Late last year, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) awarded $8.4 million in donors' money to 11 Wikimedia entities, including the Wikimedia Foundation and 10 nationally defined chapters. Under this arrangement, these organisations are required to issue quarterly reports on how far they have progressed towards their declared programmatic and financial goals. The FDC has announced that all 11 completed and submitted their reports by the 1 April deadline; FDC staff have responded to each report and made broad comments about the body of reports.
The staff made several basic points about the chapter reports. Low volunteer participation is a general problem, and where chapters employ staff, how to establish an effective balance between them and volunteers "in leading, coordinating and implementing activities" is an open question. FDC staff were encouraged by chapters' development of "a diverse set of funding partners [and] opportunities for collaboration and learning across the movement and with other allied organisations". Staff were pleased with progress on building and sustaining successful GLAM partnerships, and with new phases in education activities, "including primary and secondary schools as well as universities. These activities seem to be generating excitement and gaining momentum."
After reviewing the reports, the staff have published suggestions related to issues they found in most or all of the reports:
Wikimedia Germany—by far the largest non-WMF recipient of funds in Round 1 ($1.8M) and with more than 40 employees—came in for staunch criticism of the insufficient detail and metrics it provided for most activities. FDC staff pointed out that the chapter also faces challenges in managing the relationship between its volunteer and staff roles. Wikimedia Austria drew criticism for providing no "concrete metrics" and for failing to "show staff expenses separately in their financial report", although the chapter was praised for achieving its fundraising certification ("a significant accomplishment"), and for its progress in forging institutional partnerships. The Hungarian chapter received a back-handed compliment—that its report included "some metrics". Wikimedia Sweden was told that "in future reports, we hope WMSE will deepen its metrics and tie them more closely to the objectives of each program."
WMUK was upbraided for providing no correspondence between its 37 "programs" and budget line-items, and for failing to report on related metrics that appeared in the original funding proposal. Low volunteer participation in events, microgrant programs, and institutional framework was noted.
Wikimedia France was singled out for praise regarding its metrics and the openness with which it reported its successes and failures: the report "is filled with examples of sharing 'what worked' and 'what didn’t work', and we believe their challenges will help other entities avoid similar problems". On the other hand, the staff expressed surprise and regret that Wikimedia Netherlands "seems reluctant to share lessons learned about challenges or activities that did not work". Sweden was praised for its "admirable approach to sharing learning in its report".
Interestingly enough, the Foundation itself is eligible for FDC funding, and was awarded more than $4.5M in Round 1. FDC staff noted that "the WMF does not provide details about its expenses by program area", and that the numbers in its report indicate "a risk of a significant underspend". The WMF has dropped the technical distinction between core and non-core activities (no doubt greeted with relief by entities who found these categories problematic).
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Emails to the Wikimedia-l mailing list this week regarding Edward Snowden's recent revelations on the United States' PRISM program have drawn a response from the Wikimedia Foundation.
PRISM is a recently revealed electronic surveillance program initiated by the United States National Security Agency under the Patriot Act of 2001. According to its Wikipedia article, PRISM collects data from "email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice over IP conversations, file transfers, login notifications and social networking details". The program was first exposed by Glenn Greenwald of the UK Guardian newspaper.
One of the more obvious implications for the Wikimedia movement involves its servers, all of which are located in the US. As Liam Wyatt asked, "Does [this fact] now compromise our mission either in a technical, privacy or an ethical sense?" With the internal discussion ongoing, the WMF's legal team stated that:
| “ | [W]e have not been approached to participate in PRISM, and we have never received or honored an NSA or FISA subpoena or order. If we were to be approached in the future, we would reject participation in any PRISM-type program to the maximum extent possible and challenge in court any such demand, since this sort of program, as described in the press, contradicts our core values of a free Internet and open, neutral access to knowledge. | ” |
The interest from the public in Wikipedia's related articles can be measured with Henrik's page view stats tool. National Security Agency and related redirects have seen some of the starkest jumps, soaring from about 1,250 views per day to a maximum of over 31,000. The Patriot Act went from 3,000 per day to 14,000 or more. Glenn Greenwald's article has been receiving 5000–10,000 additional views per day, while the article on the individual responsible for releasing the information (Edward Snowden) has received more than half a million views since its creation on 8 June. Also worthy of note is the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which portrays a dystopian world with all-seeing government surveillance overseen, with a large bump from 8,000 to more than 20,000 views per day. This increase in interest has been mirrored by the book's sales, which have surged by 7000% on Amazon.com alone.
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Seven featured articles were promoted this week:
Two featured lists were promoted this week.
Five featured pictures were promoted this week.
One featured topic was promoted this week.
In an article published by the Huffington Post's United Kingdom edition, writer Thomas Church asserts that the new VisualEditor will change history, literally. It says that Wikipedia's mark-up language has been to its advantage, as most people didn't bother trying to learn it:
| “ | Unknowingly, this learning-barrier has been to Wikipedia's advantage for many years. People with ulterior motives have been put off from re-writing history, because the pen doesn't work. So far, those who do have the patience to make the pen work are faced with a team of Wikipedia volunteers (hawks) criticising and verifying their words. And to date, that's been enough. | ” |
When VisualEditor is released, however, anyone will be able to edit, without having to climb over the barrier that is wikimarkup. Church argues that Wikipedians will be swamped, and false information will last longer in Wikipedia. Mirroring concerns ("Citogenesis") made by cartoonist Randall Munroe in November 2011, he outlines a four-step process that he believes those with ulterior motives will employ, though it goes against Wikipedia policy:
Though Wikipedia will undoubtedly attract more editors, the web can be a double-edged sword. If Church's nightmare scenario comes about, and "marketers" are successful in enforcing some of their views and ideas into Wikipedia articles, he believes that the marketers will only hasten their own demise, because people in general are aware of their tactics and will simply "trust them less."
As for when this might occur, Tech2.in.com, citing a Wikimedia Foundation blog post, is reporting that the VisualEditor will be rolled out soon to randomly selected new accounts, tracking new information and additional bugs, as a beta test (a wider rollout is planned for the first week of July). The alpha test, which lacks some core functionality, has been available to registered users for some time and has garnered mixed reviews.
I've long thought that we should get rid of the Commons as we know it. Commons has evolved, through the actions of a tiny group of people, into a project with interests that compete with the needs of the various encyclopedias that are the primary users of Commons, and the reason it was created. It's also understaffed, which results in poor curation, large administrative backlogs, and poor policy development.
First, some background information. Commons was primarily created so we could share media between various wikis, with a secondary goal of being a free media repository. When Erik Möller proposed the idea of Commons, he also proposed an inclusion criteria, "Material would be eligible for inclusion in the Commons if it is useful to at least ONE Wikimedia project [including potential future use]."
At no point during initial discussions was it proposed that the inclusion criteria basically be the mere fact that an image was free. There was an implicit assumption throughout that the files would be free, and also encyclopedic in some way.
From inception until 2008, the main inclusion criteria at commons was the media be "useful or potentially useful" to a Wikimedia project, reflecting Möller's initial proposal comments. In 2008, a replacement policy was proposed and implemented by User:MichaelMaggs, with half a page of feedback from about six other editors. These six editors (some seemingly unwittingly) redefined the scope of Commons from a repository of files useful to Wikimedia project, to files "useful for an educational purpose".
This unchallenged action by a tiny group of people changed the scope of the project such that any media file with a free license can be included, since it is extremely easy to argue that any media is "useful for an educational purpose", no matter what it is. Even a file of white noise could be a study in tests for randomness.
In proposing Commons with a dual mission, Möller conflated solving a technical problem with a new project that turned out to be of very niche interest, a image/media gallery project that's similar to wikisource for images. If it weren't for the interwiki sharing function of Commons, it would probably enjoy a similar level of success as Wikisource; limited. So now we have a niche project with limited volunteers effectively dictating policy across all our projects.
Commons has come under attack many times in the past for hosting low-quality images of nudity and sexual acts, mostly uploaded by apparently exhibitionist editors, with the subjects being themselves or their partner. To even discuss removing them is framed as censorship. I'm not offended by nudity. What I am offended by is people abusing the encyclopedia for their own ends, to the detriment of the project.
Nearly all our policies are driven by the need to prevent this sort of abuse of Wikipedia. Policies on biographies of living people are driven largely by those who would abuse Wikipedia for purposes of defamation. Policies on neutrality and verifiability have been largely driven by the need to address those who were here to push a political agenda or promote their fringe viewpoints. What Wikipedia is not is pretty much a chronicle of all the things that people have tried to use Wikipedia for that the community has decided are detrimental to a quality encyclopedia.
Preventing uses of Wikipedia that are detrimental to our mission is the entire reason that most of our content policies exist. This isn't censorship, it's curation. There is no reason we should indulge exhibitionists who spew copious nude or sexual pictures of themselves or their partner across dozens of keywords for their own gratification, any more than we should tolerate the link spammer who spews their links across Wikipedia.
Commons has consistently failed to develop a reasonable policy on this matter. To me, this is just one more example of the failure of Commons due to lack of participation and conflicting mission. A small group is more likely to develop a self-reinforcing delusion that their position is reasonable, even when a large number of people outside the group are telling them otherwise.
Some have challenged my titling of this work "Wikipedia's commons", pointing out that the proper name is Wikimedia Commons. The encyclopedias have a dependency and tight integration with Commons, which would like to govern itself as a separate project with a completely different, and potentially conflicting mission and policy. Whether either project likes it or not, right now Commons is part of Wikipedia.
There is a fairly simple technical solution to the problem. Commons, for the purposes of interwiki sharing, doesn't need to be a project with separate administration. What we know today as "commons" can simply be a feature of Mediawiki, it doesn't need to exist outside of some computer code. When a picture or media file is uploaded to an encyclopedia, if its license is compatible, it will be registered as sharable, but still "owned" by that wiki. If the media violates that wiki's policies, it can be deleted. If another encyclopedia makes use of it in their article space before it's deleted, they will become the owner of the media. Search should easily allow the option of only searching locally owned media, or all media including interwiki media. I'm sure there are some details of this proposal that are not fully fleshed out, but I don't think any are insurmountable. The point is that the interwiki media function is a technical problem that can be solved by technical means.
The free repository function of today's Commons could still exist as a separate project, call it WikiGallery or something. In no case should it be a part of the encyclopedia interwiki media system, however, which should only include encyclopedic media.
The title of this is an homage to the tragedy of the commons. I don't know if it's hilarious, ironic, or sad that Erik Möller chose the name commons, citing the "positive connotations" of the word. Little did he know it would foreshadow the eventual lack of maintenance and resulting lack of policy maturity that would result.
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This is mostly a list of Non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 11 June 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC, and recent watchlist notices and CentralNotices. The latter two are in bold. Items that are new to this report are in italics even if they are not new discussions. If an item can be listed under more than one category it is usually listed once only in this report. Clarifications and corrections are appreciated; please leave them in this article's comment box at the bottom of the page.
(This section will include active RfAs, RfBs, CU/OS appointment requests, and Arbcom elections)
Last week's most popular article list was dominated by the massively popular TV series Game of Thrones, which claimed six slots in the top 25, including the top three. Its popularity was likely stoked by the most recent episode, The Rains of Castamere. Bollywood continued to increase its share of views as well, aided by the tragic suicide of star Jiah Khan.
For the week of 2 to 8 June, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
| Rank | Article | Views | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Game of Thrones | 1,314,024 | Viewing figures for the third season of this epic fantasy TV series are up by a million, and reaction to this week's episode augurs high ratings for next week's finale. |
| 2 | Game of Thrones (season 3) | 827,717 | see #1 above |
| 3 | List of Game of Thrones episodes | 827,553 | see #1 and 2 above |
| 4 | Jiah Khan | 652,165 |  |
| 5 | A Song of Ice and Fire | 631,362 | The series of novels by George R. R. Martin on which the TV series Game of Thrones (above) is based. |
| 6 | 585,492 | A perennially popular article. | |
| 7 | Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani | 539,078 | This romantic comedy is currently the 7th highest-grossing Bollywood film in history. |
| 8 | Juliane Köpcke | 527,384 | The young woman who fell more than 10,000 feet from a disintegrating plane and survived, only to have to walk several miles though jungle, became a talking point as a result of a Today I Learned thread on Reddit. |
| 9 | After Earth | 471,632 | Despite appearing on course to box-office bombhood, having grossed only $50 million worldwide in ten days against a $130 million budget, this remains the most-viewed American movie on Wikipedia. |
| 10 | The Purge | 450,459 | This social allegory/home invasion thriller had a strikingly good opening weekend, taking in ~$36 million on a $3 million budget, despite poor reviews. |
For the complete top 25, please see: Wikipedia:Top25Report
Notes:
Two cases, Race and politics and Tea Party movement have been suspended. Argentine History remains open, and a proposed decision was posted on 12 June.
The Race and politics case, brought by UseTheCommandLine and dealing with sourcing methods in articles pertaining to race politics, has been suspended, after one of the editors central to the case withdrew from editing. The case will remain open for two months from the passage of the motion to suspend (May 26, 2013); if by that time the editor has not returned to editing, the case will be closed, and a topic ban imposed.
This case involving an American political group, brought by KillerChihuahua, was suspended until the end of June, pending a moderated discussion. Pages related to the Tea Party movement are placed under discretionary sanctions. The case, along with any progress towards resolution, is to be reevaluated on 1 July 2013.
In the case, brought by Lecen, an editor is accused of systematically skewing several articles involving former Argentine president Juan Manuel de Rosas to portray a brutal dictator as a democratic leader, in keeping with the political motives of Argentine "nationalists" or "revisionists".
The evidence stage closed 12 April, the workshop stage closed on 19 April, and a proposed decision was scheduled to have been posted by 26 April. The latter was published on 12 June.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Computing. Started in October 2003, the project has grown to include 17 featured articles, 11 featured lists, 3 pieces of featured media, and 80 good articles. The project still has a heavy workload, with a relative WikiWork rating of 5.44. Members of WikiProject Computing follow Article Alerts, keep track of recent changes, maintain a style manual, and work on a variety of articles under the scope of WikiProject Computing and its child projects. We interviewed Trevj and KvnG.
Next time, we'll head off to the Southwest Territory. Until then, sip some local whiskey in the archive.
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