The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) introduced the first form of what are known as the "discretionary sanction" (DS) in 2009. From then until 2011 this developed into the system that was used until last Sunday, 4 May, when the 12 active arbitrators unanimously passed a motion replacing all DS provisions with an updated procedure. The new DS regime, called Discretionary sanctions (2014), is the result of an elaborate review process involving both the community, since last September, and the committee, for more than a year.
The Signpost understands that the DS system was and still is a response to the overwhelming task of managing the wars that flare up on many articles on "hot-button" areas of knowledge—typically those that are ideological, cultural, racial, and scientific flashpoints in human society. The English Wikipedia is especially vulnerable to these wars because it receives about 40% of the page-visits and 40% of the edits of the 290 language Wikipedias; this tends to attract people who want their views to prevail on the global stage. In recent years the site's judicial and administrative resources have struggled to cope with the chaos and personal nastiness that can ensue when foes meet on that stage.
Under the old approach (which is not easy to grasp from the text), any editor, or ArbCom itself, could place a DS template on the talkpage of another editor participating at a DS-listed article, exposing that editor to a heightened risk of being banned on the basis of their subsequent activity on the article or its talkpage. This was interpreted by some editors as an unfair and poorly applied millstone around their neck, not helped by language on the template that appeared to blame, and the fact that they typically felt "singled out".
The new approach is a marked shift from this. Now, a newly designed template merely alerts editors to the fact that the article or talkpage they have edited is DS-listed. There is no overt blame in the wording, and the template is issuable by anyone to all editors who edit a DS-listed article or talkpage. This is an attempt to remove any stigma and to avoid catching editors new to the topic, or the site, unawares. To avoid cascades of templating for regular editors of a topic, an editor can receive only one DS alert for a DS-listed topic in a 12-month period. One arbitrator we queried used an analogy with a poorly signed ban on parking in a particular street: "now all motorists on the street are personally alerted to this fact in a polite, neutral way". All that is missing from the updated DS page is a brief lead explaining what discretionary sanctions are.
Since the management of hot-button articles is often prone to gaming, both old and new versions are couched in legalistic terms, as can be seen from the diff of old versus new. Where a DS is actually applied after the informational template has been issued, appeal is via either AN/I, Arbitration enforcement, or directly to ArbCom. If either of the first two is chosen, a further appeal can be made to ArbCom.
The Signpost asked arbitrator AGK to comment on the changes. He told us that he sees three main benefits:
| “ | The new system:
ArbCom involvement in the process has also been reduced. We clarified the glaring ambiguities in the old system and centralised procedures that were strewn across many pages. |
” |
"The system is now fit for purpose," AGK said, "and less intimidating and dense, so people won't need to turn to ArbCom once a week, asking for clarifications. The alerts system is now also automatically logged. MediaWiki keeps a record of all ArbCom alerts issued, so editors no longer need to keep hundreds of logs updated."
| “ | Seniority means a lot at Wikipedia. When discussing this with others, it sounds like, unless a senior Wikipedia editor steps in to help my student, the other editor is likely to be successful in keeping my students edits off the page. This is a really disappointing outcome. ...
Moreover, I feel somewhat responsible for putting my student in a situation in which she is being bullied. ... My impression is that this sort of bullying is not common, but it also sounds like it's not rare. Right now, I'm not sure how to weigh all these different things. I'm glad that, thanks to my teaching schedule for the immediate future, it's not something I'll have to decide right away. And, in the meantime, I guess I'll see how this plays out. |
” |
For all the claims of Wikipedia bringing the world's knowledge to all who want it, it seems that the human race most wants a tabloid newspaper; a quick source for TV listings, pop culture facts, celebrity gossip and, above all, scandal—with some nice juicy racism thrown in too.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.
For the week of 27 April to 3 May, 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 | Donald Sterling | 
|
2,155,108 | What's more likely to generate watercooler conversation than a racist outburst by a privileged aged white guy? A nonsensical racist outburst. If one does not wish to "associate with black people", as he put it, owning a basketball team is probably not the way to go. And if he doesn't want black people "brought to his games," one wonders how he deals with his team's roster, which currently consists of 12 black individuals and two Caucasians. He's been banned from the NBA, though that is unlikely to affect his revenue stream. | |
| 2 | The Amazing Spider-Man 2 |
|
618,326 |  |
For a sequel to a reboot no one asked for, this movie is proving very popular with the public; after finally opening in its home territory, it scored $35 million on its first day, on top of $155 million it has already earned overseas. It's not surprising that this was released in foreign markets before its home territory; the original Spider-Man made $822 million worldwide, with the domestic and international grosses split roughly 50/50. The rebooted Amazing Spider-Man (this film's predecessor) made $752 million worldwide, but with international grosses now comprising 2/3 the total. This radical shift in Hollywood's biosphere has taken place in just a decade, and it is already altering hunting strategies, for good or ill. |
| 3 | Bob Hoskins | 
|
593,143 |  |
Much loved and respected actor who passed away on 29 April. Although he played the quintessential well'ard Cockney in films like The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa, Hoskins was perhaps ironically best known for playing the American PI pastiche Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. |
| 4 | Amazon.com | 
|
538,283 |  |
This article has been veering wildly (and suspiciously) around the view graph for several weeks, but at least now its presence on the list has a reason: Amazon Fire TV; a digital streaming device to watch online content on a HDTV. How it distinguishes itself from the three or four other such devices currently on the market is a matter of some dispute. |
| 5 | May Day |
|
499,206 |  |
Before it was International Workers' Day, May Day, aka May 1, was a fount of odd and esoteric traditions. |
| 6 | Game of Thrones |
|
492,768 |  |
New seasons of this immensely popular show always draw people to Wikipedia. |
| 7 | Deaths in 2014 | 
|
422,311 |  |
The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. |
| 8 | Man-Thing |
|
407,317 | Marvel Comics' monster-man, to whom DC's Swamp Thing, debuting 18 months later, would bear an uncanny resemblance, got some press after it was revealed he would appear in an upcoming episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. | |
| 9 | Shakira |
|
372,839 |  |
The Colombian singer with the famously swiveling hips had a number of encounters with the media this week; between being the subject of a popular Reddit thread, being upstaged by Ariana Grande at the iHeartRadio Music Awards (see below), and posting a photo of her adorable toddler Milan on her Twitter feed, she's certainly made a splash amongst the cyber-chatterati, whether she intended to or not. |
| 10 | Game of Thrones (season 4) |
|
371,364 | |
This is the page with the plot synopses for each episode. |
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In a live video stream on 1 May, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Lila Tretikov will be replacing Sue Gardner, its executive director. Gardner, who has been in the position since 2007, declared her intention to leave more than a year ago.
Tretikov started her career in the technology world in 1999 as an engineer with the Sun-Netscape Alliance, the name used by Netscape during its acquisition by AOL. Over the succeeding years, she founded her own company and served as a senior director of development for TeleSpree before moving to SugarCRM, where she had been employed for the past eight years. Tretikov was also named as a 2012 finalist in the Female Executive of the Year – Business Services category.
Tretikov served most recently as SugarCRM's chief product officer, which is based in Cupertino, California, and produces Sugar, a customer relationship management system. The Foundation has described the company as an "open-source, cloud-based software vendor": "SugarCRM sponsored an open source project with more than 30,000 contributors and deployed by over 1.5 million individuals in 120 countries and 26 languages. Lila’s responsibilities during her tenure included product strategy, engineering, operations, IT, product management, professional services, marketing, and user experience."
According to the company's Wikipedia article, it was founded in 2004 to create a strictly open-source customer relationship management software. Having joined only a few years after its founding, Tretikov has a wealth of experience from its open-source activities, despite its August 2013 announcement that the software's newest version, Sugar 7, would not include a community edition, and a February 2014 community post notifying users that they would no longer be releasing new community versions.
Tretikov addressed this in the live announcement, saying that while she had championed community involvement with Sugar, the decision to discontinue new community editions was made by the company's board.
Having held these varied roles, Tretikov comes to the Foundation with a strong skill set. Her personal LinkedIn profile emphasizes the hiring and developing of people, technical management, and product design. These, and a surprisingly lengthy list of other required qualifications the Foundation was looking for, factored into their decision to hire her:
| “ | We decided the new ED should be someone with a product/engineering background, ideally in an open-source or other online community context. We wanted someone experienced with organisations that were growing, who'd managed staff and budgets comparable to ours, and who had experience creating continuous delivery of technology improvements in an agile context. We wanted a person who is oriented towards collaboration, transparency and openness, with some experience with complex stakeholder environments, and with an international orientation. We knew we needed someone with courage and strong personal integrity, who wouldn't be intimidated by attempts to censor the projects. | ” |
According to Gardner and Foundation board chair Jan-Bart de Vreede, "Lila is precisely what we set out to find."
In announcing Tretikov, Gardner described this complex set of requirements as forcing them to look for a "unicorn—one that we weren't sure existed". These arose because Gardner was given the unusual chance to grow into the role: under her leadership, the WMF has undergone fundamental changes. In 2007, its budget was only $3.5 million. By 2012, this had risen to an annual $22.3 million, the year in which a five-country fundraiser netted $25 million in just nine days. Over the same period, the Foundation has expanded beyond a simple server-supporting organization, funding programs from education to GLAM opportunities. The WMF itself was transplanted from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco, along with expansion from fewer than 10 employees to 160 by 2012 and 207 today.
Coverage of Tretikov's hiring was collated by Pete Forsyth, and included the New York Times (Noam Cohen), the Wall Street Journal, and Re/code. Follow-up stories in English appeared in Mashable and WebProNews.
In related news, Tretikov's partner Wil Sinclair has joined Wikipedia and Wikipediocracy, the latter leading to forum members offering their suggestions for reforming Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, including that he try to have various Foundation staff members fired.
Reader comments
Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain. Pool G's 
Adam Cuerden (submissions) was Round 2's highest scorer, with a large number of featured picture credits. In March/April, he restored star charts from Urania's Mirror, lithographs of various warships (such as SMS Gefion) and assorted other historical media. Second overall was Pool E's 
Godot13 (submissions), whose featured list Silver certificate (United States) contains dozens of scans of banknotes recently promoted to featured picture status. Third was Pool G's 
ChrisGualtieri (submissions) who has produced a large number of good articles, many, including Falkner Island, on Connecticut-related topics. Other successful participants included 
Cliftonian (submissions), who saw three articles (including the top-importance Ian Smith) through featured article candidacies, and 
Caponer (submissions), who saw three lists (including the beautifully-illustrated list of plantations in West Virginia) through featured list candidacies. High-importance good articles promoted this round include narwhal from 
Reid,iain james (submissions), tiger from 
Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and The Lion King from 
Igordebraga (submissions). We also saw our first featured topic points of the competition, awarded to 
Czar (submissions) and 
Red Phoenix (submissions) for their work on the Sega Genesis topic. No points have been claimed so far for good topics or featured portals.
192 was our lowest qualifying score, again showing that this WikiCup is the most competitive ever. In previous years, 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) or 100 (2010) secured a place in Round 3. Pool H was the strongest performer, with all but one of its members advancing, while only the two highest scorers in Pools G and F advanced. At the end of June, 16 users will advance into the semi-finals.
| Key | |
|---|---|
| FA | Featured article |
| GA | Good article |
| FL | Featured list |
| FP | Featured picture |
| FT | Featured topic |
| GT | Good topic |
| DYK | Did you know? |
| ITN | In the news |
Of course this is not a complete list of content produced by any contestant; consider this a bite-sized sampling of their work.
_-_The_Girl_With_The_Pearl_Earring_(1665).jpg)
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Just because they didn't pass to Round 3 doesn't mean there wasn't some excellent content created by the participants. This section features some of the work by people who had a damn good try at a place. As before, they all did a lot more work than the sample featured.
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Boston Children's Hospital postdoctoral fellow David McIver and a team have determined that using page view statistics from Wikipedia, they can track flu progression better than the Center for Disease Control can using Google searches.
| “ | The research team wanted to use a database that is accessible to everyone and create a system that could be more accurate than Google Flu Trends, which has flaws. For instance, during the swine flu pandemic in 2009, and during the 2012-2013 influenza season, Google Flu Trends got a bit "confused," and overestimated flu numbers because of increased media coverage focused on the two illnesses, the researchers said. | ” |
The researchers seek to have a more "holistic" view of where flu-like symptoms are prevalent. Jay Walsh, WMF Communications Director, commented that the WMF is "always excited and intrigued when people make new/creative uses of our data, within the boundaries of the law and our privacy policy." He did caution, however, that data of this nature should be extrapolated and analyzed only by medical professionals. Only time will tell the effectiveness of the data, but for now, it appears to be an interesting and exciting alternate use of Wikipedia.
The Signpost has previously covered the sad fact that a famed, beloved Wikipedian Adrianne Wadewitz has died in a rock climbing fall. The New York Times published an obituary that recapped her life and work on Wikipedia. WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner commented: "It is a huge loss for Wikipedia. She may have been our single biggest contributor on these topics—female authors, women's history." Noam Cohen wrote for the Times that "Ms. Wadewitz's interest in rock climbing played out on Wikipedia. Her last editing was to improve an article about Steph Davis, a prominent female climber and wingsuit flier. In Ms. Wadewitz's hands, the article became filled with personal details, spectacular photos, a highlighted quotation and 25 footnotes." Wadewitz's presence is already missed on Wikipedia.
Formed in 2003, the Eurovision WikiProject boasts four featured articles and 22 good articles. The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, so we went down to the stage to chat with Wesley Mouse:
Until next week, check out our previous reports in the archive.
Reader comments
Four featured articles were promoted this week.
Two featured lists were promoted this week.
Five featured pictures were promoted this week.
