Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/From the editors
After a flood of traumatic, perplexing and complex events, users took time to digest the material confronting them, with topics such as the 2014 Crimea crisis or the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 easing down the list, making way for such traditional topics as St Patrick's Day, Reddit threads and even Google Doodles, which have reappeared after a long absence.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.
For the week of 16 to 22 March, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saint Patrick's Day | 
|
1,604,355 |  |
Sometimes I have to admit making a mistake, and my previous assumption that people weren't interested in arguably the world's most popular saint's day turned out to be due to mistiming; as it happens, people are very interested in it – on the day itself. Interest wanes pretty quickly in the days leading up to and from it. Given the long association of this holiday with binge drinking, perhaps there's a reason it fades in the memory so quickly. |
| 2 | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 | 
|
1,075,269 | _9M-MRO_-_MSN_28420_404_(9272090094).jpg) |
We still don't know precisely what happened to this flight, or to its 239 passengers and crew, but, gradually, a drip of hard facts is beginning to replace occasionally wild speculation. The most significant development (the Malaysian government's declaration that the plane was lost in the southern Indian Ocean) occurred after this time period, but even before then, leads had already begun to coalesce around that isolated, violent region of the sea off the coast of Australia. |
| 3 | Crimea |
|
949,876 |  |
In recent decades, the map of the world has only changed to reflect the rise of new independent nations. One country deliberately annexing part of another is not something our generation is used to. Case in point: over the last few days, Wikipedia's maps of Russia first absorbed this fragment of Ukraine, then excluded it, then finally included it in an indecisive shade of mint green, indicating it is in dispute. Given the nature of Wikipedia, that is likely as far as the argument will go; other organizations (such as Russia Today) have not been nearly as accommodating. |
| 4 | Spite house |
|
863,608 |  |
This unique form of architecture, in which usual considerations such as aesthetics, functionality or even livability are abandoned in favour of annoying the neighbors, usually by blocking sunlight, became a topic of interest on Reddit this week. |
| 5 | L'Wren Scott | 
|
658,411 | The tragic suicide of this famously tall former model (she was 6'3''), stylist and fashion designer at just 49 caused a great deal of lurid coverage in the British tabloids, particularly regarding her longterm relationship with Mick Jagger. | |
| 6 | Agnes Martin |
|
457,187 | The Canadian abstract painter got a Google Doodle for what would have been her 102nd birthday on 22 March. | |
| 7 | Deaths in 2014 | 
|
448,266 |  |
The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article. |
| 8 | Saint Patrick |
|
443,567 | .jpg) |
The man himself naturally drew interest on his day. |
| 9 |
|
443,413 | .JPG) |
A perennially popular article. | |
| 10 | Fred Phelps |
|
433,520 |  |
It is either ironic or fitting, depending on your point of view, that a man who achieved fame in life by leading pickets of innocent people's funerals would receive so much attention upon his own death. For all his fury and "GOD HATES FAGS" bombast, there is tragedy in a man beginning his career as a civil rights lawyer yet ending it in a morass of bigotry and hate. |
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/In the media
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As you have probably read on this week's op-ed, or via various other channels of announcement, 3 April will see the introduction of the Typography refresh (or update) for the Vector skin on all Wikipedias. Other projects like Commons will have this update rolled out a few days before. You may also have tested the beta option. Basically, this means you will see some, and may see other changes on Wikipedia. In short:
Other features that were in the beta but were not strictly typography-related, such as the restyled table of contents, thumbnail and blockquote styling, have been removed.
For most Windows readers, this means the headers will show in Georgia and the body text will stay in Arial, albeit slightly larger. For most Mac users this will be the same, but where the pages would normally show in Helvetica, it will now show in Helvetica Neue (it may be hard to see any difference).
On Linux, effects may vary. Where several distros and browsers all had their own default font settings, resulting in many different looks, the new typography should equalize them all to use Liberation Sans for body text. The headers may show in Linux Libertine, Georgia or Times, in that order of preference, depending on which of them are installed.
Georgia may look familiar; the Signpost has used it for its headers for some time now. And that is why...
VisualEditor news
Future software changes
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/Opinion
Results for the two-stage 2013 Commons Picture of the Year (PotY) have been announced. This year's winning photograph (above) shows a lightbulb that has been cracked, allowing inert gas to escape—and oxygen to enter, so that the tungsten filament burns. From the flames rise elegant curls of blue smoke.
The picture of the year gained 157 votes in the second round. Filament burns through is by Stefan Krause (home page). The dramatic visual potential of lighbulbs is a subject he has been exploring for some time; readers may remember last year's competition where Stefan's picture Exploding lightbulb, involving an airsoft pistol, won third place.
The Signpost asked Stefan whether his intention was entirely artistic or included a scientific rationale:
Second by a very close margin (with 155 votes) was Gentle morning light. Taken in the Holy Mountains National Park in Ukraine's Donetsk Province, just north of Crimea, the tranquillity belies recent traumatic events in the region, including the death of a Wikimedian. Photographer Balkhovitin told the Signpost: "When I took this shot I particularly liked the direct sunlight that's shining through the autumn leaves, and the light mist over the water that obscures the opposite shore."
The scene could have been a thousand years away—but for the trace of a hillside roadway on the right, behind a tree.
French Wikipedian Nicholas Sanchez won third place with an extraordinary split-second shot of a swallow in full flight, gliding open-mouthed to drink from the water's surface. Sharp geometries in the bird—a square throat and angled wings—contrast with a subtle layering of background colours. In a mirrored effect, the rippled motion of flight is reflected in the underside of the wings and in the surface ruffles below.
The organisers expressed their delight that more unique editors voted than ever before—4070 in both rounds. 2852 voters participated in the first round, which presented a record 962 images; and 2919 voted for one of the 50 finalists (to rank the top 30 overall and the top two in each of 10 categories, with an average vote per candidate of 58).
Two persistent features of PotY are its domination by continental European photographers and the small proportion of entries that feature people. One highly ranked image embodies both human and global south elements: Varanasi green peas, by Argentinian photographer Jorge Royan, is of a streetseller in that iconic Indian city. Richly symbolic, the composition is lush in its use of colour and texture. This picture is perhaps a reminder of what jurist Heta Pandit said of the field of entries in last year's Wiki Loves Monuments: "I would have also liked to see some more human element. The relationship between monuments, nature and people is so important. ... A lot of the pictures were like tourist brochures."
The Signpost asked Adam Cuerden, a veteran contributor to the English Wikipedia's featured picture forum, to comment on this year's PotY competition. He first raised the matter of "encyclopedic value", which though required at that forum is not a criterion for Commons featured pictures:
Sue Gardner, the outgoing executive director, stated that "Her experiences advocating for the rights of ordinary internet users and communicating with a large global volunteer community are both rare and directly relevant. She's got a solid understanding of internet technologies. She's a crisp, clear communicator, and an experienced spokesperson." The process to replace Gardner, which has now lasted for more than a year, is still plodding forward; the last update from the transition team gave May 2014 as a possible date: "We are at a point where we have three candidates that we all feel are great. We hope to speak to them in the coming week or two and hope to go into the final process (reference checking, terms negotiation etc.) after that."
| “ | With a little coding, I had a data set of more than 150,000 Americans deemed by Wikipedia’s editors to be notable. The data set included county of birth, date of birth, occupation and gender. I merged it with county-level birth data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics. For every county in the United States, I calculated the odds of making it to Wikipedia if you were born there. | ” |
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/Serendipity
On 3 April, we will roll out some changes to the typography of Wikipedia's default Vector skin, to increase readability for users on all devices and platforms. After five months of testing and four major iterations and through close collaboration with the global Wikimedia community, who provided more than 100 threads of feedback, we've arrived at a solution which improves the primary reading and editing experience for all users.
First, you'll notice a serif typeface is now used for headers, to more clearly differentiate them from body content. Main body content is displayed in a sans-serif typeface using a very dark grey on true white background, which decreases eye strain for people reading long blocks of text. You also may notice increased leading (the vertical space between lines in a paragraph), to improve readability and create a clean break for the scanning eye.
Text is our core visual element of Wikimedia projects, whether it's an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, or a smaller project like Wikisource and Wikibooks. We want our users to sense accuracy, reliability, and clarity from our design. We also want to avoid overly flashy typography that detracts from the content. Prior to this typography update, we had more than 20 arbitrarily defined type sizes on desktop alone, which appeared inconsistent for our users. The type size was too small for many readers, and the line height could make reading long form content difficult. We often observed users with visual impairments using text zooming to increase text size, for instance. For headings, these should act as entry points in long pages of text and were styled accordingly to aid readability. We sought to achieve better balance and cohesiveness for users to efficiently scan the page or engage in long form reading.
These changes will be familiar if you have accessed the mobile version of any Wikimedia project, as most of the changes were first trialled there in 2012. Later, with the release of the new Beta Features system for desktop, these changes have been available to desktop users on an opt-in basis since November 2013. We have used Wikimedia mobile as a place to experiment with new features and designs which we continuously migrate to desktop version of our sites. We have extended that process to the desktop beta features to further refine these changes to be appropriate for larger screens. With this typography update, we are taking another step towards a consistent visual experience across desktop and mobile.
We are extremely pleased about how well this collaborative process has gone and we look forward to you sharing your experience with the update. The following pieces of documentation may be useful if you have further questions or comments:
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/In focus Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/Arbitration report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/Humour
