On March 11, 2016, the Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Partner Manager, Daniel D. Foy, removed Orange from the list of mobile partnerships on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki, marking the apparent end of a longstanding partnership between Orange and the WMF that began in April 2009.
The 2009 strategic mobile and web partnership with Orange was the first of its kind. Predating Wikipedia Zero (launched in 2012), it took a different form from more recent mobile partnerships. Under the terms of the three-year deal, Orange paid the Wikimedia Foundation for the right to use Wikimedia brands and trademarks in showcasing the content. Users were able to access Wikimedia content from Orange's own portals, and targeted marketing was presented alongside the content.
The 2009 deal, serving European markets, was followed in 2012 by another Orange partnership focused on the Middle East and Africa (MEA). This no longer involved a monetary arrangement between WMF and Orange. Most recently, it provided free Wikipedia access to mobile users in eight African countries with a combined population of around 225 million: Botswana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Tunisia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Following the removal of the Orange partnerships, Botswana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Niger, and the Democratic Republic of Congo no longer appear on the mobile partnerships page, while Kenya still has Airtel and Safaricom listed, and Tunisia still has Tunisie Telecom.
Wikimedia Foundation Partner Manager Adele Vrana told the Signpost:
Our contract with Orange expired last year upon completion of a 3 year term. We had several short term extensions while discussing a switch to our updated legal template. We decided to let the latest extension expire on March 11th as we continued our discussions, allowing more time to reach mutually agreeable terms. The conversations with Orange are ongoing and we look forward to future collaboration.
Orange, for its part, announced last month that it had signed a strategic partnership with Google "to bring the best of mobile internet across its full African and Middle Eastern (Orange MEA) footprint". The partnership will provide access to "a range of best-in-class online services including, but not limited to, popular content covering fashion, sport and music, as well as everyday tools such as Google Search™, YouTube™ and Google Maps™. [...] Important information will be made accessible, for example, finding answers to questions instantly through Google Search or the ability to locate the nearest health clinic using Google Maps."
.jpg)
Last week's WMF research showcase focused on the evolution of privacy loss in Wikipedia, as investigated in a research project by Marian-Andrei Rizoiu, Lexing Xie, Tiberio Caetano and Manuel Cebrian.
The project, based on a dataset spanning 13 years of Wikipedia editing, incorporating 188,805,088 edits by 117,523 different users, concluded that:
The digital traces left behind by the users in the online environment reveal more about them than they might like. As our recent WSDM'16 paper shows, machine learning algorithms can be used to uncover hidden links between a user's past activity and her private traits – like gender, education level or religious views –, even for retired users. [...]
As an online system evolves over time, new digital traces of individual behavior may uncover previously hidden statistical links between an individual's past actions and her private traits [...] the prediction accuracy for almost all private traits consistently improves over time. Surprisingly, the prediction performance for users who stopped editing after a given time still improves. The activities performed by new users seem to have contributed more to this effect than additional activities from existing (but still active) users. Insights from this work should help users, system designers, and policy makers understand and make long-term design choices in online content creation systems.
A video of the research showcase is available on YouTube. The full paper and a short summary of the study are also available online.
Jimmy Wales appeared at the 2016 South by Southwest Interactive festival on March 13, where he was interviewed by Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees member Guy Kawasaki. Outgoing WMF executive director Lila Tretikov was originally slated to appear at the event, but she was quietly replaced by Wales on the schedule following her resignation.
The wide-ranging discussion touched on a number of topics. PC Magazine took note of comments on the FBI–Apple encryption dispute ("I'm really proud of Apple for fighting this thing"), Chinese censorship of Wikipedia ("I'm ready to wait 1,000 years. I'd rather the Chinese people understand what's happening to them when they understand that the government won't let them view any of the Wikipedia pages."), and problems in the Wikipedia editing community ("[W]e may be too tolerant of bad behavior. We want women to participate more."). TechCrunch highlighted Wales' strong comments on paid editing: "Companies think it’s a powerful marketing tool but I think they’re deranged and should leave us alone." However, Wales did note that "The top PR companies tend to be very good about their interactions with Wikipedia". Business Insider recounted an anecdote about Wikipedia's beginnings: "As a programming geek, I wrote 'Hello World' and those were the first words of Wikipedia." G
_(cropped).jpg)
Wikipedia is playing a central role in a lawsuit between a London venture capital firm, Ariadne Capital, and a public relations agency, Lansons Communications. Business Insider reported that Ariadne charged that a "botched attempt to improve" the Wikipedia article for Ariadne founder Julie Meyer "did its reputation more harm than good." Bloomberg News reported that Ariadne claimed Lansons' attempts at addressing the Wikipedia article resulted in accusations that Ariadne had attempted to "manipulate its own entry" and prompted "further negative updates on Wikipedia." The lawsuit charged that "this has caused and will cause further reputational damage which has led to lost opportunities and income."
The lawsuit alleges that an email was sent to "Wikipedia" and this email was posted on Talk:Julie Meyer. There is a message on that page signed by a self-identified Lansons employee, posted in 2014 by a London-based IP address. It seems unlikely that a Wikimedia Foundation employee or an OTRS volunteer would post a secondhand email to a talk page at all, much less using an IP address instead of their own account. It seems more likely that this "email" was actually a talk page message from that employee himself.
Regardless of the origin of the message, it is a sticking point in the lawsuit. Meyer told Bloomberg "To have an intern contact Wikipedia was not what we paid for". Lansons co-founder Tony Langham told Bloomberg it was "a joke lawsuit" prompted by Lansons' demand that Ariadne pay their "outstanding invoices". (Mar. 14) G
.jpg)
After a tempestuous two-year stint as the executive director of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Lila Tretikov resigned in February. Her background and her early efforts drew skepticism from the community of volunteers who have built the bulk of Wikipedia. Skepticism only grew as the Foundation, under her direction, took actions that increasingly defied advice from longtime staff and volunteer leaders. Although her first year saw a substantial increase in the organization's financial strength, the role of volunteers is more central to Wikipedia's long-term success than money; and on a number of issues, the Foundation alienated volunteers, and ultimately many of its own staff.
With Tretikov's departure, the hard work of getting back on track lies ahead. It would be too easy to pin the problems of Tretikov's tenure entirely on her, when her appointment and leadership drew strong and sustained support from the Board of Trustees. The Board has now chosen an interim ED, and has chosen well. It should now take steps to ensure that its search for a long-term ED attracts good candidates, and doesn't drag out.
1. The Board should rethink the job description of the long-term ED. The official document has not been updated since 2008, and much of the trouble of the past two years can be traced to the version circulated in 2013, which emphasized technical and product development skills as the top qualification. The single most important quality for the Foundation's executive director should be an ability to work with broad and diverse groups of stakeholders. This skill is not unique to Wikimedia; it also applies to jobs like running a university or a hospital system, or working for change in a broad social movement. Neither technical proficiency nor Wikimedia experience should be regarded as requirements; and removing them from the "must-have" list will allow the foundation to cast a wider net and improve the candidate pool.
2. The Board should clearly establish that the interim ED position is not a fast-track to the long-term position. While it may be tempting to ease the search for a long-term ED, what the movement needs from an interim ED is a laser focus on re-establishing short-term stability and order. It's possible that a transition from interim to long-term will make sense, but a decision like that is an important one, and should only be made with eyes wide open, with other solid candidates in serious consideration.
3. The Board should set up the next long-term ED for success. Steps that would support this goal include:
Changes to Board composition: Are there members of the Board whose approach to the last job search, and/or whose engagement with the departing ED, pointed things in the wrong direction? If so, it might be best for them to step aside and make room for other Trustees to try a different approach. Although several new Trustees have been appointed recently, the ones who appear most closely tied to the problems of the last six months remain.
Optimize the hiring process: How are candidates recruited? How are they moved through the process? How are they evaluated? The organization can't afford to miss good candidates, or to lose them during an onerous or erratic interview period. It's important to define and maintain a consistent hiring process, to clearly identify who will narrow the field and make the final decision, and generally to respect candidates' time and effort.
Evaluate what went wrong: The Board should thoroughly and publicly debrief the recent crises. Not only will this serve candidates for the position by enlightening them to the history and the challenges they may face, but it will serve to clear the air around the conflicts that led to Tretikov's resignation. When Wikimedia UK raised eyebrows through relatively benign activities, the Foundation ordered a review by an external consultant. The Foundation should heed its own advice, and invite expert critique of its practices.
4. The Foundation should continue its efforts to build a strategic plan and annual plans. It should pay particular attention to the dynamics that caused so much strife in recent months and consider whether adjustments to these documents would minimize the risk of similar problems. In recent months, a number of staff have expressed concern about frequently shifting strategic goals. A clear strategy can be a vital tool to help staff, various organizations, and numerous volunteers align their efforts and sustain a sense of shared purpose. And a good way to establish alignment is to build in community participation from the beginning: the Foundation knew this in 2010 when it ran the previous process, and the approach has been endorsed in a recent Harvard Business Review paper. The current draft of the organization's strategic plan appears to be a strong step in the right direction.
Recent communication among the Wikimedia volunteer community and staff has been thoughtful and diplomatic. Even when critical, there has been a focus on forward progress and improvement. I am hopeful that this ethos can survive, and that as a movement, we can return to the spirit of collaboration and service that has brought us together.
Pete Forsyth has been a Wikipedia editor since 2006 and runs a Wikipedia training and consulting business, Wiki Strategies. He worked for the Wikimedia Foundation from 2009 to 2011. The views expressed in this editorial are the author's alone and do not reflect any official opinions of this publication. Responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section.
A few complaints and mild disagreements
30 September 2022
Wikimedia LLC and disinformation in Japan
28 March 2021
Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes
28 March 2021
Maher stepping down
28 February 2021
Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free, trusted information for the world
31 January 2021
It didn't take longer than one day from the time Katherine Maher was announced to become an interim executive director at the Wikimedia Foundation (see Signpost coverage) until an article was created about her on the English Wikipedia. This has caused some controversy and discussions.
It all started when an IP-editor inserted a proposed deletion-tag (PROD-tag), which was objected by another user within five minutes.
| “ | Hoi, the executive director of the WMF IS notable. | ” |
| — GerardM, diff (talk) | ||
The tag was later removed by a third editor, with the following edit summary:
| “ | clearly notable; deletion is not cleanup | ” |
| — Pigsonthewing, diff (article) | ||
Following which, a new editor nominated the article for deletion (diff), per the English Wikipedia's deletion criteria.
| “ | Editors (and long-term editors at that) have, unfortunately, used trivial tit-bits and tried to present Katherine as being notable. She has not won any high-level awards in her field, there are no independent extensive bios by reliable sources out there […] Being ED of the WMF, in itself, doesn't even make one notable. And let's not forget she's only an interim ED. It's more WP:CRYSTAL that people are assuming she will become notable in due course. | ” |
| — MedalSmeddle, diff 1 (AfD), diff 2 (AfD) | ||
The nominating user stated that the article should be deleted because Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, while others stated that the article should be kept because the subject of the article most likely will attract attention in the near future, and some suggested that the subject may be inherently notable.
| “ | [Executive Director] of WP inherently notable, coverage will come. | ” |
| — Montanabw, diff (AfD) | ||
Other users took note of this comment and responded with arguments to move it to draft space until such time the subject has gained enough notability in mainstream media.
| “ | "Coverage will come in time" is the very definition of WP:CRYSTAL, if you want to argue that, move it to the draft space instead. | ” |
| — Insertcleverphrasehere, diff (AfD) | ||
The outcome of said deletion nomination is still under discussion; feel free to weigh in with your policy-supported opinions on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Katherine Maher.
_crop.jpg)
Freely licensed cover arts of Ms. has been in discussions on the Swedish Wikipedia lately (diff). Even if no other image exists on Commons, it seems like using these images on articles is controversial, due to the promotional nature of the images themselves. Examples that were the subject of the discussion were the infobox-image of Beyoncé, this real photo and this cover art (see images to the right).
.jpg)
Seven featured articles were promoted this week.
Two featured lists were promoted this week.
Four featured pictures were promoted this week.
_03.jpg)
After a long hiatus, we're back! This week we are interviewing Addshore, who is an administrator and bureaucrat on the English Wikipedia as well as a MediaWiki developer. He currently works for Wikimedia Deutschland as...well, I'll let him explain.
What do you do at Wikimedia Deutschland?
One of the features you recently worked on was category watchlists. There were a few hiccups with the deployment the first time, but how did it go overall? If you had to do it over again, what (if anything) would you do differently?
What cool new project are you working on next?
As you know, there's been a lot of controversy over the past month, causing heated tensions in some cases. So lets hear it, where do you stand: short array syntax or long? (context)
Based on this chart, you could think this headline will be true someday. Trump has led the chart for two consecutive weeks with over 8 million views each time -- those are very high numbers, well above the average chart topper. In comparison, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders is only #22, and Hillary Clinton isn't even on the chart— she was #54 (nor are any of the other Republicans on the chart) . Outside of Trumpmania, the death of Nancy Reagan was #4, narrowly beaten by her husband Ronald Reagan (#3). The rest of the Top 10 include two Reddit-fueled articles, two about UFC fighters, one movie (10 Cloverfield Lane, #5), one drug (Meldonium, #2), and International Women's Day (#9).
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 March 6 to 12, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donald Trump | 
|
8,257,174 |  |
Donald Trump's dominance of this chart is fairly incredible at this point, though perhaps not surprising when the front pages of most American news outlets are filled with details of the latest exploits and incidents surrounding the most bizarre U.S. Presidential campaign in history. For the second week, this article has exceeded 8 million views, when typically a mere 1 or 2 million views normally is more than enough to be number one for a week. Reporting and commentary in the last week noted that Trump won more primaries last week, that a 78-year old man sucker-punched a protester at a Trump rally (and Trump offered to pay any resulting legal fees), claims that his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski manhandled Breitbart News Network's Michelle Fields at an event, and the cancellation of a rally in Chicago due to protesters. A 1964 ad titled Confessions of a Republican used to defeat Republican nominee Barry Goldwater also has been in the news due to some eerie similarities to Trump's shenanigans. |
| 2 | Meldonium | 
|
2,108,543 |  |
Since January 1, 2016, this drug has been on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) list of substances banned from use by athletes. On March 7, 2016, former world number one tennis player Maria Sharapova announced that she had failed a drug test in Australia due to the detection of the substance. |
| 3 | Ronald Reagan | 
|
1,683,665 |  |
The 40th President of the United States died in 2004, but his wife Nancy Reagan (#4) died last week. The two articles were only 10,000 views apart. |
| 4 | Nancy Reagan |
|
1,673,052 |  |
The wife of Ronald Reagan (#3), the former First Lady died on March 6, at age 94. Those who remember the Reagan presidency may most remember her founding of the Just Say No (to drugs) campaign in the 1980s. She has been buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, next to her husband. |
| 5 | 10 Cloverfield Lane |
|
1,208,731 |  |
This science fiction thriller, which includes Mary Elizabeth Winstead (pictured) in the cast, was released in North America in 2016, to positive critical reviews. It earned $24.7 million in its opening weekend, putting it second behind Zootopia (#24). |
| 6 | Lupe Fuentes |
|
1,020,335 |  |
This is all Reddit, who lured in viewers with the headline: "TIL a Puerto Rican man was arrested for watching porno feat Lupe Fuentes, who a pediatrician identified as being underage because of her appearance. The porn star flew there from Spain to show her passport and prove she was 19. The man was in jail for 2 months before that happened." |
| 7 | Unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt |
|
971,792 |  |
The circumstances of an unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt being painted before his death was a popular Reddit "Today I Learned" topic this week. See Unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt to view the actual photo which is under a "fair use" restriction; I created a very poor facsimile of it (pictured at left) for you to shake your head at disapprovingly. |
| 8 | Nate Diaz | 
|
937,440 |  |
This mixed-martial artist prevailed over Conor McGregor (#10) at UFC 196 (#13) on March 5. |
| 9 | International Women's Day |
|
884,610 |  |
This day is celebrated annually on March 8, and is an official holiday in a number of countries. It was again celebrated by a Google Doodle. |
| 10 | Conor McGregor |
|
817,535 | .jpg) |
The guy who lost to #8. |
Wikipedia Weekly is a spoken English-language audio podcast that discusses the Wikimedia movement, and has been produced intermittently since 2006. This is the first episode since July 2015 and marks a return to what we hope will be a semi-regular publication schedule. It is also the first episode featured in the Signpost.
In our first episode of 2016, we discuss the two-year term of outgoing executive director Lila Tretikov, and the turmoil that faced the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, WMF staff, and the Wikimedia community in 2015 and 2016. Andrew Lih (Fuzheado) and Liam Wyatt (Wittylama) go over the timeline of events since May 1, 2014, when Tretikov was introduced by her predecessor Sue Gardner as the "unicorn" the Foundation was looking for. We discuss affiliate selected board seats, Knowledge Engine, a crucial all-staff meeting at the Wikimedia Foundation on November 9, 2015, and the current interim executive director Katherine Maher.
We welcome a diverse range of participation and voices from all over the community. Ideas and feedback can be left on the talk page on the main Wikipedia Weekly page, and an active Facebook group has been popular in keeping the conversation going between episodes. We welcome community help in indexing the time code and topics discussed, to make for easier navigation of the content.
You can also subscribe to the RSS feed here.
On this day fifteen years ago, the German Wikipedia was announced to the world by Jimmy Wales, becoming the second Wikipedia ever created.
Looking back, Wikipedia editor Dirk Franke told us that “Wikipedia really has revolutionized the way German-speaking people inform themselves about the world. It is almost impossible not to use it.”
Another editor, Christoph Braun, gave a concrete example of the site’s impact: “In the last 15 years, German Wikipedia has become the de facto replacement for the Brockhaus—the German equivalent of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Brockhaus has not been in circulation since 2014 seemingly because of Wikipedia’s success. Everyone from school children to university professors relies on Wikipedia and expects Wikipedia to provide information on the latest news as well as on timeless topics.”
These results have come only at the hands of dedicated community members. The German Wikipedia is known for its number of highly engaged editors, as more than 20,000 active editors—second-most in the world—edit and maintain the site as part of the wider Wikimedia world.
Many of these users live in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, which are all located in Central Europe, and this geographic proximity has played a large role in the development of the German-language Wikipedia’s community.
These countries’ “shared time zone determines German Wikipedia’s daily routine,” according to Braun, and the closeness has fostered a culture of regular in-person meetings, or meetups. As German Wikipedian Ziko van Dijk put it, the distances involved “make it relatively easy to meet each other and to organize.” The first meetup happened in Munich on October 28, 2003, and they have continued to present day; nineteen events are scheduled for this month, only two of which are anniversary-related.
Braun and van Dijk pointed to the influence of these so-called “round table” (Wikipedia-Stammtisch) meet-ups on the German Wikipedia’s culture. Franke noted these meetings have taken on different flavors over time as community members have fit themselves into different categories: “alongside the regional meetings, there are quite a lot of national meetings of different scopes. For instance, sometimes just administrators meet, while sometimes just people writing about chemistry.”
And these meetings are not just for socializing. Franke adamantly stated that “meeting in person plays a huge role in the German Wikipedia, and a lot of its social dynamics can’t be understood without knowing this.” On the social dynamics, Braun notes that the meetups “help to settle online disputes, share ideas, and are useful for networking amongst Wikipedians.” In the wider Wikimedia movement, these social relationships fostered leaders for the whole world; German Wikipedians organized the first Wikimedia chapter, formed in 2004, and the first global conference (Wikimania), held in Frankfurt in 2005.
This post is, however, doomed to be only a disappointingly short summary of a fascinatingly complex culture. Braun told us that to try to explain the German Wikipedia’s history would be an impossible task, and while Franke made an attempt, he was sure to add that we would be missing out on “so much”:
| “ | Great articles, great projects, great discussions, great fights, great people. From the beginning, when basically five people were all the active editors, to the surge in 2004/2005. Discussions about notability, several featured articles written to prove that single streets or pizza boxes can be notable. People have met and married, have argued, have gotten kids, have taken amazing photographs. We had a story in Der Spiegel (kind of a German Newsweek or Time) about a single edit war. We had times when everybody talked about the writing contest and now people care about the WikiCup. You missed many brilliant inspiring people from all ways of life, often eccentric, sometimes a bit obnoxious but always entertaining and thought-provoking. You missed people travelling across Germany to take pictures and others who edited hundreds of thousands of articles. You missed the one-man project on East Timor that has been going on for several years and one’s obsession about telecommunications towers. There were arguments about the notability of streets [and] brands … plus a three-year conflict (still ongoing) about the right and wrong symbols to use when somebody is deceased. | ” |
Last, as the site’s two-millionth article is drawing ever closer—they’re at 1.92 million as of publishing time—we took a look at the top 15 edited articles on the German Wikipedia (as of 11 March).
There are only three common names between this list and a similar list for the English Wikipedia (scroll to the bottom): Adolf Hitler, Jesus, and World War II. Articles on Germany itself swept the first, second, and seventh places, in addition to the German national football team (#6) and a controversial political party (#13), but several surprises crop up. In particular, articles on fictional media took three places: Kingdom Hearts II, a video game from 2005 (#3), a list of characters from Harry Potter book and film series (#12), and a list of characters from the US television show The Simpsons (#15).
And, strangely, there’s a list of unusual deaths at #5.
