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Meta reports that WikiConference USA 2016 is set for the three-day weekend of Friday, October 7 to Monday, October 10, 2016 in San Diego, California, hosted by the Southern California Wikimedians with assistance from other Wikipedia groups across North America. Conference organizers include User:DrMel and User:Pharos. Originally, Seattle had been considered as a site, with the Cascadian Wikipedians assisting, but they chose to focus on potentially hosting in 2018.
Other upcoming Wikimedia conferences include 2016 GLAM Boot Camp, set for June 14–16, 2016 at the National Archives in Washington DC., site of 2015 WikiCon USA. Organizers are Wikimedia DC and the National Archives. Immediately following is the 2016 Wikimedia Diversity Conference on June 17 and 18, at the same location and with the same hosts. This is the annual international conference on diversity in the Wikimedia movement.
WikiConference India 2016 will be hosted by Chandigarh Group of Colleges, Landran (Mohali) on 5, 6, and 7 August 2016. Scholarship applications for WikiCon India 2016 can be made until May 31; for details see the related Wikimedia blog post. M
A video of the Wikimedia Foundation's May 2016 Metrics and Activities Meeting is available on Commons and YouTube. In the introductory address by product manager Danny Horn, Roan Kattouw was congratulated for his seven years' service, and Pats Pena, Maggie Dennis, Daniel Zahn, and Katie Horn for their five years' service to the WMF.
Community update starts at 3:06, with a roundup of the recent FDC recommendations and new trustees, "learning days" at the recent Wikimedia Conference, the Europeana Art History Challenge, the MENA Artists Month (a Guggenheim collaboration with several parts of the Wikimedia movement, on contemporary artists in the middle east and north Africa), and the Ibero-American culture translation challenge,
News on Wikipedia starts at 8:35, including information on the increasing popularity and influence of Wikipedia's breaking news stories, and the extraordinary statistics on the sudden cascading of hits on the English Wikipedia's article upon Prince's death, which senior analyst Tilman Bayer estimated at 810 per second at one point, and an average of more than 500 views per second, and a total of more than 200 edits, in the first hour after his death; there were some 800,000 views of the WMF's social media posts about Prince. Editorial associate Ed Erhart spoke about the intersection of real-time events, Wikipedia's readers, and Wikipedia's editors (15:10–16:42).
Metrics starts at 18:30: among the key messages are that there are 530 million views of Wikimedia sites per day (generally holding steady over the past three years, with a loss of 2%), 55.1% on desktop (down 18 percentage points), 43.6% on mobile web (up 27 points), and 1.3% on apps. About 75.5% of views are from the global north.
Wikipedia Education Program updates start at 25:55. A brief Q&A starts at 32:29, with several questions relayed from IRC by James Forrester, senior product manager. T
The Wikimedia Foundation last week released its 990 tax form for 2014–15, which revealed a major surprise: after her departure as executive director in mid-2014, Sue Gardner was still one of the foundation's two highest-paid employees, with total compensation for her role as a "special advisor" amounting to US$320,057. This is over $100,000 more than the $218,529 total indicated on page 48 of the tax form for the previous year.
While the tax form reports that Ms Gardner's base compensation dropped from $200,000 in 2013–14 to $112,500 in 2014–15, "other reportable compensation" increased from $1,685 in 2013–14 to $188,841 in 2014–15, resulting in an overall increase in Ms Gardner's compensation of almost 50 percent.
The Signpost sent the following questions to the chair of the WMF board, Patricio Lorente, and chief financial officer Jaime Villagomez:
In the WMF's recently released public inspection copy of its return to the IRS for 2014–15, we note that on page 9 the former ED Sue Gardner is listed as "special advisor" at an average of 40 hours per week, with total compensation of US$301,341, with an additional $18,716, for a total of $320,057). On page 52, this compensation is broken down into $112,500 base, $188,841 other, $10,400 retirement etc, and $8,316 expenses.
We presume that this average was for the full financial year 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015; that is, involving some 2000 hours of labor input.
According to the document, Ms Gardner's compensation and labor input as "special advisor" are considerable during that financial year. We wonder whether you might respond to these related questions:
(1) Given that in purely financial terms there were the equivalent of two full-time CEOs on the payroll, what were the inputs to and benefits for the Foundation in return for this charge to the budget?
(2) Is Ms Gardner still on the payroll (her LinkedIn page states that she is), and does she currently play an advisory role to anyone in WMF management?
(3) In terms of transparency in management and governance, would it have been preferable to disclose the arrangements with Ms Gardner to the Wikimedia community at the time they were finalized rather than nearly two years later?
Mr Villagomez only replied to refer us to the chair, who responded as follows:
In May 2014, Jan-Bart announced that Sue would stay on as a special advisor,[1] which he confirmed again in June that year.[2]
The Board felt that her knowledge and experience in our movement was valuable to support the Foundation as it went through that ED transition. In general, it is good practice to make sure that there is the ability to draw on the expertise of an experienced former executive—in this case, someone who grew the organization from a few people to more than 200.
Here are a few things we wanted to ensure:
- Sue’s counsel for the new ED. We did not know what kinds of counsel the new ED would need, but it seemed reasonable to us that the new ED would benefit from ongoing time with Sue to talk over issues as they arose.
- Her engagement during the handover period, so that she would have time to engage deeply when and if that was necessary. If the new ED needed a briefing on the context for the creation of the FDC, or other initiatives Sue had pioneered in the organization, or similar, we wanted Sue to have the ability to carve out real time for that, possibly including on short , but notice sic.
- Sue's counsel for the Board as we oriented and evaluated the new ED. It is the Board's job to manage the executive director, but Sue's experience gave her unique insight into the role and its requirements, and we wanted to be able to call on her when and if we thought it was necessary.
- Sue's time so that she could dedicate some energy to generally staying aware of how the Foundation was doing, and was therefore equipped to help to support its continued success. For example, if the Board was struggling with an ongoing issue such as something related to paid editing or a media controversy, we wanted her reasonably up-to-speed so she could help us if necessary.
- Lastly, Sue's time so she could help internally in small ways as needed. A senior staffer might need her to dig a document out of her files. Somebody might need her to help reconstruct how revenue targets had been developed in the past. There might be a piece of the annual planning process that wasn't well documented and needed to be explained. We wanted her to be available in the event we had quick questions or needed information that was known only by her, or was easiest to get from her.
We felt this was an important leadership change, perhaps one of the bigger ones in the Foundation’s history. This wasn't "two EDs"—Sue maintained operational distance and offered guidance as requested. This was a practical means of ensuring the handover went as smoothly as possible, and key institutional knowledge was preserved during an important period of transition.
Sue agreed to serve as Special Advisor to the Foundation for a term of one year after she stepped down. In June of 2015, the Foundation extended Sue's term as Special Advisor, through May 31, 2016, to continue her guidance and support of the Board and the Foundation. The Foundation regularly reports on executive compensation through the 990 disclosures, but we generally have not shared that information in other venues.
Jan-Bart and I reached out to her on a number of occasions, and she reached out to us. We, not Sue, are responsible for the decisions we've made and the actions we've taken. But we've been grateful for her considered input, even when we've disagreed with it or taken a path different from what she recommended.
I and the rest of the Board appreciate Sue’s long-time commitment to Wikimedia, and her continuing support to the Wikimedia Foundation.
As these were rationales for creating Ms Gardner's special advisor role rather than descriptions of actual work performed, we then asked for some concrete examples of what Ms Gardner had done in the financial year. Mr Lorente responded:
Among others, I can recall:
- Sue designed and executed the handover process. She had prepared a handover book of orientation materials and had several multi-day offsite meetings briefing Lila on the organisation, its history, structure, operations, financials, guiding principles, etc.
- In the first months following her departure, Sue carried out some remaining transition obligations for the organisation. For example, she attended Wikimania and participated in media, including the 60 Minutes documentary.
- During Lila's tenure, Sue met with Lila regularly, and briefed her and advised her as requested.
- Sue dug up files and created briefing documents for Lila and others as requested.
- Sue has acted as a sounding board and advisor to senior staff on a number of issues over the past few years, both before and following Lila's departure. Some of this work has been quite sensitive as you can imagine: we've been grateful for her good judgment and constructive approach, in what has been a difficult time for the organisation.
- Sue has acted as an ambassador and evangelist for Wikimedia. She has been a supportive external advocate on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia, since leaving the organisation.
- Sue has acted as an advisor to the board. As I said before, Jan-Bart and I reached out to her on a number of occasions, and she had reached out to us.
We leave it to the community to judge whether these responses are satisfactory, and whether this activity justifies an apparent $100,000 increase in Ms Gardner's compensation over what she received as a full-time executive director.
According to the 2014–15 tax form, the Foundation also paid two law firms in excess of $1.9 million for undisclosed "legal services" (p. 61). This is more than four times the total for the previous year (p. 57 in last year's report). On the Wikimedia-l mailing list, WMF communications strategist Gregory Varnum indicated that a significant portion of these expenses went toward efforts to strengthen the Foundation's trademark portfolio:
AKAs our global reach has grown over time, we felt it was important to strengthen the trademark portfolio and solidify the protection of Wikimedia’s marks globally. In December 2013, we began working with Jones Day on our global trademark filings, registrations, and oppositions. During the 2014–2015 fiscal year we filed 1,500+ new trademark applications for 35 different trademarks in 100+ countries. A significant portion of the legal services expenses in 2014–2015 went toward the mandatory government trademark application filing fees.
These new trademark applications contained expanded coverage and revised descriptions to ensure better protection of Wikimedia's marks and projects, including countries where readership was growing through targeted programs or distribution (such as Wikipedia Zero and mobile readership). Going forward, we anticipate (and are beginning to realize) a decrease in trademark expenses year over year, now that we have this initial foundation is in place. This investment immediately benefits Wikimedia and its communities by ensuring that our trademark portfolio reflects the maturity and breadth of the Wikimedia movement, and protects us against certain forms of infringement or misuse.
Tony1 assisted in the preparation of this story.
In response to ongoing questions from Wikipedia volunteers, Wikimedia Foundation chair Patricio Lorente provided an additional explanation to the community on June 8, 2016, in an email to the Wikimedia-l mailing list. This is quoted here in full:
Hi all,
We’ve heard your questions and want to address them broadly, as well as provide more information about the breakdown of Sue’s compensation during this time. We understand the confusion related to this recent 990, given the period it covers, and the aggregate amounts it reports. Below you’ll find additional information about the nature of our contract with Sue, the timeframe, and her work and compensation. I expect this will help resolve this conversation. As Chair, I am completely comfortable with all terms. Sue was a great ED and brought real value in exchange for her compensation.
==
Background
In re-reading Jan-Bart’s original email [1] where he stated that Sue was staying on as an advisor, it isn’t explicit that this was a paid position. We should have been more clear on this point. It is understandable that people wonder why Sue was not listed on the page of staff and contractors. However, everyone listed on the staff and contractors page report up to the ED. Sue did not report to the ED; she was accountable to the board chair. That's why she was not on that page.
On the issue of compensation: We handled Sue's compensation the same way we do with other individuals: it is disclosed in the 990 as appropriate, and not elsewhere. That's our normal practice. This is true for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the results are certified through our external auditors. Other reasons include that it is a transparent mechanism, consistent with other large charitable organizations, and a matter of permanent, public record. The Foundation also wouldn’t normally announce the salary or contract compensation at the time of bringing someone on; that includes special advisors.
We also don’t usually share the specific details of people’s compensation beyond what is published in the 990. However, the 990 can be confusing, especially when compensation levels change mid-year, and so in this case we (including Sue) are happy to clarify the specifics.
Timeframe
One point of confusion is for the period this compensation covers. This is reasonable, this confused even some of us involved in preparing this response. Although the majority of activities reported on the Form 990 cover the Foundation’s fiscal year (specifically, the six months between July 1, 2014 - June 30, 2015), the IRS requires that details about compensation for certain highly-paid individuals are for the full calendar year in which the fiscal year begins or ends. So all the executive compensation reported is for twelve months, from January - December 2014, even though some of it it falls outside the fiscal year reporting (July 1, 2014 - June 30, 2015).
Since Sue was on payroll during the 2014 calendar year, this means that the 990 contains her total compensation for the whole year, includes Executive Director salary, bonus, and special advisor work, at differing levels throughout that period.
Total compensation
The total compensation ($301,341) reported in the 2014 990 form is broken into three areas:
(1) Compensation for her role as Executive Director during the 2014 calendar year (January 1 - May 31 2014): $107,174
This number is Sue’s regular compensation as full-time Executive Director, before the appointment of the new ED. This is for the 2014 calendar year period of January 1 - May 31, 2014. It does not include compensation for any of her efforts following May 31, 2014.
(2) Retention bonus to compensate Sue for lost opportunities during the transition period: $165,000.
Sue informed us of her intent to step down in March of 2013, but agreed to stay on until a new ED was identified. In August 2013, the Board of Trustees approved a one-time retention bonus to compensate Sue for lost opportunities and for her willingness to remain with the Foundation during an important transitional period. Sue continued to serve as Executive Director for more than a year after announcing her resignation, even though she could have sought opportunities elsewhere. In addition to her other ED responsibilities during this time, she led the creation of a transition plan for the new Executive Director and supported the search process.
The Board discussed this agreement with Sue over a few months before reaching the agreement in August. This is a standard practice used to compensate individuals for lost opportunities and ensure organizational stability during transitional periods. The Board and Sue agreed she would receive this retention bonus after the new ED had started.
(3) Compensation as Special Advisor between June 1, 2014 - December 31, 2014: $29,167.
Sue agreed to serve as Special Advisor to the Foundation for a term of one year after the new ED started, from June 1, 2014 - May 31, 2015. The Board felt that it was important to have Sue’s knowledge and experience at hand to support the Foundation as it went through an executive transition. In general, it is good practice to make sure that there is the ability to draw on the expertise of an experienced former executive: in this case, someone who grew the organization from a few people to more than 200.
Sue’s total compensation for her role as Special Advisor was $50,000 per annum, $29,167 of which was reported during the 990 period. This is a small proportion of the total amount reported, as compared to compensation as ED and the retention bonus.
In June of 2015, the Board of Trustees extended Sue's term as Special Advisor for another year, amounting to an additional $50,000. Her term ended May 31, 2016. The compensation for this period is unlikely to be reported in the next 990, as it is much lower than the threshold for reporting. However, Sue has agreed to disclose this total, given the interest in her role as Special Advisor.
We realize this is complex, so to summarize: From January 1 2014 to May 31 2014 Sue was the ED and received her normal salary. When Sue left her position as ED we gave her a one-time bonus of $165,000, to compensate her for staying on during a long transition period. From June 1 2014 until December 31 2014 she received $29,167 intended to compensate her for advising the Board after the new ED started. These are the numbers reported in the 990. Since then, she received a total of $70,833 for work as a special advisor over a period of 17 months (January 1 2015 - May 31 2016).
Other questions
As Special Advisor, Sue reported to the Chair of the Board: first Jan-Bart, then myself. We did not ask Sue to produce a final report on her work as Special Advisor. Her contract did not require it, and we didn’t see any reason for her to create one. Sue was in regular contact with the ED, Chair, and Trustees throughout this period, and we are satisfied that the terms of the contract were met appropriately.
Questions have also been raised about the number of hours spent by Sue during this period. The 990 reports that Sue worked 40 hours per week, which reflects her work while she was Executive Director. Forty hours per week is the standard, full-time employment threshold in the United States; most employers do not track the hours of salaried employees beyond these 40 hours. Sue often worked many more than 40 hours per week during her time as Executive Director. Once Sue transitioned into a consulting role, her hours varied. She consulted on an as-needed basis, sometimes as little as a few hours a month, sometimes many more.
==
Sue’s special advisor status with the Foundation ended on May 31, 2016, and she is no longer on contract with the Foundation or receiving any compensation from it. However, many of the Trustees and Foundation staff continue to maintain close personal relationships with Sue. She played a critical role in developing the Foundation and the movement, and will always be welcome among us. We thank her again for her time and efforts on behalf of our mission, and we are grateful for her continued support and advocacy on our behalf.
We would also like to thank Sue for her willingness to being completely transparent about her compensation here. Many people find this information sensitive. We appreciate that she has said she doesn't mind.
I hope this answers more of your questions, and addresses any confusion.
Patricio[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-May/071458.html
In The Times Literary Supplement, Peter Thonemann reviews (May 25) Jack Lynch's You could look it up—The reference shelf from ancient Babylon to Wikipedia and looks at the changes the IT revolution has wrought in the world of reference works.
Thonemann notes that printed concordances for classical Greek and Latin literature—"lists of all the words appearing in a given text" that were "the products of years of human drudgery"—have been "entirely superseded by two or three online databases", even though the latter are still imperfect enough (for now ...) to warrant an occasional consultation of their printed predecessors.
And in the course of his review of Lynch's book, he adds some comments of his own about Wikipedia, partly informed by his correspondence with Wikipedian Rich Farmbrough:
One of the most common gripes about Wikipedia is that it pays far more attention to Pokémon and Game of Thrones than it does to, say, sub-Saharan Africa or female novelists. Well, perhaps; the most widely repeated variants of "Wikipedia has more information on x than y" are in fact largely fictitious (Wikipedia:Wikipedia_has_more...). Given the manner of its compilation, the accursed thing really is a whole lot more reliable than it has any right to be. ...
As Lynch rightly notes, the problem with Wikipedia is not so much its reliability—which is, for most purposes, perfectly OK—as its increasing ubiquity as a source of information. "Wikipedia, despite being non-commercial, still poses many of the dangers of a traditional monopoly, and we run the risk of living in an information monoculture." Large parts of the media demonstrably use Wikipedia as their major or sole source of factual data; as a result, false or half-true claims (such as are found in any encyclopedia) can spread and take root with extraordinary speed.
Thonemann then proceeds to give an example of the adverse effects of Wikipedia's monopoly: the answer to the question, "which English-language novel has sold the most copies?"
The short answer is that nobody knows: we have no remotely reliable sales figures for books published more than a couple of decades ago, and books that are out of copyright might exist in literally hundreds of different editions and translations. Nonetheless, between April 24, 2008 and January 30, 2016, Wikipedia had the answer: it was Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, with an estimated 200 million copies sold, a third as many again as the next bestselling book, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
This figure of 200 million is—to state the obvious—pure fiction. Its ultimate source is unknown: perhaps a hyperbolic 2005 press release for a Broadway musical adaptation of Dickens's novel. But the presence of this canard on Wikipedia had, and continues to have, a startling influence.
Thonemann cites numerous mainstream media articles that appear to have lifted the information from Wikipedia—"the BBC as well as ... the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Guardian and the Independent, none of which have cited Wikipedia as a source", noting that the factoid has even entered popular history books.
Getting the genie back in the bottle has not been easy. The figure of 200 million was first queried on the Wikipedia talk pages in May 2009, and was deleted from the site on December 4, 2014 by Richard Farmbrough, one of the most prolific British Wikipedians. (He also provided much of the factual data in this paragraph; Wiki-editors are, in my experience, an exceptionally friendly and helpful bunch.) On December 5, the claim was reinserted, re-removed, and reinserted again. Farmbrough took it down it again on February 4, 2015; on March 1, it was reinstated and promptly re-removed; it appeared again on April 23, and survived for another nine months before the indefatigable Farmbrough deleted it yet again on January 30, 2016. Why has the claim proved so difficult to kill? No doubt part of the reason is that it has now accumulated a lengthy and, by Wiki-standards, respectable paper trail: a long article on historical fiction by the novelist David Mitchell in the Telegraph; Stephen Clarke’s 1,000 Years of Annoying the French; and so forth. (Wikipedians have their own word for malignant and self-sustaining cycles of this kind: citogenesis.)
Thonemann concedes that this individual case may not be particularly important, but asserts that it illustrates both the benefits and perils of Wikipedia.
One of the main worries about Wikipedia is not that its content does not improve over time (it clearly does), but that it gets better so much more slowly than anyone would have predicted back in 2006 or 2007. It is here—sneers the academic—that the project really feels the lack of expert editors. Wikipedia does just fine at uncontroversial factual information, but as soon as a topic demands critical discrimination or a bit of intelligent digging, its quality control goes completely haywire.
Yet it's impossible to turn back time, Thonemann argues, finishing his piece with the suggestion that academics should bite the bullet and "spend a bit more time editing Wikipedia ourselves."
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Mic (May 18) and Motherboard (May 17) discuss the recent email by a Wikipedian, sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, stating that his recent interactions on Wikipedia had left him contemplating suicide.
The editor's letter details his attempts to write articles for Wikipedia and the obstruction he felt he faced in doing so. After a disagreement with Wikipedia administrators that resulted in name calling, the editor was ultimately blocked from the site. At the end of the letter he says his experience has him considering suicide.
"I spent hours of my time researching the article, trying to do a good job. But in an instant the material was ripped away, and I was called obsessed," he wrote.
The editor in question is said to be OK, according to follow-up emails on the chain. While it's difficult to ascertain the validity of this editor's complaints, his words do appear to have struck a chord with others on the email chain.
In the wake of the editor's email, other contributors to Wikimedia's site piped up to say they too had felt obstructed or bullied on the platform.
"I've been called names, articles have been deleted, I've been told by many people that, sure, were it any other person they'd be banned," one contributor recounted, adding, "It's very, very toxic at times. And nobody really cares."
Ruth Reader, writing in Mic, quotes MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle:
... without in-person interaction, it can be more difficult for people to figure out how to know what common ground they share. Online, it's easier to dehumanize other people. When we meet online it's harder to know who we're talking to.
In a discussion in the Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group, one Wikimedian asserted that "Wikipedia is particularly attractive to people who deal with a mental issue", arguing that for many, it has a restorative effect and brings "a sense of self-worth". This is undoubtedly true in many cases, yet it is surely a two-edged sword: the fact that contributors dealing with mental issues may lack empathy can only contribute to a climate that many perceive as toxic, while the effects of this climate are bound to be felt most acutely by those who are already struggling with a propensity for depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and similar challenges in their lives.
The people contributing to Wikipedia are its most precious asset.
Note: The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is toll-free in the US and available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255. suicide.org has a list of international suicide hotlines, including Australia, Canada, the UK and many other countries across the world. To report any threats of harm or self-harm on Wikipedia, contact emergency
wikimedia.org.
See also this week's Signpost op-ed, "Journey of a Wikipedian", which touches on related topics.
On Geek.com, a hoaxer has come forward to confess that he seeded spurious information about the Street Sharks cartoon series on the Internet: How I used lies about a cartoon to prove history is meaningless on the internet (May 26):
I still love reading utterly baffled questions on Wikipedia talk pages, IMDB message boards, Facebook groups, and random YouTube commenters from desperate people trying to track down "the one with the girl Street Shark."
The hoaxer says that "for years, IMDB, Amazon, and numerous smaller sites were unintentionally hosting my creative writing" and asserts "The only place that's still entirely accurate is Wikipedia, hilariously enough." However, the story has been picked up by Gawker (May 26), Vox (May 27) and others, with writers drawing parallels to Wikipedia hoaxes like Olimar The Wondercat and "the guy who used Wikipedia to turn himself into an Aboriginal god". (May 26–27)
Eight featured articles were promoted this week.
Three featured lists were promoted this week.
Five featured pictures were promoted this week.
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There’s no one moment when you go insane;
not when
you find yourself crying into a phone behind a closet door
or tapping your foot to neutralize thoughts you can’t handle
or sleeping on a bed of worn clothes on a hard floor
or when the police officer pulls you over again for driving
up and back the same stretch of highway, six times
and not when you physically crack the monitor in a dark room for no reason even though it was the only light left in a night’s center as you tap away at keys throughout the silence
But you occasionally get a glimpse of someone else realizing that, “you’ve lost it”.
It was probably fall 2010. My dad turned the knob on the attic bathroom door in the house where I had grown up, and the reaction on his face was devastated. He didn’t know that no other room in the house, or the country, felt safe to me, that the warm water soothed and wetted the dry, frigid air, that my laptop was balanced purposefully so that it would fall backwards onto the tile rather than into the hip-high water, and that I had chosen the back wall of the tub for its ergonomic watchlist-monitoring suitability.
He didn’t know that. He just saw his 27-year old son, feverishly tinkering with electronics on the edge of a full bath, completely nude, oblivious to anything else, or anything wrong. He also didn’t know that I was helping lead the Egyptian revolution.
That too sounds insane, but as the calendar flipped into January 2011, the new year brought millions to Egypt’s streets. A boy had gone missing, turned up in a morgue clearly beaten beyond breath by police. Facebook pages organized gatherings that filled immense public squares. Protests turned into uprising turned into revolution.
And I, alongside 4 exceptionally dedicated editors from 3 different continents, monitored the 2011 Egyptian Revolution Wikipedia article 24-hours-a-day with equipoise and fervor. We yearned for Mubarak to fall, but in the newsroom which the article’s talkpage had become, we were vigilantly checking multiple independent reports before inputting any new words onto the growing page, scouring the article for flourishes of revolutionary support. The world would come here to find the facts; those that would dispassionately drive understanding without embellishment or motivation, for the hundreds of thousands of people reading that page each day. And I would make sure of it. From my bathtub.
There’s also no one time when sanity returns, if there is such a defined state. But suffice to say that it builds upon moments.
Like the moment when you start chatting off-channel to a Wikipedian on irc-help, just to talk to someone again. Or when you put on a suit for the first time in 6 years, to give a talk on conflict-of-interest to a gathering of pr folks at a posh downtown bar. Or when you step into the hostel at Wikimania in 2012 in D.C. and meet Stu Geiger, your coincidental bunkmate, and instantly recognize his familiar, Wikipedian-ite, eclectic genius.
The moments gather momentum though. Soon you are calling up major media companies to ask for donations. Not as Jake, or that guy who lost a decade in his 20’s, or the model teenager who lapsed into dysfunction and veered ‘off course’. But calling rather, as a piece-of-Wikipedia… Do you know what doors that opens?
The drama of recovery shouldn’t be overly simplified into highlights. It was just as much my psychiatrist’s expert balancing — seeking of psychic neutrality — with a fine and formidable mix of anxiolytics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, and sleep aids. Not too high, not too low. Not too moody, not too flat. Every pill presented a trade-off, but we found a consensus pharmacology that worked.
My parents made sure that my rock bottom was somewhere safe.
My friends’ surprise visits reminded me that there was fun yet to be had.
The diagnoses I received were varied and all increasingly off-the mark. I was bipolar, but generally calm through even the grittiest edit wars. I was agoraphobic and socially anxious, but traveling to Hong Kong and Quebec and Berlin for meetups with strangers from myriad countries. I was depressed, but could not control an urge to improve a bit of Wikipedia, every day, most of the day.
They say that Wikipedia is NotTherapy. It’s a serious place to write an encyclopedia, not to iron out one’s mental kinks or cracks. But I think that’s wrong. No one knew me on Wikipedia, except for my words, the wisdom of my input, and the value of my contributions. They couldn’t care less if I was manic, phobic, delusional, or hysterical. It just didn’t matter. They didn’t see that part of me.
So I got to build my identity, my confidence, my vocation — with longwinded eloquent analyses, meticulous bibliographies, and copious rewrites of difficult subjects.
They also say that Wikipedia is Not a social network, but that’s wrong too. In the 8 years since I started editing, first in my car outside a Starbucks, and then throughout the dull shifts of a mountain-town Staples store where I squatted for wifi, and then still more through 3 years back at home under blankets between dusk and dawn, I met hundreds of people with whom I shared the same passion. I received, quite marvelously, 49 barnstars from peers, friends, and fans. There wasn’t a bigger or better sense of validation.
I received two incomparable partners, to build a Wikipedia Library that I created and had become the head of. I received a job offer, with wellness benefits. I also received, in the grand sense of things, an irrepressible, stunning and brilliant girlfriend and her exuberant 5-year old daughter into my life.
You see, Wikipedia brings people together. It brought me together. It just takes some time for everyone to get their heads on straight, before they can see that their lives too have a mission, and an [edit] button.
_____________________
A few thoughts to remember, for online collaborators, or any collaborator, really:
The above text is licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0. It can be shared or reposted without permission under the terms of the Creative Commons license, which requires only attribution and that reusers keep the same license. It was originally published in a slightly different form on Medium.
See also "Wikipedians' fragility" in this week's "In the media" section.
Note: The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is toll-free in the US and available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255. suicide.org has a list of international suicide hotlines, including Australia, Canada, the UK and many other countries across the world. To report any threats of harm or self-harm on Wikipedia, contact emergencywikimedia.org.
For this week in the arbitration report: arbitrator Gamaliel resigned from the Committee while a motion has been made about Extended Confirmed protection.
On 22 May, it was announced that Gamaliel was resigning from the committee. A statement from the committee, written by Arbitrator Opabinia regalis, says:
Gamaliel has resigned as an arbitrator because he is currently unable to edit the English Wikipedia and is therefore entirely inactive as an arbitrator. This has come about as a result of circumstances which have been disclosed to the Committee, and which in no way reflect negatively on him. We thank Gamaliel for his service on the 2016 Committee to date and wish him the best.
For the Arbitration Committee, Opabinia regalis
His resignation comes as the current arbitration case, "Gamaliel and others", is in its proposed decision phase, with the remaining members voting on the outcome. Gamaliel was elected to the committee at the December 2015 elections, where he was ranked 9th, to take up a one-year term. Gamaliel has since retired from Wikipedia altogether.
On 15 May, the committee passed motions on extended confirmed protection. Also known as the "30/500 rule", the protection level restricts editing rights for certain articles to editors who have made 500 edits and have been registered at least 30 days. Current uses of this level include the GamerGate controversy article, articles on Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, certain articles pertaining to Indian castes and their talk pages, and any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab–Israeli conflict. The expectations for the use of 30/500 in arbitration enforcement and discretionary sanctions are:
extendedconfirmed user group as a discretionary sanction.extendedconfirmed user group as means of bypassing defined arbitration enforcement procedures (for example, removing the user group as a normal administrative action to avoid banning an editor from the Gamergate controversy article).
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
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Many of the more active Wikipedia contributors are multilingual. In the April 2011 Wikipedia Editors Survey,[supp 1] 72% of respondents said they read Wikipedia content in more than one language, and 51% said they contributed to multiple Wikipedias. Research has estimated that approximately 15% of active Wikipedians are multilingual.[supp 2] These contributors are important as they can enable knowledge transfer between different language editions of Wikipedia, yet little is known about who they are and what they do.
A recent paper published in PLOS ONE by researchers at KAIST and OII, titled "Understanding Editing Behaviors in Multilingual Wikipedia"[1], adds to our knowledge of multilingual contributors by investigating their engagement level, topic interests, and language proficiency. The paper uses a dataset spanning a month of Wikipedia contributions in July–August 2013 and defines a multilingual editor as one who make contributions to multiple languages. Overall the dataset contains 12,577 multilingual editors, of which 77.3% are bilingual, 11.4% trilingual, and 4.1% quadrilingual.
Out of Wikipedia's (now) 288 language editions, the paper focuses on three: English, German, and Spanish. These three languages were chosen because the paper utilizes natural language processing to estimate language proficiency, and the tools available in those languages are sufficiently developed. The multilingual editors are divided into two groups: primary editors, consisting of the contributors who make most of their edits to a certain language edition, and non-primary editors. These two groups are then compared in terms of their engagement, topic interests, and language proficiency.
To measure editor engagement, consecutive edits by the same editor to the same article are collapsed into edit sessions.[supp 3] T-tests are used to compare primary and non-primary editors on several measures: number of edits per session, session length, amount of content added (number of characters or tokens such as words), and whether non-visible changes are made. The results show that primary editors are more engaged as they commit more edits, have longer sessions, add more content, and are more likely to make visible edits compared to non-primary editors.
Editor interests are identified using a combination of LDA and DBSCAN to create a set of 20 topic clusters for each language. These topic clusters are then labelled by humans, resulting in cluster labels such as “Science” and “Global Sports”. Primary and non-primary editors are found to be generally interested in the same topics, but some significant differences show up. For instance, non-primary editors are contributing more to articles about cities in English, soccer in German, and plants in Spanish. Primary editors are, on the other hand, more interested in, for example, computers in English and German, and politicians and entertainment in Spanish.
Lastly the paper studies the language complexity of contributions by primary and non-primary editors. Several measures of language complexity from the literature are used, for example entropy of parts-of-speech unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams, as well as whether articles (in English: the, a, an) are used correctly. Because different topics use language differently – for instance fact-oriented topics such as sports show lower language complexity compared to more conceptual topics such as history – both intra-topic complexity as well as inter-topic complexity is controlled for. Primary editors are found to use more diverse terms and edit more complex parts of articles compared to non-primary editors across all three languages. However, English differs from German and Spanish when it comes to linguistic proficiency of the edits made. In German and Spanish, primary editors display higher linguistic proficiency compared to the non-primary editors, whereas in English there is no noticeable difference.
Taken together, the results indicate how language continues to be a barrier to entry, seeing how non-primary editors are less engaged and make less complex contributions. The findings also point to how English continues to be a hub language in Wikipedia: It has the lowest proportion of primary editors with 32.9%, compared to German’s 49.9%. (In this context, the authors mention a 2012 WikiSym paper[supp 4], co-authored by this reviewer, which found that English was by far the most-used language to translate from – as measured by translation template usage – and discussed how English Wikipedia thereby could be used as a hub.) At the same time, multilingual Wikipedians are important in helping move content across languages, as exemplified by the Wikimedia Foundation’s development of a tool to recommend articles for translation.[supp 5] As mentioned in the paper’s conclusion, when it comes to multilingual Wikipedians there are still many questions left, although this paper makes significant contributions by answering some of them.
This article[2] is a report on one component of a longitudinal study of how "rationales" are utilized by Wikipedians on articles for deletion (AfD) to direct collaboration. In order to arrive at conclusions about the role of rationales in decision-making processes, the author has approached the research object from a number of angles. Previously the researcher had conducted an exploratory content analysis of rationales. This research was subsequently followed by interviews of Wikipedians. The current research describes the process of developing an algorithmic tool that will be able to analyze large data sets for "directive rationales". The author admits that AfD discussions are predisposed to this kind of analysis due to the predictable order of comments that describe an action and a rationale for the action. Decision-making of this sort substantially differs from the style of discussion for the rest of Wikipedia's talk pages. Regardless of this limitation, the author concludes that further research into rationales will provide insights into how it functions to connect policies with practices. Given the breadth of research methods of the project, it will be interesting to see what conclusions the author comes to when the project concludes.
This paper[3] addresses the area of scientific knowledge creation online, as well as the notion of controversy, by examining the editing history and discussion about English Wikipedia pages on schizophrenia and its subpage, causes of schizophrenia. The specific controversy authors focused on is that of genetic basis for schizophrenia (a topic which the authors note is still debated by scholars and on which there is no consensus). The authors commend the neutrality of the lead of the Wikipedia article ("The causes of schizophrenia have been the subject of much debate, with various factors proposed and discounted or modified...") and ask "How are such statements constructed, or in other words, what is the work which goes into making these claims?" The authors used a dataset from August 2006 to October 2011 (20,000 words of talk text and 13,000 words of article text) to investigate how this topic is presented and contested in Wikipedia.
The authors make a number of interesting observations. They observe that editors are not equal, and in addition to the usual admin>user>anon>bot hierarchy, they noted that "'who you are’ is important when it comes to editing the schizophrenia article...". Many editors self-identified as living with schizophrenia or as medical experts. The talk pages are policed to keep the discussion on discussing article's contents, and anecdotes and personal experience stories are discouraged, or even removed from the pages. WP:V and WP:OR are certainly enforced as well, and Wikipedians will be pleased to note their observation that "Priority is always given to the published scientific literature." However, there are also a number of problems. Not all contributors have access to paywalled, quality content, and some seemingly rely only on article abstracts.
Some low quality references slip through the net, and standards are not enforced consistently ("Attention to the reference list in the schizophrenia article at the time of our study revealed numerous citations that were not reviews", but original research academic papers about "breakthroughs" – this mentioned in the context of a talkpage argument that "such papers should be avoided until their findings are confirmed"). The authors also note that they found at least "one reference to another Wikipedia article and also to a schizophrenia forum discussion". The article's structure is a result of years of minor edits with little attention to the big picture, resulting in occasionally illogical and incoherent layout with some contradictions or clearly obsolete but not updated sections, which leads the authors to summarize the state of the article as "a rather ad hoc assemblage of resources" and "a chronological patchwork of studies that nonetheless does have the effect of synthesising knowledge". Despite those problems, they conclude that the Wikipedia article, and the creation process behind it, is similar to an academic review article. Also, despite Wikipedia's claims that it is simply describing the state of things, rather than creating new arguments or points of view, the authors do think that the Wikipedia article is also an active voice in ongoing discussions, and note that some editors on the talk page see the purpose of the article as educating the public as well as some experts.
There are some unfortunate omissions (through to some degree understandable due to academic publish word limit). The authors do not discuss in detail whether some users, such as experts, seem to pull more weight in the discussions, or whether removal of personal stories impacts the friendliness of the discussion. Despite these omissions, the paper is an interesting analysis of knowledge creation on Wikipedia, as well as another contribution to the ongoing discussion about the reliability and quality of Wikipedia. On that note, it is worth noting that schizophrenia is a Featured Article, following a 2003 nomination that by today's FA standards is more like a joke. Given the criticism of the article's 2011 version as voiced by this paper, the community may want to consider a Feature Article Review here.
Co-citation graphs (networks of who cites whom) are frequently used to recommend books and articles, but how well does links between Wikipedia articles work for this purpose? A paper[4] to be published at the upcoming Joint Conference on Digital Libraries evaluates this by comparing the performance of co-citation with and without proximity analysis against the commonly used “More Like This” (MLT) text-based approach found in Apache Lucene. The paper’s main finding is that co-citation with proximity analysis (CPA) performs comparably to MLT, but that the two methods have different strengths: MLT is good at identifying closely related articles, while CPA is better at finding broader ones and will identify more popular articles that typically are of higher quality. These results suggest a hybrid approach might be best suited for finding related articles in Wikipedia, something the authors plan to study in future work.
This paper[5] in JASIST from April this year is a brief opinion piece summarizing perceptions of Wikipedia in academia. It provides a short literature review of works that discuss this subjects, summarizes the research on Wikipedia's reliability (still a concern among many scholars), notes the spread of the use of Wikipedia as a teaching assignment in colleges, acknowledges the general widespread use of Wikipedia by the public, and in the paper's own words, calls "for a peaceful coexistence". A more detailed take on those very subjects is presented by the very same journal in March[6] (disclaimer: the latter article is written by this reviewer).
Yet another small university class (<20 first-year university students) has independently tried Wikipedia editing and tells its story.[7]
The students were told to edit an article and succeeded; while doing so, they improved their information literacy, digital literacy and trust in the Wikipedia system. On the other hand, the exercise itself was not sufficient to make them understand in depth the dynamics and principles of Wikipedia, nor to integrate in the community.
In the opinion of this reviewer, the article makes for a nice blog post to be shared with university professors belonging to other Nordic countries as well as similar disciplines. The experience also confirms that university professors can and should use Wikipedia as a teaching tool, but can improve results if they contact expert Wikimedians (usually via a local Wikimedia chapter) to actually introduce the students to the spirit and dynamics of the Wikimedia projects.
Short opinion piece from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls supporting the usage of Wikipedia as teaching tool to improve information literacy.[8] Under the guise of a literature review, the author mentions 4 past experiments of usage of the wikis in the classroom, published between 2006 and 2009.
According to this 2012 survey of 800 professors belonging to the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, professors mostly agree with the usage of Wikipedia as an "open repository" to dissiminate research and a growing number of them approves of its usage as a teaching tool. At the time of the survey, however, most professors were still waiting to be convinced by their colleagues.[9] See also the longer review of the paper's preprint version[supp 6] in our December 2014 issue: "Use of Wikipedia in higher education influenced by peer opinions and perception of Wikipedia's quality"
A paper[10] to be published at the forthcoming SIGIR 2016 conference as part of their demonstration track describes MultiWiki (demo available online), a tool that calculates similarities and differences between pairs of articles in different Wikipedia languages. The tool then visualises these using a timeline, a map, and by displaying article texts side-by-side. Visualising similarities and differences between Wikipedia languages is not a new idea[supp 7] [supp 8], but this tool is the first to show textual alignment.
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
[NPOV] was new to many of them. Some say they are surprised to find that there are so many rules and norms to consider before the text is up to standards. One respondent expressed astonishment that "there are even standards for how to write numbers in percentage!" Others are surprised to find any rules at all, having heard about the inaccuracies and biases of Wikipedia's content: "I used to think anything goes."' ... The students were positive about their discovery of the Wikipedia community, which for many changed some of their attitudes to the site. ... For those who mention trust, they related it to one or both of the following factors: (a) to the discovery of the qualifications of many Wikipedians ("lots of educated people") or (b) to the control mechanism available and that there are people who "check the pages" and "remove unwanted content" ... The initial skepticism expressed in the questionnaire has thus changed, leaving Wikipedia "a place I can partly trust on par with other sources, as it is surveilled by a kind of administrators"."
Your Traffic Reports for the weeks of May 8–14 and May 15–21, 2016:
We've recently come into possession of a new tool. The Wikimedia Foundation has finally got its analytics together and made its own version of the raw data list. This is all well and good; we always need new checks and balances to be sure we're excluding the right articles. But there's a problem; the two lists use different algorithms to arrive at their numbers, which means that, while the actual entrants on each list are the same, their counts can differ by more than 100,000 views. This doesn't tend to affect the top articles, which are usually too far apart for the differences to matter. But once you get down to the mid-and-bottom end, where the numbers are closer together, it's a sandstorm. This becomes particularly problematic when deciding which articles are actually in the Top 25 in the first place. So. Lacking any actual information regarding which algorithms are correct, I decided the best course of action was to split the difference. Literally. I added the numbers up, divided by two and whichever numbers resulted, that was the order I put them in. Which means that the current list is based on numbers in both data sets.
For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of May 8–14, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the combined average of the Top 5000 and TopViews, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Captain America: Civil War | 
|
3,332,940 |  |
The 13th episode of Marvel Studios' reinvented movie serial is certain to reclaim the top spot at the US box office this weekend. Having earned $242 million in just eight days, its performance is about on par with Batman v Superman. But that film was the supposed launch of an entire franchise featuring the epic duel of two of the best known and iconic characters in all of comicdom. This is just another day at the Marvel office. For someone at Disney, life is very good indeed. |
| 2 | Eurovision Song Contest 2016 | 
|
936,232 |  |
For the first time in history, Americans were able to watch the annual sequinfest in all its interminable, trashy, gaudy glory, and no doubt come out of it wondering what all the fuss was about. Well here's what it's about: Europe's in a mess. We've got Russia making moves on Ukraine, Greece in seemingly permanent crisis, a flood of refugees bringing out the worst in us, and Britain thinking about leaving. In all that, we need something that brings us all together, no matter how corny. And here is the one chance the nations of Europe have to buoy each other up (unless they're the UK, in which case, a hug from Ireland is all we generally get). Nonetheless, this year's contest (Held at the Stockholm Globe Arena, pictured) ultimately boiled down to a battle between Russia and Ukraine, which, thanks to some passive-aggressive tactical voting in the former Soviet bloc, Ukraine won with the pointedly anti-Russian song "1944". |
| 3 | Deaths in 2016 | 
|
672,782 |  |
The annual list of deaths, always a fairly consistent visitor to this list, saw its average views jump after the death of David Bowie, and another jump after the death of Prince. |
| 4 | Donald Trump |
|
633,258 |  |
Numbers are down across the board this week, so Trump's relatively high position belies a drop in numbers of more than a third. With the GOP nomination in the bag, and only a small amount of off-the-cuff craziness to keep the public amused, viewers seem to be following the GOP and coming to quiet terms with the idea of his candidacy. |
| 5 | Game of Thrones (season 6) | 
|
586,085 |  |
The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on April 24. |
| 6 | Game of Thrones |
|
540,263 | |
See above. |
| 7 | Stephen Curry |
|
539,645 | .jpg) |
This week, the basketball player for the Golden State Warriors won the title of MVP for the second straight year, and became the first player to win the title unanimously. |
| 8 | X-Men: Apocalypse |
|
531,161 |  |
Hopes were high for this after the rapturous critical and commercial reception given to Bryan Singer's previous X-Men film, Days of Future Past; unfortunately the reviews for the followup have been largely negative, with the film struggling to reach a 60% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. How this will affect its box office performance when it opens over the next few weeks is uncertain, but Fox must be somewhat tense right now. |
| 9 | Mother's Day |
|
506,879 |  |
The second Sunday in May (that's May 8 to all you ingrates who forgot) is far and away the most popular time of year around the world to celebrate Mother's Day. |
| 10 | Black Panther (comics) |
|
470,418 | .jpg) |
King T'Challa of Wakanda, chieftain of the Panther Clan and avatar of the Panther God, was the first ever true black superhero, created by Stan Lee in 1966. The name, amazingly, actually predates that of the Black Panther Party, which was founded the same year. Wikipedia users decided to delve into his extensive history after seeing him in live action for the first time in Captain America: Civil War, and ahead of his stand-alone movie in two years. |
It only took 321,173 views to make the Top 25 most-viewed articles the week of May 15–21, the lowest this year to date by over 35,000 views. Captain America: Civil War leads the chart for a third straight week, though its 1.28 million views is also the lowest #1 view count for the year, and well below the very respectable 3.33 million views it got last week. What seems odd is that EgyptAir Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, does not appear at all in the Top 25. It is only #30. Anecdotally, it seems to have received far less press coverage than recent disasters like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which remained on the chart for five weeks after occurring in March 2014. This is not a case of a disaster happening at the end of a week such that it only shows up the following week, its views were highest on May 19, and have dropped daily since. If I had to guess a cause, I would suggest that Donald Trump (#8) and the American presidential election is sucking up a great deal of the press bandwidth in the United States.
For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of May 15 to 21, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the Top 5000 (TopViews was pretty consistent this week), were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Captain America: Civil War |
|
1,284,748 | |
Though views are down over half from last week's 3.3 million, this movie hangs on to the top spot for a third straight week. Not too surprising, since it has already earned over one billion dollars in worldwide revenue. |
| 2 | X-Men: Apocalypse |
|
1,009,485 | |
Hopes were high for this after the rapturous critical and commercial reception given to Bryan Singer's previous X-Men film, Days of Future Past; unfortunately the reviews for the followup have been largely negative, with the film struggling to reach a 60% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. How this will affect its box office performance when it opens over the next few weeks is uncertain, but Fox must be somewhat tense right now. |
| 3 | Yuri Kochiyama |
|
940,581 | Seeing this name, one previously unknown to me, with a 26% mobile view rate, I knew it would be due to a Google Doodle. Yet, the lead sentence of her article describes that she was "a Japanese American political activist influenced by Marxism, Maoism, and the thoughts of Malcolm X. She is notable as one of the few prominent non-black Black nationalists." That seems quite controversial for a Doodle, but Google's statement celebrating what would have been her 95th birthday describes her as "an Asian American activist who dedicated her life to the fight for human rights and against racism and injustice." This seems fairly noble, and Google also notes she lived in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The Doodle did cause some controversy among American conservatives. | |
| 4 | Eurovision Song Contest 2016 |
|
690,458 | |
Returning for a second week. For the first time in history, Americans were able to watch the annual sequinfest in all its interminable, trashy, gaudy glory, and no doubt come out of it wondering what all the fuss was about. Well here's what it's about: Europe's in a mess. We've got Russia making moves on Ukraine, Greece in seemingly permanent crisis, a flood of refugees bringing out the worst in us, and Britain thinking about leaving. In all that, we need something that brings us all together, no matter how corny. And here is the one chance the nations of Europe have to buoy each other up (unless they're the UK, in which case, a hug from Ireland is all we generally get). Nonetheless, this year's contest (Held at the Stockholm Globe Arena, pictured) ultimately boiled down to a battle between Russia and Ukraine, which, thanks to some passive-aggressive tactical voting in the former Soviet bloc, Ukraine won with the pointedly anti-Russian song "1944". |
| 5 | Game of Thrones (season 6) |
|
676,916 | |
The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on April 24. I don't watch Game of Thrones, but I usually know when it is on due to cryptic tweets of distress and disbelief during each episode. |
| 6 | Deaths in 2016 |
|
642,063 | |
The annual list of deaths, always a fairly consistent visitor to this list, saw its average views jump after the death of David Bowie, and another jump after the death of Prince (who departed the Top 25 this week after four straight appearances). |
| 7 | Mohammad Azharuddin |
|
607,098 | Up from #11 and 458K views last week. The once-beloved cricket captain turned politician was brought low in 2000 after a match-fixing scandal, dramatised recently by the Bollywood film Azhar (#25) | |
| 8 | Donald Trump |
|
568,970 | |
Like Deaths in 2016 (#6), Donald Trump seems to have permanently set up camp in the Top 10. If he gets elected, he might be a permanent number one. Ahem. I can't say anymore. |
| 9 | Game of Thrones |
|
566,744 | |
See #5. |
| 10 | Morley Safer |
|
550,159 | .jpg) |
The longtime journalist and reporter for the American television show 60 Minutes died just a week after announcing his retirement. |
At Eurovision, the dazzling international music contest that annually rocks much of the world, credentialed photographers jockey for space, providing copyrighted photos to the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images, and more.
For three of the past four years, Albin Olsson has been right there with them, capturing dramatic images of singers from around the world. But Olsson is credentialed by Wikimedia Sweden, his photos’ destination is Wikimedia Commons, and they’re freely licensed—anyone can use them, for any purpose, as long as they give Olsson credit and share them under the same stipulation.
This year’s Eurovision was held in Stockholm, Sweden with over 200 million people from around the world watching; the winner was Jamala of Ukraine, with the song “1944.” The contest was started by the European Broadcasting Unions a way of bringing war-torn countries together around a “light entertainment program.” To this day, many of the contest’s participants come from union members. To compete, these artists have to sing an original song to a live audience; they typically go through a national selection process to be nominated. At the contest itself, countries are allowed to vote for any singer except their own; the one with the most points is named the winner. Past contestant-winners have included ABBA, one of the most successful bands of all time, and Celine Dion.
On Wikipedia, the second screen effect was again apparent: over six million people came to Wikipedia to read about this year’s contest, including nearly 1.8 million in Russian and 1.4 million in English. Another one million came to view the article on Jamala, the winner of the contest over Australia and Russia (which placed in second and third, respectively).
We spoke with Olsson about his remarkable photographs, all of which can be used by anyone, anywhere. He told us that he got the idea for the project when Eurovision was coming to Sweden in 2013 and he could not find many freely licensed images of previous events. “Many people turn to Wikipedia to find information about [Eurovision], and there are articles in so many languages about every year’s contest, the artists, and the songs,” he said—”but there were not many photos. Almost none.”
To change this, Olsson applied for and received press accreditation for both that event and Eurovision 2014, which was held in nearby Denmark. Wikimedia Austria continued Olsson’s project in 2015. As Sweden won Eurovision 2015, the contest returned to Olsson’s home country in 2016, giving him the chance to cover it for a third time. This was, however, not a sure thing. As Olsson recounted to us: “I applied for an accreditation again, but my application was denied. I tried to make them change their minds, but it was hard to contact the right people. … When I had almost given up hope, I got an email on Wednesday morning, 27 April, saying that my application was approved. The following Sunday I took the train to Stockholm and uploaded the first photos on Monday.”
We asked what photos were his favorites. Olsson could not pick just one, but he singled out those where he was able to capture people laughing—photos where “you can look at the photos and feel the genuine joy.” He also pointed at his photos of Justs, the entry from Latvia (and the third photo below).
Will Olsson attend a future Eurovision? “Maybe. This year I came to a point where I felt ‘I am never doing this again,’ but I know that I will probably change my mind in about six months or so. It takes a lot of time and energy but is really fun. When I started the project, I wanted Wikipedians in other countries to continue my project, so I hope some Ukrainians will take great photos next year.” “But who knows? Maybe I’ll join them in Ukraine.”
Check out more fantastic photos from Eurovision 2016 with Albin Olsson below and on Wikimedia Commons.
