This August, Esra'a Al Shafei was replaced on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees by Mayree Clark. Esra'a is a Bahraini civil rights activist who served on an "Appointed Seat" on the Board of Trustees for nearly 8 years (with nine years being the current term limit). She first joined the Board in December 2017; only two current BoT members have served for longer. A board resolution notes that it was Esra'a who "informed the Chair of the Board of her decision to resign from the Board", and OwenBlacker confirmed in a comment that she "chose to stand down voluntarily before the end of her term".

The remainder of her term, until December 2026, will be served by Mayree Clark. Mayree currently serves on the Deutsche Bank AG Supervisory Board, and has previously served on the boards of various financial, software and philanthropic organisations. In Wikimedia spaces, Mayree was most prominently a member of Wikimedia Endowment Board since 2024.

According to a press release by the Foundation, Board Chair Nataliia Tymkiv said

"Mayree will strengthen the connection between the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Endowment, as we share a commitment to protect the sustainability and future of the Wikimedia projects in a pivotal moment for access to knowledge."

This news came mere weeks before the Board of Trustees made controversial changes to the 2025 BoT elections. For further coverage of those, see Interview and Special report in this issue. – S, H

WMF announced that the temporary accounts feature (formerly known as IP masking) will be rolled out on English Wikipedia on November 4. It involves restricting the ability to view the IP addresses of logged-out editors; only users who are either admins or hold the newly created "Temporary account IP viewer" user right will be able to do so. Their usage of the "IP Information tool" also has to abide by a new WMF policy.

Temporary accounts were last covered by The Signpost in the 2 October and 27 February issues. – B, S, H

A graph generated by TestUser345 and brought to the attention of The Signpost shows that the number of edits made by accounts blocked due to large language model usage is doubling around every 100 days, per this SQL query. Note the graph has a logarithmic scale on the right-hand axis. – B

The Arbitration Committee announced the resignation of members Worm That Turned and Liz. Both attained seats in the December 2024 election (see prior Signpost coverage).

Barring any more changes, there will be nine vacant seats at the upcoming December elections, joining the 6 currently-seated members. For comparison, the 2023 and 2024 elections appointed 8 and 9 Arbitrators, respectively. – B, S

Partially coinciding with the above, the next Administrator Elections are scheduled to be held in December 2025. The Call for Candidates is scheduled to open from 25 November, with candidate sign ups open for a week. After the July 2025 elections, there were some tweaks to the Admin Elections process via the RFC phase. – S

The Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC) was appointed. The Committee was announced in 2024, with the appointment process stretching out for half a year. GRDC was last covered by The Signpost in the April 2025 issue.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) made its first ruling in August, declaring systemic failure on the Uzbek Wikipedia. U4C also appointed two non-voting members - Denis Barthel (talk · contribs) and Ferien (talk · contribs). The Committee was last covered by The Signpost in the August 2025 issue.

Earlier this year, three overlapping community RFCs were initiated regarding the future of Wikispore and Wikinews. The future of the two projects came under jeopardy with two recent consultations and subsequent announcements from the Board of Trustees' Sister Projects Task Force. It is currently unclear what results from these proposals, or the initial consultations. The Task Force was last covered by The Signpost in the July 2025 issue.

The Affiliations Committee (AffCom) recently announced a pause on recognition of new User Groups, Chapters, and Thematic Organizations until March 31, 2026. The announcement cited a paper co-written by WMF staff and affiliate leaders about the Wikimedia movement's affiliate ecosystem. The Committee was last covered by The Signpost in the 1 May 2025 issue.

Earlier this month, the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) made nine recommendations to the Product and Technology department about how to improve product updates and community trust. The council was formed in October 2024 in a one year pilot, it is unclear what happens to it now. The PTAC was last covered by The Signpost in the 27 February 2025 issue. – S

Here is some news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletins of the last 6 months.

Dark Mode will be rolled out on all remaining Wikimedia sites on October 29.

Search Suggestions was deployed on English Wikipedia, giving logged-out users article suggestions on the search bar. In September, the Growth team rolled out "Add a Link" to all users on English Wikipedia. This feature gives AI recommendations to potential editors for potential links that could be added to articles.

Last month, the Community Tech team announced a new extension for the Community Wishlist. In particular, the team seeks feedback on Multiple Watchlists, a feature to allow editors to maintain multiple private watchlists. Earlier this year, a pilot project was started on English Wikipedia to support community requests for resources.

In July, the Knowledge Equity Fund (launched in 2020 with $4.5 million) announced a Final Round of grants, distributing its remaining funds of USD 819,000 in form of "top up grants" to six of its previously selected final grantees (Signpost coverage) and four "Connected Grants" to Wikimedia movement organisations "who will pair closely with one of the grantees to collaborate together", the latter being a reaction to community feedback.

Wikimania 2026 will be held in Paris from 21 July to 25 July 2026. Scholarships for the conference are currently open, and will close on 31 October 2025. – S, H

• Last month, Ergo Sum (talk · contribs) was desysopped after a recall petition was certified.
• The first Request for adminship since April (stats, see footnote re July elections) was successful. The Signpost welcomes our newest administrator, Toadspike, selected by a community vote of 245 support, 0 oppose, 1 neutral. It was the fourth successful Request for adminship this year.

Conflict of Interest note – Some of these events directly relate to a member of the Signpost team, who however was not involved in writing and editing this piece.

Earlier this month, the WMF Board made an unprecedented decision to disqualify two candidates for the Board, just days before the start of the community voting period. Naturally, that led to significant controversy, including protests and boycotts. This article covers the timeline of events leading up to this.

This issue's Interview section features interviews with the two disqualified candidates (Lane and Ravan), as well as WMF Board members Maciej Nadzikiewicz and Lorenzo Losa.

The Board of Trustees (BoT) is the governing body for the Wikimedia Foundation, and oversees high-level decisions, such as appointing the CEO or approving the WMF annual plan. The Board currently has twelve members, five of whom are appointed by the Board itself, "for their subject matter expertise". One seat is reserved for Jimbo Wales, while six Board seats are "elected" by the community.

Historically, two of the six elected seats were chosen by Wikimedia Affiliates. Since the 2022 vote, the two processes have been combined in a Community-and-Affiliates selection process. In 2022 and 2024, this process involved Affiliates shortlisting candidates (if necessary for keeping the number of candidates below a limit), followed by a final community vote.

The results of the community process, while described as "elections", are officially considered non-binding recommendations, with the Board itself having final say. (See the 2006 Wikimedia Foundation membership controversy for historical background.) Generally, the Board or WMF has not interfered in this community voting, with the closest example being the removal of James Heilman from the Board during the WMF scandals of 2016.

Until 2020, the community voting process had also been enshrined in the Foundation's bylaws. In December of that year, the Board enacted changes to the bylaws which removed this majority requirement, and changed the references to "community voting" and "a process determined by Affiliates collectively" into a more vague requirement for a "Community and/or Affiliate nomination process".

These bylaw changes generated considerable community debate when they were first presented in draft form (Signpost coverage), also because they removed a requirement that these community- and affiliate-selected seats had to make up the "majority of the Board Trustee positions, without counting the Community Founder Trustee position". (After much debate, a narrower clause was added to the final version that imposes this condition only at the time of appointing a new Board-selected trustee.) Among those who voiced concerns was none other than Jimmy Wales (Signpost coverage: "WMF Board considering the removal of Jimmy Wales' trustee position amid controversy over future of community elections"), who stated that "I will personally only support a final revision which explicitly includes community voting". Wales observed at the time that –

In the past few years, there have been several crises that have made it increasingly clear to me: the biggest problem on the board is not a lack of professional expertise, but rather a lack of community representation and control. [...]

I am deeply concerned about the tone of some of the latest [as of November 2020] proposals from some quarters: a reluctance to be firmly clear that community control – in the form of voting and not just some vague "community-sourced board members" language that might mean anything or nothing – is not negotiable.

In the end, though, the changes were approved unanimously, and the 2020 version of the bylaws remains in place today. However, perhaps because of the controversies at the time, a system of large-scale community voting remained in place where WMF did not exert major influence on the slate of candidates being voted on (unlike the affiliate organizations, who now determine the aforementioned candidate shortlist).

The 2025 WMF BoT election process started in May 2025. The elections were called to replace two outgoing trustees, Mike Peel and Shani Evenstein Sigalov. Out of seventeen applicants, twelve were deemed eligible. In the shortlisting process, Affiliates selected six of those candidates for final voting.

On 10 August, The Jerusalem Post published an article about Ravan al-Taie, an Iraqi woman and one of the six shortlisted candidates, titled "Wikimedia Foundation trustee candidate denies use of rape on Oct. 7, posts Hamas symbol" (see below for Ravan's defence). It mentioned that Ravan, a member of multiple Wikimedia movement committees and affiliates, was being described as an "anti-Israeli candidate" by "knowledge expert Dr. Shlomit Aharoni Lir" (the author of a controversial 2024 report titled "The Bias Against Israel on Wikipedia", see Signpost coverage). The story was picked up by a couple of conservative news outlets, the Washington Examiner on 20 August 2025 and the Jewish News Syndicate on 3 September 2025.

On 21 August, days after the news story, the Board's Governance Committee and the Elections Committee announced a change, stating that "the background checks and media checks and Governance Committee interviews for all six shortlisted candidates" would be conducted "now rather than after the close of the vote". This involved moving the start of the voting period from August 27 to October 8.

The Governance Committee consists of three trustees: Shani Evenstein Sigalov and Lorenzo Losa (two community- and affiliate-selected Board members), and Raju Narisetti (board-appointed). Narisetti had joined the Governance Committee earlier this year, taking over the committee chair position from outgoing community- and affiliate-selected trustee Dariusz Jemielniak, who had been chairing the committee and its predecessor since 2021.

The announcement was quickly followed by an FAQ. This stated, among other things:

What kinds of issues may disqualify a candidate from being seated and what might be announced if a candidate is disqualified?

[...] The checks will determine legal requirements, the ability of a candidate to fulfill the duties of a Trustee, as well as a determination of temperament, judgment, and discretion that comes from the Governance Committee interview and the information collected in the media and background checks. This process has been in place for several years and is regularly evaluated to ensure it meets the needs of the Board. [...]

If any candidate is disqualified through this process, will one of the six non-shortlisted candidates be brought in as a finalist?

No, we will not go back to the non-shortlisted candidates and add any to this process. We are changing only the timing of when the background and media checks are run to determine if each candidate can be seated before voting takes place, given the organisation's increased visibility and potential higher risks to individuals. [...]

On 1 October, the Board voted in a brand new Candidate Review Process, which was shared publicly the same day. Its preamble stresses the authority of the Governance Committee:

The Governance Committee decides when a candidate is suitable for the full Board to consider to be appointed as a Trustee. The Governance Committee bases its decisions on information it obtains from background checks, media checks, legal assessments, interviews, and reference checks.

The section on "Background checks, media checks, and legal assessments" includes –

Questions for Legal to consider:

• [...]
• Did the checks reveal any behavior that could be seen as violating the Board’s code of conduct or the Universal Code of Conduct?
• Did the checks reveal any relationships that may create a conflict of interest for the candidate?
• Did the checks reveal any information that suggests the candidate would create reputational, financial, operational, or other types of risk for the Foundation if they were appointed as a Trustee?

On 3 October 2025, less than two days after the resolution was passed (and five days before the community vote was due to start), WMF Board chair Nataliia Tymkiv announced on the Wikimedia-l mailing list (also copied on Meta-Wiki) that –

the Board has unanimously decided that four candidates will be on the ballot for the 2025 elections: Bobby Shabangu, James Alexander, Michał Buczyński, and Wojciech Pędzich.

That meant that two candidates – neither of them mentioned by name in Nataliia's statement – had been quietly dropped from the group of six that had made it through the affiliate shortlisting process:

• Ravan Al-Taie, the Iraqi Wikimedian who had been the subject of the above mentioned Jerusalem Post article and who in 2015 was one of three Wikipedians joining Jimmy Wales, then-CEO Lila Tretikov and then-Board chair Patricio Lorente to receive the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation at a ceremony presided over by the King and Queen of Spain (Signpost coverage);
• Lane Rasberry, a data scientist and Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Virginia School of Data Science as well as a longstanding contributor to The Signpost who has authored or appeared as an interviewee in many scholarly and media publications about Wikipedia.

On 3 October, Lane shared his perspective in a post on English Wikipedia, commenting:

I asked the WMF to share the reasons why they are taking me off the ballot. [...] I consent to any disclosure because saying anything is better and safer for me than the ambiguity.

The WMF invites [me] to join the election as a candidate [..] in two years. [The Board cited] my lack of experience in wiki community collective decision making. They offered training to get me ready to the standard that they expect of candidates.

Within the next few days, the Meta-Wiki page Objections to the 2025 WMF Board election removals was created. Several petitions on its subpages have expressed support for one or both candidates, with over 200 individuals and 20 movement bodies signing. Many of the signatories also committed to boycotting the election process entirely. Over 100 editors also signed a separate general petition for reform, started by Clovermoss.

On 9 October, Board member Victoria Doronina outlined her thinking (copied and discussed on Meta-Wiki). Writing "as a Wikimedian, relying solely on publicly available information", she outlined her reasons why "I cannot support [the] candidacy" of Ravan and Lane.

The informal nature of these comments was a departure from prior Board communications, causing BoT member Lorenzo Losa to further clarify that her "email was not sent in any official capacity".

On 11 October, Ravan shared a defense of herself on Meta-Wiki, written by several contributors. Salient comments included:

Ravan has unfortunately faced significant online harassment following the publication of an article that distorted her words and misrepresented Arabic expressions through poor translation. [...]

[S]ome members of the Board of Trustees, including Victoria, may have relied on this biased and inaccurate article in forming their views or actions.

On 14 October, Ravan lodged a formal Universal Code of Conduct complaint against Victoria, claiming breach of confidentiality and "defamation of [her] personal and professional reputation". As of October 19, the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) was still deliberating the acceptance of the complaint, with four committee members having voted "decline" so far and none "accept".

Since the initial announcement, some BoT members have commented on these events. They include –

• A post on Meta-Wiki from Board Chair Nataliia Tymkiv, titled "More answers on the Board's decision on the 2025 final ballot" on 7 October
• A further clarification, titled "Additional perspectives on current and future board selection processes" by Board Chair-Elect Lorenzo Losa on 15 October
• An interview in this issue of The Signpost with BoT members Maciej Nadzikiewicz and Lorenzo Losa

Several former Board members and veteran users spoke up on behalf of the removed candidates, or in favor of reforms. Samuel Klein, on English Wikipedia, noted:

This makes no sense whatsover [sic]. <checks username> You've been editing for over 15 years, 60k edits entails a huge amount of community governance and decisionmaking.

Christophe Henner, speaking on the mailing list, noted:

It is long past time we acknowledge that we have built a system with two centers of power, the Foundation and the communities, that do not share that power. This permanent imbalance creates constant tension, wastes time and energy, and ultimately weakens our entire movement.

James Heilman, speaking on the mailing list, commented:

As a trustee who was partly removed 10 years ago for pushing for greater transparency around the proposed Knowledge Engine it concerns me to see a candidate within the election being removed by the board in part for speaking up for transparency. I believe we need an independent group of elected community members, who have signed non-disclosure agreements, and are provided details by the WMF legal team and trust and safety, to oversee who is and is not eligible to stand for election. We can have community elections if we demand them.

Wikimedia Deutschland, the second-largest movement organisation after the WMF, suggested:

To collectively find ways of addressing the issues surfaced in this process, we invite the current BoT to consider the following steps:

• Engage in discussions with Movement stakeholders to find ways of ensuring more diversity on the BoT and within the candidates (e.g by addressing the questions raised in this petition for reform). Possibly propose amendments to the current selection process (e.g. introduce quotas, rethink the self-nomination process for candidates etc…).
• Discuss ways of better educating the affiliates and communities about our internal governance situation, including the self-perpetuating nature of the Board and the reasons for it.
• Review the language used in official communication about the “Board election” to use more accurate language (e.g. “Board selection process”, “community consultation”). This would contribute to a better understanding of our governance model.
• Review the timeline of the newly introduced process to make sure the vetting process happens as soon as possible, and definitely before the affiliates shortlisting process.

The voting process has continued without any changes. Voting is currently ongoing, and will be open until 22 October. None of the four remaining candidates have yet spoken on the recent turn of events.

User:The Land and User:Risker have observed that despite the boycott calls, current voter participation is roughly keeping pace with prior years. As there is no way to submit an "empty ballot", some editors have taken to Meta-Wiki to request invalidating their votes.

The Board of Trustees and Governance Committee currently welcome "specific proposals and ideas for reform" on the respective Meta-Wiki page, but it is unclear whether the BoT will consider any such proposals. Some Wikimedians discussed the BoT's rejection of the Movement Charter as evidence to the contrary.

What should be clear going forward is that describing the current "Community and/or Affiliate nomination process" as "Board elections" in movement communications is inaccurate.

Clearly, something needs to change – whether it's the community's expectations of free and fair elections, or the not-election process itself.

Conflict of interest note – Some of these events directly relate to a member of the Signpost's team. That person was excluded from writing and editing this piece.

During the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections, 6 candidates out of 12 were shortlisted for the final voting. Days before the voting began, the Board of Trustees announced the disqualification of two candidates, Lane Rasberry and Ravan J Al-Taie.

This has led to protests, boycotts of the elections, as well as multiple community discussions calling for reform. The full timeline of events can be read in this issue's Special report.

In this article, we interview the two disqualified candidates, as well as two sitting BoT members.

1. According to BoT member Victoria Doronina, you were disqualified because you were "going to disclose non-public financial information".

I advocate for openness, which means making public information accessible. Openness does not mean making private information public.

2. The Signpost and your journalistic background is also brought up as another source of Conflict of Interest for you. In your opinion, how should the BoT/WMF deal with such conflicts?

The dilemma is that candidates will only win the election if they are active participants in Wikimedia community organizations, but since those organizations have a conflict of interest with the Wikimedia Foundation, our system requires that election winners cease community activities which lead to election. In my case, I offered to resolve conflict by quitting The Signpost and collaborating with the Wikimedia Foundation to quit or manage other identified conflicts.

3. During this removal process, the community often has not understood what happened at all. Based on the post by BoT chair Nataliia Tymkiv, the BoT have provided you a summary of their decision, but are okay if you share with the community. Would you like to share any of their concerns to the community?

I have asked the Wikimedia Foundation to share all these details. The Wikimedia Foundation has asked me to not publish the emails they sent. Because The Signpost itself is part of this story, I shared the emails with my colleagues here on the editorial team and asked them to respect the Wikimedia Foundation's wish to keep the information private.

4. Multiple communities are protesting the current BoT election, and reforming the entire process. Ideally, what should such a reform involve?

I am confident that the Wikimedia Foundation can tell the story of where we are going next.

Writer's Note – This was a general note appended to the interview responses

I talked with the Wikimedia Foundation to review points in the initial message which I posted, and from then, this has been the Wikimedia Foundation's story to tell. They have advised me to not comment further, and I respect that.

5. Without breaking confidentiality, could you clarify what "They have advised me to not comment further" implies? What are the WMF expectations from Candidates/you regarding the confidentiality of these processes?

The Wikimedia Foundation asked for me to not talk about the election. They specifically asked that I not publish the reasons they gave me for removing me from the ballot. This is the Wikimedia Foundation’s story to tell and I respect that.

1. During this BoT election cycle, you have been the subject of attacks from politically motivated media outlets. In your opinion, what should have been the WMF/community's ideal response to that?

Yes, I was unfortunately targeted by politically motivated media outlets during this election. It was painful to see my words and personal beliefs twisted and used to question my integrity and my commitment to the Wikimedia mission. Those attacks were not just about me personally, they also misrepresented what our movement stands for: openness, diversity, and respect for different voices. Throughout that period, I chose to stay silent, not because I agreed with what was said, but because I believed that responding publicly would only feed the attacks and harm the Foundation’s reputation. I trusted that integrity and truth would speak for themselves.

In my opinion, the ideal response from the Foundation and community should have been one of clear and principled support for those values, publicly reaffirming that political intimidation or external pressure should never influence internal governance or the fair treatment of community members. A transparent, factual statement distancing the Foundation from politically driven narratives would have both protected the integrity of the election process and sent a strong signal of support for freedom of expression and diversity within our movement.

I truly hope that in the future, when any Wikimedian faces similar external pressure, our institutions can respond with clarity and compassion, protecting both the individual and the integrity of our shared mission.

2. According to BoT member Victoria Doronina, you were disqualified because "the risks for the public reputation of WMF outweigh the risks to gender equity". Do you believe that was a disqualifiable metric? Would you like to address her concerns?

I do not believe that "the risks for the public reputation of WMF outweigh the risks to gender equity" is a valid or objective metric for disqualification. In fact, I find such reasoning deeply concerning, as it suggests that external political pressures or public narratives could override the Foundation’s long-standing commitment to fairness, inclusion, and diversity, values that are meant to protect rather than penalize individuals for their identity or opinions expressed in good faith.

My advocacy has always been rooted in empathy and human rights, never in partisanship. To frame that as a "risk" to the Foundation’s reputation not only misrepresents my intent but also sets a troubling precedent, one where silence in the face of injustice becomes safer than compassion.

I believe our movement is strongest when it embraces courageous, ethical voices that reflect our shared human values. Reputational integrity should come from standing by those principles, not distancing ourselves from them.

3. During this removal process, the community often has not understood what happened at all. Based on the post by BoT chair Nataliia Tymkiv, the BoT have provided you a summary of their decision, but are okay if you share with the community. Would you like to share any of their concerns to the community?

I prefer not to go into details about the internal deliberations or the specific concerns raised by the Board, as I continue to respect the confidentiality of the process and the mutual understanding I had with the Board Chair and the Foundation’s leadership.

What I can say is that I fully acknowledge the community’s confusion and concern about the lack of clarity surrounding my exclusion. From my side, I have always aimed to act in good faith, maintain transparency, and uphold the values of fairness and trust that our movement stands for.

Unfortunately, some public statements made by others have misrepresented the situation and disclosed confidential information without my consent, which has further complicated community understanding. I believe that institutional matters should be addressed through proper channels, not through speculation or public disclosure of private discussions.

My focus remains on ensuring that our processes are fair, respectful, and in line with the movement principles of integrity and equity.

4. Follow-up question. Without breaking confidentiality, could you clarify what was the "mutual understanding I had with the Board Chair and the Foundation's leadership"?

The mutual understanding I had with the Board Chair and the Foundation's leadership was that the reasons behind my exclusion would not be discussed publicly, and I agreed not to comment in order to avoid any inconvenience to the Foundation and the movement. I fully respected this agreement until I was surprised to see Victoria publicly sharing misinformation, which has unfortunately misled many Wikimedians.

Writer's Note – Ravan has started a U4C case against Victoria for breach of UCoC because of these comments. As of the time of this writing, the U4C is likely to decline the case, citing lack of jurisdiction.

5. Multiple communities are protesting the current BoT election, and reforming the entire process. Ideally, what should such a reform involve?

I think the protests show something important, that many community members feel unheard or unsure about how decisions are being made. Any reform should focus on rebuilding trust through clarity, fairness, and participation.

Ideally, the process should be more transparent about how candidates are evaluated, include stronger community involvement, and offer a fair way to question or appeal decisions. It should also protect candidates from external attacks or political pressure.

In the end, it's not just about changing procedures, it's about restoring confidence that our movement truly lives by its values of openness, equity, and respect.

Writer's Note – BoT member Maciej and BoT chair-elect Lorenzo elected to answer all the questions at once. They also cited this further comment from Lorenzo on behalf of the Board.

1. During this removal process, the community often has not understood what happened at all. Based on the post by BoT chair Nataliia Tymkiv, the BoT have provided the candidates a summary of their decision, but do not consider it confidential, should the candidates choose to share them with the community. Could you confirm this? Is there anything else about either candidacy that you want to speak on, personally? Or on behalf of the Board as a whole?

2. A significant concern throughout this process has been the lack of transparency from the Board of Trustees, with nearly all of the sitting 12 BoT members making a singular comment, or none at all. How much are BoT members encouraged to comment on matters in their personal capacity? Some community members consider such a "strongly unified board" to imply the BoT is also "vetting for unanimity".

3. These disqualifications happened after the Affiliates had already shortlisted 6 candidates. Additionally, there are concerns raised about the "Board of Trustees Review Process" policy being passed days before you announced these disqualifications. Community members have felt blindsided by this decision, and called changing the rules during the campaigning period as out of process.

4. In his comments, Lane indicated that BoT offered him "training to get [him] ready to the standard that they expect of candidates". Why was his candidacy disqualifying enough to warrant immediate removal, but not so severe that it could be improved over time?

5. In her comments, Ravan discussed a "smear campaign" and indicated that the BoT "may have relied on this biased and inaccurate article in forming their views or actions".

6. Multiple communities are protesting the current BoT election, and discussing reforming the entire process. Is the BoT open to reform? What concessions would the BoT be willing to make should such a process happen?

Since the announcement of the final ballot and further messages, we have been closely following conversations over the past week. We agree with the sentiments that we do not have an ideal process for board selection, and as such, we are continuously reviewing it and attempting improvements. We welcome suggestions on how to change this process for the next election here on this talk page.

Order of the current checks

When the board announced the final ballot, we shared the steps we took to improve our processes this year. As in past years, this included background checks, media checks, reference checks, and an interview with members of the Board’s Governance Committee. A change was made to the order in which these things happened (announced in August), and the checks were applied to the whole group of the shortlisted candidates, not just to the ones who received the most votes.

We wanted to learn from past decisions and avoid a situation where the Board is unable to implement the outcome following the community vote. There was always a possibility in the past that the candidates who got the most votes would not pass the background checks and vetting. Luckily, that did not happen in the past, but in good governance, one has to rely on established processes and procedures. Taking into consideration the needs of the board and the higher level of scrutiny our work globally is facing, our decision was to make changes in the order of the process to make sure that the board can seat anyone on the final ballot elected by volunteers. And to avoid people voting for a candidate that we would not be able to seat this year.

We also shared how the candidates were assessed, including more subjective criteria like a candidate's judgment, discernment, discretion, and ability to engage in the duties and requirements of being a Trustee, some of which can be complex and difficult to measure. Our decision as a Board was based entirely on these factors, and no others, as also clarified in the follow-up.

Reasons

Not unlike many selection processes (or even hiring processes) across organizations globally, it is a best practice to explain the process and not appropriate to discuss specific reasons for why people may or may not be selected. In accordance with this, the Board will not be answering specific questions or releasing information about individual people.

Decision-making on the board

We also said that the decision was unanimous. The results of the candidates' vetting process, their interviews and other relevant information went through a round of discussion in the Governance Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the elections. There was a debate about the possible decisions, following which the Governance Committee members voted unanimously to recommend a decision to the full Board. The full board also had a debate, and the decision was unanimous at the end of the discussion. We made this difficult decision as a collective of Trustees, each of us with our own views, and after an active debate and a process which took weeks to complete, we reached a difficult, but unanimous agreement on the final ballot. The whole role of the Board is to exercise judgement, and this was us doing our duty.

Let me be clear: the board does not conduct "vetting for unanimity". As mentioned above, dissent is not uncommon, but each board member needs to be able to work with the board, even if their opinion is against the majority of the body. This is how a board needs to work: with diverse opinions, different perspectives, and difficult debates, but then collectively agree to make and stick to difficult decisions. The Board has always had members – historic and current – who have been critics of the Foundation and of the Board itself. This is the nature of our governance system, and this will not change. This commitment to diversity makes us a stronger movement and, we believe, a stronger Board.

Training

Each of the removed candidates received a list of concerns from the Board. It included topics that could help candidates develop for the future, including participation in future board elections and other leadership roles.

More broadly, we are actively building avenues for community members to develop governance skills: for example, last year, all Board candidates (including us) participated in a full-day workshop during Wikimania, as well as a few online sessions. The sessions included working on strategy and the duties and responsibilities required of Trustees. This year, the training was broadened to include the members of the Global Resource Distribution Council. Some training sessions are also offered to sitting Trustees to enhance their skills and capabilities. The specific concerns and areas for development were communicated to each candidate following a call and a series of written discussions.

Writer's Note – We sent the following follow-up questions to the BoT members.

7. From the Point of View of the candidates, how confidential is this? Are BoT candidates not permitted to comment on the elections? The public and private statements on this from WMF/BoT on this contradict or are very unclear.

8. Many in the community lost faith in BoT because of transparency. Community members do not feel heard by BoT, and the comments from sitting BoT members are often sanitized to the point of losing meaning entirely. What specific measures will the Board take to improve this transparency and restore trust with the community?

9. The Board has committed to reform in the past, only to veto or reject any specific measures. What specific improvements are the BoT willing to consider? Will the BoT accept external oversight? How does the community guarantee this is not empty talk?

Over the past two weeks, we as the Board have been following all of the conversations onwiki and speaking with attendees at the different regional events taking place during this time as well as informal Movement channels like Discord or Telegram, to listen to community questions, concerns and ideas. Trust between the Board and communities is very important to us, especially in a moment where we continue to see pressures on the Wikimedia projects from external forces around the world. We understand the requests for additional details and transparency on the elections process and we know they are coming from good places. As a general practice to protect both the integrity of the election process and the privacy of candidates the Board doesn’t recommend making public comments about the reasons candidates don’t progress. We do however welcome feedback on how practices overall can be improved from anyone, including Board candidates.

We are committed to reform the elections process, and welcome specific proposals and ideas. There are no specific ideas yet, a complete tabula rasa. We are open to bringing together interested community members, affiliate delegates, the Elections Committee, and representatives from the Wikimedia Foundation, to propose reforms that will work for all stakeholders, and take into account some of the external pressures we are facing at the same time. It is too early for us to say in which direction it will go and we are not limiting the scope of the discussion, but we remain open to working with the Movement on improvements.

An apparent suicide attempt involving a revolver occurred at WikiConference North America just before 10:30 a.m. local time Friday, October 17, in New York. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries. NBC News' headline reads "Armed man wearing 'non-offending pedophile' sign storms stage at NYC Wikipedia conference", and adds "The man pointed a gun at the ceiling and threatened to kill himself before being tackled by conference organizers, according to police."

The New York Times ("Wikipedia Volunteers Avert Tragedy by Taking Down Gunman at Conference") highlighted the actions of two Wikipedians that it said are on the event's "trust and safety team": Richard Knipel (User:Pharos), who "grabbed the gunman from behind", and Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado), who charged forward and pried the loaded gun from the man's hand. While cautioning that the gunman's motivations remained "murky", the NYT reports that "he was wearing a sign around his neck that said 'anti-contact non-offending pedophile' and he told the audience he was going to die by suicide to protest what he called Wikipedia’s 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on pedophiles," possibly referring to "a rule that editors 'who identify themselves as pedophiles will be blocked and banned indefinitely.'"

The Wikimedia Foundation issued the following statement to The Signpost:

Earlier today, a conference attendee entered the WikiConference North America event with a gun and approached the stage, announcing an apparent suicide attempt. They were detained quickly and taken into custody by law enforcement.

Participants at WikiConference North America are safe, and we appreciate the conference organizers and attendees who stepped in to help during the opening ceremony. The rest of today's program is cancelled, and there will be additional security as well as law enforcement onsite for the remainder of the event.

We are grateful to the event organizers and local law enforcement for their support.

Two years ago, the 2023 edition of WCNA in Toronto had been interrupted by a bomb threat (see prior Signpost coverage). – S, B, H

Following Larry Sanger's publication of a long document calling for reforms of Wikipedia (Signpost coverage: "Larry Sanger is 'baaaaack!' with 'Nine Theses on Wikipedia'"), several media covered accusations of "left wing bias" on Wikipedia by Sanger and other critics. It appears to have culminated for now in a letter from the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to the Wikimedia CEO demanding information, following which more media sources reported on the issuance of the letter, and the committee's investigation.

• Why Conservatives Are Attacking 'Wokepedia' in The Wall Street Journal gives an overall balanced view of why conservatives don't like this encyclopedia, or at least names some of those who don't like it the most: Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and Larry Sanger. It then puts the current anti-Wikipedia campaign into the context that "the nation’s most august institutions are under pressure for the messages they put into the world." Jimmy Wales then gives the arguments in favor of Wikipedia.
• Conservatives Slam Wikipedia as 'Woke' And Its Own Co-Founder Agrees: 'It's Been Hijacked by the Left' in the International Business Times cites the WSJ article and then veers in a more conservative direction.
• The speech wars come for Wikipedia in Politico concentrates on free speech issues and even cites a Village pump discussion.
• Cruz presses Wikipedia on bias amid growing conservative criticism in The Hill Sen. Ted Cruz had questions about the WP:RSPS list, in a letter to Maryana Iskander
• Ted Cruz picks a fight with Wikipedia, accusing platform of left-wing bias in Ars Technica explains what the U.S. Senate committee headed by Ted Cruz is looking for and followed with a second article titled "Ted Cruz doesn’t seem to understand Wikipedia, lawyer for Wikimedia says" featuring WMF's associate general counsel Jacob Rogers, who says "a lot of what's in this [Sen. Cruz] letter is actually misunderstandings". Rogers (who, as noted by Ars, had himself worked on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations before joining WMF in 2014), explained that "There’s no formal authority behind this letter. It’s just a letter from a person in the legislative branch who cares about the topic, so there is nothing compelling us to give him anything. I think we are probably going to answer the letter, but there’s no sort of legal requirement to actually fully provide everything that answers every question."
• "Wikipedia editors claim that Trump's 'actions against civil society were described by hundreds of legal experts and political scientists as authoritarian.' ... Wikipedia provides just three sources to back up this sweeping claim." Fox News, via AOL confirmed in current revision as of writing -ed.
• Western Journal noted its own blacklisting, blackballing, listing as generally unreliable, or whatever you call it (it was "blackball" in their headline) (paywalled)

Other media that reported or commented on this issue included JNS and The Washington Examiner.

On October 10, the Wikimedia Foundation reacted to "growing media and other attention around Wikipedia and how it works" by publishing an explainer on topics such as the NPOV policy and (the English Wikipedia's) perennial sources list ("This is not a comprehensive list of Wikipedia’s sources, nor is it a comparison or evaluation of reliability between sources").

The Congressional inquiry and Larry Sanger's interview by The Daily Signal (which we are prohibited from linking) are subjects of reflection by Jimmy Wales in his interview with The New York Times (see below). – B, H

As already reported in our previous issue, on September 30 Elon Musk announced that at his company xAI, "We are building Grokipedia [..] Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia", following up on earlier comments about possibly using the company's Grok chatbot to "rewrite Wikipedia to remove falsehoods and add missing context".

• Livemint stressed that the Grok chatbot has had a few problems:
  "Grok AI had answered a user's question on 'Who are the 3 people doing most harm to America right now?' by naming Musk along with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
  Meanwhile, the chatbot had also gone into a Hitler-praising spree on X shortly after it received the Grok 4 update. It also went on to cite Hitler as its surname in response to questions by multiple users."
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk says Wikipedia’s AI rival Grokipedia will launch in 2 weeks: Here’s what to expect The Times of India relies on posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) that seem to tell Musk what the posters expect from Grokipedia. Clear official statements from Musk or his subordinates are rare. One poster writes that Grokipedia "will cut through the BS" and that it "will use first principles and physics as a basis to identify facts and counter distortion. This would mean moving beyond surface-level edits to provide complete and accurate explanations."
• Elon Musk announces 'Grokipedia' challenge to Wikipedia on UPI followed livemint is emphasizing some of the problems with the Grok chatbot. It also stated that David O. Sacks had suggested the new encyclopedia to Musk.
• Elon Musk announces 'Grokipedia' challenge to Wikipedia in The Hill stresses that Musk and Sacks want to create Grokipedia due to the purported deficiencies of Wikipedia.
• Elon Musk Plans to Take on Wikipedia With 'Grokipedia' in PC Magazine focuses on Musk's antipathy to Wikipedia. A second PC Mag story says "xAI posted a job listing for a 'Member of Technical Staff, Grokipedia – Search/Retrieval.' The job posting suggests Grokipedia will leverage AI to pull information from Grok’s training database to create the encyclopedia entries."

On October 18, Musk followed up by announcing that a

"Buggy beta version of Grokipedia V0.1 will be released on Monday [October 20].
Even this very early release is better on average than Wikipedia imo."

Echoing an earlier focus on male genitalia in his criticism of Wikipedia, Musk added: "And we will offer you the opportunity to donate $5 to send a Grok dick pic to Jimmy Wales."

• Uphill battle against incumbent: A piece by the Northeastern University Communications Team features Joseph Reagle, a professor in the field of communications, noting that Wikipedia is "the last of the early generation websites that still serves the users instead of extracting value from them via advertising and algorithmic manipulation". Reagle is the author of a 2010 book about Wikipedia (Good Faith Collaboration) and the co-editor of Wikipedia @ 20.
• Does it really fix the issue?: "Elon Musk is right that Wikipedia is biased, but his AI alternative will be the same at best", according to an article in The Conversation by Taha Yasseri, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, Director of a TCD-TU Dublin joint centre for Sociology of Humans and Machines, and author of various research publications about Wikipedia. He concludes "In an age increasingly shaped by misinformation, transparency, diversity and open debate are still our best tools for approaching truth."

Musk is not the first to explore using Al for generating Wikipedia-like articles.

• A small website called WikiGen.ai (one developer's side project) already offers "automatically create[d] comprehensive articles on any topic you can imagine. Unlike traditional wikis that require human editors, our Al instantly generates well-structured, informative content tailored to your preferred reading level".
• "Botipedia", a project by INSEAD professor Philip M. Parker (which has been under development since at least 2021 and moved to an LLM-based approach more recently), reacted to Musk's September announcement by asserting that it had already launched version 0.5 of its "truth-seeking Al with 400B+ articles, 6,000x bigger than Wikipedia" (although a later tweet clarified it will only be "Open to all in 2026. For now, limited to edu/org/corp emails while we scale"). Larry Sanger praised it as "one of the most interesting new competitors of Wikipedia". A promotional video portrays Botipedia as being superior to Wikipedia due to its inclusionism and language diversity: "No subject, event, language or geography is too obscure to merit an article, meaning that no language gets left behind."
• The task of using LLMs to write Wikipedia-like articles has been the object of numerous academic research efforts for years (see e.g. our 2024 coverage of "STORM", a particularly notable project out of Stanford University that has also seen considerable real-life usage).
• Lastly, like Wikipedia itself, Grokipedia could also be seen as competing with ChatGPT Deep Research and similar offerings by OpenAl's competitors (like Gemini Deep Research) that generate cited reports on a user-specified topic.

– S, B, H

404 Media ("Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors"), Livemint ("Wikipedia loses 8% of human traffic as generative AI and social platforms change user habits") and others highlight a concerning statement from a recent Wikimedia Foundation post titled "New User Trends on Wikipedia."

In it, the WMF's Marshall Miller discusses a bug (phab:T395934, discovered in June and fixed earlier this month) regarding the failure of the Foundation's web analytics systems to detect a large amount of bot traffic, starting around May 2025. (Among other disruptions, including rendering pageview tools unreliable that are used by many editors, this also meant that the Foundation's own monthly Movement Metrics reports had to pause their regular analysis of readership trends, starting with the May 2025 issue.) With the data corrections now applied and backfilled, a drop in human pageviews (even when accounting for yearly seasonality) became apparent:

Revising our data in this way means we have to interpret it with care, as our bot detection systems apply different rules at different points in time. But after making this revision, we are seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the past few months, amounting to a decrease of roughly 8% as compared to the same months in 2024. We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.

This will not come a surprise to many Wikipedians and other observers who have been wondering about the impact of the current AI boom on Wikipedia ever since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Still, the Foundation's post doesn't provide any detail on how it was able to causally attribute the decline to these two factors (GenAI and social media), or how much each of them contributed to the measured 8%. Several academic research publications – including one co-authored by a Nobel Prize winner – have already tried to detect and quantify a ChatGPT-caused drop in Wikipedia traffic for earlier timespans, with varying results, see e.g. our overview in the March 22 Signpost issue: "So again, what has the impact of ChatGPT really been?". Hopefully WMF will likewise release the statistical analysis underlying its new answer to one of the most pressing questions about Wikipedia and AI. – H

• "Wikimedia Foundation removes anti-Israel board hopeful from ballot" (Jewish News Syndicate [JNS])
• Inside Wikipedia’s Board Elections Stephen Harrison interviews a former candidate.
• A banned user published a full write-up of the situation around the slate of candidates in Breitbart News, which is also a blacklisted site on English Wikipedia. The Breitbart write-up also mentions internal Signpost discussions, making it difficult for us to report on for multiple reasons.

– B

• Cory Doctorow explains why Wikipedia works: Cory Doctorow devoted a recent issue of his "Pluralistic" blog to explaining a recent "Why Wikipedia works", covering various historical aspects as well as reviewing recent media, notably "Josh Dzieza's lengthy, magisterial essay on the past, present and future of Wikipedia for The Verge," and Wikipedian Molly White who "shows you how to go to the library, find a cool book, and use the facts you find therein to make Wikipedia a better, more complete source of knowledge".
• Not a mystery person anymore: "Meet the mystery editor behind most of the Wikipedia pages on Korea" (Philippine Daily Inquirer)
• Digitize or Disappear: Akwa Ibom State deserves a place in Wikipedia, writes News Ghana.
• Who am I, anyway?: Aftonbladet reports that former Swedish national hockey coach Rikard Grönborg appeared uncertain about his future with Sweden's Tre Kronor team, joking that he had "actually checked Wikipedia" to see what his current title was. The comment came amid speculation about his position following recent coaching changes.
• Flattery will get you everywhere: An opinion piece (paywalled) in WAtoday says "[It's] the best thing that has happened to humanity since penicillin...In a world of online junk, Wikipedia is a source of hope."
• Are you motivated by all that sweet, sweet AI attribution?: A piece at IBM's "Think" blog says that WMF did the Wikimedia Enterprise model (see prior Signpost coverage 1, 2) because "Attribution is a key motivator for [Wikipedia] editors, and the [Wikimedia] Foundation sees proper sourcing as essential to its mission. Making sure LLMs credit Wikipedia for their information is an essential step."
• Jimbo to speak at UN...: No, Jimmy Wales will not address the General Assembly, but he will speak at the Goals Lounge in the UN Headquarters about his new book "The Seven Rules of Trust" at 1 p.m. Wednesday October 29.
• ...and spoke to The New York Times: Read the interview here or view the video on YouTube (43 minutes). This is classic Jimbo, speaking about current challenges, in detail and at length. Among other topics, he was asked about Elon Musk's attacks on Wikipedia, and also revealed that "we've had various conversations over the years. He texts me sometimes, I text him sometimes. He's much more respectful and quiet in private, but that you would expect. He's got a big public persona." Pressed by the interviewer about the possibility of Musk "draining support for Wikipedia", Wales replied that "I don't think he has the power he thinks he has – or that a lot of people think he has – to damage Wikipedia. I mean, we'll be here in a hundred years and he won't."
• Slop tells feted: Grant St. Clair writes "Wikipedia publishes list of AI writing tells" in BoingBoing (a regrettable omission from August when this was published – but we did cover another take on AI slop in our earlier October edition).