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23 June 2017

News and notes
Departments reorganized at Wikimedia Foundation, and a month without new RfAs (so far)
In the media
Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
Op-ed
Facto Post: a fresh take
Featured content
Will there ever be a break? The slew of featured content continues
Traffic report
Wonder Woman beats Batman, The Mummy, Darth Vader and the Earth
Recent research
Utopian bubbles: Can Wikipedians create value outside of the capitalist system?
Technology report
Improved search, and WMF data scientist tells all
 

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-23/From the editors


2017-06-23

Wonder Woman beats Batman, The Mummy, Darth Vader and the Earth

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By Eddie891
Ann Louise Gilligan (right), Irish feminist theologian, made the Deaths in 2017 list on the fourteenth. Here she is pictured with her politician wife Katherine Zappone attending a service at the Trinity College chapel in 2014.
The Top 25 Report summarizes the most popular articles each week, drawing from Andrew West's Top 5000 list. We often republish the top 10. Here are all 25, with commentary by OZOO, Igordebraga and our own Eddie891.

Summer blockbusters and sports, Trump and world events

It has been an eventful week in the world of Wikipedia page views. Gal Gadot (retaining first place from last week) was buoyed by the success of the Wonder Woman (2017 film), which took second place. The 2017 NBA Finals kept Kevin Durant (#3), LeBron James (#11), Steph Curry (#17), the Golden State Warriors (#21) and List of NBA Champions (#10) in the top 25. Despite mixed reviews, The Mummy (2017 film) was propelled to #5. Other entertainment figures and productions ranked high as well. A movie about Tupac Shakur shot him up to #12, Dear Evan Hansen was propelled to #14 and Orange Is the New Black was catapulted up to #19 after the release of a fifth season.

On a sadder note, injury and deaths (#9) also ranked high on the list. The deaths of Adam West (#4), and the injury of Steve Scalise (#8) featured prominently. E.

The twenty-five most popular articles on Wikipedia for the week of June 11, 2017, were:

Rank Page Image Views Class Comments
1 Gal Gadot
1,233,820
C Class
C Class
Having made her name playing Gisele Yashar in the The Fast and the Furious franchise, Israeli actress and model Gadot has moved on to playing Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman in the nascent DC Extended Universe. The character debuted in last year's Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice; Gadot returns as Wonder Woman in the eponymous film. And on the subject of that film...
2 Wonder Woman (2017 film)
1,192,581
C Class
C Class
...it is second in this list. Patty Jenkins has directed the fourth film in the DC Extended Universe, and the first superhero movie from a major studio to have a female lead since 2005's Elektra, since when there have been three new Batmen, two new Hulks and two versions of the Fantastic 4, to give you an idea of how long that is in film-making time. The film has thusly obtained some symbolic value as a test of the viability of female led movies in the modern era, and with a gross of $571.8 million to from opening day to June 19, it's probably passed.
3 Kevin Durant
1,053,517
Good Article
Good Article
Top scorer for Golden State Warriors in every game of the 2017 NBA Finals, unanimously named the winner of the Most Valuable Player Award.
4 Adam West 961,246
C Class
C Class
The late Batman actor saw much interest after his death on June 9, at 88 years old. He, while mainly known for being Batman in the 1960s, also played opposite Chuck Connors in Geronimo (1962) and The Three Stooges in The Outlaws Is Coming (1965). He also appeared in the science fiction film Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), and performed voice work on The Fairly OddParents (2001), The Simpsons (1992, 2002), and Family Guy (2000–2017).
5 The Mummy (2017 film)
896,532
C Class
C Class
The 2017 American action-adventure film debuted to negative reviews. The film has grossed $295.6 million (up to June 19). While it was the largest global debut for Tom Cruise, the film was largely a flop in the United States. It only made $31.7 million of the originally projected $35–40 million (second behind Wonder Woman). In its second weekend, ticket sales dropped 56% to $13.9 million, and fourth place at the box office.
6 Grenfell Tower fire
836,550
B Class
B Class
The 24 storey building was struck by a fire on June 14. 79 people are presumed dead as a result of the fire, and all of the building's inhabitants are homeless. The fire burnt for around 24 hours and was fought by hundreds of firefighters and 45 firetrucks. The fire is the deadliest fire in mainland Britain since the start of the 20th century.
7 Darth Vader
778,261
B Class
B Class
There has lately been a revival of interest in this famed villain. The announcement (and subsequent release) of a new comic about Vader in late March (and early June) may be driving traffic.
8 Steve Scalise
747,127
C Class
C Class
Steve Scalise getting shot has a lot of people heading over to his Wikipedia page to figure out, "Who exactly is Steve Scalise?" The Republican current United States House of Representatives Majority Whip and representative for Louisiana's 1st congressional district, serving since 2008 (and as House Majority Whip since 2014). Before that, Scalise served for four months in the Louisiana State Senate and twelve years in the Louisiana House of Representatives. Scalise's condition has improved from "imminent risk of death" to "critical" with "vital signs stabilized." Scalise is still in intensive care and is likely to be in the hospital for weeks. On a brighter note, the Congressional Baseball Game was not cancelled due to the incident, and in fact attracted a larger crowd than usual, raising over $1 million for charity.
9 Deaths in 2017
689,172
List Class
List Class
The near-ever-present list of the deceased stayed in the same place this week while losing about 11,000 views in total.
10 List of NBA champions
675,034
Featured Class
Featured Class
For the third year in a row, the NBA Finals came down to the Golden State Warriors against the Cleveland Cavaliers, with the former winning.
11 LeBron James
643,575
Good Article
Good Article
The professional basketball player was at the forefront of the Cavaliers' effort to win in the finals for the second time in a row. Despite scoring an average of 33.6 points per game, it was not enough this time for the Cavs to overcome the deficit and they lost, 1–4.
12 Tupac Shakur 610,200
B Class
B Class
Shakur is consistently ranked as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time, and occasionally one of the greatest artists of all time. The release of All Eyez on Me has spiked his popularity again, fittingly, just as he would have been nearing 46 years of age.
13 Otto Warmbier 607,175
B Class
B Class
The recent spike in popularity was driven in the earlier part of the week by the release – after eighteen months in captivity – of this 22 year old American by North Korea. However, Warmbier succumbed to his injuries after six days.
14 Dear Evan Hansen
578,312
Start Class
Start Class
This musical, following a high school senior with social anxiety disorder in the turmoil that follows a classmate's death saw an increase in views following the 71st Tony Awards, in which it was nominated for nine awards, winning six including Best MusicalBest Score, and Best Actor in a Musical for its lead Ben Platt.
15 Rafael Nadal
577,002
C Class
C Class
"The King of Clay" has proven his dominance yet again. He won the 2017 French Open, bringing his total French Open wins to an astounding 10. Only one player has ever topped that in a Grand Slam tournament, Margaret Court with 11 Australian Opens.
16 Earth
571,679
Featured Class
Featured Class
It's the Earth.
17 Stephen Curry
562,359
B Class
B Class
Oft considered the greatest shooter in history, Curry proved his dominance yet again, seizing the championship title, after narrowly being denied last year.
18 Donald Trump
526,315
C Class
C Class
Trump's back. Well he was never really gone. As it is, he appears on the list again, this time due to reversing the Cuban Thaw policies of Obama, his predecessor.
19 Orange Is the New Black
494,706
C-class
C-class
The release of the fifth season of the popular Netflix original about women in prison sent it up to #19.
20 ICC Champions Trophy
471,026
Start Class
Start Class
When things are big in India, they are really big. Everywhere.
21 Golden State Warriors
449,547
B Class
B Class
The Warriors won their fifth championship against the Cavs. They took their lead early, and held on to it with the help of two players you may have heard of. Kevin Durant and Steph Curry.
22 Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
436,040
C Class
C Class
The undefeated five-division professional boxing world champion announced he has seen a contestant emerge from a whole different sport: MMA star Conor McGregor (#24), who will fight Mayweather in August.
23 Pound sterling £ 432,583
C Class
C Class
From Brexit to the snap election, this currency just can't seem to get a break. Regardless, most traffic is probably driven by... you guessed it, Reddit.
24 2017 ICC Champions Trophy
421,569
Start Class
Start Class
The 2017 edition of this quadrennial cricket tournament was held in England and Wales. India returned to the final, held on June 17, but lost to neighbour/rival Pakistan.
25 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup
420,904
Start Class
Start Class
In preparation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Russia is receiving the continental champions, plus current world champion Germany, in a tournament that started on Saturday. Like in the previous edition, it is being held amidst nationwide protests – but not exactly tournament related, despite plenty of reasons they could be.


2017-06-23

Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill

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By Jonatan Svensson Glad

This Signpost "In the media" report covers media primarily from April to June 2017.

Kalanick's nipples

The nipples in question

The anatomy of Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick's chest area, more exactly his nipples, has been the talk of the month. That is at least what one can gather from a Motherboard article (June 9), in which the author Sarah Emerson asks why Wikipedia hasn't replaced the image with any of the "dozens of fair use, high-resolution options" on Flickr. This because she fails to understand our strict policy on fair use images, disallowed when free alternatives are available. However, she's partly correct that there exist a few alternatives, like this one by TechCrunch.

The article includes two screenshots of "heated" debate from the talk page spanning three years. However, this discussion only included six comments in total, one of which pointed out that the nipples were worth some $2.1 billion each. Normally I would have applied {{citation needed}} to such a statement, but given that a 5-minute Uber fare in central Stockholm costs me $13, I'm not so surprised that the pennies trickle in for the CEO. J.

Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill

The reality drama series that is the Donald Trump presidency continues onwards with its latest breathtaking episode. In a shocking development Newsweek reports (June 8) that with the help of the Twitter account @CongressEdits they've been able to uncover a traitor within the midst of the United States House of Representatives. As the Comey hearing unfolded, a rogue agent used a House IP address to add a controversial example of obstruction of justice to our encyclopedia. J.

In brief

How long will this logo have to be used on Turkish Wikipedia?
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31 January 2019

Court-ordered article redaction, paid editing, and rock stars
1 December 2018

Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
23 June 2017


More articles

  • Building a wall, and letting readers pay for it: Katherine Maher described "alternative facts [as] nothing new" in an interview with a Swedish newspaper, based on the title of the pay-to-read piece. (Svenska Dagbladet, May 22) J.
  • Wikipedia HacKeD!1: Another day, another tabloid hack who doesn't know the meaning of the word. Yet again has the media described an article suffering from common vandalism following the British election as being "hacked" (Daily Mirror, June 9). To quote the last issue of The Signpost, it is indeed "a sexy word to use in a headline". J.
  • "Turks click away but Wikipedia is gone": In early April, the Turkish government blocked access to Wikipedia. While the news was covered online and around the world, the best[COI] writing on the subject comes from Wikinews (May 2). C., J.
  • Jimmy on tour: Wiki founder Wales found a moment to mention his start-up, Wikinews copycat Wikitribune, while discussing the Facebook echo chamber in a CNBC interview (June 16) earlier last week. J.
  • Oh, to be young and free! Do you remember those times? Wikipedia was but a mewling infant, with fewer articles than Trump had lawsuits. VatorNews sure does! In a recent throwback article (June 13) they did a recap of Wikipedia's history – from Nupedia to now. J.
  • secure.wikimedia.org: Motherboard (May 26) and Siliconrepublic (May 30) wrote pieces about Wikipedia's 2011 switch from HTTP to HTTPs – adding another layer of security for readers against govermental spying and censorship. J.
  • The Signpost in the media: A special report from February written by Smallbones about paid editing has gotten traction in the "real media", and has been discussed in an article by The Times of Israel (May 29). J.
  • Wikipedia lives to lobby again: It feels like just yesterday Wikipedia protested against the proposed American legislation SOPA/PIPA. Now Wikipedia has launched FairCopyrightOz, teaming up with organisations in favor of fair use in Australia. The campaign has been covered by Gizmodo (May 22), The Sydney Morning Herald (May 21) and others. J.
  • I hear 'Happy Birthday' is in order! The Wire passes on their congratulations (June 4) to the Odia Wikipedia community, which just turned 15. Join The Wire and The Signpost in giving them a big round of applause! J.
  • Dead suits brought back to life: After Wikimedia's lawsuit against the NSA was dismissed, the WMF appealed the ruling, and the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to review the suit. Vice News believes this "could reveal secrets of [the] NSA surveillance program" (May 24). J.



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.


2017-06-23

Improved search, and WMF data scientist tells all

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By Evad37

Sister projects in search results

Sister project search results for "Brazil"

When you search on Wikipedia you can now find pages on other Wikimedia projects that could be relevant. They appear next to the search results. By introducing this feature, the Discovery department hopes to provide visitors with additional information, and reduce the likelihood of searches returning zero results. This also raises the visibility of sister projects, and may encourage visitors to explore these projects further, and potentially contribute to them. Some communities have already had similar functionality via custom JavaScript.

On English Wikipedia, a Village Pump RfC was held to determine which sister projects should be included. There were concerns that "content returned by some projects is too often irrelevant, problematic, outdated, spammy, or in some other way contradictory to the aims and purposes of [English Wikipedia] and not really what we want to send our readers to". The RfC resulted in the following projects being approved:

Commons multimedia, Wikinews, and Wikiversity results will not be shown. Wikidata and Wikispecies are not within the scope of this feature.

Results from Wikibooks are also currently displayed, in contrast to the RfC closure; a Phabricator task has been opened requesting their suppression.

Since the feature was enabled, there have been multiple requests for an opt-out option. A way to collapse the sister project results was suggested on a Village pump (technical) thread:

Here's a quick snippet you can add to your common.js to make it collapsible and collapsed by default:

	if ( mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Search' ) {
		$.when(
			mw.loader.using( 'jquery.makeCollapsible' ),
			$.ready
		).done( function () {
			var $mwInterwikiResults = $( '#mw-interwiki-results' );
			
			$mwInterwikiResults.addClass( 'mw-collapsible mw-collapsed' )
				.find( '.iw-results' ).addClass( 'mw-collapsible-content' );
			$mwInterwikiResults.makeCollapsible();
		} );
	}


— User:Murph9000

While at a Village pump (proposals) discussion, code to remove those results was posted:

just add

div#mw-interwiki-results { display: none !important }

to your own common.css.
— User:Nemo bis

WMF data scientist answers the Internet's questions

Aaron Halfaker

Aaron Halfaker (User:EpochFail), a data scientist with WMF, conducted an Ask Me Anything session with Reddit contributors on 1 June (UTC). The question-and-answer session attracted 118 comments and covered Halfaker's ORES AI-based antivandal project and AI construction in general, Wikipedia editing for wider audiences, Reddit, and AIs for content generation, including automatic summarization for unseen Twin Peaks episodes. B.

In brief

New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience

Newly approved bot tasks

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2017 #24 & #25. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

Installation code

  1. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js' ); // Backlink: User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-23/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-23/Opinion


2017-06-23

Departments reorganized at Wikimedia Foundation, and a month without new RfAs (so far)

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By Altercari
Interim Vice-President of Product Toby Negrim (pictured) made the announcement alongside CTO Victoria Coleman.

Wikimedia Foundation changes

Victoria Coleman, Chief Technology Officer

The Wikimedia Foundation has announced a reorganization of the Product and Technology departments. The re-org is expected to deliver better product development with community engagement and an audience-based approach, a more efficient pipeline and to "better prepare our engineering teams to plan around the upcoming movement strategic direction". In the new organization, the Product department will be renamed the Audiences department. The Editing team becomes the Contributors team; the Reading team the Readers team. The Discovery team will be distributed to the Readers team and the Technology department (but will still work together on various projects). The Fundraising Tech team will be moved to the Technology department. Team Practices group members working directly with teams in the Audiences and Technology departments will move into those teams, and the rest will move to the Talent & Culture department, under the newly-appointed T&C Chargée d’Affaires Anna Stillwell. Four audience verticals will be condensed into three: Readers, Contributors and Community Tech. The Design Director role will be reintroduced.

Brief notes

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-23/Serendipity


2017-06-23

Facto Post: a fresh take

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By Charles Matthews
Wikicite 2017

I come late to the vision thing. I remember still that when I was standing for the Foundation Board in 2006, one Wikimedian described my platform as "pragmatic", though not in a good way. I suppose I have usually felt that the main way to build an encyclopedia is an enormous amount of painstaking effort. Right now, though, I feel the need to kick up a fuss.

The catalyst was the latest in the WikiCite conference series. I missed the Vienna meeting in late May, but it was clearly vibrant in a way that can only be welcomed. I started the Facto Post mass message to bottle the buzz.

Backstory: Wikimedia integration

I count myself as a four-tab Wikimedian. This means that when I sit down to my machine, I have Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and Wikidata tabs open. I have been heavily involved with Wikisource since 2009, and Wikidata since 2014. I arrived on Wikipedia in June 2003. So, where is Wikimedia heading right now? I have taken part in the current Wikimedia movement strategy exercise, and have mixed feelings about it. Radicalism? I don't see it there.

I have tried thinking about Wikimedia integration around Wikidata. I think this is happening, but it is hard to explain to anyone not already a Wikimedian working on several of the sister projects. Some people seem to feel threatened by Wikidata. Others regard it, with rather more justification, as the sonic screwdriver of the Wikimedia universe: Brion Vibber is supposed to have said that it solves all problems.

Presentation and content

I put my head over the parapet with s:Wikisource talk:Wikimedia Strategy 2017#Greater scope for data, citation reform and integration on Wikipedia, and make the clear case for our place in education. What would I be meaning there?

"Citation reform" suggests something is broken. Not everyone would agree. But consider whether the reader is able to view Wikipedia references consistently, in a given style. Is there a setting in "Preferences" for that? No, there may be 100 different referencing styles used in Wikipedia, and by convention there has to be a good reason for an editor to change the referencing style in an article. Normally, and this is a strength of Wikipedia, the reader is the customer here. In the way references are presented, the original author of an article has more of the status of someone who is "always right", in selecting the citation style.

Software engineers are going to recognise the issue here, namely separation of presentation and content. The essential content of a reference can be displayed in numerous ways, e.g.: which comes first, given name or family name of an author (content)? The reader who really wants family name written first, which always reminds me of old library card indexes, could in principle have that option via "Preferences" (presentation). That is a futuristic idea: another is that we should actually know the area of text that a reference applies to. (Strange but true, we don't now.) In any case, Wikidata could do the job of implementing the separation.

Integration: a fresh take

Here and now, I'm still talking about integration, but in a more encyclopedic way. Crucially, too, in a community way. The input-output issues around Wikidata now seem like a good way to understand things in the large, not just Wikidata's place among sister projects. Wikidata inputs (automated, semi-automated, and via the fact mining which I'm working on at WikiFactMine project). Holding areas such as mix'n'match, potentially LibraryBase. Wikidata outputs, not just to infoboxes but via SPARQL, and some form of WikiCite export (in other words, reuse of bibliographic and citation data held in Wikidata).

What I was saying in detail about citation reform is a technical possibility once the WikiCite project takes hold. It is a good example of a way ahead. I would think less of a Wikimedia movement strategy that didn't mention such things.

So I mean to take "post-Wikidata" seriously. About five years since its inception, there is a new perspective available, coming from Wikidatans, but not only them. Librarians find it of interest, some of the open science crowd, those looking for the salvation of digital humanities.

Facto Post

I felt, already last summer, that Wikidata was undeniably doing something for the digital humanities, moving our take beyond GLAM. See Andrew Gray's blogpost in the first issue of Facto Post. People really should get behind new tech possibilities for Wikimedia, I say. I believe that the "technophile versus Luddite" stand-off is divisive rather than helpful. I respect the caveat-oriented scepticism that is appropriate to new technology, but the difference between entering a caveat and nitpicking is a judgement call. So, I will go so far as to question the judgement of those who can only find nay-saying in their hearts.

To get past the title, Facto Post is a play on words. Ex post facto is Latin for "retrospectively", so reversed is possibly "prospectively"? But the play is also from the middle of "WikiFactMine", on which I'm currently working: I have a summer job as Wikimedian in Residence, at ContentMine, whose project it is. Fact as in "fact mining", a subarea of text and data mining, for us the extraction of scientific facts from original papers. Some of them are headed for Wikidata, as referenced entries.

Tim Berners-Lee himself is planning a revised Web; he praised our governance, if adding that Wikipedia is not perfect. And it is not. We are still straining to adjust Wikipedia to the semantic Web concept, his previous version. In fact, the potential is only just becoming apparent in terms of Wikimedia content being much more easily manipulated. Taming the plethora of referencing styles is just a start. The excitement is emergent, not just another "next big thing". I sought to nail it in the Editorial to the first issue of Facto Post. No doubt several passes will be needed.

Sign up to the Facto Post mailing list, do.

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