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Three community-elected seats on the Board of Trustees—the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation—will be decided by Wikimedians in the election to be held 17–31 May. Voting will start 00:01 UTC on the Sunday after the publication of this edition, and will end at 23:59 on the Sunday two weeks and a day after. This comes after a two-week period of questions and discussion between candidates and community, 5–16 May.
The three seats are being contested by 21 candidates from around the world, listed below. All eligible Wikimedians are encouraged to vote in this significant event, which comes at a time when major decisions will need to be made concerning the future of the movement.
A ternary voting system will be used, imported in 2013 from the English Wikipedia's ArbCom elections, although there is no mention of this system on the election pages, including the FAQ page. The system gives voters three options for each candidate—support, neutral, or oppose—in which avoiding "neutral" votes strengthens the positions of those whom a voter supports, on simple arithmetic grounds. The formula S/(S+O) will determine the successful candidates, who must then be endorsed by the WMF Board. Vote-checking will be conducted 1–5 June; the election committee's goal for announcing the results is 5 June.
As in the recent FDC elections, the presence of rafts of "translation" links at the top of the election pages—including the candidate statement page—will be met with bemusement by non-English-speakers who click on one: they will typically arrive at the very same English-language page; this is despite the fact that most of the potential electorate of more than 70,000 comprises non-anglophones.
The Signpost will add links to the eligibility tester and voting page when they become available.
We sent out a three-part survey of attitudes to Board-relevant issues to all 21 candidates, of whom 19 provided responses.[A] The results are set out below in two tables for the numerical responses. In the final part, we invited candidates to write brief comments where they felt they needed to explain a numerical response. Voters may find it useful to peruse the tables in relation to candidates they are considering voting for or against. The data may also interest the movement in terms of the attitudes of this group of Wikimedians who are putting themselves forward for high office, both as a whole and on the basis of the following three demographic groupings that reflect key internal dynamics of the organisation:
The Signpost saw it as important that candidates were put in the position of responding in isolation, without knowing how their colleagues would be reacting. While the whole candidature is large enough to allow for statistical significance, our demographic comparisons involve smaller samples and should be treated with caution in this respect.
The first part of the survey presented each candidate with five propositions and a Likert scale, asking them to assign a numeral to each:
We calculated averages within the four-point space between 1 and 5, and the sum of the positive responses (1s and 2s), negative responses (4s and 5s), and neutral/no response. The first two propositions garnered roughly equal numbers of positives and negatives:
The last three propositions show strong skews towards positive or negative:
For proposition (a), the global north is slightly less supportive than the global south (averages 3.2 vs 2.5, with stdevs 1.0 and 1.2, respectively). For proposition (e) the same is true (4.2 vs 3.3; stdevs 1.1 and 1.5). There is otherwise little difference between the demographic groups in their responses to the five propositions.
| Propositions | Mike | Peter G | Tim | David | Cristian | Denny | James | Dariusz | Sailesh | Ahmad | María | Muzammil | Phoebe | Pete F | Samuel | Josh | Ed | Tonmoy | Mahomed | Av. (StDev) | Positive | Negative | Neutral |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Merge affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2.9 (1.1) | 7 | 8 | 4 |
| Appoint more tech experts as trustees | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 3.0 (1.1) | 6 | 7 | 6 |
| Merge Wikimania and Wikimedia conferences | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3.6 (0.8) | 1 | 13 | 5 |
| Use reserves to seed new endowment | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2.2 (1.0) | 14 | 2 | 3 |
| Terms of use should forbid paid editing | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 3.9 (1.3) | 2 | 13 | 2 |
The candidates were asked to number 10 priorities using all numerals from 1 to 10, allocating each number once and only once. Unlike the first part, here there was no opportunity to opt out by choosing the "neutral" number. The thematic order in the list was deliberately scrambled.
Based on the averages of all candidates, the order of perceived importance is set out below. The average placement of the 10 priorities occurs in three clusters: the first two, then a gap between them and the next five, then another gap separating the last three from the rest. [B]
| Priorities | Mike | Peter G | Tim | David | Cristian | Denny | James | Dariusz | Sailesh | Ahmad | María | Muzammil | Phoebe | Pete F | Samuel | Josh | Ed | Tonmoy | Mahomed | Av. (StDev) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Increasing global south reader and editor participation | 6 | 3 | 8 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 3.7 (2.9) |
| Increasing editor retention | 1 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 3.6 (2.5) |
| Investing more in mobile | 4 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 10 | 3 | 8 | 2 | 5.3 (2.7) |
| Investing more in collecting data | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 4 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 8 | 5.3 (3.1) |
| Funding more offline meetups | 5 | 6 | 9 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 7.1 (2.7) |
| Implementing VisualEditor | 10 | 7 | 4 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 4 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 7.3 (2.1) |
| Reducing the gender gap in editing communities | 8 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 9 | 5.1 (2.4) |
| Advocating for freedom of information on the internet | 9 | 2 | 10 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 10 | 6.9 (2.3) |
| Providing more engineering resources to improve readers' experience | 2 | 10 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 5.5 (2.8) |
| Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience | 3 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 9 | 10 | 4 | 8 | 5 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 5.2 (3.0) |
The three graphs below display the differences among the three demographic groups (global south/north, anglophones/non-anglophones, and females/males). A stark south–north difference is clear in prioritising the need to increase global south reader and editor participation; the priority gains second place overall only because it is placed in top position by five of the six global-south candidates, and second by the other; their average is 1.2, with a tight spread (standard deviation just 0.4). No northerner places this priority first, although five place it second (one, Ed, places it last of the 10), to give an average of 4.8 (with a larger spread, stdev of 2.9).
Surprisingly, what has been widely assumed as a greater reliance on mobile devices in the global south is not reflected in the ratings by each group, with the south's average of 6.5 (stdev 3.7) and the north's of 4.7 (2.0). Funding offline meetups such as conferences and editathons is much more important to the southern candidates—4.2 (1.9) as opposed to a dismissive 8.4 (1.9) among northerners. Southerners place slighly more importance on WMF advocacy for internet freedom, at 6.3 (2.7) versus the north's 7.2 (2.2), and slightly less on collecting mission-relevant data—6.2 (2.4) against northerners' 4.9 (3.4). Northern support for investing in editor retention is slightly greater at 3.2 (2.4) than southern support at 4.5 (2.9). Engineering to improve readers' and editors' experience is significantly more valued by the north, at 4.8 (3.1) and 4.4 (2.9), respectively, than by the south, at more tightly converging scores of 6.8 (1.7) and 7.0 (2.4), respectively.
As might be expected, the anglophone/non-anglophone differences are not unlike the north/south, even though these categories are by no means a one-to-one match. Weaker non-anglophone northern support for investment in the global south and offline meetups is evident; support for mobile investment is almost equal between these two linguistic groups.
Disparities in terms of candidates' gender are interesting, even given the low sample size. Most striking is that the two female candidates placed the need to reduce the gender gap as a high priority on average—2.0 (1.4)—whereas the males gave it 5.4 (2.3). Six of the 17 males rated the gender gap as 7th, 8th or 9th out of 10; only one, Tonmoy, rated it 2nd, and four rated it 3rd. The women rated the global south and mobile investment more highly than the men, and collecting data and offline meetups less highly.
This analysis of a sample of Wikimedians may be of limited demographic generalisability; however, it does suggest that the WMF might consider gathering similar data from larger samples to provide insights relevant to the movement's policy-making.
We limited candidates to a total of 20 words, given their large number. Most did not write comments, and while we are including a brief list, paraphrased or quoted, those who are not mentioned should not be regarded as having no opinions on the issues.
Footnotes:
This week has been a busy one for the Wikidata project, with nearly simultaneous Wikidata contests, both organized by Wikimedia Sweden, now underway.
The first contest is the Menu Challenge: in a post to the Wikimedia Blog project manager John Andersson recounted that "we are aiming at a list of vegetables, meat, fruits and other ingredients and cooking related terms that 30 restaurants will be serving at a food festival in Stockholm, Sweden in June. Wikimedia Sverige will be there to highlight how open data and crowdsourcing can benefit nearly every aspect of society." The idea is to create and to maintain experimental digital restaurant menus, based on a mock-up prepared by Wikidata user Denny some time ago. The challenge will be based around translations of Wikidata labels and the addition of images and pronunciations for ingredient items, and will take place between May 8 and 27. "Let’s get some #tastydata!"
The second of the two is the Wikidata visualization challenge, a competition meant to "make it easier to understand the value of Wikidata, what is in there, and/or how it is being created ... [by] visualizing interesting representations of the data in the database". As examples of what the competition organizers are looking for and of what the Wikidata dataset makes possible project manager points to the Listen to Wikipedia application, an aural visualization of editing activity throughout the projects; and to the Wikidata tempo-spatial display, a geographic visualization of event histories. More details on the competition, as well as the grand prize, a travel scholarship, are available here.
In related news, an update to the Reasonator tool on Wikimedia Labs this week now allows the tool, a primary visualization tool of the Wikidata project, to be used on mobile. R
 | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
| “ | The Community Tech team is focused on meeting the needs of active contributors to Wikipedia and the sister projects for improved, expert-focused curation and moderation tools. The creation of the Community Tech team is a direct outcome of requests from core contributors for improved support for moderation tools, bots, and the other features that help the Wikimedia projects succeed. The team will work closely with the community, through the Community Engagement department, to define their roadmap and deliverables. | ” |
Casual viewers may think I've posted the same list twice. But no, readers just happen to be really interested in May 2's Big Fight. In fact, last week was just the weigh-in and the trash talk. This week, the numbers actually increased. Other refugees from last week include Avengers: Age of Ultron, which continues its triumph at the box office, and Vision, arguably the team's most interesting new member. Annual returnees Cinco de Mayo and Mothers Day made their scheduled appearances as expected.
For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of May 3 to 9, 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Floyd Mayweather, Jr. | 
|
3,224,988 |  |
Apparently, Wikipedia viewers weren't done with the "fight of the century", as it remained the most viewed topic for the second week running, with its declared victor rising to the top spot. Indeed, his numbers have only increased since last week, indicating we may just be topping the hill. |
| 2 | Cinco de Mayo | 
|
2,573,768 |  |
For the third year running, one of the most self-explanatory article spikes on Wikipedia ever occurred, conveniently, on May 5. This celebration of Mexican-American culture (originally meant to commemorate a Mexican victory over the French) had more than double the views of last year. |
| 3 | Manny Pacquiao |
|
2,383,123 |  |
Numbers have, however, slightly fallen for the current Filipino Congressman and boxing's only octuple champion, who suffered a fairly noble defeat to Floyd Mayweather, Jr. during the "fight of the century" on May 2. Just goes to show that in sport, winning is everything. |
| 4 | Nellie Bly |
|
2,096,193 |  |
The barnstorming journalist, who beat Phileas Fogg by travelling around the world in 72 days and then faked insanity and got herself committed so she could uncover maltreatment of the mentally ill, got a Google Doodle on her 151st birthday on May 5. |
| 5 | Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao |
|
2,074,940 | |
Numbers are down but still robust for the "fight of the century" that took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Pay-per-view receipts are currently expected to hit $500 million worldwide. |
| 6 | Avengers: Age of Ultron |
|
1,990,691 |  |
The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premièred in Hollywood on April 13, and went on wide release on May 1. By its second weekend, it was down 60% but still massive enough to drain grosses from its competitors. Not that that its only real competition, the abysmally reviewed Hot Pursuit, needed any help to flop. |
| 7 | Vision (Marvel Comics) |
|
740,608 |  |
Numbers have more than doubled for the sentient AI and foil for the villainous Ultron, who became the breakout star of The Avengers: Age of Ultron and allowed actor Paul Bettany (pictured) to finally step out of the voice-only shadows of his J.A.R.V.I.S. character into full acting. |
| 8 | Achim Leistner | 
|
732,005 |  |
The Australian/German optician with an almost superhuman touch sense is able to handcraft spheres to a level of perfection beyond those of any machine. This was noted in a Reddit thread this week, though a surprisingly short one, given the views. |
| 9 | List of highest-grossing films | 
|
724,579 |  |
With Furious 7 already in the increasingly inclusive $1 billion worldwide club, and Age of Ultron likely to reach it next week, it's not surprising Wikipedia viewers are interested in tracking their progress. |
| 10 | Mother's Day |
|
723,932 |  |
The second Sunday in May (that's May 10 to all you ingrates who forgot) is far and away the most popular time of year to celebrate Mother's Day, and, even as the day fell, panicked college students in all participating countries rushed to their computers to see if they'd blown it. |
The Grant Shapps story continues to make waves in the British press. Shapps, a politician who was the co-chairman of the UK's Conservative Party until this week, has been accused of maliciously editing his own Wikipedia biography as well as those of rivals within his party (see previous Signpost coverage).
On April 30, the Register wondered whether Shapps had fallen victim to a Lib Dem plot. Shapps himself continued to deny any involvement in the Wikipedia edits in a BBC interview (May 8), calling it a "nonsense story" and adding: "In reality the Wiki founder, Jimmy Wales, phones me up the next day [...] he phoned me the next day, said, Sorry, not Wiki's corporate view, this was one individual, happened to be a Lib Dem activist, he shouldn't have said it, he's been chastised, he's under individual ... he's under investigation within Wiki, it was not true, but yeah, of course these things happen."
Even so, by May 11 the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Independent reported that Shapps had been "sacked" or "demoted" in the post-election cabinet reshuffle, prominently mentioning the Wikipedia story as one of a small number of factors that might have contributed to the decline of Shapps' fortunes.
On May 12, Independent reported that the "Demoted Grant Shapps faced awkward first meeting with his new boss, whose Wikipedia page he was accused of editing".
The proposed decision of the arbitration case examining the Contribsx block and the events leading to the Shapps press story, originally due on May 21, is now expected on May 26, given the recent extension of the evidence submission period to May 18. A.K.
Somewhat Reasonable, a blog of the Heartland Institute, an American conservative and libertarian think tank, complained about "Wikipedia’s Leftist Ties And Its Censorship Of The Facts" (May 12). The alleged "leftist ties" are rather tenuous. The blog post connects Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardner, former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to government transparency. Wales, who is a libertarian, also allegedly has "close personal ties to multiple left-wing bigshots", though the post only specifies Wales' appearance at a birthday party for George Soros, a billionaire supporter of liberal causes who is often the target of American right-wing ire. The post also noted the support of Democratic candidates by two current American members of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which consists of ten members from seven countries. The post concludes "the evidence suggests Wikipedia has been affected by its leftist leaders and many biased editors", but does not specify how these "leftist ties" translate to any changes in encyclopedia content.
The blog cites a 2012 paper by Greenstein and Zhu examining bias in Wikipedia articles through identifying allegedly biased "code words", which indicated that bias in those articles was decreasing over time (see previous Signpost coverage). The blog post mentions only the specific issue of climate change as an example of "obvious" Wikipedia bias and "an effort to censor information", citing the work of Dr. William Connolley (William M. Connolley), an engineer and climate modeller, on Wikipedia. Connolley, a former Wikipedia administrator who is known for his work on climate change topics on the encyclopedia and is frequently the subject of complaints on climate change denial blogs, is labeled a "climate alarmist" in the post. The Heartland Institute receives millions of dollars in funding from oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil and politically conservative organizations which deny climate change. The New York Times wrote that the Heartland Institute is "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism." G
There is a public misconception of Wikipedia: that any anonymous editor can edit Wikipedia at any time, and the person behind them cannot be tracked or identified. This is essentially a decade-old narrative, yet it is persistent and embedded in the public consciousness.
I most recently came across it in a March 31 Quora answer, published in response to a question about why Wikipedia is not allowed in official research. Many journalists ignorant of the deeper workings of Wikipedia simply read the headline "anyone can edit" and make an assumption that there are no controls in place: see, for example, Finding Dulcinea, the Economist, or the Guardian.
Many old-timers still remember the 2005 Seigenthaler incident: an anonymous editor inserted a hoax about John Seigenthaler, a prominent and then still-living journalist, and made a reference to his suspected involvement in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. The subject of the article read his biography and characterized this insertion as "internet character assassination". The anonymous troll was later unmasked as Brian Chase, an operations manager in Kentucky. The current biographies of living persons policy was implemented in response shortly thereafter, but the damage was done; the Seigenthaler incident spawned widespread criticism of Wikipedia among educators.
Since then, Wikipedia has made tremendous efforts to reach out to academia and build a foundation of trust. Jimmy Wales recently replied to a question on Quora on this very subject, writing that "if the recommendation is to not use Wikipedia at all, I think that's silly and naive advice—all students use Wikipedia a lot! ... If the Professor has a more nuanced view that Wikipedia should not be cited 'as a source' by university students, then I agree completely!" Jimmy Wales explains what many people already know: that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and that it has a systemic bias in favor of white, male, young, and educated individuals.
The Seigenthaler incident happened right as Wikipedia's popularity was beginning to explode. Wikipedia had about 12,000 active editors in October 2005, a number that has climbed to close to 137,000 now. Hundreds of these editors participate in new page patrol and recent changes patrol, the main purpose of which is to review nearly every single edit. They use sophisticated tools like Huggle, page curation, Cluebot, edit-protection, pending changes, and edit filters to watch for and roll back vandalism and dubious editing, or to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
Despite these safeguards, Kent Fung cites the 2014 U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia as one of his prime examples of Wikipedia's unreliability. Yet this episode in Wiki-history sprung the development of tools to catch these kinds of changes. The case he specifically refers to sparked the creation of over a dozen Twitter bots that still catalog edits from the governments of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, The Netherlands, North Carolina, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States.
None of this ensures the trustworthiness of Wikipedia—it simply demonstrates that the environment that allowed "anonymous editors" to create the aforementioned incidents has long since dissipated. Yet that hasn't stopped a Quora "Top Writer '14" from propagating such a viewpoint. There are plenty of reasons not to cite Wikipedia in a college paper, mind you. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written by, for the most part, laypeople. Despite everyone having the title "editor", there is no actual editorial fact-checking process for most articles whose sources are generally filled with journalism, not academia. The most active demographic group is white, young men. Many of its best 'quality' articles face a bias towards recentism or cover topics in pop culture of questionable encyclopedic interest.
Kent, though, mentions none of this. Though he is right in the premise, he is entirely wrong in the details. In my view, Kent overlooks the actual real and pressing problem with Wikipedia: like Quora, Wikipedia suffers from an entrenched elitist attitude which celebrates the ignorant shut-out of ideas that the elites don't like. It's human nature, really. Wikipedia is willing to sacrifice information if it threatens the integrity of a well-known persona. Despite essays like "No Angry Mastodons" and the philosophy that adminship is "No big deal", our administrative noticeboards have an automatic knee-jerk reaction to support a veteran editor over a novice editor. Tools like page histories, a tool that provides indisputable proof of previous edits, are not utilized while investigating concerns. Editors quickly measure their opinion of the two editors and then draw out terms such as "WP:BOOMERANG" that have become Wikipedia buzz words. It's quite easy to predict a boomerang on ANI these days—one must only count the number of the user's edits.
Quora has compounded the elitism issue even further. As a forum similar to Wikipedia's reference desk, Quora is a forum where questioners ask the public about a particular topic and users vote on the best answer, Yahoo! Answers-style. The difference between Yahoo! Answers and Quora is that the latter has a handy threaded reply feature with a block button. The particulars matter: when one editor blocks another it also hides the comments made by the blocked editor, in this case hiding from public view my criticism of Kent's position—as though it never happened. It's an interesting tool that I know hundreds of politicians wish they had.
"Now, what does this have to do with Wikipedia?", you ask.
I believe Quora represents a larger issue: the number of authorities in the general public who are ignorant of the differences between 2005 Wikipedia and 2015 Wikipedia, and whose assumptions are never challenged because the public is unaware. Authorities in a subject are generally regarded by the average Joe to be authorities in all subjects. It becomes a sort of intellectual jack-of-all-trades. Their authority gives the misinformation legitimacy. And while I would never make the argument that Wikipedia is reliable, it is important to know why it isn't. Until you get to the real reason Wikipedia is unreliable, you'll never know what to actually be wary of. And in the end, you'll be unreliable to yourself.
Eight featured articles were promoted this week.
One featured list was promoted this week.
Five featured pictures were promoted this week.
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