Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/Traffic report
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John Timmer, senior science editor at Ars Technica, editorializes about the state of science articles on Wikipedia, writing "Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment": "Disturbingly, all of the worst entries I have ever read have been in the sciences. Wander off the big ideas in the sciences, and you're likely to run into entries that are excessively technical and provide almost no context, making them effectively incomprehensible." According to Timmer, Wikipedia articles on many subjects are well-written and accessible to the lay reader. However, science articles are largely impenetrable to these readers. Of one typical example, he writes that "it descends into a mass of incomprehensible equations, sporadically interspersed with impenetrable jargon." Many of them appear to assume that the reader already has an advanced science background. "In other words, they're probably only useful for people who would never have to read them anyway."
Timmer posits that this is a negative influence on the state of science literacy, especially in the United States. He suggests that "one potential partial solution is to have more of the population feel that scientific knowledge is approachable, and scientific reasoning is intuitive", but inaccessible Wikipedia articles have the opposite effect: "They suggest that quantum mechanics is completely impenetrable. That evolutionary biology is just a bunch of jargon. That math involves little more than a bunch of random stipulations. More generally, they indicate that it's something that has to be left to the experts and is inaccessible to anyone without arcane knowledge." (Dec. 29) G
Jimmy Wales will deliver a keynote speech at Ericsson's Change Makers Forum in Dubai on January 10, as reported by Arabian Business and Emirates247. The event is held under the patronage of Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, a member of Dubai's ruling Al Maktoum family.
A year ago, Wales came under fire for accepting a $500,000 cash prize from Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and constitutional monarch of Dubai (see previous Signpost coverage). Critics pointed out the country's poor human rights record. According to Human Rights Watch,
| “ | The United Arab Emirates (UAE) often uses its affluence to mask the government's serious human rights problems. The government arbitrarily detains individuals it perceives as posing a threat, and a new counterterrorism law poses a further threat to dissidents and rights activists. Security forces have been implicated in torturing detainees in pretrial detention, authorities have invoked repressive laws to prosecute critics of the government. Labor abuses persist, as migrant construction workers facing serious exploitation, including on one of the country's most high-profile projects. Female domestic workers are excluded from regulations that apply to workers in other sectors. | ” |
(Dec. 29–30) AK
In The New Republic, Jeet Heer concludes that "Wikipedia is dying". Heer bases this on "a new academic paper" recently linked to on the blog of economist Tyler Cowan. The paper, "The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s reaction to popularity is causing its decline", appeared in the May 2013 issue of American Behavioral Scientist and its lead author was Aaron Halfaker, senior research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation. The paper was discussed in the September 2012 edition of the Signpost's Recent Research. Heer writes "The paper suggests the main reason is that, when it expanded rapidly between 2004 and 2007, Wikipedia responded by instituting restrictive policies that drove away eager new volunteers" and concluded by quoting the paper: "Over time, these changes resulted in a new Wikipedia, in which newcomers are rudely greeted by automated quality control systems and are overwhelmed by the complexity of the rule system." (Dec. 31) G
"First Mention" is a recurring segment on All Things Considered which looks at when the first time a now-ubiquitous word or phrase was used for the first time on National Public Radio. The latest segment discusses the first mention of Wikipedia, which occurred on January 17, 2003, two days after Wikipedia's third anniversary. Ira Flatow was interviewing open source advocate Bruce Perens, who told listeners about a website that was so new to them that he had to spell the name of it:
| “ | I have a site I'd like people to go to. It's called wikipedia.org - W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A dot org. What would you think if someone said, well, I'm going to write an encyclopedia with my friends in my spare time? That's what these people are doing, essentially, one individual, one article at a time. They have 80 or 90,000 encyclopedia articles that they're working on. | ” |
The English Wikipedia hit 100,000 articles four days later, on January 21, 2003. (Dec. 31) G
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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/Opinion
The Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees voted last week to remove community-appointed trustee James Heilman (Doc James), an unprecedented action that has created controversy in the movement. The aftermath of the event has seen intense speculation on the institutional state of the Wikimedia Foundation—in particular the role of the community in the Foundation's vision for the future. These tensions have been heightened not just by continuing commentary on the circumstances of the removal, but by the unrelated announcement of the appointment of two new board trustees with strong Silicon Valley backgrounds.
It is now clear that the move against Heilman had been planned for some time. Given the long lead-time, others have queried the cohesiveness of the Board's strategy surrounding the meeting called to dismiss him, which apparently failed to: (1) make a clear decision on whether the removal resolution would be "with" or "without cause", per the legal distinction in the relevant law of the state of Florida (the resolution text itself did not contain a legal cause, yet Jimmy Wales has since stated that the removal was indeed "for cause"); (2) prepare beforehand a public announcement for release immediately after the meeting, despite the likelihood that Heilman would announce his removal soon after his expulsion from the meeting; or (3) make a decision on filling the vacant seat, instead stating in an announcement soon after that "we will reach out to the 2015 election committee ... to discuss our options, and will keep you informed as we determine next steps."
In a move that, though not directly related to Heilman's departure, seems poorly timed, the Board has announced the appointment of two new trustees: Kelly Battles and Arnnon Geshuri. Kelly is a veteran technical manager whose credentials stem from financial leadership positions at firms such as IronPort and Hewlett Packard; Arnnon brings experience in human resources from experience at firms such as Tesla and E*TRADE. Trustee Dariusz Jemielniak has written that the selections came after "wide input from different stakeholders." In the announcing blog post, WMF executive director Lila Tretikov states that the appointments "bring a deep commitment to making knowledge more freely available for people around the world."
However, the Signpost is aware of an online expression of discontent from one WMF staffer with the Board's selection. In addition, Liam Wyatt (Wittylama), community-selected member of the WMF Funds Dissemination Committee, has questioned what these appointments bring to the overall diversity of the Board: "I've always believed that Wikimedia is an education charity that happens to exist in a technology field. ... But these appointments indicate the Board and WMF Executive believe Wikimedia is a technology charity that happens to exist in the education field."
This brings the number of trustees with ties to Google up to five, which is half of the Board:
WMF strategy consultant brings background in crisis reputation management; Team behind popular WMF software put "on pause"
6 February 2017
Knowledge Engine and the Wales–Heilman emails
24 April 2016
[UPDATED] WMF in limbo as decision on Tretikov nears
24 February 2016
Search and destroy: the Knowledge Engine and the undoing of Lila Tretikov
17 February 2016
New internal documents raise questions about the origins of the Knowledge Engine
10 February 2016
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An in-depth look at the newly revealed documents |
It is becoming impossible to ignore the increasing anxiety among many Foundation staff over the last few months of 2015. This may not be entirely separate from the implications of the Heilman removal, since we understand that a specific complaint against Heilman by other trustees concerned his contact with disgruntled staff. Transparency appears to be a flashpoint in both the dismissal and low staff morale.
The Signpost contacted around ten staff members to seek their views on where the balance should be drawn between unfettered transparency and strategic secrecy for a leader of the free culture movement; what the causes are of the rapidly changing work environment at the organization; and what is necessary to improve project continuity and success. At this point we should say that not one source—whether those we reached out to or several others who initiated contact with us—would agree to be named, although some provided on-the-record information anonymously.
A key issue has been the WMF's annual evaluation of employee engagement, conducted and analyzed by a third-party consultant in late 2015. The results were made available on an internal office wiki, and it is now public knowledge that an internal discussion among staff has begun about making the survey public. As of publication, more than two dozen staff members have spoken in favor of releasing the survey as soon as possible "with no dissenting voices". The Signpost has been apprised of the results by one of their number. We understand that there was a healthy 93% response rate among some 240 staff. While numbers approached 90% for pride in working at the WMF and confidence in line managers, the responses to four propositions may raise eyebrows:
The Signpost has been informed that among the "C-levels" (members of the executive), only one has confidence in senior leadership.
It is unclear exactly what combination of factors underlie the discontent among staff, but we are aware that there has been internal controversy about recent moves to allocate significant resources to the Discovery unit in the second half of 2015. This unit is heavily involved in the development of what is called the knowledge engine. John Vandenberg, a member of the editing community and a volunteer developer, told the Signpost:
| “ | The knowledge engine is a good move, one direction in which the Foundation should be going. This will take our supporting technology to a higher level. It’s not massively hard to develop these days, and it’s appropriate that we do it to provide our readers with advanced "question-and-answer" technology. It’s unclear whether or to what extent it might reduce the number of visitors who seriously read through whole articles, and this might cause concern among editors; but I note that the heavy use of mobile devices is almost certainly doing that now.
The recent shifting of resources towards knowledge discovery may also leave many staff feeling that their department won't receive the resourcing that they believe it needs. This could be contributing to a general dissatisfaction with management; but this is the cost of running an organization in a fast-moving tech environment, and the move away from early and total transparency might be rooted in a belief at the top that some staff and parts of the editing community may react badly to change. |
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Vandenberg added that we seem to be witnessing a sharpening of the tension between two quite different approaches to achieving professionalism—a tension that may be unique to the Wikimedia movement. On the one hand, he said, the editorial community has developed a hugely successful process of open collaboration, based on incremental improvements. On the other hand, paid staff in any large organization achieve professional outcomes through hiding their incremental improvements in favor of a final product. There lies one basis for the clash between cultures of transparency and secrecy that we now see surrounding the Heilman dismissal.
Wikimania 2016 submissions open: Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario will take place from 21 to 28 June 2016. As this is somewhat earlier in the year than past conferences, the submission periods for proposals and scholarship applications have overlapped the winter holiday period, and the deadlines, placed much earlier in the calendar than in years past, are approaching fast. Please note the following key dates:
For further details, see Submissions and Scholarships on the Wikimania 2016 website. AK
Knight Foundation grant: a "Knowledge Engine": On 6 January, the Knight Foundation, a long-time benefactor for the Wikimedia cause, published a blog-post by WMF vice-president of product Wes Moran, titled "Exploring how people discover knowledge on Wikipedia and its sister projects". This was followed by a Knight Foundation press release announcing that
| “ | The Wikimedia Foundation will launch a new project to explore ways to make the search and discovery of high quality, trustworthy information on Wikipedia more accessible and open with $250,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Funding will support an investigation of search and browsing on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, with the goal of improving how people explore and acquire information. | ” |
A Wikimedia blog post appeared as well, titled Wikimedia Foundation to explore new ways to search and discover reliable, relevant, free information with $250,000 from Knight Foundation, along with a press release, both featuring a link to a new, dedicated Knight FAQ page set up on MediaWiki. AK
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/Serendipity
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/Op-ed
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/In focus
On 29 December, the case on Catflap08 and Hijiri88 was decided. In their 12-part findings of facts, the Committee found that Catflap08 and Hijiri88 have been in conflict since June 2014, beginning with the Kenji Miyazawa and Kokuchūkai articles, and spilling over to other articles in the Japanese culture topic area, as well as various noticeboards. A two-way interaction ban was placed between the two on 17 April 2015, a ban both Catflap08 and Hijiri88 violated. It was found that Catflap09 forum shopped and edit warred while Hijiri88 edit warred and "engaged in personal attacks and incivility ... and has issued a threat of on-wiki retaliation." Other named parties were also found to have to been uncivil, with TH1980 being found to have edit warred and to have hounded Hijiri88. CurtisNaito was also found to have edit warred.
With these results, the Committee implemented remedies, including two major sanctions for Catflap08, who is now "indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to Nichiren Buddhism and its adherents, broadly construed" and "prohibited from making any more than one revert on any one page in any 24-hour period". Hijiri88 was topic-banned from all pages relating to Nichiren Buddhism and placed on a one-revert rule, as well as being "indefinitely topic-banned from all pages relating to Japanese culture". An interaction ban has been placed on TH1980 and Hijiri88.
On 1 January, in the first decision made with the participation of the newest members of the Arbitration Committee, The Devil's Advocate was indefinitely banned from the English Wikipedia. The Committee announced that "In remedy 8.5 of the GamerGate case, The Devil's Advocate was 'strongly warned that should future misconduct occur in any topic area, he may be banned from the English Wikipedia by motion of the Arbitration Committee.' Accordingly, for continuing harassment of other editors, The Devil's Advocate is banned indefinitely from the English Wikipedia. He may request reconsideration of the ban six months after this motion passes, and every six months thereafter." The reaction to this announcement has been polarizing, with the comments thread as of 19:39, 5 January 2016, being noticeably more active than other discussion sections on the talk page. A major issue cited in the announcement was the lack of transparency, as the nature of what was the cause for the ban was not specifically discussed. A similar issue was raised earlier on 30 December, when Soap was desysopped and banned for taking part in off-wiki harassment.
The GamerGate case was decided on 29 January last year, and is approaching its one-year anniversary. An overall controversial topic on Wikipedia, the case resulted in the topic-banning of 11 (later 12) editors, with one editor indefinitely banned from the site. The decision was covered by Breitbart.com's Allum Bokhari, with an article titled "Wikipedia Can Now Ban You For What You Do On Other Websites". One can argue that the title is misleading as off-site harassment has been seen as an ongoing issue for Wikipedia, with an example being Tarc, who was also one of the editors topic-banned from all pages relating to GamerGate, being indefinitely banned back in September, "for continued serious breaches of policy, including off-wiki harassment".
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-06/Humour
