We all know what the bad is. The 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic has spread to at least 190 countries, infecting 683,000 and killing 32,100 – and these are just the numbers as of March 29. Tomorrow they will be worse. People throughout the world are being quarantined or ordered into social distancing, bringing economies to a near-standstill. The WMF has gone into work-from-home mode, and all in-person gatherings of Wikipedians have been cancelled.

While any "good" from the last month is relative, Wikipedians have responded well to the pandemic. About 500 articles have been written on aspects of the pandemic, and page views of the three most viewed articles are 1.7 million daily; check this month's Traffic report for details. Several major news sources have praised Wikipedians' response.

• How Wikipedia Prevents the Spread of Coronavirus Misinformation
• The Coronavirus Is Stress-Testing Wikipedia’s Policies
• Meet the Wikipedia editors fighting to keep coronavirus pages accurate
• Looking for information on Coronavirus? Wikipedia it

In the media has some details. WikiProject report has extensive views from Wikipedians on the same topics.

Wikipedia is a go-to resource for information in crisis situations. The Special report and Community view explain why this is so.

There are other stories this month. March has traditionally been a special month for stories on women. The Gallery covers this story beautifully.

In focus explores Wikipedia's coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein story.

So how has the coronavirus affected The Signpost? It has been a difficult month for some of us, but we can't complain. We'll save that for the good months. A couple of planned submissions had to be delayed or arrived at the last moment, which is to be expected in such circumstances. We'll get them published in a month or two. We're in this for the duration. Readers who have been considering submitting articles or suggestions to The Signpost should step up and let your voices be heard. Please start with a note on our suggestions page or email me here.

Stay well.

This traffic report is brought to you by the letters "COVID", and the number 19. (Special thanks to both the WMF Tools and User:Jtmorgan for helping us compile the data while the regular tool is down)

Please note that news on COVID-19 has been rapidly developing. The descriptions of the historical articles given here may be out of date.

• These lists exclude 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.

Last month in this column we couldn't find a theme for February's news coverage of Wikipedia. There was a lone article on the COVID-19 outbreak, "On Wikipedia, a fight is raging over coronavirus disinformation" by Omer Benjakob in Wired on February 9. This month it's almost all COVID-19.

• Iran Blocks the Wikipedia Amid Coronavirus Crisis, Says Net Group from the AP via the March 3 Haaretz. Only the Farsi Wikipedia was involved according to the group NetBlocks.
• "How Wikipedia Prevents the Spread of Coronavirus Misinformation" by Noam Cohen on March 15 in Wired was one of the first of many COVID-19 related news stories about Wikipedia this month. More stringent rules are being applied to prevent the spread of misinformation, according to Cohen.

[Wikipedia] has developed a personality, a purpose, a soul. Now, as the new coronavirus outbreak plays out across its many pages, we can see that Wikipedia has also developed a conscience.

Compare this article to his 2014 article on "Wikipedia Emerges as Trusted Internet Source for Ebola Information" in The New York Times.

• "The Coronavirus Is Stress-Testing Wikipedia’s Policies" by Stephen Harrison in Slate, March 19, emphasizes the importance and difficulty of using Wikipedia's policies and guidelines in an unprecedented situation. What does "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" mean, when 2,100 editors have edited coronavirus articles and some articles are semiprotected? Policies and guidelines covered include "not news", "reliable sources" and "verifiability".
• "Meet the Wikipedia editors fighting to keep coronavirus pages accurate" in the March 24 Daily Dot concentrates on the sources of misinformation – inexperienced editors, medical studies that don't pass the "smell test", conflict-of-interest editors such as those working for drug or vaccine developers.
• "Looking for information on Coronavirus? Wikipedia it" by Roshni Majumdar in India Today, March 20. Indian editors just started the project "Special Wikipedia Awareness Scheme for The Healthcare Affiliates" or SWASTHA in December to translate Wikipedia's health content into 10 regional languages. Over 500 million people will be using these languages on the internet by next year. It looks like they have a head start now.
• "Wikipedia has COVID-19 information in Bangla, Hindi, Tamil and 6 other Indian languages" in the Hindustan Times follows up on the above story on March 27.

• "The impact of news exposure on collective attention in the United States during the 2016 Zika epidemic" by Tizzoni et al was published on March 12 in PLOS Computational Biology. Page views in the US of Zika-related Wikipedia articles such as 2015–16 Zika virus epidemic were highly correlated with the timing of news coverage, but not to the incidence of the disease in particular areas.
• "Wikipedia research on diseases strongly synchronised with news coverage" in Engineering & Technology on March 13 does a good job translating the academic paper to more normal language.
• "Like Zika, The Public Is Heading To Wikipedia During The COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic" Forbes.com contributor Farah Qaiser wrote on March 18, trying to draw parallels with the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 7, before COVID-19 became the only story in the news, Alex Pasternack,, who claims to be a Wikipedia editor, quotes at least nine editors in his FastCompany article, including Jimmy Wales, Ryan Merkley, DQUACK02, Cgmusselman, an arbitrator, more than one administrator, and some editors without advanced permissions. A couple of academics were also quoted. Compared to the three love letters Wikipedia received in the media last month, the article is quite realistic describing both our achievements and our challenges. It mentions vandalism, political articles, "one of the most trusted sites on the internet," debunking conspiracy theories, conflicts of interest, paid editing, thousands of small donations, the struggle to retain new editors, biting the newbies, left-wing bias, a Byzantine body of policies and guidelines, assume good faith, and ArbCom. The last several paragraphs are just as densely packed with information, until he slows down for the conclusion. There he goes into detail about his experiences with the new gamified project, WikiLoop Battlefield. He even won a prize there – something like a barnstar.

March has been a time of many articles on the theme of women's biographies and edit-a-thons. This year however, many edit-a-thons were cancelled and news coverage moved to COVID-19.

• "Filling in the gender gap on Wikipedia" in Fortune covers editing women's biographies, while focusing on Earlham College. Wikipedia Lacks Profiles Of Women. These College Students Are Changing That from Cincinnati Public Radio also focuses on Earlham.
• Did 100 new women's biographies in Brussels sprout? The Brussels Times states that was the goal of the March 5 Wikithon.
• Texas Public Media reports on an edit-a-thon sponsored by Artpace and the San Antonio Museum of Art lets participants know how difficult it can be to find information and properly write articles.
• "Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon teaches Wikipedia editing to students" from the Indiana Daily Student
• "Wikipedia project promotes women artists" in Cornell Chronicle
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hosted its sixth annual Art + Feminism edit-a-thon as reported by The Daily Tar Heel.
• The Jakarta Post covers efforts by Wikimedia Indonesia and the Swedish Embassy in Jakarta to close the "WikiGap", including recruiting new women editors and translating articles in English into Indonesian and Sundanese.
• High Museum to host virtual Wikipedia edit-a-thon to boost entries about women adapting to social distancing. Ditto for Boston College.

• BroBible – a site that emphasizes the Bro over the Bible: Here Are The 15 Most Interesting Things I Learned On Wikipedia During My First Week Of Self-Isolation joins an increasing number of stories where the author lists "weird" Wikipedia articles. Matt Reigle's list includes actor Norman Lloyd, whose career so far spans 1923–2015; animated character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit whose career spans 1927–2015, and the Greenland shark which can live to be 500 years old.
• Battle of the macrons: Debate about Māori words on Wikipedia ends: Place names in New Zealand based on the Māori language will now get macrons or diacritical marks. Folks in Paekākāriki should be happy.
• Britney Spears enters Wikipedia's athletic records: Her claim to have shattered the 100-meter dash record by four seconds was briefly listed in Wikipedia (Uproxx)

2018 Wikipedian of the year Farkhad Fatkullin was banned on the Tatar Wikipedia for a post on Phabricator on August 21, 2019. As of March 29, discussions continue in Tatar, Russian, and English on this page. The Signpost has not been able to contact all parties involved, so this report should be considered preliminary.

In 2018, Jimmy Wales said, "Farkhad is energetically community organizing among Russia's minority languages communities, going far and wide beyond his native Tatar. He is also fluent in English, a fact that has established a bridge between those communities and the wider movement after years of isolation."

Fatkullin's views in September are expressed on his Tatar user page in both Russian and English. He recently told The Signpost that he is "quite busy around Wikimedia Language Diversity (Meta), Wiki-Smart Tatarstan (Wikimedia RU) & wider Wiki-Smart Region (Meta), so I don't at all have time to feel wiki-exclusion."

According to this log Fatkulin appears to have been rebanned and re-unbanned on March 29.

Ssr contributed to this article. —S

• A pilot social media traffic report gives statistics on traffic referred to Wikipedia articles from the social media sites Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube. The pilot is expected to last 1–3 months, and may help to design a permanent database of such referrals. One hope is that having such a database may aid in patrolling damaging edits coming from disinformation campaigns on the social media sites. See meta:Research:Social media traffic report pilot for further information and Social media traffic report for the data from March 27.
• Guy is back: The community was notified on March 8 by a family member of requests for adminship (RfA) candidate Guy Macon that the candidate had experienced a health incident on March 3, while the RfA was in progress. The RfA was marked "unsuccessful" on March 5. Guy returned from an editing hiatus on March 12 to say that he was recovering and "As a general response to the oppose !votes, I will be studying them and seeing what I can learn ... don't expect any 2nd RfA any time soon."
• WikiCred, a project started at the WikiConference North America 2019, bills itself as Wikimedians Strengthening Knowledge and News Credibility on the Internet. The Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Facebook, and Microsoft fund the project. WikiCred offers microgrants (from $250 to $10,000) for pilot projects to help support internet credibility using Wikimedia. The microgrants can be awarded to individuals or teams. The first deadline to apply is April 6, 2020.
• New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this week's newest Wikimedia movement affiliates:
  • Wikigrannies User Group (Вики-бабушки "wiki-babushkas")^[1] – official language Bashkir
  • Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group^[2] – official languages Turkish and Turkic
  • Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group^[3]
  • Wikimedia Community User Group CEE [Central and Eastern Europe] Spring^[4]
  • Wikimedians for Sustainable Development^[5]
  • Myanmar Wikimedia Community User Group^[6] – official language Burmese
• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators, Cabayi and Lee Vilenski.
• Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones this month:
  • Ukrainian Wikipedia: 1 million articles on March 22 (details in Ukrainian, details in Russian)
  • Dutch Wikipedia: 2 million on March 8

The life of reputed billionaire^[1] Jeffrey Epstein took many strange turns. So did the articles about him on Wikipedia. In 2008, he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution, served 13 months in a Florida jail, and was required to register as a sex offender. He allegedly committed illicit sexual activities while he was on work release from jail,^[2] and was suspected of continuing them through at least 2015.^[3]

Ultimately, he was accused of additional serious offenses, including sex trafficking, resulting in his July 2019 arrest. That month, publicity about the lenient plea deal in Epstein's 2008 case resulted in the resignation of US Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, who as U.S. attorney for Southern Florida had approved the deal.^[4] Epstein died in jail in August 2019, his death ruled a suicide by the New York City medical examiner.^[5]

Between his 2009 release from jail and his second arrest, the editing got interesting on Wikipedia. Epstein began an extensive campaign to whitewash his reputation. Most notably, he claimed large donations to well-known academics through his charitable foundations.^[6] Given his heinous crimes, the probable high-level political interest in the story, and the campaign to whitewash his reputation, in retrospect Wikipedia's article on Epstein seems like an obvious potential target for conflict-of-interest or paid editing.

The New York Times on November 26, 2019, broke a story about Wikipedia editing by accounts with probable links to Epstein. The Times wrote that after his 2008 conviction, Epstein named reputation management services that he used, and a Wikipedia user account, "Turville", appeared in information Epstein provided.^[6] However there is no User:Turville registered on Wikipedia, and the Times suggested that User:Turvill (without an "e"), was the account referred to.

This Signpost report investigates whether User:Turvill and other accounts were associated with Epstein and how their edits affected two articles on Epstein. It is important to note that no purely on-Wiki investigation can prove the identity of a user account. For example other people may impersonate an editor in order to embarrass them, a tactic known as Joe jobbing. We cannot conclusively determine whether Epstein himself, employees of the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, reputation management companies, or other types of paid editors edited the Wikipedia articles about Epstein. We can however gather evidence about how editors who associated themselves in some way with Epstein affected the articles.

The Wikipedia article on Epstein was created on August 4, 2006, a week after Epstein's first indictment and two years before his conviction. Within hours a reliable source was added, citing CNN on the indictment.

Over the next two years the article grew to include 15 references, almost all of them about the sex scandal or investigation, until on June 30, 2008, when Epstein pleaded guilty and the plea was noted in Wikipedia.

However, not all was well with the article during this time. A lot of material, mostly unreferenced and complimentary to Epstein was added to the top of the article and all the referenced material on the criminal case was pushed to the bottom. From October 2007 to February 2008 one IP editor made six major deletions of material on the sexual allegations and related lawsuits.

In December 2011 there was more conflict among editors. Wikipedia editors had been keeping the article up to date, with reliable sources—until the arrival of editors favoring Epstein. Trouble began when User:Stgeorge12 reverted an administrator and removed material about the sexual offense conviction with the edit summary "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein to describe his biography in a professional and accurate way, that does not involve any scandals or disreputable content. As a living person, this is his right." On January 7, 2012, Stgeorge12 was indefinitely blocked for this and similar edits, at exactly the same time as another new editor, User:Ottotiv, who had made similar edits. These single-purpose accounts had established a pattern of obstruction and interference that would continue with User:Turvill.

Six weeks after Stgeorge12 was indefinitely blocked, User:Turvill made their first edits, with five of the first seven edits on talk pages discussing deleting the Jeffrey Epstein article or protesting the proposed deletion of Jeffrey Epstein (plastic surgeon), which they called "my article".

Turvill has associated themself with Epstein by uploading flattering photos of Epstein to Wikimedia Commons with one described "Previously published: on my website, on facebook www.jeffreyepstein.org". When these files were deleted from Commons because the copyright permission was poorly formatted, Turvill implied that Epstein's foundation would release the photos. Turvill also tried to get a public domain Florida mugshot of Epstein speedily deleted from Commons because it was a "personal attack; violation of biography of a living person."

Turvill's main topic for editing was an article they helped create on the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. Using the articles for creation procedure, an IP editor proposed the article on March 24, 2013, but Turvill took control of it two days later and made the vast majority of edits on it until August 20, 2013, when it was accepted as an article.

The article as first accepted claimed that the foundation funded projects worth "$200 million a year." The New York Times^[6] published financial statements from the foundation showing that, in total over 18 years, the foundation funded less than $20 million in projects.^[7] The article as first accepted also included a 100 word biography of Epstein which did not mention his conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Turvill was a single-purpose account devoted to articles related to Epstein. Turvill occasionally signed an edit in text as "Turville" (with an "e") or once as "Tuville" resulting in their IP address being posted on talk pages. The IP editor posted 25 of their 31 edits on the same pages where Turvill contributed. Turvill's last edit on Wikipedia was in January 2015 when they removed the words "convicted paedophile" from the foundation article.

In March 2012 and again in July 2012, Turvill was warned about editing warring on the Jeffrey Epstein article. Following the November 26 New York Times article, Carrite asked Turvill whether they would make a paid editing declaration, even though Turvill had not edited in almost five years. The next day Turvill was indefinitely blocked for "(Spam / advertising-only account WP:UPE)", where "UPE" refers to "undeclared paid editing".

In the same month that Turvill began editing the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation article, Epstein met the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, Joi Ito for the first time, with both interested in a donation to the Media Lab. On March 2, 2013, Ito requested staff members to conduct due diligence on Epstein.^[8] One of them responded by email two days later:

In an independent report commissioned by MIT, the authors noted six sentences or paragraphs in the Wikipedia article that could have warned Ito that MIT should not accept Epstein's money, although the article "also included statements that could be read as undercutting the strength of some of the allegations."^[8]

The MIT report noted that MIT did consider the possible risks to MIT's reputation when they accepted Epstein's money, but MIT "did not appropriately take into account the significant damage to the MIT community, particularly victims of sexual assault and abuse, from allowing Epstein to associate himself with MIT."^[8]

Some staffers at the Media Lab were clearly worried about Epstein's victims. Epstein visited the MIT Media Lab in 2016, about a year after Turvill's final edit. According to an MIT staffer interviewed by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker,^[3] two young women accompanied Epstein on the visit. "They were models. Eastern European, definitely … All of us women made it a point to be super nice to them. We literally had a conversation about how, on the off chance that they're not there by choice, we could maybe help them."

Wikipedians reported on the Epstein investigation soon after it was announced in 2006, and they reported his conviction and many details of other allegations against him. But they were regularly opposed by single-purpose editors who removed material on Epstein's conviction or otherwise whitewashed the articles. Two of these editors associated themselves with Epstein or his foundation.

These Epstein-related accounts were not enough to prevent the Wikipedia article on Epstein from alerting MIT to Epstein's offenses, but they did soft-pedal the story enough that MIT managed to ignore the alert long enough to accept Epstein's money. Wikipedia's editors performed their work well in a difficult situation.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog was reopened on March 9, 2020. Until now, the original 2018 case request was in an unusual state of limbo: it was accepted, but the case will not be opened at this time in light of Jytdog's statement that he is retiring from Wikipedia... on December 9, 2018.

A unanimous decision to reopen the case was reached by Arbcom on March 5 after receiving a communication from Jytdog expressing the wish to return to the community. Committee member Bradv gave the account Jytdog2 the confirmed user permission in order to initiate an Arbcom case.

The case is in its workshop phase as of our writing deadline.

An anti-harassment Request for Comment (RfC) under the aegis of the Arbitration Committee was mentioned as a follow-on action during the Fram case last year (see the September 30, 2019 Special report for details). The draft RfC was posted on March 16, and was not yet open for comments as of our writing deadline.

Motorsports case was accepted February 28 as a content issue we cannot resolve, according to Arbitrator David Fuchs. A proposed decision was due March 27 – as of our writing deadline, it has not been posted.