1, a Google Doodle celebrating the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump; at #10, the enduringly popular scifi film Gravity, a paean to human spaceflight. It's odd to think it's taken us 200 years to travel about that many miles up.

• In the media: Rand Paul plagiarizes Wikipedia?
  While giving a speech on behalf of a gubernatorial candidate, Paul advocated his pro-life position, and compared allowing unrestricted abortions to the film Gattaca. He went on to use strikingly similar language and phraseology in his speech to what the Wikipedia page reads. The Washington Post's article conceded that Wikipedia is a widely used source for trivial information, but mocked the fact that a politician would view it as a reliable source.

• News and notes: Sex and drug tourism—Wikivoyage's soft underbelly?
  In January we raised several potentially troublesome issues for the Wikimedia movement in taking on Wikivoyage, including the apparent inadequacy of the English Wikivoyage sex-tourism policy, hurriedly strengthened against mention of child sex after our inquiries. However, both sex-tourism and illegal-activities policies remain equivocal about how the site should treat entries about sex tourism more generally, and drugs that are classed as illicit in almost every country. Yet the Signpost has found it remarkably easy to locate material in Wikivoyage that violates both the spirit and the letter of the policies.

• Featured content: Wrestling with featured content
  This year's WikiCup competition has finished, while three articles, five lists, and six pictures, were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Recent research: User influence on site policies: Wikipedia vs. Facebook vs. Youtube
  Laura Stein, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, has concluded that, based on her comparison of user policy documents (including the Terms of Service) of YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, Wikipedia offers the highest level of participation power overall.

• WikiProject report: Special: Lessons from the dead and dying
  With Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and other gloomy celebrations this week, we're taking a look at Wikipedia's dead and dying. For some dead WikiProjects, the sole purpose of their life was simply to serve as a warning to others. Some of these projects may still be salvageable, but for most, a revival is unlikely. Here are some projects that never got off the ground and the lessons that can be gleaned from their follies

• News and notes: Alleged "outing" of editor's personal information leads to Wikipedia ban
  As part of the second major "outing" controversy to hit the English Wikipedia in less than a year, the Chelsea/Bradley Manning naming dispute was dragged into the spotlight yet again when the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee ruled by motion to remove the administrator tools from and ban long-time Wikipedia contributor Phil Sandifer.

• Traffic report: Danse Macabre
  It's fair to say that commemorating death was a strong theme this week, with Lou Reed's passing generating interest, as well as a Google Doodle celebrating the costume designer Edith Head. And of course, the world's greatest celebrations of the dead, Halloween and the Day of the Dead, were also popular this week.

• Featured content: Five years of work leads to 63-article featured topic
  HMS Hood, one of the most famous warships of the Second World War, was a battlecruiser and therefore part of what is now the largest featured topic on Wikipedia: "Battlecruisers of the world". The topic was promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week alongside eleven articles, three lists, four pictures, and two other topics.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Accessibility
  This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Accessibility, a project that strives to make Wikipedia accessible for users with disabilities. The project improves Wikipedia's guidelines and Manual of Style, collects useful templates and scripts, and provides support to impaired Wikipedians.

• Arbitration report: Ebionites 3 case closed
  The Ebionites 3 case has closed with an interaction ban for the two editors involved in the dispute.

• Discussion report: Sockpuppet investigations, VisualEditor, Wikidata's birthday, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• Traffic report: Google Doodlebugs bust the block
  The numbers this week are beyond anything that has been seen since this report began. The top view count beats the average by an order of magnitude. Usually the appearance of numbers this big on the list is due to spamming, but in this case it seems they are due to honest interest; more specifically, Google Doodles, which for the first time claimed all five top slots. This column has raised numerous times the power of a Google Doodle to shine light on Wikipedia, but the wattage has never been as high as this.

• Featured content: 1244 Chinese handscroll leads nine-strong picture contingent
  Five articles, two lists, one topic, and nine pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Special report: FDC staff raise the benchmarks for activities, impact, planning, and governance
  The supporting staff of the Wikimedia Foundation’s powerful volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) have released their assessments for the third half-yearly round of funding applications. The applications for the newly named annual plan grants were submitted by affiliated entities on 1 October, and comprise a total of more than US$5M in bids.

• News and notes: Trademark at issue again with the Italian Wikipedia and wikipedia.it
  The Italian-language Wikipedia community has overwhelmingly voted to request the Wikimedia Foundation's assistance in recovering wikipedia.it, a website that has been frequently confused with the Italian Wikipedia.

• WikiProject report: The world of soap operas
  This week, we followed the intricate storylines of WikiProject Soap Operas.

• Discussion report: Commas, Draft namespace proposal, education updates, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• From the editor: The Signpost needs your help
  As I said in August, contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement, not to mention the English Wikipedia.

• Book review: Peter Burke's Social History of Knowledge—ambitious, fascinating, and exhaustive
  Peter Burke's A Social History of Knowledge: Volume II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia is a broad and wide-ranging look at how knowledge has been created, acquired, organized, disseminated, and sometimes lost in the Western world over the last two and a half centuries, a sequel to his 2000 book covering the prior three centuries, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot.

• Featured content: Rockin' the featured pictures
  Four articles, five lists, and thirty-four pictures were promoted to 'featured status' this week, including an image of a small fraction of the 18,000 taxis that serve Hong Kong.

• WikiProject report: Score! American football on Wikipedia
  This week, we headed over to WikiProject National Football League. With 10 Featured Articles, 61 Featured Lists, and 142 Good Articles (as of publication), this WikiProject has done a lot of work improving American football articles.

• News and notes: Foundation to Wiki-PR: cease and desist; Arbitration Committee elections starting
  The Wikimedia Foundation has sent a formal cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR—the public relations agency accused of breaking Wikipedia policies and guidelines by creating, editing, and maintaining several thousand articles for paying clients through a sophisticated array of accounts. The Foundation's attorneys, Cooley LLP, have demanded that Wiki-PR's employees abide by the site's Terms of Use and the language of a community ban from the English Wikipedia.

• Traffic report: Ill Winds
  It's not hard to guess which event is leading interest in the top 25 this week. The sheer scale of Typhoon Haiyan is staggering; estimates place its maximum windspeed upon first landfall in the Philippines on November 6 at 315 km/h, which would make it the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to reach land. To date, the storm has killed nearly 4000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 4 million homes.

• Arbitration report: WMF opens the door for non-admin arbitrators
  Back in March, when the March 25 Arbitration Report covered the Audit Subcommittee appointment discussion, a statement from the WMF legal division clarified its position that access to deleted revisions required an RFA or RFA-identical process; therefore AUSC committee appointments were not open to non-admins. The WMF legal team has now further clarified its position, saying that running for and winning an election for arbitrator would qualify as the type of rigorous community selection process required for the checkuser and oversight rights held by arbitrators.

• Traffic report: Kennedy shot Who
  Summary:Doctor Who nearly got cancelled in its first week because its premiere was swamped by coverage of the JFK assassination, which happened the same day. Thankfully, producers saw fit to rerun it the next day, which is now its official anniversary date.

• Recent research: Reciprocity and reputation motivate contributions to Wikipedia; indigenous knowledge and "cultural imperialism"; how PR people see Wikipedia
  Wikipedia works on the efforts of unpaid volunteers who choose to donate their time to advance the cause of free knowledge. This phenomenon, as trivial as it may sound to those acquainted with Wikipedia inner workings, has always puzzled economists and social scientists alike, in that standard Economic theory would not predict that such enterprises would thrive without any form of remuneration.

• Discussion report: Musical scores, diversity conference, Module:Convert, and more
  Recent discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• News and notes: One decade of Wikisource; FDC recommendations raise serious questions
  The sister project Wikisource, the digital library that hosts free-content primary sources, is now a decade old. Wikisource, which now has versions in 63 languages, is the sixth type of project to reach ten-year milestone and will be the last until 2016. The Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations to the Board of Trustees on 11 new applications for annual grants by 11 WMF-affiliated organisations. The maximum total budget for the current and upcoming March rounds is US$6M.

• WikiProject report: Electronic Apple Pie
  This week, we returned to WikiProject Apple Inc. for a peek at their newest articles about the latest in gadgets and software. The last time we took a bite out of WikiProject Apple, they had just finished merging WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject iPhone OS. Today, the project is hard at work rewriting their primary article, improving the subject's outline, and adding to the project's list of 25 Good Articles and 6 Featured Articles.

• Featured content: F*&!
  Seventeen articles, four lists, and twenty-eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status in the last two weeks.

• Arbitration report: Ottoman Empire–Turkey naming dispute case opens; New discretionary sanctions draft proposal available for review
  The Ottoman Empire–Turkey naming dispute case has opened. The second draft of the discretionary sanctions proposal is now open for review.

• Traffic report: Deaths of Mandela, Walker top the list
  When one edits this page for too long, one is tempted to appoint oneself as the psychoanalyst for the human race, or at least the English-speaking portion thereof. Since nearly everyone uses Wikipedia, the constant stream of TV updates, pointless celebrity scandals, and inquiries after who has died can seem like a dreary peek into humanity's surprisingly banal collective consciousness.

• In the media: Edward Snowden a "hero"; German Wikipedia court ruling
  Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales caught headlines last week when he referred to former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden ... Loek Essers of the International Data Group, (IDG) News Service is reporting that a German court has held Wikipedia liable for its content, but still does not have to fact check the information in advance.

• News and notes: Wiki Loves Monuments—winners announced
  Amid great anticipation the international prize winners have just been announced for the fourth annual Wiki Loves Monuments, now the world's largest photographic competition and one of the biggest events on the Wikimedia movement's calendar. ... The first prize has gone to David Gubler's photograph of a Swiss train crossing a viaduct.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Wine
  This week, the Signpost interviewed the Wine WikiProject.

• Interview: Wikipedia's first Featured Article centurion
  On 7 December, Wikipedia editor Wehwalt reached the momentous milestone of 100 featured articles with History of Chincoteague, Virginia. Quite apart from the reading and research, that's around three-quarters of a million words of finalised text, not counting footnotes, image captions and the rest.

• Featured content: Viewer discretion advised
  Three articles, one list, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Technology report: MediaWiki 1.22 released
  On 6 December, the latest version of the MediaWiki software was released. In development from March 2013 through October 2013, the release featured anti-spam and counter-vandalism improvements.

• WikiProject report: Babel Series: Tunisia on the French Wikipedia
  This week, the Signpost interviewed the Tunisia WikiProject on the French Wikipedia.

• Traffic report: Hopper to the top
  An animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.

• Discussion report: Usernames, template data and documentation, Main page, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• News and notes: Nine new arbitrators announced
  A little more than six days after the close of voting, the results of the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced. Of the 22 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, though only one gained the support of more than half of the voters. Eight were elected to two-year terms, and a ninth will serve for one year.

• Featured content: Triangulum, the most boring constellation in the universe
  Seven articles, three lists, and eight pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Technology report: Introducing the GLAMWikiToolset
  This week, the GLAMWikiToolset, or GWToolset, is being deployed to the Wikimedia Commons. It allows for GLAM organizations to batch upload content based on various metadata stored in an XML schema. In the past this has been done by various bots, but now it will be easier for GLAMs to do it directly.

• Recent research: Cross-language editors, election predictions, vandalism experiments
  Analyzing edits to the-then 46 largest Wikipedias between July 9 and August 8, 2013, a study identified a set of about 8,000 contributors with a global user account who have edited more than one of these language versions in that time frame.

• Featured content: Drunken birds and treasonous kings
  Five articles, two lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia.

• Discussion report: Draft namespace, VisualEditor meetings
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• WikiProject report: More Great WikiProject Logos
  We saved one last special report for 2013. After our well-received review of great WikiProject logos a couple years ago, it was only a matter of time before we collected a new batch of interesting iconography that showcases the creativity of the Wikipedia community. Hopefully, these logos will also inspire other projects to liven up their drab pages.

• News and notes: IEG round 2 funding rewards diverse ambitions
  A significant move by the Wikimedia Foundation has been to broaden the types of activities it funds to develop several different programs for judging and allocating that funding, and to set up volunteer committees that initially assess applications for funding.

• Technology report: OAuth: future of user designed tools
  Last month, the OAuth extension was deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. OAuth is a standard used for allowing users to authenticate third-party applications, also known as consumers, to take actions on their behalf.

• Traffic report: A year stuck in traffic
  In fact, the majority are relatively evenly split between three themes: people of interest, television, and websites.

• Arbitration report: Examining the Committee's year
  In 2013, the arbitration committee closed 10 cases, 9 amendment requests, and 26 clarification requests.

• In the media: Does Wikipedia need a medical disclaimer?
  On New Year's Day, an article by Tim Sampson published in The Daily Dot and republished shortly after on Mashable covered the currently ongoing medical disclaimer RfC.

• Book review: Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia
  Dariusz Jemielniak's book is the newest about Wikipedia, published in Poland in 2013 and with an English edition forthcoming in 2014.

• News and notes: The year in review
  This was the year in which one journalist described the flagship site, Wikipedia, as "wickedly seductive". It was the year Wikipedia's replacement value was estimated at $6.6bn, its market value at "tens of billions of dollars", and its consumer benefit "hundreds of billions of dollars". But it was also the year in which one commentator forecast the decline of Wikipedia—that the project is in trouble from its shrinking volunteer workforce, skewed coverage, "crushing bureaucracy" and 90 percent male community.

• Discussion report: Article incubator, dates and fractions, medical disclaimer
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia and around the Wikimedia movement include...

• WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Fifth Edition
  The year 2013 has come and gone, adding 50 new WikiProject Reports to our long list of projects we've had the privilege to meet. Last year saw the continuation of our Babel series, featuring WikiProjects from other languages of Wikipedia. We also expanded our selection of special reports, offering readers a growing collection of helpful tips and tools as they participate in WikiProjects.

• Featured content: 2013—the trends
  Over the past year 1181 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured picture candidates (FPC), which promoted an average of 46 pictures a month. This was followed by featured article candidates (FAC; 32.5 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 18 a month).

• Technology report: Looking back on 2013
  2013 saw a lot of changes to MediaWiki software and Wikimedia infrastructure.

• Public Domain Day: Why the year 2019 is so significant
  Public Domain Day—January 1, 2014—gives me an opportunity to reflect on this important asset, mandated by the Constitution of the United States.

• Traffic report: Tragedy and television
  The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.

• Technology report: Gearing up for the Architecture Summit
  MediaWiki developers will be meeting in San Francisco on January 23–24 for an Architecture Summit.

• News and notes: WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing"
  On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.

• Op-ed: WikiCup competition beginning a new year
  At the very start of the new year, 2014's WikiCup—an annual competition which has been held on Wikipedia in various forms since 2007—began.

• WikiProject report: Jumping into the television universe
  This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Television.

• Featured content: A portal to the wonderful world of technology
  Twelve articles, three lists, seven pictures, and a portal were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.

• News and notes: German chapter asks for "reworking" of Funds Dissemination Committee; should MP4 be allowed on Wikimedia sites?
  Wikimedia Germany, the largest national affiliate, has authored an extensive critique of the Funds Dissemination Committee's process for issuing funding recommendations for the various large organizations in the movement.

• Technology report: Architecture Summit schedule published
  The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.

• Op-ed: Licensed for reuse? Citing open-access sources in Wikipedia articles
  It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.

• In the media: Is Google hurting Wikipedia traffic?; "Wikipedia-Mania" in the New York Times
  Wikipedia's recent decline in readership, possibly due to Google's Knowledge Graph. ... Judith Newman in the New York Times asks "What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?"

• Traffic report: The Hours are Ours
  We now can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Sociology
  This week, we studied human social behavior with the folks at WikiProject Sociology.

• Book review: Missing Links and Secret Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries from Across the Known Multiverse
  A particularly esoteric anthology of speculative fiction, filled with imaginary Wikipedia entries from, as the introduction puts it, "the many Wikipedias across the Multiverse."

• News and notes: Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom
  The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.

• Featured content: Dr. Watson, I presume
  Fifteen articles, nine lists, twenty pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.

• Special report: The few who write Wikipedia
  On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.

• Technology report: Architecting the future of MediaWiki
  This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.

• In the media: Wikipedia for robots; Wikipedia—a temperamental teenager
  An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.

• Traffic report: No show for the Globes
  While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.

• Traffic report: Six strikes out
  There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.

• WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
  Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.

• News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
  Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".

• Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
  The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.

• Recent research: Translation assignments, weasel words, and Wikipedia's content in its later years
  An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

• Traffic report: Six strikes out
  There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.

• WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
  Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.

• News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
  Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".

• Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
  The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.

• Recent research: Translation assignments, weasel words, and Wikipedia's content in its later years
  An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

• In the media: WikiVIP; Art Feminism; Medical articles; PR manipulation; Azerbaijani Wikipedia
  As reported in various media outlets this week, including The Next Web and The Daily Dot, this past week, Wikimedia Commons and various language Wikipedias are working together to encourage subjects of Wikipedia articles to record a 10-second clip of their voice to be appended to their Wikipedia article.

• Technology report: Left with no choice
  Software evolution does not always mean that features are being added. It also means that old fat is being trimmed. It is no different for MediaWiki.

• News and notes: WMF bites the bullet on affiliation and FDC funding, elevates Wikimedia user groups
  In a bold move, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has announced a major change in policy concerning affiliated groups in the worldwide movement, and FDC funding levels to eligible chapters and thematic organizations over the next two years. Both decisions were published last Tuesday after considerable post-meeting consultation with the FDC and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom). The core of the first decision is

• Featured content: Space selfie
  Thirteen articles, three lists, and twenty-five images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia from 19 January to 1 February.

• Traffic report: Sports Day
  Two great sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, collide in one week, transforming the top ten into a festival of flying feet, a carnival of colliding caraniums and a bacchanal of bouncing balls, combined to influence Wikipedia's most popular articles last week.

• WikiProject report: Game Time in Russia
  In celebration of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, we revisited the team at WikiProject Russia to learn how the project has changed since our first interview in 2011.

• News and notes: Foundation takes aim at undisclosed paid editing; Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge
  The Wikimedia Foundation has proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' Terms of use to specifically ban undisclosed paid editing. ... Dimitris Liourdis, a lawyer in training who moonlights as an administrator on the Greek Wikipedia, is embroiled in a legal dispute with a Greek politician over alleged edits made to his Wikipedia article.

• Technology report: ULS Comeback
  Runa Bhattacharjee has notified the community that the Foundation is ready to turn the Universal Language Selector back on.

• WikiProject report: Countering Systemic Bias
  WikiProject Countering System Bias aims to combat imbalanced coverage while encouraging neglected cultural perspectives and points of view, both in articles and in the larger Wikipedia community. As you'll see from the varied experiences and motivations of our nine respondents, the biases that the folks at WP CSB tackle run the full gamut of human characteristics and dispositions. The interview that follows unveils many of Wikipedia's greatest shortcomings.

• Featured content: Holotype
  Five articles, seven lists, forty-three pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.

• Traffic report: Chilly Valentines
  Valentines Day got a somewhat muted reception this week, overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the death of Shirley Temple.

Hello Makecat:

WikiProject AFC is holding a month long Backlog Elimination Drive!
The goal of this drive is to eliminate the backlog of unreviewed articles. The drive is running from March 1, 2014 to March 31, 2014.

Awards will be given out for all reviewers participating in the drive in the form of barnstars at the end of the drive.
There is a backlog of over 4800 articles, so start reviewing articles! Visit the drive's page and help out!

A new version of our AfC helper script has been released! It includes many bug fixes, new improvements and features, code enhancements, and more. If you want to see a full list of changes, visit the changelog. Please report bugs and feature requests there, too! Thanks.
Posted by Northamerica1000 (talk) on 02:12, 28 February 2014 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk), on behalf of WikiProject Articles for creation

• Forum: Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
  About a week ago, the Wikimedia Foundation proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' terms of use to specifically ban paid editing, by adding a new clause titled "Paid contributions without disclosure". We have asked two users, one in favor of the measure (Smallbones) and one opposed (Pete Forsyth), to contribute their opinions on the matter.

• Featured content: Odin salutes you
  Eight articles, three lists, and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• WikiProject report: Racking brains with neuroscience
  This week, we found three Ph.D.s willing to give us a crash course on WikiProject Neuroscience.

• Special report: Diary of a protester: Wikimedian perishes in Ukrainian unrest
  Ukraine has been gripped by widespread protests over the past three months. Due to a decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych—at Russia's urging—to abandon integration with the European Union, the country was (and in many ways still is) split between the Europe-favoring Ukrainian-speaking western half and the Russian-speaking east and south. Hundreds have died during the unrest, leaving thousands of family members and friends to bury their loved ones. This week our Wikimedian colleagues in Ukraine are facing that challenge after the death of one of their own.

• News and notes: Wikimedia chapters and communities challenge Commons' URAA policy
  Following a trend started by Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Argentina has published an open letter challenging the recent deletion of hundreds of images from the Commons under its policy on URAA-restored copyrights, relating to the United States' 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act.

• Traffic report: Snow big deal
  The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list.

• Recent research: CSCW '14 retrospective; the impact of SOPA on deletionism
  The monthly roundup of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee.