Potential shown for mobile and tablets when reading Wikipedia
Readers are using smartphones more than ever to browse content.
As detailed in previous Signpost coverage (1, 2), a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the development of an improved mobile platform for Wikimedia wikis. On 16 November, the Foundation's Mani Pande and Ayush Khanna presented a round up of recently conducted research into this field and to tie it into the Foundation's development strategy.
The results of the recent survey question "On which devices have you ever read Wikipedia?"
For example, the report noted that statistics generated recently demonstrate clearly that readers are no longer sticking to conventional desktop and laptop computers. Instead, they are already viewing an entire range of devices; smartphones are used by 21% of the 4000 globally distributed readers surveyed recently, tablets by 7% and gaming devices by 4%. Statistics also showed that over half of Wikipedia readers from Brazil, India and Mexico intended to buy a smartphone within the next year, emphasising the possibility of growth in this area. Additional research showed that Wikipedia-related apps (rather than simply browsing the site in a mobile web browser) had been tried by 41% of smartphone-owning users. The most popular app identified in the survey was the WMF's own official iPhone app. 37% of readers who had browsed content sites on a mobile device considered Wikipedia to have offered a superior experience.
These statistics, drawn from the 2011 Reader Survey (see Signpost coverage) will no doubt influence future resource allocation with regard to mobile projects, as will a second survey aimed specifically at mobile readers, the results of which are yet to be published. Development time is currently being focused on finishing an official Google Android app as well as improving the generic mobile site, including through the addition of the edit functionality it currently lacks.
The lunge for improved mobile support mobile will of course be tempered by the fact that desktops remain the most widely used device for reading Wikipedia, with over three-quarters of all readers having read Wikipedia articles from a desktop. Nonetheless, there is significant concern that developing countries will soon see whole generations that browse the web on mobile devices but have never touched a desktop; including them in the Wikimedia project could be key to fulfilling Wikimedia's long term mission for these countries.
Wikipedia instant search
An engineering student at India's BITS-Pilani KK Birla Goa campus has recently created "WikiLive", a minimalistic search tool offering instant search results of Wikipedia, MediaNama reports. Similar to Google Instant, the website also offers a preview of the actual article, all in real time. Unfortunately, the website's features are currently limited to the English Wikipedia. The launch of Google Instant in September last year had already prompted the creation of several such tools for Wikipedia (see Signpost coverage) – of the four examples listed back then, two are still online: The Instant Wiki and WikInstant.com.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
An example screenshot from the BugTender mobile phone appMobile bug editing facility: Brion Vibber blogged about his efforts over the Thanksgiving weekend to create a functioning mobile version of a Bugzilla installation such as Wikimedia's. He describes his initial effort, dubbed "BugTender", as providing developers "with a mobile-friendly interface to browse (and later, comment on & triage) [their] bugs".
Server outage: Wikimedia sites suffered from an outage of about 30 minutes on Sunday November 27 around 11:00 pm UTC. It was initially thought to be caused by faulty hardware on a database server, but Performance Engineer Asher Feldman later explained that the outage was probably due to a reddit thread (see "In the news"). The thread, an "Ask me anything" discussion started by Wikimedia staff member Brandon Harris (currently featured on fundraising banners), linked to the "Special:FundraiserStatistics" page on the Wikimedia Foundation website, but the page "wasn't suitable for high volume public consumption" because it ran a "very expensive [database] query". The statistics page has been temporarily disabled.
1.19 code revision targets in place: Rob Lanphier this week published what look like will become the accepted code revision targets for the MediaWiki 1.19 release cycle (wikitech-l mailing list). Based on performance during the 1.18 release cycle, the numbers generated (including four hundred revisions dealt with in the first week and all revisions handled by the end of January) reflect the fact that reviewing will start quickly and end more slowly as only more complex changes are left to be reviewed. The projections also account for a code review lull over the Christmas break.
Bugzilla vandalised; future new contributors constrained: In the last week, vandals have repeatedly targeted the Wikimedia bugzilla installation by impersonating staff and then using the "mass change" feature of the software to alter dozens of bugs within a handful of minutes. In the past, vandalism had been rare – there is very little incentive to vandalise the site, which is viewed almost solely by Wikimedia developers – and had operated a fairly generous permissions package for new users. Unfortunately, it is now likely that those advanced permissions will be denied in future to new users by default (wikitech-l mailing list).
The radio buttons in the user interface through which editors vote. This time the middle, default column is No vote, renamed from Neutral in previous years.Voting has already started in the annual election for the Arbitration Committee. Arbitrators perform among the most important and prominent roles on the English Wikipedia, and all eligible editors are urged to consider voting. Just over a day after going live, nearly 300 have cast their vote. Last year more than 850 editors had voted by the close, and the year before nearly 1,000 had done so.
A public page displays who has voted when (most recently in the case of voters who've changed their votes), and is a convenient way for editors to verify that their vote has been registered in the system. Voters' choices are confidential. After voting, an editor may change their choices any time before the close of voting on Saturday 10 at 23:59 UTC, but will need to start again from scratch, because previous votes will not be displayed and submission of a new ballot page will override all previous votes by that editor. For this reason, voters should consider keeping a private record of their vote.
Voters are reminded that there can be last-minute technical logjams, and are asked to vote at least an hour before the close—that is, by Saturday December 10 at 23:00 UTC (11 pm). On the east coast of North America the equivalent "safe margin" time is Saturday 18:00 (6 pm), and on the west coast Saturday 15:00 (3 pm). On the east coast of Australia this is 10 am Sunday December 11, and on the west coast 6 am Sunday.
The technical side of ACE2011 has run smoothly, except for a minor glitch in which it was discovered that editors who are blocked on any of the WMFs projects were blocked from voting; this problem was promptly fixed by the election administrators. (Only editors blocked from the English Wikipedia are unable to vote).
Since last week's Signpost report, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, whose term had not been due to finish until the end of 2012, unexpectedly stepped down from the committee to avoid any potential conflict of interest arising from his new full-time position as the Office and Development Manager for Wikimedia UK. In his announcement, he wrote, "This is a permanent role based in London. As there is a potential conflict of interest between the two roles, especially with regard to Arbitration cases and ban appeals that involve UK Chapter members, the Wikimedia UK Board have asked me to step down in order to maintain complete transparency. I agree with their position. It is therefore with great regret that I am announcing my intention to stand down as an arbitrator on 31 December 2011."
An RfC was launched to allow a quick decision on whether Chase me's seat should be filled in the current election, which resulted 22–13 in favour of filling the vacancy at the election—in other words, to expand the maximum number of vacancies to be filled from seven to eight seats. In closing the RfC, the three election admins, Happy-melon, Tznkai, and Skomorokh, said, "we are unanimous in concluding that both past precedent and a rough majority of contributors to this RfC support the conclusion that Chase Me's seat will be filled in this election. Given that, the second section of the RfC indicates clear support that the extra arbitrator will sit for one year, ending when Chase Me's seat would originally have expired. This is also in line with the past precedent from the 2009 and 2010 elections."
News from the fundraising front
Comparison's of this year's (yellow) and last year's (blue) totals so far.
This year's Fundraiser launch is off to a stirring start, with a record total of 1.2 million dollars in the first 24 hours alone, shattering the previous record of $790,853.48. An even greater accomplishment is the amount of support, with donations coming from 65,000 people in 150 countries, compared to the previous record of 26,082 donors on December 31, 2010. As of the time of writing, the Fundraiser has raised nearly US$7 million, an amount that was not reached for 25 days last year.
The annual fundraiser is the Wikimedia Foundation's biggest single source of income, and has been growing with the project since early efforts from 2004. As with previous years, the event kicked off with Jimbo Wales' "personal appeal", which consistently received the highest feedback in previous drives, and has done again this year; interestingly, using a green background in the banner increased contributions.
A message from Wikimedia Foundation Senior Designer Brandon Harris was added later this week, and has performed similarly to Wales' appeal (see "In the news" for reaction from around the 'net). The fundraisers are currently in the process of adding community appeals, with which they intend to start "highlighting stories from many different Wikimedians to help raise our budget". Editors are invited to sign up and help draft appeals towards the continuation of the Fundraiser.
GLAM fellow Liam Wyatt visits Qatar
Outside the city of Ajdabiya during the Libyan revolution – one of the historically significant Al Jazeera English photos now available on Commons
Wyatt also met with Al Jazeera English, the Qatar-based broadcaster; shortly after the meeting they changed the settings on their Flickr feed, with many images from the Arab Spring, to CC-by-SA. A bot has been steadily importing them onto Commons.
Wyatt also demonstrated translatewiki.net to the members of the "let's tweet in Arabic" group Taghreedat who are attempting to localise the Twitter interface for Arabic.
He also made a presentation to librarians from the "Education City" to demonstrate how to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool, and also with the ictQATAR's digitization and business incubation teams to discuss ways free-culture can also be used in a commercial setting.
Brief notes
The Czech Wiktionary's 30K commemorative logo.
POTY exhibit in Poland: Wikimedia Poland is planning a traveling Picture of the Year exhibit, to start in Warsaw. The exhibition is similar to a previous two-week display in Poznań that celebrated Wikipedia's 10th anniversary (see Signpost coverage). The exhibit is currently looking for venues; see also its Facebook group.
Google Knol closes down: It has been announced that Google Knol, a publicly contributed reference site of the same type as Wikipedia, will close its doors on April 2012. Knol was originally launched in 2007, and follows a more open format than Wikipedia, with articles, called "knols", ranging from encyclopedic entries to how-to, opinion essays, cooking instructions and sales listings. The project is currently being transferred to the Wordpress-based Annotum.
New administrators: No administrators were promoted this week; despite this, what had looked like the first month without a new administrator since October 2002 may yet be averted, as there are five open nominations with favourable levels of support at the time of writing.
Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this week: the Indonesian Wikipedia reached 700,000 pages, our English Wikipedia reached 500,000,000 page edits, the Czech Wikitionary reached 30,000 articles with cs:respecter, and the Dutch Wikipedia has reached 2,000,000 total pages.
This year's elections to the Arbitration Committee have entered the voting phase. Eligible editors are invited to cast their vote before the end of Saturday December 10 (see "News and notes").
Abortion case ends
The Abortion case closed this week, after 15 weeks of contentious arbitration. The remedies included the provisions that all articles related to the topic "be semi-protected until November 28, 2014"; "not be moved absent a demonstrable community consensus"; and "are authorized to be placed on Standard discretionary sanctions". The announcement of these measures was greeted with raised eyebrows at the administrators' noticeboard, where it was pointed out that the number of articles and talkpages affected would be over 1500.
Among the other remedies were the predicted slate of topic-bans and reminders to behave for offending editors of varying degrees of culpability, and the following declaration:
"Structured discussion is to take place on names of articles currently located at Opposition to the legalization of abortion and Support for the legalization of abortion, with a binding vote taken one month after the opening of the discussion." The Committee has traditionally avoided motions to establish binding discussions in light of its aversion to getting involved in content disputes, but has in the past taken similar measures with respect to Ireland article names, the Macedonia naming dispute, and the Palestine-Israel working group.
The Requests for clarification saw little activity this week, with the Arbcom-unblocked editors request entering its fifth week without arbitrator comment while arbitrator SirFozzie proposed that the Eastern European mailing list request be archived as stale.
The Request for amendment of Russavia-Biophys remains in its early phase, with arbitrators seeking clarification and further context from the assembled personages.
