Recent prominent events and decisions on English Wikipedia have focused on what information, published elsewhere on the web, can be appropriately republished or linked on Wikipedia itself. Such questions about information and ethics are essential to any serious effort to organize and publish information. Here at the Signpost, we aim to present debates like this to our readership, and offer analysis to help our readers track the progress of various discussions, and participate more effectively.
Typically, the proper role of the Signpost is not to take a position, but to offer a platform for exploration and reflection. In July 2016, for instance, we ran an op-ed piece from Wikipedian Doc James, who argued in favor of permitting the republication of information that is already public; and in the spirit of a healthy and diverse discourse, we would gladly run essays arguing otherwise, provided they are rooted in an exploration of what will help Wikipedia thrive.
On this topic, however, our relationship to Wikipedia is more complex. Wikipedia is not merely the subject matter of the Signpost; it is also the platform on which the publication rests. For us to play a useful role in sharing information and stimulating discourse about Wikipedia, we must be able to link to relevant source material; our writers and editors must be able to speak without fear of retaliation or censure. As with all publications, our ability to inform our readership relies on freedom of the press. We must regard any policy or enforcement that might have a chilling effect on our contributors’ words as a potential threat to our core purpose.
Wikipedia's policies on no personal attacks and harassment contain language that if strictly interpreted would severely impede our ability to bring you the news; and recent discussions suggest that strict interpretation is to be expected. As of this writing, Wikipedia’s harassment policy states (emphasis added):
Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person had voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia. Personal information includes legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, other contact information, or photograph, whether any such information is accurate or not. Posting such information about another editor is an unjustifiable and uninvited invasion of privacy and may place that editor at risk of harm outside their activities on Wikipedia. This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors.
Like any news outlet, the Signpost routinely publishes quotations from, and links to, a wide variety of materials on the web, including personal web pages, blog posts, press releases, affiliate sites, and wikis other than English Wikipedia. In many cases—and for no nefarious purpose—those public pages contain information that the definition above would categorize as “personal”, though Wikipedia policy may be the only framework that categorizes it that way. Thus, if the Signpost is to carefully adhere to a strict interpretation of current Wikipedia policy, we are forced to curtail the quantity and quality of information we offer our readers.
This state of affairs is not desirable for any news outlet that hopes to keep its readers informed. In the short term, we will append a short message, linking to this editorial, to the bottom of any story in which we must compromise our intended words to comply with Wikipedia policy. In the longer term, we look forward to a day when Wikipedia’s policies can adequately protect individuals’ genuine privacy interests while simultaneously supporting various legitimate discussions involving identity and related topics.
User:Go Phightins! is stepping down from his position as the Signpost's co-editor-in-chief today:
It is not without a degree of disappointment that today I announce that effective immediately, I will be stepping down as co-editor-in-chief of the Signpost. My tenure has lasted 18 months, but due to real-life obligations, there have been prolonged droughts where I have been barely able or not at all able to contribute. It is not fair to the remainder of the team that produces this publication for me to continue to hold a title without contributing my fair share. Therefore, now is a good time for me to step back. I plan to continue to advise and contribute as I can in the future, but will do so in a reduced capacity.
I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to The ed17 for offering me (a.k.a. dragooning me) to take on this responsibility in January 2015, Rob for serving with me for most of this tenure and taking on a lion's share of the publication process, Tony for his unwavering support of the publication's goals and reliable reporting as one of our most prolific writers, the entire Signpost editorial board for their consistent work in churning out issue after issue, and especially Andreas for his willingness to be drafted into service on this project and his huge body of work maintaining it.
My sincerest hope is that the publication continues on its current upward trajectory while attracting new blood to help give those who have been longstanding contributors a break to avoid burnout.
To that end, it is with surpassing pleasure that we announce that Pete Forsyth will be joining us as our new co-editor-in-chief. Pete has been a Wikipedian since 2006, and has covered Wikipedia happenings in the Signpost, and in news outlets from USA Today to the blogs of Creative Commons and the Wikimedia Foundation. We are excited to have him join us in this official capacity.
As always, we are eager for new contributors, and now is a great time to consider whether joining The Signpost team is something you are willing to do. Please contact Rosiestep if that's something you would be interested in doing.
Thank you for your continued loyal readership!
Sincerely,
Ben Go Phightins!
Thank you, Ben, for your many years of service to the Signpost. I am delighted that you will continue to be a member of the Signpost editorial board, and contribute as and when time allows.
I am equally delighted to welcome Pete Forsyth as my new co-editor-in-chief. Pete brings outstanding smarts, insight and experience to the position, and I couldn't have wished for a better replacement. I look forward to our work together, covering news in and around the Wikimedia world. AK
The figures are deeply unsettling: 28% of editors say they have experienced criticism of their work, 24% believe that other editors are "not fun to work with", and 11% have experienced harassment. This was the introduction of a presentation by Maggie Dennis—the WMF’s director of support and safety and interim senior director of community engagement—about onwiki harassment to the WMF's monthly Metrics and Activities Meeting on 28 July. In the Foundation's consultation late last year, its workshop in February 2016, and in the results of its survey in 16 languages, stories have emerged that highlight the "frustration, shame, and helplessness" of harassed editors, she said. Among the key findings were that:
Among the most common forms of harassment reported in the slide at 17:31 were content vandalism (27%), trolling or flaming (24%), name-calling (17%), discrimination (14%), and stalking (13%). Less prevalent but more concerning were threats of violence (6%), outing (6%), impersonation (5%), hacking (3%), and revenge porn (2%). Unspecified experiences were rated at 15%.
What becomes clear from viewing Maggie Dennis's presentation is that harassment is a highly prevalent behaviour at the interface of three problematic phenomena that continue to plague the WMF's sites: the gender gap, the flatlining of editor numbers, and the maintenance of the quality of the sites for readers. The Foundation is investigating measures to address the harassment problem in the communities; proposals for impending action include the default protection of user pages, the creation of a help page on all Wikipedias, and research into current mechanisms for dealing with harassment.
Dennis then introduced Ellery Wulczyn, from Wikimedia Research, who explained the progress of a program to develop an algorithmic approach to detecting personal attacks on the English Wikipedia—a collaborative project between the WMF and Jigsaw, a division of Alphabet, a holding company for Google. The project has created a data "pipeline" of examples of personal comments on the site, used this to develop a model for automated detection of harassment, and analysed the data to try to develop a system with the same level of accuracy as humans. Samples of comments were judged by 10 humans and a scale was derived of how likely each comment was to be harassing. From this a model was developed, and the claim was made that this is a 95% match with a later pooled human assessment of whether examples constituted harassment. A demonstration is at wikidetox.appspot.com, which readers are invited to visit and test for themselves. The algorithm determined that there is an 82% likelihood that this statement of mixed but ultimately insulting intention was harassment:
The algorithm determined a 69% probability that "F#@$ you, a$$h0l3" was a personal attack; and the different grammatical contexts of "I will punch your lights out" and "Let's drink punch" were rated at 59% and 17% likelihoods of harassment, respectively. However, Wulczyn pointed out that the system is only as good as the depth of the corpus of personal attack patterns to which it has been exposed, with human rankings; for example, "Your intellect is lacking" was determined as having only a 10% probability of being an attack.
The intention now is to continue the program of "training" the system to achieve scores approaching zero false positives. The immediate goal is to explore the prevalence, dynamics, and impact of personal attacks on the English Wikipedia, and to create a complete historical dataset of talkpage comments with probability scores (which will be released publicly) for input to the "training" process.
The program is still at an early stage. Among the next goals is to integrate the algorithm with the ORES API system to enable extensions and tools to be built on top of the model. Readers with questions or suggestions are welcome to visit the dedicated page on Meta. T
The 2016 Wikiconference North America, which will occur in San Diego, California, from October 7–10, invites interested editors to submit proposals to host a workshop, seminar, panel, tutorial, or other program during the event. Submissions can be made here. GP
A reputation management and search engine optimisation firm has announced a professional service for creating, altering, monitoring, updating, and translating Wikipedia pages and has launched a corresponding Internet portal. In its communications, the firm assures potential clients that ownership of a Wikipedia article is a prominent asset, enhancing their online reputation.
The press release contains a contact name, a city, a phone number, and an email address identifying an employer (whose web page also includes a photograph of the contact, along with details of other staff members). All of this is "personal information" as defined in WP:Outing. AK / PF
The Signpost aspires to provide readers with sufficient information to evaluate the news we report and the opinions our op-ed writers express. However, English Wikipedia policy prevents us from doing so in some routine cases. We withheld significant information in this story to comply with our interpretation of Wikipedia’s policies.
Beginning in 1988, photographer Carol M. Highsmith donated thousands of images to the Library of Congress for free use by the general public, only to see Getty Images, a stock photo company, appropriate them, in some cases without attribution, add their own watermark, and then accuse Highsmith of copyright infringement. Hyperallergic reports that Highsmith sued Getty and another stock photo business, Alamy, for copyright infringement, asking for $1 billion in damages, including compensation for over 18,755 images Getty appropriated as well as punitive damages because the company had been previously liable for the same violation against another photographer within the past three years. She learned that both agencies had been charging fees to customers for use of her images and sending threat letters to others who had used her free images. The complaint states, “The defendants have apparently misappropriated Ms. Highsmith’s generous gift to the American people ... not only unlawfully charging licensing fees ... but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner.” Inspired by the example of Dorothea Lange, Highsmith wanted to document all 50 states, and these images now form the Carol M. Highsmith Collection at the LOC. (July 27) MTbw
The Atlantic studied trends in the number of edits to Wikipedia articles about potential vice-presidential picks, noting a 2008 Washington Post story on an upsurge in Wikipedia article edits prior to the VP selection of Sarah Palin. This year, The Atlantic noted increased editing activity each time various hopefuls such as Tom Vilsack and Elizabeth Warren were paraded into public view. Based on this metric, a dramatic upsurge in editing of Tim Kaine's article prior to Hillary Clinton's July 22 announcement shows that Wikipedia accurately foreshadowed the selection of the Democratic VP nominee. The story was also covered by New York Magazine and Bloomberg Politics. (July 22) MTbw
Pacific Standard reports on a $250,000 Knight Foundation grant for a project called "Amplify libraries and communities through Wikipedia". The article draws particular attention to the dearth of women and people of colour in Wikipedia's volunteer base ...
As James Hare, president of Wikimedia DC, told the New York Times in 2015:
“The stereotype of a Wikipedia editor is a 30-year-old white man, and so most of the articles written are about stuff that interests 30-year-old white men. So a lot of black history is left out.”
... as well as the hostile reception new editors may receive. In the words of Merrilee Proffitt, one of the project leads, Wikipedia ...
can be a challenging environment. The thing that someone said to me that resonates is, “Wikipedians are very nice in person, but can be mean online.” You don’t get subtleties in online communication. These are all volunteers, they’re doing it on their spare time, they’re not getting paid, they’re very protective of that. They’re a little suspicious of new editors and what might be motivating them.”
It’s a lot to expect all librarians to get on board with this project. But if they did, you’d be talking about essentially closing Wikipedia’s gender gap in one fell swoop.
Librarians' racial bias, on the other hand, is much the same as in Wikipedia, so addressing racial bias “may be a bit trickier”:
“It’s safe to say that librarians are also disproportionately white, but the communities we serve are incredibly diverse,” Proffitt says. “What librarians can do by becoming Wikipedians is bring this out to their people. Public libraries are in every corner, and serve such a variety of audiences.”
(July 27) AK
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Kevin Gorman, a US Wikipedian active primarily on the English Wikipedia, has passed away after complications from a number of rare genetic disorders. He was 26.
Kevin joined Wikipedia as part of the 2010–11 Public Policy Initiative, a pilot project that tested the waters to see if Wikipedia could be adopted as a teaching tool in US universities. This initiative was later turned into the Wikipedia Education Program.
At the time, Kevin was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, taking a "Politics of Piracy" class in the spring 2011 semester, and it was probably from that classroom that he made his first edit, on 1 February 2011.
Kevin took to the site as a duck to water, making nearly 2500 edits in his first four months, and branching out into mushrooms, a topic for which he had a passion. By April, he had signed up to help facilitate a Wikipedia-oriented class that would be held in the following semester, and within two months had landed a summer communications internship with the Wikimedia Foundation. He came back to the WMF for a short time in 2013 to author a retrospective report on the organization's grants process, which took care to point out several significant potential risks in the process. In February 2014 he made international news headlines by becoming the first person to hold a Wikipedian-in-residence position at a US university.
As a volunteer, Kevin took on a heavy and often harassment-inducing load in combating bias in Wikipedia articles related to the men's rights movement—an effort that attracted coverage in the celebrity and pop-culture site Jezebel.
It was these experiences, according to the Feminist Philosophers blog, that persuaded Kevin to "attend the first class of Alex Madva’s feminist philosophy course, and ultimately led [him] to play an integral role in identifying and redressing the underrepresentation of feminist philosophy and women philosophers on Wikipedia." He later also became a moderator of the gendergap Wikimedia mailing list.
Some of those philosophers are listed in his userspace, and editors will note that many articles still need to be written.
Kevin took on some of the work of exposing undisclosed paid advocacy on Wikipedia, which is where we had personal contact. Thanks to him, the Signpost helped to uncover the edits of Wiki-PR, a public-relations company that contravened several policies and guidelines—especially those related to sock puppetry—to manage thousands of articles for pay. The "source", referenced three times in that initial story, was Kevin. He was also a primary driver behind a feature story on Wiki-PR from Martin Robbins of Vice. These revelations were enough to engender a strong reaction from the Foundation, which directly led to changes in the global terms of use.
Kevin continued to tackle paid advocacy right up until his 12,000th and last edit—a post on the harassment policy's talk page which read (in part):
| “ | Last time I kept track there were at least 30 paid editing outfits. Any guess as to how many there are now that most of those who could take care of them and track them are gone, deliberately discouraged from doing so or no longer capable of doing so? | ” |
Kevin died in July 2016 from a combination of what his family described as multiple "very rare" genetic disorders, which had caused or were in addition to other serious illnesses that afflicted him—everything from sepsis to encephalitis. These ailments were a factor in a significant reduction in editing after August 2014.
Despite his health issues, he did try to turn his experience into a positive by contributing a significant amount of content to the article on immunoglobulin therapy—a treatment he himself was receiving. He wrote that he needed the treatment because he "never developed an immune system, and as a result, need[ed] frequent injections of antibodies pooled from y'alls blood plasma. ... the reason I got sick so often was because I had no immune system."
Kevin's generosity in death lives on through other people; with his prior permission, medical staff were able to use his liver, kidney, and heart for people in need. This kindness as a donor should surprise no one: he dedicated his life to helping others. It is a legacy that might cause us to be proud and grateful.
Community members are leaving condolences on Kevin's English Wikipedia talk page, and there are plans to work on the organ donation (see WikiProject Medicine) and Marfan syndrome articles in his honor.
His family has created a memorial on Facebook; according to his father, Kevin's friends in Berkeley are planning to hold a memorial service in the city on 21 August.
Your traffic reports for the weeks of July 10–16, July 17–23, and July 24–30.
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.
Let it Pokemon Go: Pokémon Go led the chart for a second week, with a substantial 4.7 million views. This is a flashback to people's complaints about Wikipedia circa 2005—that the site was dominated with Pokemon articles. Well, the world finally caught up to our advance research. Aside from the esport, politics and regular sports dominate the chart. Sports entries are split among Ultimate Fighting Championship articles; football, with the conclusion of UEFA Euro 2016; and tennis, due to Wimbledon. The lack of any Google Doodle or Reddit "Today I Learned" threads anywhere in the Top 25 this week seems unusual.
For the week of July 10 to 16, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pokémon Go | 
|
4,778,652 |  |
Way up from 1.37 million views last week to lead the chart for a second week. Many non-players simply enjoy reading the stories of the ridiculous things happening due to it, such as people wandering into places not really appropriate for gaming such as cemeteries, neighbor's yards, and so on. Oh, and accidents. Until and unless someone dies, it is mostly harmless fun, right? |
| 2 | Theresa May | 
|
1,738,109 |  |
The new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. May had previously been the British Home Secretary since 2010, but the shockwaves of Brexit have been to May's benefit. That's the way history goes for individual people, mostly unpredictable except in hindsight. |
| 3 | Mike Pence | 
|
1,651,153 |  |
Don't tell Donald Trump (#23), but his newly announced vice-presidential candidate got far more views this week. Trump's media skills generated a great deal of interest in his VP pick, though there was some suggestion that he almost tried to back out of the Pence pick at the last minute. Though more conservative than Trump on social issues, the Governor of Indiana is generally considered a safe and stable selection by the Republican party, more so than the other reported finalists for the VP slot, Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie. |
| 4 | Sultan (2016 film) |
|
1,220,923 |  |
Second week on the chart, with about 70,000 more views than last week. One big difference between Hollywood and Bollywood is that in Bollywood, stars still matter. And Salman Khan (pictured) rules the roost right now. His last big film, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, dominated Eid al-Fitr weekend and went on to make nearly $100 million. Now he's done it again: his latest, a wrestling drama, was also released on Eid and took in nearly ₹1.96 billion ($29 million) in its first six days. |
| 5 | UFC 200 |
|
1,139,080 |  |
Second week on the chart, as is typical of these UFC Saturday events. The latest in the mixed martial arts tournament series was held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (pictured) on 9 July. Headliner Amanda Nunes defeated Miesha Tate in the first round. |
| 6 | Bastille Day |
|
977,775 | .jpg) |
The French national holiday has never made it on the Top 25 before, so sadly, its appearance is most likely due to the 2016 Nice attack. |
| 7 | Cristiano Ronaldo |
|
946,953 | .jpg) |
Up from #21 last week. Playing for the Portugal national football team (#24), the man sometimes called the world's most famous athlete led his team to victory in the final of UEFA Euro 2016 (#10) over France, and earned the Silver Boot award. |
| 8 | Andy Murray | 
|
831,169 |  |
The men's singles winner at Wimbledon over Milos Raonic (#12) occurred on July 10. |
| 8 | Brock Lesnar |
|
750,002 |  |
Lesnar defeated Mark Hunt in the heavyweight match at UFC 200 (#5). |
| 10 | UEFA Euro 2016 |
|
744,132 |  |
Numbers are down again this week, but its been a long run in the charts for this football tournament. Portugal won for the first time, on July 10. |
Trumpapalooza: Last week's American news was dominated by the Republican National Convention, which could have been named the Trump Convention, because Trump family members were highlighted among the speakers every night. FIVE of the top ten slots this week are Trumps, even including Donald Trump's first wife, Ivana Trump (#8), who wasn't even at the convention. I cannot recall any prior instance of a single family dominating the chart like this. And outside the Top 10, two more Trump offspring made the list, plus Trump's second wife, Marla Maples, was #11.
For the week of July 17 to 23, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Melania Trump |
|
2,990,596 |  |
How is The Donald not #1 this week? Well, his third wife gave a speech on Monday night at the Republican National Convention. This type of speech is usually non-controversial and helps humanize the candidate. This one kicked off a negative three day news cycle because the speech lifted some passages from Michelle Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. This fact was initially denied by the campaign (which to date is notorious for not being coordinated in its public statements), but finally admitted to on Wednesday, though blamed on one of Trump's employees, Meredith McIver, who has been the ghostwriter for a number of Donald's books. |
| 2 | Donald Trump |
|
2,796,617 |  |
Trump is now officially the Republican nominee for President of the United States, and accepted the nomination in a lengthy speech on July 21. |
| 3 | Pokémon Go |
|
2,029,089 | |
Down from 4.7 million views last week, but still going strong. How long is the shelf life of this thing? I was out to dinner the other night and half the people I saw walking around were teenagers looking at their phones playing Pokémon Go. I shook my fist at the sky like a cranky old man and felt better. The article has improved from Start Class to B-Class in the last week, now with a staggering 184 references. |
| 4 | Ivanka Trump |
|
1,775,380 | .jpg) |
Probably the most liked Trump outside core Trump-fandom, Trump's daughter Ivanka gave a speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention, though she touted some policy positions that sounded like she was introducing a Democratic candidate. |
| 5 | Tim Kaine |
|
1,513,047 | |
Kaine, a current United States Senator, and former Governor from Virginia, was named as Hillary Clinton's vice-presidential running mate on July 22. I must say Kaine was not high on my radar because he does not showboat online, though the Wall Street Journal put him on Hillary's shortlist last month. Virginia is also a swing state, probably a must-win for either candidate to be elected. |
| 6 | Kabali (film) |
|
1,351,718 |  |
This Tamil language film starring Rajinikanth (#27) (pictured) debuted on July 22 to mixed reviews, but broke box office records, earning around ₹211.75 (US$31 million) worldwide during its opening weekend. |
| 7 | Stranger Things (TV series) |
|
1,165,953 |  |
This Netflix science-fiction series was released on July 15 to positive reviews. |
| 8 | Ivana Trump |
|
1,032,111 |  |
Donald Trump's (#2) first wife, mother of Ivanka (#4), as well as Donald Jr. (#20) and Eric (#13). She was not in Cleveland last week, but instead in St. Tropez "with her dog and Italian lover" as the Daily Mail tells us. I would guess some of these views include people trying to get to Ivanka's article. |
| 9 | Tiffany Trump |
|
1,019,203 |  |
Donald Trump's (#2) only child with Marla Maples (#11) (his second wife), who also spoke at the convention last week. |
| 10 | Mike Pence |
|
940,781 | |
Donald Trump's (#2) Vice-Presidential candidate, down from 1.65 million views last week. |
Bonus: Just missing the WP:TOP25 for July 17–23:
Hillary Summer: The Democratic National Convention (not to be confused with the Democratic National Committee, both abbreviated DNC) was held this week, and culminated in Hillary Clinton receiving her coronation as the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States; the first woman to be so named by a major political party in the US, though that string of qualifiers is a reminder of just how behind the rest of the world the US is in this regard. Unlike last week's Republican Convention, which saw a flood of interest in all things Trumpian, the DNC hasn't generated as much traffic; numbers are down across the board, and Hillary got less than half the views of her rival. This weaker showing allowed the traditional concern of the American summer season, movies, to get a strong look-in, particularly toward the bottom of the list.
For the week of July 24 to 30, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hillary Clinton | 
|
1,331,698 |  |
One puzzling feature of this list over the last year is how seldom Hillary Clinton has appeared on it, despite the constant media hum of the 2016 election and the near omnipresence of her competitor. Some might argue that they already know everything they need to about Hillary; after all, she's been a global figure for longer than many of our readers have been alive. But the same could also be said of Donald Trump, and interest in him has obviously not waned. At this point it is clear that people just aren't as excited about her. On paper, she is one of the most qualified people ever to run for President of the US, and yet, ignoring post-convention "bumps" after each party's convention, polls place her neck and neck with Donald Trump, a man with no political qualifications and no coherent policy goals who just this week told a dictator to commit espionage against the United States. In what should be her moment in the sun, nominated as her party's candidate, endorsed wittily by a sitting President, and even supported by her onetime arch-rival Bernie Sanders, her article didn't generate even half the views Trump got during his nomination week, and he lost the top spot to his wife. |
| 2 | Kabali (film) |
|
1,118,570 | |
This Indian film (not Bollywood- it's in Tamil; Bollywood films are strictly Hindi) starring Rajinikanth (pictured) has, despite mixed reviews, smashed records in its first week of release, earning ₹3.2 billion ($48 million) worldwide and already placing itself as the second (or third, depending on the source) highest-grossing Tamil film ever. |
| 3 | Stranger Things (TV series) |
|
1,110,852 | |
This Netflix science-fiction series (basically an 8-hour homage to early 80s kid-centric flicks like E.T., The Goonies and Explorers) was released in its entirety on July 15 to positive reviews. |
| 4 | Donald Trump |
|
1,022,010 | |
To be fair, he was probably going to be on this list anyway; the timeframe includes the comedown from his convention spike. But there's no denying the sudden boost he got on 28/29 July, when he suggested on-air that the Russians should hack Hillary Clinton's (#1) email server, making him arguably the first ever US presidential candidate to invite a foreign power to attack his own country. |
| 5 | Tim Kaine |
|
1,018,201 | |
Kaine, a current United States Senator, and former Governor from Virginia, was named as Hillary Clinton's vice-presidential candidate on July 22. I must say Kaine was not high on my radar because he does not showboat online, though the Wall Street Journal put him on Hillary's shortlist last month. Virginia is also a swing state, probably one Trump would have to win to have any chance of being elected. |
| 6 | Suicide Squad (film) |
|
854,350 |  |
DC Comics' ramshackle crew of pressganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, are the stars of one of the most anticipated films in the nascent DC Cinematic Universe, due for release on 5 August. |
| 7 | Bill Clinton |
|
849,257 |  |
The former President widely regarded as one of the most persuasive speakers in modern American politics drew on all his talents to support his wife's candidacy for his former position. Whether it worked or not is unclear; many were nonplussed by his oration, which, having begun with the phrase, "In the spring of 1971, I met a girl..", drew unintentional attention to his infidelities. |
| 8 | Chelsea Clinton |
|
857,452 | .jpg) |
The woman who very well could become the first offspring of two US Presidents gave a warmly received speech in support of her mother's candidacy at the DNC. |
| 9 | Pokémon Go |
|
806,097 | |
The curiousest thing about Pokemon Go, at least for me, is how it has dissolved the barrier between video games and reality. Video games are the most popular entertainment medium in the world, but they have always been confined to certain spaces- that kid shouting abuse through his headset in his mother's basement; the harried mother catching some alone time on the bus; the family pulling out the console on Christmas Day. All easy to ignore. But now, the game has not only entered the outside world, but it has become the outside world- to the point where people who have never even contemplated playing a video game have found themselves pulled into this one, as their houses and places of business were transformed into gyms and Pokestops. |
| 10 | Star Trek Beyond |
|
681,239 |  |
The latest in the Star Trek reboot film series has been holding steady for a second week. The film stars Chris Pine (pictured) as Captain Kirk, and was released on July 22 to positive reviews. It grossed over $117 million in its opening weekend, but has seen some pretty steep drops since then. |
Eight featured articles were promoted these weeks.
Two featured lists were promoted these weeks.
Fourteen featured pictures were promoted these weeks.
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
A paper to be presented at the 2016 OpenSym conference titled "Evaluating and Improving Navigability of Wikipedia: A Comparative Study of Eight Language Editions"[1] attempts to determine which links should appear at or near the top of a Wikipedia article. Using the Wikipedia clickstream data, the four researchers found that on the English Wikipedia, an average of 30% of article traffic comes via links from other Wikipedia articles. They cite previous research[2][3] (coauthored by some of the same authors, like a third related paper[4]; see also here) which has shown that most readers focus their attention on the content of an article that appears "above the fold"—usually just the lede section and the top of the infobox. This suggests that it would be easier for readers to browse related content if links to the most relevant related articles appeared near the top of an article, which would improve the overall navigability of Wikipedia. Their goal is to make it easier for readers to move between related pages by determining which articles are most closely related to a given article, and should therefore be linked in the top section where readers are mostly likely to see them.
The researchers determined the relationships between articles without using keywords or categories. Instead, they generated a type of directed network graph called a bow tie model, which determines how closely the linked article is to the article that links to it based on the relationships between other articles that link to and from both of them. By looking at the links present within different 'views' of a large set of articles (e.g. the first lede paragraph, the whole lede section, the infobox, or the entire page) across different wikis, the researchers could quantify how much related content is accessible from the part of an article that readers are mostly likely to see. They concluded by describing how their research findings could be used to create a system for recommending links that should be included in article ledes and infoboxes.
The paper also sheds new light on the widely discussed phenomenon that by clicking on the first link in an Wikipedia article and repeating the process, one will eventually arrive at the article philosophy:
A new journal called Wiki Studies is being launched. As explained by founding editor Bob Cummings (a professor for Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi and author of a 2009 book titled "Lazy virtues: teaching writing in the age of Wikipedia"):
The submission deadline for the first annual volume, envisaged to appear in March 2017, is 31 December 2016.
See the research events page on Meta-wiki for upcoming conferences and events, including submission deadlines.
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.
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Until recently, wiki users haven’t had much reason to visit the Special:Notifications page. Outside of aggregating all your old messages, it didn’t do much.
Last week, however, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Collaboration team completed a round of major enhancements to the notifications system that included a complete rewrite of the notifications page. The page’s new design and tools make it a place where users can both get a broader overview of all their messaging activity, and narrow their focus to just the topics that interest them most. Here’s a quick tour of this new messaging hub—and a look at a few other new features that are making the notifications system more convenient and helpful.
View the whole wiki world: On the notifications page, you can now monitor messages from all the wikis on which you’re active. This “cross-wiki” capability has been available in the drop-down notification panels for a few months, but the panels display only a subset of the newest notifications and show only unread cross-wiki messages. On the notifications page, you can see your entire message history on a remote wiki—both read and unread—as if you were there
Narrow your focus: One of the most noticeable features on the new notifications page is the recent activity panel of filtering options on the left. The recent activity panel lists all the wikis on which you have unread messages as well as the individual pages that the messages are about. Clicking on a wiki name gives you access to all your notifications on that wiki (as described above). Clicking on a specific page enables you to focus in on a subject or discussion by accessing all your new and old messages about that page. Next to recent activity, another set of filters at the top of the notifications page lets you filter by read or unread message status—helping users surface older messages or concentrate only on what’s new.
A cleaner, more readable interface, with improved pagination and power tools for marking groups of messages as read, cap off a list of improvements that make this formerly obscure page into one that notification power users, in particular, will want to take a second look at. (To access that page, type “Special:Notifications” in the search bar or click on the “all notifications” link at the bottom of the notifications panels.)
In addition to completing work on the notifications page, the Collaboration Team launched a number of other new notification features recently.
Expandable bundles: Users have complained for some time about getting barraged by similar notifications related to a single page or event. Repetitive thank-you messages, for example, can be a distraction for some highly active editors.
Expandable bundles make such duplicative messages more manageable: Users receive one collective message (“5 people thanked you for your edit …”), which can be expanded to reveal the individual notifications underneath. Introduced originally for cross-wiki messages only, bundling is now reducing clutter across a range of message types.
More consistent classification: Another complaint from users has been that they didn’t understand the logic used to differentiate “alerts” versus “messages” in the two drop-down notification panels. Alerts, with its bright red icon, suggests a level of urgency. So why, for example, were page-link messages in that category? It was distracting for many to have that red icon light up, only to find some innocuous announcement. To create a system that’s more predictable and consistent with expectations, we surveyed users from the English- and French-language Wikipedias about which notifications they feel are the most urgent, and then completely re-sorted the panels accordingly. Astute users have noticed message types switching sides (no, not a bug!). A few may have observed that the “messages” panel is now called “notices”, a change that more accurately describes this somewhat less critical group. You can read more about how notifications are classified over on MediaWiki.org.
Changes to mark as read/unread: In the past, opening the alerts panel caused all the notifications there to be marked as read. Now that alerts are explicitly the messages that users consider most crucial, this makes little sense, and the automatic marking-as-read has been removed.
While it’s possible that this change might lead to a buildup of unread messages, new and more convenient controls for marking messages as read/unread should offset the risk. There’s a new link on the notifications page that marks all messages in a given wiki as read with one click. And users can now easily toggle between read and unread states by simply clicking on the blue read/unread indicator in the corner of every message.
Let us know what you think: The Collaboration team has been making improvements to the notifications system for the last ten months or so. This last round of releases completes our planned work, and the team is moving onto other projects—but we’ll keep fixing problems and our ears are always open for good ideas. If you have praise, blame, comments or bugs to contribute, please stop by the notifications talk page and let us hear from you.
Joe Matazzoni, Product Manager, Editing Product team
Wikimedia Foundation
User scripts allow registered users to customise almost any aspect of the Wikipedia interface. They can enhance the reading experience, assist with editing, or provide other functionality, supplementing the choices already available in Special:Preferences. See Wikipedia:User scripts for further information, including instructions.
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{{subst:iusc|1=User:Fred_Gandt/linkRedirectTitle.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:Esquivalience/mathjax.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:Fred_Gandt/sectionFooters.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:Mxn/CommentsInLocalTime.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:Omni Flames/PendingChangesLink.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:Music1201/QuickLinks.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:קיפודנחש/viewstats.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:Fred Gandt/responsiveHistoryCompare.js}}
{{subst:iusc|1=User:Czar/closexfd.js}}
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia tech ambassadors. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Problems
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).
