Communications committee/Notifications/Archives/2007

100000 articles assessed on English Wikipedia

I wrote a piece tonight for the Signpost:

On Wednesday, September 20, 2006, the 100,000th article assessment was carried out on the English Wikipedia! Such assessments provide a basic analysis of the overall article quality as on a six-point scale, and may also assign a level of importance to the topic as Low, Mid, High or Top. Some may include a short set of comments. Assessments are carried out by around 100 WikiProjects on articles within their purview, with a project template on article talk pages indicating the assessment and generating a suitable category. Work is often done by a designated "task force," and the military history project alone has managed to assess over 13,000 articles in this way. A bot crawls through the project assessment categories every 24 hours and compiles a worklist table, a log and statistics for each WikiProject. The data can be used by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team for locating higher quality articles in specific subject areas for inclusion on a CD or DVD release. The project worklists automatically indicate if a particular article has been included in an offline release. It seems that article assessment has finally arrived!

Should we be announcing this initiative to the outside world? I'm thinking of something along the lines of:

• "ARTICLE ASSESSMENT COMES TO WIKIPEDIA The quality of articles on Wikipedia is now being evaluated using a simple six-point scale. Brief assessments are carried out by "WikiProjects" which coordinate work within specific subject areas, and results are posted on article talk pages. Projects may optionally include an importance rating and comments on possible improvements. The results are automatically compiled into project tables, which can be used to locate high-quality articles as well as important articles needing work. This week the English Wikipedia celebrated 100,000 assessments completed, with over 50,000 carried out in the last month alone.

When I have shown this work to librarians the response has always been very enthusiastic, along the lines of "This is what we've been waiting for!" It may not be New York Times material, but it may interest some more specialised media such as library journals and journals that focus on internet issues. I also think this assessment system is something we can begin to mention in more general press releases. Walkerma 04:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocking of US House of representatives IP address

At 17:46, 9 November 2006, en:User:DragonflySixtyseven blocked "143.231.249.141" (which is registered to the US House of Representatives per [1]) with an expiry time of 1 hour, citing the reason "vandalizing Donald Rumsfeld". ([2]). Please look into this. Thank you. w:User:Shreshth91 17:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

User:143.231.249.141

This is just to note that earlier today I blocked en:User:143.231.249.141 which is a US House of Representatives IP address; it had been blanking the "controversy" section of en:Steve Buyer. The block was for 24 hours, anon only. Instructions on the talk page of that IP instructed me to notify the communications committee. Mangojuice 02:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• Blocked again, for edits such as this after multiple warning. 48 hours. Anon only. Wikibofh 22:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia seems to be failing to encourage adequate standards of accuracy on medical topics

I am forwarding this to your committee because your charter includes "Supporting and overseeing communication with the general public" and "Coordinating communications with the press, including press releases, interviews, and inquiries"

I am widely published, both in peer-reviewed journals, and, over the last 20 years, by having regularly contributed to several commercial publications, most recently as a Contributing Editor for Byte.com

About a week ago I was alerted that defamation was being published about me in Wikipedia, under the username Garsecg, on the 'Talk' page of the Wikipedia entry on 'Vitamin D' at URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vitamin_D

I attempted to contact the individuals involved in those postings, and to contact those who had removed material about the research of myself and my colleagues from that Wikipedia entry. I encountered a blizzard of words, with no respect whatsoever being paid to my professional status as a published expert on that topic. Later I noted that another expert had also been 'run-off' by the Wikipedians posting material on that same Vitamin D entry.

I have no stomach for the time wasting waiting for mediation at Wikipedia.org to get its house in order. I need to spend my time with the FDA, with the NIH, and with my scientific colleagues around the world.

I am therefore alerting this executive committee to the problem which has arisen, in the hope that there is some mechanism in place which will act to protect the public from the apparent lack of controls upon the scientific integrity of the medically oriented content published here.

Sincerely, Professor Trevor G Marshall, PhD, Director, Autoimunity Research Foundation.

Professor Trevor Marshall 16:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Please respond to local Houston controversy about a Wikipedia article

There is a controversy brewing about the Wikipedia article about "Southampton, Houston, Texas" - A user's blog link has been removed several times from the page, and now the press has published a story about the article - http://www.examinernews.com/articles/2007/03/07/west_university/news/news05.txt

The author of the article and the owner of the blog do not know about Wikipedia policies.

Please enlighten them. :)

Submit communications to: "West University Examiner (Wednesday delivery) Mike Reed, ext. 210 mreed@hcnonline.com"

70.142.28.179 04:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know; I'll let our press people know about this, but I'm not sure if a response is necessary here. Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Commons announces 'Picture of the Day' RSS feeds

Please see commons:Commons:Press_releases/Picture_of_the_Day_RSS. POTD is now available by RSS and email, among other ways. Not so much a press release as something good to publicise on the web to raise Commons' profile and visibility. --pfctdayelise 10:02, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for letting now us. How about the below at Template:News-en/2007-04 for the website mainpage? --Aphaia 12:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Sponsors Sought for Wikimania
The Wikimedia Foundation is currently searching for sponsors for their annual conference, Wikimania. This year, Wikimania will be held in Taipei, Taiwan. The event brings together international users from various Wikimedia Projects, as well as individuals interested in learning about Wiki technology, free content and free knowledge, and educational and social trends in the internet culture. In the past the event has received widespread, international media attention. Read more (PDF). (April 25 2007)

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Wikipedia Version 0.5 Released
The Wikimedia Foundation announces the release of Wikipedia Version 0.5, a compact disc collection of approximately 2,000 articles from the English Wikipedia. The project paves the way for many such collections, with larger releases planned in a variety of languages. Secure your copy today.(April 18 2007)

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Wikimedia Commons supports its RSS feed of Picture of the Day
The picture of the day is now officially available by RSS and email, among other ways. See the press release from the Commons community. (April 9 2007)

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Yep, it's good! Thankyou. but the template doesn't appear on the main page... --pfctdayelise 01:17, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Since I was waiting for feedback / copyediting ... now it is on the website. Thanks! --Aphaia 03:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

By the way Sandy is going to send the press release on Commons to her contacts of media, for your information. --Aphaia 03:52, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

143.231.249.141 block

I blocked the 143.231.249.141 IP belonging to the en:United States House of Representatives for a period of 3 hours for vandalizing past final warnings. Nishkid64 (talk) 17:16, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

192.197.82.203 block

I blocked this IP, belonging to the Canadian House of Commons PARL-C1 for a period of 1 hour for vandalizing past final warnings. Lucasbfr 20:27, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

170.20.11.116 block

I am en:User:Magnus animum, and I have blocked CBS's IP (the one above-stated) for one week for persistent vandalism. Steptrip 00:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Blocking of House of Representative IPs

Please see w:Wikipedia:Community_sanction_noticeboard#Responses; some kind of response from a Committee member would be appreciated. Proto 14:31, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft IP blocked

Just to let you know, I've just blocked en:User:65.54.154.154 which resolves to microsoft for 3 hours due to vandalism. Ryan Postlethwaite 01:26, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

House of representatives again

I blocked the 143.231.249.137 IP belonging to the en:United States House of Representatives for a period of 3 hours for vandalizing past final warnings. Caribbean H.Q. 16:02, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Qatar

Someone blocked Qatar again. See here. Picaroon (t) 15:42, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Qatar again

Qatar was blocked for a week and it flew under the radar: en:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Requesting unblock of 82.148.97.69.C2.A0.28talk.C2.A0.C2.B7 contribs). 68.193.199.114 (en:user:east718 [3]) 22:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Qatar Blocked

Qatar(82.148.96.68) got blocked again for 10 days[4]. enwikiuser:SmileToday 02:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

And has now been unblocked. enwikiuser:SmileToday 05:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Skypecast /Wikipedia Weekly

Just made a couple of notes on the Comms Proj page (bottom right) pointing to a Skypecast 'virtual room'(it's still in beta). There are many other (free) virtual rooms available on the web. I thought Skype's would be a good first one to suggest.

Underneath is a link to Wikipedia Weekly (WW).

I haven't seen any real time communication projects across WMF projects, so excuse me if I'm duplicating your committees' efforts somewhere. The idea, which I've mentioned on WW's talk page is to provide ONE place (in the first instance) for remote Wikimedia groups to talk and record their conversations (if they want) and 'stream' to those interested who can make it in real time. Those who can't could be offered a pod at the WW site. Have also suggested to WW that an edited version of all weekly meetings taking place in a room would be useful.

In the longer term, the idea is to support the development of the kind of interactive production spaces (virtual classrooms as they are called in academia) which would support the virtual groups who gather around WMF's projects' (library) articles. Please respond on the ComProj talk page if there is any interest at your end. regards, --Simonfj 21:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)