Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-08-30/On the bright side

There are many opportunities to discuss bad news, problems, and concerns in the Wikiverse, and I think that having candid discussions about these issues is often important. Many days I spend more time thinking about problems than about what is going well. However, also I think that acknowledging the good side and taking a moment to be appreciative can be valuable.

I encourage you to add your comments about what's making you happy this month to the talk page of this Signpost piece.

Content
The English Wikiquote of the day for 8 August is from American poet Sara Teasdale. The quote is a poem, "Alchemy," from her collection Rivers to the Sea that was published in 1915. A few years later and for another poetry collection, Teasdale received a Pulitzer prize.

The Commons picture of the day for 2 August was of a butterfly, a spotted fritillary (Melitaea didyma) in Galichica National Park, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia), by photographer Charles J. Sharp from Scotland.

Products and technologies


The oldest "unbreak now" task on Phabricator as of 1 August was 0 days. (This could mean that there were no unbreak now tasks at the time that the Phabricator report was generated, which would be good news.)

Cross-posting thanks from Legoktm on Wikitech-l:


 * “Daimona, bawolff, and sbassett for their work on v2.0 of the phan-taint-check-plugin, which has been instrumental in catching real security issues.
 * “James_F for picking up a lot of CI maintenance
 * “MatmaRex for seeing through a patch to allow skins to have custom OOUI themes, 2 years after beginning work on it!”

Wikidata


A summary of interesting links, adapted from Wikidata Weekly Summary #376:


 * "Wikidata: From "an" Identifier to "the" Identifier", Theo van Veen, Information Technology and Libraries, 38(2), 72-81.
 * "Opening up Research Data in Film Studies by Using the Structured Knowledge Base Wikidata", Adelheid Heftberger et al, in Digital Cultural Heritage, pp 401-410.
 * "Bridging the gap between linked open data-based recommender systems and distributed representations", Pierpaolo Basile, et al, Information Systems, Volume 86, December 2019, pp 1-8.
 * "Open Refine Beginners Tutorial", video tutorial by Emmacarroll3 demonstrating how to import a dataset with OpenRefine. Access to this resource at that location is no longer public, but there is a Youtube version.

Affiliate organizations



 * Wikimedia Medicine was elevated from User Group to Thematic Organization.
 * Wikimedia Colombia was elevated from User Group to Chapter.
 * User group recognitions: Hausa Wikimedians User Group, Wikipedians of Goa User Group, Wikimedians of the Caribbean User Group, and Yoruba Wikimedians User Group.
 * Wikimedia Portugal has signed a new chapter agreement with WMF.

Legal topics


"The European Commission chooses truly free licenses for its content", by Dimitar Dimitrov, Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU.

Advanced mobile contributions feature set
The Advanced mobile contributions feature set is live on all wikis. I haven't tried this yet but I think that this looks promising.

ESEAP Strategy Summit
A report and video from this summit are available. Participants in the summit included people from or members of affiliates of Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.

Vlog regarding the City of Miami Fire-Rescue Department


This vlog isn't related to Wikimedia directly, but it is related to public service, which many of us do here in the Wikiverse in our own ways. The Miami Police Department posted a vlog of a visit and ride-alongs with Miami's fire and emergency medical services. This vlog is interesting, educational, sometimes fun, and sometimes serious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d8zjbLGI_E

Meta issues

 * Updates regarding the GlobalFactSync project were provided in an email sent to Wikitech-l, and in a Wikimania presentation with slides.
 * Wikimedia Indonesia published a video that highlights Wikipedia's uses for preservation and transmission of languages and cultures. The languages spoken in the video are Sundanese and Minangkabau.

Content highlights

 * The "Selected anniversaries" section of English Wikipedia for 16 August noted that the day was the anniversary of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt setting the world record for the 100 meter sprint in 2009.
 * This is a photo of one of two 17 meter (56 foot) high sculptures named Skyhooks at the east end of Trafford Park, Greater Manchester, England. Trafford Park was the English Wikipedia Article of the Day for 18 August. The photo is a featured picture on Commons. I feel that the sculpture is thought provoking.
 * The English Wiktionary Word of the Day for 16 August was neroli, which Wiktionary defines as "More fully neroli oil or oil of neroli: an essential oil distilled from the blossoms of the bitter orange or Seville orange (Citrus × aurantium subsp. amara) used to make perfumes." The etymology is interesting: "Borrowed from French (“neroli”), from Nerola, a town and comune in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Lazio, Italy. Marie Anne de La Trémoille, princesse des Ursins (1642–1722), Princess of Nerola but originally from France, is thought to have made neroli popular as a fragrance in her country of birth around 1670. The word is cognate with Italian nerola (obsolete), neroli."
 * I appreciated this English Wikiquote of the Day for 13 August from German-American philosopher Felix Adler: "The condition of all progress is experience. We go wrong a thousand times before we find the right path. We struggle, and grope, and hurt ourselves until we learn the use of things, and this is true of things spiritual as well as of material things. Pain is unavoidable, but it acquires a new and higher meaning when we perceive that it is the price humanity must pay for an invaluable good."

Off wiki
The New York Times published an opinion piece by Agnes Callard, who is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, titled "Why Philosophers Shouldn't Sign Petitions". In the context of reflecting on how we make decisions in the Wikiverse, I feel that the distinction between petitioning and arguing is a good topic for reflection. Hopefully in the Wikiverse we make collective decisions that are largely based on rational consensus.

Wikidata milestone
Wikidata passed the one billion edit milestone. The milestone edit, by User:Stevenliuyi, created the item “The band structure in microwave frequency for quasi-1-D coaxial photonic crystals (Q66665412)”.



Anti-disinformation research
There was a meetup regarding disinformation at Wikimania 2019. Thanks to Leila for the notes from the session. I am glad that that there is interest among WMF and community members regarding this topic.

Humor
(For anyone who does not understand the joke: Abraham Lincoln’s life preceded the existence of the Internet by approximately a century.)

Google and Mozilla take steps to limit mass surveillance in Kazakhstan
See Mozilla’s blog post at https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/08/21/mozilla-takes-action-to-protect-users-in-kazakhstan/.

Content
From English Wikipedia’s “Selected anniversaries” I learned that on 18 August 1877, “American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, six days after his discovering Deimos, the smaller one.” This image of Phobos is featured on Commons and on the Arabic, English, Spanish, and Persian Wikipedias. I enjoyed reading the description of how the image was made. Also of note is that when Asaph Hall was learning mathematics, he studied under an instructor who was two years ahead of him, Angeline Stickney. “During their days together as teacher and student, Hall and his classmates would devise questions and problems that they were convinced Miss Stickney could not solve, yet she never failed to solve them.” The two of them later married. Stickney encouraged Hall to search for the Martian moons. Hall said, "The chance of finding a satellite appeared to be very slight, so that I might have abandoned the search had it not been for the encouragement of my wife." The largest crater on Phobos is named Stickney in her honor.

The Commons Picture of the Day for 23 August 2019 was “Khotyn Fortress under the light of the full moon”. According to the article about the fortress on English Wikipedia, “The Khotyn Fortress (Ukrainian: Хотинська фортеця...) is a fortification complex located on the right bank of the Dniester River in Khotyn, Chernivtsi Oblast (province) of western Ukraine... Construction on the current Khotyn fortress was started in 1325, while major improvements were made in the 1380s and in the 1460s.”



Off wiki
Related to Wikimania 2019’s focus on the Sustainable Development Goals, I sometimes think about what happens to recycled materials. This article from The New York Times Magazine reports that “The recycling of scrap metal is a $32 billion business in the United States, according to IBISWorld.” The article discusses the business of scavenging for metals and recycling them.

Regarding translations
Skillful translations of the sentence "What's making you happy this week?" would be very much appreciated. If you see any inaccuracies in the translations in this article then please ping User:Pine in the discussion section of this page, or boldly make the correction to the text of the article. Thank you to everyone who has helped with translations so far.

Your turn
What's making you happy this month? You are welcome to write a comment on the talk page of this Signpost piece.