The Signpost
Single-page Edition
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17 January 2017

From the editorNext steps for the Signpost
News and notes
Surge in RFA promotions—a sign of lasting change?
Interview
What is it like to edit Wikipedia when you're blind?
In the media
Year-end roundups, Wikipedia's 16th birthday, and more
Featured content
One year ends, and another begins
Arbitration report
Concluding 2016 and covering 2017's first two cases
Traffic report
Out with the old, in with the new
Technology report
Tech present, past, and future
Recent research
Female Wikipedians aren't more likely to edit women biographies; Black Lives Matter in Wikipedia
 

2017-01-17

Next steps for the Signpost

Please note the subscription/notification poll described at the end.

Since joining the Signpost team and assuming the role of editor in chief in August 2016, I've struggled with two competing thoughts. I'm honored to help continue the important work of this publication; but I'm concerned about our future, as a volunteer-produced work covering an increasingly complex network of projects and organizations.

On the one hand, the Signpost team, and our occasional contributors, continually impress and inspire with their work, whether it be relevant and carefully-researched stories or a badly needed technical fix. The opportunity to work alongside them, to help present their work to our readers, and to learn from them, is a source of great pride and satisfaction.

But on the other hand, the problems we face—and that all, or most, of my predecessors have faced—are stark, and the solutions are not readily apparent. Our core team is small and overtaxed; we miss publication deadlines; and we are not as diverse, by any number of measures, as we should be.

The value of the Signpost

The Signpost, since its inception in 2005, has built a strong and important legacy. While I, and my colleagues and predecessors, have made some mistakes and omissions, the publication has consistently played a central role in helping Wikipedians and Wikimedians understand our ever-expanding world, track important developments, and engage with various initiatives. Many of our stories—coverage of WikiLeaks in 2010, and of the Knowledge Engine in 2016, come to mind—have documented stories whose importance goes beyond the ranks of Wikimedians, and have filled gaps left by media entities that sometimes struggle to engage with the complexities of the Wikimedia world. I recently asked for perspectives on the Signpost's value on the website Quora, and have enjoyed reading through the answers; I hope to see more there, or in the comments here.

But much of our process and technology is "legacy" in the less agreeable sense. Inefficiencies tax the limited time and attention of our personnel, and impede our ability to present a superior news product. Our format, news offerings, publication schedule, and delivery mechanisms are not as consistent as we, or our readers, would like.

Recruitment and retention are key

Most of my discussions about these issues, whether with "Signpost insiders" or occasional readers, have pointed to "R&R"—recruitment and retention—as the key issues. I agree with this assessment—to a point.

But as we begin 2017, rather than focus entirely on R&R, we are going to focus on some of the issues we believe impact R&R.

When volunteers come forward to work with us, do we offer clear roles and assignments, so they can quickly contribute in satisfying ways? Do we give them the support they need to succeed? When writers or other contributors do leave the Signpost, can future employers in communications or research see the value of what they've done here? These are some of the questions demanding our attention.

What we can improve

We have already made some "under the hood" changes that will make things easier going forward. My predecessor Gamaliel had the foresight to bring in a team member with a professional background in human resources, Rosiestep, whose insights have helped us think more clearly about R&R. We adopted Slack to serve as our "newsroom"—a discussion platform that lets both regular and occasional contributors discuss and refine stories and longer-term planning. We have begun using the open platform Hypothes.is to support more sophisticated editing of stories submitted on-wiki.

Already this year, TheDJ updated the CSS for our pages, making us readable on mobile devices. And we have been exploring the Newsletter extension, currently under development by Qgil-WMF and others, which may allow us to offer more useful subscription options in the future. A team of volunteers has emerged to plan for a revamp of our publication bot, which will greatly simplify our work when complete.

As we move forward, we want to continue to expand our coverage to more thoroughly cover the international, multi-project, multi-language totality of the Wikimedia world. We hope to make our content more accessible via RSS, which should in turn improve our exposure outside Wikipedia, via services like Planet Wikimedia and Google News.

Did you know the Signpost's name is a pun? I only discovered this recently, when reading Michael Snow's initial announcement in 2005. A core feature of the publication, that distinguishes it from most wiki content, is that our posts are signed; attribution is a key feature. But is our approach to attribution sufficient to serve the needs of Wikipedians looking to build a resume for a career in journalism, communications, or research? Perhaps not. We will be looking to tweak the way we approach attribution in our pages, and to improve the visibility of the Signpost in places like LinkedIn, to help those who have substantially contributed to our work more effectively communicate their role to the wider world.

Could formal, clearly-defined roles help us build a team that's more consistent, or more inviting to (say) non-native English speakers? That's another angle we're exploring; we may even take steps to create a formal internship program.

Even as we experiment and make improvements, we will of course continue to publish regularly. Full disclosure, though: we might strain your expectations of "regularity." We explicitly changed from weekly to fortnightly publication in 2016, and we've found that even the new schedule is challenging to sustain. We are considering changing to a monthly publication schedule, partially in recognition of the various communication channels that have sprung up around the Signpost over the years. We're especially interested in your thoughts and wishes about our publication schedule.

What do you think?

Many past "from the editor" notes have broadly called for new contributors; and of course, we welcome those who want to pitch in. If you want details on how you can contribute, the framework offered in this October 2015 still applies. But for the moment, we're not actively pursuing contributors, beyond those who have a clear idea what they want to do, and are pretty capable of forging ahead with limited guidance. If that's you, please let us know; but if clear guidance is important to you, give us a little more time. We expect to put out a more comprehensive call in the near future, when we're better prepared to work with new volunteers to find the best fit.

We do want to stay in touch about our progress, and about our plans as they evolve. I plan to use the Signpost's main talk page for occasional updates on what we're working on; please keep an eye on it for the most up-to-date information. Please chime in there, or in the comment section below, if you have thoughts about our priorities and next steps.

How do you like to get your Signpost?

Would you like cream with that? How about some sugar?

We expect to have some new options available for subscribers in the coming months. Please fill in this poll to help inform our decisions. (It's based on a Google form; if you prefer not to use Google, just leave us a note below instead.)

Some background information, and the full poll questions, are available here.




Reader comments

2017-01-17

Surge in RFA promotions—a sign of lasting change?



Reader comments

2017-01-17

What is it like to edit Wikipedia when you're blind?

Graham87 at the Dubai Museum in 2011

To say that Wikipedian Graham Pearce (Graham87) has never seen light wouldn't be quite true. On a number of occasions up to the age of nine, his doctor or his mother would shine a torch into his left eye, and the few retinal cells that had not died would pick up a strange flash of light. But since then his retinopathy of prematurity has made those fleeting experiences distant memories (and rather meaningless ones, he says).

Not only is Graham totally blind, but as a result of being born 15 weeks premature he has only 50% hearing in one ear—although his other ear is perfect. While some might regard this as a threadbare perceptual situation, that's not the way Graham sees the world or himself (to use a visual metaphor that blind people become inured to). To know him is to become acquainted with a rich internal landscape, where the linguistic, the spatial, and the proportional seem more sophisticated than for many sighted people. Ask him whether Tokyo is more northerly than Beijing and he'll tell you. Ask him what the cubed root of 97 is, and you'll know within a couple of seconds (if only to one decimal place).

Now 29, Graham has been a devoted Wikipedian for eleven years, and achieved adminship nine years ago with a 67–0–0 result. He spends an average of six to eight hours a day onwiki on tasks that keep the site operating smoothly, such as merging page histories, repairing vandalism, and blocking miscreants—all in addition to article writing and editing. From time to time he's been active in the offline Wikimedia movement: he attended Wikimania in Washington DC (2012) and in Hong Kong (2013), and he expects to be at Montreal this year.

He and I sat down to a Skype audio interview for the Signpost across the 3300 kilometres (2000 mi) between Australia's east and west coasts.

Before Wikipedia

Tracing Graham's history on Wikipedia, and further back to his early experiences with computers and the Internet, demonstrates what a profound difference information technology has made to the lives of many people who have an unusual perceptual profile. This is especially true for those who are visually impaired.

"My mother started teaching me braille when I was three. A year later I started typing braille with a Perkins Brailler, essentially a braille typewriter from the 1940s that's still in use today." He adds: "A lot of blind tech has always been a decade behind." At school, Graham used an automated machine that would translate from braille to print. In an unjust twist, the system excluded him from the "gifted and talented program" because of his blindness. But this is where we see the precursor to his involvement in Wikipedia: during “silent reading”, he'd indulge himself by reading the school's hard-copy encyclopedia and the Atlas for the Blind, while his fellow students chose children's fiction.

The first of two milestones came in 1997, when he experienced a full PC standard qwerty keyboard in touch-typing tutorials at Perth's Association for the Blind, "a pretty crude setup", he says. It was there that he learned how to use the Internet, and Microsoft Word and Excel. But still he had no proper facilities at home. "Although I'd had a desktop PC at home since 1998, it had no 'speaking voice', so it wasn't much use to me."

The second milestone was a grant he received to install a copy of JAWS on his home computer (JAWS is a computer screen reader with text-to-speech output). "That marked the start of my fast trajectory. I devoured the JAWS basic training tapes and achieved facility through self-training. It went way beyond what I’d learnt at what was then the Association. But still we had no Internet at home." Finally, in 2000, his family was able to access dial-up Internet at home, just before he started high school.

I ask him what his intellectual interests were at the time: "Internet, computers, maths, and music. I went to a specialist music high school. I got in on a voice scholarship, and I'd already learned to play the piano. That's aside from a disastrous attempt to play the recorder in year 2!" Graham also has absolute pitch, a coveted ability among musicians.

Becoming a Wikipedian

Fast-forward to the end of high school, just before he joined the English Wikipedia. What predisposed him to the kind of writing and editing required of a Wikipedian? He says: "I had some experience in writing and editing essays, and I'd occasionally heard about Wikipedia. In February 2005, I took the plunge and made my first edit. I took to it immediately using JAWS. From memory, my first activities were on a list of interesting and unusual place names.

"I didn't even think to tell people I was blind. It just didn't occur to me, even though there was nothing to stop me from telling people. I think I was mainly a lurker in the early stages, on forums like Featured Article Candidates. I gradually moved from lurker to editor over the first three or four months, and copyedited quite a few articles nominated for FAC. I remember getting into trouble with JAWS, which got a lot of homonyms wrong, as you can imagine. Someone accused me of vandalism at FAC because I'd changed "wear and tear" to "ware and tare". The accuser was the first person on Wikipedia I told that I'm blind. That night he announced it on his user page, and word soon spread. It was a turning point for me, I now realise: it improved my confidence."

In 2006 Graham started to advocate for accessibility on the site. He was using an older version of JAWS, and couldn't afford to upgrade; it didn’t read CSS properly, and HiddenStructure caused JAWS to display "weird things". He wrote messages on relevant talk pages. Sometimes people were receptive, and with the help of others he expanded into broader issues about accessibility. One example was main-page headings, which were chaotic. He got that fixed.

In those early days he wasn’t able to view diffs properly: "I discovered that by viewing the html source and looking for the CSS class diffchange, the diff changes could be accessed. But this method is problematic when people add/remove line breaks while making edits. In these cases I have to restore the line breaks to figure out what else the editor changed."

How is it different from vision-based editing?

Braille typewriter: modern technology makes it seem incredibly clunky.

I want to know more about the experience of editing as a blind person. The most obvious difference, he says, is that nothing is synoptic: "It's all presented to you in a very linear fashion, in the order the page is written in html. Buttons that appear to sighted people at the top—including the menus, the pull-downs, and the search box—are actually at the bottom when you use JAWS. Under them, right at the bottom, are the items you see on the left-side margin." I notice he uses a visual metaphor ("bottom", not "end") to express it in a way that's easier for sighted people. Graham adds: "Images, of course, are just part of the linear stream of syntax". He does the odd bit of maintenance and replacement on images, but understandably it's a minor part of his work.

Graham finds it easier to edit after copy-pasting from edit-mode onto a plain text file. He can switch back and forth between wiki and a text file because using JAWS he doesn't have to visually re-find the equivalent place in each. He has JAWS set to a default line-by-line display (in audio). "You can go word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, if you want, using the arrow keys as modifiers. And you can jump between section headings."

However, it's by no means a perfect system, and he's found the slow progress in JAWS' feature set frustrating over the years.

Astonishingly, his reading speed can be up to 500 words per minute—not skimming, he emphasises. "I haven't got any faster since 2003, and this speed is typical of blind computer users." I hear an example in the background of the conversation; it sounds like incredibly fast, garbled, unmodulated speech, stopping and starting at his whim. But what is an auditory muddle to me is a super-fast, clear stream of information to someone who's used it for years. This is Graham's bridge to the world. JAWS even signals that a word is initially capitalised by raising the pitch with which it speaks the word. The contour of yes–no questions (on talkpages) rises just as it does in speech. It's all in a US east coast accent by his choice ("the British accent sounds fake and awful for some reason", he says).

At the end of the interview I can't resist asking him about the sensory modes in which he dreams. He says: "I guess it's more strongly auditory and tactile than for a sighted person. And if it's spatial, it's not spatial in a visual way." Afterwards, he links me to an online article on the subject.



Reader comments

2017-01-17

Year-end roundups, Wikipedia's 16th birthday, and more


If the BLT's simplicity earns its inventor "hero" status, what of the villain who invented this monstrosity?





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



Reader comments

2017-01-17

One year ends, and another begins

Contribute  —  
Share this
By Armbrust
Jackson is the largest municipality in Mississippi, by both land area and population.

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 18 December to 14 January.
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Jochen Rindt took the Lotus 72's maiden victory at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix.
The first Belgium A-squad in 1901 featured four Englishmen.
The water pipit is evaluated as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The cover art for the first edition of Astounding Stories of Super-Science was created by Hans Waldemar Wessolowski.
Tamannaah at the theatrical trailer launch of Baahubali: The Beginning
Bradley Cooper's breakthrough came with the role of a reckless teacher in The Hangover.
The blue-and-yellow macaw is a large South American parrot with blue top parts and yellow under parts.

Twelve featured articles were promoted.

Thirteen featured lists were promoted.

Twelve featured pictures were promoted.



Reader comments

2017-01-17

Concluding 2016 and covering 2017's first two cases

Happy 2017, readers of the Arbitration report. For the first issue of the year we cover the remaining 2016 motions and the first two cases accepted by the Arbitration Committee in 2017.

War of the Pacific case

The first case accepted by the committee opened on 3 January. It involves an accusation by filing party Keysanger that MarshalN20 has made personal attacks. Previously, Marshal was topic-banned from all Latin American history articles in the Argentine History case. The topic ban was later suspended for a year by an 8–0 motion on 1 September 2015. The case was accepted in an 10–0 decision and is currently in the evidence stage.

The Magioladitis case

Also opened on 3 January, the Magioladitis case was filed by Ramaksoud2000, who has claimed that administrator Magioladitis refuses to follow the bot policy, specifically WP:COSMETICBOT. Magioladitis's bot Yobot has been blocked 19 times since March 2009. The case is also currently in the evidence stage.

In briefs



Reader comments

2017-01-17

Out with the old, in with the new

Your traffic reports of the ten most-viewed Wikipedia articles for the week of Dec. 11–17, 18–24, 25–31, and January 1–7, 2017. We've re-ordered things starting with this issue to put the most recent weekly report first. On the other hand, 2017 kicked off rather quietly compared to the last-minute rush of notable deaths as 2016 came to a close.

Week of January 1 to 7, 2017

A New Year: 2017 kicks off more sedately than the string of highly notable deaths last week. The chart is led by the popular Indian film Dangal with 1.18 million views. Mariah Carey follows on the strength, or lack thereof, of her New Year's Eve performance at Times Square.

For the full Top 25 this week, see Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/January 1 to 7, 2017.

For the week of January 1 to 7, 2017, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Dangal (film) Start class 1,182,405
Up from #7 last week, though with fewer views, but enough to reach one number after the flurry of last week's notable deaths. Aamir Khan (pictured) is without question the biggest star in Bollywood, a world where star power counts for a lot. So it's not surprising that his latest film is already breaking records, having made ₹1.07 billion ($15.78 million) in its first three days.
2 Mariah Carey Featured Article 1,177,898
The diva singer ended 2016 with a performance gone terribly wrong in New York's Times Square on live television. I saw it happen live – the music starts and she walks out and starts talking instead of singing, implying something was going wrong with her equipment, it was getting so painful I was surprised they didn't go to commercial. I immediately went to twitter to enjoy the first responders of humor. 2016 – good riddance!
3 Om Puri Start class 1,091,754
This Indian actor died on January 6.
4 Rogue One C-class 887,080
Felicity Jones (pictured) stars in this Star Wars universe movie, which is continuing a decent run on this chart.
5 Carrie Fisher B-Class 862,861
A drop from 9.2 million views and #1 last week. It's not enough that 2016 took so many beloved people from us; at times the year seemed to be sadistically toying with us. When we first heard that the onetime Princess Leia had suffered a heart attack on a plane, naturally we feared that 2016 was about to turn its murderous eye onto one of the icons of our childhood. And then she was reported to be in stable condition, and we breathed again. And then, out of the blue, George Michael died. And then she did as well. But, as she said, given enough time, everything becomes funny, so maybe she would have found the humour in this.
6 List of Sherlock episodes List 786,178
This hasn't been on the chart since January 2014, only because that was when the last series of Sherlock (#14) aired.
7 Deaths in 2017 List 758,898
A new year, a new Deaths article in the top 10.
8 Elizabeth II Featured Article 757,937
For yet another week, the longest-reigning British monarch in history places on this list thanks to The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years in which she is played by Claire Foy.
9 Sandford Fleming Start class 705,516
A Scottish Canadian engineer and inventor who was honored with Google Doodle for his 190th birthday.
10 Jimmy Carter C-Class 696,567
The 39th President of the United States (1977–1981), his article was very popular on January 3 (620K views). Must be due to this reddit TIL thread titled "On his second day in office, President Jimmy Carter pardoned all evaders of the Vietnam War drafts." which has over 48,000 upvotes.

Week of December 24 to 31, 2016

Circle of Death: And so, 2016 ends as it began, with a flurry of unexpected and tragic deaths. The deaths of Carrie Fisher, George Michael and Debbie Reynolds in such close proximity sent a collective shock wave through our user base. Indeed, if this were any other year, this list might have seen record breaking numbers. Our viewers, bless their hearts, were driven to a quest to understand their idols' world. This was, as I am sure they learned, a monumental task in Carrie's case. In her stand up show Wishful Drinking, Carrie outlined her family story using the sort of blackboard one normally associates with TV murder investigations; to fully grasp every scandal, tragedy and shenanigan her family have witnessed would take an article of its own. But our users seem game; this list very much resembles Carrie's board. I've tried to give a vague outline of the connections below, but forgive me if I missed anything.

For the full Top 25 for this week see Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/December 25 to 31, 2016.

For the week of December 25 to 31, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Carrie Fisher B-Class 9,202,699
It's not enough that 2016 took so many beloved people from us; at times the year seemed to be sadistically toying with us. When we first heard that the onetime Princess Leia had suffered a heart attack on a plane, naturally we feared that 2016 was about to turn its murderous eye onto one of the icons of our childhood. And then she was reported to be in stable condition, and we breathed again. And then, out of the blue, George Michael died. And then she did as well. But, as she said, given enough time, everything becomes funny, so maybe she would have found the humour in this.
2 George Michael B-Class 7,744,516
Like many in the music business, George Michael spent much of his life under masks. A British singer of Greek descent, he changed his name from Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou. Throughout the 80s, he adopted the swagger of a preening sex god whilst being secretly gay. After being forced out of the closet in the most humiliating circumstance imaginable, he decided to own his identity, and campaigned vociferously on gay rights issues. Perhaps the best outcome of his sudden death on Christmas Day has been the outpouring of stories by people whose lives were bettered by his quiet charity, news of which has quieted Britain's notoriously homophobic tabloid press.
3 Debbie Reynolds C-class 7,331,227
The mother of Carrie Fisher, who was a world-class movie star in her own right, having appeared in Singin' in the Rain, How The West Was Won and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, for which she was nominated for an Oscar, outlived her daughter by less than 48 hours. According to her son, her last words were, "I miss her so much; I want to be with Carrie."
4 Billie Lourd Start class 3,175,053
What must it be like to lose both your mother and your grandmother in the space of two days? The only child of Carrie Fisher, who, initially against her family's wishes, is also an actress, with a regular role in the horror/comedy TV series Scream Queens, had to face that horror just after Christmas. Thankfully, her family and fellow cast members have rallied around her.
5 Eddie Fisher (singer) B-Class 2,883,834
The father of Carrie Fisher was a mega-selling crooner in the days before rock and roll. His best known song is probably "Oh My Papa"; known to my generation most likely because Krusty the Clown sang it on The Simpsons. In her stage show, Wishful Drinking, Carrie explained how, having fathered her and her brother, he went to console his best friend's widow, Elizabeth Taylor, in the wake of his death. "My father flew to Elizabeth's side, gradually making his way slowly to her front". She would very quickly ditch him for Richard Burton. Carrie seemed to have forgiven him by his final years; she sent him strippers on his 81st birthday.
6 Todd Fisher B-Class 2,247,399 The brother of Carrie Fisher, whose eclectic career has flitted between the entertainment industry and architecture, appears to have assumed the role of holding his family together in the wake of his mother and sister's deaths.
7 Dangal (film) Start class 1,776,966
Aamir Khan (pictured) is without question the biggest star in Bollywood, a world where star power counts for a lot. So it's not surprising that his latest film is already breaking records, having made ₹1.07 billion ($15.78 million) in its first three days. And it's not stopping; viewing numbers have doubled since last week.
8 Rogue One C-class 2,239,147
Felicity Jones (pictured) stars in this Star Wars universe movie, which has grossed over $700 million. It probably won't dominate this chart as thoroughly as Star Wars: The Force Awakens did a year ago, but it will probably do quite well all the same.
9 Deaths in 2016 List 1,484,927
The deaths list had always acted as this list's lodestone; it was so consistent on a day to day basis that where it appeared was an indication of the weekly traffic levels. Not anymore. Notable deaths have been so freakishly frequent in 2016 that as the year nears its close, people are struggling to make sense of it, even to the point of personifying 2016 as a kind of sentient demon. In the wave of the new year, we've seen the list cross a million views, possibly for the first time since we started this project.
10 Bryan Lourd Start class 1,372,098 The onetime partner of Carrie Fisher and father to her only daughter, Billie Lourd, is notable not only for being one of the premier talent agents in Hollywood, but also for having left Carrie for a man.

December 18 to 24, 2016

Star Gabors: Hollywood history old and new collided this week as the huge success of Rogue One was overshadowed by the death of 50s star Zsa Zsa Gabor, which led Wikipedia users to search her and her extensive showbiz family. The Star Wars universe saw its own collision with history, as Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the film series, suffered a fatal heart attack. As per usual for Wikipedia, Christmas was hardly worth a mention, with only a Google Doodle drawing attention to it.

For the full Top 25 for this week, see Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/December 18 to 24, 2016.

For the week of December 18 to 24, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Zsa Zsa Gabor B-class 2,248,668
The heyday of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who died this week just 50 days short of her 100th birthday, was way before my time, and, from the looks of things, before the time of most Wikipedia users, since this list is peppered with the same pages I looked up to research her. Groomed for stardom from a young age and a professional celebrity before the term existed (she was married nine times to various society figures), she was also, briefly but appropriately, the great-grandmother of Paris Hilton.
2 Rogue One C-class 2,239,147
Numbers are up for this Star Wars universe movie, which saw just a 38% drop over its second weekend at the US box office. (It first appeared on this chart in April 2016.) Felicity Jones (pictured) stars in the film, which has already grossed over $550 million. It probably won't dominate this chart as thoroughly as Star Wars: The Force Awakens did a year ago, but it will probably do quite well all the same.
3 'Tis the Season disambig 1,543,670
For the third year in a row, a Google Doodle sent hundreds of thousands of people to a disambig page. You'd think they would have sorted this by now.
4 Carrie Fisher B-Class 1,233,129
It seems that, whatever your political persuasion, the general consensus is that 2016 has been a fairly terrible year. And the one reason we can all agree on is that the Grim Reaper has called open season on the celebrisphere. So when the actress so fondly remembered for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the Star Wars films suffered a heart attack on the day before Christmas Eve, everyone girded themselves for another loss. Although her condition initially stabilized, she died on December 27.
5 The OA N/A 905,746
This Netflix series, created by and starring Brit Marling (pictured), essentially explores ideas she first discussed in her film Sound of My Voice, about a woman who may or may not be supernaturally gifted forming a cult around herself. Released in its entirety on the 16th of December, it has become the latest Netflix watercooler topic, though less in a "you have to see it" kinda way than a "you really should just check it out" kinda way.
6 Darth Vader B-Class 854,652 The most iconic villain in modern history (I challenge you to disagree) made an appearance in the latest Star Wars spinoff, Rogue One. He's actually appeared on this list several times over the last few weeks, but his low mobile count suggested he was usurping the throne. This is the first time I feel his mobile count is high enough to warrant inclusion.
7 Star Wars Good Article 851,108
See above. And #2. And #4.
8 Steve Biko C-Class 848,967
The anti-Apartheid activist who was tortured to death by the South African police in 1977 got a Google Doodle for what should have been his 70th birthday on 18 December.
9 Deaths in 2016 List 841,579
The deaths list had always acted as this list's lodestone; it was so consistent on a day to day basis that where it appeared was an indication of the weekly traffic levels. Not anymore. Notable deaths have been so freakishly frequent in 2016 that as the year nears its close, people are struggling to make sense of it, even to the point of personifying 2016 as a kind of sentient demon.
10 Dangal (film) Start class 814,271
Aamir Khan (pictured) is without question the biggest star in Bollywood, a world where star power counts for a lot. So it's not surprising that his latest film is already breaking records, having made ₹1.07 billion ($15.78 million) in its first three days.

December 11 to 17, 2016

Two Leaders and One War: Two articles exceeded two million views this week, and no others even exceeded one million. The death of Canadian actor Alan Thicke (#1) leads the list; a successful actor but perhaps a surprisingly strong showing considering his heyday was in the 1980s and 1990s. And in second place, we have Rogue One, the new Star Wars (#9) franchise film entry, likely to remain with us for a few weeks. In more serious matters, the Battle of Aleppo (2012–16) hit #7, and two related articles (Aleppo at #11 and Syrian Civil War at #20) also made the Top 25.

For the Full Top 25 for this week, see Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/December 11 to 17, 2016.

For the week of December 11 to 17, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Alan Thicke C-class 2,734,867
The Canadian actor best known for his role as the dad on the American sitcom Growing Pains (1985–1992), he died of a heart attack at age 69 on December 13. He was also a songwriter who penned a number of popular TV show themes. Indeed, he had a rather successful life, though it seem a bit surprising that his death was such a solid #1 for the week.
2 Rogue One C-class 2,151,908
This Star Wars (#9) universe movie, but not part of the main series, was released on December 16, 2016. (It first appeared on this chart in April 2016.) Felicity Jones (#21) (pictured) stars in the film, which has already grossed over $320 million. It probably won't dominate this chart as thoroughly as Star Wars: The Force Awakens did a year ago, but it will probably do quite well all the same.
3 Rex Tillerson C-class 917,566
The CEO of ExxonMobil (pictured shaking hands with Vladimir Putin) is Donald Trump's pick to be America's next Secretary of State.
4 Deaths in 2016 List 780,226
The deaths list has always acted as this list's lodestone; it is so consistent on a day to day basis that where it appears is an indication of the weekly traffic levels. And it is quite high at #4 this week. That said, we may have to recalibrate our mathematics, since its numbers have been slowly going up over the last few weeks, and that continued again this week.
5 Westworld (TV series) C-Class 662,835
The season finale episode, The Bicameral Mind, aired on December 4. Views are down about 50% from last week, but that's still good enough to be #5 this week.
6 Battle of Dunkirk B-Class 643,547
Appearing due to the release of a new trailer for the upcoming July 2017 film Dunkirk (#23). A seven-minute trailer appeared at select IMAX showings of Rogue One (#2).
7 Battle of Aleppo (2012–16) 629,731
As Syrian government forces recently captured most the city of Aleppo (#11), the world is again paying a bit more attention to this terrible conflict. It is an odd irony that this article follows another battle on this list and which only appears due to an upcoming movie about it. Frankly, digesting the reality of war right in front of our eyes is harder than watching movies about a 75 year old battle.
8 Robin Thicke B-Class 609,246
The popular singer is the son of #1.
9 Star Wars Good Article 588,514
See #2.
10 Elizabeth II Featured Article 587,004
For yet another week, the longest-reigning British monarch in history places on this list thanks to The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy.




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2017-01-17

Tech present, past, and future

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By Evad37 and Legoktm
Ward Cunningham's keynote at the 2017 Wikimedia Developer Summit

Ward Cunningham, inventor of the first wiki, delivered the first day’s keynote, titled “Has our success made it hard to see your own contribution”. He used one slide for the entire keynote, aiming for 10 minutes of speaking and 50 minutes of questions, though he was ultimately unsuccessful in that timing. The second day featured a Q&A with newly hired CTO, Victoria Coleman, and the VP of Product, Wes Moran, with questions coming from an All Our Ideas survey as well as those asked in person. Notes from other sessions are available on mediawiki.org, and videos should be posted shortly. L

This is what we wished for

The Community Tech team's 2016 Community Wishlist Survey was held last month, and the results are in! There were 265 proposals for tools, bots, and the other features to help the Wikimedia projects and their core contributors. The proposals were discussed and voted on by 1132 contributors, and 5037 support votes were cast in total. The top ten proposals, which the Community Tech team will investigate and address, are:

#10 – User rights expiration
Currently, Stewards may grant temporary user rights, but these have to be manually removed when the approved time period has expired. The proposed solution is to add a new option to set a time how long rights will last when they are granted. (Phabricator task T12493)
#9 – Fix Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report
Mr.Z-bot used to automatically compile a list of the most popular pages for each WikiProject on a monthly basis – for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Popular pages. The bot, which stopped working in April 2016, was limited to desktop pageviews and the English Wikipedia. (Phabricator task T141154)
#8 – Automatic archive for new external links
External webpages may disappear, leaving behind dead links. Preventing link rot by using a web archiving service is additional work for editors, that could instead be completed by a bot. Whilst similar to a 2015 wish to migrate dead external links to archives, this proposal includes preemptive archiving of new external links, before they become dead. (Phabricator task T153354)
#7 – Warning on unsuccessful login attempts
Hackers may attack user accounts by testing popular passwords. This proposal is to alert users of unsuccessful login attempts through the Notifications system. (Phabricator task T11838)
#6 – Wikitext editor syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting would make wikitext easier to edit. There are common use-cases for articles and templates, such as distinguising <ref></ref> tags and contents from surrounding text in a paragraph, or making sure the correct number of braces are present for code such as {{{a|{{{b|{{{c}}}}}}}}}. While syntax highlighting can be implemented through user scripts, this proposal is for integration into MediaWiki for faster loading and theme-friendly colours. (Phabricator task T101246)
#5 – Rewrite Xtools
Xtools (tools developed by User:X!) provide detailed information on users and articles. These include the Edit Counter (with detailed breakdowns of edits), Article Blamer (which shows who inserted specific text into an article), and several others. The Xtools are being completely written to provide stability and maintainability, which the current tools lack; this proposal is for assistance with rewriting and testing. (Phabricator task T153112)
#4 – Global settings
For users active on multiple wikis, the settings in Special:Preferences must be set on each wiki individually. This must be repeated each time new options are added, such as for compact interlanguage links, editor selection, and MediaViewer. (Phabricator task T16950)
#3 – Section heading URLs for non-Latin languages
Non-Latin section headings are handled poorly, in the display of the anchor portion of the url. For example, on the Russian Wikipedia, the section "Биология" on the article "Кошка" will display the url https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кошка#.D0.91.D0.B8.D0.BE.D0.BB.D0.BE.D0.B3.D0.B8.D1.8F , and cannot be reached from the url https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кошка#Биология . (Phabricator task T75092)
#2 – Edit summary length for non-Latin languages
Edit summaries in non-Latin-based language have fewer characters available than compared to English or other languages with a Latin alphabet – about half or even a third as many characters. This is because edit summaries are measured in bytes. While Latin characters take up one byte, non-latin characters require two or three. It is proposed that the edit summary length be measured in terms of characters rather than bytes. (Phabricator task T6715)
#1 – Global gadgets
Popular gadgets such as HotCat, wikEd, navigation popups, and WikiMiniAtlas, have to be maintained as separate forked scripts on each wiki they are available on. The proposed global gadgets would, from a single centralised copy, be available as gadgets on each WMF wiki. (Phabricator task T22153)

Some wishes that didn't make it into the top ten will also be worked on by the Community Tech team, to support smaller user groups without large voter numbers. Other wishes may be worked on by volunteer developers, the WMDE Technical Wishes team, or other Wikimedia Foundation product teams. E



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2017-01-17

Female Wikipedians aren't more likely to edit women biographies; Black Lives Matter in Wikipedia

A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.



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