Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/From the editors
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.
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) | 
|
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 | 
|
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 |
|
1,091,754 |  |
This Indian actor died on January 6. |
| 4 | Rogue One | 
|
887,080 |  |
Felicity Jones (pictured) stars in this Star Wars universe movie, which is continuing a decent run on this chart. |
| 5 | Carrie Fisher | 
|
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 | 
|
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 |
|
758,898 |  |
A new year, a new Deaths article in the top 10. |
| 8 | Elizabeth II |
|
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 |
|
705,516 |  |
A Scottish Canadian engineer and inventor who was honored with Google Doodle for his 190th birthday. |
| 10 | Jimmy Carter |
|
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. |
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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) |
|
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 |
|
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) |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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. |
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 | 
|
851,108 |  |
See above. And #2. And #4. |
| 8 | Steve Biko |
|
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 |
|
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) |
|
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. |
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
917,566 | .jpeg) |
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 |
|
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) |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
609,246 |  |
The popular singer is the son of #1. |
| 9 | Star Wars |
|
588,514 | |
See #2. |
| 10 | Elizabeth II |
|
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. |
| “ | Musician Score. This is a score out of 100 that is a weighted average of a musician's Wikipedia page views over the last 30 days, the Wikipedia page views over the last 30 days of the bands they were/are in, the number of followers they have on Spotify and the Wikipedia page views of both their releases as solo artists and in bands. | ” |
 | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
See or edit source data.
Data sets, consisting of either tabular or map data, can now be stored on Commons, and accessed from any wiki. The data can even be localised, with different labels for different languages. The interactive map above, showing GDP by US state, is generated from the data table at Data:Bea.gov/GDP_by_state.tab on Commons.
Raw data can be accessed using Lua, filtered, converted, mixed, and formatted. Lists, or other wikimarkup, can be generated from the data. For example, the same monthly climate data for New York can be shown as either a typical weather box...
| Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1981–2010 normals,[a] extremes 1869–present[b] | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °F (°C) | 72.0 (22.2) |
78.1 (25.6) |
86 (30) |
96.1 (35.6) |
99.0 (37.2) |
100.9 (38.3) |
106.0 (41.1) |
104 (40) |
102.0 (38.9) |
93.9 (34.4) |
84.0 (28.9) |
75.0 (23.9) |
106.0 (41.1) |
| Mean maximum °F (°C) | 57.0 (13.9) |
57.7 (14.3) |
68.0 (20.0) |
80.6 (27.0) |
87.6 (30.9) |
92.5 (33.6) |
95.4 (35.2) |
93.0 (33.9) |
89.2 (31.8) |
79.7 (26.5) |
69.6 (20.9) |
60.3 (15.7) |
95.4 (35.2) |
| Mean daily maximum °F (°C) | 38.5 (3.6) |
39.7 (4.3) |
47.8 (8.8) |
59.5 (15.3) |
70.7 (21.5) |
79.5 (26.4) |
84.4 (29.1) |
82.4 (28.0) |
75.7 (24.3) |
64.6 (18.1) |
52.7 (11.5) |
42.1 (5.6) |
61.5 (16.4) |
| Mean daily minimum °F (°C) | 25.9 (−3.4) |
26.2 (−3.2) |
33.3 (0.7) |
43.2 (6.2) |
53.4 (11.9) |
62.8 (17.1) |
68.4 (20.2) |
67.1 (19.5) |
60.4 (15.8) |
49.8 (9.9) |
39.9 (4.4) |
30.2 (−1.0) |
46.7 (8.2) |
| Mean minimum °F (°C) | 8.2 (−13.2) |
9.0 (−12.8) |
17.6 (−8.0) |
30.7 (−0.7) |
42.3 (5.7) |
52.2 (11.2) |
59.7 (15.4) |
57.6 (14.2) |
47.5 (8.6) |
36.9 (2.7) |
25.3 (−3.7) |
13.3 (−10.4) |
8.2 (−13.2) |
| Record low °F (°C) | −6.0 (−21.1) |
−15.0 (−26.1) |
3.0 (−16.1) |
12.0 (−11.1) |
32 (0) |
44.1 (6.7) |
52.0 (11.1) |
50 (10) |
39.0 (3.9) |
28.0 (−2.2) |
5 (−15) |
−13 (−25) |
−15.0 (−26.1) |
| Average precipitation inches (mm) | 3.50 (88.9) |
3.32 (84.4) |
4.00 (101.6) |
3.74 (95.1) |
3.72 (94.6) |
3.63 (92.3) |
4.39 (111.6) |
4.45 (113.0) |
3.93 (99.7) |
3.72 (94.4) |
3.54 (89.8) |
3.69 (93.8) |
45.63 (1,159.2) |
| Average snowfall inches (mm) | 7.74 (196.7) |
8.85 (224.8) |
4.82 (122.5) |
0.78 (19.8) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.0 (0.0) |
0.03 (0.8) |
0.72 (18.2) |
5.38 (136.6) |
28.32 (719.4) |
| Average precipitation days | 11.0 | 9.7 | 11.3 | 10.8 | 11.1 | 10.3 | 10.5 | 9.8 | 8.4 | 8.5 | 9.2 | 10.6 | 121.2 |
| Average snowy days | 4.2 | 3.7 | 2.4 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 2.8 | 13.9 |
| Source: edit data NOAA (relative humidity and sun 1961–1990)[1][2][3] See Geography of New York City for additional climate information from the outer boroughs. | |||||||||||||
...or as an interactive graph:
| Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
See or edit raw graph data.
Map data, stored as GeoJSON, can be displayed over a map based on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. This map of the endangered Jemez Mountains salamander habitat comes from the data at Data:ecos.fws.gov/Endangered habitat 58938/Plethodon neomexicanus.map on Commons. However, such data pages aren't needed for roads and other shapes already defined in OSM – for example, here's Interstate 696. And this is Alaska.
Data is stored as pages with a *.tab or *.map extension, in the Data: namespace on Commons. Pages are generally prefixed by their origin, such as commons:Data:Naturalearthdata.com/US states.map; sandboxes or test pages can be created with titles like Data:Sandbox/<user>.tab. The only licence currently allowed is the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. A thread on the Commons Village Pump, now archived, discussed whether more licences should be supported, and if database rights (which exits in some countries, but not the United States) should be respected.
Future plans include a spreadsheet-like editor for tabular data, tracking cross-wiki data usage through "What links here", data redirects, and supporting external data feeds. The original announcement was on the Wikitech-l mailing list. Documentation is available on MediaWiki.org for tabular data and map data. E
MediaWiki developers met in San Francisco earlier this week for the fourth annual Wikimedia Developer Summit. The first two days were filled with pre-planned sessions, and the third was a unconference-style “Get stuff done day” for hacking.
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
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:
<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)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
New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience
Newly approved bot tasks
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2016 #51 & 2017 #2. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.
Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function {{#statements: }} to get formatted data. You can also use {{#property: }} to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua. (Phabricator task T152780) The live option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. (Phabricator task T85048)about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. (Phabricator task T151770)importScript( 'User:Lourdes/AfDclosing.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/AfDclosing.js
importScript( 'User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js
importScript( 'User:Lourdes/SpecialNewPages.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/SpecialNewPages.js
importScript( 'User:Lourdes/TFAhistorylink.js' ); // Backlink: User:Lourdes/TFAhistorylink.js
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/Opinion
Eight administrators were promoted in the first 16 days of 2017, following four successful requests for adminship (RFAs) in December. This is more than any month since March 2011, which saw nine new admins. January has already seen half as many promotions as did the entirety of 2016.
From a large-scale research project in 2011 to several subsequent attempts at reform, the precipitous decline in admin promotions over the last several years has drawn the attention of the community. The Signpost investigated whether these reforms are working: whether this surge is the start of a trend, or just a temporary blip on the radar. We spoke with several recently promoted administrators, past candidates, nominators, and RFA observers to explore that question.
One common theme from their responses was acclaim for the optional RFA candidate poll (ORCP), a development championed by Anna Frodesiak that began in October 2015. It provides a forum for prospective administrators to put their names forward and receive appraisals from community members on their likelihood of passing. In 2016, of the sixteen successful RfAs, eleven (69%) had used the poll. Of 2016's twenty unsuccessful candidates, only two (10%) had first used the poll.
Montanabw, who ran unsuccessfully in September 2015, points to another improvement in the RfA process: watchlist notifications.
| “ | The watchlist notice has brought about an improvement in the tone and level of participation ... There [previously] was a free-for-all atmosphere that allowed a high level of personal attacks and unregulated debate. The lack of any broad notice provision created a situation where a significant number of participants were people who regularly monitored RfA but who were not necessarily representative of the community as a whole—many people later told me that they had no idea I was even running! I think that the process now is handled with more respect for candidates. | ” |
Generally, the sentiment that RFA has become less nasty shined through many recent candidates' reflections. NinjaRobotPirate, who passed overwhelmingly earlier this year, commented that "a lot of the nastiness has been purged" from the process. Nevertheless, he described putting himself forward as a challenge, given that "nobody likes the idea of putting their contributions on trial."
RFA's reputation as a nasty experience for well-meaning contributors has certainly not helped encourage editors to take the plunge. Sam Walton, an administrator himself who has recently begun a mini-campaign of nominations that has yielded several new administrators, offered his insight on RFA's perception problem.
| “ | You only need to glance at WT:RFA to see the endless debates and proposals on how to fix what users see as a broken, horrible, why-would-anyone-bother process. While I wouldn't argue that these discussions aren't useful, they do feed into what I see as RfA's perception problem, which directly results in a lack of candidates and I think only fuels the debated problems. | ” |
He went on to say that when RFAs are rare and only one candidate runs at a time, it fosters an atmosphere of intense scrutiny on that candidate, which can lead people to look for more reasons to oppose. He has sought with his recent nominations to curb the notion that "no one runs because no one runs" and to address the recurring challenge of getting more people to run by simply asking and nominating qualified candidates. He believes his recruitment efforts are "doing a good job of spreading some goodwill and improving the negative perception of RfA."
Another recent change that may reduce the time-consuming nature of running for adminship is the limitation on questions to two per inquirer, which was imposed in 2015. In all, 11 proposals reached the request for comment stage of a 2015 reform effort, and four of those proposals passed. (The others were the tweaking of promotion discretionary range, watchlisting, and the notice on the Centralized discussion template; while the pre-RFA candidate poll happened at a similar time as the 2015 reform RFC, this was coincidental.)
Two editors at the forefront of RFA reform efforts in recent years have been WereSpielChequers and Kudpung. Kudpung was a coordinator of the massive research endeavor and reform effort of 2011, and WereSpielChequers has compiled statistics and has written about the issue for the Signpost (here, here, and here).
WereSpielChequers doubts that the reform efforts of late 2015—including the optional candidate poll and the lowering of promotion criteria from 70–80% support to 65–75%—explain the recent surge: "the slightly lower threshold for promotion has made almost no difference; Those who do pass usually do so with near unanimity or at least a strong consensus. I fear that ORCP has succeeded in persuading more to come forward, but then deterred them from actually running. It is too early to say whether the January surge is a welcome but temporary rally or a change.".
Kudpung also doubts that the recent spike in successful promotions is part of a longer-term trend. In a statement to the Signpost, he suggests that RFA remains an inherently broken process:
| “ | I don’t believe the current spate of RfAs is actually bucking the downward trend. It’s probably just a flash in the pan due to the hard work of those who scour the land for possible candidates and Anna Frodesiak's initiative at WP:ORCP. While the precipitous decline in 'promotions' is giving rise to concern, the same could be said about the state of many aspects of the Wikipedia even though the actual content is definitely growing. RfA still remains the horrible and broken process as described by Jimbo Wales and for the same reasons, and it’s clearly the main cause for lack of interest by potential candidates. In spite of all the talk of reform, however, people turn around and are suddenly busy with something else when the actual standard of participant behaviour is mentioned.
The work of admins has never really changed ... Occasional unbundling of one or two tools, such as for example rollback, hasn’t made much difference, but to talk of admin backlogs is really to create an illusion to illustrate the claim that we need more admins ... The future of the number of truly active admins is predictable. It will continue to be as it is, and the number of new RfA has bottomed out. At some time in the future—but not for a while yet—there won’t be enough admins. By then there will however be better bots and better helper scripts. The various recent reforms brought about in good faith in December 2015 ... have ironically cancelled each other out, leaving the one single major problem still completely unaddressed, but with just more participants, more unnecessary talk in the discussion section, and despite the lowering of the pass mark, more ‘crat chats and more contentiously close-run bids for the mop. |
” |
Although many deride RFA as a broken process, those who have recently experienced an RFA have differing opinions.
K6ka noted that "the drama (of reading old RFAs) was enough to keep me at bay" before he ran successfully earlier this year.
"I got very little sleep throughout the week. I'd stay up till midnight watching the !votes on my RFA fluctuate unsettlingly before getting eight hours of terrible quality sleep, waking up at roughly eight-thirty in the morning or so to scroll through my RFA page again on my phone in bed," he said.
However, both he and Ealdgyth, who recently passed with 250 supports and no opposes, described their RFAs as enjoyable, a sentiment not shared by Hawkeye7, a former administrator who ran for the tools again in early 2016:
"RfA remains a tough process. There was a vicious off-Wiki campaign against me. It deters people from running, and it deters people from contributing to Wikipedia. I was heartened, though, by the editors who supported my candidacy—a veritable Who's Who of Wikipedia."
Ad Orientem, whose successful candidacy in late December may have springboarded a wave in nominations, summarized RFA as it stands today:
"My RfA was contentious and for me personally, highly stressful. Twice during the RfA I seriously considered withdrawing but was talked out of it … The problem with those who complain about RfA is that there seems little consensus or even serious suggestions for an alternative. As long as we need Admins (and we do!) we are going to need some system for vetting candidates. Like many Wikipedians I have heard horror stories about RfA before the series of reforms that began a few years back and I would like to assure readers that abusive and trollish behavior is generally not tolerated anymore," he said. "Overall I think the process is fair if imperfect." GP
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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/In focus
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.
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.
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.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/Humour
