User:Phoenix2/Signpost
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Virginia Tech massacre articles rise to prominence
The article on the massacre that occurred last Monday in Blacksburg, Virginia had humble beginnings. It was created with the above 18 words by Taoster some two hours after the second shooting incident, and has since been edited nearly 7,500 times by more than 2,000 unique editors and is now more than 5,000 words long. Each revision has lasted for an average time of only 70 seconds. In less than one week, it rose to the #2 article position on the top 100 list according to WikiCharts (effectively #1, since the top position belongs to the main page). When the flurry of edits began, it was requested that the article remain unprotected because it is linked to as a news item on the main page. Administrators found a compromise to the consistent vandalism by semi-protecting the article in short segments of roughly 3 hours, hoping to thwart off casual vandals. It has since been semi-protected 12 times, a status under which it remains as of press time. Natalie Erin and Kizor have led the way; the former editing the page more than 170 times since its conception. The two, as well as Swatjester, also figured in a New York Times story covering the development of the article. On the day of the incident, a timelapse video was created, quickly running through screenshots of the article's first twelve hours. It was uploaded to YouTube, where it has been viewed nearly 40,000 times. On Thursday, Dalejenkins nominated the Virginia Tech massacre article for featured status. However, the nomination was delisted by Michaelas10 7 hours later, after nearly 20 opposing comments that all cited a lack of stability. The article on Virginia Tech itself has been semi-protected since Monday afternoon. Articles currently exist for three faculty victims of the massacre, though one is being reviewed after a decision was made to cut off discussion on its possible deletion. A fourth was deleted Sunday after exhaustive discussion. Also proposed for deletion are inaccurate media reports, a list of victims, and a navigational template. The article for Seung-Hui Cho, the man confirmed to be the shooter, has been edited nearly 2,500 times since TedFrank created it. It has been the target of a number of malicious edits, and remains semi-protected. There was also confusion over the article's title; as Korean names list the family name first, he may be known as Cho Seung-Hui and Seung Cho. April 20, 2007 marked the eighth anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. The milestone, combined with the discovered connections between the two incidents, propelled the article to the fourth most-viewed for the month of April, behind Seung-Hui Cho. It is currently semi-protected; the new interest may have been detrimental, as the article is now under review to challenge its featured status, which it received in August of 2005. Backlogs continue to growWikipedia is growing exponentially; most notably in size, but also in recognition. Inevitably, processes designed for the systematic improvement of articles have become severely backlogged. For the most part, worthwhile efforts are underway to clear the backlogs. Such efforts include minor innovations; others have seen a revamp and subsequent expedition of the process, or the creation of wikiprojects. CleanupReaders and editors are probably most familiar with the generic cleanup template, which can be seen on an increasing number of pages. The category containing all articles needing cleanup currently exceeds 24,000 articles. Each month, nearly 2,500 additional articles are tagged and added to the category. Various editors have chipped in to help, by checking the history of pages and determining when the cleanup template was added. Once sorted, CbmBOT, created in July of last year by Dvandersluis, updates a table on the category page providing a summary of the number of articles that were tagged from each month. RedWordSmith created the Cleanup Taskforce in March of 2005, encouraging users to tackle the rapidly increasing number of articles in the category.
A procedure is provided for editors to request an article be fixed by the Taskforce. A template is then placed on the discussion pages of articles to which modifications have been made. Members of the force who desire to do so create a 'desk' where cleanup requests are placed.[1] Elsewhere, the force also tries to add a more specific template where it is needed, from a page containing more than fifty specialized messages. Articles lacking sourcesThis article does not cite its references or sources. It's a message one has an increasingly frustrating probability of seeing. Several incidents have forced Wikipedia to look more closely at articles in which content has been copied from other locations. The message has thus been forced upon articles, particularly biographies, where it was previously unlikely to appear. The proposed policy page concerning the matter, Wikipedia:Attribution, is currently the site of discussion concerning the amalgamation of various other adopted policy pages. Elsewhere, discussion is ongoing about the format by which references and external links should be cited. The category containing all articles that lack sources is quickly approaching 70,000 articles. A project created to specifically process articles from the category has yet to be created. Peer reviewPeer review is one of the most recognizable pages for editors. Since its conception in 2003, thousands of articles have been reviewed, and two dozen topic-specific reviews have been created. Regrettably, in recent months, the number of articles that remain on the page without comments has significantly increased. Possibly contributing to this is the fact that, more often than not, opposing comments on the featured article candidates page are accompanied by a recommendation that the article be submitted to peer review. For users that abide by the initial recommendation to do so, it may take well over a month for such a review to take place. In March, IvoShandor suggested that users who add an article to the list should also review at least one other article to help clear the backlog. Good and featured articles In late 2005, the good articles (GA) process was created to provide a more prominent status for articles that were too short, or otherwise unlikely to receive featured status. Since then, more than 2,100 articles have been listed by hundreds of different reviewers, in what can be seen as a more expeditious undertaking. This week, in an effort to make them more noticeable, the articles that have been waiting the longest to be reviewed were placed in the usual backlog template that is placed at the top of the candidates page. Though a mostly successful outing, there has been concern about the 'division of resources' good articles create. Some editors feel that instead of reviewing articles for GA status, people should work on improving them further and bringing them up to featured status. In a situation similar to that at peer review, some opposers of featured candidates are quick to point out when an article has not yet received good article status. Since the longest unreviewed articles at GAC have been there since late March, casual editors may have already lost interest by the time said article receives GA status.  A graph on the statistics page for good article shows, by month, the percentage of total articles that have achieved either good or featured status. The rate at which articles have been promoted to featured status has remained relatively constant, but because of Wikipedia's quick growth the featured total against the total number of articles is steadily decreasing, now under 0.08%.[2] There are currently more than fifty articles with open nominations at FAC. When a general consensus has been reached, or when all outstanding issues have been addressed, the articles are promoted or failed (based on four criteria) by Raul654, the featured article director. He also schedules the featured articles that appear on the Main Page.
Featured lists reaches a milestoneThe featured list process this week reached a milestone of two hundred and fifty featured lists with the promotion of List of The Batman episodes on Wednesday.[1] After being introduced in May 2005 (see archived story), the featured list process led the way for the creation of featured topics and portals, both of which were proposed later that year. Based on the criteria for featured articles, but with necessary modifications, the first draft of a set of criteria for lists was created on May 18, 2005 by Filliocht. On June 1, the first list was promoted by ALoan, who has since successfully nominated fifteen lists. Filliocht had nominated the list several weeks earlier, on May 18. List of North American birds was promoted with four supporting comments, after several objections citing the lack of articles for every bird had been addressed. Very active during its first six weeks of operation, twenty-three lists were nominated; thirteen of which were successful by the end of June. The majority of the lists that failed did so either because of a lack of references, an insufficient lead, or a lack of free images. July of 2005 saw twenty lists promoted, a total that has been matched only by December of last year. Nearly seventy lists had been promoted by the end of 2005. A featured content portal was created in January of 2006; it has since been added to the navigation section of the sidebar. Initially, a list of all the featured lists was placed under a header of "featured lists". On September 11, CBDunkerson began transcluding a portion of a randomly selected featured list using <onlyinclude> and <includeonly> tags; this is how the list section of the portal can be seen today. After earlier discussion in various places, further discussion began earlier this month as to whether featured lists should be included on the Main Page. At its onset, some editors did not believe there were enough featured lists to make such an endeavour sustainable. Several editors then suggested a rotation, whereby one list is displayed per week, but different sections are displayed to keep the content fresh. On April 21, Ed proposed a WikiProject aimed at Wikipedia's lists. He said, "This project will encourage editors to write more lists. Lists are quite scarce now, and they're definitely needed to make Wikipedia as complete as possible." Discussion also began in early April concerning fair use images on featured lists, and how much the inclusion of such images should affect the final result. Tompw proposed that the number of fair use images used in featured lists should be limited, due to repeated arguments about the exact interpretation of the fair use policy (especially point #3). The change would particularly affect lists such as those that give episode summaries for television series. In July 2006, a subpage of Wikipedia's guidelines on fair use that pertains exclusively to lists was created. The page describes several advantages and disadvantages of non-free content in lists, although it was tagged as historical in January 2007. On Thursday, April 26, Lists WikiProject was created after a proposal by Ed. The final goal is to make all lists conform to the featured list criteria. A dozen editors have already agreed to assist in the effort. Unlike the featured article process, there is no "featured list" director. Filiocht, ALoan and Rune.welsh have all taken a major hand in the promotion process; Tompw currently promotes or fails the vast majority of candidates. He was also a major contributor to the featured topic of Canadian elections, which currently contains fourteen featured lists.
 Debate over non-free images heats upIn continuation of the story the Signpost ran last week about featured lists, discussion began Tuesday, involving more than two dozen editors, on the administrators' noticeboard. It concerns the inclusion of fair use images in lists such as that of Family Guy episodes, and the general undertakings of the Episode list WikiProject. Last month, after noting its effect on the nominees for featured list status, Tompw initiated discussion about modifying the featured list criteria to exclude non-free content from lists. It was aimed mainly at lists for television series which contain a screenshot from every episode. Most in support of the changes stated that screenshots could be used on the articles for individual episodes, but need not be used in episode summaries, which generally contain only one or two sentences about specific episodes. Several editors 'strongly' opposed the modifications, citing various things, including the lack of usability of a screenshot for piracy. Others said screenshots simply made the list more visually appealing and an easier recognition of a given episode, without reading the summary. Discussion on the page continued through April. On April 30, ESkog removed all of the images from List of Family Guy episodes, claiming a lack of fair use in his edit summaries. Shortly thereafter, an anonymous user reverted the change, but ESkog restored his version some three hours later.
The anonymous user again reverted the change, after which ESkog made mention of the issue on the administrators' noticeboard. At this point, administrator Ryulong quickly reverted to ESkog's imageless version and protected the page, saying, "fair use violations aplenty." The original posting by ESkog and note of protection at the noticeboard has since sparked nearly 40,000 words of discussion. In it, he described the inclusion of a screenshot for every list as a "decorative fair-use gallery". Cburnett was very unhappy with the change and quick protection by Ryulong, calling it an obvious endorsement of his preferred version. He also accused Ryulong of taking the administrative action of protection against a page to which he was involved in editing. Also troublesome was the definition of "decorative"; several users sided with ESkog and maintained the philosophy that listed screenshots should not be included. Cburnett queried as to the amount of time that was spent ridding the Family Guy list of non-free images, when other lists, such as that for Naruto, were allowed to retain them. Ryulong then swiftly made his first edits to that list, three of which were formatting-related. The other was a reversion of the restoration by Someguy0830 of Zscout370's removal of the screenshots.
Peregrine Fisher appeared to be the main advocate for non-free image retention. He initially questioned the poor location of the discussion, and later tried to shed light on the decision that had been made regarding a proposed amendment to Wikipedia's fair use criteria. Discussion continued for a number of hours, concerning the number of editors required to achieve consensus, followed by numerous reminders that the discussion was not strictly a vote. Later, WAS 4.250 proposed that smaller (icon) sized images should be used, but the proposal was quickly dismissed. Administrator Cyde Weys, a major contributor to the discussion, said that he had taken the initiative in deleting images that had been orphaned since their removal from various lists. Gmaxwell provided a list of articles that were featured, but had episode screenshots. The most notable were those of The Simpsons, a series for which there are eighteen seasons. Future Perfect at Sunrise and Picaroon9288 removed the non-free screenshots from these lists. For a number of the other lists, users who were unaware of the discussion on the noticeboard, reverted the image removal. Early Tuesday, Cyde created a page on which lists that have had their screenshots removed are to be added. Several users have since assisted in the massive removal of the images, sparking minor edit wars at various locations; a number of episode lists were temporarily protected because of disputes that arose from the removal of images, which involved multiple editors. Consensus, or at least a general acceptance of the policy and the subsequent image removal effort, began to emerge Wednesday. Cburnett, who initially was unhappy with the immediacy of the matter and lack of consensus, praised editors for dealing with the issue in a professional manner. Hard feelings finally turned against Wikipedia's vague fair use policy for non-free images. Regarding long-term solutions to the problem, Crotalus horridus proposed a separate Wiki exclusively for popular culture. The forked site would continue to license text under the GNU Free Documentation License, but there would be a much less restrictive use on non-free content. The proposal generated discussion, but was considered unfeasible. Spoiler warnings may be tweakedEven casual Wikipedia readers are likely aware of the epic battle over the use of spoiler warnings that erupted last week. If one has recently seen {{spoiler}}, which is linked to by thousands of pages, it is known that it carried a message tempting a visit to this request for comment, which is nearly 100,000 words long. The drama began Tuesday, when Phil Sandifer (talk · contribs) proposed the deletion of the entire page formerly known as Wikipedia:Spoiler warning. It had previously been considered to be part of the Manual of Style, and accordingly was labelled a guideline. His main point of argument pointed to the lead section of articles, which are supposed to provide stand-alone summaries of the remaining content. The example he gave was The Crying Game, where the guideline makes writing a summarizing lead section impossible. The spoiler guideline at the beginning of May recommended that "editors avoid placing spoilers in edit summaries or section headers", with a similar recommendation for the lead section. Meanwhile, his deletion request, made as miscellany for deletion, quickly drew participants, the majority of whom agreed with Sandifer. Several editors cited a common argument, "Wikipedia is not censored", in their push to have spoiler warnings removed. Kusma advocated for deletion alongside Sandifer, mentioning that the German Wikipedia does not use such warnings because proper encyclopedias do not either. Simultaneously, discussion was underway for the deletion of {{spoiler}}, but it was quickly realized that debate over the existence of the policy page itself should precede it. Discussions for the template was terminated, with a note left by Tony Sidaway stating so. All discussion was eventually consolidated to one page, a request for comment. Early on, several editors made it clear that they wanted the policy changed to allow leads to provide complete summaries of both fiction and non-fiction. Wednesday, DESiegel provided eight suggestions for change. He argued in favour of the inclusion of all plot elements in lead sections. In an effort to reduce the thousands of articles that are currently tagged, he recommended the exclusion of warnings from "widely known works such as the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare". Tony Sidaway agreed, pointing out that Wikipedia's content disclaimer already warns of the revelation of plot elements. Several editors counterargued, claiming that the majority of readers reach articles through Google and other searches, and are therefore unlikely to even come across the content disclaimer. Lexicon argued for their removal because the definition of a spoiler itself is subjective, and such warnings may prohibit readers from reading content that may not have hampered their enjoyment of the works at all. Phil Sandifer tried to get the discussion back on track late Thursday, outlining the remaining issues. He stood by his initial position, stating that writing articles was very difficult because content outside of demarcated spoiler zones had to remain neutral, but could not do so if certain story elements were off-limits. In another section, Sandifer began to question the age of works, that is, the length of time since their release and the effective that time has on the inclusion of warnings. Cop 633 stepped in with his views, making a firm statement that the age of fiction should not have an effect on the presence of spoiler warnings. Discussion continued Thursday, nearly around the clock. By early Friday, it seemed the arguments for the removal of spoiler warnings outnumbered those against. An unusually high number of comments to the discussion were made anonymously, most by an editor who wanted spoilers to remain. The user, 87.189.124.195, was later blocked for twenty-four hours because of repetitive replacement of a spoiler warning on Sleeping Beauty. In any event, by late Friday, dialogue on the RfC had virtually stalled; many arguments and counterpoints were being continually repeated. Uncle G then threw the ball far in the direction of deletion, addressing the issue of spoiler warnings in other encyclopedias. He used Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopaedia as an example; an encyclopedia which includes pieces on various works of science fiction, revealing many plot elements with no forewarning. Several editors promptly agreed, thanking him for adding significantly to the discussion. Kizor, however, cited Uncle G's arguments in a couple of his own for the defense of spoiler tags, insisting that Wikipedia is unlike any paper encyclopedia and should be looked at in a different light. The continuing conference temporarily lightened early Friday, but showed no signs of halting. Edison repeated the argument that Wikipedia is always a frontrunner in internet searches, and readers/movie-goers are certainly to be disappointed if they encounter something crucial to the plot in the opening sentences of an article. Most in opposition to him stood by their core arguments, quoting the content disclaimer and remarking that such users should be disregarded because Wikipedia has no obligation to their disappointment.
Earlier discussion from the Shakespeare play Hamlet that concluded Friday regarding the matter was also transcluded to the RfC, on the basis that it not be modified. Later, Farix initiated three straw polls in an effort to determine where users stand on the issue. In the first poll, which noted the use of spoiler warnings in classical and historical works, ten supported the use, while twenty-two opposed. The second poll, which concerned warnings in fairy tales, was much more one-sided. Only four of twenty-seven voters wanted spoilers in such articles, and three of the four thought it should be decided article-by-article. The final poll, which asked Should spoiler warnings be placed in sections titled "Plot", "Plot summary", "Synopses", or any variation thereof?, thirteen supported spoilers while twenty opposed. As of press time, votes were still being added to all three polls. However, as a preliminary result of the polls and their subsequent discussion, Wikipedia:Spoiler is currently marked as a "proposed policy, guideline, or process." Initially, it appears the use of warnings will be significantly reduced. Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates has also been slightly modified, no longer freely allowing spoilers as an exception to the guideline. PaddyLeahy was concerned Saturday about the "premature removal of spoiler warnings", since the guideline was still changing. Farix comically suggested the whole situation be added to Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars, a page on which conflicts which have little substance and end-value are listed. Later Saturday, a proposal by ARC Gritt for hierarchical spoiler templates was quickly shot down. Ed chipped in late Sunday with his reasoning as to why spoilers should be kept. Kizor and Sidaway, among others, responded with counterarguments that had been seen earlier in the week. Another straw poll, slightly less serious than the previous three, was then initiated by Kizor asking, "Are spoiler warnings condescending or insulting to readers?" Only nine users voted, with six saying 'no'. |
