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15 July 2017

News and notes
French chapter woes, new affiliates and more WMF team changes
Featured content
Spectacular animals, Pine Trees screens, and more
In the media
Concern about access and fairness, Foundation expenditures, and relationship to real-world politics and commerce
Recent research
The chilling effect of surveillance on Wikipedia readers
Op-ed
Why Task Forces are Dying in 2017
Gallery
A mix of patterns
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Film, television and Internet phenomena reign with some room left over for America's birthday
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New features in development; more breaking changes for scripts
Wikicup
2017 WikiCup round 3 wrap-up
 

2017-07-15

French chapter woes, new affiliates and more WMF team changes

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By Evad37
Crisis point for Wikimedia France

The French disconnection

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There have been fresh developments in an ongoing controversy within the leadership of the Wikimedia France chapter (WMFR). At the centre is the management and governance of the chapter, including conflicts of interest, board resignations, resignations by volunteer project leaders, the dismissal of staff, and the expulsion of members. Some 70 members have signed a call for an early general assembly, which is now being scheduled.

Threads on French Wikipedia's Bistro (a central discussion point for editors) have raised related issues on 26 and 27 June; many further discussions regarding WMFR have occurred since 8 July. Several chapter members have developed a timeline (in French, English translation available) of events dating back to 2013; the hashtag #wmfrgate has been used on Twitter.

In an email, forwarded to the Wikimedia-l mailing list by Chris Keating, five of the seven WMFR board members describe their view of the situation. According to Keating:

Topics covered include:

  • How WMFR feels community members are "destabilising and denigrating" the chapter, and how Wikimedia France is responding by expelling some of those people from the organisation, threatening them with legal action, and temporarily closing its email discussion list
  • Accusations that Christophe Henner has personally manipulated the FDC [Funds Dissemination Committee] process to cut WMFR's funding
  • Also, a statement from WMFR that the WMF is also considering withdrawing WMFR's chapter agreement

The Wikimedia Foundation has responded to the email. Katy Love, Director of Resources, writes:

WMF staff will conduct a site visit, which will involve "working with Wikimédia France to initiate an independent governance review". Funding to WMFR is conditional on such a site visit and governance review, as well as making progress on implementing the resulting recommendations.

Wikimedia Foundation Communications Director, Juliet Barbara, told the Signpost:

Allegations about the FDC process in Wikimédia France’s recent email to its membership have no merit. They were rejected by the Wikimedia Foundation Board, which strongly endorsed the results and independence of the FDC process and denied Wikimédia France’s appeal of that recommendation. Based on his past relationship with Wikimédia France, Christophe was not present during any FDC discussions related to WMFR at the Round 2 discussions held in May.[1] He also formally recused himself[2] from the Board’s investigation and handling of Wikimedia France’s appeal and abstained from voting on the Wikimédia France section of the Board's resolution.

WMF team changes

Following on from last month's changes (see previous Signpost coverage), Trevor Parscal has announced some further adjustments on the Wikitech-l mailing list. The Language and Collaboration teams merged to become the Global Collaboration team. Runa Bhattacharjee will manage the combined team. Meanwhile, Dan Garry joined the team responsible for editing tools like VisualEditor, now renamed the Editing team. This allows James Forrester to "step away from his 5-year stint as the Product Manager for VisualEditor and focus on leading product for Contributors".

Brief notes

Logo of one of the newest Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Wikipedia Library User Group.

Footnotes



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2017-07-15

Spectacular animals, Pine Trees screens, and more

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By Eddie891
Left hand screen of the Pine Trees screens, a pair of newly featured pictures

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted since June 19. Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Fourteen featured articles were promoted this week.

Shown are three Guadeloupe amazons (above), one Guadeloupe macaw (middle) as well as several seabirds and a sea turtle
A red-billed tropicbird with her chick

Six featured lists were promoted this week.

Chelsea celebrate with the tournament cup after winning the 2011 Premier League Asia Trophy.

Nine featured pictures were promoted this week, including the Pine Trees screens (Shōrin-zu byōbu, 松林図 屏風) a pair of six-panel folding screens (byōbu) by the Japanese artist Hasegawa Tōhaku (nominated by Theramin).

Good articles

Apart from this featured content, a total of 133 good articles were promoted in the month of June, starting with The Blair Witch Project, Gus Grissom, and Badmotorfinger, and ending with Carroll Baker, G (New York City Subway service) and Citi Bike.

Click to show
  1. The Blair Witch Project
  2. Gus Grissom
  3. Badmotorfinger
  4. Equatorial Guinea at the 2000 Summer Olympics
  5. Banksia sceptrum
  6. "Rebel Heart" (song)
  7. Miriam Makeba
  8. Typhoon Wendy (1960)
  9. 1943 Atlantic hurricane season
  10. Golden Sun 
  11.  Guadeloupe amazon 
  12.  IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line 
  13. Mrs. Puff 
  14.  Ephesto 
  15.  H to He, Who Am the Only One 
  16.  Ikaruga 
  17.  Buddy Alliston
  18. Taking Back Sunday (album) 
  19.  We Are X 
  20.  Taurean Allen 
  21.  Siempre Tú 
  22.  Deerfoot Trail 
  23.  Mr. Saxobeat 
  24.  Rainier Beach station 
  25.  Miss Malini 
  26.  Prayer of Saint Francis 
  27.  Asa Gray
  28.  Fighters Uncaged 
  29.  Horizon Zero Dawn 
  30.  Fraser, Frieda 
  31.  Agagianian, Gregorio Pietro 
  32.  The Nightfly
  33. Islands (miniseries) 
  34.  Buhl Altarpiece 
  35.  Anthony Henday Drive 
  36.  California State Route 125 
  37.  Melampitta 
  38.  Lilias Armstrong 
  39.  Starship Troopers 
  40.  Nina Simonovich-Efimova 
  41.  Sylvia Plath 
  42.  Kill or Be Killed (comics) 
  43.  SMS Meteor (1865) 
  44.  Vivo (Luis Miguel album) 
  45.  Siege of Thessalonica (1422–1430) 
  46.  Agent Carter 
  47.  2017 Buenos Aires ePrix 
  48. The Holy Trinity 
  49.  Hooded pitohui 
  50.  Revival 
  51.  Lexington Avenue–63rd Street (63rd Street Lines) 
  52.  Praseodymium 
  53.  Michael Allen (Canadian football) 
  54.  Sappho 16 
  55.  The North Remembers" (Game of Thrones) 
  56.  Science in the medieval Islamic world 
  57.  Talbot, Geoffrey 
  58.  Papal conclave, March 1605 
  59. A Toast to Men 
  60.  The Hidden Oracle 
  61.  Barge of the Dead
  62. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film) 
  63. Boruto Uzumaki
  64. Superliner (railcar) 
  65.  Smith, Babe
  66. Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch! 
  67.  Me & the Rhythm 
  68.  Osmaniye-class ironclad 
  69.  "Hands to Myself" 
  70. Countess Palatine Ingrid Von Marburg 
  71.  Legion (season 1) 
  72.  "E.B.E." (The X-Files) 
  73.  Roosevelt Island (IND 63rd Street Line) 
  74.  Papal conclave, May 1605 — "Baby I" 
  75.  Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel 
  76.  Plankton and Karen 
  77.  Double Dare
  78. 1947 Atlantic hurricane season 
  79.  Antichrist Superstar 
  80.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
  81.  Alberta Highway 3 
  82.  "Same Old Love" 
  83.  Fordham University 
  84.  Casualty (series 29) 
  85.  Greg Mancz 
  86.  Dostana (2008 film) 
  87.  Philip Osipovich Paulucci 
  88.  Pioneer Square station 
  89.  "Sledgehammer" (Fifth Harmony song) 
  90.  Dezinformatsia (book) 
  91.  Superliner (railcar) 
  92.  Babe Smith
  93. Mujhse Shaadi Karogi 
  94.  Ashby de la Zouch Castle 
  95.  Istiodactylus 
  96.  1827 North Carolina hurricane 
  97.  Rocky Romero 
  98.  "Anymore" (Goldfrapp song) 
  99.  Battle of Heligoland (1864) 
  100.  The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty 
  101.  Rain World 
  102.  Disneyland Railroad 
  103.  Mia Hamm 
  104.  Unbiunium 
  105.  Leslie H. Martin 
  106.  Jeff Almon 
  107.  Dubnium
  108. Washington State Route 522 
  109.  Arkansas Highway 142 
  110.  Landsat 2 
  111.  Missouri Route 75 
  112.  Saint Kitts and Nevis at the 1996 Summer Olympics 
  113.  Lana Turner 
  114.  SMS Blitz (1862) 
  115.  SMS Basilisk (1862) 
  116.  Wayne Allison (Canadian football) 
  117.  Labour Party of Scotland 
  118.  Calcium 
  119.  Independence from Europe 
  120.  1942 Atlantic hurricane season 
  121.  Tropical Depression Six (1975) 
  122.  "More than Friends" (Inna song)
  123. Hurricane Dennis (1981)
  124.  Typhoon Clara (1981)
  125. "Call My Name" (Cheryl song)
  126.  Charles Alston (gridiron football)
  127. Hurricane Adrian (1999)
  128. Yellow-bellied marmot
  129. ''The Hunted'' (1995 film)
  130. 1927 Pacific typhoon season
  131. Carroll Baker
  132. G (New York City Subway service)
  133. Citi Bike


Right hand screen of the Pine Trees screens, a pair of newly featured pictures



Reader comments

2017-07-15

Concern about access and fairness, Foundation expenditures, and relationship to real-world politics and commerce

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By Bri and Saqib

Concerns about unimpeded access to Wikipedia continue

Visualization of the dark web
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More articles

Free-of-charge access and free-of-interference access to Wikipedia were the subjects of articles in a number of outlets – the libertarian magazine Reason, Harvard University's Harvard Magazine, the online magazine Slate.com, and the Canadian cultural magazine Vice. The Vice story provocatively suggested nullifying censorship of Wikipedia by disseminating Wikipedia via the dark web, a venue more often associated with porn, terrorism, and Bitcoin-fueled drug transactions.

In Reason, WMF's former legal counsel Mike Godwin wrote about how Everyone Should Be Getting Wikipedia for Free (June 4, 2017). Libertarians are skeptical of interference with free markets. In some cases, Internet providers have been choosing to lower rates or charge zero for Wikipedia access over their networks like Wikipedia Zero. But some call this a violation of net neutrality to favor one website, even if it is the global repository of the sum of all human knowledge. Godwin explains: "Internet providers should be able to experiment with giving subscribers free stuff, such as access to Wikipedia and other public information and services on their smartphones. Unfortunately, confusion about whether today's net neutrality regulations allow U.S. providers to make content available without it counting against your data plan—a practice called "zero-rating"—has discouraged many companies from doing so, even though zero-rating experiments are presumptively legal under today's net neutrality regulations."

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University has a project that monitors Wikipedia access from various countries around the globe. Harvard Magazine's Alisha Ukani reports (June 29, 2017) on the Center's findings on access in China, Iran, Thailand, Uzbekistan and eleven other countries in research conducted since 2014. The study concluded that since WMF's implementation of across-the-board encryption using HTTPS, most countries faced with an all-or-nothing censorship decision have opted not to censor. The Center's director and a participant in the research said, "Wikipedia is one of the most prominent, and most important, sites out there," and states that it was the first, "complete empirical deep dive into incidents of the blocking of Wikipedia projects around the world".

A Slate blog post by Angelica Cabral titled "Wikipedia Seems to Be Winning Its Battle Against Government Censorship" (June 1, 2017) echoes the Berkman Klein Center findings at least in part. She says, "In Iran—as you might expect—internet content about women’s rights, sex, and religion are censored and filtered. Wikipedia articles on the topic used to be blocked," but this changed after mandatory HTTPS was implemented by the WMF in 2015.

Cristian Consonni is the former Wikimedia Italy vice-president. In Vice's Motherboard (June 7, 2017), Louise Matsakis analyzed Consonni's proposal to bring up Tor's darknet as a Wikipedia platform. The Motherboard writer suggested, "It would be far more difficult for governments to censor or monitor Wikipedia's dark web version. But Consonni and like-minded editors aren't just concerned with surveillance. He hopes bringing Wikipedia to the dark web will also help improve Tor's reputation. The browser is often thought of as a tool for drug dealers and other criminals, instead of say, encyclopedia readers trying to avoid government surveillance." B.

"Follow the money" leads to unexpected half mil of parting payments

Following Andreas Kolbe (Andreas Kolbe)'s May 2016 Signpost special report titled "Compensation paid to Sue Gardner increased by almost 50 percent after she stepped down as executive director", executive compensation for Wikimedia Foundation staff who had been terminated (but possibly re-hired temporarily) was the subject of several off-wiki reports, many of whom used the phrase golden handshake to describe the situation. One report that appeared in The Register (7 June 2017) was also written by Kolbe and reprised his analysis of the annual Form 990 report, asking the rhetorical question "is this what donors giving $15 'to keep Wikipedia online and growing' had in mind?"

In International Business Times, Mary-Ann Russon – noting the apparent largesse of the Foundation – likewise asked "why does the foundation keep saying the online encyclopedia is struggling to survive?" (8 June 2017) Her IBT column seems to answer its own question at the same time as Kolbe's with an internal sub-heading titled "Urgent appeals for donations don't ring true".

Business Insider Australia reported on The Register's report (June 8), and a Slashdot News story (June 7) on the same topic was also widely picked up by reposters.

The WMF declined to explain individual payments, saying it would "not be commenting on the specific nature of the severance payments or circumstances which may be related to them" (wikimedia-l 2017-05-24).

Andreas Kolbe further clarified the Form 990 reporting cycle for Signpost: "Forms 990 are supposed to be published 5 months after the end of the financial year (the WMF financial year ends on June 30), but organisations can request up to two three-month extensions, and the WMF generally does so. This is why its Form 990 is generally published in May, almost a full year after the end of the financial year. Unless the WMF does a quicker turnaround next year, the 2016-2017 Form 990 will become available in May 2018, and it will show Lila Tretikov's severance payment – more than two years after the event (because, as explained in the email announcement, information related to key employees is published on a calendar-year rather than financial-year basis, with the 2016-2017 Form 990 covering the 2016 calendar year)." B.

Wikipedia, how old is Calibri?

Dawn, Pakistan's most widely read English-language newspaper, cited Wikipedia July 12 to establish the earliest date the Calibri font was available in Windows Vista, in an article about Panama Papers corruption case with potentially forged official documents printed with the built-in font. A related edit war and gold lock were noted by various major English language dailies in Pakistan like The Express Tribune, The News International, Pakistan Today, The Daily Times, The Nation. It was also discussed in various major TV talk shows.

Dawn said: "There were indications that the Wikipedia entry for the Calibri font had also been changed repeatedly to reflect a similar claim till Wikipedia itself placed a hold on editing the page till July 18 'or till editing disputes are solved'." The Times of India, the world's largest circulation English newspaper, ran another story on the edit war, as did Engadget noting "someone did manage to squeeze in a reference to the corruption probe" prior to protection. Haaretz noted "Wikipedia finds itself at center of the controversy because its entry on the font suggests a key document is fake." while The Guardian headline reads "'Fontgate': Microsoft, Wikipedia and the scandal threatening the Pakistani PM" and noted that "people praised Wikipedia for its quick response and said it was proof of the company’s integrity." Newsweek noted "Wikipedia is well known for not imposing restrictions on the editing process, and while it is possible to lock articles to avoid anonymous editing this usually reserved for controversial topics. But on July 12 Wikipedia administrators voted to lock the article on Calibri after the joint investigation team report was released." Al Jazeera, Independent, BBC and CNN, Gulf News, Financial Times, are all among the major International news outlets that noted the lockage of the Wikipedia page. The Nation noted that Pakistani MP Shireen Mazari said "If Nawaz Sharif claims that Wikipedia is also involved in conspiracy against them, don’t be surprised." S., B.

In brief

File:Size=300px
Conservapedia screenshot



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.



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2017-07-15

The chilling effect of surveillance on Wikipedia readers

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By Tilman Bayer

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

Chilling effects: The impact of surveillance awareness on Wikipedia pageviews

A paper in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal[1] finds that the traffic to privacy-sensitive articles on the English Wikipedia dropped significantly around June 2013, when the existence of the US government's PRISM online surveillance program was first revealed based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden. As stated by the author, Jon Penney, the study "is among the first to evidence—using either Wikipedia data or web traffic data more generally—how government surveillance and similar actions may impact online activities, including access to information and knowledge online." It received wide media attention upon its release, as already reported last year in the Signpost.

The paper is part of a growing body of literature that studies the effect of external events on Wikipedia pageviews (for another example, see our previous issue: "How does unemployment affect reading and editing Wikipedia ? The impact of the Great Recession"). The 66-page paper stands out for its methodological diligence, devoting much space to explaining and justifying its data selection and statistical approach, and to checking the robustness of the results. The framework was adapted from an earlier MIT study that had similarly examined the effect of the Snowden revelations on Google search traffic for sensitive terms, finding a statistically significant reduction of 5%. The author emphasizes the higher quality of the Wikipedia data: "unlike Google Trends, the Wikimedia Foundation provides a wealth of data on key elements of its site, including article traffic data, which can provide a more accurate picture as to any impact or chilling effects identified."

To generate a list of Wikipedia articles that could be considered privacy sensitive in the context of US government surveillance, the author used a (publicly available) set of terms that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) specifies as related to terrorism. The corresponding Wikipedia articles (48 altogether) include dirty bomb, suicide attack, nuclear enrichment (a redirect) and eco-terrorism. To verify the assumption that these topics are indeed considered as privacy sensitive by Internet users, a survey among 415 Mechanical Turk users asked them to rate each, e.g. on whether they would be likely to delete their browser history after accessing information about it.

To examine the impact on traffic, the paper uses the time series of monthly pageviews for the 48 articles (81 million views altogether, from January 2012 to August 2014). It is divided into the periods before and after the June 2013 "exogeneous shock". As a first finding, the author notes that the average monthly views in the "after" period are lower - but points out that such considerations (which e.g. form part of the difference in differences approach in the paper on unemployment mentioned above) are too simplistic to show an actual effect, e.g. because this could merely be caused by an overall declining traffic trend. (Although not stated directly in the paper, this is indeed the case, as the study is only based on desktop pageviews, which have been gradually replaced by mobile views in recent years. The Wikimedia Foundation makes combined mobile/desktop pageview datasets available going back to 2015.)

The author then turns to a more sophisticated statistical method known as interrupted time series analysis (ITS). It involves a "segmented regression analysis": linear trend lines are calculated separately for the timespans before and after June 2013, providing information both on the slope (growth/decrease rate) within each and on the size of the mismatch (if any) where the two segments intersect. This method indicates "an immediate drop-off of over 30% of overall views" following the June 2013 revelations. To further exclude the possibility that the results for these terrorism-related articles "may simply reflect overall Wikipedia article view traffic trends", an analogous ITS analysis is conducted for the pageviews to all Wikipedia articles.

The author points out the importance of the results for the Wikimedia Foundation's current lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the NSA surveillance of Internet traffic.

See also our review of a recent qualitative study that examined the privacy concerns of editors: "Privacy, anonymity, and perceived risk in open collaboration: a study of Tor users and Wikipedians"

Briefly

Conferences and events

See the research events page on Meta-wiki for upcoming conferences and events, including submission deadlines.

The Komodo dragon is the most popular reptile according to Wikipedia pageview data

Other recent publications

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.

Logo of the Art+Feminism editathons

References

  1. ^ Penney, Jon (2016-06-01). "Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use". Berkeley Tech. L.J. doi:10.15779/Z38SS13.
  2. ^ Roll, Uri; Mittermeier, John C.; Diaz, Gonzalo I.; Novosolov, Maria; Feldman, Anat; Itescu, Yuval; Meiri, Shai; Grenyer, Richard. "Using Wikipedia page views to explore the cultural importance of global reptiles". Biological Conservation. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.03.037. ISSN 0006-3207. Closed access icon
  3. ^ Massa, Paolo; Zelenkauskaite, Asta (2014-03-19). "Gender Gap in Wikipedia Editing: A Cross Language Comparison" (PDF). Global Wikipedia: International and Cross-Cultural Issues in Online Collaboration. 3/19/14. p. 12.
  4. ^ Tramullas, Jesús; Garrido-Picazo, Piedad; Sánchez-Casabón, Ana I. (2016). "Research on Wikipedia Vandalism: a brief literature review". Proceedings of the 4th Spanish Conference on Information Retrieval CERI 2016. Granada, Spain: ACM. doi:10.1145/2934732.2934748. Closed access icon
  5. ^ Thomas, Paul (2016-09-15). "Wikipedia and participatory culture: Why fans edit". Transformative Works and Cultures. 22 (0). doi:10.3983/twc.2016.0902. ISSN 1941-2258.
  6. ^ Rodriguez-Hernandez, Ismael; Trillo-Lado, Raquel; Yus, Roberto (2016). WikInfoboxer: A Tool to Create Wikipedia Infoboxes Using DBpedia (PDF). University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain. p. 4.
  7. ^ Atzori, Maurizio; Gao, Shi; Mazzeo, Giuseppe M.; Zaniolo, Carlo (2016). Answering End-User Questions, Queries and Searches on Wikipedia and its History (PDF). Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Data Engineering. p. 12.
  8. ^ Gieck, Robin; Kinnunen, Hanna-Mari; Li, Yuanyuan; Moghaddam, Mohsen; Pradel, Franziska; Gloor, Peter A.; Paasivaara, Maria; Zylka, Matthäus P. (2016). "Cultural Differences in the Understanding of History on Wikipedia" (PDF). In Matthäus P. Zylka; Hauke Fuehres; Andrea Fronzetti Colladon; Peter A. Gloor (eds.). Designing Networks for Innovation and Improvisation. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer International Publishing. pp. 3–12. ISBN 9783319426969.
  9. ^ Jatowt, Adam; Kawai, Daisuke; Tanaka, Katsumi (2016). "Predicting Importance of Historical Persons Using Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 25th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. CIKM '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 1909–1912. doi:10.1145/2983323.2983871. ISBN 9781450340731. Closed access icon
  10. ^ Stanisavljevic, Darko; Hasani-Mavriqi, Ilire; Lex, Elisabeth; Strohmaier, Markus; Helic, Denis (2016-11-30). "Semantic Stability in Wikipedia". In Hocine Cherifi; Sabrina Gaito; Walter Quattrociocchi; Alessandra Sala (eds.). Complex Networks & Their Applications V. Studies in Computational Intelligence. Springer International Publishing. pp. 379–390. ISBN 9783319509006. Closed access icon
  11. ^ Oliveira, João Marcos de; Gloor, Peter A. (2016). "The Citizen IS the Journalist: Automatically Extracting News from the Swarm". In Matthäus P. Zylka; Hauke Fuehres; Andrea Fronzetti Colladon; Peter A. Gloor (eds.). Designing Networks for Innovation and Improvisation. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer International Publishing. pp. 141–150. ISBN 9783319426969. Closed access icon
  12. ^ Suyehira, Kelsey; Spezzano, Francesca (2016). "DePP: A System for Detecting Pages to Protect in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 25th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. CIKM '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 2081–2084. doi:10.1145/2983323.2983914. ISBN 9781450340731. Closed access icon
  13. ^ Farzan, Rosta; Savage, Saiph; Saviaga, Claudia Flores (2016). Bring on Board New Enthusiasts! A Case Study of Impact of Wikipedia Art + Feminism Edit-A-Thon Events on Newcomers. SocInfo’16. Vol. Part I, LNCS 10046, pp. 24–40, 2016. Springer International Publishing. p. 17. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47880-7_2. Closed access icon (direct PDF download)




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2017-07-15

Why task forces and subgroups are dying in 2017

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By 22mikpau and Maplestrip

Task forces and subgroups play a vital role for their parent projects and ultimately, the encyclopedia itself. They do this by specifying and taking care of tasks that the parent projects may not have time for. The downside? With a less broad focus they can die out quickly if the task force cannot find or keep active members. For you readers who may not know what task forces or workgroups are, they're subgroups that focus on a certain "tasks" under their parent projects' scope. Many have their own organisation of members, roles, important tasks, and how to solve them.

Examples

Rick Rioridan Task Force

22m

That's the case for the Rick Riordan task force (RRTF) of WikiProject Novels, which focuses on articles related to author Rick Riordan. It has accomplished much considering it rarely (if ever) has more than twenty active members. For example, it has gotten six articles to Good Article status, fought back against "fan edits", and completed several drafts. However, it struggles with having enough active participants, despite having almost 50 pages in its scope. (It's worth noting about half are stub or start class.) In 2015 the Percy Jackson Task Force (the group's predecessor) died out completely if not for actions made by several editors renaming it and broadening its focus. But little improvement has been made. Today, RRTF still tries to remain an "active" task force. The group's remaining members knew they needed a new approach. The idea was an edit-a-thon about John Rocco, Riordan's illustrator, which is currently ongoing. Apparently the idea came from a lack of notable books published by Riordan during the summer months except Rocco's birthday. (Rocco was added to broaden the group's scope.) RRTF claims that the idea is working with boosting participation but if it's lasting, only time will tell. You can still participate in the John Rocco edit-a-thon ongoing until August 1st.

Webcomics work group

Maplestrip

Another example is the webcomics work group. The group was founded back in 2005 in order to improve coverage on webcomics. At the time, Wikipedia's verifiability and notability guidelines were much less strongly enforced, and web content was covered by very few reliable sources, so a lot of low-quality articles on webcomics were being produced at a rapid pace. When a lot of articles were subsequently deleted for not meeting notability guidelines, controversy ensued. Properly sourcing webcomic articles has always remained difficult, and over the years, many webcomic enthusiasts left Wikipedia. By 2015, the work group was completely deserted. A new user tried to clean up the project's pages and create a few new ones, rebooting the requests lists, creating a list of reliable sources, and becoming active on the work group's talk page. Since then, a few other people have started doing regular work on webcomic articles as well, and the field has slowly been improving. There's still fairly little discussion, but it is believed that the cleaned-up resources trigger editors to get more engaged.

Military History WikiProject

22m

Well this is an odd case but I wanted to include it. Military History Wikiproject (milhist) has many "task forces". They really are only ways to sort topics and few actually have active members. They really only get together editors interested in a topic rather than organising work. It just documents what these editors have done. This is something I've found common among subgroups. The groups that work are narrow and intersect subjects. The group does have "long term collaborations" that are in codenames like Operation Majestic Titan which is about battleships. However, this "Operation" is one of the only ones to have longlivity and good success but at least the others do direct work. Even this one relies on a core group. This is what our reporter from milhist said,

..."My overall view on task forces (and special projects) is that you need a small core of committed members, a narrow focus, and achievable goals in the short term. You also need a wider group of editors willing to review the work at GAN and FA, something that WikiProject Military history excels at. WikiProject Military history has also really benefited from having formal assessment tiers like B-Class and A-Class, as well as a system of awards and recognition. These things help focus Military history members to support their fellow members by reviewing their work. I think task forces and special projects have a future on WP, but only if they have a narrow focus and modest initial goals."

Are task forces needed?

22m

I believe my opinion is clear, task forces are important for Wikipedia. Others don't agree. One editor told me,

"Most Wikipedians just want to fiddle with small things without commitment to any greater goal, not too many want to do the heavy lifting of extensive content writing, tedious maintenance work like fixing deadlink citations, etc. FWIW, I think it's not a good idea to create separate wiki pages for taskforces/subprojects until there is a substantial number of genuinely active contributors. If the number of active contributors is small, I'd say keep your conversations on the Talk page of a larger more active WikiProject (obviously one that is relevant) so people keep seeing the activity and possibly join in. If the conversations are taking place between a couple of folks in a subproject, nobody else is going to see it. I'd stay on the major project page until they kick you out."

So do we need to minimise the number of subprojects or even eliminate them? Or is there a different solution? RRTF has said that while WP:NV didn't agree that the group was needed it "didn't interfere with the fledgling task force". However, while I was looking through WP:NV's talk archives, I saw little communication between the larger project and its subgroups.

Conclusion

So are task forces needed? Well it depends. I've heard users say "My group (or group's subject) is (or could be) influential for Wikipedia", and I agree with you, however subjects can be interesting to you but there may not be enough notable pages or active and interested users such as WikiProject Christianity in India. And that was a WikiProject! So maybe the problem of being to hard to keep members can appy to ANY project on the site. You may remember that The Signpost had a hiatus because of lack of editors. Maybe you can help a narrow subject more by just editing it instead of pouring energy into a dying task force. There has to be a middle ground between the views of destruction and saving of task forces. Anyway these are ideas on what to do with task force that I've found.

I hope that one day we will have more healthy, productive task forces doing more of the good work they are doing today. By "more" that may mean fewer subgroups altogether. Whatever the case I hope you found this article interesting and useful.



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2017-07-15

In the mix - Patterns and colors

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By Joe Hebda
The Gallery is an occasional Signpost feature highlighting quality images and articles from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons based on a particular theme.
This is a mixed collection of pattern images, some from mosaics.




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2017-07-15

The infobox game

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By Barbara
Empress
Barbara X. Page
(If I had an infobox this is what it would be)
Barbie (before age 8)
isn't she lovely
everyone wants to be me
Pronunciationβa-βa-ɻa pʷeɪj
Born
Barbara PahTootey Falks

(1960-05-06) May 6, 1960 (age 64)
Upper Schlabutkeeville, Michigan
Disappearedyou wish
Linn Run State Park
Statuslost in the woods
Died
not established
Cause of deathpremeditated murder
Body discoveredenvied by a top modelling agencies
Resting placethere is no rest for the wicked
Monumentshundreds thousands(planned)
NationalityFrench, Canadian, English, Polish
Other namesjust expletives
Citizenshipworld and galaxy
Educationself-taught
Alma materSpring Arbor University
OccupationWikimedian
Years activeten
Eracommon
Employer(s)me and I have two library cards
Organization(s)secret, there really is a cabal
Known formaking other editors crazy
Notable workEmpathy in chickens, English two-letter words, Monarch butterfly migration
Styleencyclopedic
Televisionnope, too busy writing WP articles and voting on new administrators
Height5 ft 2 in (157 cm)
Title"The magnificent..."
Termlifetime
Predecessornone
Successornone
Political partythere is always a party whereever I am
Movementsmooth
Opponentread my talk page
Board member ofmahogany
Criminal chargefailure to disperse
Criminal penalty3 hour jail term
Criminal statusunconvicted
Spousewishes to remain anonymous
Childrensix
Parent(s)Carol and David
RelativesMany
FamilyBros. and sisters
AwardsNobel prize for ridiculousness

Ah yes, the infobox. I am a big fan. These boxes come in handy when I only have seven seconds to read an article. My absolute favorite parts of the infobox are the amazing parameters that can be included. For once, I would like to see each parameter filled in with each tiny fragment of information. So I made one about myself.

You are probably familiar with the infoboxes for entertainers, gaming, movies, cities, et cetera et cetera.

But DYK....that there are infoboxes for:

and DYK...

I think infoboxes have a firm future because of our ever decreasing attention span. And it would take little effort to commercialize infoboxes by transforming them into trading cards. Instead of detailed arguments about pogs, we will hear: "I'll give you one Joe Negri for a Phil Ochs, a Melissa Greener and Caroll Spinney". I already have mine in a binder and inserted into those dandy plastic sleeves. I anticipate forming a massive collection. I can see my children at the estate sale after my death trying to unload my infobox/biography trading cards off on some clueless investor who trades in infobox futures.



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2017-07-15

Film, television and Internet phenomena reign with some room left over for America's birthday

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By Eddie891

Back to normal after low views last report

Things are back to normal, after a fairly slow week last week.
As usual, movies featured prominently, occupying the #1, #6, #8, and #14 spots (Spider-Man: Homecoming, Wonder Woman (2017 film), Transformers: The Last Knight, and Baby Driver respectively). The popularity of Spider-Man: Homecoming has also led to boosts to Tom Holland (actor) (#12) and Stan Lee (#13). Fans can't wait for the upcoming release of Game of Thrones (Season 7), and are heading to the page in droves, placing it at #11. In the news, the G20 summit (#4), the death of Stevie Ryan (#15), and the Canadian government compensating Omar Khadr (#3) were notable.

Countries drew popularity, specifically India, with both their Goods and Services Tax (India) (#9), and their prime minister's visit to Israel (#10) headlining; and the United States, with their Independence Day (United States) (#2), and Congress's magazine reading Hustler (#7).


For the week of July 2 to 8, 2017, the 15 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:


Rank Page Image Views Class Description
1 Spider-Man: Homecoming 1,286,802 c Class The 2017 American superhero film was released last week, to generally positive reviews, and received sustained interest this week, boosted by large openings around the world.
2 Independence Day (United States) 1,087,915 b Class The birthday of America drew interest as always, with this being the fifth year in a row the holiday has appeared in the top 25. Totals were slightly lower than last year, leaving the page just short – again – of first place.
3 Omar Khadr 892,465 c Class The 30 year old Canadian received revived interest when the Canadian government apologized to him and agreed to pay a reported C$10.5 million in compensation for his interrogation in Guantanamo Bay. In a related action, Tabitha Speer, widow of Christopher Speer, filed an application to enforce a US$134 million Utah judgment in Canada.
4 G20 712,798 b Class The meeting of the governments and central bank governors from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union drew attention as it does every year. Increased attention was largely due to Ivanka Trump briefly holding her father's seat as he stepped away to meet other leaders, and riots and protests related to the summit continuing throughout the week.
5 Deaths in 2017 679,901 list Class Views for this page are slightly down from normal, but still around 100,000 a day.
6 Wonder Woman (2017 film) 608,598 c Class The film by Patty Jenkins continues to receive much attention (being viewed as a test of how female-led superhero films will do in the modern era), and continues to do very well. Grossing over 746 million dollars, and receiving generally good reviews, Wonder Woman has continued to deliver on high expectations.
7 Hustler 511,025 c Class Hustler's appearance on this list is a product of a July 5 thread on the Subreddit, Today I Learned (TIL). Apparently, every month, copies of Hustler are mailed to all members of the U.S. Congress for free (perhaps this is why Congress is so ineffective?) Hustler, like all print magazines, is a little before my time, so I tend to watch interviews of models online.
8 Transformers: The Last Knight 501,661 c Class Interest continued in the most recent installment in the Transformers series. Despite getting truly rotten reviews, and lagging revenue, the film has still made well over its budget, and has two sequels slated for release.
9 Goods and Services Tax (India) 499,825 start Class Despite facing some in-party opposition, "India's biggest tax reform in 70 years of independence" is still attracting much readership, though down from number three last week.
10 Israel 495,779 b Class The Middle-Eastern country found itself in the news again, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Israel, becoming India's first PM ever to visit the country.
11 Game of Thrones (season 7) 459,350 c Class The upcoming release of the seventh series in this hugely popular fantasy drama has fans excited.
12 Tom Holland (actor) 455,977 c Class The starring actor in the very popular Spider-Man: Homecoming has himself seen increasing attention as a result of the recent popularity and acclaim surrounding the film.
13 Stan Lee 437,188 c Class Whilst some of the views to his page are being driven by the success of his characters, a large amount of the increased traffic is probably due to the death of his wife, Joan Lee.
14 Baby Driver 426,505 start Class The film's recent critical acclaim and relatively stable performance at the box office has led to sustained interest.
15 Stevie Ryan 422,603 stub Class The actress and YouTuber who starred in Stevie TV was found dead due to suicide late last week.




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2017-07-15

New features in development; more breaking changes for scripts

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By Evad37

The colour of wikitext

Syntax highlighting is now available for testing

Syntax highlighting for wikitext is a much-sought feature to assist with editing. While userscripts can and have made syntax highlighting possible, a solution integrated into MediaWiki ranked #6 on the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey. The WMF Community Tech team has a version available for testing, as a Beta feature on the test Wikipedia. Barack Obama is a suggested test article. Comments and questions should be directed to the project talk page on Meta.

Changes to Recent Changes

Recent changes filters can now be bookmarked

New filters for edit review were recently added as an optional beta feature. This feature improves Special:RecentChanges and Special:RecentChangesLinked by adding highlighting and filtering, including quality and intent filters using ORES. Filters bookmarking is now available, to save the set filters, and more new features are planned: additional filters (for namespaces, tagged edits, categories and usernames), live updates, and a redesigned navigation. The Collaboration team also plans to make the interface clearer by hiding the links currently shown at the top of the page. Mockup screenshots are available on Phabricator, and feedback on the change can be given on the MediaWiki.org talk page.

Users are also now able to choose whether they want to see Wikidata changes in the enhanced recent changes and watchlist. The enhanced mode is available in your preferences, under the "Recent changes" tab, as the "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" option. This way you can see the changes that happened to data on Wikidata that is used in the Wikipedia pages. You might need to uncheck the "hide Wikidata" checkbox on the recent changes or watchlist page to see them.

Breaking script changes

The big blue buttons which may break some scripts

Accessible editing buttons ("big blue buttons") have been deployed to Meta-wiki and several large Wikipedias, and will soon be deployed elsewhere, including English Wikipedia. They are intended to be more accessible, and be consistent with the majority of the rest of the user interfaces provided in MediaWiki. Instructions for testing and fixing affected scripts are available on MediaWiki.org.

Another potentially breaking change is the upgrade of the jQuery library in MediaWiki from 1.x to 3.x (the current stable version). The timeline for deployment to production wikis was August 2017. An overview of the important changes, and advice on how to migrate code, is available from jQuery. In most cases migration involves fairly simple changes, such as using a different method name, or adding quotes in selectors. The vast majority of the added requirements and removed methods will be restored through the jQuery Migrate plugin with a deprecation warning in the console – as such, it is unlikely that code will require any immediate changes.

In brief

Fewer labs labs labs

Newly approved bot tasks

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2017 #26, #27, & #28. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.



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2017-07-15

2017 WikiCup round 3 wrap-up

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By Eddie891 and Cwmhiraeth
Key
FA Featured article
GA Good article
FL Featured list
FP Featured picture
FT Featured topic
GT Good topic
DYK Did you know?
ITN In the news

Seventeen of thirty-two remaining contestants advance, with Cas Liber again leading the round

The third round of the WikiCup competition has finished in a flurry of last-minute activity, with 288 points being required to qualify for round 4. It was a hotly competitive round with all but four of the contestants exceeding the 106 points that was necessary to proceed to round 4 last year. Coemgenus and Freikorp tied on 288, and both have been allowed to proceed, so round 4 now has one pool of eight competitors and one of nine. Round 3 saw the achievement of a 26-topic featured topic by MPJ-DK as well as five featured lists and 13 featured articles. PanagiotisZois and SounderBruce achieved their first ever featured articles. Carbrera led the GA score with 10, Tachs achieved 17 DYKs and MBlaze Lightning 10 In the news items. There were 167 DYKs, 93 GARs and 82 GAs overall; this last figure exceeds the number of GAs in round 2, when twice as many people took part. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

Category leaders

This WikiCup has been a very high paced one, with 33 FAs, 216 GAs, 14 FLs, 26 FTs, 15 GTs, 499 DYKs, 71 ITN, and 377 GARs. In this section, we pay tribute to the leaders in every section, even if they are no longer competing.



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