Wikimania 2017 was 9-13 August. Many people used the conference as an opportunity to participate, speak up, learn, engage, and form collaborations. The challenge following the event is to capture the momentum and meaning of it all while it is still fresh. The Signpost would like to publish all the news and updates from the event, but you and your colleagues have not yet written your articles about the event!

Will you please share what you learned at Wikimania in the form of a news story for The Signpost? Write your draft now, but feel free to submit your story anytime. As a conference which is largely volunteer organized, it takes some time to categorize all the media produced at the conference and publish all the lasting ideas which people had there. Over the next few weeks the professional videographers will be uploading the official videos of the keynote talks and some other presentations. The majority of talks either were not recorded, or were recorded by volunteers who will share the videos on their own time. Individual presenters may or may not share their slides or other materials.

Did you present at Wikimania? If so, and you want to reach an even larger audience, consider turning your talk and the discussions you had about your presentation into an article for The Signpost. Did you attend a talk at Wikimania that you found meaningful? Then please consider contacting the presenter, doing a 2-3 question follow up interview with them, then publishing your response to their presentation in The Signpost. Did you and another person have a conversation at the conference that you want to share? Again, The Signpost is a record of current thought in the Wikipedia community as we present it to each other and to the non-wiki outside world. If you can draft at least 5 sentences in the manner of a journalist and will agree to go through a traditional editorial process, then congratulations, you qualify to be a freelance writer for The Signpost.

The impact of Wikimania does not end at the in-person event. Please, everyone, ping everyone else who did anything significant at Wikimania and offer them the option to publish their project, idea, discussion, controversy, opinion, argument, conspiracy theory, rant, fan letter, or other journalistic material in The Signpost. Writers get a relevant audience, entry into the public record, and sweet community discussion.

To submit drafts or proposals, or for further information, visit the Submissions desk.

Godwin's Law states that any internet discussion that goes on too long will eventually have a Nazi comparison. Well, things have gotten so ugly in America that Godwin himself says there is a valid comparison to be found in the Unite the Right rally, led by white supremacists (#5) and featuring protesters carrying swastika flags and doing the Nazi salute. Understandably, anti-fascism groups (#7) appeared to counterprotest. And it all started because of a threat to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee (#2), showing the Civil War he fought is unfortunately resonant today.

Yet, the top entry on the list has the only place that somehow is worse, the world of Game of Thrones—say what you want about the political turmoil, at least there are no zombies or dragons involved—which also takes two other spots in the top 10. Back to Earth, given the Sun continues to shine in spite of so much barbarism, people were fascinated to see it eclipsed by the Moon during the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 (#6). India is worried about deaths caused by the Blue Whale game (#3), the UK mourned Bruce Forsyth (#9), and the ever-present deaths in 2017 list came in at #10.

Our list topper, one way or another, is Game of Thrones, the main page for the series replacing the season 7 article, which drops to second (but see the note at the bottom). Comedian Jerry Lewis is at #3 following his death.

Eclipse content tended to dominate the list, with some surprising entries. Obviously the article for this week's eclipse (#4) makes it onto the list, and not really a surprise to see the main solar eclipse article (#8) here, and both the lists on eclipses this century and eclipses visible from the United States (#9 & #10).

Also sweeping the world up in -mania was boxing, with both Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (#5 & #6) making good placings. Controversial Indian guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh (#7) was convicted of rape this week, a conviction that led to riots in which more than thirty people were killed.

For the week of August 20 to 26, 2017, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Note:

• The article for Game of Thrones has increased by roughly a million viewers from last week, with no equivalent boost for the season article, which looks suspicious. Considering the mobile percentages from the raw list, it can be estimated that last week had 507,454 mobile & 578,474 computer views, with this week having 543,364 mobile & 1,418,948 computer views, indicating a potential issue. However, it is difficult to say how many of those views should be branded "illegitimate", as the article certainly belongs on the list, even if it maybe should be slightly lower. It should be considered that the #2 page is the season article, so the #1 slot has not been "stolen" from something unrelated that deserves it more. If the view counts for Game of Thrones were the same as last week, the article would be down at #8 (from #4), which is, perhaps, an indicator of how many big articles there were this week.

• These lists excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

The controversial memo Google's Ideological Echo Chamber was published on August 5, 2017. Due to the since-fired James Damore's referencing of certain Wikipedia pages, those pages are becoming hot spots of edit warring and massive restructuring.

In the 10-page memo, Danmore wrote that "personality differences" between men and women such as women having a "lower stress tolerance" are the reason that there are fewer women than men in leadership and engineering roles at the company. In making his conclusions, Danmore cited the Wikipedia pages Neuroticism, Sex differences in psychology, Empathizing–systemizing theory, and others.

Motherboard reported on the uptick in edits and page views on Neuroticism in particular, saying that "the article has received more than six times the amount of pageviews as it does on average—topping out at 15,574 pageviews yesterday. Between yesterday and now, the page has been revised 27 times, compared to its average of 4.2 edits per month." Discussions on the talk page have been occurring rapidly, with the size of the page almost becoming six times larger in August of 2017, and the page itself received 157 edits in August, compared to two in July.

Seth Stevens-Davidowitz is a former Google data scientist who, as Business Insider reported on August 6, 2017, thinks he has found what it takes to become successful (the mark of being successful being, having a Wikipedia page). Stevens believes that at long last he has found the answer. Grow up near a big college town that is diverse and somewhat urban.

In order to perform this study, Stevens took 150,000 articles about Americans (limited to baby boomers). He took their county of birth, date of birth, occupation, and gender. Stevens found that "30% of people found success through arts and entertainment, 29% through sports, 9% through politics, and 3% through science or academia." He also learnt that geography plays a large role in Wikipedia page prevalence (WPP). Baby boomers born in California had a one in 1,209 rate of WPP, compared to West Virginia, with a WPP of one in 4,496. At a more local level, Stevens found a WPP of one in 748 in Suffolk County. Growing up near "large, semi-urban college towns" placed the counties containing Madison, Wisconsin; Berkeley, California; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Ithaca, New York (home to University of Wisconsin–Madison; University of California, Berkeley; UNC Chapel Hill; and Cornell respectively) in the top 3% of counties ranked by WPP. Stevens wrote "The greater the percentage of foreign-born residents in an area, the higher the proportion of children born there who go on to notable success," The effect was very prominent, so prominent, in fact that among two college towns, both of around the same size, "the one with more immigrants will produce more prominent Americans." Stevens also writes that "Perhaps this effort to zoom in on the places where hundreds of thousands of the most famous Americans were born can give us some initial strategies, encouraging immigration, subsidizing universities, and supporting the arts, among them."

• The second Confederate President: The list of President of the Confederate States of America was briefly vandalised by an IP to include Donald Trump. First reported on by Business Insider on August 15, several other media outlets picked up on the vandalism.
• Malaika Aurora Turns 44: Birthday wishes poured in from all over, as people were extremely excited to wish Malaika Arora a happy 44th birthday. However, those well meaning wishes were not quite correct, as Wikipedia had erroneously reported her birthday as August 23, not October 23. Malaika Aurora herself corrected the mistake, blaming Wikipedia for the mishap. Reported by NDTV (August 24, 2017)
• Siri "What is an Indian?": Apple iPhone users were outraged when they discovered that if you ask Siri "what is an Indian?" the response is "They are a bit brown and they smell like curry and eat it." The text comes from vandalism by since blocked Thedarkoverlord123 which was up for three minutes. This prompted questions about how often Apple updates Siri's responses. Reported in BuzzFeed (August 11, 2017)
• Fined for editing Wikipedia: A 53-year-old South Korean man (referred to by the surname Yang) was fined 4 million won ($3,564) on September 1, 2017, for changing the Wikipedia pages of Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae-myung to say that they were North Korean. The Seoul Central District Court fined the man, a software developer, for vandalizing the two pages in February. Yang corrected the edits six hours later, but was referred to the prosecution for investigation by the National Election Commission. Reported in The Korea Times and multiple other publications. (September 1, 2017)
• Cuba's Internet Paradox: The deputy principal in a state-run primary school in Cuba was fired because she had her students look up information on the Internet as part of a history lesson. One of them used Wikipedia. “They [the government] say children can’t use Wikipedia, because everything in Wikipedia is a lie. [They say] that children have to learn what is in history books, and not look for other information,” the unnamed woman told Amnesty International. (August 29, 2017)
• Download Wikipedia: The Economic Times, and Lifehacker picked up (August 20, 2017 and August 26, 2017) on the fact that you can download Wikipedia and put it on a flash drive (see previous Signpost coverage).

Bassel Khartabil, a Palestinian Syrian open-source software developer and Wikimedia content contributor, has been confirmed as dead by his wife as of 31 July 2017. From the Wikimedia Foundation blog, "Bassel was a leader, advocate, and member of many open culture communities; he had a pivotal role in the development of the open source movement in the Arabic-speaking world. In addition to his advocacy for and contributions to Wikimedia—many of which were made anonymously—he was project lead and public affiliate for Creative Commons Syria, a friend of the Global Voices community, a free software advocate and contributor to Mozilla, the founder of Aiki Lab hackerspace in Damascus, and much more."

Bassel had been arrested on 15 March 2012 and held in detention until September 2015 when his communication was cut and the Syrian prison system ceased communication about him. The Wikimedia community and others participated in a campaign asking #WhereIsBassel. The recent announcement confirmed that Bassel was missing because he had been executed outside of any legal process for activities including his engagement with Wikipedia and similar educational projects. A close friend of Bassel's remarked to Wikipedia that Bassel continually hid his on-wiki editing history and accounts for fear of his safety, so Wikipedians cannot review his work history.

At Wikimania 2017 in Montreal an Editathon for Bassel celebrated his life. There was also a Basselpedia Party at which attendees shared what they knew of Bassel and discussed his work and the circumstances of his death. Many media outlets reported on Bassel's death. Wikipedia participants wishing to demonstrate condolences may edit the Wikipedia articles about Bassel and his work, read FreeBassel.org for news on next steps, or take action as they deem respectful in his memory. B

On 11 August 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees confirmed the appointments of three community-selected trustees: María Sefidari and Dariusz Jemielniak (both reappointed), as well as James Heilman, former Trustee (controversially removed December 2015, see previous Signpost coverage). Christophe Henner and María Sefidari were reappointed as Chair and Vice Chair respectively. Terms for the community-selected Trustees last for three years. E

• Wikimania 2017 was held on 9–13 August (did you attend?)
• Jibber-jabbering with Wikimedians: Sebastian Wallroth has started a podcast WikiJabber (meta:WikiJabber) where he discusses "Wikipedia, life and all the rest" with one or more guests. There is also a German language version WikiStammtisch (de:Wikipedia:WikiStammtisch).
• Milestones: On August 9, 2017, the Cebuano Wikipedia hit its five-millionth article. Other milestones reached include 2,000 articles for the Hawaiian Wikipedia.

No bots were harmed in the writing of this article.

There are a startling 1,862 bots at large on Wikipedia.^[2] If the world has any fear of AI, then the robo-cide should probably begin here. There is suspicion that a few of these bots are included in the count of the 5,000 most active editors. It's uncertain whether this is true or not, but it does make you wonder – who are they and what do they do? (In plain English, please.) Scripts are somewhat comprehensible, HTML makes sense – bot but why so many? Do they ever have their own bot-like edit-wars? Has a bot ever become a sock of another bot? Who needs administrators or ArbCom when bots could do the same things (without mercy)? Many bots possess human qualities and foibles. Short descriptions of the most interesting ones include:

• Botnet – the scary, big, and bad, bot boss.
• BotTheBuilder – created with a child-like personality. This bot will automatically leave a message on all the talk pages of articles on heavy machinery that optimistically states: "Yes we can!"
• Bots n Panz – assembles topics for a new WikiProject: Domestication of Men. Two articles have been tagged for assessment for this project so far. These are What women want men to do in the kitchen and You never listen.

• orangeBot – has the tedious job of sorting through the Knock-knock joke articles, assessing their humor, and adding the speedy deletion template to tag the article page: pointless since every knock-knock joke get the speedy deletion tag. Orange you glad this bot is around? This bot was created by the self-identified German participants on the talk page.
• Bots!! – is a massively multiplayer bot and "uses nProtect GameGuard but because of its method of actuation, similar to a rootkit, it is criticized for being extremely invasive."^[3] It was created in March 2006, so its a little slow and pixelated. This bot was licensed to Playdom. Then Disney purchased it^[4] from Playdom for $763 million. The Korean version is called BOUT!!
• Bots – easily confused with the former bot. Though named after a band, it is able to translate Dutch articles into English.

• Botswana – A place where bots 'wanna' retire.

• Wilf Bott, Richard Bott, Mark Bott, Leon Bott and John Bott – takes articles on soccer players,^[5] skeleton players,^[6] cricketeers,^[7] and rugby^[8] players and tags them as stubs. This is pretty pointless since all amateur sports players are stubs anyway.
• RaoulBott – a Hungarian-American mathematician best known for his Bott periodicity theorem, the Morse–Bott functions, and the Borel–Bott–Weil theorem.
• JackBot and Jillbot – pretty useful in filling out the biography parameter "| married for money = <!--answer with yes, no, probably-->".
• HotBot - a special project of the editors active in the WP:WikiProject Food and Drink. They use it to extract recipes from food and drink articles, deposit them into Wikibooks and expand them into recipes that have all the ingredients in metric and annoying American quantities. It also will transform a recipe that is designed to feed a family of four into other quantities, kinda like the loaves and fishes miracle.
  • HotCrockBot – a subsidiary of HotBot but only creates wikibook recipes for things that can be braised.
• CrackBot – this particular bot is a little touchy and hangs out on just a few different article pages. It has some helper scripts with their own names: KISS, Tea time, and IceChat.
  • UKcrackbot – the UK has some pretty great place names. This bot doesn't do a darn thing except watch the others work.
  • Crackbot cave – a script that used to help disambiguate bat and cave topics. It got gummed up and was decomissioned when it didn't know how to handle Knee-wrecker Passage and Beans and Bacon mine.
  • crackBotHall, a landmark ruin near Keld, North Yorkshire.
  • LittleCrakBot, this bot leaves messages on talk pages for unusually curt editors who are notoriously contentious.
  • Crackbot theory, well there are quite a few of these and somewhat difficult to describe.
• BotBound – a favorite in WP:WikiProject Botany because it will flag the articles of those plants whose roots tend to rot.
• PainInDaBot – – a bot that keeps a count of new editors who are treated this way by cranky editors with lots of edits to their name.
• PotBot – scavenges WP looking for articles that contain the word "Cannabis" and inserts these articles into this template. It is not entirely predictable. But it seems totally relaxed, euphoric, can't fall asleep, talks too fast, is always hungry, has the jitters, is anxious, paranoid, introspective, and makes pompous philosophical declarations. It also tends to loop a lot.^[9][10]