Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-09-10/From the editors
Even though it's not quite 3⁄4 over, it's safe to say that 2014 will go down as a year of war, mass murder, plane crashes and terrible diseases. While certainly paying it some heed, it's not surprising that Wikipedia viewers tried this week to find any alternative to that litany of tragedy and pain, and their chosen method of escape was, as usual, celebrity. The death of comedian Joan Rivers led to much attention to both her and her family, while the leaks of the private photographs of dozens of celebrities led to much condemnation, as it is the kind of atrocity most people can get their heads around.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Joan Rivers | 
|
2,024,356 |  |
The brassy, pioneering comedian died this week at 81. Many people in this profession are lazily described as "shocking"; Joan Rivers actually was. Her acerbic barbs at her fellow celebrities, most recently displayed on her cable TV show Fashion Police, were witty, caustic and often downright cruel – to the point when some threatened to sue her for defamation. A lifelong plastic surgery fan, she tended to view physical imperfections as optional and would mercilessly dig celebrities about excess hair, ageing, and weight gain. "If Kate Winslet would've just lost five pounds, Leo would've been able to fit on the raft," she said of the Titanic star, or, on Cate Blanchett: "Her movie is about Middle Earth, which is exactly where Cate's boobs have settled." But for all that, you can't deny her indomitability; after achieving fame on the talk show circuit in the 80s, she faced ruin when a failed attempt to launch her own show led to a irreparable break from her mentor Johnny Carson and, she said, her husband's suicide. But she rebounded, reinventing herself as a red carpet commentator and fashion maven, and was still working until the day she died. |
| 2 | 2014 celebrity pictures hack | 
|
895,417* |  |
An event so controversial that Wikipedia can't even decide what to name it; both its most popular titles this week are now redirects. The hack into dozens of personal files that celebrities (including Jennifer Lawrence, pictured) unwittingly stored on Apple's iCloud, which led to the mass publication of their private nude selfies, has acted as a sharp reminder of the fragility of personal privacy in the age of Web 2.0. A handy warning to any and all contemplating a bout of private exhibitionism: if you want to take a nude selfie, use a normal camera, not a phone; or, if you must use a phone, remember, just because you delete a picture, that doesn't mean it's gone.
*Number includes views for its monumentally insensitive nickname, "The Fappening", based on the subreddit where all of the pictures were collected. |
| 3 | Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant | 
|
635,031 |  |
Numbers are up again for this almost absurdly brutal jihadist group, which proudly posts mass executions it carries out on Twitter and has been disowned even by al-Qaeda. The surge is likely due to the fallout from Barack Obama's decision to take US troops into Iraq, (despite having campaigned on the promise of troop withdrawal from the country) including the execution of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. |
| 4 | Jennifer Lawrence |
|
560,678 | |
Wikipedia's favorite actress returns to the list for the first time since March as the most notable victim of the celebrity photo leak scandal. |
| 5 | Ariana Grande |
|
546,039 |  |
The singer and onetime Nickelodeon actress may have released her most recent album My Everything on August 25, but she's most likely on this list as another victim of the photo leak scandal. |
| 6 | Harry Houdini |
|
488,448 |  |
A performer from the age of nine, the Hungarian-Jewish immigrant with the intense eyes and the bodybuilder's physique worked his way to becoming the most successful escape artist and magician in the world, and, along with Charlie Chaplin, one of the first modern celebrities. Aware of the power of illusion, he used his fame to debunk fraudulent mediums and other bogus psychics, a tradition his fellow magicians continue to this day. Interest in his story was piqued by a two-part miniseries based on his life written by Nicholas Meyer and starring Adrian Brody in the title role. |
| 7 | Melissa Rivers |
|
444,539 | The actress daughter of Joan Rivers (see #1), who took her mother's stage name and eventually followed her into red carpet reportage, gained interest in the wake of her mother's death. | |
| 8 | Deaths in 2014 | 
|
431,671 |  |
The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. |
| 9 | 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup |
|
428,295 |  |
The only world sport that the US can truly claim as its own, basketball, as Carl Sagan noted, is younger than the cinema. But in its relatively short life, the game has risen to become the third most popular in the world (after soccer and cricket) and to see its world cup garner a global audience of over 800 million. |
| 10 | Radamel Falcao |
|
424,441 |  |
The Colombian striker, currently on loan to Manchester United from AS Monaco scored a record-breaking 17 goals in a single season in 2011. Interest was raised this week due to concerns over a past injury and controversial claims that he lied about his age. |
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Last month, I wrote an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, inviting others to join me in a simple but important request: roll back the recent actions—both technical and social—by which the Wikimedia Foundation has overruled legitimate decisions of several Wikimedia projects.
The context of the letter has been discussed in many venues, including the Signpost. In summary: Three of Wikimedia's most substantial projects clearly and formally rejected the full deployment of the Wikimedia Foundation's Media Viewer software, and declared that the deployment should be scaled back. The WMF disagreed, and created both technical ("superprotect") and social obstacles to those projects' decisions. In the letter, we requested, and continue to request, that the Wikimedia Foundation remove those obstacles.
I hoped that, if I contacted those who had previously spoken up on the topic, and diligently pursued my friends and close colleagues, I might earn as many as 200 signatures in a month, and thereby deliver a clear, strong message.
The response was astonishing.
In less than a month, the letter has been signed by 824 Wikimedians. An additional 82 people signed a copy of the letter published on change.org, totalling more than 900 supporters.
Numbers like these are, to my knowledge, without precedent; no previous Wikimedia issue has ever garnered 800 supporters. Votes on the US SOPA/PIPA legislation, on allowing proprietary video formats, and for individual appointments to the Board of Trustees have numbered in the hundreds, but none of these surpassed 800.
The signatures reflect broad support from those who have built Wikimedia's content, and who are passionate about our vision of freely sharing knowledge around the world; this group isn't narrowly centered on a certain range of experience or a specific language community. More than half of those signing began contributing between 2001 and 2007; nearly 100 started within the last 2.5 years. Wikimedians from 42 language communities signed. Volunteers have fully translated the text of the letter into 20 languages, and discussed it on various "Village Pump" pages across the Wikimedia projects. I have heard personally from Wikimedians around the world, in private emails and public talk page messages, about the letter's importance, and how it relates to local issues.
Let me emphasize several things the letter does not request or assert.
The letter does not endorse the Request for Comment model, or any other particular model, for evaluating software suitability. It does not propose any specific hierarchy or power dynamic among the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia volunteers. And finally, it does not insist that software like the Media Viewer or the superprotect status can never exist.
When I wrote the letter, I took great care to maintain neutrality on points like these. Dedicated Wikimedians hold a variety of views on such issues. But the letter’s simple requests, if granted, will address an immediate and divisive issue, and will permit those of us who share the Wikimedia vision to deliberate topics like these calmly and productively.
New software should bring celebration, not panic. Together, we need to work toward that reality. But before we can do so, we need an acceptable starting point.
900 people agree on what that starting point should look like.
The Wikimedia Foundation has the next move.
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