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The Signpost: 21 August 2013

• In the media: Chelsea Manning, Box-office predictors, and 'Storming Wikipedia'
  Wikipedia's gender identity MOS section and its effect on Chelsea Manning was both praised and emulated in the media this week. ... Coverage of the distributed open collaborative course called "Storming Wikipedia" continued this week.

• Recent research: WikiSym 2013 retrospective
  98 registered participants attended the annual WikiSym+OpenSym conference from August 5-7 at Hong Kong's Cyberport facility.

• WikiProject report: Loop-the-loop: Amusement Parks
  This week, we secured free admission for WikiProject Amusement Parks, the project dedicated to amusement rides, roller coasters, theme parks, traveling carnivals, and funfairs.

• Traffic report: Reddit creep
  The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.

• Featured content: WikiCup update, and the gardens of Finland
  The 2013 WikiCup competition is entering its final round. Eleven articles and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• News and notes: Looking ahead to Wiki Loves Monuments
  Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia's annual volunteer-driven and the world largest photo contest, is gearing up to be conducted throughout September 2013. The event, originally developed in the Netherlands in 2010, has gone global with 34 countries taking part last and 49 this year.

• Technology report: Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia
  Wikipedia's traditional image gallery format, produced by the markup, has remained largely unchanged for years. The resulting layout, seen below, does not adapt well to variations in image size, and has been characterized by some critics as aesthetically unappealing.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 09:28, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 August 2013

• In the media: Chelsea Manning, Box-office predictors, and 'Storming Wikipedia'
  Wikipedia's gender identity MOS section and its effect on Chelsea Manning was both praised and emulated in the media this week. ... Coverage of the distributed open collaborative course called "Storming Wikipedia" continued this week.

• Recent research: WikiSym 2013 retrospective
  98 registered participants attended the annual WikiSym+OpenSym conference from August 5-7 at Hong Kong's Cyberport facility.

• WikiProject report: Loop-the-loop: Amusement Parks
  This week, we secured free admission for WikiProject Amusement Parks, the project dedicated to amusement rides, roller coasters, theme parks, traveling carnivals, and funfairs.

• Traffic report: Reddit creep
  The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.

• Featured content: WikiCup update, and the gardens of Finland
  The 2013 WikiCup competition is entering its final round. Eleven articles and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• News and notes: Looking ahead to Wiki Loves Monuments
  Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia's annual volunteer-driven and the world largest photo contest, is gearing up to be conducted throughout September 2013. The event, originally developed in the Netherlands in 2010, has gone global with 34 countries taking part last and 49 this year.

• Technology report: Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia
  Wikipedia's traditional image gallery format, produced by the markup, has remained largely unchanged for years. The resulting layout, seen below, does not adapt well to variations in image size, and has been characterized by some critics as aesthetically unappealing.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 16:52, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for September 5

This Thursday's VisualEditor update was mostly about stability and performance improvements, and some preparatory work for major planned improvements, along with bug fixes for non-English language support and right-to-left text. Everything that the English Wikipedia received today has been running on Mediawiki for a week already.

Officially, the problem with the link inspector not linking to a specific section on a page (bug 53219) was fixed in this release, although that critical patch actually appeared here earlier.

A number of bugs related to copy-and-paste functionality were fixed (48604, bug 50043, bug 53362, bug 51538, among others). Full rich copy-and-paste from external sources into VisualEditor is expected "soon".

In other fixes, you can no longer add empty ref tags (<ref/>) (bug 53345). Selecting both an image and some text, and then trying to add a link, previously deleted the selected image and the text. This was fixed in bug 50127. There was another problem related to using arrow keys to move the cursor next to an inline image that was fixed (bug 53507).

Looking ahead: The next planned upgrade is scheduled for next Thursday, and you should expect to find a redesigned toolbar with drop-down menus that include room for references, templates, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and code formatting. There will also be keyboard shortcuts for setting the format (paragraph vs section headings).

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being determined at this time. Generally speaking, languages that depend on the input method editor are not going to receive VisualEditor this month. The current target date is Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 September 2013

• In the media: Manning "put back in the closet"; State involvement in Azerbaijani Wikipedia
  After media praise for Wikipedia's decision to move the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning, the reversion of that page move on August 31, after a discussion in which several hundred Wikipedians participated, has so far triggered less favourable feedback, as well as a blog post from Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner expressing her disappointment with the decision.

• News and notes: Privacy policy debate gears up
  On September 3, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the second stage of the process to improve the privacy policy implemented on most Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia and its sister projects, by publishing a policy draft.

• Traffic report: No accounting for the wisdom of crowds
  A news-heavy week offers some insight, perhaps, into humanity's priorities.

• Discussion report: Arbcom election procedures, Wiki Loves Monuments, Privacy policy, FDC, and more
  As mentioned in "In the news" on Wikipedia's main page, the Library of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has opened. This interior photo was taken a week before opening. The article reports that the library "has been described as the largest public library in the United Kingdom, the largest public cultural space in Europe, and the largest regional library in Europe."

• Featured content: Bridging the way to a Peasants' Revolt
  Four articles, four lists, and eight pictures were promoted to 'featured' status this week on the English Wikipedia

• WikiProject report: Writing on the frontier: Psychology on Wikipedia
  This week, we spent some time with the minds behind WikiProject Psychology. The project was created in March 2006 and has grown to include 14 Featured Articles and 43 Good Articles.

• Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute case opens; Tea Party case closes ; Infoboxes nears completion
  The dispute over the title for the Manning article escalated quickly to arbitration levels, as the Bradley/Chelsea Manning naming dispute case was accepted for arbitration.

• Technology report: Making Wikipedia more accessible
  In this week's "Technology report", we explore ways of making Wikipedia more accessible to users of screen readers. Graham87 is a highly active contributor who is also blind and accesses the site through a screen reader.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 01:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 September 2013

• In the media: Lawyer goes to court to discover Wikipedian's identity; Storming Wikipedia; Wikimedia UK Secretary in conflict-of-interest controversy; Does Wikipedia need a "right to reply" box?
  'The National Law Journal reported on September 9 that lawyer Susan L. Burke has been taking legal steps to discover the identity of Wikipedia editor . Zujua had edited her biography, allegedly adding misleading content about various lawsuits in the process

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Indonesia
  The Signpost went to Indonesia this week.

• Featured content: Tintin goes featured
  Four articles, eight lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.

• News and notes: As deadline approaches, Individual Engagement Grants looks for ideas
  The deadline for proposals to the Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) volunteer committee on Meta will pass on 30 September. The program is designed to fund projects that tackle long-term problem and have a significant editing community impact; it has previously supported solutions like The Wikipedia Library, which improves Wikipedian access to online reference sources like JSTOR (see Signpost coverage).

• Traffic report: Syria, celebrities, and association football: oh my!
  While the Syrian Civil War crept its slow way into the minds of the public, with a new fourth related entry in the top 25, the top 10 remained dominated by celebrity, mainly sports and music. Two megabucks transfers stimulated public interest in football/soccer ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, while Lil Wayne's public apology ahead of his latest album release sent him to the top.

• Arbitration report: Workshop phase opens in Manning naming dispute ; Infoboxes case closes
  Discussion over the Manning title dispute was off to a running start as evidence and workshop phases continued in the Bradley/Chelsea Manning naming dispute. The Infoboxes case closed with topic bans for two users, and a recommendation for community discussion of infoboxes.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 08:39, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for September 19, 2013

VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.

As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias. The controls to add <u> (underline), <sub> (subscript), and <sup> (superscript), <s> (strikethrough) and <code> (computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.

In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).

In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl+0 sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl+1 up to Ctrl+6 sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl+7 sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl+2, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.

Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).

Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.

Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).

Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:47, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 September 2013

• News and notes: Third time's the charm: the FDC's newest round of funding requests
  The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the volunteer-led body that evaluates chapter and (for the first time) thematic organizational annual plan grant requests to the Wikimedia Foundation, is preparing for its third round of public proceedings to deliberate on the distribution of several million US dollars of Wikimedia movement funds.

• WikiProject report: 18,464 Good Articles on the wall
  This week, the Signpost headed to WikiProject Good Articles. As of publishing time, out of the 4,331,477 articles on Wikipedia, only 18,464 are rated as "good" (about 1 in 235).

• Featured content: Hurricane Diane and Van Gogh
  Thirteen articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status last week on the English Wikipedia.

• Technology report: What can Wikidata do for Wikipedia?
  In this week's "Technology report", we look at how the growth of Wikidata can benefit Wikipedia. Gerard Meijssen is a highly active contributor and frequent blogger about Wikidata. We asked him to share his thoughts on how the new project benefits Wikipedia.

• Traffic report: Twerking, tragedy and TV
  The top 10 is bookended by unlucky dates, as Friday the 13th fell just after the anniversary of 9/11. Breaking Bad's final season continued to draw attention, while interest in Miley Cyrus's youthful exuberance is fading only slowly.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 10:27, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 September 2013

• Op-ed: Q&A on Public Relations and Wikipedia
  Over the last year, there's been extensive debate about whether public relations professionals and other corporate representatives should participate on Wikipedia and, if so, to what extent and what kinds of rules should be followed.

• Traffic report: Look on Walter's works
  The saga of Walter White, chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin, as told in the critically adored television series Breaking Bad, has been a water-cooler necessity for years, and now, as it nears its end, audiences are feverishly following every plot thread to guess what the finale will reveal.

• In the media: Fox News: Wikipedia abandons efforts to purge porn from online encyclopedia
  Fox News writer Perry Chiaramonte published an article detailing Wikipedia's alleged abandonment of its fight to remove pornography.

• News and notes: Last call for Wiki Loves Monuments; Community–WMF tension over VisualEditor
  On 30 September, Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the Wikimedia community's global photo competition, will reach to the end of its submission period. The proceedings have been underway since the first of this month; national juries will start reviewing submissions for the first round of selections after it closes ... Community aggravation with one of the Wikimedia Foundation's signature initiatives, the VisualEditor, came to the fore again this week with the announcement and implementation of code blocking the tool.

• WikiProject report: Babel Series: GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!
  This week, we continued our exploration of other language editions of Wikipedia by visiting the Spanish Wikipedia's Wikiproyecto Fútbol (WikiProject Football).

• Featured content: Wikipedia takes the stage
  Twelve articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Recent research: Automatic detection of "infiltrating" Wikipedia admins; Wiki, or 'pedia?
  A conference paper makes a rather serious claim: "We find a surprisingly large number of editors who change their behavior and begin focusing more on a particular controversial topic once they are promoted to administrator status."

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 10:30, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 October 2013

• Op-ed: Commons medical diagnostic images under threat from unresolved ownership
  Medical images have transformed many aspects of modern medicine. Over the past two decades the increasing sophistication of MRI, CT-scanning, and X-ray techniques has made these technologies the cornerstone of diagnosing a range of conditions, replacing what used to be largely guesswork by doctors. They can be the difference between life and death for a patient, and their importance is underlined by the tens of billions of dollars spent on them annually just in North America. For Wikimedia Foundation projects, advanced images are now a powerful tool for describing and explaining, and educating our worldwide readership of medical articles.

• Discussion report: References to individuals and groups, merging wikiprojects, portals on the Main page, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• News and notes: WMF signals new grantmaking priorities
  In what will be remembered as a game-changing week for Wikimedia grantmaking, the Foundation's executive director, Sue Gardner, published a forthright and in places highly critical statement, Reflections on the FDC process, and grantmaking staff revealed that the WMF will significantly strengthen its targeting of optimal impact in funding.

• Featured content: Bobby, Ben, Roger and a fantasia
  Six articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Arbitration report: Infoboxes: After the war
  Editor's note: To go beyond the mere facts of cases, the "Arbitration report" invited several editors who participated in the recent Infoboxes case to comment on infoboxes: what they are, where new users can go to find out about them, specifications and protocols, best practices, and how the upcoming community discussion recommended by the Committee in the case decision should be framed.

• WikiProject report: U2 Too
  This week, we revisited the enthusiastic editors at WikiProject U2. Started in June 2007, the project has grown in spurts, resulting in a collection of 8 Featured Articles and 24 Good Articles. The project maintains a to do list, portal, and a list of references.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 05:12, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 October 2013

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 17:35, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013

VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable".

The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).

There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).

Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 October 2013

• 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...

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 02:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 October 2013

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 06:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 October 2013

• 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

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 01:59, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 November 2013

• 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...

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 09:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 November 2013

• 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...

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 11:38, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.

A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Wikipedia were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:

• Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or ← Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed. The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
• Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
• Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
• File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Wikipedia (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Wikipedia (bug 56001).
• Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the ⇧ Shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
• Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
• Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
• Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through /wiki/Foobar?veaction=edit and /w/index.php?title=Foobar&veaction=edit both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915).
• Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
• Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
• Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
• Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
• Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
• Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching Wikipedia:TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
• Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
• Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid ($wgVisualEditorParsoidForwardCookies set to true) (bug 44483). (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)

Looking ahead:

• VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
• Public office hours on IRC to discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
• In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done. Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2013

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 16:13, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 December 2013

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 08:02, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 December 2013

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 05:41, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 December 2013

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 07:55, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:

• Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
• Auto-numbered external links like can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
• Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
• There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
• Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
• It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally.  To do so, append ?veaction=edit to the end of the page name.  For example, change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit to open a random page in VisualEditor.  This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.

Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 December 2013

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 06:39, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 January 2014

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 06:21, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 January 2014

• 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.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 09:03, 11 January 2014 (UTC)