A few weeks ago, long-time Signpost editor-in-chief The ed17 announced his intention to step down due to time constraints. Aware of the heavy workload of his role, he sought two editors to replace him. As the members of the newly formed Signpost editorial board, we're pleased to announce our vision for the future of the Signpost and to explain our new roles.
Vision for the future
A wise individual once said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The new Signpost editorial board subscribes to this philosophy in relation to the weekly newspaper. Although we certainly do have some goals—reviving "News and notes" on a weekly basis, for one—we see no particular reason at the present time for making substantial changes to the Signpost's format. We will strive to maintain our voice and standing as an independent entity, separate from the WMF, Wikimedia chapters, WikiEd, or other entities. We hope to expand our coverage by including high-quality content and interesting opinion pieces from community members, including opposing viewpoints in some editions, like this week.
Members of the board
Co-editor-in-chief: Gamaliel: Gamaliel, an administrator with more than a decade of experience on the English Wikipedia, brings a wealth of Signpost experience to the team and is pleased to embark on this new venture. Most recently, he has revived the "In the Media" section, reporting on the Wikimedia movement's global media coverage. He has previously served as an assistant editor of sorts, occasionally helping Ed copyedit and organize the paper. In his new role, Gamaliel will be primarily responsible for the Signpost on a day-to-day basis.
Co-editor-in-chief: Go Phightins!: Go Phightins!, an administrator since May 2014 and editor for about three years, is admittedly a bit apprehensive about taking on this new role, but is thankful for the opportunity to do so, as well as for the strong team being installed at the same time. He has contributed to the "In the Media" section in the past and has had an enthusiasm for journalism for most of his life. In his new role, Go Phightins! will be primarily responsible for recruiting and retaining regular writers, facilitating timely communication, and assisting in the copyediting process.
Publication and newsroom manager: Pine: The name "Pine" has almost become synonymous with "Signpost writer" over the last few years, during which he has contributed in a variety of capacities. One of the sticking points for the new editors-in-chief in accepting their roles was the need for someone proficient in the technical aspects of publication. On learning of Pine's willingness to continue to serve in that capacity, they were thrilled and ready to sign on. Pine will continue to be manager of publication and a contact person for urgent newsroom queries; the new editors-in-chief are grateful for his help.
Editor emeritus: The ed17: Ed has volunteered to stay on the editorial board as a consultant and to help in a smaller capacity behind the scenes with sporadic tasks. As the outgoing editor-in-chief, he has a wealth of experience and personifies the excellent editor.
Technical consultant: Jarry1250: The editors are very pleased to have Jarry1250 in this role so that we can draw on his expertise on the technical aspects of publication as necessary.
You: The editorial board is not complete without you. We are looking for Wikipedians with all kinds of experience levels who are willing to commit to just a few hours per week to help the Signpost, including those interested in layout, copyediting, delivery, technical management, and—perhaps most importantly—writing. Now is a perfect time to pitch your ideas for a new section or a new angle on an old one, whether it appears weekly, biweekly, monthly, or sporadically. We are especially interested in editors willing to write for "News and notes" and about what other-language Wikipedia projects and newsletters are working on, though we welcome help and ideas on absolutely any topic. This is an exciting and dynamic time for the Signpost. So we call on you, our readers: if you have any interest whatsoever, please contact one of the members of your editorial board.
We'd like to take one more opportunity to thank Ed for his years of service as editor-in-chief, during which he told us he contributed up to 20 hours per week—never eager to step into the limelight but always willing to help behind the scenes. Please join us in thanking him for his dedication to this community newspaper. In this time of transition, we ask for your patience, confident that we will make mistakes, perhaps even large ones. Please bear with us as we learn our respective roles.
One editor has been site-banned, while another twelve are subject to remedies ranging from admonishments to broad topic bans and suspended sitebans. In addition, the committee has authorised broad discretionary sanctions, which give administrators wide latitude to block, topic-ban, or otherwise restrict editors who behave disruptively. The breadth of the topic bans and the discretionary sanctions was the subject of much discussion between arbitrators. Arbitrators were in agreement as to the need to prevent the dispute being exported to related articles—GamerGate is part of a much larger series of controversies about gender identity and sexuality (see, for example, coverage of the Christianity and sexuality case in last week’s Arbitration report)—but concerns were raised about the sheer scope of some of the proposals. After Roger Davies consolidated the options into proposals for a "standard topic ban", the committee reached agreement to define the scope as "(a) GamerGate, (b) any gender-related dispute or controversy, [or] (c) people associated with (a) or (b), all broadly construed".
When ArbCom grudgingly accepted a GamerGate case in November (the third such request in quick succession), Newyorkbrad urged the committee to handle the case "in a highly expedited manner to avoid its becoming a complete circus," while Beeblebrox decried the "'keep asking till you get [what] you want' feeling" he got from repeated case requests—he conceded that the situation was "spiraling out of control," thus necessitating a case. Despite hopes for an expedited case, it lasted for two months.
The case stems from the "GamerGate" hashtag, which was started in response to concerns about the proximity of relationships between some video game developers and the journalists reviewing their games. Those using it, however, have been severely criticised for the harassment and misogyny that has become associated with it. The related Wikipedia article, GamerGate controversy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), promptly became another front in the battle, with editors on both sides ranging from throwaway single-purpose accounts to long-established editors—several of whom had lengthy track records of edit-warring or misconduct in controversial topic areas.
Arbitrator Roger Davies told the Signpost that the case was complicated by its size and complexity. With 27 named parties and 41 editors presenting roughly 34,000 words worth of on-wiki evidence, a total that does not include email correspondence, the case was of a sort rarely seen in the committee's current era. Still, Davies observed that the case was concluded within two months, compared to the much longer durations of previous complex cases, such as Climate change (which took five months to resolve) and Scientology (nearly six). Of the various remedies, Davies said that no "silver bullet" would have resolved the issues raised in the case, but he suggested that the combination of "several related fixes, including existing and new sanctions" available to administrators would help. In the light of criticism that the decision had little immediate effect, Davies told the Signpost he expected it would "probably take a week or two to work through" for the effects to be fully felt.
Editor
Sanction
Duration
Notes
NorthBySouthBaranof
Topic ban
Indefinite
Passed in favor of a topic ban 9/3/2; for treating Wikipedia as a battleground
Ryulong
Topic ban
Indefinite
Site ban
Indefinite
TaraInDC
Admonishment
N/A
Tarc
Topic ban
Indefinite
Passed in lieu of a site ban, promulgated by two arbitrators, one of whom noted previous ArbCom findings against Tarc; standard topic ban for this case imposed
Warning
Indefinite
In wake of previous issues, ArbCom issued a blanket warning against future disruption, the consequence of which could be a site ban
The Devil's Advocate
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom unanimously imposed the standard topic ban for this case
1RR restriction
12 months
Passed unanimously as part of a package of four remedies imposed against The Devil's Advocate
Restriction
12 months
Editor is restricted from editing any administrative noticeboards; passed as third restriction component to avoid site ban
Warning
Indefinite
Similar to other editors, ArbCom issued a blanket warning against future disruption, including encouragement to avoid editing in contentious areas, the consequence of which (future disruption) could be a site ban
TheRedPenOfDoom
Admonishment
Indefinite
Passed 10/4; arbitrator GorillaWarfare, a dissenter, commented, "Though there was poor behavior here, I don't think a formal admonishment is needed."
Tutelary
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case
ArmyLine
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case
DungeonSiegeAddict510
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case
Xander756
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case
Titanium Dragon
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban from editing under BLP enforcement, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case
Loganmac
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom unanimously imposed standard topic ban for this case
Willhesucceed
Topic ban
Indefinite
ArbCom unanimously imposed standard topic ban for this case
Media coverage and responses
This case has even attracted media attention, including from The Guardian, which mistakenly proclaimed that Wikipedia "has banned five editors from making corrections to articles about feminism." It extensively quoted Mark Bernstein, who wrote a series of blog posts commenting on the Arbitration Committee's pending decision. (Editor's note: Mark Bernstein was topic banned by Gamaliel and later blocked by HJ Mitchell.) His three-part series, "Infamous", "Thoughtless", and "Careless", received wide-spread attention on social media, including through the blogs of actor Wil Wheaton, Tumblr, and biologist PZ Myers. Bernstein noted that five Wikipedia editors, NorthBySouthBaranof, Ryulong, TaraInDC, Tarc, and TheRedPenOfDoom, were targeted by supporters of GamerGate, who dubbed them the "Five Horsemen". According to Bernstein, these editors were "active in preserving objectivity and in keeping scurrilous sexual innuendo out of the encyclopedia". He went on to call them feminists, complaining:
“
By my informal count, every feminist active in the area is to be sanctioned. This takes care of social justice warriors with a vengeance — not only do the GamerGaters get to rewrite their own page (and [GamerGate targets] Zoe Quinn’s, Brianna Wu’s, Anita Sarkeesian’s, etc.); feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia.
”
He also erroneously claimed that aside from a few new single-purpose accounts, no GamerGate supporters were sanctioned, leaving them free to write their own page as ArbCom ostensibly ostracizes "liberals."
The Committee passed a site ban against one of the "Five Horsemen" at the last minute, in view of his behaviour while the case was ongoing and taking into account his long history of misconduct; topic banned two more; and admonished the remaining two. The Committee has also passed topic bans against seven editors who are widely seen as GamerGate supporters, four of whom were already topic-banned from the (narrower) GamerGate topic area through community general sanctions.
The Guardian also quoted Wikipedian Abigail Brady (Morwen), who said that contentious editing disputes on Wikipedia have become a "game of provocation chicken", asserting that internal politics of Wikipedia "are poisonous," as each side tries to "work as close to the ill-defined edge of acceptable behaviour to provoke the other into crossing it." The article concluded:
“
The byzantine internal processes of Wikipedia are incomprehensible for many, but they serve to shape the content on the site, the seventh biggest on the internet. Its reportedly unpleasant internal culture and unwelcoming atmosphere for new editors has long been blamed for an overwhelmingly masculine make-up – just one in ten editors are thought to be female – which in turn contributes to which topics get featured on the site.
”
The issue was also reported on by a number of other publications, most citing The Guardian's article, including Gawker, PandoDaily, De Volkskrant, Der Standard, Jezebel, Raw Story, ThinkProgress, The Verge, and The Mary Sue. Their headlines largely reflected the perception that Wikipedia was banning feminist editors, echoing the complaints following the Manning arbitration case that the Committee was sanctioning both editors who had made transphobic comments and those who opposed transphobia.
A number of Wikipedia editors decried the inaccuracies in the Guardian's reporting, with one party to the case calling it "completely ridden with factual errors" and another calling it "clearly biased". A Quest For Knowledge wrote that the Guardian misunderstood the purpose of the Committee: "editors are sanctioned for conduct, not their POV. This is absolutely critical to understand. There's no way the press can write a decent article about an ArbCom case without understanding this key distinction." Others echoed the central complaints of Bernstein and the Guardian. Jayen466 wrote "Yes, the Guardian article and its spin-offs contain inaccuracies, but there is still enough truth in the story for this to become quite as big a controversy as Categorygate did in 2013." The Guardian has since published a correction, stating that "An earlier version gave the impression that the bans had been finalised, and a quotation suggested that no pro-gamergate editors had been banned from the site."
Likely in response to that media attention, the committee released a lengthy statement intended for the press on its decision making process, vaguely and indirectly addressing some of the coverage on the case. "There have been a number of articles about this case in the press of late, some of which mischaracterize the Committee, its process, and outcomes of this case," the Committee wrote. "We would like to clarify the Committee’s purpose, process, and preliminary findings." The community widely criticized the statement for its length, minutia, and unintended obfuscation. Georgewilliamherbert, for example, wrote that "If you are going to comment at all, and you just did, you need to address the actual criticisms", while Jehochman stated that "The obvious mistake here is that the statement is wordy and lacks sound bites." Others approved of the statement but questioned a perceived lack of involvement from WMF, including Shii, who wrote, "This is a good statement, but where is the Wikimedia Foundation? They are the people who receive the fundraiser money—shouldn't they be involved in supporting the community, especially when some of English Wikipedia's most dedicated editors come under attack from unfair reporting?"
Philippe Beaudette of the Wikimedia Foundation wrote a blog post echoing the statement by the Committee, reading in part that "The Committee's mandate is to uphold a civil, constructive atmosphere that furthers Wikipedia’s mission. At the Wikimedia Foundation, we support that objective and are taking active steps to create and maintain a civil atmosphere for editors of all backgrounds. We ask all our editors to do the same."
Editor's note: In the interest of full disclosure, the Signpost's co-editor-in-chief Gamaliel and regular arbitration report writer Harry Mitchell (HJ Mitchell) have been involved to varying degrees in the Wikipedia aspects of the GamerGate controversy, including in the sanctioning of Mr. Bernstein. To avoid the appearance of impropriety, HJ Mitchell did not substantively edit any part of this report related to Mr. Bernstein, and Gamaliel limited himself to providing links and background information for this article. Without their input and contributions, this piece would not have been possible. Final editorial control was exercised by The ed17, this publication's editor emeritus.
Readers' responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section.
Nguyen, however, never was a co-founder of the company, which was actually founded by Parker, Todd Masonis, and Cameron Ring. Most publications reporting on the murder charge have corrected their mistakes regarding Plaxo or written follow-up stories. On his blog (January 21), John McCrea, Plaxo's former head of marketing, wrote that Plaxo's employees largely have no idea who Nguyen is:
“
Well, since Minh never set foot inside the doors of Plaxo, nor did a single day of work there, most of them, somewhat surprisingly, have actually never met him. To them, he’s just "that guy who keeps editing the Wikipedia page for Plaxo," listing himself as co-founder, despite it not being true. Every attempt to set the record straight over the years has been met with a rapid re-edit by Minh.
”
McCrea discussed the problem (January 22) with People. He said, "It sort of became a wrestling match. As soon as we'd edit the page [and remove Minh's name], he'd go back and put his name back in. It happened dozens of times over multiple years. Eventually, we gave up out of frustration." The claim that Nguyen was a co-founder of Plaxo was first added to the Wikipedia article for the company in June 2006 by User:Minhn21, who added it again in 2008 and 2010. It was also added by IP editors. It is not known if Plaxo sought assistance on Wikipedia or from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding this matter.
Why would Nguyen repeatedly make such a claim? Masonis told People that Nguyen was a childhood friend of Parker. DCInnospoke with (January 21) several former Plaxo executives who all said that Nguyen was present at several social gatherings at Parker's home near Stanford University around 2001, but that he played no role in the founding of the company. McCrea told DCInno:
“
Minh never, ever worked at Plaxo. The company was created in Silicon Valley while he was living on the East Coast. He never set foot in the building, and he had no role in the founding of the company. His claim of co-foundership is false by every possible definition of the term.
”
McCrea speculated on his blog that "The best I've been able to piece together is that he and Sean may have talked about the idea of a smarter address book, and somehow in Minh's mind that made him a co-founder."
At the time of the murder, the claim was again in the Wikipedia article, cited to a 2008 TechCrunch article. While many publications may have just glanced at Wikipedia, fact-checkers would have found that the information was supported by other sources, like the TechCrunch article, Nguyen's profile on LinkedIn, and the Encyclopedia Britannicaarticle on Sean Parker.
Russian official threatens to censor Wikipedia "in jest"
Newsweekreported on comments made by Alexander Biserov to ITAR-TASS on January 22. Biserov is deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, or Roskomnadzor, the agency charged with media and communications in Russia. Biserov told ITAR-TASS that Wikipedia was full of "a colossal number of mistakes" and said "My opinion on this, and I have said it many times, is I would ban Wikipedia, simply put it under censorship". The Russian government quickly backpedaled in a statement issued hours later via RusNovosti radio, which said "All this was said in jest, with irony and it should not prompt any kind of public reaction." Biserov's statement is the latest in a series of Russian government complaints about Wikipedia. In November 2014, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library announced it planned to create its own alternative to Wikipedia (See previous Signpostcoverage).
Wikipedia source for assassination dossier
Jerusalem Onlinereports (January 25) that Mashregh News, a news website affiliated with the IranianRevolutionary Guards, has published an article detailing a presumably hypothetical assassination plan targeting the two adult sons of Prime Minister of IsraelBenjamin Netanyahu, as well as the sons of former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Mashregh published a photograph of the Netanyahu family with crosshairs superimposed over the two sons, as well as detailed information about their recent activities and travels. According to Jerusalem Online, most of this information appeared to have been taken from Wikipedia. According to the International Business Times, high-ranking Revolutionary Guard member Hussein Salami called for (January 25) the assassination in retaliation for the death of Iranian General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi, who was killed in Syria in an airstrike earlier this month, an act that Iran has attributed to Israel.
Another government editing investigation: The Ottawa Citizenreports (January 28) that the Correctional Service of Canada is investigating a number of edits by 198.103.109.141, an IP address belonging to the CSC. The edits include homophobic remarks and the names of current correctional officers.
An education in Wikipedia: The Australian Broadcasting Corporationinvestigates (January 27) Evocca College, an Australian training college with over 40 campuses. Government figures, which Evocca disputes, indicates that in 2012, almost 14,000 students were enrolled but only 19 graduated. ABC cited the case of one student who sought a digital media degree but discovered that course content was copied without attribution from Wikipedia articles he himself had written.
Easter eggs: Rolling Stonereports (January 27) on an Easter egg contained within the new trailer for the 2015 superhero film Fantastic Four. Small red lettering can be seen on a screen which reads "23.21.190.125". Employing that number as a url in a web browser (23.21.190.125) will redirect you to the Wikipedia article for Latveria, the fictional country ruled by Fantastic Four nemesis Doctor Doom.
Cape Town meetup: htxt.africareports (January 27) on a Wikipedia meetup in Cape Town, South Africa on February 1.
SNet's Wikipedia: The Associated Pressreports (January 26) on how young Cubans have constructed a network of over 9000 computers in a country where internet access is expensive and strictly regulated by the government. The network, called SNet, short for streetnet, provides access to multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, a Facebook-like social network, movies and television shows, and a copy of Wikipedia that is refreshed whenever someone with internet access is able to do so.
The Prince of Wales: Debrett's has included Jimmy Wales on its annual Debrett's 500 list, a list of those they deem "Britain's 500 most influential people." Wales was born in the United States but is a resident of London.
Wikipedia encryption: PC Proreported (January 22) on comments made by Jimmy Wales at the 2015 BETT UK trade show. Wales pledged that Wikipedia will never turn off its encryption. Wales noted that following the disclosure by Edward Snowden of classified surveillance activity by the NSA and GCHQ, including the revelation that Wikipedia was seen as an easy target due to the absence of encryption, Wikipedia accelerated its efforts to provide it.
Who holds back the electric car?: Jimmy Wales was one of the attendees at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting of the world's overlords in Davos, Switzerland from January 21 to 24.
Infobox hero: The Daily Mirrorreports (January 20) that an IP address belonging to the UK government, 62.25.109.197, has made hundreds of edits to Wikipedia articles during the workday from November to January. While editing from UK government computers has been in the news before, this particular user or users took an interest in Wikipedia articles that were tagged as needing an infobox and systematically added infoboxes to them in alphabetical order, from A and T Recovery on November 20 to Butcher Bros. on January 14. The Mirror reported that the feed of the Twitter bot WhitehallEdits, which tweets links to Wikipedia articles edited from all UK government computers, was overwhelmed by the number of edits from this single IP address.
Note
Media coverage of the Gamergate Arbitration Case will appear in this week's "News and notes".
Editors' note: As we mentioned in our introduction, one of our goals is to offer a platform to discuss happenings in the Wikipedia community through publication of op-eds, editorials, and other material. This week, we have featured two excellent op-eds penned by Wikipedia administrators that offer differing views on how the arbitration committee handled the GamerGate case. The views expressed are those of the authors alone; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section, but please let your discussion be a positive representation of two of Wikipedia's core values—consensus-building and civility. Thank you.
Masem: Committee facilitates stability
Gamergate has drawn a lot of people and organizations into the controversy, and Wikipedia has been one of the more visible. The Gamergate supporters have identified that the English language Wikipedia article is one of the first results when one searches for "Gamergate", and desire to see that the article expresses their side of the issue properly. This has resulted in many of these supporters working with the open wiki nature of Wikipedia to try to discuss changes and introduce their side into the article. Some of these have been reasonable, starting civil discussions on the content.
However, the majority of these interested editors have been those that have not taken the time to learn about Wikipedia's policies on content, sourcing, and living persons. Several have tried to introduce some of the tenacious Gamergate theories into the article without proper sourcing, including egregious claims against living persons, particularly women. Some evidence of potential outside coordination to influence the Wikipedia article exists. How to handle the single purpose and sleeper accounts and anonymous edits of this nature has been a struggle. To stem the influence of these types of editors, the community decided on instituting general sanctions on the Gamergate topic space, which has been generally sufficient to quickly quell external pushes to affect the article.
At the same time, there has been a large disconnect between groups of established editors in how they approach the article. The Gamergate topic is clearly emotionally-driven, as the harassment of anyone (women or otherwise) via pseudo-anonymous groups already has a toxic connotation, and it is very difficult to find any sourcing from the media that doesn't paint the Gamergate supporters in a negative light. This has created a divide between these editors on how our sourcing and neutrality policies need to apply. Issues have arisen around how to present the media's highly negative take on the Gamergate situation within the neutrality policy, while the "verifiability, not truth" paradox of reliable sourcing has made the task of presenting objective material about Gamergate supporters from quality sources nearly impossible. There are plenty of pages of heated discussion of these matters, which can be expected from a situation like this.
What is core to the Gamergate Arbitration Committee case is that a subset of these established editors have seen themselves as a type of "white knight". They have expressed an overly strong concern about maintaining the page free of BLP violations and keeping the predominant view of the press as demanded by our neutrality policy to the point of edit warring. They have failed to accept new editors in good faith and have presumed bad faith about existing editors who did not follow their view. They have attempted page ownership, even when a draft version of the page was set up to prevent edit warring on the main space. As more attention was drawn to the Wikipedia article within Gamergate circles, many of these editors themselves became targets from offsite groups due to their opposition towards Gamergate, which appeared to drive them further into their activities of preventing Gamergate supporters from changing the nature of the Wikipedia article, while forgoing what would be expected behaviour of all Wikipedia editors.
The case was presented as a clash of the behaviour and attitudes of these experienced editors against an ongoing tide of single purpose accounts that, intentionally or not, wanted to push the Gamergate supporter side of the controversy onto Wikipedia and correct the lack of coverage the press has given their side.
While this is difficult situation for any editor to deal with, ArbCom's decision correctly focused solely on behaviour, only issuing findings of fact and no decisions or remedies on content policies, supporting the uninvolved admins who have tried to maintain order in this mess, and urging the community to review Gamergate and related articles within the context of policies.
The decision continues to uphold how we should handle new and single purpose accounts that are only here to try to influence the context of one topic, and re-emphasizes the community-based general sanctions within the context of the decision. At the same time, the rulings, particularly towards editors who are being topic-banned or admonished, affirm that decorum and civility is expected of editors even when dealing violations of BLP or neutrality. Actions like edit warring and battleground mentalities, regardless of how "right" that position might be, is not appropriate within the consensus-driven editing process.
The ArbCom decision does not have the bias that some blogs and news sources are reporting, but instead is applying an equivalent standard to every editor, new or experienced, who comes to edit in a given topic area with a mission: editors are still expected to follow civility, standards of decorum, and encyclopedia policy that an open wiki built on consensus requires to maintain stability, no matter how much one might feel their mission is for the right cause. The decision enforces the tenet that Wikipedia is meant to be neutral on any topic it covers and should not be used as a battleground to push agendas from any direction, regardless of the cause.
Masem is a Wikipedia administrator and works frequently on the areas of contemporary works, video games, and popular and Internet culture, science, and current events. He is also a major contributor in the areas of Wikipedia's non-free content policy and notability guidelines.
The Arbitration Committee just announced their decision in the Gamergate case. The case, from the "infamous blunder"[1] of the proposed decision to the bizarre press release (an ArbCom first, perhaps?), has been an utter, avoidable failure that shakes any confidence I have the Committee will be effective in the future.[note 1]
The Gamergate controversy erupted when game developer Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend accused her of sleeping around[2] and metastasized into harassment and death threats against anyone (usually female) who criticized either the pretext of the controversy - "actually...it's about ethics in game journalism" - or gaming culture itself. Normally, these situations die out as forum trolls get bored.[note 2] Gamergaters did not get bored.
Threads on KotakuInAction (KiA), a popular[note 3] Gamergate forum, or subreddit, on the website Reddit, brought a heavily active community interested in seeing their version of events displayed here. Rather than just coordinating to tag-team articles, they also focused on editors. Five Wikipedia editors, dubbed the "Five Horsemen",[5][6] were identified as "biased" against Gamergate: Ryulong,[7]Tarc,[8], TaraInDC, TheRedPenOfDoom and NorthBySouthBaranof.[9]
As a result of the attention (and, admittedly, the intransigence of some long term editors), in the span of three months the article has been protected nine times[10] and the talk page has accumulated millions of bytes of discussion. Three arbitration requests were made in 30 days, all lodged by editors pushing a pro-Gamergate POV[note 4][11][12][13] and all aimed at editors defending the article against the same.
Arbitrators recognized early on that off-wiki "co-ordination"[14] and "controversy"[15] were central to the case. Editors with experience in similar enforcement areas warned against potential problems. Hasteur left an prescient note, reminding the Committee that "[c]learing the decks of all the editors who have already contributed to the Gamergate colleciton [sic] of articles is only going to provide more incentive for...[single purpose accounts]."[16] with, as Future Perfect at Sunrise put it, "all the makings for another procedural disaster like the infamous "Macedonia 2", where hordes of people motivated by external political agendas were given free rein to drown the procedure in their drivel for weeks, until clerks and arbs started randomly and erraticly [sic] hitting out with blocks against established participants who had cracked under the constant provocation and lost their temper."[17]
Recognizing these exigencies, WormTT recommended "an expedited case, and firmly holding to deadlines and word limits."[18], with Newyorkbrad hoping to "[handle the case] in a highly expedited manner to avoid its becoming a complete circus".[19]Beeblebrox suggested temporary injunctions may be needed to ensure an orderly case.[20]
On the 25th of November, the Committee accepted the case.
The Committee let two deadlines slip after 11th hour pleas for more space and time from parties to the case, some of whom had been warned about misuse of the evidence page or accusations made with irrelevant or insufficient evidence.[note 5] No temporary injunctions were proposed or enacted. No sanctions were made during the case, although enforcing the third deadline required fully protecting the evidence page.[22]
The initial proposed decision was released, after two delays, on the 19th of January.[23] Every member of Gamergate's "five horsemen" faced sanctions. Only one editor supporting Gamergate who was not already banned or topic banned faced sanctions.[note 6] Proposed decisions change over time, of course; new remedies were added by other arbitrators and some of the original remedies did not gain consensus, but remarkably little has changed in the overall scope. Ryulong, Tarc, and NorthBySouthBaranof were topic banned; TaraInDC and TheRedPenofDoom will just be "admonished". Despite finding unanimously that "off-wiki feuds" and accusations of "off-wiki canvassing" were central to the dispute,[24] none of the proposed remedies addressed off-wiki actions.[note 7]
DD2K summed up the problem directly: "by sanctioning long-time editors who have had to deal with deplorable, egregious off-site (and many times on-site) harassment, while letting one of the main coordinators of that harassment go unmentioned, tells regular editors(volunteers themselves) and admins that protecting the project from BLP violations coordinated from off-site will not only get you sanctioned, but the perpetrators will be rewarded with no sanction."[26]Resolute added, "in trying to appear fair, you've really only given the outside harassers exactly what they want. I sincerely hope your "robust protections" are as advertised, because from where I sit, I see no incentive at all to try and enforce Wikipedia's policies on this set of articles. Looks like all you will get for your trouble is harassed, attacked, doxxed and threatened from the outside, and then topic or site banned from the inside."[27]
Lest we imagine this uncertainty is only hypothetical, Risker, a former arbitrator, wrote that she "took action [in the topic area] using advanced tools the other night only after I had the personal commitment of two of your colleagues to 'have my back' if I did so, because this decision is so broad that even acting entirely within policy I see a realistic risk of being sanctioned for taking entirely policy-accepted actions."[28] Remember the case was kicked off by a complaint about administrative malfeasance, precisely the kind of situation an administrator wading into Gamergate six months from now might face.[note 8]
That an arbitration decision divides the community and foments uncertainty is not news,[note 9] nor is it a sign by itself that the Committee cannot tackle vexed problems. What truly staggers here is the extent to which active arbitrators saw the major issues in the case coming and then did literally nothing about them. They recognized that behavior during the dispute would be a problem, then took no action as the evidence page ballooned.[note 10] They recognized the importance of off-wiki coordination[note 11] and then refused to take action on that very subject. They were repeatedly warned about misinterpreting this dispute as garden-variety Wikipedia factionalism and went on to "[clear]the decks of all the editors"[32] anyway.
Gamergate is not special. It is not a 100 year flood. It is the future of online resentment and so long as Wikipedia is both editable and authoritative we will face the same sort of problems. I had a hope, when this case was first taken, that Wikipedia would do the right thing in the end. That this community, which I am so passionate about and have been lucky enough to be a (very marginal) part of would land on the right solution after having tried all the bad ones. We're still looking, and the Arbitration Committee appears to be badly lost.
Protonk is a Wikipedia administrator who has had an account for over six years, totaling over 23,000 edits in that time (many of which have yet to be reverted!)
Notes
^By way of introduction and disclaimer, I'm peripherally involved in the Gamergate issue but am neither a party to the case nor a major contributor.
^"If there are a parade of single purpose accounts acting badly, the page can be semi-protected or protected long-term by any administrator, and disruptive accounts can be warned and then topic banned. Once the bad actors realize that we aren't going to tolerate them, they will go elsewhere."[3] Additionally, many of the single purpose accounts in the topic area were older but until-recently inactive accounts,[4] rendering semi-protection less useful.
^In terms of concurrent users, a popular thread on KotakuInAction could bring thousands of interested, motivated eyes on a Wikipedia article, user or project page.
^All the while the page was watched closely by KotakuInAction.[21]
^This has proven embarrassing enough to the Committee that in their press release they attempt to obscure the issue by lumping in community action with the outcome of the decision.
^Following the proposed decision, Roger Davies (one of the drafting arbitrators) gave their view of the challenges, "if the Committee were in a position to introduce emergency draconian measures (which it isn't), it could only be on the basis of what's happening within the encyclopedia rather what may be going on outside it. There are simply no practical solutions to some of these issues because Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It would take major systemic change (end pseudonymous editing, require ID to create an account etc) to make individual editors accountable and, even then, we'd have no reliable means of connecting external anonymous individuals to named internal accounts."[25] It's possible (likely, even!) that arbitrators reviewed the possibility of addressing off-wiki coordination and found the evidence wanting or the action needed to be outside their remit, but little of that came through in the decision.
^While these allegations were never substantiated, one of the remedies in the proposed decision can only be described as a Gilliamesque admonition: "Gamaliel is reminded that the boundaries of 'involved' are frequently blurred and that the exercise of administrative discretion often requires the exercise of circumspection."[29]
^Though the current Committee is certainly on a roll with regard to gender-related cases
^One principle noting the importance of conduct during arbitration cases has unanimous support from 14 arbitrators.[30] One can only assume the committee feels they've done a good job in this regard.
^A problem which still exists on the article, with editors importing translations of the Spanish language version of the article.[31]
It is pretty clear what the theme is this week: people. With the media on hiatus during the January dead zone (except for the astonishing performance of American Sniper) Wikipedia readers turned to their other main focus of interest: celebrity. More specifically, dead celebrity. Two of the Traffic Report's subjects died this week (a third, Coronation Street's Anne Kirkbride, just missed the top 10) while two more either died fairly recently (Chris Kyle) or had their lives commemorated (Martin Luther King Jr.). Wikipedia readers' tendency to reduce Super Bowls to duels between rival quarterbacks meant not only that Tom Brady appeared in the Top 10, but that Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson appeared in the Top 25. Altogether, seven of the top 10 slots went to people, and two more went to articles related to them.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
America needs heroes it seems, because when Clint Eastwood gave her one, she embraced him for all she was worth. Viewing numbers for this murdered US soldier have pretty much doubled each of the last three weeks. It's hard to imagine a more perfectly formed hero; a man of superhuman ability (the most successful sniper in military history) and fatal compassion (his murderer was a PTSD-affected veteran whose pain he was hoping to ease on a shooting range) who now, in death, can never be corrupted or betray his own ideals. It is not surprising that America found her hero in a movie; after all, if the US Congress were a movie, it would have the second-lowest score on IMDb, only beating Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas.
Clint Eastwood has always had astute commercial instincts as a filmmaker, instincts that appear only to have sharpened with age. But even he must have been flabbergasted at the commercial reception given to his latest film, American Sniper. The biography of sniper Chris Kyle has earned over $200 million in just 11 days of wide release, and that in January, usually considered Hollywood's financial graveyard. There hasn't been a phenomenon like this since Frozen. Adjusted for inflation, the film has already eclipsed Unforgiven as Eastwood's highest grossing film as a director in the US, and shows no signs of slowing down.
It is Martin Luther King Day this week, and, with public awareness of police killings of black men spiking, and claims that blacks are being blocked from voting by new voter fraud laws, it's fair to say the civil rights pioneer's life has more resonance than ever. On top of that, a mild controversy has also emerged concerning the exclusion of his biopic Selma from most major Oscar categories. You'd think that would be enough for him to top the list, but apparently not.
This list invariably pops up once a year, as Americans scramble for facts to determine which team will win the Super Bowl; the foremost of all football fiestas (at least in the US- most of the rest of the world has never heard of it).
The New England Patriotsquarterback with the all-American name has led his team to the Super Bowl six times in the last thirteen years, and won thrice. His position on the list implies readers expect him to do so again.
Thanks to the "pass the parcel" mode of succession practised in Saudi, which hands the crown not down the generations but between the sons of the country's first monarch, Ibn Saud, its now-late ruler was 81 when he assumed the throne, and held it for less than a decade before his death this week handed it to his brother Salman, who, at 79, is the youngest surviving son of Ibn Saud. After him, the grandchildren will finally be let in. Such a system ensures that Saudi Arabia will be a gerontocracy for the foreseeable future.
The Phantom of the Opera-esque Bollywood film starring Vikram (left) opened this week to reasonable reviews and fairly spectacular box office, netting ₹1.84 billion ($30 million) worldwide in its first 12 days.
The fitness model and actor died this week after running between the rails of the MetrolinkAntelope Valley Line in Burbank, California. His death was recorded on video and, while it hasn't been released, it apparently suggests he was trying to outrun a train.
A suspiciously high mobile count (93%) implies that this week's release of Sorry 4 the Wait 2, the latest mixtape from Lil Wayne, composer of such masterpieces as "B***s Love Me", might not be generating solely human interest, and that his views may be being artificially inflated. I'll leave it to you as to whether we should drop him.
The hip-hop singer and former stripper caused a minor Internet storm this week when she released some revealing images of herself online, to much attention and a decent amount of criticism.
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
US playwright Alice Gerstenberg. A bot-generated article about her 1920 comedy Fourteen was accepted with minimal changes.
Bot detects theatre play scripts on the web and writes Wikipedia articles about them
A paper[1] presented at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition last year (earlier poster) presents an automated method to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theatre plays ("only about 10% of the plays in our dataset have corresponding Wikipedia pages"). It searches for playscripts and related documents on the web, extracts key information from them (including the play's main characters, relevant sentences from online synopses of the play, and mentions in Google Books and the Google News archive in an attempt to ensure that the play satisfies Wikipedia's notability criteria). It then compiles this information into an automatically generated Wikipedia article. Two of the 15 articles submitted as result of this method were accepted by Wikipedia editors. For the first, Chitra by Rabindranath Tagore, the initial bot-created submission underwent significant changes by other editors ("the final page reflects some of the improvements we can incorporate in our bot"). The second one, Fourteen by Alice Gerstenberg, "was moved into Wikipedia mainspace with minimal changes. All the references, quotes and paragraphs were retained".
"Renaissance Editors" create better Wikipedia content
A study of the German Wikipedia[2], about the diversity of editor contributions among the 8 "main categories", shows a relationship between editor diversity and quality.
The authors start by defining an "interest profile" of an editor – the proportion of bytes contributed across all categories. Then an entropy measure is proposed which rewards an interest profile for being more distributed across more categories – having a polymath style.
There is a correlation shown between the average diversity of contributors and what types of article quality they've contributed to. Article quality is determined based on whether the article is a "Good Article", "Featured Article", or neither. It is also shown that total productivity, measured by bytes contributed, is linked to diversity, only marginally insignificantly. Finally, a logistic regression shows that diversity more than productivity significantly determines article quality.
Despite too many simplifications (e.g. single language, naive article quality ratings, too broad categories), the methods used by the researchers are well-defined, clear, and convincing in a limited scope, and place a finger on the notion that our most lauded editors tend to run all over Wikipedia.
Briefly
In-depth examination of the history of three featured articles on the Swedish Wikipedia, and their main editors: This paper[3] looks at collaboration on the Swedish Wikipedia via a qualitative analysis of three Featured Articles. Information is pulled into the articles from a variety of sources including other language Wikipedias and curated by editors. The qualitative study found the articles' growth followed a similar trajectory and were contributed to by both content and process oriented editors, in what the author calls a process of ‘intercreation.’
"Contropedia" tool identifies controversial issues within articles: This paper [4] discusses the formation of a new method for identifying and examining controversial issues within Wikipedia articles. The paper outlines the development of an algorithm used to identify the most contested topics via an analysis of the edits surrounding wikilinks. The resulting Contropedia tool (already presented at WikiSym 2014[5]) provides an excellent visual presentation of hot button issues in a given article. The authors note that the tool has the potential to be of use to researchers interested in studying the evolution of controversial issues over time in an article, as well as affording Wikipedians insight into potential sites of controversy.
"Building Multilingual Language Resources in Web Localisation: A Crowdsourcing Approach": This volume on natural-language processing was semi-recently published, several chapters of which are about wikis, confirming their value for NLP research. Some results are still of some use.
"Micro-crowdsourcing" and shared translation memory are proposed as solutions to localising the web: in fact, both were already implemented by the Translate extension; respectively on translatewiki.net in 2009 and on Wikimedia wikis in 2012, years ahead of the researchers' idea.[6]
Italian linguists developed a CC-BY-SA dictionary based on Tullio De Mauro's, which they describe as "very close to Wiktionary" but with two differences in their platform: "senses (and their relationships) are first-class citizens [...] a rich interactive and WYSIWYG Web interface that is tailored to linguistic content."[9]
Other recent publications
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
"The dynamic nature of conflict in Wikipedia"[10] From the abstract: "With a small number of simple ingredients, our model mimics several interesting features of real human behaviour, namely in the context of edit wars. We show that the level of conflict is determined by a tolerance parameter, which measures the editors' capability to accept different opinions and to change their own opinion."
"Comprehensive Wikipedia Monitoring for Global and Realtime Natural Disaster Detection"[11] (slides)
"Hedera: Scalable Indexing and Exploring Entities in Wikipedia Revision History"[13] From the abstract: "Hedera exploits Map-Reduce paradigm to achieve rapid extraction, it is able to handle one entire Wikipedia articles’ revision history within a day in a medium-scale cluster, and supports flexible data structures for various kinds of semantic web study."
"Learning to Identify Historical Figures for Timeline Creation from Wikipedia Articles"[14]
"WiiCluster: A Platform for Wikipedia Infobox Generation"[15]
"Proceed With Extreme Caution: Citation to Wikipedia in Light of Contributor Demographics and Content Policies"[16]
"Wikipedia: helping to promote the art and science of civil engineering"[17]
References
^Banerjee, Siddhartha; Cornelia Caragea; Prasenjit Mitra (2014). Playscript Classification and Automatic Wikipedia Play Articles Generation. 2014 22nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR). pp. 3630–3635. doi:10.1109/ICPR.2014.624. , preprint, dataset
^Erik Borra, Esther Weltevrede, Paolo Ciuccarelli, Andreas Kaltenbrunner, David Laniado, Giovanni Magni, Michele Mauri, Richard Rogers, Tommaso Venturini: Contropedia – the analysis and visualization of controversies in Wikipedia articles
PDF
^Wilson, Jodi L. (2014). "Proceed With Extreme Caution: Citation to Wikipedia in Light of Contributor Demographics and Content Policies". JETLaw: Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law. 16 (4): 857.
Since I began this project two years ago, I have often compared it to navigating by lamplight through a dense, opaque fog. All we receive to craft this report is a sequence of raw data, with no indication as to its origin or validity. From it, we must discern the genuine human views from those of spammers, DDOS attackers, botnets, or lunatic pranksters. Initially, we relied on simple hard graft; checking viewing stats, news sites, Reddit threads or Google Doodles, ruling out possibility after possibility, and basing our conclusions on a combination of common sense, intuition, and trial and error. However, over time, our tools increased (in particular with the addition of mobile views), and now searches that used to take hours can be done in minutes. Unfortunately, because these tools came to us only towards the end of the year, they have proven rather useless in compiling the annual report, which has left me with that same feeling of helpless panic that I remember from our earliest days. And it wasn't like 2014 was in a mood to help; indeed it was apparently the year that the Internet decided to gang up on Wikipedia. The year-end pileup of every oddball entry for the last twelve months meant that, for the first time ever, I have had to exclude more entries than I included, which raises some serious questions, not least by myself, as to whether this list could ever be accurate. All I can tell you is to take the conclusions below with a grain of salt, and if you are concerned, check out the raw data for yourself.
This is only my second annual Traffic report, so it's too early to discern longterm trends, but one thing stands out like a panzer in a pizzeria: this year's 25 most viewed articles together comprised 289 million views; last year's total was 350 million. That's a decrease of 18 percent. The natural question is why, and it is an excellent one. It's not like people aren't turning to Wikipedia for information; this year's list contained four articles related to current events (five if you count the centenary of World War I), compared with one last year. And it isn't surprising; I was not the only one left stranded in the fog by 2014. With the tragic and seemingly inexplicable death of Robin Williams, the nebulous and inconclusive war against ISIL, and the overstated alien horror of Ebola, people turned to Wikipedia to make sense of a world that seemed beyond their control. This arguably led to a decrease in the quality of the articles from last year's list: articles on current events remain in a constant state of flux, and seldom settle down long enough to be improved.
That said, in other respects, this list is reassuringly familiar: the same dominance of pop culture (TV, movies, websites, celebrities); the same egocentric interest in one's country of residence (yes, the countries, even those further down the list, are still in order of English-speaking population); the same obsession with death (Deaths in 2014 eclipsed Facebook this year to top the list, while, again, the most viewed celebrity was one who died), and the same sober desire to commemorate past events (this year, the centenary of World War I; last year, the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's delivery of the Gettysburg Address).
One major difference stands out, however: film has a much stronger presence on this list than last year. On noting 2013's relative lack of film entries, I speculated that movies' relatively short lifespans in theatres mean they don't sustain the public interest to the level that television can. That may still be true, for most films, but this year saw films of such mind-bending popularity they essentially became institutions overnight. My only question is why Frozen isn't higher on this list. It debuted in November last year, but toy tie-ins for the movie were still the must-have presents for this Christmas. Who's betting that years from now mothers the world over will still be plugging their ears to their daughters' billionth play of "Let It Go"? As for Guardians of the Galaxy? Well, only a studio as confident as Marvel would have dared to release it to begin with, let alone hire a former Troma director and cast Vin Diesel as a walking tree or Bradley Cooper as a raccoon. But the concept was so crazy it worked; audiences fell in love with it, and then, when it was released on video, fell in love with it again.
Conversely, TV had a reduced presence from last year. With Breaking Bad and How I Met Your Mother now concluded, Game of Thrones has assumed the pole position by virtue of its numbers seeing negligible change. Once again, Wikipedia viewers, for obvious reasons, favoured the "watercooler shows" that require a large amount of background knowledge to stay current, like The Walking Dead or True Detective, or geek-friendly fare, such as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
As with last year, music stars were the majority of celebrities on the list, as their frequent concerts and media appearances keep their flames alight longer than others of their stripe. In the regretted and possibly surprising absence of Jennifer Lawrence, former Nickelodeon poplet Ariana Grande claimed the position of Wikipedia's most popular woman by default. Less explicable is the enduring interest in Jordan Belfort, a hedonist who financed his playboy lifestyle by scamming investors out of millions, who now hosts motivational seminars on how to get rich quick. True, he was the subject of a moderately popular film in 2013, but that still doesn't explain his appearance on this year's list.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 11 to 17 January 2015. Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Philip Seymour Hoffman(nominated by Dr. Blofeld and Loeba) (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014) was an American actor, director, and producer of film and theater. Best known for his supporting and character roles – typically lowlifes, bullies, and misfits – Hoffman was a regular presence in films from the early 1990s until his death at age 46. Drawn to theater as a teenager, Hoffman studied acting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He began his screen career in a 1991 episode of Law & Order, and started to appear in films in 1992. He gained recognition for his supporting work throughout the decade, notably in Boogie Nights (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Hoffman also appeared in Hollywood blockbusters, such as Twister (1996) and Mission: Impossible III (2006), and one of his final roles was Plutarch Heavensbee in the Hunger Games series (2013–15). The feature Jack Goes Boating (2010) marked his debut as a filmmaker. Hoffman was also an accomplished theater actor and director. He joined the off-BroadwayLAByrinth Theater Company in 1995, where he directed, produced, and appeared in numerous stage productions. His performances in three Broadway plays – True West (2000), Long Day's Journey into Night (2003), and Death of a Salesman (2012) – all led to Tony Award nominations. Hoffman struggled with drug addiction as a young adult, and relapsed in 2013 after many years of sobriety. In February 2014, he died of combined drug intoxication – an unexpected event that was widely lamented by the film and theater fraternities.
Hoopoe starling(nominated by FunkMonk) is a species of starling which lived on the island of Réunion. It had white and grey plumage, and a crest on its head. Before its extinction, they were kept as caged birds by some settlers on the islands; however, they were also hunted for food, and because they were seen as a crop pest, and between that, introduced species, disease, and deforestation, the bird was in decline by the early 19th century, and went extinct in the 1850s.
California Diamond Jubilee half dollar(nominated by Wehwalt) Issued to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Californian statehood in 1925, the California Diamond Jubilee half dollar was struck in San Francisco in August of that year. The obverse depicts a prospector panning for gold; he is peering intently into his pan, looking for specks of placer gold. The reverse has a grizzly bear, an adaptation of the emblem on the state flag. Although 300,000 coins were authorized to be minted, only 150,000 were actually struck, and of these approximately half were sold. The rest were melted down. Of the 86,594 coins sold or distributed to the public, 494 were given to children born in the State on 9 September, the 75th anniversary of California statehood. The design, by Jo Mora, was widely admired, although at least one critic was puzzled by the inclusion of what he thought was a Polar bear, as he had travelled up and down the state without seeing one.
Mackensen-class battlecruiser(nominated by Parsecboy) The Mackensen class of battlecruisers were "the last class of battlecruisers to be built by Germany in World War I". The cruisers were designed to have eight 14 inch guns, and more powerful engines, throwing out 67 megawatts of power to move their 35,000 tons at a top speed of 28 knots or 32 miles per hour. Of the intended seven only four were built, of which three were launched, but, despite these three being officially launched, none were actually completed. The nearest to completion, Graf Spee, had been launched on 15 September 1917 with a speech by Prince Henry of Prussia and a christening by the widow of Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee. She was sold for scrap in October 1921. The unfinished hull fetched 4.4 million Marks- about £6,000 or US$24,000 at the exchange rate of late October (just over two years of hyperinflation later 4.4 million marks was worth about half of a third farthing).
1987 Giro d'Italia(nominated by Disc Wheel) The 1987 Giro d'Italia was the 70th event in the series, one of cycling's Grand Tour races. It began on 21 May with a 4 km (2.5 mi) prologue in San Remo, and concluded on 13 June with a 32 km (19.9 mi) individual time trial in Saint-Vincent. A total of 180 riders from 20 teams entered the 22-stage, 3,915 km (2,433 mi)-long race, which was won by Irishman Stephen Roche of the Carrera Jeans–Vagabond team. Second and third places were taken by British rider Robert Millar and Dutchman Erik Breukink, respectively. It was the second time in the history of the Giro that the podium was occupied solely by non-Italian riders. Roche's victory in the 1987 Giro was his first step in completing the Triple Crown of Cycling – winning the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France, and the World Championship road race in one calendar year – becoming the second rider ever to do so. Roche's teammate and defending champion Roberto Visentini took the first race leader's maglia rosa (English: pink jersey) after winning the opening prologue, only to lose it to Breukink the following stage. Roche took the overall lead after his team, Carrera Jeans-Vagabond, won the stage three team time trial. Visentini regained the lead for a two-day period after the stage 13 individual time trial. The fifteenth stage of the 1987 Giro has been recognized as an iconic event in the history of the race because Roche rode ahead of teammate Visentini, despite orders from the team management, and took the race lead. Roche successfully defended the overall lead from attacks by Visentini and other general classification contenders until the event's finish in Saint-Vincent. Stephen Roche became the first Irishman to win the Giro d'Italia.
Amphetamine(nominated by Seppi333 and Boghog)Amphetamine is "a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant" discovered in 1887 by Romanian chemist Lazar Edeleanu at the University of Berlin. "The first pharmaceutical amphetamine was Benzedrine", used as a bronchodilator for blocked noses. Early users, discovering the euphoric stimulant effect, cracked the inhaler open and swallowed the drug-impregnated material inside. Amphetamines soon became available in a more convenient tablet form, and were widely distributed during the Second World War to Allied and Axis combatants. "“About that time I discovered Benzedrine. Loved those little white suckers. We could get a sack full in those days" (USAF Captain Bryant L. Smick). Amphetamine alters the use of "monoamines as neuronal signals in the brain, primarily in catecholamine neurons in the reward and executive function pathways of the brain, collectively known as the mesocorticolimbic projection". "The concentrations of the main neurotransmitters involved in reward circuitry and executive functioning, dopamine and norepinephrine, increase dramatically in a dose-dependent manner by amphetamine due to its effects on monoamine transporters." A few more quotes from Captain Smick: "It sure didn't bother to get up at 3:00 AM anymore. Pop a couple of pills and you were wide awake ready to take on the whole world.""If it kept you awake, just take a few sleeping pills. Boy! Isn't medical science great or what!!" (As First Lieutenant, Bryant L. Smick and his crew flew the B-24 LiberatorLiberty Belle on 24 missions to targets in Romania and Austria from their base in southern Italy. His 25th mission, on another B-24, was so tough that the entire crew were awarded the Silver Star. On his 26th his plane was shot down; Smick parachuted into the sea and was captured.)
Maurice Richard(nominated by Resolute)Joseph Henri Maurice "Rocket" Richard, PC CC OQ was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. "Rocket" Richard was born in 1921 in Montreal. At the age of four he was given a pair of ice skates- from that point he was skating on frozen rivers, and "a small backyard ice surface his father created". Richard began playing organised hockey at 14. In 1940 he played for the Montreal Canadiens' affiliate in the Quebec Senior Hockey League but broke his ankle in the first game and missed the rest of the season. Attempting to enlist in the Canadian army in 1941 he was deemed unfit for combat due to his injury. For the 1941-1942 season "Richard returned to the QSHL Canadiens, with whom he played 31 games and recorded 17 points before he was again injured." The 1944-1945 season saw Richard setting several records, including scoring 50 goals in 50 games. Richard often faced the violence of opposing teams attempting to prevent him scoring. They found that "he could be goaded into taking himself out of the game by violently retaliating and fighting".
Pancreatic cancer(nominated by Wiki CRUK John, a.k.a. Johnbod) Pancreatic cancer arises when cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a mass. These cancer cells have the ability to invade other parts of the body. There are a number of types of pancreatic cancer. The most common, pancreatic adenocarcinoma, accounts for about 85% of cases, and the term "pancreatic cancer" is sometimes used to refer only to that type. These adenocarcinomas start within the part of the pancreas which make digestive enzymes. Several other types of cancer, which collectively represent the majority of the non-adenocarcinomas, can also arise from these cells. One to two in every hundred cases of pancreatic cancer are neuroendocrine tumors, which arise from the hormone-producing cells of the pancreas. These are generally less aggressive than pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Signs and symptoms of the most common form of pancreatic cancer may include yellow skin, abdominal or back pain, unexplained weight loss, light-colored stools, dark urine and loss of appetite. There are usually no symptoms in the disease's early stages, and symptoms that are specific enough to suspect pancreatic cancer typically do not develop until the disease has reached an advanced stage.
St Helen's Church, Ashby-de-la-Zouch(nominated by Jimfbleak)Ashby-de-la-Zouch is a small town in North West Leicestershire where, on a Friday night, your beer will be served in a plastic "glass" just in case you get beligruntbellagerunt a bag on. Oh you did, did you? On Saturday morning you will be scraped off the pub floor, and taken to St Helen's Church, Ashby-de-la-Zouch where your fingers will be put in ye finger pillory, and you'll be sitting there looking right mardy until it's dark over Bill's mum. Yes meduck. Nar then… St Helen's Church is the Anglicanparish church of Ashby, situated between the castle and the town. Although there was a church there in olden times, the core of the present building was created by William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings "at the same time that he converted his neighbouring manor house into a castle", starting in 1474. Unlike the rest of us, barons don't have problems with builders or planners, and Hastings was soon in possession of a fine church, a big castle, a sore throat and an aching sword arm. The Hastings family remained patrons of the church for four centuries; it was stripped of its medieval finery during the Reformation, and the Civil War saw its patrons hold the town for the Crown. Refurbished in 1670, by the 18th century the church had become dirty and the churchyard a haunt of pigs. As the congregation increased during the first quarter of the 19th century, the pews were replaced and galleries installed in 1829. Half a century later, in 1878-1880, the church was extensively rebuilt and two outer aisles added by the magnificently-named James Piers St Aubyn. St Helen's is now a Grade I listed building, one of exceptional interest, with a Baroque wooden reredos of outstanding quality, the Hastings Chapel with its family monuments, and some choice medieval stained glass, possibly from the castle. Also, there's a finger pillory… it's occupied at the moment by someone with a bad hangover.
The "Pillars of Creation", a cloud of interstellar gas with a high level of star formation, and actively being destroyed by the "winds" from that star formation.
James Cameron filmography(nominated by Cowlibob)James Cameron is a Canadian director, screenwriter, and producer who has had an extensive career in film and television. Cameron's début was the 1978 science fictionshortXenogenesis, which he directed, wrote and produced. In the early part of his career, he did various technical jobs such as special visual effects producer, set dresser assistant, matte artist, and photographer. His feature directorial début was the 1981 release Piranha II: The Spawning. The next film he directed was the science fiction action thriller The Terminator (1984). It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular cyborg assassin, and was Cameron's breakthrough feature. In 1986, he directed and wrote the science fiction action sequel Aliens starring Sigourney Weaver. He followed this by directing another science fiction film The Abyss (1989). In 1991, Cameron directed the sequel to The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (with Schwarzenegger reprising his role), and also executive produced the action crime film Point Break. Three years later he directed a third Schwarzenegger-starring action film True Lies (1994). In 1997, Cameron directed, wrote, and produced the epic romantic disaster film Titanic which grossed over $1.84 billion. A worldwide 3D re-release of the film in 2012 increased this total to over $2.18 billion at the worldwide box-office and it became the highest grossing film of all time. Other notable films include Rambo: First Blood Part II, Avatar, and Solaris (because it's by Stanisław Lem and he's awesome).
List of Seattle bridges(nominated by Cptnono) The city of Seattle has multiple bridges that are significant due to their function, historical status, or engineering. Bridges are needed to mitigate the city's waterways and hilly topography. Twelve bridges have been granted historical status by the city, federal government, or both. Seattle also has some of the only permanent floating pontoon bridges in the world. Lake Washington and Puget Sound are to the east and west of the city, respectively. They connect via a series of canals and Lake Union that are collectively known as the Lake Washington Ship Canal. The four double-leaf bascule bridges crossing the Ship Canal are the oldest in the city, having opened between 1917 and 1930. The easternmost—the Montlake and University bridges—connect neighborhoods south of the canal to the University District.
Men of the Docks(created by George Bellows, nominated by Crisco 1492)Men of the Docks is a 114.3-by-161.3-centimetre (45.0 by 63.5 in) oil painting on canvas. It depicts a group of men, wearing overcoats smeared in grime, standing at a dock in Brooklyn together with some draught horses. These men appear to be day labourers, at the docks to find work. They look to the left, as if receiving a message, while a large steam liner looms over them to their right. Behind them are a tugboat and the waters and ice floes of the harbour in winter. Further behind them are the skyscrapers of the lower Manhattan skyline. The winter weather about them is bleak and grey. In the early 20th century, day labourers in the New York docks worked depending on the availability of ships to unload, and thus when not working they often stood nearby, waiting for news that there was work. This subject of men at the New York docks was a common one for Bellows, as well as fellow Ashcan painters such as Everett Shinn. Men of the Docks is the largest of Bellows' treatments of the subject.
The Peasant Wedding(created by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, nominated by Armbrust)The Peasant Wedding is a 1567 painting by the FlemishRenaissance painter and printmakerPieter Bruegel the Elder. It is currently found in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Bruegel often depicted peasants and aspects of their lives, and he has been called Peasant-Bruegel, but he was in fact a highly sophisticated intellectual. Many of his paintings involve a symbolic meaning or moral aspects too. The wedding feast is held in a barn in the summertime; two sheaves of grain with a rake remind us of harvesting. The scene is a crowded and busy one, two pipers play on a bagpipe, a boy in the foreground licking a plate, a wealthy man at the far right is involved in a discussion with a monk, while feeding a dog. The plates are carried on a door off its hinges, serving porridge or pudding. The bride is in front of the green textile wall-hanging, with a paper-crown hung above her head, wearing a crown on her head. She is sitting passive, not participating in the eating or drinking around. There has been much speculation of the identity of the groom in this painting. It may be that according to contemporary custom, the groom is not seated at the table. He could be the man in the red cap serving food or may be the man pouring out beer, or possibly the man eating with a spoon or the man in black, leaning back, with a mug in hand. Some authors have even speculated that the groom is not even included in the painting, like Van der Elst, who thought this painting is depicting a proverb: "There is an old Flemish proverb: 'It is a poor man who is not able to be at his own wedding.'" Some argued that it is a presentation of the mystical Wedding at Cana. And then there is the mysterious third foot - that nobody has explained... (It belongs to the man serving pies. Sadly, noone's that well endowed.)
The Dance Lesson(created by Edgar Degas, nominated by Crisco 1492)The Dance Lesson (sometimes known as The Dancing Lesson) is an 1879 oil-on-panel painting by the French artist Edgar Degas. It is currently kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. There is at least one other work by Degas by this title, also made in about 1879, which is a pastel. The painting is the first of a series of about 40 pictures that Degas painted in this horizontal, frieze-like format. A painting by Degas about ballerinas. Unheard of.
Nicholson Organ, Chancel, West Great Organ, and Choir of Portsmouth Cathedral(created by David Iliff, nominated by National Names 2000)Portsmouth Cathedral is the seat of the AnglicanBishop of Portsmouth, and is located in the city of Portsmouth in Hampshire, England. It is another church that witnessed murders and has been significantly rebuilt during its history, and, in a further connection to our previous entry, its full name is the Cathedral Church of St Thomas of Canterbury. The earliest structure, built on land donated for the purpose by Jean de Gisors, was a church in cruciform shape, with a central tower which was also used as a lookout point and lighthouse. This medieval building, dedicated in 1188, was rebuilt and of the original building, only the chancel and the transepts remained intact. In 1449, when the Bishop of Chichester was murdered by local sailors, the town's inhabitants were excommunicated and the church was closed for a time. It eventually reopened, and in 1591, it had a somewhat notable worshipper pass its gates: Elizabeth I of England. Later, in the English Civil War the Royalist garrison used the church tower to observe the movement of enemy forces. That war resulted in the ruin of the medieval tower and nave. The church was rebuilt from 1683 to 1693, in the classical style; however the classical style was not meant to last: With the establishment of the Diocese of Portsmouth in 1927, the building was rebuilt by Sir Charles Archibald Nicholson to dignify its new cathedral status, changing it to a round-arched Neo-Byzantine style. We'll be seeing more of Portsmouth Cathedral in a couple weeks. However, I'm sure I shall manage to resist the temptation to just copy-paste this entry. [Editor's note: I lied. Copy-paste! Mwahahaha!]
St. John the Baptist(created by Leonardo da Vinci, nominated by Crisco 1492)St. John the Baptist is an oil painting on walnut wood by Leonardo da Vinci. Completed from 1513 to 1516, when the High Renaissance was metamorphosing into Mannerism, it is believed to be his final painting. The original size of the work was 69x57 cm. It is now exhibited at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France. The piece depicts St. John the Baptist in isolation. St. John is dressed in pelts, has long curly hair, and is smiling in an enigmatic manner which is reminiscent of Leonardo's famous Mona Lisa. He holds a reed cross in his left hand while his right hand points up toward heaven (like St Anne in Leonardo's cartoon The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist). It is believed that the cross and wool skins were added at a later date by another painter. The pointing gesture of St. John toward the heavens suggests the importance of salvation through baptism that John the Baptist represents. The work is often quoted by later painters, especially those in the late Renaissance and Mannerist schools. The inclusion of a gesture similar to John's would increase the importance of a work with a religious conceit.
Horsehead Nebula(created by NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team, nominated by Nergaal) The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 ) is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of the star Alnitak, which is farthest east on Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The nebula was first recorded in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming on photographic plate B2312 taken at the Harvard College Observatory. The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of the shape of its swirling cloud of dark dust and gases, which bears some resemblance to a horse's head when viewed from Earth. The dark cloud of dust and gas is a region in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex where star formation is taking place. This stellar nursery, as it is known, can contain over 100 known organic and inorganic gases as well as dust consisting of large and complex organic molecules. The red or pinkish glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. Magnetic fields channel the gases leaving the nebula into streams, shown as streaks in the background glow. A glowing strip of hydrogen gas marks the edge of the massive cloud and the densities of stars are noticeably different on either side.
De Menagerie(created by Melchior d'Hondecoeter, nominated by Crisco 1492)Melchior d'Hondecoeter (c. 1636 – 3 April 1695), Dutchanimalier painter, was born in Utrecht and died in Amsterdam. After the start of his career, he painted virtually exclusively bird subjects, usually exotic or game, in park-like landscapes. Hondecoeter’s paintings featured geese (brent goose, Egyptian brent and red-breasted brent), fieldfares, partridges, pigeons, ducks, magpies and peacocks, but also African grey crowned cranes, Asian sarus cranes, Indonesian Yellow-crested Cockatoos, an Indonesian Purple-naped Lory and Grey-headed Lovebirds from Madagascar. His masterpieces are at The Hague, Soestdijk and at Amsterdam. But there are fine examples in the Wallace Collection and Belton House in England, and in the public galleries of Berlin, Caen, Karlsruhe, Kassel, Cologne, Copenhagen, Dresden, Dublin, Florence, Glasgow, Hannover, London, Lyons, Lille, Montpellier, Munich, Paris, Rotterdam, Rouen, St Petersburg, Stuttgart, Schwerin and Vienna. The largest Hondecoeter exhibition to date was held in Berlin in 2010, where 18 of his works were shown at the Neue Nationalgalerie as part of Willem de Rooij's installation 'Intolerance'.
Shrovetide(created by Boris Kustodiev, nominated by Adam Cuerden)Boris Kustodiev was an unusual Russian painter, illustrator and stage designer, an intellectual and a cultivated person, who came from a family where the father was a professor of philosophy, history of literature and logic. He was the pupil of the renown Russian painter Ilya Repin, and was elected into the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts. He traveled extensively in Europe, in countries like Spain, Austria, Germany, France and Italy. His works are colorful, playful and joyful, against the fact that he was gravely ill for a large part of his adult life. He was an innovative Russian artist who is remembered for his wonderful paintings and illustrations with contemporary themes illustrating the Russian way of life.
The Temptation of St Anthony(created by Hieronymus Bosch, nominated by Hafspajen)The Temptation of St Anthony is an oil painting on wood panel by Flemish artist Hieronymus Bosch, dating from around c. 1500-25, currently housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Among Hieronymus Bosch most famous works is The Garden of Earthly Delights. The work tells the story of the mental and spiritual torments endured by Saint Anthony the Great (c. 251 – 356 AD) also called Anthony Abbott or Anthony of the Desert - and indeed the temptations were numerous. The abbot was one of the earlies and also most prominent of the Desert Fathers in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. The temptation of St Anthony was a popular subject in Medieval and Renaissance art, often like many of Bosch's work, the painting contains much fantastic imagery. Anthony was a rich young man who took the words: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven; and come, follow Me" (Matthew 19:21) quite literally, so he gave away everything he had and went out into the desert to spent the rest of his life in loneliness and prayer. Or so he thought: his fame spread all over the area and soon he found himself in the company of many more followers, and thus he is blamed for the first rudimentary Christian monastry. Anthony the Abbot is portrayed by here Hieronymus Bosch in meditation, in a fantastic landscape filled with weird creatures and small demons that are luring around or are popping up around him, ready to disturb his peace, while he is sitting under the trunk of a dry tree. The abbot was renowned for his ability to refuse temptation and to fight back against evil spirits and other demonic creatures. Considering the violent fights he fought he looks like he is taking a slight break in the picture from wrestling with the most evil ones. Anthony of the Desert was said to have lived to be around hundred years. So kicking an evil spirit in the ass is maybe not such a bad idea after all...
Royal Kurgan(created by Anatoly Shcherbak, nominated by Alborzagros) The Royal Kurgan (Kerch) or Tsarskiy Kurgan (Russian: Царский курган, Ukrainian: Царський курган) from the 4th century BC, is one of the most impressive tumuli (kurgans) of the eastern Crimea. The burial barrow is located in the present-day Kerch, which developed out of the ancient Greek town Panticapaeum (Παντικάπαιον) founded by Miletus. About 200 burial mounds exist in Kerch and its immediate surroundings. The Royal Kurgan is located about 5 km northeast of the town centre, close to the “Defense of the Adzhimushkay quarry” memorial. The mound is almost 20 metres high and its base perimeter is about 250 meters. It holds a burial chamber with a square floor plan (4.39 m X 4.35 m), which gradually merges into the circular shape of a corbelled dome (“false vault”). The total height of the burial chamber is 8.84 meters. Also the generous dromos, a 2.80-meter-wide and 37-meter-long acute entrance passage, is built in the corbelled vault technique. Both parts of the building are made of yellowish limestone blocks and have a floor from a tamped mix of clay, lime and limestone. It is assumed that the Royal Kurgan, a masterpiece of ancient architecture, was the final resting place of a ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom.
Todi, Italy(created by Livioandronico2013, nominated by Crisco 1492)Todi is a town and comune (municipality) of the province of Perugia (region of Umbria) in central Italy. It is perched on a tall two-crested hill overlooking the east bank of the river Tiber, commanding distant views in every direction. The Italian press reported on Todi as the world's most livable city. According to the legend, said to have been recorded around 1330 BC by the mythological Quirinus Colonus, Todi was built by Hercules, who here killed Cacus, and gave the city the name of Eclis. "Palazzo dei Priori", The Prior's Palace is located in the southern side of the Piazza, facing the Cathedral. It was begun in 1293 and later enlarged as seat of the podestà, priors and the Papal governors. The trapezoidal tower was originally lower, and had Guelph merlons. The façade includes a big bronze eagle by Giovanni di Giliaccio (1347).
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