This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of
almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds
on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which
I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send
the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was
never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to
look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles
down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study
the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a
search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to
analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly
at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed
on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the
simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface
features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality
that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The
[[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article
html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number
of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words
and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number
of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number
of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see
the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or
h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number
of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage
links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age
(based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :*
Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any
class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out
featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the
classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of
this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external
links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly
distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value
assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B
and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information.
:* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. =
Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an
analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the
link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet
Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful
Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis
is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then
look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the
article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can
pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this
article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also
contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in
our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple
English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring
in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA
only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl
Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic
Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]],
[[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple
only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug
use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual
liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]],
[[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock
festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic
acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles
produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion /
Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your
perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET
ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature
sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that
the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not
distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together,
Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles
are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't
look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is
interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five
Stars Dominate Ratings"
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html…
I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system
is
well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and
create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating
system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia
namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as
needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you
don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot).
:* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles
and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You
ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give
the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure
of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from
document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page
262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the
kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what
features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is
an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority,
economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance,
precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent
features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a
person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has
has this much of these surface and these latent features.
= References =
- DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in
Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report.
PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…>
- Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the
feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical
Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>
Hoi,
I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most
excellent bit of news.
The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the
field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding
drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in
a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to
learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics.
What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are
asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more
linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be
interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more
relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get
more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that
we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with
all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the
Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should
approve yet another language :)
NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in
this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus...
Thanks,
GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org>
Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org>
Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project
<reviews(a)linguistlist.org>
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/
The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University,
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Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org>
================================================================
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===========================Directory==============================
1)
Date: 18-Jun-2007
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
Dear subscribers,
As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the
"Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their
donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the
English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this
at:
http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm.
The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity
of
our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic
about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit
more
leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on
the
Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely
organizational one. We will:
*Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or
pages that need improvement;
*Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified
as
"in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any
references or sources," etc;
*Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or
articles;
*Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia;
*Keep track of our project Wikipedians;
*Keep track of revisions and new entries;
*Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's
efforts.
We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us
all
get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an
area
needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of
Linguists
page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M
Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and
information
added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort,
please
respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at
hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which
linguistics
entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our
campaign
on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we
will
share with you soon.
This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The
end
result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth
and
depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate
prospective
students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on
what
we do. Please consider participating.
Sincerely,
Hannah Morales
Editor, Wikipedia Update Project
Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable
-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831
Given the large reserves that the WMF carries, and the savings from
cancelling events such as Wikimania 2020, I would have thought that the WMF
was one organisation that could afford to pause its fundraising for a few
months. At least in countries where the economy is in freefall.
In a few months time lots of people will still be in a financial mess. But
the large number of people who are currently going to be worried about
their financial future will hopefully be divided into those who have kept
their jobs. or got new ones and those who were right to be worried.
Hopefully some of those who come through this financially OK will be in a
position to donate.
WSC
On Tue, 5 May 2020 at 11:25, <wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
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>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Annoying ads (John Erling Blad)
> 2. Re: Annoying ads (Benjamin Ikuta)
> 3. Re: Annoying ads (Robert Fernandez)
> 4. Re: Annoying ads (Pierre-Yves Beaudouin)
> 5. Re: Annoying ads (Nick Wilson (Quiddity))
> 6. Re: Annoying ads (Samuel Klein)
> 7. Re: Annoying ads (Paulo Santos Perneta)
> 8. Re: Annoying ads (Paulo Santos Perneta)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 4 May 2020 16:55:50 +0200
> From: John Erling Blad <jeblad(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Annoying ads
> Message-ID:
> <CAJcMX2=
> 5GgwUNkrfG6EjJsn6sB1rBF1H_FnyPhPd_Wjr5otu0A(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> Often I surf Wikipedia without being logged in, and so I did right now. I
> got the usual banners, but this time they popped up repeatedly in several
> locations. This quickly gets extremely annoying, and I find it unwise.
> Create one banner, and stick with that. Several banners are simply way over
> the top.
>
> /jeblad
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *****************************
>
Dear all,
I am writing to share some good news! After two years of brainstorming and
planning, our instructional website in Arabic is out! This is yet another
step for Wikimedia Israel in developing instructional tools.
We’re thrilled to introduce Wiki Warsha ويكي ورشة <http://wikiwarsha.org/>!
Wikiwarsha.org <http://wikiwarsha.org/> is a multimedia instructional
website designed to introduce Wikipedia to Arabic readers, to invite new
editors to write and edit content on Arabic Wikipedia, to assist teachers
in school activities, and instructors in editing workshops.
Warsha is the Arabic word for ‘workshop’, the website includes short
instructional films, texts and images and is divided into 13 informative
and instructional lessons:
-
Wikipedia homepage structure
-
About Wikipedia articles
-
Create account
-
Sign in to a registered account
-
Create a userpage
-
Create a new article
-
Edit an article
-
Formatting the article
-
Request edits approval on Arabic Wikipedia
-
Adding image
-
Adding internal and external links
-
Adding references
-
Adding categories
In addition to those lessons, the website contains informative sections
about copyright issues, FAQs, good article criteria, and talk pages, all in
order to facilitate understanding how Wikipedia communities function.
For further details and info:
warsha(a)wikimedia.org.il
Michal Lester
Bekriah Mawasi [[user: bks-WMIL]]
Michal Lester
Executive Director
Wikimedia Israel
Dear all,
I would like to share with you some updates on Wikimedia Foundation Board
governance, concerning board composition, annual planning, and more.
The past few weeks and months have been difficult for many of us as
COVID-19 changes our schedules and lives, but we are being really true to
the vision of “the world in which every single human being can freely share
in the sum of all knowledge”—on the whole the visits to Wikimedia projects
have increased by more than 30% over the past month. It is impressive that
the volunteer communities continue to produce the information that informs
everyone through graphs and data seen by millions and careful synthesis of
the medical and administrative facts. Wikimedia volunteers’ work is present
in top stories on the novel coronavirus. We volunteers do this despite the
need to tend to home chores, take care of kids and the elderly, probably
feeling depressed or fearing for our jobs, economy, health and the lives of
relatives and friends all over the world.
In these circumstances, it may seem odd to be hearing about board
governance updates, but those are still important, for the long-term
thriving of our movement. I joined the Board because I wanted to explore
ways of improving understanding between the Foundation and the communities,
and to help the trustees provide what was needed to our communities. No
Board will ever do this perfectly, and I know, as do we all, that there
have been occasions in the long years of the movement on which the Board
had not supported the Foundation and communities in the ways we all hoped
and needed. We as Board members want to play our part in building a
Wikimedia that will sustain our mission far into the future. Please forgive
the length of this message—it is a lot of things to share in one letter.
== Designing a better Board for Wikimedia ==
One of the most significant initiatives the Board worked on collectively
over the last year was to run an official Board governance review. In large
part this review was a response to direct requests for clarification from
the community over several years. I will explain a few of the
recommendations that came from this review, and the changes we are making
based on these recommendations.
In early 2019, the Foundation Board Chair and Executive Director
commissioned Board Veritas (named Taylor Strategic Partnerships at the
time) to review how the Board might more effectively support the goals of
the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia movement. Board Veritas was
chosen because of their expertise in the governance of U.S. nonprofits with
global operations and internationally diverse boards, as well as their
background in developing strategic comparisons with other not-for-profit
boards.
The resulting recommendations [1] centered on increasing the Board’s
effectiveness in fulfilling its governance responsibilities, including
improving the process for selecting Board members; developing greater
clarity around Board roles, responsibilities and accountabilities; better
leveraging the talents and skills of trustees in service to the
Foundation’s mission and strategic goals; improving trust and interactions
between the Board, the ED/CEO, and staff; and strengthening strategy and
program oversight.
The Board began taking steps to respond to the recommendations right away,
at a special meeting in July 2019 [2]. At that meeting, we lengthened the
terms of Board officer and committee chair positions from one year to three
years, and we tasked the Board Governance Committee with the preparation of
proposals for how to implement additional changes.
We will have more to share in the near future when the Board will be
engaging broadly on the outcomes, but the first big planned change is
expanding the number of seats on the Board, from 10 to 16. This includes
increasing the current number of seats sourced from the wider Wikimedia
community (including affiliates) by three, for a total of eight
community-sourced seats. The majority of the Board and I feel that this
overall growth is necessary for us to increase our capacity to meet the
governance needs of the Foundation—and better reflect the growing and
diverse communities we serve with the increased number of voices from
community sources.
== Community-selected Board seats ==
The voting process to select nominees for three Community-selected Board
seats was intended to open candidate submissions soon. In normal
circumstances this selection process occurs every three years and would run
this month. However, we feel that the widespread global impact from the
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting strain on resources make it
unwise and unreasonable to continue the voting process on its planned
timeline:
The selection process requires extensive effort from community members (to
read proposals, ask questions, be engaged and informed, and of course
vote); candidates (to write statements and engage with community
questions); the Elections Committee (to run the process, including
responding to questions and engaging across languages); Foundation staff
(to support the Elections Committee in running the process and coordinating
the work across all stakeholders); and the Board (to make high-level
decisions and follow the process, also across languages). Given the public
health crisis and the many extraordinary demands on every person’s time and
attention, we believe we can not expect or require the level of sustained
effort and engagement needed to hold a successful trustee selection.
We do not want to delay the trustee selection process any longer than we
have to, and we will continue to evaluate whether it is appropriate to
proceed based on the best information available to us. It takes time to
plan and run the selection, so once the postponed process can resume we
will still need to work out the best timing for it. It does not currently
seem likely that the process will resume before August 2020, but we are
committed to completing it before the end of June 2021.
In order to ensure sustained community representation on the Board, we are
extending the terms of the three community-selected trustees currently
occupying those seats (María, Dariusz, and James) for up to a year until we
are all ready to run the postponed process. I would like to thank them for
their service to our communities and dedication to our shared mission.
Note: The selection process is mandated by the Bylaws to happen every three
years according to a schedule and process set by the Board of Trustees. The
process last occurred in 2017, so if we determine that it is best to
postpone the process past 2020, this will require a modification of the
Bylaws. The necessary modification of the Bylaws will be part of
forthcoming recommendations as we learn more about when we can all dedicate
the necessary time to the selection process.
== Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan timeline ==
The Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan would normally be completed in April
and posted for your feedback in May. This year, the Board has provisionally
approved an extended and revised timeline for annual planning in order for
us to remain sensitive to global economic conditions and revenue
projections.
We are also adjusting the timelines and expectations for our affiliates
during this time. Our affiliates and user groups hold a lot of in-person
events and are transitioning some of their work online and having to
postpone or cancel some events entirely. We are all having to rethink the
next year and recognize that the adjustment is going to take time. This
pandemic is a changing situation and will affect parts of the globe
differently over time. We need to remain flexible during this time of
uncertainty.
There will be future updates on annual plan progress from the Foundation,
but we wanted to let you know as soon as we could that the usual timelines
are postponed.
== Board meeting minutes & resolutions ==
Some of you have asked for minutes and resolutions from our recent
meetings, as we are behind in publishing these notes. I apologize that we
fell behind in this; once we were behind, it became harder to catch up, and
we have only now been able to read and approve them all. The minutes were
posted and you will find them on the Wikimedia Foundation Governance Wiki
[3]. I shall update on this thread when they are all up.
Voting online to approve the minutes is not always possible, so we are
approving them during our meetings. The timeline of the expected publishing
of the minutes was too ambitious, and this would need to change. Amanda
Keton, our General Counsel and Secretary of the Board, will see to adopting
the practices needed and having support in place to help us review more
quickly.
== To recap ==
* In early 2019, the Foundation Board Chair and Executive Director hired
Board Veritas to conduct a Board Governance Review, and we are sharing the
resulting recommendations [1].
* We are planning to expand the number of seats on the Board, from 10 to
16. This includes increasing the current number of seats sourced from the
wider Wikimedia community (including affiliates) by three, for a total of
eight community-sourced seats. This change will require changing the
Bylaws, especially regarding the selection pathway for the additional
seats. We plan to present the Board’s vision and hold a community
discussion as part of the process for the Bylaws change.
* We are postponing the trustee selection process by up to a year because
of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic by up to a year, the resulting strain on
resources, and the added burden to our communities. And we shall be
modifying the Bylaws to allow for this revised timeline in the selection
process, if needed.
* We are approving an extended timeline for the Wikimedia Foundation Annual
Plan.
* And we are posting the remaining backlog of trustee meeting minutes and
resolutions. After they are all up, I shall update on this thread.
As these are a lot of topics to talk about, please post your
thoughts/comments on the talk page of my message on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_not…
. It would be easier to have a structured discussion there, rather than
dozens of emails in this thread. Depending on interest and our shared
situation we might hold a video “town hall” to discuss more details of some
of these plans with you all.
Also we are currently working on an update to our 2016 statement on
community culture in order to reinforce our commitment to safety on our
projects. We look forward to sharing it with you in May.
Please take care of yourselves.
[1]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Board_Veritas_Governance_Recomme…
[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2019-7-10
[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal working
hours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during weekend. You
should not feel obligated to answer it during your days off. Thank you in
advance!
Hello,
Today I stumbled upon this public phabricator ticket [1] created by someone
from WMF starting with:
"My team is creating bi-weekly HTML Dumps for all of the wikis, except for
wikidata as part of the paid API project."
I have so many questions:
- What is the "paid API" project? Are we planning to make money out of our
API? Now are we selling our dumps?
- If so, why is this not communicated before? Why are we kept in the dark?
- Does the board know and approve it?
- How is this going to align with our core values like openness and
transparency?
- The ticket implicitly says these are going to be stored on AWS ("S3
bucket"). Is this thought through? Specially the ethical problems of
feeding Jeff Bezos' empire? (If you have seen this episode of Hasan
Minhaj's on ethical issues of using AWS [2]). Why can't we do/host this on
Wikimedia infrastructure? Has this been evaluated?
- Why is the community not consulted about this?
Maybe I missed announcements, consultations or anything, forgive me for my
ignorance. Any pointers is enough. I also understand diversifying our
revenue is a good tool for rainy days but a consultation with the community
wouldn't be too bad.
[1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T254275
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maXvZ5fyQY
Best
--
Amir (he/him)
Hi Pascal, all,
this is being discussed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cyberpower678 THe last response was
June 16, and it seems to focus on geo-blocking as the cause for
blacklisting (in case anyone feels called to help out the developer).
This bot performs incredible work and I hope it gets fixed soon!
Best,
Lodewijk
On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 5:04 AM Pascal Martin <pmartin(a)linterweb.fr> wrote:
> HI,
>
> My native language is French, automatic translation into English.
> This message follows the numerous detection of false 404 links by the
> Internet Archive robot because it is blacklisted on a lot of servers. Small
> details concerning the archiving service of Wikiwix (
> https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:De_kroeg#Internet_Archive_Bot )
> It is based solely on this Javascript to be implemented since 2008 in
> French Wikipedia:
> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-ArchiveLinks.js
> The advantage of this solution makes it possible to add other archiving
> sources, and does not modify the content of Wikipedia articles.
> New links are detected by 3 different means:
> • Annual recovery: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html,
> • Recovery on IRC and on the WEB of Recents Changes.
> And we also recommend clicking on the archive link as soon as the source
> is added by a contributor, this immediately generates storage of the link
> and allows you to test the rendering of the archived page.
> In addition to fighting 404 errors, this solution also offers the
> advantage of protecting against changes in content that may appear in the
> pages to be archived.
> Wikiwix strictly respects copyright, archiving is only done with the
> author's approval using the noarchive tag.
> Since 2015, I have been alerting about the deployment of the IA robot:
> 2015:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2015/Bots_and_gad…:
> the bot solution with modification of the template cache is currently
> exclusive to WayBackMachine, 2017:
> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_user:Pmartin#I_left_you_a_message! :
> attempted collaboration abort by the bot trainer and bot stopped following
> numerous false detections on page 404.
> The role of IABOT is to detect the links present in Wikipedia which are in
> errors 404, to find an archive in priority on the WayBack Machine, and to
> modify the articles to replace the dead link there.
> This process is not good because IABOT only allows one archive url to be
> stored on all the languages, which greatly favors the Wayback Machine, to
> the detriment of the different versions of the page. While the template
> should link to a page that would list all of the possible archives for a
> 404 page.
> A week has been planned for the end of July 2020 to resolve the few
> stabilization problems that Wikiwix currently encounters, linked to the new
> solution which consumes only 30 euros of electricity per month, we can also
> support this week for a deployment of the solution on the NL part of
> Wikipedia.
>
> Could someone stop this bots, otherwise the false detection of links will
> become contagious for all projects?
>
> Pascal Martin
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Dear all,
I want to share with you the next steps of the Wikimedia Foundation Board
of Trustees about the Brand Project.
Originally the Board meeting dedicated to the brand project was supposed to
happen no earlier than October. The expected outcome from the project were
the recommendations on what the rebranding should look like - from changing
fonts/logos to renaming. And if there is going to be a renaming - to what.
Of course, the Board’s role is not in approving a change in fonts, but if a
recommendation to rename was to be made - the Board’s role would have been
to make a decision on that recommendation. The timeline has now been
changed, and the renaming part of rebranding will be discussed in our
August meeting.
Moreover, the Board will meet in early July to receive a briefing about the
project and talk about the process between June 2018 - June 2020. The
consolidated materials on what the brand project team has been working on
for a while now will be presented to the Board, and these materials are
also going to be posted publicly. The more-strategic conversation is
planned for the August meeting. Time to prepare the materials is needed,
and the ongoing conversations need to be summarised, so the Board can have
an in-depth discussion about this, before making any kind of decision.
We would like to continue with the survey [1] - we have discussed the
possibility of technical changes to the survey with an additional option
like “no renaming is needed” (not the exact words, mind you), but with more
than 700 respondents it is not methodologically sound to change the survey
now. Staff have confirmed to the Board that responses to the survey will
not be calculated as support for a change. The survey was only designed to
collect feedback on the possible renaming options, not as a yes/no vote on
whether to adopt them.
Thus the timeline on rebranding for the next 6-7 weeks is as follows:
* Early July - special Board meeting with the Brand project team to review
and discuss the process so far, and for the Board members to receive the
briefing on discussions happening;
* July - consolidated materials prepared for the July meeting will be
posted publicly after the meeting;
* August 5th - the Board meeting on renaming part of the rebranding, not
about the process. The Board will make the decision about whether to stop,
pause, or continue the work on this, within the framework of a discussion
on strategic goals, tensions and tradeoffs, and potential next steps.
* August (after the meeting) - the Board statement on the next steps about
the Brand project.
I also want to acknowledge receiving the Community open letter on renaming
[2] that was posted this week. Thank you for this statement on the position
of those of you who signed. I know there are other perspectives, and that
some would agree with it who have not signed it, and that there are also
some who would not agree. We expect that the Board meetings and
communication after them will address the concerns raised in the letter.
Stay safe,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Acting Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
[1] https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9G2dN7P0T7gPqpD
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_open_letter_on_renaming
*NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal working
hours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during weekend. You
should not feel obligated to answer it during your days off. Thank you in
advance!*
Dear our beloved global community members,
The National Security Bill for Hong Kong is passed today (30 Jun, HKT
2300). Most members within Hong Kong’s recovering community are shocked,
considering how much it affects local politics, and at the same time,
uncertainty brought from this decision to the local community (including
much of the Hong Kong people). Even until this moment, not to mention its
accessibility for the general public, the full text is only to be found at
the time of implementation (30 Jun, HKT 2300). However, this unknown text
will precede all common law principles within 30 minutes’ time for those
who are currently in Hong Kong.
There are a few points that we would like to bring up -- our worries this
piece of completely unconsulted legislation (apart from few well-known
local pro-Beijing figures), from the drafting phase to the implementation
phase, could change the Chinese-dominant Hong Kong community work:
1. This piece of legislation has never entered a public consultation phase.
The legislation is passed in a way to effectively circumvent local
legislative council opposition. It imposes unnecessary restrictions on free
speech, and is against all norms within local (Hong Kong) politics, where
most bills, including the most controversial Article 23 implementation bill
that was brought to a halt in 2003, had open public consultation. This
piece of legislation didn’t do so, and citizens have not even read what is
written before it became a law.
2. This piece of legislation seems to interfere with freedom of speech even
out of local boundaries. This includes, most possibly the criminalization
of speeches and acts that promote Hong Kong independence. This can include,
according to what the so-called “people’s congress representative” which
most within the city cannot vote for, said acts committed online could also
be counted. This may mean writing for, for example, reasons that lead to
the rise of the Hong Kong independence movement, may become a criminal act
if written in Hong Kong. This is unprecedented, and, as we all know, IP
addresses can be documented and tracked to prosecute personnels. If writing
for Wikipedia becomes a criminal act, what can go right?
3. It narrows the editor base. For example, the ban of Wikipedia in China
had completely changed the community environment for Mainland editors of
the Chinese Wikipedia. Off-site insults became common where local policies
could not act on as the editor base became much narrower. Without the
input across
the political spectrum, Wikipedia will become harder to remain neutral for
its content.
4. Uncertainty brings whether accessing Wikipedia articles related to Hong
Kong independence can become a crime. It’s interpretation of the bill is
unknown, and it seems possible as the implementation of the bill violates
how local laws are passed.
The local offline and most members of the online community has accessed the
effects in the short run and the long run:
In the short run, we expect the community base to retain mostly intact,
while meetups (currently run in an online mode due to the coronavirus
pandemic) would attract fewer members, particularly when local
pro-democracy (not pro-independence) figures are warned to be sent into
jail with this piece of legislation.
In the long run, if nothing changes, we expect the recovering user group
will most likely descend into non-compliance like the former chapter, and
similar to the current state of the offline-inactive Chinese User Group,
Wikimedia User Group China, which ceased its offline operations after the
Chinese government blocked Wikipedia. In the worst case scenario, the local
community may be replaced with a pseudo-community that works more like a
propaganda service than a User Group advocating for free speech and open
access.
We, as Hong Kong editors have tried expressing our concern but it is in
vain because of fierce opposition from some Chinese Wikipedia editors who
are mostly pro-Beijing. Uncertainty from the legislation, where original
plans to react to the bill when it became open to the public, became in
vain because of “local editors’ desire to respond when the bill is
publicized” and the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress of
China act to hide the bill from public access. This rendered the local
community’s inability to react before the bill was implemented. This
included plans to “shut down” some articles related to the ongoing 2019-20
Hong Kong protests. Of course, this turns out to be in vain both because of
its controversy of bringing Wikipedia into media attention, and whether
such an act violates neutrality principles, plus fierce opposition from
editors from China (excl. Hong Kong and Macao).
We hope the glocal community can pay attention to the effects of this bill
in Hong Kong, as it would most probably limit free speech and may affect
most citizens (including Wikimedia (incl. Wikipedia) editors in Hong Kong),
instead of what it proclaimed to be the few, unlawful separatists.
In grave concern of our future,
The Hong Kong offline Wikipedia Community
Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong