The Wikimedia Foundation recently switched to a quarterly report structure to better align reporting with the generally quarterly planning and goal-setting processes. This week's publication of a January–March 2015 quarterly report marks the second such report to be released since a switch was made earlier this year from an older monthly to a new quarterly internal reporting structure. The change was made to better align the contents of these reports with the Foundation's generally quarterly goal-setting processes, and in March the Signpost covered the contents of the first such report, as well as some of the reasoning behind the reformatting. These reports are still reasonably new in structure and remain a work in progress; in an email to the foundation-l mailing list, senior operations analyst Tilman Bayer and chief operating officer Terence Gilbey spoke of some of the changes and new features introduced into this second report.
The principal change has been the creation and organization of a new departmental "scorecard"; this is a new organizational assessment system spearheaded by recently hired chief operating officer Terence Gilbey as a part of an effort to increase the rigor of the metrics the Foundation uses to keep track of its progress—a major theme in last month's publication of the mammoth State of the WMF report. The scorecard is typified by a system of goals drafted at the beginning of a reporting period that are either met (successes) or "missed" (failures) over the course of quarter. The first quarter saw 130 objectives split across 32 teams, with a roughly even distribution of successes (52%; 67) and misses (48%; 63). At this month's metrics and activities meeting, Gilbey, new leader of the meetings in the stead of now-departed vice president of engineering Erik Möller, somewhat clarified the vision behind the scorecard: the hope is for about 75% of goals to result in successes, while a 100% success means that the team is probably not setting goals aggressively enough. He attempted to mollify concerns from a member of the audience about what use a binary pass/fail departmental assessment system could serve in the organization, stating that many of the teams which missed their objectives "came very close" and that further refinements in the system remain under consideration.
In related news, the Wikimedia Foundation this week also published a draft version of its 2015–2016 annual plan. The first Foundation annual plan appeared in 2008, and the Foundation has been openly publishing its annual plans, with various changes in format, ever since then. Last year's annual plan drew criticism for indigestibility: as the Signpost reported at the time, the plan was published and reviewed via the annual plan grants process, an awkward arrangement given that the process's stated mission is reviewing grant proposals to the Wikimedia Foundation by far smaller affiliated national chapters, not those of the organization itself.
In contrast to last year's 22,000-word proposal, this year's plan—now again released independently of the FDC—clocks in at just 3,600 words. Thus, although the plan does provide current data on WMF projections about its activities and budgets for the coming year, in contrast with last year's report it provides little in the way of explanation of its intent. Indeed, in the "background and context" section, the report outlines its new format. A SWOT-style "Risks" section will be prepared as a separate document, one that, alarmingly, only "may be released" in a public version (our italics). The plan says nothing more about the Foundation's progress against its current year's plan: instead it is meant to serve as "a 12 month high-level overview of organizational priorities as guided by the 2015 Call to Action and a forward-looking spend forecast ... it re-aligns organizational focus around communities and technical deliverables."
What to make of the new format? The WMF is currently in the process of overhauling the way it measures itself (hence the report's secondary focus on "key performance indicators", to be defined), and as part of that it has been attempting to re-align its reporting periods against its assessment periods and to cut procedural waste and duplication. This year's annual plan, then, is a plan only in the fiscal sense: it provides board-approved numbers on how the Foundation plans to spend its money, but little else besides. Organizational intent is to be read elsewhere: in the Foundation's quarterly reports, and in particular, in this year's publication of the enormous State of the Wiki report. Though the plan is up for community review, there is little (though not nothing) for the community to review here, as much of the action takes place elsewhere.
Worthy of particular attention is the last section of the report: an appendix on the Foundation's newly restructured engineering department. Engineering—or things that are to be construed as engineering under the aegis of the "product" department—makes up the bulk of the WMF's expenditure; there is good reason for this, since surveys again and again show that stakeholders believe this should be at the core of the Foundation's purpose. Vice-president of product and strategy and extremely long-time Wikipedian Erik Möller, retired from the Foundation last month—a move that was soon followed by a public email to the mailing lists by executive director Lila Tretikov regarding high-level reorganizations in the WMF, principally a restructuring of the engineering team (and the re-merging of product into the engineering department). R
| “ | The first is narrowly focused on Tor, where I’ll be developing a strategic plan for and with the Tor Project. I’m doing that because Tor is important — it’s the most secure and widely-used anonymity-supporting software that we’ve got. Tor is controversial because (like phones and cars and banks) its users include criminals. But what matters more to me is its use by people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. I want the organisation behind Tor be as strong and effective as possible, and so I am going to put some energy towards helping make that happen.
My second project will be to research the broader state of “freedom tech”—all the tools and technologies that enable free speech, free assembly, and freedom of the press. I want to figure out, from a user-centric perspective, what kinds of freedom-enabling technology products and services people have access to today, what impediments they’re running up against in trying to use them, what functionality is needed that’s entirely missing from the current landscape, and what kinds of interventions would need to be made in order to start getting it built. Do we need easier, faster funding, and/or other forms of support, for individuals and tiny teams? Or bigger, better-funded organisations, with expertise the space currently doesn’t have? What would move the needle? That’ll be my focus. |
” |
| “ | Our movement is not only a "knowledge movement" or a "open movement", it is above a "social movement" which depends very much on the strength of our social connections to advance and thrive. The most obvious connection is between contributor and reader, it is the most singular one which differentiates us from other platforms like Facebook, however it is far from being the only one. Contributor-to-contributor is another key one which has been underestimated, and it is the salt and pepper of the community.
[…] In the wikimedia movement there is a serious lack of said expression spaces. For instance, during the WMCON 15, it was the first time that user groups representatives seated down together, also with some WMF employees, to discuss user groups in an open manner. I think it is a big step forward which paves the way in other areas too. Problems of the past like VE deployment schedule, and the upcoming Commons reform could profit of the "sit-and-talk" approach. It is costly, it takes time, however in the end there are more smiles, less drama, and the general feeling that besides of the you and me, there is a we, which is created together. |
” |
| “ | Let’s get this straight: UI-wise, Wikipedia teleports its audience into the year 2004. Not surprisingly, there has been vibrant discussion recently as to how Wikipedia could be updated to feel contemporary. We’ve seen a few good (and even more mediocre) design ideas, but many feel like eye candy without substance.
On a different note, changing this established platform’s design and selling that to a conservative community is likely to be hard, or even impossible, even if the changes are tiny. Too many stakeholders will always ensure that things never really move forward. Apparently, some people are already fed up with the whole discussion and are begging designers to stop whining. But at Raureif, we don’t think this should be the end of the story. The good news is that Wikipedia’s license allows anyone to take the great community content and shape it into something completely different. So we figured: instead of joining the crowd of designers who are whining and making sexy Dribbble shots, why not actually build the Wikipedia iOS app we’ve always dreamt of? Why not build a sleek app with Wikipedia’s content, but with a reimagined UI and a typographic treatment that is as thoughtful as the hand-crafted design of 100-year-old encyclopedias? (Digital encyclopedias do not have to look like unstyled HTML from the 90s.) So build it we did, and we called our app Das Referenz. Yes, we’re based in Germany. |
” |
The Daily Telegraph reports (May 26), in a story widely circulated in the British media, on Wikipedia editing to articles of Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prior to the May 7 United Kingdom general election from IP addresses assigned to Parliament. The editing included the removal of a sex scandal and involvement in the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, as well as the addition of "flattering" details. Many of the edits have been restored or removed by other editors. None of the politicians contacted by The Telegraph admitted that they or their staffs were responsible for the edits. A spokesman for one MP, Joan Ryan, denied responsibility, pointing out that she "did not even have access to the Parliamentary Internet network from which these changes were made" as she was not in office until the May 7 election. The Telegraph wrote: "It is impossible to prove the changes were made by the MP in question or their staff. However it is unclear why people unconnected to the politician or party would gloss up the Wikipedia biographies from inside Parliament."
The news outlet provided details on changes made to the articles of twelve MPs, listed in the chart below. G.
| MP | Party | Constituency | Content of edits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Hammond | Conservative | Wimbledon | Removal of his frequent use of chauffeured cars available to government ministers. Hammond was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport until 15 July 2014. |
| Craig Whittaker | Conservative | Calder Valley | Removal of a 2012 arrest for assault. The case was not prosecuted. |
| Gordon Birtwistle | Liberal Democrats | Burnley | Removal of his opposition to same-sex marriage; addition of a long promotional section called "Record Of Delivery" praising his "delivering jobs and growth". |
| Gavin Barwell | Conservative | Croydon Central | Removal of a Croydon Advertiser editorial calling on Barwell to "stop launching campaigns" that it viewed as self-promotional. |
| Stewart Jackson | Conservative | Peterborough | Removed comments by Prime Minister that he was "appalled" by the revelations of the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, of which Jackson was one of many MPs involved. |
| Joan Ryan | Labour | Enfield North | Removal of an expense claim on her second home as part of the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal; removal of report from The Independent on over 30 attempts to remove this information. |
| Robert Blackman | Conservative | Harrow East | Removal of citations about his 11-year affair (Blackman is married); modification of material about inaccurate mileage claims. |
| Geraint Davies | Labour Co-op | Swansea West | Modification of material about repaying mailing expenses, second home renovation and taxi fare expenses, and staff and office costs. |
| George Freeman | Conservative | Mid Norfolk | Modification of coverage of his loss in the 2005 United Kingdom general election; addition of his appointment as Minister for Life Sciences. |
| Natascha Engel | Labour | North East Derbyshire | Addition of award of Parliamentarian of the Year in 2013 by the Political Studies Association. |
| Bill Wiggin | Conservative | North Herefordshire | Addition of promotional section called "Campaigns for improve rural communications networks". |
| Robert Jenrick | Conservative | Newark | Addition of Jenrick as purchaser to the article Eye Manor. |
The New Statesman writes about gender bias on Wikipedia and asks "does it matter if our biggest source of knowledge is written by men?" (May 26) The Statesman notes the failure of the Wikimedia Foundation to increase the number of female editors from around ten percent and provides more examples of the disparity in article coverage: the well-maintained List of pornographic actresses by decade versus the "sprawling dumping ground" of List of female poets and the single article for six seasons of Sex in the City versus the 43 articles about Top Gear. The Statesman interviewed several women about their experiences on Wikipedia. Zara Rahman spoke about her negative experience editing the article on inventor and actress Hedy Lamarr, where Lamarr's discoveries were de-emphasized in the introduction in favor of information about nude scenes and a male film director's opinions about her appearance. (Rahman has previously blogged about her experience.) Theresa Knott (User:Theresa knott) became a Wikipedia editor in 2001 and was an administrator and member of the Arbitration Committee, but she stopped editing in 2012. She said about Wikipedia "The women who were on there were more likely to be people like me...Very geeky kinds of females who thought in a certain way and kind of fitted in with the men. There weren’t many women who would not traditionally be in a male sphere." Claire Millington, a PhD candidate in classics at King’s College London, began editing at a 2013 editathon. She said "There’s a pattern in what’s written about women and their achievements, and it’s basically that they’re not written about. I don’t want Wikipedia to be a place where women are written out of history again, because if it’s not on Wikipedia, it’s not visible." G.
To many, Internet Relay Chat is an old relic, but not to Wikipedia. Wikipedia currently has an IRC help channel designated to help and assist editors with editing Wikipedia, #wikipedia-help connect. Most of the time, users go there to seek advice and help regarding a draft submission they have written. From time to time, this channel can become a bit crowded, and it becomes difficult to distinguish the standard designated nicks given by the current software. With one user seeking help named "WPhelp14356" and another "WPhelp16432", it can become both confusing and cluttered. At least, that's what PhantomTech and other users are claiming in a recent request for comments.
In the discussion, some suggest adding JavaScript that makes users use an IRC-nick identical to their Wikipedia username. This has received both positive and negative feedback from users. One of the main opponents of this suggestion is Technical 13, who stated,
I very much think that adding JavaScript code to compromise editors [sic] privacy and security is a big deal, especially when the code is as badly flawed as it is from a technical standpoint.
Another reason for opposition is that the code will not work for users whose usernames include nonstandard (non-ASCII) characters (characters other than a-z, 0-9, etc.).
The system currently in use assigns a default "WPhelp"-nick, but does not inform users that their IP will be visible to other members in the chat room. Therefore, the proposal also includes that a disclaimer as well as a FAQ be added on a new Wikipedia-namespace page, which is currently located in PhantomTech's userspace pending acceptance of this RfC.
Wikipedia already uses JavaScript, what additional security flaws and issues would this script introduce? The disclaimer warns about linking usernames to IPs, not IPs to IPs. Adding a disclaimer inside the IRC channel is like not letting someone read a contract until after they sign, it's too late at that point.
Editor's note: After writing this report, but before publication, the RfC in question was closed by Guerillero with clear consensus for the disclaimer, but with no consensus for the auto-population of irc nicknames.
After multiple cleverly piped, misleading DYK-hooks appeared on the main page, the user Fgf10 had finally had enough and started a discussion on Did You Know's talk page. Some editors were direct in their counterarguments:
Just because you're unable to appreciate [them] doesn't mean the rest of us, and our readers, must live in your dull world of droning, lifeless facts.
— EEng
After the discussion ostensibly got out of hand, @Ritchie333: closed the section with the comment:
Enough, already. Wikipedia is no place for humour. Everything is very serious here and we are all terrifically important.[citation needed]
Despite this comedic closing remark by the user, the underlying question remains.
Some sort of archaic technology from the dark ages, we believeFifteen featured articles were promoted this week.
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Four featured lists were promoted this week.
Six featured pictures were promoted this week.
To think that this glorious spiral galaxy was once categorized as an annoying distraction in the night sky.One featured topic was promoted this week.
The fuliginous Parantica aglea
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
Recently when my 83-year-old father was undergoing medical treatment, the doctor wanted to change one of his blood pressure drugs, and in order to let us know what the effects would be, she printed out the Wikipedia article on the drug and handed it to us. This accords with the overall impression I have developed: Wikipedia's articles on drugs are pretty good – good enough to impress even doctors. A new research study[1] adds some substance to that impression.
A team of German pharmacologists picked a set of 100 drugs described in pharmacology textbooks, and compared the textbook descriptions with Wikipedia articles about the drugs, for accuracy (meaning that the Wikipedia article matched the information in the textbook) and comprehensiveness. They found that 99.7% of the facts in the Wikipedia articles were accurate, and 83.8% of the facts from the textbooks made it into the Wikipedia articles. These numbers were derived from the German Wikipedia, but the authors state that similar results were obtained for the English language version. They conclude that "our results suggest that Wikipedia is an accurate and informative source of drug information for undergraduate medical students." They also revisited the drug articles examined in 2010 by an earlier study which came to less positive conclusions (see coverage in this newsletter: "Quality of drug information in Wikipedia"), and "found the quality of pharmacological information significantly improved". Upon reviewing several other empirical studies which evaluated the quality of medical information on Wikipedia, the authors observe that "despite different methodologies, the main conclusion of these studies was that Wikipedia articles on health topics contain few errors and are well referenced, while the information provided often lacks depth."
Obviously this is something we should be proud of, but let me note a caveat. Articles about specific drugs are a prime example of the sort of thing Wikipedia is best at: articles about topics that can be handled in a systematic way, without requiring mastery of a large body of literature. As a rule, the more comprehensive a topic, the lower the quality of the Wikpedia article. Thus our article on the drug chlordiazepoxide (commonly known as Librium) is better than our benzodiazepine article, which covers the class of drugs to which Librium belongs. The latter article contains a lot of good information but is poorly organized. Our article pharmaceutical drug shows this flaw to an even greater degree. The general take-home message, supported by the German study, is that our medical articles can be very useful to people who are looking for specific facts, but tend to be less useful to people who are trying to understand broad principles.
"It's a man's Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia",[2] presented at the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) this week, is an investigation into the gender of biography articles of six different Wikipedias. Four different biases that are investigated are coverage bias (who makes it into the encyclopedia), structural bias (which articles link to which), lexical bias (the type of words used in the articles), and visibility bias (who is featured on the Main Page).
Coverage bias is analysed by seeing who from the reference databases of notable humans of Freebase, MIT's Pantheon, and Human Accomplishment are in Wikipedia. A surprising result here is that women are not proportionally underrepresented as hypothesised, but even "slightly overrepresented". (The researchers acknowledge that the first two of these three are at least partly based on Wikipedia themselves, but try to address this issue by "seeking patterns that exist across all three datasets".)
The structural bias is a graph theoretical measure of how men and women's articles link to each other. Here it is shown that across all six languages, articles about women tend to link more to articles about men than vice versa. The Smurfette Principle, that women are less central in the link graph, is also tested. The in-degree of the two gendered article categories is compared, and it is found that men are indeed significantly more central in all language editions, except in the Spanish Wikipedia, where men and women are equally central.
The lexical bias notion stems from the idea of the Finkbeiner test, that a female scientist will often be noted as a woman as much as a scientist. It is indeed found that articles about women place linguistic emphasis on relationship, gender, and family. Whereas top terms in men's articles focus on their professions. The authors mention that this ties into the concept of male as the null gender. For instance the word "divorced" is 4.4 times more frequent in a woman's article than a man's on English Wikipedia. For German and Russian, that multiplier increases to 4.7 and 4.8 times, respectively.
Lastly visibility bias, the propensity of gendered articles to appear on the English Wikipedia Main Page is tested. Yet no significant difference is found in the propensity of the two genders to appear on the Main Page.
Unfortunately this paper suffers from its Euro-focus. The six languages in question are English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian, but the width of the methods used still show wide-scale issues. The authors conclude that Wikipedia does show some signs of addressing systemic bias, like equal visibility on the main page, and coverage bias equality; but still there are stark differences in their portrayal. Whether this is due to biases in the real world, or the way that Wikipedians write about the real world, they say, is still an unknown mixed bag.
An article[3] in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) examines Wikipedia editors' public communication using social network analysis theory. This research suggests that Wikipedia editors who engage in communication with others using user talk pages "are more experienced in editing high quality articles and are more integrated in the community". The author distinguishes quantitative and qualitative contributions, noting that the use of communication tools is more directly related to contributing not just to many articles, but to high quality articles, as well as larger number of namespaces. The use of such tools is centered on "coordinating and mentoring editors who edit lower quality articles", or in other words, the author observes that editors who edit high quality articles and use communication tools a lot seem to be more likely to reach out to less experienced editors than the other way around. The author concludes that online collaboration systems are improved through features that allow creation of what the author calls "personal" communication network. Through the study excluded bots, it does not seem to have investigated the details of communication (ex. templates, warnings, awards, others), and so its conclusions on the nature of communications (rather than who engages in it) are more tentative.
This paper,[4] likewise published in the JASIST, looks at the Talk:Vietnam War page (and its archives) and analyses it in the context of theories dealing with the concept of collective memory (cultural memory, memory space, and the "floating gap" concept introduced by Pentzold (2009) in his paper on Wikipedia.[supp 1] As such, this paper is one of several works that argues that Wikipedia is a place where modern world's memories are being recorded and, to some extent, shaped for posterity. The paper finds that the Wikipedia's article is affected by two major debates ("(a) whether the US actually lost the war and (b) whether the voice of the American Vietnam veteran should be privileged.") It reviews major, recurring arguments presented by the talk page participants, and concludes that Wikipedia allows us to study how collective memory is shaped. The author also argues that it is the very fact that such debates can be observed on Wikipedia that may distance some educators, primarily librarians, who are used to works that conceal their knowledge production processes. The author ends with a call for librarians to edit Wikipedia, and help their patrons do the same, in order to participate in the 21st century curation of collective memories.
In a separate paper, published earlier in the Journal of Documentation,[5] the author examined the debate about reliable sources on the same talk page and concluded (according to the abstract) that while much of it "is conducted without acrimony, the level of analysis one finds in the talk pages is rather shallow while the attention of individual contributors is not overly concentrated."
Three researchers have conducted a survey[6] of the use and perceptions of Wikipedia among secondary school teachers and librarians in the United States. Twenty-two teachers and librarians responded to the survey. The vast majority (91%) reported that "Wikipedia had some effect on student research". Responses were mixed about how positive or negative that effect was, however. Positive comments included responses that Wikipedia is "easily understood...thorough, up-to-date, and easily edited" and "students use it to get the basic ideas for their research, then go to other websites to verify it." Negative comments largely centered on the fact that many students did not go beyond Wikipedia in their research, such as the responses that "students rely on it too heavily and do not expand their research to prove or disprove their findings" and "Students don’t want to check sources when they can just get their work done in one stop." Most (91%) reported that their schools had no policy regarding the use of Wikipedia, but responses were roughly split regarding the need for one. Teachers and those responding that Wikipedia had a negative effect were more likely to respond there was a need for such a policy, as opposed to librarians and those responding it had a positive effect. Based on the results, the authors concluded that any policy should not restrict Wikipedia use. They write "instead of banning and fighting against the usage, students need to be taught the skills to utilize it an effective way, such as how to use Wikipedia as a jumping off point to other potentially more trustworthy resources and how to evaluate the reliability of articles." Given the very small sample size of the survey, this article is more useful for its excellent literature review.
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.
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As usual for the time of year, pop culture rules this week. The start of summer vacation in the US means a focus on summer movies, particularly blockbuster sequels Avengers: Age of Ultron, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road, though the meaning of the term "summer movie" has become increasingly vague as blockbusters open earlier and earlier. Pop cultural competition the Eurovision Song Contest had a similar impact, as did summer TV shows Game of Thrones and The Flash.
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 17 to 23, 2015, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mad Max: Fury Road | 
|
1,515,128 | .png) |
Numbers are up 35% for this action film starring Tom Hardy in the title role, which debuted on Australia on May 14 and in the United States the next day. Despite topping this list, and receiving rapturous reviews (it currently stands at 98% at Rotten Tomatoes), it has not managed to claim the top spot at the box office, being hobbled by Pitch Perfect 2 and then Tomorrowland. But while box office is a big mover of Wikipedia views, controversy is the Bagger 288, and when a mildly antediluvian men's rights activist from the modestly named website returnofkings.com declared that no one should see "Mad Max: Feminist Road", the media smelled some blood and went into a predictable spin. While he admits he hasn't actually, well, seen the film, the guy's gripes are apparently that Max doesn't speak in the trailers, while Charlize Theron does (remind me, how many lines did Max have in The Road Warrior?) and that Theron "Barks orders at Mad Max. Nobody barks orders at Mad Max". I guess he must have missed Tina Turner's immortal line in Beyond Thunderdome, "You can shovel ****, can't you?". Anyway, the only apparent result of this "controversy" is that more women have gone to see the film, which should give it the legs to recover its $150 million budget. |
| 2 | David Letterman | 
|
879,202 |  |
The American talk show host finally retired this week after 33 years on late night television, first on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman and then CBS's The Late Show with David Letterman. In the decades following his defeat in the brief war of succession for the throne of Johnny Carson, Letterman may not have achieved the ratings of the eventual victor, his onetime friend Jay Leno, but was always seen by opinion makers as the true heir to Carson's legacy, not least by Carson himself. While Leno contented himself with puerile caricatures and flat one-liners, Letterman was prickly, genuine, and fiercely topical, often barely concealing disdain for guests he didn't like. His humour bordered on the surreal; sometimes he would blow up cabs or drop televisions out of windows for no reason, while another time he turned two local souvenir shop owners named Mujibur and Sirajul into overnight celebrities just, well, because. With Leno and Letterman passing into the night, the battle has passed to the next generation, with each handing their respective chairs to Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert. |
| 3 | Mad Max |
|
815,965 | |
The 1979 film starring Mel Gibson that started the absurdly influential Mad Max franchise, now resurrected after three decades in hibernation. |
| 4 | Eurovision Song Contest 2015 |
|
752,700 |  |
Numbers have almost doubled for this year's event, probably due to its being the diamond jubilee of this most peculiar of international competitions. Politics threatened to rear its ugly head again after it seemed likely that Russia would win the popular vote, and thus the dubious privilege of hosting next year. Thankfully the prospect of one of the most gay-friendly events in the world being held in a country with stringent anti-gay laws was ultimately undone by eventual winner, Sweden. |
| 5 | Avengers: Age of Ultron |
|
717,191 |  |
The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe crossed the banner $1 billion worldwide mark this week. |
| 6 | Game of Thrones (season 5) |
|
703,082 |  |
Numbers are up this week, which isn't surprising, since the latest episode, "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" featured certified sadist Ramsay Bolton raping virginal Sansa Stark to the rage of a number of viewers, particularly the feminist blog "The Mary Sue", who stated they would no longer review the show. |
| 7 | The Flash (2014 TV series) |
|
656,073 |  |
This spinoff from the hit series Arrow marks DC Comics' second attempt to create a TV universe, after the late and much lamented DC Animated Universe. Numbers are up this week for the season finale, which aired on May 19. |
| 8 | Stephen Curry | 
|
636,375 | .jpg) |
On May 22, during a Western Conference Finals game against the Houston Rockets, the basketball player for the Golden State Warriors broke the record for the most three-point shots in a playoffs, in just 13 games. |
| 9 | Payback (2015) | Future | 632,394 |  |
WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held on May 17 at the Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, Maryland. |
| 10 | Pitch Perfect 2 |
|
424,773 | .jpg) |
This American musical comedy film, and sequel to 2012's Pitch Perfect which generated the improbable hit song "Cups", debuted in North America May 15. Starring Anna Kendrick (pictured), it has grossed $187 million worldwide as of May 27 on a budget of just $29 million, only a fifth that of Mad Max: Fury Road. Interestingly, while that film has suddenly become lauded for its feminism, this one, which is geared specifically towards women and has consistently beat it at the box office so far, has been criticised for fat jokes, racial stereotypes and other easy, regressive forms of humour. |
...allegedly. In a post to wikitech-l, Steven Walling pointed out that the TV show CSI: Cyber had used a screenshot of MediaWiki's HTML output and claimed it was responsible for blowing up printers.
In other related news:
MediaWiki 1.25 was released (announcement) during the 2015 Lyon Hackathon. It features numerous changes that have been live on Wikimedia sites for a few months, including bringing live preview out of beta, numerous API format and documentation improvements, and major performance improvements in the backend and frontend.
Greg Grossmeier announced on wikitech-l that the deployment cadence will be changing to make it less confusing for users and faster for developers to get new code to Wikipedias. The new schedule is:
It will take effect starting with the 1.26wmf9 branch (June 9th).
MediaWiki and Wikimedia developers, users and more met up in Lyon during the 2015 Wikimedia Hackathon. There were various meetings, sprints, and random projects worked on over the weekend. The author is still jetlagged from this event, so you can read more about what different projects were presented at the showcase at phab:T96378.
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