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31 October 2022

 

2022-10-31

A new goose on the roost

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By JPxG

I don't really like writing about myself, but I guess there is no way out of it this time. As EpicPupper has left Wikipedia and resigned their position with The Signpost, I am now the official bull goose looney of this joint.

What does this mean?

Well, my first job is to decide what it means. I would be remiss to simply read the Wikipedia article and call myself an expert – especially not when I can simply read the Signpost and call myself an expert instead. There are 3,528 talk pages, and 7,960 subpages of The Signpost, of which 5,935 are articles (give or take a few). They go from January 2005 up to today: I have gotten through one year already, which means there are only 16 left until I catch up to when I started publishing last November. I am taking notes during this process, so by the time I get through I should be able to write a fairly comprehensive history of the paper. By the time I get caught up, I expect to have a clearer idea of what the hell has been going on for the last two decades, what is currently going on, as well as (hopefully) some galaxy-brain ideas for how to make it be even more going on.

For now, I am going to be continuing to fix things on the backend, like updating and improving some of the Signpost templates – those couple illustrated issues we had just now were the result of me manually adding images to each article item on the front page because the template can't embed images or bylines. Whoopsies daisies!!! As you are probably already starting to realize, most of this stuff is fairly boring, but my idea is to make the whole experience a little better, while lowering the amount of effort required to read, write, and comment on Signpost articles. I am also going to try to implement (or get out of the way during the implementation of) some galaxy-brain ideas that wiser people than myself have come up with.

Before I get to that, though, I must apologize for some errors: my proofreading was rather lazy throughout the publication of the September issue, and the Gallery was an incomplete draft not meant to be published. I gave you a crappy Signpost, and for that, I am sorry. This issue will be somewhat thin as well: I have spent most of my time in the run-up working on technical issues (like documenting the confusing ecosystem of internal templates) instead of writing and editing and soliciting submissions. I have a few diabolical schemes in the works – which you will see more of as they unfold – so keep your eyes peeled.

Anyone looney enough to want to help with any of this is invited to pop on over to the newsroom talk page, where more detail can be found on most of these goings-on.



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2022-10-31

Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after "somewhat-viral" tweet

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By Andreas Kolbe

On October 11, a Twitter user pointed out that millions of dollars donated "to Wikipedia" had been used for non-Wikimedia grants. Above two pictures of Wikimedia fundraising banners, the user (@echetus) said:

If you use Wikipedia, you've seen pop-ups like this. If you're like me, you may have donated as a result.

Wikipedia is an amazing website, and the appeals seem heartfelt. But I've now learnt the money isn't going where I thought...

The tweet attracted well over 10,000 retweets and more than 35,000 "likes" (NB: perhaps helped along by OP's tasteful Haruhi av).

Knowledge Equity Fund overview deck
What was the Twitter user talking about?

The thread attached to the tweet focused on the Knowledge Equity Fund, "a new US$4.5 million fund created by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2020, to provide grants to external organizations that support knowledge equity by addressing the racial inequities preventing access and participation in free knowledge".

The money was transferred to an outside organisation, Tides Advocacy, sometime in the 2019–2020 financial year when the Foundation found it had a large amount of money left over because of an underspend. This transfer of millions of dollars of donated funds to Tides Advocacy bypassed established grants processes, and was not publicised at the time.

The creation of the Tides Advocacy fund thus remained unknown to the community and the public at large until December 2020, when the Wikimedia Foundation's 2020 Audit Report and associated FAQ were published, leading to instant controversy. Concerns expressed then focused on the secrecy of the grant, the break with the participatory grantmaking principles the Foundation had until then embraced, and the fact that the transfer coincided with Amanda Keton's move in the 2019–2020 financial year from General Counsel of the Tides Network and CEO of Tides Advocacy to General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Subsequently, in 2021, a little over $1 million was given to three U.S. grantees as well as one Brazilian, one West African and one Jordanian organisation in the first round of grants from the fund, leaving several million dollars in Tides Advocacy's accounts to this day.

Community questions

This October (the 12th to be precise), Wikipedian and former Wikimedia UK trustee and fundraiser Chris Keating inquired on the Wikimedia-l mailing list about the fund's status, specifically referencing the Twitter thread:

Meta (1) suggests 6 grants were made in September 2021 and that a second more community-focused round of grants would be made in 2022. No details of a second round have been published that I'm aware of; is this still active? Are there any public details of impact or progress reporting from the September 2021 grants?

There is also a somewhat-viral Twitter thread which focuses, alongside some general criticisms of Wikimedia fundraising, on two grants specifically from this fund and the WMF making itself a participant in US 'culture wars'. (2) I wonder if there is any response from the WMF to that?

(For what it's worth, my perception is that the Knowledge Equity Fund was initially a deliberate attempt led by US-based staff to have the WMF 'do something' to align itself with a broader progressive movement in the USA. I believe the main advocates for this have now departed, that it was never a particularly good fit with the WMF's overall approach to grantmaking, that the evolution of the WMF's approach to this fund was positive, but still if the whole thing is now forgotten about that's probably no bad thing).

Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Staff Nadee Gunasena replied on the fund's talk page on Meta-Wiki:

The short answer is that because the Equity Fund is a pilot initiative for us without any dedicated staff, it has taken us longer than we anticipated to hit some of our milestones. It’s been a learning process. [...] Our goal is to choose grantees for a second round of grants and to make that process visible. I can share more about the timeline there when I have more details.

Long-time Wikimedian Steven Walling and Wiki Education Foundation Executive Director Frank Schulenburg expressed their disagreement:

Hi Nadee, when I said I supported Steven's proposal, I meant specifically "Given that this is a pilot and there have been serious concerns expressed about the ROI and ethics of funding grantees not doing any work that has a direct measurable impact on Wikimedia projects, I would encourage you to stop". I've recently seen enough voices online expressing concern about the fact that they thought they donated to keep Wikipedia's servers running, but ended up having funded some other organization and cause. I think this is a reasonable question and I'm interested in hearing what the Wikimedia Foundation will be doing to ensure that the Knowledge Equity Fund is in line with generally accepted principles of ethical fundraising. --Frank Schulenburg

The discussion is ongoing at the time of writing.

WMF response to a user cancelling his donation

On Twitter meanwhile a user shared that they cancelled their donation after reading the thread and received the following response from the Wikimedia Foundation:

I can confirm your monthly donation has been cancelled, and you will see no further charges from the Wikimedia Foundation.

We always appreciate fair criticism and questions about our practices, as well as the opportunity to make our processes clearer and more transparent. With that said, the recent messages shared on Twitter about our fundraising practices and the growth of Wikipedia are misguided and don't reflect an accurate understanding of what it takes to sustain a top global website.

Since Wikipedia first started, the needs of the site have significantly evolved, and the Wikimedia Foundation has adapted in response to meet those changing needs. For example, the growth of Wikipedia to more than 1.5 billion visits a month has required making steady investments in our product and technology work to ensure the site loads quickly, is available across devices, and in readers' preferred language.

Because of our volunteer editors and the support of our donors, Wikipedia has become a go-to resource for millions of people across the world. We want everyone, everywhere, to experience its benefits and have the world's knowledge reflected in its articles so it's a better resource for you. That's why we are working to address gaps in knowledge in our projects. Part of that work includes increased support to volunteers, affiliate groups and other organizations working on issues like diversity and women's history.

Over the past fiscal year, we have increased grant funding to volunteers and groups working to address barriers to free knowledge by 51 percent year over year. We distributed grants across more than 90 countries around the world to help ensure Wikipedia continues to be a trusted place for reliable, relevant, and trustworthy knowledge.

We hope this provides more information about our fundraising practices and how we steward reader donations to best support Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and our free knowledge mission.

What stands out in this response is the claim that the Foundation "distributed grants across more than 90 countries around the world". The first thing to say here is that according to its most recent Form 990 tax filing, the Wikimedia Foundation spent over 95% of its money in North America and Europe. Grantmaking in the global South accounted for just 1.2% of revenue (see previous Signpost coverage for figures).

Moreover, a look at the overall budget shows that grants to the community, emphasised in the above response, are a very minor part of the overall budget and not constrained by any budget shortfall. In the Wikimedia Foundation's most recent audited financial statements, "Awards and grants" amounted to $9.8 million, of which $5 million (possibly $5.5 million) represented a grant to the Wikimedia Foundation's own Endowment held by the Tides Foundation. This leaves somewhere between $4 and $5 million for actual grants made to the community – a figure dwarfed by the Wikimedia Foundation's $50 million budget surplus in 2020–2021. There was no lack of money for grants.

The auditors also point out on page 14 of the financial statements that the actual sum transferred to Tides Advocacy was $8.723 rather than $4.5 million. They add that a part of this money ($4.223 million, presumably) would be used "to fund the annual operating expenses of other Wikimedia chapter organizations".

A side effect of this arrangement is that neither the Wikimedia Foundation's audited financial statements nor its Form 990 filings will now show if, when, or how this money is or was spent by Tides Advocacy to fund chapter organisations – just like there has never been any public accounting for the over $100 million in Wikimedia Endowment funds held by the Tides Foundation (see previous Signpost coverage as well as the WMF's Governance update in this Signpost issue). Whatever purpose these arrangements with Tides organisations serve – it is not transparency. – AK

Lisa Seitz-Gruwell takes on additional role as Deputy CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

Lisa Seitz-Gruwell is the new Deputy CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia CEO Maryana Iskander announced last month that longstanding Chief Advancement Officer Lisa Seitz-Gruwell now also serves as Deputy CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, in addition to her responsibilities for fundraising, strategic partnerships and grantmaking. Moreover, a recent advertisement looking for at-large directors of the Wikimedia Endowment described Lisa Seitz-Gruwell as President of the new Wikimedia Endowment organisation, whose application for 501(c)3 non-profit status has now been approved (see News from the WMF).

Other C-level changes announced by Maryana Iskander included Stephen LaPorte taking on the role of Deputy General Counsel, working closely with Amanda Keton, and Maryana Iskander herself temporarily heading up the Talent & Culture department in addition to serving as CEO. Nadee Gunasena's role as Chief of Staff has been broadened to include supporting the entire organisation and movement rather than just the CEO. As previously reported, Product/Technology is now headed by Selena Deckelmann, who came to the WMF from Mozilla, where she was head of Firefox.

Iskander said that while the Wikimedia Foundation's headcount had grown by over 200 since 2020, this growth would not continue. Instead there would now be a period of stabilisation. – AK

Wikimedia Foundation stops publication of its quarterly "tuning sessions"

Less transparency

Nadee Gunasena, the Wikimedia Foundation's chief of staff, has announced that the WMF will no longer publish the presentation decks from its quarterly reviews or "tuning sessions" providing an update on each WMF department's progress against Annual Plan targets. Instead of this year's fourth quarter tuning session decks, which in the past were posted on Commons by mid-July (the WMF's fiscal year runs from July to June), there will now only be an unspecified but most likely very abridged "update" posted on Meta-Wiki "by mid-November" – a delay of at least four months.

The community and public are thus deprived of timely information that the WMF had been happy to provide for the past ten years – including reports of financials, staffing levels and partnerships that formed the basis of Signpost and media reports in the past. – AK

Wikimedia Summit Report

The programme documentation for last month's Wikimedia Summit 2022 is now available on Meta. As announced this week on the Wikimedia-l mailing list –

The documentation consists of a description and summary of each conference session of each of [the] three days and topics to follow up on. Additionally, a short summary of the documentation provides an overview of the topics discussed, and has been translated into 6 languages by our colleagues from the Wikimedia Foundation.

The report on the Wikimedia Summit is available on Commons

An English-language report on the event is also available on Commons as well as on Meta-Wiki.

The Wikimedia Summit is an annual meeting of Wikimedia Foundation leadership – both trustees and executives – with affiliate representatives and members of movement committees. The event is usually held in Berlin, Germany. It was cancelled last year due to COVID; this year, around 150 people from around the world attended in person, with a similar number participating online.

Early indications are that this hybrid format – mixing in-person attendance and online participation – worked better this time round than at the recent Wikimania (see previous Signpost coverage). Survey results on this aspect will be reported around the end of next month, along with the event's budget.

Key topics discussed at this year's Summit included the Movement Charter, Hubs, and Revenues & Resources.

The run-up to the Berlin Summit also saw WMF board members coming together in person for a quarterly board meeting. During the meeting, it was decided to keep the size of the board at 12 members for the next two years, this size being deemed more effective than a larger board.

The minutes of the previous quarterly board meeting held in June 2022 were approved and are now online here. In addition to updates on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and the Movement Charter, the minutes also spell out the board's expectations for the 2022–2023 financial year:

FY22–23 is not anticipated to be a year of rapid growth. The Foundation anticipates 17% growth to a budget of $175 million with moderate growth in terms of staffing. Next year, the fundraising team will be increasing targets in each of their major streams, with a particular focus in Major Gifts. A motion was made by Tanya Capuano and seconded by Nataliia Tymkiv to approve the Wikimedia Foundation 2022–23 Annual Plan. The motion was unanimously approved.

The Annual Plan, as shown in the Resolution, envisages total expenses of $175 million. Total expenses in 2020–2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, were $112 million; the most recent projection for 2021–2022, in the third-quarter Finance and Administration tuning session deck, forecast total expenses of $142 million for the financial year ended June 30, 2022. – AK

"Think big – open letter about Wikimedia Commons"

An open letter was published on Commons on 10 October, asking the Wikimedia Foundation to invest in Wikimedia Commons:

We, the undersigned, are involved with Wikimedia Commons, the central media platform of the Wikimedia movement. Commons is where the movement comes together: we take pictures, we upload files, we embed images in Wikipedia articles, we deal with legal questions, we teach others how to use Commons, we work with cultural institutions (GLAM), or we support Commons in other ways.

Commons is one of the largest online media collections in the world. It offers freely licensed files to everyone: via Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis, and also many other websites and individuals in the world. This makes Commons vital for millions of people on the planet.

But we are concerned about the present situation and the future of Wikimedia Commons. Our platform is fighting to remain relevant in a world that is dominated by visual platforms (such as YouTube, Instagram, flickr etc.) that are constantly evolving. Commons, in contrast, fails modern standards of usability and struggles with numerous foundational issues. [..]

At the time of writing, the open letter has attracted well over 200 signatures. – AK

Brief notes



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2022-10-31

Governance updates from, and for, the Wikimedia Endowment

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By Lisa Seitz-Gruwell

This article was first published on October 26, 2022 on the Wikimedia Foundation's Diff blog, with the title "Governance updates for the Wikimedia Endowment", CC-BY-SA 3.0. Lisa Seitz-Gruwell is President of the Wikimedia Endowment, as well as Deputy to the CEO and Chief Advancement Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation.

A year ago we announced that the Wikimedia Endowment reached its initial $100 million fundraising goal. Launched in 2016 to support the future of Wikimedia projects, the Endowment is a permanent fund that helps protect Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in times of uncertainty and enables long-term investments to support their growth. This early achievement was a testament to the generosity of Endowment donors and the value of Wikimedia projects in today’s world.

Today, we’re sharing more updates on the progress of the Endowment since last year, including new governance and operational policies to set the Endowment up for success to serve Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects.

Renewed support from Amazon

The Endowment itself has performed well despite significant fluctuations in the global economy this past year, and our generous Endowment donors including individuals, corporations, and foundation donors have continued to support its growth.

As part of this continued support, Amazon has renewed its annual $1 million gift to the Endowment again this year, bringing the company’s donations to the Wikimedia Endowment to a cumulative $5 million since 2018. Commensurate support from companies like Amazon helps sustain our projects and mission of delivering free knowledge to the world.

“Since 2016, Amazon has supported our mission to ensure that the free knowledge movement thrives. We are thankful for their continued commitment to Wikimedia, which helps to build a more sustainable future for our projects,” said Lisa Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation.

To learn more about our benefactors and their contributions, please visit our Benefactors page.

Endowment status updates

Last year, we announced our plans to establish the Wikimedia Endowment as its own independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States. This year, our application was approved and we are in the process of setting up the Endowment’s strategic and operational policies and systems. This will help solidify and protect the independence of the Endowment, allowing its management and investments to be aligned directly to the needs of the Wikimedia projects.

The Endowment Board has also formed several new committees to establish strategic and operational planning for the Endowment as a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This includes:

  • The Grantmaking and Community Committee is tasked with tending to the relationship between the Endowment and the communities of the Wikimedia movement. This committee will be chaired by Phoebe Ayers, and Patricio Lorente is also a member of the committee. They are both Community Directors of the Wikimedia Endowment, former members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, and long-time Wikipedians.
  • The Finance Committee is responsible for overseeing the Endowment’s investment portfolio, budgetary planning, accounting and financial reporting processes, and financial audits. The Board intends to publish financial updates via an annual report. The Board meeting minutes from the July meeting (which include an updated Endowment total) will also be shared on Meta once they are approved in the coming weeks.
  • The Governance Committee will help to ensure the Board’s compliance with its legal and fiduciary duties and to ensure the Board is governed efficiently and effectively.

In addition, we have added new policies to better direct the work of the Endowment. This includes a new Open Access policy pledging that any research supported by the Endowment will be published freely and openly for reuse, and the Endowment Gift policy to provide greater transparency into how gifts to the Endowment are received.

As we get closer to 2030, there is still much work to be done to advance our strategic direction and address the challenges that lie ahead for our movement. This foundational governance work will help to ensure the Endowment is set up for success to meet these challenges and support Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects and communities in the ways that will best serve them over the long term.

More details about the new policies and committees are available on the Endowment Governance Wiki. We invite you to ask questions and join the conversation via the Endowment’s talk page on Meta where Fundraising staff will be reviewing and responding to comments and questions.



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2022-10-31

Scribing, searching, soliciting, spying, and systemic bias

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By OwenBlacker, Lane Rasberry, Bri, Andreas Kolbe, Sdkb, and Smallbones

Jessica Wade

Jess Wade, a scientist and Wikipedian

Jess Wade, a scientist and Wikipedian, had several media reports appear about their article-writing prowess this month:

The deletion debate for Clarice Phelps, a scientist whose biography was created by Wade, was covered by Today and in readers' comments on a previous Signpost's Community view "The Incredible Invisible Woman" by Megalibrarygirl, and an Op-ed by Wade herself. – B

Growing attention for Growth features

Screenshot of suggested edits module in Czech Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation has decided that the Growth Team features are ready for the public spotlight. Adi Robertson, a reporter at The Verge, Vox Media's technology news outlet, picked up the pitch, running with the headline "Wikimedia is adding features to make editing Wikipedia more fun".

"Wikipedia is one of the sturdiest survivors of the old web, as well as one of the most clearly human-powered ones, thanks to a multitude of editors making changes across the globe," she writes. From there, the article provides a straightforward overview of the new mentorship system and suggested edits tool. It is mostly deferential to the foundation's perspective, although Robertson notes that gamified interfaces have been criticized as addictive, and that "the algorithm's own accuracy rate isn't exemplary: editors deem about 75 percent of the link recommendations accurate". (After the newcomer chooses which recommendations to adopt, 10 percent of edits have been reverted.)

The Indo-Asian News Service published a short, thinly reported version of the same story. – Sdkb

You can ignore whatever you'd like

The time draws nearer for the WMF's annual plea to donate, accompanied by a plea from Andrew Orlowski to not donate. This year, appearing in Unherd, he argues that –

These banner ads have become very lucrative for the NGO that collects the money – the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit based in San Francisco. Every year the NGO responsible for the fundraising adds tens of millions of dollars to its war chest. After a decade of professional fund-raising, it has now amassed $400 million of cash as of March. [...] Wikipedia’s Administrators and maintainers, who tweak the entries and correct the perpetual vandalism, don’t get paid a penny — they’re all volunteers. What has happened is that the formerly ramshackle Foundation, which not so long ago consisted of fewer than a dozen staff run out of a back room, has professionalised itself. It has followed the now well-trodden NGO path to respectability and riches.

Much to think about. For additional coverage on the subject, see this month's News and notes. Orlowski has been a harsh critic of the project since at least 2004, when he described Wikipedians as "the Khmer Rouge in diapers". – AK, S, J

French wiki editors and BLP subjects demand trans rights

In June, trans comic artist Jul Maroh, the French creator of the graphic novel Blue Is the Warmest Color posted to Instagram about the turmoil they were experiencing as a result of discussions on fr:Discussion:Jul' Maroh around misgendering and the repetition of their deadname on their French-language biography. They also posted to Instagram Stories asking for support from Wikimedians. This was lightly covered in the media at the time, mainly by French-language online magazine ActuaBD. After the discussion, they posted a toolbox for other trans BLP subjects and attended the annual general meeting of Les sans pagEs, the French-language equivalent to Women in Red.

After that AGM, Les sans pagEs announced that they were professionalising, having secured funding from the French national chapter (with grants proposals under review with WMF and Wikimedia CH) to employ project founder Natacha Rault as a director, causing several days worth of heated discussion on Le Bistro, the Francophone equivalent to our Village pump. As a result, Wikimedia LGBT+ organized an Open letter of support for Les sans pagEs, criticising "bad-faith arguments" and "harassment" that included calls for the disestablishment of the project. The open letter has been signed by 77 wikimedians, including representatives of affiliates such as AfroCROWD, Art+Feminism, Noircir Wikipédia, Whose Knowledge?, WikiDonne, Wikimedians of Slovakia and the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network plus national chapters including Wikimedia Belgium and Wikimedia UK, as well as individuals. (Note: the author here was lead organiser on the Open letter.)

Les sans pagEs came back energised from the controversy, with Natacha presenting with Wikimedia LGBT+ to promote Queering Wikipedia 2022 at Wikimania before working on gaining a consensus update to frwiki's MoS guidelines on trans biographies and being featured in young-women's magazine Madmoizelle, headlined " 'Wikipedia reproduces the sexist bias of our society': Les sans pagEs, the collective filling in the encyclopedia's gender gap".

Which brings us neatly back to Jul' Maroh, who in October led an open letter in French news-weekly L'Obs, reported in literary news magazine Actualitte denouncing insensitive coverage of trans, nonbinary and intersex biographies on the Francophone Wikipedia and crediting the efforts of Les sans pagEs and Noircir Wikipédia in countering systemic bias. – O

Down with the middlemen, or factoids over ad-cruft: Wikipedia as a better search tool (except for some pirates)

Some folks think Wikipedia is a great search-engine replacement. Some don't. Oh, were you looking for a frog in a clown suit?

James Vincent in The Verge offers a hearty recommendation of Wikipedia's mobile app as an alternative to Google Search. He says it's more useful, less bloated, and more fun.

After a frustrating search session blighted by nearly a full page of ad-cruft, the author sums up their experience: "why the hell am I Googling this stuff anyway? If half of my Google searches on mobile are just Wikipedia lookups, why not cut out the middleman altogether?" The Wikipedia app goes straight to the juice and provides diverting and illuminating side trips for "a nerd with an affinity for factoids" in the bargain: "Wikipedia is actually one of the true wonders of the internet", they say.

"Up with the knowledge keepers and down with the middlemen," he concludes. We're blushing.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette also acknowledged that "some people" use the Wikipedia app instead of searching with Google, but found an error in a pirate-related search that resulted in the answer Alexander von Humboldt – who, the Democrat-Gazette reminds us, "was not a pirate". – B, Sdkb

Wikipedia as a military target for disinformation

Cover page of The Spy by James Fennimore Cooper, in Russian for some reason

Think tanks Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Centre for the Analysis of Social Media presented a report discussing the possibility of state-sponsored bad actors using Wikipedia as a channel for disinformation, propaganda, or as part of an information warfare campaign. Various media sources reacted. El País in particular called out the study's concern over "long-term infiltration by state-sponsored actors" to take over Wikipedia's "underlying policies and governance processes". Later, an ISD employee was able to add enough citations to the organization's article to save it from a nomination at Articles for Deletion. – B, BR, J

See also Disinformation report and Recent research in this month's Signpost.

In brief

The world's most popular reptile is the Komodo Dragon.
Wikipe-tan supports everyone's right to access restrooms and, uh, litter boxes.



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next month's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.




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2022-10-31

From Russia with WikiLove

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By Smallbones
A recent academic report, widely cited in the mainstream press (see this issue's "In the media"), has suggested that Russian agents have edited Wikipedia through the use of sockpuppets. Readers of The Signpost should not be surprised by this report. I have documented similar allegations about paid editing by Russians and others several times, for example in The oligarchs' socks and "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein …".
I have edited articles I thought were written by foreign agents and interacted with some of the Wikipedia editors mentioned below. The opinions expressed below are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of The Signpost or its staff, or of any other Wikipedia editors. – S
A poster and some redacted text side by side; the poster shows a smudged man in a hard hat with text inviting miners to a pro-Trump rally, and the text describes an FBI investigation of that rally
Poster and redacted text from Mueller report about 2016 political rallies organized by Russia's Internet Research Agency

Do Russian agents, paid directly by the government or by people close to President Vladimir Putin, edit Wikipedia? There are many reasons to think that they would if they thought it would be successful. Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and other Western elections by means of the internet, according to the Mueller report. Much of their effort used social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or video sites. Russians are certainly aware of Wikipedia's reach and credibility and the Russian government has attempted several times to establish Russian online encyclopedias as alternatives to Wikipedia. Its agents have the motivation and opportunity to spread their disinformation, but do they have the ability to avoid Wikipedia’s defenses?

A new tool

A report from the Centre for Analysis of Social Media division of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue titled Information Warfare and Wikipedia examines this question, and proposes a potentially useful method of assessing whether Russian agents have edited Wikipedia.

The lead author of the report, Carl Miller, may be familiar to Signpost readers through his reporting on the BBC on disputes between Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese editors (program) in 2019 and disputes between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese editors in 2021. I’ve also interviewed him in The Signpost.

Suggestions of coordinated editing from 86 accounts

The report starts with a review of the current state of disinformation operations on the internet. The review may be especially useful to Wikipedians who haven't followed recent changes in disinformation techniques. It then gives the basics of Wikipedia operations, and factors that could make the site attractive to spreaders of disinformation. This section should be quite familiar to many Wikipedians, but is followed by a more challenging section on how Wikipedia fights disinformation. If you need to learn about sockpuppet investigations and checkusers, this is a good short introduction.

The most interesting section is a case study of the article on the Russo-Ukrainian war, which was started in March 2014 (soon after Russian soldiers seized two Crimean airports and deposed the prime minister of Crimea, but before Russia illegally annexed the region). The goal of the case study was to explore potential Russian disinformation inserted in the article over the next eight years, by using methods that could be automated at scale and used by other researchers in other studies of disinformation on Wikipedia.

The authors identified article editors who were later banned by administrators or checkusers, generally via sockpuppet investigations. The beauty of this method is that outside researchers do not need to judge whether Wikipedia rules have been broken – an often difficult and contentious task. They only need to know that the editors have been banned, a fact reported in the article's edit history, with data gathering fairly easily automated.

They identified 89 accounts that were banned, mostly for sockpuppeting. After eliminating three bots, they were left with 86 "suspicious" editors. These editors' editing history was examined, including edits made on other articles where two or more of them crossed paths, describing a network of editors and articles edited by them.

Some of the media articles about this report seem to take the existence of this network as "proof" of Russian government editing. In reality, it is clearly not that easy to draw such a conclusion. What they found was people inserting pro-Russian bias; whether this was commissioned by the Kremlin remains unclear. The report’s authors find the existence of the network only as suggestive of coordinated editing, and conclude that there is evidence of "a particular strategy used by bad actors of splitting their edit histories between a number of accounts to evade detection". They stress a possible strategy of entryism, or infiltration of Wikipedia by Russian agents. While there are clearly limitations on using this methodology, it looks like a step forward in the search for a way to examine particularly contentious topics where hundreds of editors may be making thousands of edits across dozens of articles.

Another approach

So where do we stand now? Do Russian agents edit Wikipedia articles? The academic approach to this question has so far given an answer of essentially we have a method that has identified 86 editors, with many of them looking suspicious. Fortunately we have the complementary methods of journalism which generally look at the cases of individuals or small groups. I believe that most Wikipedians who look at the following cases will conclude that yes, there appear to be some Russian agents editing Wikipedia. But we must note that no analysis of Wikipedia edits can prove to the standards of a criminal court the identity of a Wikipedia editor.

An unregistered foreign agent of Russia

A single page formal, sealed document on light yellow paper, signed by the U.S. President
Presidential Pardon for Paul Erickson, who had ties to the National Rifle Association and was the boyfriend of Maria Butina. Butina was convicted of being an unregistered Russian agent. Erickson was convicted of unrelated fraud charges.

Maria Butina was a Russian student at American University, who was also working with the high ranking Russian politician – Deputy Governor of Russia’s Central Bank (and suspected member of the Russian Mafia) Aleksandr Torshin. Butina and Torshin attended meetings of the National Rifle Association together, attempted to connect with associates of Donald Trump, and are suspected of attempting to donate money to the Trump campaign via the NRA. In 2018, she was convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia while in the U.S. and served 18 months in federal prison before being deported to Russia. She received a hero's welcome on her return, became a television presenter, and was soon elected to the Russian State Duma.

In 2018, the Daily Beast published an article titled "Who Whitewashed the Wiki of Alleged Russian Spy Maria Butina?" strongly suggesting that it was a specifically named editor, who was Maria Butina. Furthermore, there was an anonymous unregistered IP editor from the same university as Butina.

That article, and five other articles from reliable sources reporting similar facts, are listed at Talk:Maria Butina. The editors of the talk page noticed the first news article, generally accepted it as factual, and cleaned the article of the offending edits. The editor suspected to have been Butina denied the allegations on their user talk page.

Fertilizer from the oligarchs' sockfarms

In the March Signpost article "The oligarchs' socks", I reported on eight well-known Russian oligarchs: Alisher Usmanov, Roman Abramovich and his son Arkadiy Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, Alexander Nesis, and Andrei Skoch.

Usmanov hired the PR firm RLM Finsbury, who then edited his Wikipedia article. Finsbury admitted this in 2012. The articles on A. Abramovich and Nesis were almost certainly edited by the disgraced (and now defunct) political PR firm Bell Pottinger.

Fifty now-blocked sockpuppets edited the article on Roman Abramovich, thirty edited the Deripaska article, but less than ten edited the articles on Fridman, Khan, and Skoch. There is a overlapping pattern of edits by the same sockfarms (large groups of sockpuppets named together in sockpuppet investigations).

Banned user Russavia edited two of the oligarch articles. He was a very active administrator on Wikimedia Commons, who specialized in promoting the Russian aviation industry, and in disrupting the English-language Wikipedia. After finally being banned on the English Wikipedia, he created dozens of sockpuppets. Russavia, by almost all accounts, is not a citizen or resident of Russia, but his edits raise some concern and show some patterns.

In 2010, he boasted, on his userpage at Commons, that he had obtained permission from the official Kremlin.ru site for all photos there to be uploaded to Commons under Creative Commons licenses. He also made 148 edits at Russo-Georgian War, and 321 edits on the ridiculously detailed International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both of these articles were, at one time, strongly biased in favor of Russia.

Conclusion

The Russian government is now engaged in a brutal war in Ukraine, or as they call it, a "special military operation". They are widely reported as supporting this war and other controversial activities with a disinformation war, including inserting disinformation on social media sites. Wikipedia is apparently not immune from these activities. Russian agents have the motivation and opportunity, and allegedly the ability, to insert their disinformation here. We should continue to investigate and report this activity, using the tools of journalism and the tools now being developed by academic researchers.

See also In the media and Recent research in this month's Signpost.



Reader comments

2022-10-31

Disinformatsiya: Much research, but what will actually help Wikipedia editors?

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By Tilman Bayer


A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

Think tank publishes report on "Information Warfare and Wikipedia"

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, earlier this month published a report (co-authored with a company called CASM Technology)[1] focusing "on information warfare on Wikipedia about the invasion of Ukraine"; see also this issue's "In the media" (summarizing media coverage of the report) and "Disinformation report" (providing context in form of various other concrete cases).

As summarized in the abstract:

"The report combines a literature review on publicly available research and information around Wikipedia, expert interviews and a case study.
For the case study, the English-language Wikipedia page for the Russo-Ukrainian war was chosen, where accounts that edited the page and have subsequently been blocked from editing were examined. Their editing behaviour on other Wikipedia pages was mapped to understand the scale and overlap of contributions. This network mapping has seemed to identify a particular strategy used by bad actors of dividing edits on similar pages across a number of accounts in order to evade detection. Researchers then tested an approach of filtering edits by blocked editors based on whether they add references to state-media affiliated or sponsored sites, and found that a number of edits exhibited narratives consistent with Kremlin-sponsored information warfare. Based on this, researchers were able to identify a number of other Wikipedia pages where blocked editors introduced state-affiliated domains [...]"

The report offers a great overview of Wikipedia's existing mechanisms for dealing with such issues, based on numerous conversations with community members and other experts. However, the literature review indicates that the authors – despite confidently telling Wired magazine "We've never tried to analyze Wikipedia data in that way before" – were unfamiliar with a lot of existing academic research (e.g. about finding alternative accounts, aka sockpuppets, of abusive editors); the 39 references cited in the report include only a single peer-reviewed research paper. Likewise, despite the hope that their findings could yield "new tools" (Wired) that would support combating disinformation on Wikipedia, there is no indication that the authors were aware of past and ongoing research-supported product development efforts to build such tools, by the Wikimedia Foundation and others, some of which are outlined below. On Twitter, the lead author stated that "We're going to be doing more research on information warfare on Wikipedia with a new project kicking off later this month [October]", so perhaps some of these gaps can still be bridged.


How existing research efforts could help editors fight disinformation

Exactly two years ago, in the run-up to the 2020 US elections, the Wikimedia Foundation published a blog post noting concerns about a "rising rate and sophistication of disinformation campaigns" on the internet by coordinated actors, about elections and other topics such as the global pandemic or climate change, and providing a summary of how Wikipedia specifically was addressing such threats.

After mentioning the volunteer community's "robust mechanisms and editorial guidelines that have made the site one of the most trusted sources of information online" and announcing an internal anti-disinformation task force at the Foundation (which reportedly still exists, although one former member recently stated they were unaware what its current work areas are) as well as "strengthened capacity building by creating several new positions, including anti-disinformation director and research scientist roles," the post focused on summarizing how

"the Foundation's research team, in collaboration with multiple universities around the world, delivered a suite of new research projects that examined how disinformation could manifest on the site. The insights from the research led to the product development of new human-centered machine learning services that enhance the community's oversight of the projects.
These algorithms support editors in tasks such as detecting unsourced statements on Wikipedia and identify malicious edits and behavior trends.

With the US mid-term elections imminent and independent researchers apparently being unaware of these research projects at the Foundation (see above), now seems a good time to take a look at how they have developed in the meantime. As "some of the tools used or soon available to be used by editors", the October 2020 post listed the following:

  • An algorithm that identifies unsourced statements or edits that require citation. The algorithm surfaces unverified statements; it helps editors decide if the sentence needs a citation, and, in return, human editors improve the algorithm’s deep learning ability.
According to the corresponding project page on Meta-wiki, this project (launched in 2017) is still in progress, but it already resulted in a paper presented at the 2019 World Wide Web Conference ("Citation Needed: A Taxonomy and Algorithmic Assessment of Wikipedia's Verifiability"). The project page mentions plans "to work in close contact with the [developers of Citation Hunt, an existing community tool that identifies unsourced statements for editors to fix] and the Wikipedia Library communities. We will pilot a set of a recommendations, powered by the new citation context dataset, to evaluate if our classifiers can help support community efforts to address the problem of unsourced statements."
(See also "Improving Wikipedia Verifiability with AI" and "Countering Disinformation by Finding Reliable Sources", below)
  • Algorithms to help community experts to identify accounts that may be linked to suspected sockpuppet accounts.
This project resulted in a working prototype by December 2020, but it appears not yet to have been put into production and made available as a tool for the intended audience (checkuser community members). It had been preceded by earlier research efforts at the Foundation as well as various independent academic publications that also tackled this detection problem.
A natural language processing (NLP) framework used in the "Discovering content inconsistencies between Wikidata and Wikipedia" project
This project (a collaboration with researchers from Koreas's KAIST, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Taiwan's NCKU) has since completed, resulting in a dataset that aligned Wikipedia and Wikidata statements using natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The project documentation on Meta-wiki doesn't mention an implementation of the system that would be directly usable by editors.
  • A daily report of articles that have recently received a high volume of traffic from social media platforms. The report helps editors detect trends that may lead to spikes of vandalism on Wikipedia helping them identify and respond faster.
This report (English Wikipedia version: User:HostBot/Social media traffic report) was made available to Wikipedia editors as a pilot project in spring 2020, which concluded at the end of 2021. (It implemented a recommndation from a 2019 report about "Patrolling on Wikipedia".) The research project page on Meta-wiki lists several conclusions, including:
  • "the organic traffic coming from external platforms like YouTube and Facebook that link to Wikipedia articles as context for examining the credibility of content is not having a significant deleterious impact on Wikipedia or placing an additional burden on patrollers." (mitigating earlier concerns that had been voiced by the Wikimedia Foundation and others when YouTube introduced these links back in 2018))
  • " early evidence suggests that the Social Media Traffic Report as an intervention has not led to a substantial change in patrolling behavior around these articles"

Furthermore, the 2020 post mentioned the (at that time already widely used) ORES system.

The efforts appear to be part of the WMF Research team's "knowledge integrity" focus, announced in February 2019 in one of four "white papers that outline our plans and priorities for the next 5 years" .

Briefly

  • See the page of the monthly Wikimedia Research Showcase for videos and slides of past presentations.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation's Research and Security teams are requesting input from researchers "to help prioritize the release of data that can be useful for your research", such as country-wise pageview and editor numbers.

Other recent publications

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.

Facebook/Meta research on "Improving Wikipedia Verifiability with AI"

From the abstract:[2]

"We develop a neural network based system, called Side [demo available at https://verifier.sideeditor.com/ ], to identify Wikipedia citations that are unlikely to support their claims, and subsequently recommend better ones from the web. We train this model on existing Wikipedia references, therefore learning from the contributions and combined wisdom of thousands of Wikipedia editors. Using crowd-sourcing, we observe that for the top 10% most likely citations to be tagged as unverifiable by our system, humans prefer our system's suggested alternatives compared to the originally cited reference 70% of the time. To validate the applicability of our system, we built a demo to engage with the English-speaking Wikipedia community and find that Side's first citation recommendation collects over 60% more preferences than existing Wikipedia citations for the same top 10% most likely unverifiable claims according to Side. Our results indicate that an AI-based system could be used, in tandem with humans, to improve the verifiability of Wikipedia."

See also research project page on Meta-wiki

"Countering Disinformation by Finding Reliable Sources: a Citation-Based Approach"

From the abstract:[3]

"Given a one sentence claim, the challenge is to automatically find a knowledge source (e.g. a book, a research article, a web page) that could support or refute the claim. We show that this capability could be learnt by observing associations between sentences in English Wikipedia and citations provided for them. Thus, we collect a corpus of over 50 million references to 24 million identified sources with the citation context from Wikipedia, and build search indices using several meaning representation methods."

New book: A Discursive Perspective on Wikipedia: More than an Encyclopaedia?

From the publisher's description::[4]

"This book provides a concise yet comprehensive guide to Wikipedia for researchers and students of linguistics, discourse and communication studies, redressing the gap in research on Wikipedia in these fields and encouraging scholars to explore Wikipedia further as a platform and a medium. Drawing on [Susan] Herring's situational and medium factors [in computer-mediated communication], as well as related developments in (critical) discourse studies, the author studies the online encyclopaedia both theoretically and empirically, examining its origins, production and consumption before turning to a discussion of its societal significance and function(s)."

"Russian Wikipedia vs Great Russian Encyclopedia: (Re)construction of Soviet Music in the Post-Soviet Internet Space"

From the abstract:[5]

"The referential texts in the Russian Wikipedia and the Great Russian Encyclopedia [...] were selected as examples for the analysis. A comparative analysis of articles on music and the composers who lived and worked in the USSR (including Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Tikhon Khrennikov, Boris Asafiev, Isaak Dunaevsky, Georgy Sviridov, Aram Khachaturian, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke) displayed a number of regularities: emphasizing previously unknown areas of music of that period ("avant-garde music", "repressed music"), replacement or disregard towards the epithet "Soviet" regarding musical phenomena and composers, and the absence of any nostalgia for Soviet musical culture in modern receptions."

References

  1. ^ Carl Miller, Melanie Smith, Oliver Marsh, Kata Balint, Chris Inskip, Francesca Visser: Information Warfare and Wikipedia https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/information-warfare-and-wikipedia/ Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), 17 October 2022
  2. ^ Petroni, Fabio; Broscheit, Samuel; Piktus, Aleksandra; Lewis, Patrick; Izacard, Gautier; Hosseini, Lucas; Dwivedi-Yu, Jane; Lomeli, Maria; Schick, Timo; Mazaré, Pierre-Emmanuel; Joulin, Armand; Grave, Edouard; Riedel, Sebastian (2022-07-08). "Improving Wikipedia Verifiability with AI". arXiv:2207.06220 [cs].
  3. ^ Przybyła, Piotr; Borkowski, Piotr; Kaczyński, Konrad (July 2022). "Countering Disinformation by Finding Reliable Sources: a Citation-Based Approach" (PDF). 2022 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). 2022 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). pp. 1–8. doi:10.1109/IJCNN55064.2022.9891941. Data: "Wikipedia Complete Citation Corpus", "Finding Reliable Sources: Evaluation Datasets", code
  4. ^ Kopf, Susanne (2022). A Discursive Perspective on Wikipedia: More than an Encyclopaedia?. Cham: Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783031110238. Closed access icon
  5. ^ Kupets, Lyubov A. (2021-06-25). "Russian Wikipedia vs Great Russian Encyclopedia: (Re)construction of Soviet Music in the Post-Soviet Internet Space". Проблемы музыкальной науки / Music Scholarship (2): 156–169. doi:10.33779/2587-6341.2021.2.156-169. ISSN 2782-3598. Retrieved 2022-10-26.




Reader comments

2022-10-31

Isabelle Belato on their Request for Adminship

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By FormalDude

The Signpost sits down with Isabelle Belato whose recent Request for Adminship (RfA) saw 237 votes and all but one of which supporting their being made a sysop.


1. Congratulations on your nearly unanimous RfA. Why do you think it was so successful?

Thanks for the congratulations! I can positively say that a big part of it was my nominators, partially due to the trust the community has put into them, which was then translated to trust in me as an editor, and partially due to their help in preparing me for my RfA. I feel very lucky to have had Barkeep and TNT as my noms. Not to toot my own horn, but I imagine my time patrolling recent changes, closing discussions and mentoring helped somewhat.


2. How was the RfA process for you overall? Was it about what you expected, better, worse?

Well, it's hard for me to say. On one hand, it was definitely better than I expected; I was sure I would receive a fair amount of opposition based on my not participating too much in AfDs or contentious areas, but that didn't come to pass. On the other hand, I knew it would attract some trolls, but I never expected to get attacked in the manner I was. In general, it was a very stressful period, compounded by the issues surrounding it, and I was very happy when it came to a close, so that I could return to my normal editing habits (I remember closing an RfC during the RfA and some user seeing that as unadvisable move, so I decided to stay away from doing anything that could cause controversy for the remainder of the RfA).


3. An administrator appears to have opposed you simply because you use they/them pronouns. Is there anything you'd like to say about this?

I decided not to participate in the various discussions that occurred after the vote mostly because whatever I'd say at the time would be influenced by my emotions, and considering how stressed I was, it wouldn't be a net positive. I did discuss these events with my nominators, as well as with a couple other editors and some friends, and I remember that my first reaction was one of genuine shock. Initially I thought it to be just another troll, but soon it became clear it was a veteran editor and administrator, and that made me upset, not because of what was said, but because of who was saying it. Having a trusted user say those things was deeply hurtful, not only to me, but to other editors too, I'm sure.


4. Have you encountered transphobia elsewhere on Wikipedia before your RfA?

Yes, both indirect and direct. As someone who spends a lot of time patrolling recent changes, it's not uncommon to see edits to the biographies of trans people that attempt to deny their queerness, or who flat out attack them. My talk page also has plenty of insults thrown by these kinds of editors. On occasion, more experienced users will be reported at ANI due to comments that are considered to be transphobic, though thankfully that's much rarer.


5. Do you think the community reacted correctly to the previously mentioned administrator's tasteless !vote?

While the discussion showed a vast amount of support by the community, and I'm deeply grateful for all the kind words people left in my talk page, it also showed me some editors don't quite understand why a comment like the one made by Athaenara is problematic, regardless of venue. Had she said this on any other space on Wikipedia, the result would have been just as damaging to the trust queer editors put into the community. It's also hard for me to ignore that some editors took this opportunity to tacitly share their support for this kind of bigotry.


6. What advice, if any, do you have for editors considering running the gauntlet?

My advice would be the same that Barkeep gave me when he first approached me, which is to wait until you are ready. This will vary widely between editors, but for me it was when I felt like I could be doing more with the tools, be it clearing backlogs at AIV or RFPP, or closing contentious discussions where the trust of the community was seen as needed. Don't be afraid to contact an administrator that you trust and ask them for an opinion on your readiness, either.


7. Does your experience give you any ideas on how to improve the RfA process?

I see my RfA as an anomaly, in that nothing exciting happened until something did, and most people forgot about the RfA itself.


See also

Category:Wikipedia RfA debriefings



Reader comments

2022-10-31

Topics, lists, submarines and Gurl.com

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By Adam Cuerden and Bri

This month we're doing a fairly minimal report. Last month, there were around fifty articles and lists to summarise, and I wasn't able to get any help for it. This month, I'm doing the amount I feel up to, which means no article summaries by me. Still have the gallery of featured pictures because it's literally the same amount of work either way there, and Bri has done featured article summaries. As always, we work a month behind so that we're not adding new content right up to publication date.

Featured articles

Twenty-four featured articles were promoted in September.

King Edgar with the Virgin Mary and St Peter
Portrait of Ælfwynn's foster-son King Edgar in the Winchester New Minster Charter of 966
Ælfwynn, wife of Æthelstan Half-King, nominated by Dudley Miles
Anglo-Saxon nobility who died in 983, chiefly known for having been foster-mother to the future King Edgar the Peaceful (shown in illustration).
BioShock 2, nominated by David Fuchs
A first-person shooter video game for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 released in 2010. It sold over three million copies.
1997–98 Gillingham F.C. season, nominated by ChrisTheDude
1963–64 Gillingham F.C. season, nominated by ChrisTheDude
1920–21 Burnley F.C. season, nominated by BigDom
Both academics and sports magazines have called the stadium the "modern cathedral". If that's true, then these (European) football seasons fulfill their seekers' quests for meaning, and who am I to argue with that?
2022 Welsh Open (snooker), nominated by Lee Vilenski
Less of a blowout than a football stadium, but still: snooker is a diversion from the tedium of being alive, and also prone to childish puns involving balls and pockets. But at any rate, Joe Perry won the tournament.
Aerial view of a highway bridge on columns crossing a river and a narrow island.
The Glenn L. Jackson Memorial Bridge carries I-205 across the Columbia River
Interstate 205 (Oregon–Washington), nominated by SounderBruce
A 37-mile (60 km) long auxiliary Interstate Highway in the Portland, Oregon and Washington suburbs, bypassing Interstate 5. It crosses the largest river in the Western United States outside of Alaska at a fortuitously placed island; unfortunately, the bridge (image shown) took the lives of three construction workers.
Wizards of Waverly Place, nominated by SatDis
A Disney sitcom whose tie-ins included merchandise, a soundtrack album and video game adaptations.
"Dance in the Dark", nominated by FrB.TG
A 2010 Lady Gaga single that isn't actually about dancing, if you get the drift. Positive reviews indicated its suitability for accompanying a workout (is that another innuendo?) and it was nominated for a Grammy – but one reviewer called it "a little bit Gaga-by-numbers".
"I Drink Wine", nominated by MaranoFan
A song from Adele's 2021 album 30, it deals with feelings stemming from her divorce from Simon Konecki. It was variously described as one of the top ten songs of 2021 (Rolling Stone), a "'standard Adele' cut" (MusicOMH), and – at over six minutes long – excessively lengthy and unfit for pop radio (Slant Magazine).
"Our Song" (Taylor Swift song), nominated by Ippantekina
This song from Taylor Swift's 2006 debut album peaked atop Billboard's Hot Country Songs for six weeks, and made seventeen-year-old Swift the youngest person to single-handedly write and sing a Hot Country Songs number one.
R2K: The Concert, nominated by Pseud 14
The first arena concert by Filipina entertainer Regine Velasquez, held on April 7 and 8, 2000, at the Araneta Coliseum; it featured a 360-degree configuration with a semi-circular plexiglass two-level stage with twin staircases, four large video screens, and an automated flying rig. A bit more than your neighborhood cafe's open mic night, in other words. The show earned Velasquez Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards.
Famous photograph of Truman grinning and holding up a copy of the newspaper that erroneously announced his defeat
Louis H. Bean wasn't fooled like many others were.
Louis H. Bean, nominated by Kavyansh.Singh
Bean was an American economic and political analyst best known for predicting Harry S. Truman's victory in the 1948 presidential election, which earned him the title "Lone Prophet" of Truman's victory from Life magazine. His analysis was based on the idea of "political tides", similar to Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.'s cyclical theory, and from identifying third party movements affecting the two-party vote share.
The Boat Race 2022, nominated by The Rambling Man
The Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford was first held in 1829 and has been held annually since 1856, except during the First and Second World Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It restarted in 2021, relocated to River Great Ouse, without spectators due to pandemic restrictions, and in 2022 returned to its usual location on River Thames. The winning Cambridge women's team had the fastest time for a women's race at the Thames; the men from Oxford won with the third-fastest time ever.
spine and front cover of hardbound book
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham, nominated by Tim riley
Playwright, novelist, short-story writer, and MI6 agent – gathering intelligence on German Samoa during World War I – with a complicated love life. He described his early attempts to be heterosexual as the greatest mistake in his life. Four and a half million copies of his books were bought in the US during his lifetime; his well-known book Of Human Bondage was partly autobiographical.
Gurl.com, nominated by lullabying
One of the first major websites aimed at teenage girls in the United States, praised for being a positive community on topics such as female sexuality, queer identity, and body positivity, as well as its inclusion of peer advice from teenage girls. It won the Webby Award in 1998 and was shut down in 2018.
Bleed American, nominated by MusicforthePeople and DannyMusicEditor
Jimmy Eat World's 2001 album containing "The Middle", considered by critics to be the band's signature song and their crossover hit, becoming "one of the most recognizable tunes of its generation, a common radio staple to this day". It had the current title when its first single was released but was renamed prior to the album's release because of the 9/11 attacks, then was renamed back to the current title in 2008.
Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine, nominated by Anarchyte
A 2013 Xbox 360, Mac, Linux and PC single- or multiplayer stealth video game (a stealth game allows the player to remain undetected by hiding, sneaking, or using disguises) later ported to a Nintendo platform as well. Turned down twice by Microsoft Game Studios before it was picked up by another studio for release, it went on to get critical raves like a 9.5/10 score from Destructoid and two awards at the Independent Games Festival. It garnered positive comparisons to the heist film Ocean's Eleven and Pac-Man.
Homo antecessor, nominated by Dunkleosteus77
An archaic human species from 1.2 to 0.8 million years ago once thought to be the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, but later reinterpreted as an offshoot from the modern human line, branching off just before the modern human/Neanderthal split. They were able to manufacture simple pebble and flake stone tools out of quartz and chert, and may not have used fire.
Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles, nominated by Your Power
2021 Disney concert film starring Billie Eilish, blending live action and animation (using motion capture and rotoscoping) in the style of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Cool World. Nominated for Grammy Award for Best Music Film and other awards.
Kathryn D. Sullivan, nominated by User:Hawkeye7 and TommyBoy
First woman to dive to the deepest part of the Earth's oceans, the Challenger Deep; aviation altitude record-holder; US Navy officer; college professor and holder of multiple honorary doctorates; space shuttle astronaut who helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope; member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; etc. In other words, an underachiever. Just kidding, really a person to put on one of your "perfect dinner guests" list if you don't mind looking like a schmuck by comparison.
A black and white sketch of men on foot fighting with swords
Roman general Scipio's son rescues his father at Battle of Ticinus
Battle of Ticinus, nominated by Gog the Mild
A battle between Hannibal and his Celtic (Gaulish) allies against the Romans in 218 BCE. Hannibal prevailed and proceeded to campaign in southern Italy for the next 12 years. The Roman leader, Publius Cornelius Scipio, was wounded during the battle and rescued from death or capture by his 16-year-old son.
WBPX-TV, nominated by Sammi Brie
A television station in Boston, Massachusetts, originally broadcasting subscription television in the 1970s – encrypted analog over-the-air broadcast television which could be decrypted with special equipment – becoming the nucleus of the Monitor Channel which lost hundreds of millions of dollars, then a Boston University for-profit operation, then finally an outlet of the Pax network, which changed its name to i in 2005 before becoming known as Ion in 2007.
Coventry ring road, nominated by Amakuru
A 2.25-mile (3.62 km) ring road in Coventry, England; with weaving sections as short as 300 yards (270 m), giving the road a reputation for being difficult to navigate.

Featured pictures

Twenty-two Featured pictures were promoted in September, including lead and footer images for this article.

Featured topics

Two featured topics were promoted in September:

Romanian record charts, nominated by Cartoon network freak
view | edit | discuss
Romanian record charts
6 articles
Romanian Top 100 number ones
Media Forest most-broadcast songs (2009)
Airplay 100 number ones
Media Forest most-broadcast songs (2010s)
Media Forest most-broadcast songs (2020s)
Overview of Angel Locsin, nominated by Pseud 14
view | edit | discuss
Angel Locsin
Featured topic
3 articles
Awards and nominations
Filmography

Featured lists

Ten featured lists were promoted in September.

Women's Professional Billiards Championship, nominated by BennyOnTheLoose
List of songs recorded by Ella Henderson, nominated by Lil-unique1
Michael Jackson singles discography, nominated by TheWikiholic
List of presidents of the United States, nominated by Kavyansh.Singh
List of municipalities in Arkansas, nominated by Mattximus and Straughn
Grace Kelly on screen and stage, nominated by Cowlibob
94th Academy Awards, nominated by RunningTiger123 and Birdienest81
GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film – Wide Release, nominated by PanagiotisZois
List of Billboard number-one R&B songs of 1953, nominated by ChrisTheDude
List of Billboard number-one R&B songs of 1954, nominated by ChrisTheDude




Reader comments

2022-10-31

We all make mistakes – don’t we?

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By Vysotsky

I've written several hundred journal and newspaper articles. For decades I've written a piece, had it corrected by an editor and then seen the article published. I write hastily, make mistakes, and am very glad the editors are not like me. So when I began writing for Wikipedia 15 years ago, being bold and just publish came as a shock to me. It was the open peer review that helped me cross the line: it’s all in the open, and Wikipedia is really "the encyclopedia anyone can edit". Which also means that your own mistakes are blatantly clear for anyone to see. Do I make mistakes? Sure, everyone does. And if you have made a few hundred thousand edits on Wiki, it is likely that you have made at least a few dozen mistakes. I can even see a pattern in my mistakes.

Katarina Blagojević-Jovanović at Hoogovens 1971 (earlier wrongly identified as Mária Ivánka)
  • Stealing copyrighted text. Well, by stealing I mean: taking two paragraphs from a ten year old text that is straight to the point. It's a deadly sin in academia. It happened to me on Wiki at least twice. It happens to others. I hope we all get busted and corrected.
  • Uploading images with no clear license. It happens a thousand times a month at Wikimedia Commons. It really happens to me too, especially with photos from 1938.
  • Writing articles about semi-notable people. It happens frequently, especially if you like minor poets and sculptors.
  • Adding incorrect photographs of people. Mistaken identities occur but why with female chess players? I really thought this Katarina (pictured) was a young Mária Ivánka.

The strength of Wikipedia is the peer review – afterwards

At first I thought the whole "be bold" thing in Wiki was a bit ridiculous. But after years of working in Wikipedia, I see it's one of the main assets of Wikipedia. "Wikis like ours develop faster when everybody helps to fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure wording is accurate, etc." True, really. But the mistakes you then inevitably make need to be corrected by fellow Wikipedians. So don’t be cross if someone tries to improve your text or images. Enjoy. This is one of the most important elements of Wikipedia.



Reader comments

2022-10-31

Mama, they're in love with a criminal

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By Igordebraga, SSSB and YttriumShrew
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, SSSB and YttriumShrew.

October is hailed as a month for scares due to Halloween. And nowhere it's clearer than readers flocking in record numbers to the article on a cannibal serial killer documented on Netflix.

My innocent victims are slaughtered with wrath and despise (September 25 to October 1)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Jeffrey Dahmer 17,531,816 You know Netflix has too much of a pull on people when a show on a serial killer manages to bring more views than the death of Queen Elizabeth (thankfully Kobe Bryant is still the most viewed...). The Ryan Murphy-produced Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has Evan Peters playing the "Milwaukee Cannibal" who killed seventeen men, indulging in cannibalism and necrophilia with the bodies afterwards, before getting arrested in 1991, and three years later was beaten to death in prison by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver (played in the miniseries by Furly Mac).
2 Christopher Scarver 3,878,592
3 Coolio 2,321,416 Rapper Artis Leon Ivey Jr., who got gangsta rap to the top of the charts with "Gangsta's Paradise", died at the age of 59. Among the celebrities who mourned Coolio's death was "Weird Al" Yankovic, who famously parodied that song with "Amish Paradise".
4 Marilyn Monroe 2,053,648 Back to Netflix, Blonde (#17) chronicled the life of the quintessential sex symbol in the 60th anniversary of her death, with Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane Masterton.
5 Ponniyin Selvan: I 1,622,210 Indian cinema notches up a new entry now, with a Tamil adaptation of a beloved book of the same name. Set in the adolescent Chola empire and extremely complex (as you can tell from this terrifying character chart, left), the film has been received well and opened strongly at the box office.
6 Evan Peters 1,323,957 The best cinematic Quicksilver plays #1 (see above).
7 John Wayne Gacy 1,306,735 The previous serial killer to have been showcased on Netflix has a brief appearance in #1's show, played by Dominic Burgess.
8 House of the Dragon 1,137,206 #5 has been compared to Game of Thrones due to its complex and dramatic plot and medieval setting. How fitting that the Game of Thrones prequel is still here.
9 Giorgia Meloni 1,085,149 Following the 2022 Italian general election, this woman is likely to be the new Italian prime minister. A conservative right-wing nationalist and populist, who is sometimes described as far-right, as well as a homophobe, racist and conspiracy theorist, something I would agree with after reading the political positions listed on her article.
10 Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story 1,048,481 Ryan Murphy already chronicled real life murders in American Crime Story, so now he has expanded to a miniseries on the reprehensible human being at #1. Whose death in prison was partially racially motivated, as nine of Dahmer's victims were Black, and the perpetrator (#2) went on to also bludgeon to death Jesse Anderson (played in the show by Jeff Harms), who killed his wife and tried to frame two African Americans for it.

Distributor of pain, your loss becomes my gain (October 2 to 8)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Jeffrey Dahmer 10,667,069 No article ever had 10 million views in consecutive weeks. And then it happens to this long dead serial killer because of a show on Netflix. And again the follow-up is the guy who murdered the "Milwaukee Cannibal" in prison.
2 Christopher Scarver 2,313,242
3 Ponniyin Selvan: I 2,280,265 The current biggest Indian film is the first part of this Tamil epic, which follows the eponymous son of the Kaveri before he eventually becomes the formidable emperor Rajaraja Chola I.
4 Marilyn Monroe 2,053,648 Just like last week, the first article off the podium is quintessential sex symbol Norma Jeane Mortenson, who in the 60th anniversary of her death got a Netflix movie focusing on her life struggles, Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates's novel offering a fictionalized take on Marilyn's life (previously adapted into a 2001 miniseries). Criticisms were raised toward having so much heavy content that it borders on exploitation (this here writer also objected to the director stretching scenes in a way reminiscent of some dull Western he directed once), but nonetheless Ana de Armas under extensive make-up made a perfect fit for Marilyn.
5 Loretta Lynn 1,333,810 One of the biggest names in country music with songs like "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)" (relevant link) and 57 years of touring prior to a stroke in 2017, Loretta Lynn died at the age of 90.
6 John Wayne Gacy 1,233,934 Another serial killer showcased on Netflix, the "Killer Clown" who has a brief appearance in #1's show.
7 Erling Haaland 1,191,106 One of the few high profile footballers who won't get a views spike when the 2022 FIFA World Cup starts next month (his nation failing to qualify), this Norwegian striker who plays for Manchester City became the first player in Premier League history to have hat tricks in three consecutive home games.
8 2022 Brazilian general election 1,142,067 Cracked.com once accurately described this as the only country whose elections managed to be as screwed as the American ones. And the worst part is that it's not over, as the representatives and most state governors were elected but there is a second round for closer races, most importantly for president, currently led by a former ruler whose government had much corruption but at least couldn't be qualified as a total trainwreck like its opposition.
9 House of the Dragon 1,137,206 Still here in its seventh week, presumably because Wikipedia isn't too dark. (nor full of terrors)
10 Empress Elisabeth of Austria 969,751 And now for a less objectionable subject of a Netflix historical drama, the monarch also known as Sissi is the main character of German show The Empress. The show seemingly ends early in her life as Empress, so maybe it will earn more seasons?

A rat runs down the alley, and a chill runs down your spine (October 9 to 15)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Jeffrey Dahmer 5,835,008 This guy again, only the second article with more than 5 million views for four weeks straight after one of the few things as bad as a cannibal serial killer.
2 Robbie Coltrane 2,216,013 This award winning Scottish comedian and actor died this week, aged 72. Perhaps best well known for his role of Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter series, and Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky in James Bond, Coltrane has also won the Peter Sellers Award for Comedy and a British Academy Scotland Award for outstanding contribution to film and television.
3 Angela Lansbury 1,875,393 A British actress who died at 96, leaving behind an extensive career (a Tony Award-winning foray in theater, playing Jessica Fletcher in the TV show Murder, She Wrote, and among other movies voicing Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast) that even earned her a Dame title; there's even a posthumous role to be released in the Knives Out sequel.
4 House of the Dragon 1,388,479 The Game of Thrones prequel show remains here, with two episodes left of its inaugural season.
5 Christopher Scarver 1,249,177 As documented on Netflix, #1's life in prison was ended when this fellow inmate beat him to death with a dumbbell bar.
6 Michael J. Fox 1,099,735 It's been 7 years since 2015 turned out not to be that much like Back to the Future Part II. Well, 2022 still offered another opportunity for Marty McFly to reunite with Christopher Lloyd at New York Comic Con (and next month the Academy will give him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recognizing the actor's work regarding the disease that pushed him into semi-retirement with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research).
7 Halloween Ends 1,084,464 One year after the polarizing Halloween Kills, the David Gordon Green-directed trilogy that started by ignoring all previous Halloween sequels in 2018 ended in an equally divisive way, specially because focusing on a Michael Myers copycat (another slasher franchise tried that before...) rather than The Shape himself is a sure way to displease much of your audience, no matter if you finally give a Michael-Laurie Strode confrontation in the ending. No matter what, this will probably take the box office by storm this weekend.
8 Ponniyin Selvan: I 985,737 Kollywood's highest grossing movie of the year, an adaptation of a Tamil five part epic about to be turned into two movies.
9 Deaths in 2022 935,480 No one ever died for my sins in hell
As far as I can tell
At least the ones I've gotten away with!
10 The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power 903,997 Season 1 ended with the jewelry of the title starting being forged - namely the "Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky" - and the reveal of Sauron, who is bound to make the rest of the rings, including "My Precious". Season 2 is already in production.

You won't believe the things I've done, and the killing is just for fun (October 16 to 22)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Jeffrey Dahmer 3,100,706 Fascination with this serial killer's Netflix show managed to make him both become the first article with five straight #1 appearances since a terrible thing from 2020 and a terrible thing from 1986 (the latter also boosted by a TV show!) and overtake the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as the most viewed article of the year. (I for one can't wait for The Crown to possibly make the current third place push the Milwaukee Cannibal off the top spot)
2 Black Adam (film) 1,745,481 The DC Extended Universe returns by bringing in Dwayne Johnson as Teth-Adam, who is essentially a darker version of Shazam hard to define morality-wise (as put by DC League of Super-Pets, "Anti-hero. It’s basically exactly like a regular hero, except way cooler. You make up your own rules, and then you break ’em. Also you can ignore most moral and ethical conventions because no one can stop you." "Yeah, that sounds a lot like a villain."). In spite of this transgressive protagonist nature, the movie has enough shortcomings to earn mixed reviews, but audiences - especially those already into superheroes or the larger-than-life star - don't care as Black Adam is set to become one of The Rock's biggest box office openings.
3 Liz Truss 1,742,894 Forty-five days.[a] That's how long Liz Truss lasted as prime minister of the United Kingdom. Which is especially amazing when you consider that her tenure was only that long because the Queen died and delayed her plans for two weeks. Her shambolic tenure in office was defined by the TRUE TORY BUDGET her government announced, which included large-scale, unfunded tax cuts for people with lots of money. Weirdly, this turned out to be a bad idea, to the point of warranting emergency intervention from the Bank of England and Truss being forced to reverse the entire policy, and then forced to resign. Wonder who's next...
4 Kantara (film) 1,463,934 Sandalwood put out this picture set in the eponymous mystical forest, as a buffalo racer and a forest service officer come up against a long-held curse. Unlike most recent Bollywood releases, many of which have at best been described as anticlimaxes, this one started out small before surging into a hit, spurred by glowing reviews and very positive audience reception. Hombale Films now hold the top three spots on the list of highest-grossing Kannada films.
5 House of the Dragon 1,249,171 Only one episode left for HBO's Game of Thrones prequel, although the suspense was slightly broken after someone leaked the finale ahead of its release.
6 The Watcher (2022 TV series) 1,048,464 Something for those who didn't have enough Ryan Murphy Netflix thrillers with #1's show.
7 Deaths in 2022 899,133 There's no earthly way of knowing
What was in your heart when it stopped going...
8 Halloween Ends 799,724 Showing how the final chapter of the Michael Myers story (at least until another attempt at rebooting the franchise...) ended up disappointing too many people, the second weekend box office had such a steep drop (80%!) that the movie went from the top spot to fourth, behind #2, star-studded newcomer Ticket to Paradise, and, most damningly, fellow horror movie Smile, which has been in theaters for a month!
9 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup 748,064 The latest edition of the Whacky-Cricket World Cup began play this week, most of which was taken up by the pools to decide which of the teams that didn't auto-qualify would make the main pools; SPOILERS: Ireland, Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. In a major shock, the West Indies were knocked out early. Then the main pools started on Saturday, and hosts and defending champions Australia got off to a bad start after New Zealand thrashed them in the opening game thanks to Smashy and Half-Century Man.
10 Black Adam 709,911 Interest in the film has many readers wanting to know more about the origins of comic book character. Unlike Dwayne Johnson who portrays Black Adam in the 2022 film the comic book character is depicted with black hair and pointy ears. Even after reading the article, I still no idea why his ears are pointy.
  1. ^ Technically slightly longer than that, if you count the few days the Conservatives are taking to elect a new leader.

You broke my will, but what a thrill (October 23 to 29)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Rishi Sunak 7,898,149 The UK has a shiny new Prime Minister, the first of British Asian and Hindu descent, as well as the first appointed by King Charles III. Sunak has also been described by some sources as "the British equivalent of Barack Obama", whose appointment as US President was of a similar nature to Sunak's appointment as UK PM. His party is now Ready for Rishi after realising that wanting Liz for Leader a month ago was a big mistake. Sunak previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer during Boris Johnson's premiership, being best known for the schemes he and the government released during the early days of the goddamned pandemic. Sunak was appointed PM and Leader of the Conservative Party after being elected unopposed (the first PM to be elected unopposed since Gordon Brown) in the October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, held after his predecessor Liz Truss was forced out amid a government credibility crisis and was beaten by a lettuce. Sunak takes office during a turbulent time for his party, with the Conservatives way behind Labour in the polls, leaving many to suspect a Labour landslide victory in the next general election is highly likely. Sunak also has a daunting economic downturn and the Ukraine war to deal with. It's not yet known how Sunak exactly plans to turn things around to secure another Conservative election victory, or if he'll even be able to achieve this at all, but we can only hope he at least lasts longer than his predecessor did.
2 Leslie Jordan 2,374,465 The American actor, comedian, writer, and singer died this week after a car crash.
3 Akshata Murty 2,047,488 #1's wife and the daughter of #10.
4 Jeffrey Dahmer 1,990,852 After five weeks, this is finally off the top spot. Nevermind we're still disgusted the most viewed article of the year so far, which should've gone to either the Ukraine war or the late English queen, is instead a dead serial killer due to a Netflix show, and dreading the possibility Dahmer could still be there when 2022 ends. But there's still two months to go before then, so we can only hope one of those two topics ends up winning instead (with the fifth season of The Crown on the way, this is likely to happen)
5 ICC Men's T20 World Cup 1,881,064 Australia's major cricket grounds are busy hosting this tournament, incluing MCG hosting the match.
6 Black Adam (film) 1,556,428 No matter if reviewers were unimpressed with Dwayne Johnson as a villain/anti-hero butting heads with the Justice Society of America before the studio announces his inevitable confrontation with Shazam (and other heroes, if the credits scene is any indication), audiences already made Black Adam earn $250 million in two weeks.
7 Jerry Lee Lewis 1,464,110 The 1950s "goodness gracious, Great Balls of Fire!" rock and roll star died this week at the age of 87, in a career worthy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even if his fame never recovered from the controversy of marrying a 13 year old cousin (as documented in a biopic with Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder).
8 House of the Dragon 1,374,790 The first season of the Targaryen show finished, renewing some people's faith in Westeros after that letdown of 3 years ago and the fact The Winds of Winter never seems to be closer to completion.
9 Diwali 1,246,891 Diwali is a festival of lights
Let me tell you something
Tonight has been one crazy night
So put on your saris
It's time to celebrate Diwali...
10 N. R. Narayana Murthy 1,214,824 #1's father-in-law, an Indian billionaire who founded Infosys.

Exclusions

  • These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.



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2022-10-31

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By Adam Cuerden


5 Years Ago: October 2017

Tajikistan

One of the more baffling things this issue was the humour section, which has either aged terribly or was always odd. Moving on, though, newswise, there's two things worth pulling out from this month. From "In the media":

Tajikistan Demands Wikipedia "correct spelling mistakes": The state language committee of Tajikistan has threatened legal action over spelling mistakes in the Tajik language Wikipedia; the committee "warns the errors violate the country's state-language law and therefore make Wikipedia legally liable for the mistakes." (Reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

There doesn't appear to be an update, but as the original source says, "It remains unclear whether or even how Tajik authorities could potentially take legal action against Wikipedia".

Secondly, there's a rather good interview with Kiwix creator Emmanuel Engelhart (aka "Kelson") was featured in this issue, but given readers might not be familiar with Kiwix, I think we'd be wise to take our sample from the "What Kiwix is" part of the interview:

As we noted in a 2014 profile of Kiwix, the software "uses all of Wikipedia's content through the Parsoid wiki parser to package articles into an open source .zim file that can be read by the special Kiwix browser. Since Kiwix was released in 2007, dozens of languages of Wikipedia have been made available as .zim files, as has other free content, such as Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikivoyage."
In addition to Wikimedia content, Kiwix now contains TED talks, the Stack Exchange websites, all of Project Gutenberg, and many YouTube educational channels. Anne and Emmanuel chatted about how video and smart phones are changing the offline landscape—and where Kiwix plans to go from here.

10 years ago: October 2012

In October 2012, we had a proposal for formalising crossovers between education and Wikipedia – failed, from what I can tell; the process to bring Wikivoyage into Wikimedia continued, and video support was massively upgraded. However, the 1 October issue had two huge stories I'd like to focus on, starting with an interview with Jimmy Wales about paid editing. Now, in my opinion, the inciting factor for the interview was overblown: A Wikipedian's company worked with Monmouth and Gibraltar to put up QR codes linking to Wikipedia pages for various landmarks, and was paid for it, which is... rather borderline.

However, Jimmy Wales sets out a clear distinction that helps explain how to judge what is and isn't acceptable. Here's a sample of the interview:

When was the first time paid editing came onto your radar? When you conceived of Wikipedia, did you ever imagine that editors would be financially compensated for their work, or that companies would employ people to influence articles?
From the beginning, it was something I thought we should pay attention to and prevent to the maximum extent possible. I remember the feeling of the Internet community – the appropriate cynicism – when Yahoo introduced a system whereby you could pay them for expedited review of your website for possible inclusion in their directory. Allegedly, such review would be neutral with no guarantees, but many people quite properly had doubts.
It was obvious even then that there are some people who are willing to act immorally.
You've been the most visible and strident promoter of the "bright line" rule prohibiting direct editing by paid editors. What influenced your thinking around this practice, and why do you think it is so important?
The "bright line" rule is simply that if you are a paid advocate, you should disclose your conflict of interest and never edit article space directly. You are free to enter into a dialogue with the community on talk pages, and to suggest edits or even complete new articles or versions of articles by posting them in your user space.
I've been an advocate of this because I think it makes a lot of complicated problems vanish completely. First, it avoids the sort of deep embarrassment and bad press for the client that has become common. Second, it answers the concerns that some people have about how to interact with Wikipedia as an advocate. It's almost impossible (assuming you behave in a polite manner) to get into trouble suggesting things on a talk page. And finally: it works. There are easy means to escalate issues if you are having a problem. There is simply no excuse for editing directly.
In my reading, WP:COI at least allows uncontroversial or minor changes, and at most permits any non-promotional edits, even major ones, although they are "strongly discouraged". From the 2009 paid editing RfC to the 2012 COI RfC, a direct prohibition of paid editing has failed to gain consensus. Yet you've described those who support or tolerate paid editing as an extreme minority. Do you agree that the bright line rule is not policy? If it's not, why do you think the community hasn't implemented it yet?
One of the biggest problems in this area is a lack of precision in talking about this. Even in your question, you say "paid editing" but that's much too broad and tends to confuse the issue quite badly. If a university decides to encourage their professors to edit Wikipedia as a public service as a part of their paid duties, that's a wonderful thing (so long as they steer clear of advocacy!). It's paid advocacy that we should be talking about.
I'm unaware of any serious arguments that we should welcome paid advocates into Wikipedia to edit articles about which they have a financial conflict of interest. (To be clear, there are a few people who argue in favor of that, but their arguments are so implausible that it is difficult to take them seriously.)
You've made a distinction between an employed academic versus a PR professional – the first editing in their free time in the area of their expertise and the second as a tainted advocate who shouldn't edit directly at all. Does 'advocacy' lie in the person (and their context) or only the person's behavior?
Both are relevant. If you're a PR professional editing on behalf of your client, then hiding behind the excuse that you're only making NPOV edits doesn't cut it with me at all. There's simply no reason to do that, when working with the community openly, honestly, and editing only talkpages is more effective.

Secondly, this was the start of the problematic phasing out of Toolserver in favour of Wikimedia Labs, as reported in our "Technology report" for 1 October:

The Toolserver is an external service hosting the hundreds of webpages and scripts (collectively known as "tools") that assist Wikimedia communities in dozens of mostly menial tasks. Few people think that it has been operating well recently; the problems, which include high database replication lag and periods of total downtime, have caused considerable disruption to the Toolserver's usual functions. Those functions are highly valued by many Wikimedia communities, comprising data reports on the relationships between pages, categories, images, and external links; support for Wiki Loves Monuments, OpenStreetMap and GLAM projects; talk-page archiving services; edit counters; and tools aimed at easing many automated administrative processes such as the account and unblock request processes on several major wikis, as well as cross-wiki abuse detection.
How did the Toolserver start?
It was originally set up in 2005 through the donation by Sun Microsystems of servers to Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE); so it was almost by coincidence that the German chapter was prompted to take on responsibility for the project. WMDE has since invested heavily in Toolserver infrastructure and its operations—an unusually global role for a chapter, resulting from the particular nature of its revenue streams and German charity laws. There has been in-kind support from the Wikimedia Foundation, mostly in the form of database replication and space in its Amsterdam data centre (valued at US$65k a year), as well as financial grants to expand the hardware (example). Nevertheless, WMDE still makes up the bulk of the general budget of about €100k (US$130k); other chapters, such as Wikimedia UK, have also made smaller contributions.
Wikimedia Labs vs Toolserver: a comedy of errors?
In 2011, the Foundation announced the creation of Wikimedia Labs, a much better funded project that among other things aimed to mimic the Toolserver's functionality by mid-2013. At the same time, Erik Möller, the WMF's director of engineering, announced that the Foundation would no longer be supporting the Toolserver financially, but would continue to provide the same in-kind support as it had done previously.
DaB is the volunteer who administers the Toolserver, and who in the process has acquired unique expertise for running the system. (WMDE has also contracted Marlen Caemmerer to assist in Toolserver administration since October 2011.) DaB told the Signpost that there is a simple reason for the recent degradation in performance: the Toolserver's hardware was not added to in 2012, while more tools have been written and more people are using the tools. The German chapter, he says, has refused his request to extend the hardware infrastructure, giving only a vague commitment of support. But its September forward planning allocates just a fraction of last year's funding.

That said, our reporting was out of date even then. As documented on the Meta page Future of Toolserver, in September:

Erik (WMF) clarified that it's WMF's decision, on its end, to discontinue services to Toolserver at some point:

However, for our part, we will not continue to support the current arrangement (DB replication, hosting in our data-center, etc.) indefinitely. The timeline we've discussed with Wikimedia Germany is roughly as follows:

  • Wind down new account creation on toolserver by Q2 of 2013 calendar year
  • Decommission toolserver by December 2013

However, we did explain the disaster that inevitably did ensue in our report:

[...]Hersfold was closely involved in writing the "unblock ticket request system" (UTRS), which allows blocked users—including innocent parties caught up in range-blocks—to appeal their blocks. UTRS, created only recently and now officially mandated by the Foundation, is written for the Toolserver, not the Labs environment. Hersfold told the Signpost:

How Labs functions seems to be almost completely different from how the Toolserver functions. We've been told multiple times that Labs will provide lots of "beefy" infrastructure for tools development; ... users will be able to set up virtual machines, or "instances" ... to handle their development, and submit new programming code to a shared location. As one may expect from the Foundation, it's a very collaborative setup. Once inside their instance, a user can more-or-less do whatever they want; install MediaWiki, run a bot, set up web pages for tools, whatever. But most people on the Toolserver don't need "beefy"; we just need a web server that will let us run our tools and access the databases holding information about Wikipedia and the other projects. If someone needed "beefy," they'd have set up their own server ages ago. While Labs is all swishy and fancy (and presumably has less downtime than the Toolserver), it's an environment we're all completely unused to, and perhaps worst of all, it provides no access to the Wikimedia databases, which will prevent most tools and bots from working at all. Supposedly this functionality will be available at some point in the future [editor's note: planned for the first quarter of 2013] ... I don't think either organization fully realizes how much Wikipedia, the Commons, and all the other projects rely on the tools provided by the Toolserver ... [if it goes,] most of the tools and bots we take for granted will suddenly cease to function.

It was an awkward transition that would take years and a ridiculous amount of recoding to fully recover from. There's an entire page listing replacements, some of them without all the same functionality, that could be used after Toolserver's final shutdown in 2014. Here's a list of all the tools Toolserver had, several of which I believe never actually migrated.

15 years ago: October 2007

October 2007 introduced WikiProject reports to The Signpost, a feature that, while less used nowadays (because no-one's been interested in writing it, and WikiProjects as a whole seem to be a lot less active, with a few major exceptions), would be a regular feature for most of the Signpost's run; we saw a WikiWorld comic that was since deleted, Wikimedia Commons reached two million files (it now has around eighty-six million). In sadder news, we reported on the death of historian Roy Rosenzweig, author of one of the first scholarly papers to study Wikipedia, and the death of Wikipedian Robert Braunwart from melanoma.

I think the "In the News" for 1 October best reflected that strange early period of Wikipedia:

Jimbo sparks deletion debate
Wikipedia wars erupt - Jimmy Wales created a one-sentence article about a popular gathering spot in South Africa, Mzoli's, which was originally speedily deleted and then taken to AfD. Some accused others of affording a God-like status to the Wikipedia co-founder, while Wales accused his detractors of bad faith. This incident has refocused attention on the debate between quality and quantity, and because the site has just reached the two-million article mark, the article notes that making an original contribution is harder. The debate between inclusionists and deletionists is framed as one between newer members of the project, and older members who understand that some of the deletions they have made are wrong.

...Whereas the "In the News" for 15 October showed just how much things stay the same:

Deletionists and inclusionists
Delete generation rips encyclopedia apart - The article presents the view that administrators are divided into deletionists and inclusionists, two diametrically opposed schools of thought about the inclusion of content into Wikipedia. The article reviews the deletionist and inclusionist arguments, and states that "notability debate has spread across the discussions like a rash". There is a focus on the deletion of stubs - in particular, the debate over Mzoli's - and how some Wikipedians have changed their ways, reflecting back on the "old times".




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