User:Titoxd/Interwiki report



Report from the Spanish Wikipedia
 * By Titoxd, 28 August 2006

Status and community news
The Spanish language Wikipedia has approximately 147,000 articles. Of these, 235 articles (about 1 in 630) are considered artículos destacados, the Spanish Wikipedia equivalent of featured articles. There is no equivalent to good articles on the Spanish Wikipedia, but the creation of "artículos ejemplares" (exemplary articles) as an equivalent category is under discussion.

The last three articles to be featured are Trillo (agricultura) (Threshing-board), Musa x paradisiaca (Banana) and Estado Libre del Congo (Congo Free State).

The Spanish Wikipedia has approximately 204,000 registered users, including 82 bibliotecarios (administrators), which amount to 0.04% of users. However, something that differs substantially from the English Wikipedia is that there are 75 bureaucrats on the Spanish Wikipedia. As a matter of policy, all active administrators in the Spanish Wikipedia are granted bureaucrat status by default, and it is removed to those who become inactive. Currently, only Brion VIBBER, Centeno, Daniel Mayer, Frutoseco, Randyc and Sauron are considered inactive.

Checkuser votes
From August 1 to August 15, editors in the Spanish Wikipedia held a vote to select CheckUsers, as the requirements on Meta require, which prompted considerable debate due to unforseen circumstances. Previously, it had been decided that only three CheckUsers would be requested at this time, but seven candidates fulfilled the requirements (80% approval, 30 or more votes): Alhen, Axxgreazz, Barcex, Cinabrium, Cookie, Hispa and Tomatejc. Depending on which selection method was applied (most supporting votes, highest approval percentage, or net support votes) different users would receive the privilege. A long discussion about who should be granted CheckUser status occured on Wikipedia Discusión:Candidaturas a Checkusers, going nowhere until Cookie, Alhen and Axxgreazz withdrawed their respective requests. At this point, Barcex, Cinabrium and Hispa were selected, and given CheckUser rights by Paginazero on Meta.

Fair use prohibited
Fair use was originally allowed on the Spanish Wikipedia, but the practice was discontinued in November 2004, when a decision to disallow new fair use uploads was made, and images that did not fall under a free license were speedy deleted. However, a few fair use images lingered on the site, which prompted a new discussion to change image policies this June. The community decided to delete all existing fair use images, transfer all of the Spanish Wikipedia's images to the Wikimedia Commons, and to disable local image uploads. On August 22, the last fair use image was deleted by Dodo.

Userboxes
Similar to the debate on the English Wikipedia, the Spanish counterpart has had its share of discussion about userboxes. The Spanish Wikipedia officially adopted the German userbox solution, erasing all userboxes from the Plantilla (Template) namespace and transferring them over to user space. This decision was ratified and implemented following a vote held from July 16 to July 30.

Wikiconcurso
The Wikiconcurso ("Wikicontest") is a Wikipedia-wide collaborative effort to try to improve as many articles as possible by giving awards to those who produce the greatest number of high-quality articles. There have been five Wikiconcursos to date, the latest one finishing on August 10, which have covered stub expansion, biography article expansion, and translation of featured articles.

Depending on the grades awarded by a three-judge panel, each article receives a number of points, which an editor accumulates over one edition of the Wikiconcurso. At the time the contest finishes, the editor with the most points win, and high quality articles are sent to Candidatos a artículos destacados to decide whether they should be featured.

The winner of the latest edition was Chewie, who translated Gas venenoso en la Primera Guerra Mundial (Poison gas in World War I), Habitabilidad planetaria (Planetary habitability), Invasión (Invasion) and ROT13 (ROT13) from the English Wikipedia. Winners of previous editions can be seen at the Wikiconcurso page in the Spanish Wikipedia.