Superprotect is now one year old, as noted in a discussion in the Wikimedia-L mailing list this week. Superprotect was a novel page protection level implemented on August 10 last year, without warning, to allow Wikimedia Foundation staff to resolve an ongoing wheel war with community administrators on the German Wikipedia; the administrators were attempting to use a change to a MediaWiki configuration page to locally disable the then-new MediaViewer software.
The administrators were acting on the results of a community poll that had reached an undisputed consensus: the community's editors (mirroring editors on the English Wikipedia as well) regarded Media Viewer as an unfinished product—one that was not ready for use on their project. But the requisite change was rejected by the Foundation, which, as the owner of the servers, was in a position to overrule community consensus. This was not the first time that the WMF had overruled community consensus. "Limits to configuration changes" on Meta lists types of instances that may involve central overruling, stating that:
| “ | Rarely, a local community consensus will emerge for a particular wiki configuration change that is technically feasible to implement, but is rejected by the [WMF's] system administrators. Arguably this is a demonstration of a technocracy, or a necessity to preserve the founding principles and our mission. | ” |
The page lists nine instances in which a change was rejected outright and three in which the change was partially rejected. Before superprotect, the incident that caused the most social tension was ACTRIAL, a successful April 2011 proposal on the English Wikipedia to limit article creation to autoconfirmed accounts; it was similarly blocked at the implementation level. The Foundation's rejection provoked a significant conflagration with the community, which included terse conversations between editors and Foundation staff in the fallout reportage in the Signpost. This, however, was nowhere near as controversial as superprotect would come to be.
The German Wikipedia administrator realized that, unlike the case of ACTRIAL, it was possible to force through the change they wished to make with only a local edit to that site's MediaWiki page. They were promptly reverted by Foundation staff and informed that making "breaking" changes to the wiki configuration files was improper. The administrator persisted, and the WMF introduced and immediately applied what it called "superprotect" to the page.
Enough words have been written about the ensuing firestorm. The meta-wiki "superprotect" page lists no fewer than eight separate statements and consultations released by the Foundation in the wake of the resulting outrage. In the case of MediaViewer, the WMF stood firm on refusing to allow it to be disabled—and enforced this by threat of de-sysopping—and superprotect remains installed on the German Wikipedia, although it was taken off the page in question. An open letter circulated in the community condemning the action, garnering almost a thousand signatures. An English Wikipedia arbitration committee case was opened, with animated debate, and closed without action. For Signpost coverage from the time, refer to the Media Viewer series.
The memory of superprotect appears to be fresh in the hearts and minds of both experienced editors and Foundation personnel. Since the event, executive director Lila Tretikov focused WMF staff on increasing community feedback as much as possible—a big plank in Tretikov's platform for the organization. A prominent question of community candidates for the Board of Trustees just months ago concerned superprotect. Two of the re-standing candidates were sympathetic to the issue, while the third was on the fence; none was re-elected, whereas three strongly opposed to the use of superprotect were (prominent long-time editor and superprotect critic Pete Forsyth (Peteforsyth) was almost giddy with the results).
What do you think about the issue? The Signpost is currently soliciting two essays on the propriety of superprotect from the community—one in support, one against—soon to be published in a forum op-ed. R
English Wikipedian Liz was nominated for administrator on July 27.
A current trainee clerk for the Arbitration Committee, she has been editing since 2013 with her current account, and since 2007 with a previous account (she has also done a great deal of categorization work in the Signpost archives). She was nominated by three administrators: Worm That Turned, a former arbitrator, Yunshui, a current arbitrator, and The Blade of the Northern Lights. Their nomination described her as "a versatile candidate", who "has demonstrated empathy, understanding and helpfulness" and is "a model of diplomacy and discretion when dealing with complex, heated issues".
The nomination quickly gained much support, with more than 100 supporters in two days. However, concerns were raised about Liz's focus on noticeboard discussions and wikignome activity, and a perceived lack of content creation. In the words of one editor, she has a "disproportionate focus on drama boards as opposed to content involvement".
While a number of her advocates highlighted her support for content creation, Liz wrote "the role of administrators is undermined if there is the impression that there are different standards for behavior based on an editor's contributions and the view that some editors are unblockable", a statement that may have been perceived negatively. DD2K, a supporter, wrote that many voters opposed her nomination "because Liz dared make the statement that content creators should not be given carte blanche exemptions from the rules. Everyone knows this."
The nomination attracted offsite attention, including discussions on Wikipediocracy and r/KotakuinAction, a pro-Gamergate forum on Reddit. While not a named party to the Gamergate arbitration case, she is one of many Wikipedians whose involvement in editing and discussing Gamergate-related articles has drawn the ire of Gamergate supporters (as has this author).
Bureaucrats struck votes and comments by two accounts thought to be a "sole purpose GamerGate account". One of them, Auerbachkeller, belongs to Slate tech writer David Auerbach, who lodged complaints about the bureaucrat decision on two different Wikipedia noticeboards. (Last year, he commented frequently on arbitration case pages and got into a public spat with one of the named parties to the case.) The offsite discussions and stricken comments prompted many users to complain that the nomination had fallen victim to canvassing.
The nomination was closed on August 4 with 200 supports, 72 opposes, and nine neutrals. Requests for adminship states that "most of those above 75 percent approval pass and most of those below 70 percent fail". With support at about 73.5%, a bureaucrat discussion was opened to determine whether or not the nomination would pass. Following the discussion, Liz was promoted to administrator on August 6.
When asked on her user talkpage if she thought gender played a role in the discussion, she wondered whether her female username prompted editors to react differently: "I was struck by how some of the critical comments were very personal, about me as a person, my faults and why I was unsuitable. I've participated in over a dozen RfAs and probably read over two dozen more in preparing for this RfA and it's not typical that voters get that personal. [...] I think this happens to more often to women than men. [...] One is not judged by one's skills but how you make other people feel." G
How paid editors squeeze you dry
31 January 2024
"Wikipedia and the assault on history"
4 December 2023
The "largest con in corporate history"?
20 February 2023
Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth
31 August 2022
The oligarchs' socks
27 March 2022
The Atlantic examined "The Covert World of People Trying to Edit Wikipedia—for Pay".
The article first discusses medical editing and the experiences of Dr. James Heilman (Doc James), a Canadian physician who is currently on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. (Heilman discussed his opinions on paid editing in a Signpost op-ed earlier this year.) In 2013, Heilman was editing the Wikipedia article for kyphoplasty, a popular back procedure of disputed effectiveness. When Heilman reverted changes to the article that he thought were not "supported by existing research", he found himself drawn into a contentious debate with employees of Medtronic, a medical equipment company which sells a kyphoplasty kit. He was emailed by a physician who was a consultant for Medtronic and the resulting email thread was cc:ed to over 300 others, including one of Heilman's medical school professors. Heilman was intimidated by the contact. Elsewhere, he wrote "having 'representatives' from an 28 billion USD company email 300 of your colleagues to inform them how misguided you are is disconcerting."
The Atlantic puts this incident in the context of the conflicts between the motivations of company employees and volunteer editors.
| “ | [...the employee's] concern that a Wikipedia article was hurting his company's business is a common one—the site has enormous reach, and the information it contains makes its way to nearly everyone, from consumers to policymakers to people Googling innocuous questions on their phones. Even minor changes in wording have the potential to influence public perception and, naturally, how millions of dollars are spent. What this means for marketers is that Wikipedia is yet another place to establish an online presence. But what this means for Wikipedia is much more complicated: How can a site run by volunteers inoculate itself against well-funded PR efforts? And how can those volunteers distinguish between information that’s trustworthy and information that’s suspect? | ” |
The Atlantic writes that these issues are exacerbated by the shrinking ranks of active editors, the small number of administrators, and the growing number of articles. Heilman told The Atlantic that undisclosed advocacy edits "often distract the core community of editors away from more important topics." The Atlantic notes that Wikipedia's wide reach makes these issues important ones. According to Wikipedia's medical articles likely have a larger readership than WebMD and are used by 50-70 percent of doctors. Wikipedia information has even turned up in medical books themselves. As recounted by Heilman in the Signpost earlier this year, Wikipedia was plagiarized by a contributor to an Oxford University Press medical textbook.
The Atlantic discusses what public relations companies are and are not doing. It mentions in passing the 2014 pledge by a number of PR firms to adhere to Wikipedia's terms of use by disclosing their conflict of interest. (William Beutler (WWB), a paid editor who spearheaded that effort and wrote an op-ed in the Signpost about paid editing last month, called that a "big missed opportunity".) Despite this, undisclosed advocacy editing persists, ranging from the high profile, such as this summer's Sunshine Sachs controversy (see previous Signpost coverage), to the low profile, like the abundant ads on Elance advertising the services of Wikipedia editors and even administrators. Patrick Taylor, one of the duo at the head of Wiki-PR, which was blocked from editing Wikipedia for operating an army of sockpuppets (see the Signpost's Wiki-PR series), told The Atlantic that "Undisclosed paid editing, especially on the part of the largest PR firms, is rampant on Wikipedia."
The Atlantic talked with two paid editors, Gregory Kohs, founder of MyWikiBiz and longtime Wikipedia critic, and Mike Wood, who runs Legalmorning. The Atlantic failed to note that both have been banned from Wikipedia for policy violations. Both refuse to disclose their advocacy editing and claimed to The Atlantic that they did so because of Jimmy Wales, an odd, self-serving justification. Wood said "As soon as Jimmy Wales adheres to Wikipedia guidelines, I will adhere to Wikipedia guidelines," though the only specific act of Wales cited by The Atlantic was Wales editing his own Wikipedia article back in 2005. (Aug. 11)
Business Insider reports that Wikipedia traffic from the search engine Google has experienced a significant drop. It recounts analysis from a July 28 blog post by Roy Hinkins, head of search engine optimization for SimilarWeb, a web analytics company. Hinkins writes:
| “ | Wikipedia lost an insane amount of traffic in the past 3 months. And by insane I mean that the free encyclopedia site lost more than 250 million desktop visits in just 3 months! | ” |
Business Insider speculates that the drop is due to Google's growing "preference for inserting its own content above the content of other non-Google web sites, even when those sites may be better resources than Google itself", though it notes " there is no evidence that Wikipedia's traffic loss is due to Google".
The drop in traffic was noted at the Wikimedia Foundation August Metrics & Activities meeting (see graphic at right), though the meeting did not discuss a potential cause. Elsewhere, a number of experienced editors are attributing the drop to the normal summer decrease in Wikipedia traffic. (Aug. 12)
Music news outlets noted that singer Nicki Minaj took to Instagram, where she has 31.2 million followers, to complain about the Wikipedia article for her boyfriend, rapper Meek Mill. Whenever she posted Mill's birth name, Rihmeek, she was inundated with complaints and mockery on social media for "misspelling" his name, because his Wikipedia article spelled it "Rahmeek". She posted a picture of herself with Mill and his family and wrote:
| “ | Everytime I say the name "Rihmeek" in a post I get a billion comments saying I'm spelling his name wrong. Lol. Hmmmmm. Lemme get this straight, I should believe Wikipedia over his MOTHER, SISTER (@naboogie) AND HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE?????? 😂 yall gotta chill. #NoMoreCommentsAboutHisNAMEpls #TakeHisGirlWordForIt 😁😛😂 #StayOffWikipedia #YallReallyBeMad 😩😘😘😘😘😘😘😘 | ” |
Neither Minaj nor the media outlets noted that the incorrect spelling in Meek's Wikipedia article was cited to a biography page on the website of his own record label, Roc Nation, where the error remains. (Aug. 8)
Editor's note: Emoticons in the above quote may not be visible on all computers.
How paid editors squeeze you dry
31 January 2024
"Wikipedia and the assault on history"
4 December 2023
The "largest con in corporate history"?
20 February 2023
Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth
31 August 2022
The oligarchs' socks
27 March 2022
It is impossible to lump all paid editing together, since it ranges from those deceptively using sockpuppets to evade scrutiny and create promotional articles on non-notable subjects to others who openly disclose and use high quality sources to write neutral content. In my experience though, paid editing is overall a net negative for the project as the few good paid editors are vastly outnumbered by the rest. The net effect is to decrease the neutrality and quality of the project as a whole. It also encourages others to create articles on the basis of other crap existing which leads to a vicious cycle (see for example Tuft & Needle and Casper). A considerable amount of volunteer effort is required to clean up the mess when we could potentially be creating other content.
Paid editing is inevitable so long as anyone can edit. Dealing with it requires the right balance of carrot and stick so as to tolerate and assist those who are open, while taking a hard line with those who are not here to write an encyclopedia. The bright line is good in principle, but there aren't enough volunteers who want to review paid edits, particularly if explaining the problems will take a substantial amount of effort. Further, our current terms of use, policies and guidelines don't provide sufficient punishment for those who fail to disclose or continue to edit mainspace. If we applied the principle of WP:DENY to undisclosed paid editors then it may encourage more to play by the rules. I'd also like to see a bot like cluebot that flagged edits to corporate and BLP articles that could be paid editing. Our methods of detection are inconsistent and haven't improved since I started editing 6 years ago.
I support the allowance of paid editing, but only with careful monitoring. All editors have the potential of bias with the possibility that their contributions might be more positive or negative rather than truly neutral. This is a challenge that applies to all edits and all editors. However, in the case of paid editors, we know there is a strong built-in potential for bias. Some paid editors will manage to provide new content, but others even if unconsciously, will lean toward a more favorable coverage of their client. If the position is known, their contributions can be scrutinized by others through that lens, and the resulting article can be a neutral article. Without identification of the status of the editor, it becomes much more difficult to ensure neutrality.
We have the concept of pending changes which applies to articles. Perhaps we should find a way to apply the concept to editors. If all declared editors were subject to a pending change requirement, it might be a useful way of allowing paid content while maintaining strict scrutiny of the content.
Out of more than 100 assessments I provided to article-subjects, I found that their objectives were aligned with Wikipedia's content policies 30% of the time. I estimate that 10-20% of COI edits are useful, but less than 10% are acting in bad-faith. The majority of article-subjects are well-meaning, but make poor edits, because their motives for editing skew their point-of-view. This is also true of former employees, legal antagonists, etc. Most of the time they can be persuaded to abstain through patient and authoritative consulting, whereas in some cases there are borderline attack pages, factual errors, or other circumstances where their participation is desirable.
There is a lot we can do to improve things. An outreach and education program for article-subjects and their representatives with a focus on abstaining could target the bulk of cases. For a small number of cases (~1%) where there is a persistent and bad-faith violation of the Terms of Use, legal enforcement is needed. All the Wikipedia jargon that has made WP:COI incomprehensible to PR people is another issue and I think requiring a minimum disclosure, rather than an excessive one, would reduce drama, harassment and other nonsense, while promoting a focus on content instead of editors.
If the edits are impartial, neutral and do not seek to pervert Wikipedia and its articles and have no WP:OWN connotations, either of edits or of articles, then I applaud all good quality edits and deprecate all poor quality ones, exactly as I do with amateur editing
The challenge is to enforce it. I favour the commercial editor declaring their interest(s) on their user page and their deploying {{Connected contributor}} with all parameters filled out on the talk page of each article they contribute to in their commercial persona. I do not support separate accounts for commercial and non commercial use unless they are properly declared on the user pages concerned. I favour strong but not draconian enforcement of declarations as a matter of policy.
I have no problem in principle with paid editing, as long as it is done honestly and in the open. But we must be more proactive in battling stealth paid editing. The for-hire creation or modification of articles by a person or company who would otherwise be unconnected to the subjects of those articles, without clear previous disclosure, is the type of activity we must endeavor to stop because it undermines the trust readers place on us. There is too much potential for abuse, and we have seen that recently where for-profit "editors" (I use that term lightly here) stoop to blackmail in order to keep the money rolling in. This reflects negatively on Wikipedia because often the victim thinks this is the norm around here, or that it is somehow done with the blessing of the community or the Foundation. The COI guidelines must be revamped and made into a policy with teeth and clear avenues of action for administrators and editors to follow. There are conversations we must have as a community and major changes to be made if we are to remain a truly free and truly neutral source of information that the world trusts.
Ever since I started editing on this site, my views about COI and paid editing have changed dramatically, primarily due to reviewing some GA nominations substantially written by CorporateM, who has openly admitted to being paid and having a COI. Unfortunately, I at first made the impulsive decision of quick failing one of the nominations simply because this editor was paid and there was a COI. I had made that poor decision because of my own ignorance and stereotyping. However, after requesting that it be re-reviewed, I agreed to look over it again more closely and found that not only was the article in question neutral, but very informative and well-written. From that day on, it made me realize that just because an editor is getting paid and/or has a COI doesn't mean that they are here to harm the encyclopedia (in fact, there are quite a few that are assets to this project). In conclusion, I don't have a problem with paid editors and editors with a COI editing this site as long as the site is being benefitted by their contributions and not harming/disrupting the project in anyway, shape or form. I really hope that this piece can help the community realize that not all paid editors and COI editors are here for their own benefits and be a bit more accepting as a whole.
For the first installment, see part 1, the plenaries
For those who generally only edit on the English Wikipedia project, it is quite an experience to hobnob with attendees from nearly forty countries, [Note 1] over six continents (alas, no WikiProject Penguins from Antartica), and representing about four dozen languages and their respective Wikipedias.[Note 2] There were also those who primarily work on other Wikimedia projects and other WMF websites, such as Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, MediaWiki, and Phabricator. There was non-Wikimedia open source/open data representation there as well, such as Mozilla México in the Community Village and a mapping party for OpenStreetMap.
Inter- and intra- were the applicable geographical prefixes, as meetups were intra-continental: WikiAfrica, Wikimedia Asia, Central and Eastern Europe Wikimedians, and the Canada and United States affiliates, intra-language/inter-continental: WikiArabia, WikiFranca, Iberocoop, and Turkic Speaking Wikimedians, intra-country: Wikimedia Deutschland (Germany) and the Mexican Wikipedians, and the inter-language, intra-country, and internationally diasporic Indic Meetup. Thematic meetups included the Wikipedia Education Program, LGBT and allied Wikimedians, OTRS volunteers, Wikidata editors, Wikipedia Librarians, the WikiProject Med Foundation, a Wikiwomen's Lunch, and a joint Wiktionary-Wikidata Meetup. There was even a meetup for a Wiki Wedding.
Unless you hang out in San Francisco, you will seldom have a chance to meet Wikimedia Foundation employees. Wikimania is an excellent venue for meeting dozens of them. A prime spot for this was the WMF booth. The Wikimedia Design Research team also staffed a table in the Community Village as well where they conducted surveys and interviews about how editors contribute to wiki projects on mobile devices. Attendees could engage with reorganized Community Engagement team leaders in a mediated Q&A panel discussion, or go to a Wikimedia Engineering Management Q&A, a WMF Legal presentation on defending users and content, or a Q&A with the WMF Board. There was also ample opportunity to meet individual staff and learn from them. It was intriguing to learn that the WMF uses Apache Cassandra as a back-end database to deliver content used by VisualEditor to retrieve page HTML for editing or that the search tool now provides intitle: and incategory: parameters.
The substance of Wikimania is in the sessions presented by editors and staff for the rest of us. The Programme included tracks on Education, GLAM, Community, Tech, and Legal issues. Of the plethora of sessions, below are just a few that stood out among those attended by this editor.
Despite the dearth of official videos of Wikimanía 2015 sessions, as reported by the Signpost, some individuals took the initiative to record session and other videos. These can be found at Wikimania 2015 presentation videos on Commons, Wikimania 2015 videos on Internet Archive, and miscellaneous "Wikimania 2015" videos on YouTube.
{{cite web}}: External link in |work=The charts are led this week by UFC women's champion Ronda Rousey, who won her last match at UFC 190 (#9) in 34 seconds. And at the bottom of the top 10 is Donald Trump, the highly improbable leading candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2016 Presidential elections. Of course, the election is 15 months away, which is light years in politics. The Top 10 also saw two high profile deaths in British singer Cilla Black (#3), and American wrestler Roddy Piper (#8). Aside from American films, and another strong showing from Indian cinema, a few more American debate related topics appear further down the Top 25. (A bonus chart of the candidates ranked by views follows below.)
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.
For the week of August 2 to 8, 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 | Ronda Rousey | 
|
2,049,053 |  |
UFC 190 fell on August 1, which was the day before last week's report was published, so the reaction to that match, during which the undefeated UFC women's bantamweight champion beat Bethe Correia in 34 seconds in Correia's home town of Rio de Janeiro, really only came through this week. Still, she managed to get on the list last week too. Apparently Correia had been trash talking Rousey prior to the fight, which strikes me as a rather odd thing to do to someone who a) has never lost a fight and b) won her last fight in 14 seconds, except as a ploy to get better ratings. |
| 2 | A. P. J. Abdul Kalam | 
|
933,223 |  |
The sustained surge of views this scientist and reluctant politician received upon his death last week at the age of 83 is merely a reflection of the regard in which he was held by his fellow Indians. A Muslim in a predominantly Hindu country, he rose to the very top of the political ladder, first as a developer of India's missile and nuclear programs, and then as President. Despite adhering to Islam, he considered himself an Indian and drew much inspiration from his country's Hindu heritage. As a result, his one term as President was one of the most popular in his country's history. A lifelong advocate of technology, he believed that India could become a developed country through embracing and expanding its knowledge base. |
| 3 | Cilla Black | 
|
796,775 | .jpg) |
Topics of purely British interest almost never make the top 25 (Britain's population can't compete with America or India, even if you factor in countries that share its pop culture, like Australia) and when they do they rarely reach this high. So that should tell any non-Brits reading this just how popular Cilla Black, who died this week, was in her home country. A native of Liverpool, she began her career as a singer in the innocent days of early 60s pop and achieved great success thanks to promotion by her fellow Liverpudlians The Beatles. She then became a fixture in British households for almost four decades, hosting a series of variety shows, game shows and hidden camera shows, eventually becoming the highest paid female performer in British television. Part of her appeal was that, unlike many in her position, she never abandoned her Liverpool roots, retaining her accent and mannerisms throughout her career. (This entry summary helpfully provided by Serendipodous, as my vague non-British knowledge of Ms. Black is limited to recalling some Smiths connection or homage to her in the past.) |
| 4 | Deadpool |
|
793,190 |  |
The article on this fictional Marvel Comics antihero surged in popularity on August 5 with the debut of a trailer for upcoming film of the same name starring Ryan Reynolds (pictured), which will be released on February 12, 2016, in North America. |
| 5 | Fantastic Four (2015 film) | 
|
788,731 |  |
Another Marvel Comics movie, including Miles Teller (pictured) among the top-billed cast, the film premiered in New York on August 4 and was released in theaters on August 7. The film was panned by critics and audiences alike and underperformed at the box office, earning only $25.7 million in North America during its opening weekend. However, a sequel is already scheduled to be released on June 9, 2017. |
| 6 | Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation |
|
719,059 |  |
Up from #19 and 340,226 views last week. The box office draw of Tom Cruise (pictured) may have flagged of late, but he can always return to his signature franchise, which has yet to let him down. The fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible series was released on July 31 and had a hefty $56 million opening weekend, all but ensuring a part 6. |
| 7 | Bajrangi Bhaijaan |
|
686,399 |  |
Down from #4 and 948,650 views last week. Bollywood's Muslim-targeted counterprogramming to the raging box office tsunami of Baahubali: The Beginning, starring Hindu/Muslim superstar Salman Khan (pictured) and opening on Eid weekend, made Rs 200 crore ($31.2 million) in its first nine days, and earned support from legends like Shekhar Kapur. But Khan's tweets in apparent support of Yakub Memon have led to posters for the film being defaced in some areas. |
| 8 | Roddy Piper |
|
646,146 |  |
Down from #3 and 1,086,945 views last week. Wikipedia readers love their wrestlers, and so the death of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, world-renowned WWF and WCW heel, at the relatively young age of 61, was bound to stir emotions. In the ring, "Hot Rod" played up his Scottish roots, affecting the rage of a Glaswegian football hooligan and entering to the sound of bagpipes, for which he was named (his real last name, incidentally, was Toombs, which you would think would be a perfectly acceptable wrestling name). |
| 9 | UFC 190 | 
|
638,825 |  |
See #1. Performing better than UFC 189, which had 557K views when it appeared on the Top 25 a few weeks ago. And for whatever reason UFC 188 didn't make the list at all in June, but UFC 187 did in May. |
| 10 | Donald Trump |
|
614,810 |  |
The larger-than-life real estate developer and media personality nicknamed "The Donald" continues to flummox the American media, as Trump stood center stage in the first major Republican candidates debate on August 6, and is the candidate currently ranked highest in the polls. Many thought the questions he received from the Fox News anchors, including Megyn Kelly (#15), were aimed at ending his reign, but subsequent polls suggest his lead is increasing. How do you explain this craziness? Well, first of all, it is almost 15 months until the U.S. presidential election. Outside the focused political media and hard core Republicans, no one cares yet! He won't be the nominee. As seen above, wrestling and UFC is more popular at this point, taking 3 of the top 10 spots. Second, a large core of Republicans fear illegal immigration, because they've been taught to fear it in order to draw votes away from Democratic candidates. Trump's frank talk on this issue (despite veering into likely racism) appeals to that base. Many Americans are simply watching Trump "for the lulz". |
| Rank | Candidate | Views |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donald Trump | 614,810 |
| 2 | Ben Carson | 403,620 |
| 3 | Carly Fiorina | 393,404 |
| 4 | John Kasich | 214,815 |
| 5 | Jeb Bush | 204,989 |
| 6 | Ted Cruz | 184,220 |
| 7 | Marco Rubio | 173,578 |
| 8 | Rand Paul | 131,158 |
| 9 | Chris Christie | 86,011 |
| 10 | Bobby Jindal | 66,431 |
| 11 | Scott Walker | 65,585 |
| 12 | Lindsey Graham | 58,671 |
| 13 | Mike Huckabee | 55,729 |
| 14 | Rick Perry | 37,395 |
| 15 | Rick Santorum | 33,657 |
| 16 | Jim Gilmore | 30,236 |
| 17 | George Pataki | 27,769 |
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Fourteen Featured articles were promoted this week.
- Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
- While proudly riding o'er the azure realm,
- In gallant trim, the gilded vessel goes,
- Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm,
- Unmindful of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
- That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg)
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Twenty-eight Featured picturess were promoted this week.
She is a "ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [1]
The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [2]
You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later. [3]
You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [4]
It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [5]
You can no longer use the Sajax library. You can see a list of pages to fix. [6] [7]
You can no longer use document.write on Wikimedia wikis. You can see a list of pages to fix. [8] [9]
Problems
More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [11]
Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [12]
Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [13]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon. [14]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some things in the watchlist will get a new look. [16]
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During World War II, the German battleship Tirpitz was a major threat to Allied convoys travelling across the North Atlantic and Arctic Sea to the Soviet Union. Tirpitz was one of the largest and most modern battleships afloat, and the massive effort which was required to find and sink its sister ship Bismarck in May 1941 convinced the Allies that it needed to be destroyed. This proved very difficult, however, as from 1942 Tirpitz was stationed in well-protected bases in Norwegian fjords.
During 1942 and 1944, the British repeatedly attempted to attack Tirpitz at its bases. Several raids by land-based bombers flying from the UK were unsuccessful, and an attempt to attack with manned torpedoes failed at the last moment due to technical problems. The task of attacking Tirpitz became even harder once it was moved to Kaafjord in the remote far north of Norway, but in September 1943 a raid conducted by British midget submarines (Operation Source) inflicted heavy damage. However, it survived this attack, and the British decided that the next-best option was to attack it with the Fleet Air Arm, using aircraft flying from aircraft carriers.
This led to a series of operations between April and August 1944, of which only the first—Operation Tungsten—inflicted any significant damage. Mascot was much less successful, and involved a somewhat farcical attack in which the British pilots attempted to drop bombs on the ship by aiming at flashes from Tirpitz‘s guns through a thick German-laid smokescreen. Goodwood involved four separate raids over a week in August, but once again ended in failure due to smokescreens over the battleship during each of the attacks. Despite the lack of results, each of these attacks was a major battle involving thousands of personnel on both sides.
Over the last two years I’ve developed three featured-class articles about these unsuccessful attacks, but how did an Australian end up writing about little-known events which took place in the far north of Norway 70 years ago and involved very few Australians?
Ironically, my main inspiration for writing about this topic came from a museum located even further away from Norway—when visiting the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, I was surprised to learn that New Zealanders made up a large proportion of the FAA’s aircrew during World War II (about 17% of the airmen involved in Operation Tungsten were from the country). The museum’s dramatic diorama depicting British Fairey Barracuda aircraft dive-bombing Tirpitz in a fjord interested me as well; I’d written articles on other little-known carrier aircraft attacks on important naval bases (like the Attack on Yokosuka) and World War II in Norway (Black Friday [1945] and Action of 28 January 1945), and recently reviewed a book about the British attacks on Tirpitz.
When combined, this looked like a topic I’d want to work on, and my initial research confirmed this. The series of British raids were major efforts which involved the bulk of the Home Fleet (the Royal Navy’s main combat force, stationed in the UK) and exposed the airmen to extreme danger from the hostile Norwegian climate and formidable German defences. Moreover, despite the British forces being considerably more powerful than the German units stationed at Kaafjord, they were unable to do much damage due to the limitations of the fleet’s aircraft, bad weather, and some ingenious German tactics.
Deeper research turned up more fascinating facts—for instance, the US Navy transferred an aircraft carrier from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean to allow Operation Tungsten to go ahead, and one of the Royal Navy’s carriers was so worn out it was withdrawn from service and retired halfway through Operation Goodwood!
My main challenge in writing these articles was the absence of a single source which covers all of the attacks in detail. While there are several histories which cover all the Allied attacks on Tirpitz, the amount of information they provide on each of the operations varies considerably. For instance, Mark Bishop’s recent book Target Tirpitz only goes into detail on Operation Tungsten and skims over the other attacks, and John Sweetman’s Tirpitz: Hunting the Beast is very useful for Operations Tungsten and (to a lesser extent) Goodwood, but only briefly mentions Operation Mascot. Stephen Roskill’s venerable official history of the Royal Navy in World War II also provided a useful overview of the attacks and the strategy which guided them, but was weak on the details of the individual operations.
As a result, developing these articles to FA standard was only possible by consulting many specialised sources. I’m fortunate to live in a city boasting several libraries with excellent military history collections, and I trawled their shelves on weekends. This really paid off—for instance, the Operation Mascot article probably couldn’t have come together without V.E. Tarrant’s rather obscure The Last Year of the Kriegsmarine, which provided the only detailed account of this attack I could find. Similarly, specialised works on battleships, naval aviation, and the naval war in the Arctic allowed me to fill in important details. Given the importance of these obscure works, I suspect that there are only a smallish number cities in the world—and possibly no other city in Australia—where it might have been possible for an amateur historian like me to develop articles on this topic without resorting to inter-library loans and/or expensive purchases.
Something that surprised me was the value of the British official history British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, which was published during the 1980s and 1990s, in developing the articles. By assessing British wartime intelligence reports against what actually occurred, this work provided an important reality check at several points, and was particularly valuable when using sources which pre-dated the disclosure of the Allied success in breaking the German codes in the late 1970s. As a bonus, its authors had a good eye for interesting snippets about the military operations against Tirpitz which allowed me to inject some extra “colour” into the articles. This experience illustrated the value of reading widely around the topic, and I’d strongly recommend consulting this work when writing articles on World War II in Europe.
Despite these positive experiences, I wasn’t able to fill in some significant details in the articles. Most importantly, no source went into detail on the German experiences of the operations, with the available coverage generally being focused on Tirpitz and its crew. As a result, I couldn’t pin down the strength of the German anti-aircraft and air force units deployed to protect Tirpitz, or the casualties they sustained—which appear to have been heavy in several of the attacks. Second, while this part of Norway is sparsely populated, it would also have been good to have described the experiences of local civilians. Finally, while various unreliable or semi-reliable sources discussed commemorations of the raids, it was very difficult to source material on them to featured article standard.
I developed the three articles in their chronological order, starting by improving the already-existent Operation Tungsten article and ending by creating and developing an article on Operation Goodwood. This worked well, as I was able to re-use text and references in each successive article. I also adjusted the level of detail on the background and aftermath of the operations as appropriate—Operation Tungsten has detailed coverage of the background to these attacks, Operation Mascot discusses the several abortive raids which followed Tungsten in April and May 1944, and Operation Goodwood goes into greater detail on the successful attacks by land-based Royal Air Force bombers which followed the Royal Navy’s failure to seriously damage Tirpitz. To improve readers’ ability to navigate this topic, I also created a List of Allied attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz article which provides a summary of the various operations.
The process of submitting each of the articles to Good Article, A-class and featured reviews also helped guide their development. The feedback from reviewers highlighted areas I needed to pay close attention to which were common to all articles, such as the need to ensure that the terminology used was suitable for readers who don’t have prior knowledge of the broad topic areas the articles cover. I also found that I could revisit the older articles as I went along and found new sources or useful facts I’d missed, with the happy result that the Tungsten and Mascot articles are—hopefully—in better shape than when they passed their featured article nominations!
I’d also like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Manxruler, a Norwegian local and Wikipedia editor, who took photos of the graves of Allied airmen at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Tromsø and added some additional details to the text. This illustrated the power of Wikipedia to connect interested editors in different parts of the world to work towards a common cause.
Overall, I’d recommend the experience of writing a string of articles on related topics, and now understand why some editors tend to use this as their main editing style. It’s an efficient way to produce high-quality articles, and provides a great opportunity to write about a topic in detail. While I was worried about getting bored with the topic or burnt out, the small number of articles, fairly self-contained nature of the individual battles and the sheer novelty of the topic (aircraft carriers attacking a battleship in a fjord!) kept me interested, and I was pleased with the positive response from reviewers, which suggests that other editors also found the topic worthwhile.
I was also very pleased that Operation Tungsten appeared on Wikipedia’s front page to mark the 70th anniversary of the raid on 3 April 2014, which went a long way to making the whole project worthwhile.
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