• 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.

We hope Father Will forgives us, but we just couldn't keep this column concise this month. Even the stories in the "in brief" section are not brief. Despite all the horrific general news stories lately, stories related to Wikipedia have mostly been interesting and different. No, we couldn't totally ignore some of the usual, more somber, stories. So pick and choose your stories and enjoy the difference!

Jimmy Wales in Al Jazeera reminds us how the internet used to be. According to Jimmy there was little or no disinformation in healthcare or elections, and people could generally agree on the facts. Despite this double dose of nostalgia, Jimmy has a point and a program to make things better. The disinformation situation has gotten much worse. The program looks like Wikipedia, "the cornerstone of the free web.... It is the blueprint for restoring public trust in the web again."

Wales draws three conclusions from the success of Wikipedia:

• We must all take responsibility for the truth of information on the web. "As we discover more about how influential a dozen people can be in spreading disinformation far and wide, Wikipedia highlights the role we each can play in providing good information."
• "purveyors of news and information, including large technology companies, must create a common agreement about the need for information to be factual, reliable, and up to date." And
• "Transparency in online spaces will empower internet users to have open, civil debates where we can embrace our differences and be clear about our own personal biases. This creates more productive conversations and will build communities instead of promoting conflict."

Sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? We've got one request however. Jimmy, next time, please let corporations and their paid editors know that we don't want their disinformation, AKA hidden advertisements in our encyclopedia. And please let them know that our minimum requirement is that they must declare each paid edit, along with the names of the client, employer, and other affiliated parties. If we can't see these hidden adverts, we can't correct them. If you or the Wikimedia Foundation won't let people know about these requirements, who will? – S

How to Use Wikipedia When You're Watching the Olympics, Stephen Harrison of Slate set the stage for the Olympics by describing how to use Wikipedia as your second screen while watching the Tokyo games. The most popular athletes score high on Wikipedia pageviews, Google Knowledge panels and Alexa report the information from Wikipedia. You can even read about the oddities that only Wikipedia ever covers such as List of Olympic medalists in art competitions.

Editors at WikiProject Olympics report that good photos of the Olympians are hard to get because broadcasters and national sports federations control the copyrights. Are the articles biased? Inclusion of articles about athletes should not be biased against women because of easy notability requirements for all Olympic athletes, but the article coverage may be less for athletes from some countries. A gymnastics writer says that there are no obvious misstatements in Wikipedia articles about the gymnasts she covers, but that controversies are sometimes avoided.

Why Basketball 3×3 Star Stefanie Dolson, Others Fact Check Their Wiki Pages NBC Channel 4 New York asked five USA Olympians to review the Wikipedia articles about themselves on video and suggest any needed corrections. Four of the five loved the articles.

• Stefanie Dolson – Despite a few quibbles – like not including a "Q" on "LGBT" – she concludes "I'm impressed Wikipedia. You got basically all the information correct. More information than I would have even known about myself. Very well done." The U.S. women's 3-on-3 basketball team took home gold medals, another job well done.
• Carlin Isles – Taking his assignment very seriously, Isles finds several mistakes, e.g. he says he was born in Akron, Ohio rather than in nearby Massillon. But he concludes "Hey Wik, I must say, you wasn't too shabby. You didn't leave out a lot of details. I'm very proud [of Wikipedia's performance]." The United States men's rugby sevens placed sixth – not too shabby for American rugby.
• Mattie Rogers – a woman weightlifter, starts out with "whoever did this was very professional" and barely quibbles the rest of the way through the article. She finished sixth in the 87 kg weight class.
• Ginny Fuchs – a woman flyweight boxer. She notes two important missing facts:
  • Wikipedia missed that she qualified for the Tokyo Olympics (whoops!).
  • She is a spokesperson for mental health, due to her struggles with OCD, and has spoken on the topic on the Oprah Winfrey Show (double whoops!!). Sorry about that!

In the round of 16 she lost to Stoyka Krasteva, who later won the gold metal.

• Kyle Snyder – Snyder is a long time fan of Wikipedia. "Wikipedia, you guys are doing a good job." He won the 97 kg freestyle 2016 Olympic gold. He defeated Abdulrashid Sadulaev in 2017 to win the 97 kg freestyle world championship, one of only two losses in Sadulaev's career. This year Snyder suffered his third career loss to Sadulaev in the 97 kg final, taking the silver medal.

There are 11,656 athletes at the Olympics. Guy Fraser wanted them all on Wikipedia: The Guardian covers the work of one dedicated Wikipedian, who has been filling in the blank spaces in our coverage of the 2020 games. See Community view for further coverage. – S

Père Guillaume Conquer ran what must be the most unusual version of Wikimania this year, perhaps ever, in the Coconut Club in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as he documented in a local paper. With 15 participants, including a dozen Cambodians, young and old, a Korean businessman, and an Australian cultural-events organizer, the event was almost as large as the congregation of Conquer's church in the tiny village of Chom Lak. Father Will, as he's usually called, has been a Roman Catholic missionary in Cambodia for two years for the Missions Etrangères de Paris. It's his first assignment since being ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Monaco. He told AsiaNews "Wikipedia is not the right tool for proselytising. Its success lies in its neutral point of view. It's a space for knowledge, not preaching."

Father Will bought the first drink for Wikipedia editors registered before the event. He's been a Wikipedian since 2008 making 3,432 edits across all projects. His goal for the Khmer Wikipedia is to double its 8,000 articles over the next year. Thanks for all you do, Father. And keep the faith. – S

Wikipedia Has a Language Problem. Here’s How To Fix It by Yumiko Sato in Undark Magazine (reprinted in Fast Company). Following an earlier article in Slate where she explains in detail how the Japanese Wikipedia has whitewashed much of Japan's World War II history, Sato notes that the Croatian Wikipedia has had similar problems for almost a decade. (See prior coverage in The Signpost Disinformation report (2021) and Opinion (2019).) Al Jazeera piles on the Croatian editors with Are Croat nationalists pushing a political agenda on Wikipedia? on how Croat nationalists affected the Croatian Wikipedia, but concentrates on how they affect the Bosnian Wikipedia.

Wikipedia certainly has had language versions that produce seriously biased articles resulting from poor governance. While Sato recognizes that there will be technical difficulties, she proposes that there be a single language version of Wikipedia (presumably English) so that poor governance on a smaller version doesn't affect article quality. Political problems would prevent the implementation of this solution, even more so than technical problems. Different cultures want to be able to determine their own "truths" in their own languages.

But could a single "All-Wikipedia" article even be possible for even one of the most controversial articles? Likely, that would involve a set of about five translations from a single main article. Edits to the translations would have to be translated to the other versions. Debate on talk pages might need several translations as well. The thought of a multi-language edit war boggles the mind. It's an interesting idea, but it's unlikely to be implemented any time soon. – S

Francesca Tripodi's recent paper, Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia continues to make news this month. Dr. Tripodi, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, reports that biographies of women are more likely to be nominated for deletion than similar male biographies.

• Utah Public Radio's UnDisciplined podcast interviews Tripodi in the episode. Women And Wikipedia.
• Marketplace Tech: Why it’s so hard for biographies about women to stay on Wikipedia quotes Tropdi saying, "The default to erase notable women rather than simply fix their page is the broader problem that we’re trying to look at here."
• Tripodi appeared on CBC Radio (Canada's national broadcaster) in a piece titled Canadian Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias, study finds. The case mentioned in the radio show but not spoken by name was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elicia Maine, the AfD for a woman who holds a named chair at a well-known Canadian university. See previous Signpost coverage of gender issues at Recent research.

– B

• 7 Notable African Women Activists Who Deserve Wikipedia Pages are named by Global Citizen, who also provide a couple of paragraphs of good information about each woman. Ok, they could have provided links to other reliable sources, but sometimes these things all work out in the end. The women are Madame Cissé Hadja Mariama Sow, Nebila Abdulmelik, Jeannine Mukanirwa, Mercy Akuot, Kagendo Murungi, Bibata Ouédraogo, and Beatrice Mukansinga. All news sources are encouraged to publish similarly informative articles on African women – and please tell us about it on the Suggestions page. Thanks to Abishe, Victuallers and Indy beetle for creating the Wikipedia articles!
• A deep dive under the bonnet: Feast examines the engine behind Wikipedia articles on the top-ten UK automobile brands in BMW becomes Wikipedia’s most edited car brand page. Do you want to know which brands have the most total article edits – linking to graphs breaking it down by month? You'll find it right before the most prolific editors for each article. Pageviews and the pageviews-to-edits ratio are also mentioned. Most of the stats are readily available: the innovation in this article is collecting them all in a single place for one important market. Vertu Motors, the UK's fifth largest automobile dealership published the original report, which is no longer available online.
• The creator of Lsjbot is arguably the most prolific author in the world according to The Guardian. The creator, Sverker Johansson, is a Wikipedian who began his career as a particle physicist, and now writes books about the origins of language for his day job. The bot has created at least 80 percent of the Cebuano Wikipedia.
• Kansas City Public Library Hires A Dedicated 'Wikipedian-In-Residence': NPR member KCUR interviews Miranda Pratt. The Kansas City Public Library states that Miranda is "the first Wikipedian-In-Residence appointed by a public library in the United States."
• Input and CNET's stories both covered a classic example of vandalism. A vandal waited to become autoconfirmed, and then defaced a widely-used template with a Nazi flag, affecting more than 50,000 pages. While reverted in just a few minutes, the high-profile pages affected (such as Joe Biden) meant that the press took notice.
• Decentralized blockchain project launches contest to build next Wikipedia – once more, a Wikipedia-killer is about to be proposed. This one, sponsored by a cryptocurrency organization, doesn't have a product yet – just a contest to produce ideas for one. Their more detailed objectives, suggest that their beef with Wikipedia is that we limit their free advertising for cryptocurrency. "One example are blockchain/cryptocurrency-related topics on English Wikipedia, strictly controlled by Wikipedia old-timers and cryptocurrency haters like David Gerard. Such people have large support groups that allow them to push their agenda using particular pages." Gerard tells The Signpost that proposed cybercurrency-controlled encyclopedias, such as Lunyr and Everipedia, are nothing new. He says "I refer the honourable gentlemen to my previous written response."

You've got two more days – until 23:59 UTC August 31 – to cast your vote for the new community-elected Board of Trustee members. The start of the election period was delayed due to technical reasons for 14 days to August 18.

To vote, follow the link on meta:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Voting. In the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system you need to rank the candidates. Rank your favorite candidate 1, your 2nd favorite 2, and so forth, up to your 19th favourite (as there are 20 candidates). You only have to rank as many candidates as you want; the rest are treated as being equally unpreferred by you. You can't rank a candidate more than once, and you can't skip a ranking – for instance, you can't specify a 2nd-preferred candidate and a 4th-preferred candidate, leaving your third preference blank.

You'll likely want to rank at least four candidates, since that's the number of open seats on the board. The STV method being used for this election is designed to consider your preferences in order from most-preferred to least. If your favourite candidate isn't seated, your vote is transferred to your next favourite. In addition, once a candidate you voted for has enough votes to guarantee finishing in the top four (that is, has reached quota), a percentage of your vote is transferred to your next preferred choice. (See Meek STV Explained for more details.) -S, I

Last October Portuguese-language Wikipedians voted to require that editors register before editing. "IP editing" was effectively banned with the goal of reducing vandalism and improving the editing experience. The Wikimedia Foundation has been following the impact of the ban closely and issued its report last month. They "found no significant negative impact" on the health of the community and several positive impacts.[1] [2]

New user account registrations and the number of active editors on ptWiki have increased. Vandalism is down as indicated by a decline in the number of reverts. Also administrator actions for page protections and blocks are down over 70%. User retention shows no trend.

The impact on the number of edits is unclear. The total number of edits has decreased but the decline is at least partially explained by decreases in reverts and bot edits. Without these edits being included in the data, year-on-year edits declined during the first six months of the study period, but increased during the final three months.

Editor comments were requested and indicated that 14 editors supported the ban, four opposed it, and one was neutral. The report recommends that ptWiki be allowed to continue the IP editing ban for now, along with continued data collection and study. Two more Wikipedia projects might be allowed to conduct "similar experiments" but "the experience of a single wiki should not be used as decisive evidence." -S

Editors are invited to nominate themselves until September 14th for a spot on a drafting committee. As noted on the meta page, "the Movement Charter defines the roles and responsibilities for all in the Wikimedia Movement. It will be a shared framework for working together toward the Strategic Direction." In other words, if you want to shape Wikipedia's Future by using lots of Nouns that are capitalized in the Middle of Sentences, this is your chance! Polish up your word choice skills in a way that really matters, rather than wasting your inner bureaucrat on your actual job. Only a few more days to get your name in there, in all seriousness, so take a look and see if you can volunteer your time to help out the movement. – G

A discussion was held at User talk:Jimbo Wales concerning the resolution to a back-end performance issue and its impact on Russian Wikinews (which is also available in the English language). According to WMF staff, dynamic page lists (DPL) had to be disabled to preserve several S3-hosted wikis. The related Phabricator ticket shows a list of hosts that does not include English Wikipedia but does include a number of related projects including English Wikinews, Wiktionary, and Wikibooks.

More technical details are available at wikitech:Incident documentation/2021-07-26 ruwikinews DynamicPageList. – B

Is the English Wikipedia's paid-editing disclosure policy fully signed off by the community? One commenter at the talkpage (linked from WP:Village Pump (policy)) doesn't think so: I don't think the way forward is a Schrödinger's cat-like state where the page is a policy in minds of some, not in the minds of others, and enforced as a "Wikipedia policy with legal considerations" regardless due to the banner at the top. It's either a policy or it isn't. The Signpost notes that an RfC on new disclosure requirements for freelance paid editors was closed on November 19 as having resulted in consensus to add language about mandatory disclosure of paid editing accounts in advertising and in communications directly to clients. – B

The backlog at WP:Articles for creation went down from 4,156 to 0 during the July drive. – S

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

Graph from WP:AfC

• A distinct lack of RfAs: Thus far this year there have been only eight requests for adminship, and only six have succeeded! At this rate, 2021 will certainly become the year with the fewest new admins and fewest candidacies, beating 2018 (10 for 18). Why? It's hard to say, but it may be that the RfA process has become known as a bit of a minefield. Still, with over 1000 admins and 471 active, we're not in danger of running out of sysops yet. Barkeep49 has initiated a review of the RfA process, with the first phase seeking views on what the broad issues with the process are.