Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-10-23/Interwiki report

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Report from the Finnish Wikipedia

By MikkoM, Jannex, Samulili, Ism, Myrtti, Tbone and Hasdrubal, 23 October 2006

Status and community news

As of October 18, 2006, the Finnish Wikipedia has 82,938 articles, of which 84 articles belong to Suositellut sivut (the equivalent of featured articles). There is no equivalent of "good articles" on the Finnish Wikipedia. The ever-increasing article count has surpassed those of printed Finnish encyclopedias. When the Finnish Wikipedia reached 50,000 articles on February 21, 2006, a pool was set up to guess the date when 100,000 articles will be reached. The median guess date is January 26, 2007.

There are 34,867 registered users, 33 active administrators (1 in 1,056), 3 active bureaucrats and 4 CheckUsers. Judging by the number of votes cast in the most crucial decisions, the number of the most active users lies a little below 100. On the IRC channel, there are typically over 60 nicks online at the same time.

Media

The Finnish Wikipedia has been increasingly featured in the media, mainly in the print media and on the radio. The monthly supplement of the largest Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat published recently a rather large article on the Finnish Wikipedia and interviewed ten users. Nearly all newspapers published by Student Unions have also written about Wikipedia.

Policy overview

The Finnish Wikipedia processes are heavily based on pure voting, though discussion and consensus decision-making are in general favoured and encouraged in policy issues. Article deletion requires 70 per cent support, undeletion, featured article selection and adminship 80 per cent. Naming policy is based on individual community-approved dictionaries; approval and conflict resolution is accomplished by a vote.

Use of userboxes that sparked so much controversy in the English and some other Wikipedia's language versions is regulated in the Finnish Wikipedia so that only project-related userboxes are permitted.

Image policy

Fair use images are allowed whenever the image is integral to the article and no free alternatives can be obtained. Usually such images fall into predefined categories, such as logos and album covers. This strict policy is based on Finnish copyright law, and forbids, for example, fair use images of celebrities. It is strongly recommended that images are uploaded to the Commons.

Blocking policy

The blocking policy of the project is quite liberal, and can be summarized by a phrase: "usually less than 30 days". As the Finnish Wikipedia has no Arbitration Committee, the responsibility of enforcing the integrity of the project lies in the hands of individual administrators. As such, it is worthwhile to mention that accusations of administrator abuse are rather rare and usually judged by the community to be without merit.

Recent controversies

The naming policy of towns that are not part of Finland but where Finnish or Finno-Ugric languages are spoken or have been spoken, has been under fierce debate. As Finland has a complex history with Sweden and Russia, the question of which names to use arouses strong feelings, sometimes resulting in blocks and article protections.

Notability and its relation to the deletion process perpetually raises opposition. Current policy says that obvious non-notability is a criterion for a speedy deletion, and most Votes For Deletion are based on the concept of notability. A proposition to get rid of the notability requirement was summarily dismissed.

The meaning of administratorship has recently been under discussion. A policy of removing the privileges of inactive administrators was approved. There is much disagreement about the number of edits one should have before applying, and also about how many administrators the project really needs. In addition, the existence of the infamous "Administrator Cabal" has been occasionally conjectured.

In the past, some of the more memorable controversies have included: a lengthy discussion on the correct spelling of pizza (fi:pizza) in Finnish (which, as it turned out, is "pizza" instead of "pitsa"), and a near-legendary debate on whether to use the en dash or the em dash in the Finnish Wikipedia.