• 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.

• "Twitter Wants to Use Wikipedia to Help Determine Who Gets a Blue Checkmark": Stephen Harrison in Slate discusses Twitter's plan to use Wikipedia as part of its verification process. The new system would require that bluetick wannabes prove they have a 'presence in public indices' in the case of companies or 'Off Twitter Notability' for individuals. A Wikipedia article covering the person or organization in question could be used as evidence of either status. Harrison quotes Wikipedia editors Monika Sengul-Jones, and Kevin Li, who reacted to the proposal with a mixture of 'pride and wariness' and suggests that it wouldn't hurt Twitter to bring in a few other features of Wikipedia in particular the {{Citation needed}} tag. The Twitter proposal seems to import Wikipedia's definition of "notability" into Twitter and might end up importing the systemic biases that go along with the definition. At the same time "It’s a form of Twitter offloading its work to us and expecting us to deal with it," according to Li. Perhaps Twitter should consider increasing its donation to the Wikimedia Foundation by several times.
• "Govt asks Wikipedia to remove wrong map showing Aksai Chin as part of China": India Today (via MSM) covers a decision by the Indian government to "request" that Wikipedia take down a map depicting Aksai Chin (a part of the disputed region of Kashmir governed by China) as part of China. The issue which has created a great deal of debate in the world's largest democracy and on the world's best encyclopedia (including advice from WMF's legal counsel to the community) was sparked when a Twitter user shared an image of the map. The article suggests that India may take legal action against Wikipedia or even block the website if the map is not removed.
• Here are a few of Wikipedia's most surprisingly controversial topics: Mike Vago at The A.V. Club takes a look down the "Wiki Wormhole". Perhaps the term 'controversial' is used too liberally in the article's headline, but the column does glance over several niche topics from the underbelly of medieval measurements to some rather contrarian traffic control methods. During December Vago has departed slightly from his usual subject matter by collecting a group of smaller topics rather than writing about one Wikipedia article per column. His December 20 column speeds through Honkbal Hoofdklasse, Root hog or die, and our favorite, List of games that Buddha would not play.
• "Let's walk" sheriff merits Wikipedia page: The Flint, Michigan radio station, WCRZ did a story on the creation of a biography for their county's sheriff, Christopher R. Swanson. His notability is due largely to his humane response to the George Floyd protests, taking off his riot gear and telling protesters "let's walk". He has also written a children's book.

• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson won't say how many children he has: But The Economist cites Wikipedia's "at least six" in its December 19 story "Sprechen Sie Tory?". Wikipedia patched together the inequality from stories in The Guardian and The Independent.
• Someone In 'Northern Territory Government' Changed McDonald's Name On Wikipedia To McBumholes: Stewart Perrie in The Lad Bible reports how geolocate caught out the playground humour of a bored Australian civil servant. The article explains how an edit changing the name of the Wikipedia page for McDonald's to Mcbumholes was traced back to an IP address belonging to the territorial government of the Northern Territory of Australia. What would Crocodile Dundee think?
• Wiki Who?: The CW31 show Good Day has a segment on trivia questions usually taken from a Wikipedia biography. In this edition there are 2 panelists answering 3 questions about 3 people named Meg.
• Researching Wikipedia on the origins of toxic words : The author tells about how he "find[s] that there are places where Wikipedia doesn't fear to tread", not just the many uses of the f-word (a noun, a verb, an adjective, an interjection or an adverb), but the origins of the aubergine/eggplant schism. (Asian Age)
• Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is "well reported": The list of NFL players with the condition is noted by The National Law Review.
• Beware This Wikipedia Photo Copyright Scam: Petapixel discusses social media reports that scammers are editing the wiki commons to claim ownership of photographs they did not take.
• The most-read Wikipedia page on each day of 2020 (Quartz)
• Pakistan threatens Google, Wikipedia over 'sacrilegious content' (Deutsche Welle)

This Wikipedia essay was first published on June 13, 2011. Essays are not project guidelines, policies, or part of the Wikipedia's Manual of Style. They may or may not have broad support among the Wikipedia commuity. You may edit this essay if you wish, but please do it at the original essay page.

This page in a nutshell: Some subjects may seem notable because they are perceived as being important. But without meeting Wikipedia's inclusion criteria, they are not notable.

Subjective importance is when a subject is perceived as being notable by seeming important or appearing to stand out to a person or group of people. A common misconception about notability is that importance or uniqueness equals notability. But some things that are assumed to be important lack sources that are required by Wikipedia in order to meet the general notability guidelines or other inclusion criteria. Therefore, they are not included.

A subject may be the biggest, the best, or the most well-known of something. It may be possible on this basis to argue that it should obviously be included. But without a single reliable source to verify its existence or accuracy, there is no way it can be included.

For example, a high school basketball player may be the best on their team. A pizza shop may serve the most popular pizza in town. A church may be the oldest place of worship in the region. These facts may be well known to those most familiar with these subjects. But there may be nothing published about any of this that can be used as sources for the basis of an article.

Also, certain factors that are viewed as respectable by society are likewise not automatic grounds for notability. The world has many physicians who have studied hard and save lives. But most of these physicians are relatively unheard of in published sources and are not worthy of articles. Likewise, the principal of a school or the founder of a club do not get automatic articles for their achievements.

There are many reasons why one may believe something is notable when they are not. In many cases, these have been used in arguments to keep an article proposed for deletion, and they sometimes have worked.

• Keep He is the oldest living person in the country right now – Own A Title, 14:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep This store has been around for 105 years – Hand-me-down, 17:35, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep This house was built over 1300 years ago – Restored, 21:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Just because it's old, that doesn't mean it's notable.

Age is just a number, and numbers are not used to judge notability on Wikipedia. Everything and everyone has an age, and with each passing day, that age is increased by one day. That age will continue to increase as long as the person is alive, or the object still exists. At what time will that person or object be ready for an article?

If a structure that is still standing is thousands of years old, and there is a name put to it, it is likely that there will be multiple independent reliable sources ("MIRS"), about it, though these must be provided in order for the article to be written. The same goes if it has been verified to be the oldest example in existence. But there cannot possibly be an article about every living tortoise or tree on planet earth.

The older something is, the more difficult published sources can be to locate. Sources for subjects that existed before the days of the internet are more likely to be offline. While there is no requirement that sources be available online, they must be verifiable. The more clearly you cite an offline source, the less likely it is to be challenged. Remember, the burden is on the editor adding the material to provide sufficient sources.

• Keep It is the best-selling brand – Keeping up with the Joneses, 06:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
• Keep It is a game everyone plays – Challenge me, 06:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
• Keep It is a favorite recipe – Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, 06:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

There are many things that have reached the status of one of the above examples, yet they have never been covered in any published source, and they are nothing more than word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is not only insufficient for Wikipedia notability, but it may also be original research.

There are sites, such as Urban Dictionary, that more readily accept entries without proof, taking the word of the submitter as enough to make it plausible. This, in theory, can allow anyone to pass off their own creation as something long in existence. The main point of the notability guideline is to provide objective criteria for inclusion rather than subjective criteria such as importance which depend on an individual's perspective on the subject.

• Keep He has hundreds of fans – Autograph collector, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
• Keep Her picture is in the local newspaper – Instant celebrity, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
• Keep They performed at Town Square – Money in the hat, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
• Keep He was on a reality TV show – 2000s star, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

There are many levels of fame. These include:

• International fame: Refers to those who are known around the world.
• National fame: People who are known within their own country to its own citizens
• Local fame: Where one is an iconic figure within their own city, town, or region, but unheard of beyond. See WP:LOCAL
• Time-bound fame: A person is briefly in the spotlight, but soon forgotten. See WP:ONEEVENT regarding this policy. Includes those who have appeared on Reality TV shows, but otherwise have no coverage.

But notability is not temporary. What this means is that once a topic has been the subject of "significant coverage" in accordance with the general notability guideline, it does not need to have ongoing coverage, but brief coverage that ceases quickly may not render a subject notable. The one event guideline in particular discourages standalone articles for those who only received this brief coverage.

Regardless of the degree of fame, a living person or even a deceased person may only have an article about themselves if they meet notability guidelines for biographies. Brief public exposure or word-of-mouth only fame does not make one notable.

• Keep He is a really great artist – Autograph collector, 04:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep She is a very fast runner – Triathlon, 04:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep They are a tremendous band – CD collector, 04:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It is nice to have such talent. But all too often, one's talent or greatness is a matter of personal taste. Even when measured by statistics (such as the number of home runs one has hit) and recorded, it means nothing in the way of notability unless it gets published. Furthermore, every single person in any occupation at all could always simply claim to have talent, whether they've actually achieved anything encyclopedically noteworthy or not — however, Wikipedia's inclusion standards are not based on what's been claimed about a person or group, but on what can be reliably sourced as true about a person or group.

And even if a statistic is measurable by numbers, being a great feat is still a point-of-view issue. A high school sports star may not be able to score once at a professional level. A child prodigy may not grow up to be very successful. This is just another reason why sources must continue to rule over so-called "talent."

• Keep It is the 5th largest Italian restaurant in Bergenshire – StatsKeeper, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
• Keep It is the only elementary school on Sunny Drive – No Choice, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
• Keep It was the first swim club to open within a 2-mile radius of the only convenience store in the neighborhood of Cedarland Heights – One-of-a-kind, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Their single reached #98 on the Billboard chart – Chartfanatic, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

You see how ridiculous this may sound. Believe it or not, arguments similar to these have been made in AfD debates, sometimes by a majority of participants, favoring keeping the article, and in many cases, resulting in the articles being kept. But that does not make the topic encyclopedic.

Notability is not about being the biggest, the best, or the only of something. Likewise, not fitting this description does not make something not notable. Notability is about having published, non-trivial information (i.e., more than a mere mention) in multiple sources independent of the subject, and the article itself not being the first place to provide the information. No matter what, you can combine all the variables you would like, and then find something unique about every person, every business, every idea.

• Keep He has a master's degree – Earn your article, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
• Keep She has a Harvard PhD – Erudition, 14:18, 24 December 2004 (UTC)
• Keep She is a physician – CPR, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
• Keep He is a priest/minister/rabbi/imam – Blessed, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
• Keep She is an attorney – It's the law, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)

Certain positions and titles in front of a person's name are a sign of having really accomplished something. Being known as "Dr. John Doe" or "The Reverend John Doe" or "John Doe, Attorney at Law" sounds a lot nicer than simply being called "John Doe." It is quite deserving too. Yet, there are plenty of people out there in these positions who have never received the coverage needed to be given a Wikipedia article. In fact, a very small percentage of those in such positions have accomplished just that.

It may seem strange that at the same time, so many people who have not come close to the above achievements qualify for having articles. Some people have articles for writing one short book, acting in one film, or publishing one song. Some people have articles for playing briefly on a professional sports team. Some people have earned themselves articles just for being victims of crime, or even stranger when you come to think of it, committing the crimes themselves.

While this may seem so unfair, this does not mean a person who has achieved a high academic credential in their field is unimportant, insignificant, or is being dishonored. It is just that getting a Wikipedia article–meeting WP:N–is based on information that has been published in reliable sources, and some fields tend to be better covered by reliable sources than others. Entire books will be written on relatively minor film actors or TV actresses, while professors or lawyers who have had significant careers may only merit a few articles in local newspapers.

• Keep The subject is not out there to make money – Seeking donations, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This is a service provided by a government agency – Your hard-earned dollars, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This article does not advance the subject's cause – Just informing you, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This NGO helps cute baby bunnies – Cute'n_cuddly, 13:16, 24 December 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It is a given. Wikipedia is not an advertising service. If you've reached this page, you probably know this by now. But the absence of seeking profit is not a free pass to having an article.

For starters, in case you have not noticed, Wikipedia does allow articles about for-profit companies, provided that they meet notability guidelines. Wikipedia has thousands of articles on for-profit companies, ranging from international corporations that are household vocabulary (e.g. Wal-Mart), to some local businesses operating a single location known mostly to those in the region (such as the Hersheypark).

Likewise, an entity that is not out there to make a profit, and is funded by taxes or private donations, or does not operate using money at all, can be excluded if it fails to meet Wikipedia's general notability guidelines.

One thing to be aware of is that many services operated by a national, state/provincial, or municipal government are not 100% tax-funded and do indeed solicit income via advertising, just like a for-profit corporation. For example, the United States Postal Service, as well as selling its stamps, uses televised advertising to make their offerings known. Many government-operated lotteries are run more like businesses. And political candidates are looking for donations for their campaigns, not to mention, votes. This does not exclude them from having articles, but still, all inclusion and citation guidelines must be carefully met.

You also cannot forget that the purpose of many non-profit organizations is to support some partisan, often controversial cause (e.g. NARAL Pro-Choice America, PETA). This does not rule out their ability to have articles, as many such organizations are indeed worthy of them. But it requires that any such article that is written must be based on neutral, factual information, and does not promote or oppose the cause.

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. There are many subjects that are commonplace in our lives. But the most that can be said about them is a simple definition, nothing more, no matter how hard you search. In such a case, rather than creating an article, it is preferable to link from articles that give important mention on the subect with the following: [[wikt:subject name]]. If the subject is the title of a disambiguation page, a link to the wiktionary entry can be obtained by adding {{wiktionary|subjectname}} to the top. If there is only one other use, this can be accomplished through a hatnote of {{see wiktionary|subjectname}}.

For example, the title "nice" is used for the French city Nice. On the page Nice (disambiguation), there is such a link to the word "nice," which includes the English adjective.

Entry of What goes around comes around leads to the album by Waylon Jennings. At the top, using {{see wiktionary}}, is a hatnote that says For a definition of the phrase "what goes around comes around", see the Wiktionary entry {{wikt:what goes around comes around}}.

If one more piece of sourceable information besides the very basic definition can be included, even if the article is still a stub, it is worthy of inclusion.

• Wikipedia:Bare notability
• Wikipedia:But it's true!
• Wikipedia:Inclusion is not an indicator of notability
• Wikipedia:Obscure does not mean not notable
• Wikipedia:Run-of-the-mill
• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions § Subjective importance
• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid on discussion pages § Subjective importance
• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause
• Wikipedia:An article about yourself is nothing to be proud of
• Wikipedia:Existence ≠ Notability
• Wikipedia:Existence does not prove notability

Disclosure: The author is an unpaid line member of a union that has organised demonstrations supporting the workers mentioned in this article. Neither his editing nor this article are connected to his union activities, apart from an interest in the subject matter.

Textiles are the most important export sector of Bangladesh's economy. Trousers, hoodies, t-shirts and so on are produced by Bangladeshi firms and then exported to Europe or America, where they are sold by some of the world's most important brands at steep mark-ups. The textile sector is also plagued by safety problems and labor issues, but more on that later.

One large group of companies in this sector is Dragon Group. From the eponymous Dragon Tower in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the group exports sweaters and socks to international customers, which have included Walmart and Lidl. In fact, the group "is the pioneer of Bangladesh's sweater industry" and "directly responsible for the establishment of the sweater industry in Bangladesh"; it "is among the world's largest sweater suppliers and is the largest sweater industry in south and southeast Asia."

At least according to the first version of its article, created in October 2009 by editor Mqsobhan.

Over the years, some of these sentences were cut from the article. It was also marked as missing references. An article for Dragon Sweater, one of Dragon Group's subsidiaries, was changed into a redirect – Mqsobhan had posted it with the same contents as the Dragon Group article. In December 2015, Mqsobhan returned, adding that the machinery of Dragon Group "produces most supple and excellent yarns and the quality is among the best in South and South East Asia", and that the Group's chairman, father of Mostafa Quamrus Sobhan, was "widely known as the Father of Bangladesh's sweater industry".

Just over a year later, some of this promotional material was again cut from the article. It was then nominated for deletion in 2018 – "Only negative sources", according to the nominator. (The nominator, Farooqahmadbhat, was later blocked as a sockpuppet in an unrelated case). But other editors involved in that discussion argued that there were enough sources to show notability and that negative coverage was not a reason for deletion. In the end, the article was kept. By September of this year, the tectonic-plate-paced push-and-pull had resulted in an article a few lines long, still lacking references and structure.

That was the state of the article when I first read it. I proceeded to add headers for organisation and history, added about twenty links to sources (which were published in Bangladesh's most noteworthy newspapers and therefore indeed not very hard to find) and, most importantly from the aesthetic point of view, added an infobox. That infobox included a list of Dragon Group subsidiaries and some of the key people, again including the chairman and his son, the managing director Mostafa Quamrus Sobhan. I also filed a conflict of interest notice regarding Mqsobhan, noting the suspiciously similar name and editing behaviour.

However, since the editor at that point hadn't edited in four years and didn't reply to my notification, no action was taken. But Mqsobhan was not gone for good. On December 3, an anonymous editor with an IP address from Dhaka, Bangladesh deleted most of the article, but was immediately reverted. A new account, Mqs2020, was then created and deleted the same parts of the article, three times, only to be reverted three times. And then, after about three and a half hours of edit warring, the Mqsobhan account returned from its four-year slumber and deleted the same parts of the article, again. The reason: "False information in the history section which are travestry of facts" that had been "edited by a miscreant who is trying to ransom money from the editor by posting and editing false claims." The account also proceeded to add some new links to the article in what an edit note described as "quakity news".

When the new Mqs2020 account was asked on its talk page whether there were any relations to the Mqsobhan account or to Dragon Group, the answer came from Mqsobhan: "Sorry no connection with mqs2020 or this company." Both accounts were indefinitely blocked as confirmed sockpuppets a few hours later.

The sockpuppeting block was not the end of the story. Five days afterwards, two new anonymous editors, both with IP addresses from Dhaka, again edited the article. One of the IP accounts modified a citation in the last paragraph of the history section, where a link to news website "bdnews24.com" was changed to "bdnew.24com", making it unusable. The linked source dealt with the firing of around 500 Dragon Group workers earlier this year. The Group says they were laid off due to COVID-19; the workers say they were fired for organising to demand unpaid wages.

The Mqsobhan account had already remarked on the linked article during its edits on December 3: "The article also falsely claims that there r disputes with workers but Dragon Group and Dragon sweater are not related entities." In a later reply to an email from The Signpost, the person behind both the Mqsobhan and Mqs2020 accounts said that the issues with Dragon Sweater workers had been resolved. They also said that Dragon Group was not a company, that it did not own Dragon Sweater, and demanded anonymity. The websites of Dragon Sweater and Dragon Sweater and Spinning clearly state that both are a part of Dragon Group.

"It is reprehensible that the owners of Dragon Group have engaged in such biased propaganda mongering against the workers movement on such a widely read and circulated platform as Wikipedia", a spokesperson for the Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Centre (GWTUC), the union representing the fired workers, told The Signpost. "Once again Dragon Group has engaged in a campaign of misinformation against the ongoing labor struggles. The deletion of information must be seen in the context of pulling of local news articles related to the movement, and propaganda against international solidarity movements."

The other of the two IP accounts that edited the Dragon Group article concentrated on another part of the article: A mention of a 2015 inspection that had found "cables directly laid on floors without proper safety, insufficient exit capacity through exit doors and the absence of sprinklers" at Dragon Sweater was changed into one that had found "cables directly laid on floors without proper safety, sufficient exit capacity through exit doors and the installation of sprinklers" – without changing the source.

There is a history of major fires in Bangladesh's garment factories. The most notable was in 2012, when a Dhaka factory burned down, killing at least 117. The suspected cause were exposed wires, compounded by a lack of emergency exits. The inspection that found the exposed cables and others was done by the Bangladesh Accord, an eponymous organization formed by an agreement signed by Bangladeshi trade unions and international companies following the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, in which 1,134 people lost their lives. And the 2015 inspection was not the only time they reported structural flaws in Dragon Group factories.

In September 2018, an Accord inspection found cracks on a Dragon Sweater factory ground floor column. One year later, the column had only been retrofitted up to the third of the required seven floors. Since then, Dragon Group has asked seven times for an extension to complete the work. While the Accord has refused each time to delay the deadline, verification that the required repairs have been completed is still reported as pending in December 2020. According to Accord reports, sprinkler systems have also not been fully installed and there are still issues with unprotected wiring. Dragon Group's deletion of the Accord inspection was in line with a repeated lack of enthusiasm on matters of working conditions and labor rights, the GWTUC spokesperson told The Signpost. "Labor violations are abundant over the years in the factories, and the pandemic has brought to the fore numerous health and social violations too."

The whole case was not surprising to Christie Miedema, who works with the Clean Clothes Campaign. According to her, the garment market is competitive, and brands and retailers hold the power to dictate terms to factories. Therefore, it would make sense for factories to try to influence the opinions of these international companies, for example through Wikipedia. "We have noticed in other instances, for example our own reporting, that some factory owners are very much on top of the information circulating about their factories and that they care a lot about their image", she told The Signpost.

The Dragon Group article has now been semi-protected until January 14. In the end, our response to the manipulated article looks pretty good. The first time around, it took more than a year until some of Mqsobhan's claims were marked as unsourced. By the same time in 2015/16, most of the added promotional material was already deleted; and in 2020, Mqsobhan et al were blocked after just a few hours. The article is still incomplete, especially for such a noteworthy company – but then again, it is a company in Bangladesh, one of the areas suffering most from a systemic lack of attention on the English Wikipedia.

The story also shows the potential relevance of our articles for real people, though. Miedema said she did not know on what information international companies based their decisions, but that having fewer controversies available through Google was of course in favor of a factory. But these "controversies" are not immaterial: exposed wires, lacking sprinklers and cracked columns have the potential to do real harm to many people. The deletion of these issues from a company's article in order to allow that company to act as if these issues did not exist can not be permitted.

That leads me to one thing that could probably be improved: The only version of the article in another language is in Bengali, which looks to be a translation of a 2018 version of the English article. That version still has much of the promotional material inserted by Mqsobhan in it. Since Dragon Group is comprised of Bangladeshi companies, it would probably be good for it to have an extensive Bengali article.

Lame duck US President Donald Trump created more puzzlement on Wednesday with his veto of the United States defense appropriations act, which had passed Congress with a "veto-proof majority". His stated reasons were the inclusion in the bill of a process that could be used to rename military bases that are named for Confederate military leaders, and the lack of a repeal of Section 230 in the bill. His veto message states that "Section 230 facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online".

Voting on a veto override is expected to take place on Monday, December 28, a day after publication of this issue of The Signpost. If successful, it would be the first veto override of his presidency.

Section 230 provides immunity to the Wikimedia Foundation, and social media sites in general, from lawsuits arising from most user generated content. In 2017 the WMF said "The Wikipedia we know today simply would not exist without Section 230." On December 15, WMF announced that "to ensure that laws support vibrant online communities such as Wikipedia", it had joined Internet.Works, a newly formed coalition aiming to defend Section 230. Members include Automattic, eBay, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium and other internet platforms (but none of the Big Tech companies).

A simple repeal of the section, which would have to be written into a new bill, and then passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, would likely be very difficult. Failure to override the veto would delay $740 billion in defense appropriations, so would also be very difficult.

While Trump's current challenge to Section 230 may seem unlikely to succeed, two other legal year-end surprises are set to become law that will affect Internet users and platforms. On December 21, Congress approved the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which combines $900 billion in COVID-19 stimulus aid with a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill for the 2021 fiscal year. At 5,593 pages, it is the longest bill ever passed by Congress. Besides details on the actual appropriations, it contains around "3,000 pages [of] totally unrelated bills that Congress couldn't pass through the rest of the year" (as summarized by Techdirt). These include two controversial copyright bills which were only publicly confirmed to be part of the act on the day of the vote:

• The CASE Act will enable copyright owners to bring alleged copyright violations before a tribunal at the Copyright Office, without having to go through the court system. It had been opposed by public interest groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge and the Authors Alliance, who argue that it does not appropriately protect individuals from "sophisticated actors" (corporations, copyright "trolls" and similar abusers). Other law experts worry that the new mechanism may be used to target fair use and de minimis usage. Law professor Eric Goldman unfavorably compared the CASE Act's $30,000 maximum fine with the $600 COVID-19 relief introduced elsewhere in the same appropriations act: "you're going to need 50 stimulus checks to cover the damages demanded by a copyright owner in your first CASE Act proceeding".
• The other new provision makes it a felony to stream copyright protected content. While it seems less likely to affect Wikimedia contributors, it is worth noting that a different version of it had been part of the 2011/12 SOPA/PIPA bills that Wikipedia and many other websites protested at the time.

Ironically, during the last few days the remaining obstacle for both provisions to become law was the threat of another Trump veto to the entire Consolidated Appropriations Act (over his objections to the $600 relief amount). However, as we go to press on Sunday, December 27, The New York Times has reported that Trump just signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act into law. – S & H

On December 15, the European Commission unveiled its long awaited proposals for the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). In a special edition of its monthly "EU Policy Monitoring Report", the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU reacted with "very rough first notes", expressing appreciation that the DSA reflects "the idea of safeguarding fundamental rights and freedom of speech even within online services", but warning that "Communities/community-driven moderation and platforms are not really thought of anywhere, which leads to a few risks." (The group consists of European Wikimedia chapters and community members, and is also known as the EU Policy group.) The Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy team followed up a few days later with "early impressions" on the DSA. The two groups highlighted different aspects within the same two areas of concern in the proposal text.

Firstly, Article 12-2 requires online services to "act in a diligent, objective and proportionate manner in applying and enforcing the restrictions" of their terms and conditions, "with due regard to the rights and legitimate interests of all parties involved, including the applicable fundamental rights of the recipients of the service". The EU Policy group is concerned "that people claiming rights in bad faith might try to alter Wikipedia articles by going over a legal process supposed to force platform operators to defend fundamental rights." The Foundation said:

[We worry] that 'diligent, objective and proportionate' can mean very different things depending on who you ask, and that community-governed platforms would be hurt by unclear standards and a lack of discretion. Terms of use (like the Foundation’s Terms, or even the Universal Code of Conduct) frequently include provisions prohibiting clearly harmful but often hard-to-define and even platform-specific things like harassment, disruptive behavior, or trolling. At what point would a regulator or a litigious user think that a certain volume of trolling meant that a service wasn't being 'diligent' in enforcing its 'don’t troll other users' rule? Or what happens when someone whose posts are moderated, or who thinks someone else's behavior should be moderated, decides that the moderators aren’t being 'objective?'
— Wikimedia Foundation Public Policy Team via Medium

Secondly, the EU Policy group argues that "in Articles 14-19 (basically the content moderation systems) we need stronger safeguards and rights for communities and individual users ('counter-notices' within the Notice & Action system being one basic example)." The Wikimedia Foundation is worried that it will become subject to undue burden caused by a vague wording in Article 14:

[The article] says that an online provider will be presumed to know about illegal content — and thus be liable for it — once it gets a notice from anyone that that illegal content exists. There’s a number of different ways that ambiguities in this section can create problems [...]. For example, if the Foundation got a notice from someone alleging they had been defamed on one article, what would the Foundation be responsible for, if the alleged defamation was referenced in or spread across multiple articles, or talk pages, that the user may not have specified?
— Wikimedia Foundation Public Policy Team via Medium

On the other hand, the Foundation's Public Policy team applauded "that the DSA preserves [the intermediary liability provisions] of the e-Commerce Directive, which ensure that the Foundation can continue hosting the knowledge of countless editors and contributors" (similar to Section 230 in the United States, see also above).

In its monthly report, the EU Policy group clarifies that the other big new proposal unveiled by the EU Commission on December 15, for the Digital Markets Act, should not affect Wikimedia projects and organizations: "This basically is a list of 'dos and don’t' for very large platforms that have a so-called gatekeeper position on the internal market. To be part of that club you need to have a turnover of over 6.5 billion euro, so Wikimedia is out."

But the report notes relevant recent developments on several other ongoing EU regulation efforts:

• "On December 10th a compromise was adopted on terrorist content regulation" ("TERREG", still to be finalized and formally adopted by the Council of the EU, and to be voted on by the European Parliament, possibly next month already). The group appreciates that in contrast to earlier versions, the current proposal "will exclude material disseminated for educational, journalistic, artistic or research purposes" and "content which represents an expression of polemic or controversial views in the course of public debate." Still, it criticizes that "the competent authorities [which can order removals of "terrorist" content, generally to be taken down within one hour] will not be judicial or independent." Also, the group notes that its "desired outcome ... has not been reached" on the subject of cross-border removal orders. (This issue might become more salient if recent concerns persist that some EU countries like Hungary and Poland fail to uphold the rule of law and democratic principles such as media freedom and judiciary independence.)
• The EU Policy group worries that an exception in the EU's proposed Data Governance Act "is worded in a way that Wikidata and Europeana might have issues with".
• Regarding the e-Evidence regulation, "we got one fix - prosecutors won’t be able get data about which IP accessed [which] Wikipedia article without a judge’s stamp. But we also have one fail - the hosting Member States agency won’t have a veto right on production orders [requiring e.g. a website to provide user data] if fundamental rights are violated by the issuing prosecutor." – H

On January 1, 2021, works first published in 1925 in the US will enter the public domain, according to the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at the Duke University School of Law. The books affected include:

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
• Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
• Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
• The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
• On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs by Dorothy Scarborough and
• The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton.

Films affected include:

• Go West starring Buster Keaton
• The Freshman starring Harold Lloyd
• The Merry Widow and
• Lovers in Quarantine, a comedy.

Some musical compositions are also affected, but not necessarily the performances of those works. Compositions affected include Sweet Georgia Brown and some works written by Lovie Austin, Amy Beach, Sidney Bechet, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, George and Ira Gershwin, W.C. Handy, Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace, and Fats Waller. -S

The billionth edit to English Wikipedia made in the current Wikipedia database software will be made soon – according to analysis by The Signpost staff, likely between 12 January and 16 January, just before or after Wikipedia's 20th birthday on 15 January. The current Wikipedia database was initiated on January 25–26, 2002, when Wikipedia used phase II software. Before that date, UseModWiki was used to edit and edit counts are murky - perhaps there were a few hundred thousand edits using UseModWiki, some but not all of which have since been recovered and reloaded into the system as part of the thousand million edits. Some purists might wish to include the number of edits transferred from Nupedia to Wikipedia as well. While the "billionth edit" may be inexact, it does symbolize a remarkable achievement – an encyclopedia of over 6,215,569 articles built by at least 1,000,000,000 edits. Even if a hundred million or more of those were vandalism or spam. – B & S & W and – G

The Signpost noted exactly one year ago that "the tally of active administrators...does not appear likely to rise above 500 again, unless there is a major change in trend." Well, we are ending the month (as of time of publication) with 504 active admin accounts on the list, and it was over 520 earlier this year. At first blush, this looks like good news going forward?

However, with only 243 new admins in the last ten years and only 17 new administrators this year, the long-term trend is still unsustainable: The average new admin would need to be active for thirty years for a supply of 17 new admins a year to maintain a cadre of 500 active admins. It isn't just that a large majority of our active admins were appointed over a decade ago. Only 50 of our current administrators first created their accounts in the last ten years. We are not recruiting enough admins from among members of the community who joined us between 2011 and 2019. – B & W

Wikimedia Foundation announced on December 7 that it had reached a fundraising milestone allowing it in turn to fund the planting of 400,000 trees. It is working with the Plant Your Change initiative which aims to plant 100 million trees in the next decade, as part of the foundation's carbon footprint reduction strategy. -B

• New administrator: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Hammersoft.
• Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones this month:
  • Bengali Wikipedia: 100,000 articles
  • Burmese Wikipedia: 80,000 articles
  • Ido Wikipedia: 30,000 articles
  • Mongolian Wikipedia: 20,000 articles.
  • Picard Wikipedia: 5,000 articles
  • Oromo Wikipedia: 1,000 articles
  • The Malagasy Wiktionary has fallen below 2,000,000 entries, as the cleanup continues (see previous Signpost coverage)
• Lapsed user-group: The Affiliations Committee announced that the User Group Botswana's status as an affiliate has lapsed.

Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020 voting ended on December 7, followed immediately by scrutineering of the results, and an announcement of the outcome on December 21. The seven newly elected or re-elected members of the Arbitration Committee will be:

• Barkeep49
• BDD
• Bradv
• CaptainEek
• L235
• Maxim
• Primefac

The new members' terms will begin on January 1.

Functionary team changes announced: Anarchyte was appointed as an Oversighter, while EdJohnston, Oshwah, and Yamla were appointed as CheckUsers.

Horn of Africa case was resolved by motion on December 9:

Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes) for a trial period of three months and until further decision of this Committee. After March 1, 2021 (or sooner if there is good reason), any editor may ask that this request be reopened for the purpose of evaluating whether the discretionary sanctions have been effective and should be made permanent or if a full case should be accepted to consider different or additional remedies.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Flyer22 and WanderingWanda was opened 5 December by WanderingWanda and accepted by the committee 16 December; evidence is due 30 December. At issue are alleged gender (transgender) motivated aspersions involving on-wiki and off-wiki writing.

Flyer22 Frozen, one of the involved parties and an active editor since 2007, retired after the case was opened.

Nick Moyes published the original version of 'Twas the Night Before Wikimas about three years ago at the Teahouse. The current version has evolved since December 26, 2017 at WP:The Night Before Wikimas.

'Twas the night before Wikimas, when all through the Teahouse
Not an editor was stirring, not even a mouse.

The references had been inserted by users with care,
In hopes that St. Jimbo^[who?] soon would be there.

Most editors were nestled all snug by their beds,
While visions of new articles danced in their heads.
When out from a keyboard there arose such a clatter
I sprang to my screen to see what was the matter.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a question on sources and how to use them well here.

More rapid than eagles these questioners came,
And the hosts from the Teahouse welcomed each one by name.

"Now, em Dasher! Now, Images!
Now, Actrial! Now, Patrolled!
On, Users! On, IPs!
On, Young and on, Old!
To the top of each article, be it long, short or tall,
Now, type away, type away, type away all!"^{[This quote needs a citation]}

As dry words that before an old dictionary fly,
when they meet with a synonym, mount to the sky,^{[citation needed]}
So, onto these articles the edits they flew,
With a sleigh full of facts, and citations, too.

And then in a twinkling, I saw on the page
Our wiki-creator: a man of great age.
As I checked it on Commons and was turning around,
Down my router St. Jimbo came in with a bound.

Over 6 million articles he had flung on his back,
And he looked like most users with the editing knack.
His eyes – how they twinkled! slightly square – but how merry!
Too much editing, folks, had turned his nose red like a cherry!^{[medical citation needed]}
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.^{[citation needed]}

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his editing,
And filled bare urls; did sourcing and crediting
And confirming notability with a tap on his nose,
And pressing "Publish changes", back up my modem he rose.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, leaving me to my epistle.^{[anachronism]}
But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Editing to all, and to all users a good night!"

With grudging acknowledgement to Clement C. Moore, 1823.