Single-page edition for 2015-09-16

Single-page Edition

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16 September 2015

news

Another week

No particular trends to spot in this week's top article traffic. Pablo Escobar maintains the top spot for a second week due to the new Netflix series on his life, followed by the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The Queen of England is #6 by virtue of now being the longest-reigning British monarch in history. This was dutifully noted by the press in the same way that same event was noted in September 1896 when Queen Victoria took that title. Thus does time march on.

For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

For the week of September 6 to 12, 2015, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages (and culled from the Top 25 Report), were:

Rank	Article	Views	Image	Notes
1	Pablo Escobar	1,454,312	File:Pablo Escobar graffitti.jpg	Holding steady in the top spot for a second week (down by about 130,000 views). The Capone of cocaine shot from the bottom to the top of this list last week, thanks to the Netflix series Narcos, which charts his rise, brutal rule, and bloody end. It is odd that the Colombian drug lords haven't been romanticised as their Italian Chicago predecessors were. Perhaps it's simple xenophobia, or more likely, because we are so much more aware of how barbaric they were.
2	September 11 attacks	1,245,665		The 14th anniversary of these terrorist attacks repeats its second place showing from last year, when it was eclipsed by a Google Doodle on Leo Tolstoy. It topped the chart in 2013.
3	Serena Williams	806,091		Serena's no stranger to this list, and she returned this week as she played in the 2015 US Open, ultimately losing to Roberta Vinci (#19) in the semifinals.
4	Eazy-E	709,350		Down one spot and about 120,000 views from last week, for a fifth straight week in the Top 10 is the article about the founding member of N.W.A, whose death from AIDS at the age of just 31 forms the emotional climax of the film Straight Outta Compton.
5	The Visit (2015 film)	692,721		The latest film from director M. Night Shyamalan is this comedy horror movie, released in North America on September 11. It finished second at the box office, just edged out by The Perfect Guy (which is somewhat oddly all the way down at #205 in the raw WP:5000). The film has received mixed reviews from critics, though some have praised it as a return to form for Shyamalan.
6	Elizabeth II	627,601		The Queen returns to the top 25 for the first time since May, when she welcomed a new grandchild. On September 9, she surpassed her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria to become the longest-reigning British monarch in history, at 63 years, 217 days, and counting. Victoria took her title on September 23, 1896, which the press similarly noted back then.
7	Deaths in 2015	575,096		The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550 thousand on average, apparently heedless of who actually died. Views were slightly higher this week at 575K. Deaths noted on the list this week include Russian water polo player Vladislav Timakov (age 24, September 6, heart attack); Spanish woman's right activist Elena Arnedo (age 74, September 7); Azerbaijani musician Habil Aliyev (age 88, September 8); American businessman Charles Hallac (age 50, September 9, cancer); Italian actor Franco Interlenghi (age 83, September 10); Georgian writer Rezo Cheishvili (age 82, September 11); and The Damned bassist Bryn Merrick (age 56, September 12, cancer)
8	Syrian Civil War	567,289		The ongoing refugee crisis, now more directly impacting Europe than before, is getting increased attention.
9	Labor Day	550,603		An annual appearance, the first Monday in September is the traditional end of the United States summer season, and, for some people, the last time of the year it is in any way excusable to wear white.
10	Narcos	528,389		Down from #4 last week. The TV series about the rise of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar (see #1) premiered in its entirety on Netflix on August 28.

2015-09-16

Is there life on Mars?

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By Gamaliel, Noyster, and Smallbones

Is there life on Mars? Probably not.

Whitehall, where UK civil servants diligently update Wikipedia

COI editing: The Washington Post reports that some edits made to the article for Melissa Chiu, director of the Hirshhorn Museum, were by her husband, art critic Ben Genocchio. The Post reports that Sarasays, an experienced editor and employee of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, has been discussing with staffers of the Smithsonian and Hirshhorn about editing in a manner compliant with WP:NPOV and WP:COI. (Sept. 18) G
This again: Someone at Vox found the page Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars and wrote an article about it. They wonder "The big question is why Wikipedians get involved in absurd arguments that persist for years." The answer is that when "anyone can edit", then anyone can be an obsessive. (Sept. 17) G
Whitehall never sleeps: Gizmodo reports on the latest amusing Wikipedia edit from a Whitehall civil servant revealed on Twitter, an early morning edit soliciting new members for a Clash of Clans team. (Sept. 17) G
Global North edits the world: The Guardian reports on research by Oxford University showing that a few rich Western countries edit most articles about places – and when others do contribute, they write about the west. Nearly half (45%) of all edits to articles with specific geographical coordinates were made from the UK, US, France, Germany, and Italy. Further, of the smaller number of edits that do come out of poorer countries, many are about Europe and North America. The researchers, from the university's Internet Institute, describe this as an example of how richer countries still "largely define the world view of" less affluent parts of the world. (Sept. 15) N
Financial edit wars: The online magazine Observer covers allegations that anonymous users (IPs) have for many years been whitewashing Wikipedia articles about Dennis Levine, Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and others accused of financial malpractice. There have been long-running edit wars, with named accounts ("Wiki sheriffs") repeatedly attempting to restore information removed or doctored by the IPs. To illustrate the edit warring, the Observer report features a screenshot of the edit history (which it describes as the "talk page") for the article about Levine. (Sept. 15) N
Wikipedia in the laboratory: Chemical & Engineering News reports on how academics in chemistry are working to get their colleagues to understand and contribute to Wikipedia. (Sept. 14) G

Hutup Yuwa School

Irish whitewashing: The Irish Independent reports another whitewashing of a politician’s Wikipedia article. The removal of controversial content was made by an IP traced to Ireland’s legislature, the Oireachtas. The article on Irish senator Jim Walsh was edited on Monday, September 14 to exclude information on Walsh’s opposition to same-sex marriage and to emphasize his support for a united Ireland. While there’s nothing new about reports of politicians allegedly editing their own articles, this story is remarkable for being reported the day after the edits were made, and for the quality of the diffs provided. (Sept. 14) S
Pseudoscience wormhole: If you don’t have time to randomly click links and climb down the wormholes connected to an interesting article, The A.V. Club will do it for you. In the 104th installment of a planned 4,962,925-week series, they look at pseudoscience on Wikipedia, with stops including alchemy, ear candling, spirit photography, the face on Mars, Lysenkoism, ending at the Woozle effect. (Sept. 14) S
Village editing: HuffPost India reports on how schoolgirls are editing the Wikipedia article for Hutup, their small village in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Illiteracy, child marriage and human trafficking are rampant among girls in Jharkhand, and the Wikipedia editing is part of an effort by Yuwa, a non-governmental organization, to combat those ills through "football and education". A Yuwa spokesperson said "it is important for these girls to use technology to expand their worldview beyond their own village". An inspirational effort to bring technology to the Global South, but one wonders what will happen when Global North editors discover the girls' first-person accounts of village football conflict with Wikipedia policies. (Sept. 11) G

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.

2015-09-16

Tech news in brief

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Byrd and notifications leave, but page views stay; was a terror suspect editing Wikipedia?

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Garfield Byrd's departure

Garfield Byrd

On 10 September, Garfield Byrd announced in an email that he would be stepping down on 30 September. He had served as chief of finance and administration of the Wikimedia Foundation since 2011. He is taking a position at an unnamed foundation focused on public education.

Many people wished him well and thanked him for his time. A few mentioned his presence at Wikimanias, [9][10], and several mentioned his dancing.[11][12][13] J

Did terrorism suspect edit Wikipedia?

On September 9, the FBI arrested Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a 20-year-old Jewish resident of Orange Park, Florida, for allegedly supplying bomb-making information for a plot to attack a Kansas City ceremony commemorating September 11 attacks. A series of reports in the Sydney Morning Herald detailed Goldberg's alleged history of "trolling" using a variety of online personas, including a GamerGater, an ISIS supporter, a white supremacist, a radical free-speech crusader, and a feminist. Given Goldberg's many accounts on various websites, including Twitter and Reddit, it seems possible that he attempted to use Wikipedia accounts as part of his web of online activity. A persona named in media reports and the criminal complaint against Goldberg shares its name with a Wikipedia account that was blocked for sockpuppetry and editwarring by a checkuser in 2013. That persona's Twitter account claimed to have created a particular Wikipedia article in 2015. The account that created that article was blocked for personal attacks and harassment earlier this month. The Arbitration Committee seems to have learned of this matter, as an arbitrator indefinitely blocked the second account following Goldberg's arrest. Neither account appears to have edited articles involving terrorism, but instead focused on film, especially horror films, animation, and video games. G

Is Google taking eyeballs away from Wikipedia?

Oliver Keyes of the Wikimedia Foundation has investigated claims that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites have been losing "an insane amount of traffic" over recent months, due to Google possibly diverting searches toward its own or other sources of information.

A special study of a sample of pageviews was carried out. The results indicate that search traffic referred directly from Google has in fact increased between January and August this year. However, search traffic with no known referer has dropped. This change may or may not be related to what Google is doing, and the report concludes with a call for direct discussions with Google, as well as for more complete ongoing tracking of how searchers reach Wikimedia sites.N

Notifications (Echo) reversal

Screenshot of Notifications breaking Commons in Firefox 3.5

On 15 September, the WMF decided to roll back the recent changes to Notifications (Echo).[14] This is due to two bugs introduced in the recent change.

The first bug was a large increase in the size of the CSS being loaded, causing a slowdown. The initial slowdown was reported to be five-fold.[15] They tried to work on it, but even after their efforts there was still a 30% increase in the size of the CSS, and up to a second longer in load-time on uncached views.

The second bug was a rendering error in Firefox 3.5 and Safari.[16] In Firefox text was spread throughout a large portion of the page (see image), while in Safari the text was constrained to the top portion of the page.[17] J

Brief notes

Milestones: No milestones this week, but the English Wikipedia is rapidly approaching five million articles.
SSL Certificate Expirations: The SSL certificates for wmfusercontent.org and wmflabs.org (tools.wmflabs.org) expired without being renewed. They will be added to the tracking calendar for the future.[18][19] J
The Wikipedia Library launches seven new partnerships: EBSCO (expansive academic and popular databases), IMF eLibrary (international trade and economics publications), Newspaperarchive.com (international historical newspapers), Sabinet (African journals), Numérique Premium (French language books), Al Manhal (Arabic and English multidisciplinary publications), and Jamalon (English and Arabic books). Also expansions of ScienceDirect (science, medicine and social science journals), BMJ and DynaMed Plus (medical content), as well as additional accounts from many other available resources. S

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-16/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-16/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-16/In focus Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-16/Arbitration report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-16/Humour

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