Wikisource:News/2013-06

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Request for comment: Scope of Ombudsman Commission
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Current scope • In 2006, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution to create the Ombudsman Commission. The Commission was tasked to investigate "cases of privacy policy breach or checkuser abuse." At present, however, the Ombudsman Commission only hears complaints regarding violations of the privacy policy. This means that complaints about misuse of checkuser, with no violation of the privacy policy, are rejected as outside of the scope of the Ombudsman Commission.

The problem • For wikis where local procedures exist to handle such complaints this is not generally a problem. For example, on the English Wikipedia complaints can be directed to the Audit Subcommittee. On smaller wikis with no such procedures in place no specific procedure exists to hear complaints about checkusers and oversighters who may have misused the tool. On the German Wikipedia the Arbitration Committee does not hear complaints about checkuser misuse. Even if the complaints are within the scope of local mechanisms, those might be unable to resolve the conflict due to nonpublic evidence often involved in allegations of checkuser misuse. Similarly, if the allegation of misuse is regarding a member of the local appeals body on a wiki that does have a body in place, there is no impartial group to hear their complaint.

Oversight-related complaints • While the oversight feature was available on Wikimedia wikis prior to that resolution, the 2006 resolution did not literally specify oversight-related issues. Similar to checkuser access, oversight access has privacy policy implications. There are insufficient processes for the investigation of cases involving breach of privacy policy using the oversight tool.

To help address the problems described above, the Ombudsman Commission proposes to add the following items to our scope:
 * 1) We will begin to hear complaints investigating questions of whether local policies for checkuser and/or oversight violate respective global policies.
 * 2) We will begin to hear complaints containing allegations that checkusers and oversighters have violated the global checkuser and oversight policies, subject to #3 in this proposal.
 * 3) We will defer complaints about violation of global checkuser and/or oversight policy to designated local groups wherever possible and appropriate. However, if there is a compelling reason to skip the local process (for example, if members of the designated local group are involved in the case) then the Commission may skip the process. If a complaining user has gone through local processes and is not satisfied with the response, we may consider the complaint and investigate if there is a compelling reason for this. We will inform the local group of this investigation where appropriate.

GLAM Boot Camp proofread-a-thon
Theornamentalist and Doug gave a presentation on Wikisource at the GLAM Boot Camp, held on 26-28 April at the National Archives in Washington D.C. (The acronym GLAM stands for "Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums" and it is generally used by Wikimedians when referring to co-operation with this sector). This presentation included a proofread-a-thon of The Yellow Wall Paper (1901) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Edit-a-thons of Wikipedia and Commons are common events now but no record of similar events for Wikisource has been found, so this may have been the first of its kind.

The presentation was reported in the Wikipedia Signpost on the 29th April. In the discussion of that article, Asaf Bartov, Wikimedia Foundation Head of Global South Relationships and head of the Foundation's grants program, questioned the choice of work because, "A free electronic text has been available for more than a decade thanks to the efforts of Project Gutenberg. Was any Wikisource value-add statement articulated at the event, perhaps?"

Doug responded with the reasoning for the selection of this work, including the facts that it was important, it was not previously in a good condition on Wikisource and that it was short and so appropriate for a one-hour presentation. He added, "We discussed the value of scans and how that has the ability to make us more reliable than Gutenberg yet more usable than the scans alone ... The existence of the work elsewhere was not a consideration, at least not for me, nor would it be in the future — we have a different goal and supporting scans are almost mandatory for new works here since the implementation of the ProofreadPage Extension (c. 2007)." Theornamentalist also left a lengthy note on Bartov's Wikipedia talk page, which included, "After we were done, I did a quick comparison [between the new and old versions]. What I found was that there were several transcription errors in the unsourced version, likely introduced by the person who originally typed it up, and most importantly, an entire missing line." The version with the missing line and other errors was probably sourced from the Project Gutenberg edition in the first place, which still includes them (or excludes in the case of the missing line).

Featured text for June 2013


This month's featured text is "Laura Secord: A Study in Canadian Patriotism" (1907) by George Bryce. (Main page template)

A short, early text on Laura Secord, heroine to Canadians of the War of 1812. After the Americans invaded the Niagara Peninsula in 1813, they planned further invasions into Upper Canada; Secord overheard their plans, and stole away on 23 June to British-controlled territories to warn them. The British won against the invading Americans at the Battle of Beaver Dams the next day. This month includes the 200th anniversary of Secord's historic walk.

The Wikipedia article for Laura Secord has also been upgraded to Featured Article status and it is expected to be on Wikipedia's main page on the date of the anniversary. The selection of this text on Wikisource was controversial as the war was fought between two English-speaking nations and Secord is only a heroine to one of them. There was a brief discussion about whether the merit of a work should be a consideration when it comes to featured text status.

The original featured text for June was actually Magic (Ellis Stanyon) by Ellis Stanyon and it was featured on the main page for just over a day. However, the anniversary relating to Secord's walk took precedence and Magic was displaced for one month to become July's featured text.

Dr. Bryce was the guest of the Canadian Club at their luncheon yesterday afternoon, and delivered an address on the gallant deed of Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. A personal touch, as Professor Osborne, the chairman, remarked, was lent to the occasion by the presence at the luncheon of Mrs. Cockburn, a grand-daughter of Laura Secord.

Like the Rhenish frontier of Alsace and Lorraine, the banks of the Niagara river have for several centuries been the debatable land—the scene of conflict in North America. Long before the coming of the White man, Iroquois and Hurons; Sioux and Ojibways; Eries and Caughnawagas regarded the Niagara peninsula as the march-land between east and west. Its backbone of Burlington heights, the great gorge of Niagara, and its contiguous lakes Erie and Ontario gave scope for strategic movements in war far exceeding the plains of Flanders.
 * Read on...

Collaborations for June 2013
The Proofread of the Month for June 2013 is about biography. The first selected book is Balthasar Hübmaier (1905) by Henry Clay Vedder. Balthasar Hübmaier was an influential German Anabaptist leader, one of the most well-known Anabaptist theologians of the Protestant Reformation.

The Maintenance of the Month task for June 2013 is Work index revision. The work index is actually an illustrated subject index today and should be repurposed. For example, it could be made into an alphabetical list of all works, just like the author index.

New administrators
Two new administrators were successfully nominated in May: GorillaWarfare and MODCHK. Both were nominated by Billinghurst. GorillaWarfare is already an administrator and ambassador on Wikipedia and an OTRS volunteer on Commons; as well as a computer science student in real life. She is working on a Google Summer of Code project (as reported last month) and has recently created a bot to upload missing US Supreme Court cases from Justia. MODCHK is almost exclusively as Wikisourcer and is apparently a former embedded coder on finance/petroleum terminals. MODCHK are one of the few users to date to have edited in the Module namespace (on Module:Poetry in this case).

Administrator confirmations
Three administrators were confirmed in May 2013:


 * Billinghurst (talk | contributions)
 * Doug (talk | contributions)
 * Spangineer (talk | contributions)

Four administrators will have their confirmation discussions in June 2013:


 * Beeswaxcandle (talk | contributions)
 * BirgitteSB (talk | contributions)
 * Hesperian (talk | contributions)
 * Theornamentalist (talk | contributions)

Milestones
Two Wikisource milestones happened in May 2013. On the 25th, the Czech Wikisource reached 20,000 text units. This occurred slightly more than one year after reaching the same project reached 15,000 and a commemorative logo was created to mark the event. On the 29th, the Sanskrit Wikisource welcomed its 1,000th registered user.