A Wiki Education course went awry last month when controversy over a deletion discussion spilled onto Twitter, leading to harassment of a 15-year-old editor. The course, Black Women and Popular Culture, was taught by Msia Kibona Clark. Clark, whose Wikipedia username is Mkibona, is an associate professor of African cultural and feminist studies at Howard University. As of press time, 12 out of the 24 articles linked on the course page are redlinks. One of those, about the activist organization Black Women Radicals (archive link), was nominated for deletion on December 13; it was deleted a week later, after a clear consensus formed that the group was not notable (editors also identified copyright violations and promotionalism issues).
During the nomination, Clark posted on Twitter "I don't know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving" the article, in a thread where she tagged the group's Twitter handle. The AfD nominator joined the Twitter conversation, identifying themselves, linking to the canvassing guideline, and stating "I am 100% not trying to erase anything cultural. I based my decisions on notability guidelines and what other editors said about the content."
Other users, including the Black Women Radicals account, responded with hostility, particularly after the editor revealed that they were 15 years old. @uchenna (Uchenna Kema) wrote "Delete your Wikipedia account and go to school". @moontomysea mockingly paraphrased their comments as "yes i erased your nigger page from wikipedia and if you talk about it the rules say we can ban you", commenting "they sure do make white fifteen year old kids bold now don't they". The Black Women Radicals account tweeted "It's a shame the ways Wikipedia (particularly its overwhelming[ly] white editors) gatekeep what is considered 'notable' enough to have a Wiki article. Most of the time, Black women's work is not considered 'notable' enough." They also shared a screenshot showing that the nominator had blocked them.
The nominator brought the matter to the Education Noticeboard, where they expressed intense distress. "I am now scared of what they will do next, if they'll follow me into other social media or even here to make attacks or potentially doxx me as an act of 'revenge'," they wrote. "Please help."
Many editors responded. Ian Ramjohn, the Senior Wikipedia Expert for WikiEd, wrote "I'm horrified at what has happened here" and communicated information about how Wikipedia operates to the group in replies on Twitter. Administrator Joe Roe pointed out that many non-Wikipedians on Twitter likely misunderstood the role of an editor to be "someone with special authority over Wikipedia content", rather than anyone who edits.
Clark explained and defended her actions in the noticeboard thread. "I initially only turned to my community on Twitter because I was frustrated, I was not being heard, and I didn't know what to do," she wrote. "I needed help getting resources and ideas for the article, as well as help navigating Wikipedia. I also needed support from my community because it is not a good feeling to feel like you're not being heard and to feel powerless to do anything about it." Regarding the nominator, she wrote "when he went on Twitter, identified himself, and continued with the tone of criticism and chastising that I had experienced on Wikipedia, I anticipated the reaction. I wish it had not happened, but it did not have to happen."
In a statement for WikiEd, LiAnna Davis (its chief programs officer and deputy director) wrote "I'm very sorry this situation has resulted in multiple people feeling harassed." However, the bulk of her statement focused on thanking Clark for her work trying to combat systemic bias on Wikipedia, reminding editors to assume good faith about her intentions in going to Twitter, and urging the community to take into account the "systemic bias in our sources" when assessing articles. Administrator Barkeep49 criticized this response, saying that WikiEd was responsible for "blasé handling of demonstrable harassment". Davis later clarified that "my post yesterday should have read 'being harassed', not 'feeling harassed'. My apologies for my poor wording choice." Discussion about WikiEd continued from there, with the harassment issues referred to WMF Trust and Safety for private handling.
African Americans are severely underrepresented among Wikipedia editors, according to a 2020 WMF survey, which found that they make up only 0.5% of American editors, despite being around 14% of the American population. There remain many content gaps in Wikipedia's coverage of Black history and culture.
The incident highlights the ongoing challenges faced by WikiEd's student editing program. Supporters argue that a few troublesome instances overshadow many quieter successes, point to its thorough training modules, and note that it helps bring in a more diverse group of editors. Detractors emphasize the disruption to the community from courses that produce problematic content and note that few students go on to make productive contributions after their course ends.
The incident also highlights the challenge of communicating Wikipedia's complex processes to unfamiliar audiences, especially in heated situations where people may be inclined to view community decisions through a political or ideological lens. Marginalized communities, in particular, may be reticent to assume good faith after having endured systemic discrimination. "The experience was hurtful for me and for my students who witnessed it," wrote Clark in the noticeboard thread.
A Call for Feedback on the upcoming Board of Trustees elections was launched by the Wikimedia Foundation and is open until 16 February 2022. Unlike previous Calls for Feedback, this discussion incorporates community feedback from 2021, replacing Board-suggested proposals with key questions from the Board of Trustees sourced from the feedback about the 2021 Board of Trustees election with the hope of inspiring collective conversation and collaborative proposal development. There are three questions regarding diverse representation, expectations for candidates, and affiliate participation. Interested editors can participate on Meta. – E
The Signpost special report "Administrator cadre continues to contract" in 2019 noted that the number of active administrators had dropped below 500 for the first time. Since then, the numbers have continued falling and have not risen above 500 in the last six months. Another milestone was set in September 2021: the number of active administrators was under 450 for most of the month. By January 1 this year, the number had "recovered" to 469. – B
When we last heard from the (non-recognized) Wikimedians of Mainland China User Group they were planning on creating a "hard fork" of zhwiki, the largest Chinese-language Wikipedia and a project of the WMF. The WMC hard fork encyclopedia was expected to copy current articles from zhwiki and then independently edit from there. Several zhwiki admins and other users had been blocked by the WMF, leading up to the fork. An anonymous source, claiming to be a spokesperson for WMCUG, has informed The Signpost that their encyclopedia has now copied 600,000 zhwiki articles and has about 50 regular editors. Editors must be approved by the managers of the project and their numbers are soon expected to rise to 75-100. A new large commercial partner is expected to join the project within days and will guarantee their minimal financial needs and community independence. New text will be freely licensed CC BY SA 4.0. None of this information could be independently verified. – S
After a five month long search process Maryana Iskander was selected in September to succeed Katherine Maher as the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. She then started a "listening tour" to hear the views of Wikipedians across the world. On January 1, 2022 she began her official duties as CEO.
Iskander was born in Egypt, grew up in the United States, and now lives in South Africa. She presented her thoughts in September in her Welcome letter and summarized the results of the listening tour two weeks ago in Puzzles and Priorities.
Signpost: Welcome to your new job at the Wikimedia Foundation! I hope you’ve settled in a bit and have a good idea of your “routine schedule” and basic responsibilities. Has anything surprised you so far? Will you be working out of San Francisco? Do you intend to fly around the world on a regular basis or has COVID put an end to that?
Maryana Iskander: Four weeks in, one thing that's clear is that there is no "routine" in this job! Although South Africa is my home, I plan to be where I am needed until I figure out what the job requires. I am spending a lot of time in the US (West and East Coasts) to meet with staff, partners and volunteers who are there, but will also be traveling (COVID willing!) to many other parts of the world. One thing that maybe shouldn't have been a surprise is how weird and wonderful the Wikimedia Foundation office is – as quirky and brilliant as our people!
SP: The COVID pandemic has forced the whole world to change the ways that we work. Do you see permanent changes to how WMF employees, affiliates, and volunteers will work?
MI: Even before the pandemic, the Wikimedia Foundation was already moving to more remote work. This was certainly accelerated by COVID-19. A very positive consequence is that this has enabled hiring an even more diverse and multilingual workforce (as of now about 43% of staff are from outside the US). I don't think anyone in the world is heading back to "life before the pandemic", but I also believe that people who can crack the code on hybrid events will point the way to the future. We'll have to figure out how to bring people back together safely without losing the inclusiveness and accessibility created by virtual formats. I definitely see an opportunity for the Foundation to learn from communities that will also be bridging virtual and in person formats for future events.
SP: In your Welcome letter on Diff you've written "I am driven by the question of what it will take to create—not just imagine—a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge?" This is a very big question! I've always thought of Jimmy Wales's statement "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge” to be a wonderful inspiration, but impossible to create in practice. But look how far we’ve come toward achieving that goal! How would you ever know if we have even temporarily achieved that goal? Would 100 million articles in each of 300 languages within 20 years possibly achieve the goal? How do you think we could do that?
MI: You are right that quantifying the sum of all knowledge is an impossible question! BUT the very existence of this unexpected community as a digital wonder of the world is proof that impossible ideas can be created, not just imagined. I am not sure if success will be a numerical number of articles or also other data assessing the health and vibrancy of our global movement. I do know that these metrics will have to be responsive to what the world needs from us now, not just what we think matters. In my listening tour letter, I shared some reflections about how we make many different kinds of contributions 'count' in building online and offline communities that are committed to our mission. Even as I’ve started making my first edits, I can see that there are many types of ways of contributing to the movement. I don’t have all the answers, but know this is a puzzle we have to figure out collectively.
SP: In the Welcome letter you also said you want to use your "position of leadership to champion often unheard voices." Please pick just one of the following groups – indigenous people throughout the world, or more specifically First Nations in Canada; or Chinese living on the mainland; or incarcerated people in the U.S. How can you – or Wikipedians in general – help these people participate in Wikipedia?
MI: Let's pick "indigenous people throughout the world" as that is a very large and diverse group to name! I am confident that there is so much culture, history and perspective that these groups can add to the sum of all human knowledge. Indeed, without them, it literally can't be the "sum of all human knowledge". I think we can enable these communities to participate in Wikipedia by opening the doors more widely – through many of the things volunteers are trying now like preserving endangered languages or innovating across language dimensions – but also by targeted outreach, and by listening and learning what they would need to walk through those doors and join us. We should never assume that we know. I also think we can build creative partnerships with other organizations who can help us connect more authentically to indigenous communities they know well who also want to contribute to the mission of free knowledge. This helps to bring our movement strategy to life, as there are Wikimedia volunteers who already work closely with indigenous groups in their region.
SP: Wikipedia has created a new hobby over the last 20 years. Thousands of people throughout the world now write encyclopedia articles on a regular basis for fun. Are Wikipedians some special type of person who were born with this idea of fun, or perhaps developed it early on? Or can we help people develop into Wikipedians by special programs and training?
MI: I have met enough people now to know that ANYONE can become a Wikimedian – there is no obvious list of characteristics or traits. One thing that has struck me about most of the people I’ve met is their deep curiosity – this feels like more of a shared value than an attribute. And our challenge is how to make ourselves an easy place for the many deeply curious humans out there in the world to get involved and contribute.
From a Signpost reader: What is your understanding of disinformation on Wikipedia, how are you going to tackle this problem? How would you determine an adequate level of resourcing?
MI: I think there is broad consensus that disinformation poses a threat to societies around the world. What should be done about it – and what is our role in that – feels that it has a lot less consensus. I have been trying to learn more about past approaches, like how the movement dealt with COVID and also the 2020 US election. I am also trying to first understand what current Foundation resources are being allocated to this issue, so that we can determine what more may be needed.
From a Signpost reader: Many people assume that the WMF CEO is a key link in the chain of command of the WMF, a manager working under the supervision of the Board of Trustees who supervises other managers and ultimately helps decide how WMF employees "on the shop floor" spend their working time. Others say it hasn't worked this way at the WMF. The CEO has been busy consulting with volunteers and chapters, and potential partner institutions (like GLAMs) and even donors. In short the CEO has been flying around too much dealing with external stakeholders, to have the time to deal with the internal situation at the WMF. What type of CEO will you be?
MI: I am not sure there is a "type" of CEO in a role this complex. As I shared in my Puzzles and Priorities, this job requires balancing the needs of many stakeholders within the Foundation and the movement, without losing sight of what the world needs from us now. While I am certainly formally accountable to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, I also see myself as accountable to many of these other stakeholders, internally and externally. I think people often focus on how much "power" is in a role, whereas for me it is often the case that more "power" really just means a lot more accountability.
SP: Thank you for your candid answers. The Signpost wishes you well in your new job, and hopes that you help lead the Wikipedia community to new successes.
Wikipedia can be a very diverse working environment. Editors on the English-language Wikipedia will likely interact with many native English speakers from several countries as well as many Western Europeans and others from throughout the world. But the diversity in our editing population as well as in our content has some major gaps. The best known gap is with women editors. About 20% of our editors are women. They represent slightly over half the world's population. About 0.5% of American editors are African-Americans. They represent 13% of the American population.
February is Black History Month in the US. How can we all help document Black history on Wikipedia over the next month?
In an extraordinary article this month, The Washington Post documents that 1,766 congressmen (including male senators), and one female senator, Rebecca Latimer Felton, at some point in their lives claimed to legally own human beings as their slaves. The data collection is ongoing. The original totals were reported as 1,715 slaveholders, 677 not listed because the Post did not have enough evidence to make a conclusion, and 3,166 non-slaveholders. The Post is now asking for crowdsourced contributions – to be checked by reporters – to gather further evidence.
Most of the enslaved people were of African descent. Others were from Native American tribes, or possibly Hispanic. While the general story of congressmen owning slaves has been known since the first congress met in 1789, the Post names 1,767 of them in a detailed table. The evidence was gathered mostly from U.S. Census records but also included wills, journals and other historical documents.
Some of the detailed stories are horrific. Maryland representative John T.H. Worthington, who represented the Baltimore area, claimed ownership of 29 people in the 1840 Census. According to the Post, "He sold his own enslaved daughter for $1,800 to a man who wanted her to bear more enslaved children, according to an account written by James Watkins, who managed to escape slavery." She "refused to consent to sex with her new enslaver. As punishment, she was beaten to death."
The slaveholdings of some congressmen were not generally known until now. The Post cites the Wikipedia article on the senator from New York, Rufus King, a signer of the Constitution, to show this lack of detailed knowledge. Wikipedia did not say that King was a slaveholder, though he owned slaves early in his life and was an anti-slavery activist later. The Post's point was not that Wikipedia is inaccurate – just that the extent of congressional slaveholding is not generally known. But clearly, there are some articles we need to revise.
One indication of our omissions is that our category of American slave owners includes about 1,010 individuals (842 in the main category, about 168 in subcategories). That includes congressmen and non-congressmen alike. Wikipedia includes articles on all U.S. Congress persons since 1789, so at least 756 congressmen are missing from the broader category.
After examining only a few individual articles, I am convinced that many of our articles just don't mention a congressman's slaveholding status, while others distort or don't properly document it. Four examples, where The Post identifies the congressman as a slaveholder, follow.
We have a lot of work to do.
Since February is Black History Month, let's get started now. There are a few resources that should come in handy,
You might first pick a congressman from one of the two lists from the Post, then read the Wikipedia article on the congressman. If you check the proposed list article first and record your work there when you are finished with your editing session, you may avoid duplicating work with other editors.
Is the article well written and well referenced? Does it mention slaves or slavery? You should search for other information on the congressman with an emphasis on the topic of slavery. If possible, search offline in a library's local history collection or at a local historical society. Then make any needed changes. For example you might remove material that supports the discredited "Lost Cause" school of Confederate history. Be particularly careful of potential copyright violations. These were more common in the early years of Wikipedia when many of the articles were written. At the same time, you should remember that most of these articles were based on the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, which is in the public domain.
If justified by the article content you might then copy and add this footnote:
Take your time. You won't usually be able to do all this in one editing session. But it is straightforward editing that any experienced editor should be able to do.
There are other ways we might be able to add this information to Wikipedia. For example we could create a category for all slaveholding congress persons, perhaps Category:U.S. congress persons who owned slaves.
While completing this article, I was informed that Wikidata now has an almost complete list. Using
This database query will generate a list of 1,718 congressmen.
This development may be quite important. The identities of congressmen-slaveholders are now available for use in Wikipedia articles and by anybody who knows how to use Wikidata. Adding the attribute "Q10076267 = slaveholder" is allowed for other government figures as well, including presidents, vice-presidents, supreme court justices, cabinet members, ambassadors, generals, admirals, governors, and anybody else with a Wikipedia article about them. These additions to Wikidata could open up and document the whole slaveholding structure of the antebellum republic.
I'll leave further explanation to editors who are more experienced in Wikidata.
An unusual way to help Wikipedia would be to help the Washington Post complete their dataset through crowdsourcing. Julie Zauzmer Weil, the lead author of the Post article, notes that everybody who can do careful research is invited to contribute material to their effort – and that the material will be checked by their reporters.
She told The Signpost "I have been a great admirer of Wikipedia for a very long time. I am sure (the Wikipedia) community of skilled and principled researchers would be marvelous helpers if they are up for the task of looking for evidence about whether any of these congressmen I'm still researching were ever slaveholders."
Let's do it!
Well, 2021 is over, and 2022 seems like it is shaping up to be less exciting. The largest AfD in history has been closed, nobody is running around the United States Capitol in a Viking helmet, and anyone in rich countries who wants a vaccine can just go get one. Still, things are happening in the world, and so too are things happening on Wikipedia. This month in deletion, the ever-present issues of political disagreement flare up in unexpected places, an ArbCom case builds up steam, and a silent battle over a subject-specific notability guideline rages in the background.
In the last two deletion reports, I've started by rattling off a bunch of statistics, including fun facts about the wacky and obscure debates of the month, but this month I will do it a bit differently, and sneak in some actual journalism. We'll see how it goes (I will, of course, retain the first AfDs of the new year as well as the list of AfDs with freaky titles).
At the policy village pump, a discussion was opened on the 19th about the sports notability guidelines that have guided inclusion criteria for many years. For those of us who are not intimately familiar with notability guidelines, I will spare you a ton of tl;dr – Wikipedia articles are generally subject to notability guidelines, which largely govern questions of inclusion (i.e. whether an article is written in the first place, or whether an AfC submission is accepted) and exclusion (i.e. whether an article is retained or deleted at a deletion discussion). Much ink has been spilled over the years defining the finer points of what "notability" means, to the extent that we recognize many "arguments to avoid" at AfD ("the article sucks" is usually ignored, for example, as is "the article is funny").
On Wikipedia, "notability" means that it's possible to write a high-quality encyclopedia article based on reliable sources concerning a subject, and nothing more. The overall standard for notability, based on the accumulated consensus of hundreds of thousands of deletion discussions, is reflected in the general notability guideline, which says that "a topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". This is straightforward enough, but there exist subject-specific notability guidelines for many types of content. NPROF, for example, allows college professors to have articles even if they fall far short of GNG. Conversely, GNG allows professors to have articles even if they fall far short of NPROF. There are several subject notability guidelines, or SNGs (academics, astronomical objects, biology, books, events, films, geographic features, music, numbers, organizations/companies, people, sports, and websites). There are some SNGs that have been deprecated through community discussions, like WP:PORNBIO (retired after a 2019 RfC), as well as essays treated as de facto SNGs, like NSOLDIER (now deprecated, archived here). Generally, the creation and modification of notability guidelines causes a lot of drama. Some see them as the only way to ensure Wikipedia has reasonable coverage of diverse topics, and the only barrier between us and a project where subjects can only be covered if they're the subject of enough viral tweets to get into the news cycle. Contrariwise, some see them as an underhanded attempt by gangs of nerds to sneak droves of worthless articles about obscure subjects into the project with an end-run around the guidelines everyone else has to follow.
Okay, basically nobody believes either of these things, but they're the extreme points of a spectrum that most people fall on with respect to SNGs. These perspectives are currently coming into play with respect to Wikipedia:Notability (sports).
These notability guidelines, which have existed since 2007, cover a wide variety of sports – 28 of them, from orienteering to rodeo to billiards. They also cover teams, clubs, rivalries, arenas, and collegiate athletes. While the specific criteria differ across sports, the general thrust is that a person is presumed notable if they have played in at least one game at a professional level. This results in some weird edge cases, like an individual page for some guy who pitched a couple innings of a single game in 1890 and nobody wrote down his first name.
Of course, these weird edge case articles can be good. Lewis (baseball), currently a redirect, was previously a quite well-written article. In fact, it was a Featured Article until a contentious AfD in October 2021 (nominated by Therapyisgood, the same editor who had written most of the article). What changed?
Well, it almost goes without saying that standards have evolved on Wikipedia over the last twenty years; even a critically important topic like oxygen looked like this in early revisions. And the bar to becoming a featured article was lower back in the days when they were called "brilliant prose". But Lewis wasn't some holdout from 2005 – it was promoted to FA in 2020 and appeared on the Main Page in March 2021. Its October AfD nomination was part of a larger trend of sports FAs – previously upheld as the highest standard of quality on Wikipedia – being nominated for deletion, and then being deleted.
Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 was previously a featured article (despite an attempted AfD in 2015). It was turned into a redirect following a second AfD nomination in October 2021 by Trainsandotherthings, who this month made a fifteen-article batch nomination of Australian cricketers, including six featured articles and five good articles. Some articles survive the process – the batch nomination was withdrawn, and List of players who appeared in only one game in the NFL (1920–1929) developed a consensus to keep. However, many do not – Ron Hamence with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (2nd nomination) was almost unanimously merged this month. The winds of change seem to be blowing, and blowing fast.
At the subpage created to host this discussion (split off from the main VPP thread on the 25th), there are a whopping 400,000 bytes of text. The core of it revolves around a proposal, made by RandomCanadian, to abolish the current version of NSPORTS, citing "needless conflict, pointless AfDs and DRVs, and above all bureaucratic waste of time". A pre-RfC discussion was held to determine what aspects of NSPORTS are most problematic. Major categories of complaints include the presumption of notability as used in AfD arguments, the presumption of notability as used in article creation, confusing guidance, the granting of indefinite amounts of time for SIGCOV to be located, and criteria that often fail to correctly predict GNG coverage. Currently, there are six subproposals for guideline amendments outlined on the page.
Normally, I give the largest AfDs of the month by the highest !vote count and the largest character count. This month, something a little confusing happened: the highest !vote count AfD had the second-largest character count, and the largest character count AfD had the second-highest !vote count. While about seemingly-unrelated subjects, both ended up at the center of sometimes-acerbic arguments pertaining to gender politics.
The result was no consensus. and none likely to emerge with established editors making policy-based cases for both sides of the issue. [...] ETA following conversation about my close with JoelleJay, I am explicitly noting that I have no issue with this being renominated if participants or nominator think a different outcome is likely quickly. This appeared to be cleaner than an additional relist.
Apart from those, the largest discussions by character count were as follows:
The result was delete. Sources analyzed in the discussion don't appear to satisfy the WP:NORG standard and there were not alternative sources put forward. Since this article and its redirects have been around a long time, as an editorial action I'm going to recreate them as redirects to Center for Inquiry.
The AfDs with the most !votes cast were:
What counts as the "first AfD" of the year depends on your perspective (and on your time zone). But even then, there are a few different "firsts".
There are a few firsts that I wasn't able to suss out, mostly because I don't feel like spending two hours on database queries. These include the first !vote of the year, as well as the first nomination/closure for each time zone.
In the tradition of WP:DAFT, here is some wacky stuff I found while compiling this month's report.
Deleted articles with freaky titles:
Kept articles with freaky titles:
Merged articles with freaky titles:
Redirected articles with freaky titles:
No consensus articles with freaky titles:
Open AfDs for articles with freaky titles:
Procedurally closed AfDs that were closed "speedy keep" for being nominated in the incorrect venue, but later opened at RfD, relisted there a week later, and closed as "no consensus" with freaky titles:
The Unreviewed featured articles 2020 working group is not a WikiProject with a formal list of members, but a working group that any editor can contribute to. They often are temporary and don't need formal approval. By any name, whether WikiProject or working group, the spirit of collaboration is the important part. The immense feat of coordinating such a large effort drew me to this working group, as did its recent first anniversary. So, why clean up Featured Articles? And why have a working group about doing it?
What is the Unreviewed featured articles 2020 working group, and why have an unreviewed featured article working group?
What motivated you to become a member of the Unreviewed featured articles 2020 working group?
What do you see as some of the biggest achievements of the Unreviewed featured articles 2020 working group and are there any contributions you are particularly proud of?
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*These received a Million Award
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What does an average day at the Unreviewed featured articles 2020 working group look like? What roles and tasks do you associate with your WikiProject, and how do you go about fulfilling them?
What are the Unreviewed featured articles 2020 working group most pressing needs, and how can a new contributor help?
Anything else you'd like to add?
Thanks to everyone who answered these questions, and also to you, the reader. Please contribute some ideas for WikiProjects to review or any other feedback in the comments below. If you'd like to learn more about the working group and perhaps even participate yourself, the 2021 annual report is a great resource!
January marked the start of a new term for several arbitrators appointed in the 2021 elections. The election, its outcomes, and the cute photo montage of the new arbs' namesakes can be found in the previous Arbitration Report. So what have they been up to in the last month? A few things, as it turns out. Several cases were declined, a topic ban was lifted, and some old cases were modified. Additionally, a comprehensive review of old discretionary sanctions began, and one case was opened.
On 16 January, a case was opened regarding potential issues of coordinated editing by members of at least one group, Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW), led by Susan Gerbic (who is both a party to the case and the subject of one of the articles involved in the case). I made a preliminary statement in the case urging it to be accepted, which means I will refrain from going off about it at length in the Arbitration Report. The basic issue at hand is whether the activities of the group, which are often conducted in an opaque manner off-wiki, embody conflict-of-interest editing; sources and articles involved include the Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and Center for Inquiry Investigations Group (among others).
Several categories of discretionary sanctions are up for review, following a 2021 review of the practice. The discussion, located here, concerns a number of rarely-used sanctions areas, whether they should continue to be covered by DS, and in some cases modifications to existing DS regimes. The sanctions being considered for abolition are:
Additionally, some article probation remedies are being considered for abolition. These are:
Finally, two DS regimes are being considered for amendment. They are:
Nine enforcement requests were closed in January.
Additionally, two enforcement requests are currently open.
So far, there have been 52 actions logged for 2022. They are as follows:
2021 was mostly a year to finish what we couldn't have in 2020, between delayed sports events (football – the one actually involving feet and a ball, although gridiron also shows up thanks to a dominating quarterback – and the Olympics) and movies (broadly construed, there are twelve superhero media entries on this list, not counting future supervillain Dwayne Johnson; though there is also a place for the most famous fictional spy and giant monsters, plus a science fiction adaptation and a science fiction actor). We are not fully rid of COVID-19, but thankfully only the pandemic's overall article entered the list, as vaccination and conscious actions seem to finally slow down the disease (variants and irresponsible people aside). The political landscape saw the expected change in Donald Trump's exit, and the unexpected regression in Taliban's return and US states trying to block racial discussion in schools. Reflecting three subjects that are constantly on the news, there are entries for the two richest men in the world (who are also in their new space race), the British monarchy (which had a bad year between exposés and death), and the recently deceased. Completing it all are plenty of Netflix-related subjects (including Squid Game and Bridgerton), the three English-speaking countries that shape Wikipedia views the most, and two singers, a young one filling in for Billie Eilish's absence, and a dead one that somehow keeps himself alive.
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes | Peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deaths in 2021 | 
|
45,385,914 |  |
After being robbed of the top spot the last two years by both a fictional and real endgame, the list of deaths returns as the most-viewed article this year. | Apr. 9 (DMX and Prince Philip die) |
| 2 | Elizabeth II | 
|
26,680,332 |  |
If 1992 was her first annus horribilis, then 2021 is a good contender for her second. While a certain Netflix series that helped secure the Royal Family's position on this list did not air a new season this year, several notable events have occurred this year to secure Her Majesty's position this high in the Top 50. The biggest of them is the death of her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, after 73.5 years of marriage. She also reigns over one less nation than she did last year, as Barbados abolished its monarchy to become a republic. | Apr. 9 (husband died) |
| 3 | Elon Musk | 
|
25,569,324 | .jpg) |
After volunteering to once again write about this South African kajillionaire after doing so on last year's list, I realized far too late that I have no real interest in discussing Elon Musk anymore. I don't want to talk about him, I don't want to hear about him, and I most definitely don't want to hear him say that someone "took a major L" or wear a Wario costume in an SNL skit ever again. Even Elon Musk is tired of reading about Elon Musk on Wikipedia, hence why he railed on this website for not being "curated" enough after hearing about his appearance on this list. Maybe he would prefer to read something like CNN, where it was revealed that he owes billions of dollars in taxes, or The Guardian, who wrote that critics considered his pick as Time Person of the Year the "worst choice ever". Is that curated enough for you?
I must be alone in not wanting to hear as much as humanly possible about the man, though, if you couldn't tell from the fact that his is the third most-viewed article this year on the seventh most-visited website on the whole Internet. I mean, the guy is nestled in between the queen of England and the most popular Netflix series of all time. If Oprah was somewhere on the list (and considering her interview with the royals, I'm kind of surprised she's not) he would literally be the song "Billionaire" by Travie McCoy. Yet what more is there to say about him? I could talk about his recent breakup from Grimes, a relationship that lasted far too long for anyone's tastes and amounted to a year's worth of her embarrassing herself with passionate defenses of her hot hubby. I could talk about his endorsement of Dogecoin, which gave every straight man on the planet carte blanche to mansplain cryptocurrency to everyone else, and rapidly fluctuated in response to Musk's every move (because, sure, let’s give him one more thing to control for his own benefit while convincing his impoverished fans it's for theirs). I could even talk about all of the stupid, immature things he thinks it's okay to tweet, like responding to Bernie Sanders's very reasonable request that "the extremely wealthy pay their fair share" by being a hit dog and hollering, "I keep forgetting that you're still alive," as if anyone was ever convinced Elon Musk cared about whether or not anyone outside of the 1% was alive and well, let alone his own workers. And unfortunately for Elon, this uncurated "dumpster fire" of a Wikipedia article will surely continue to get clicks since, unlike the robots and robot-makers that came before him, he revels in the attention that comes with being the wealthiest man on Earth, and won't stop getting it until the bitter end. What did that one space guy say? Oh, yeah. To infinity and beyond. |
May 9 (hosted Saturday Night Live) |
| 4 | Squid Game | 
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23,129,704 |  |
"Mugunghwa-kkochi pieot-seumnida."
If people last year thought Tiger King would be the biggest Netflix hit in the 2020s, they've seen nothing yet as this South Korean series not only beat Tiger King's viewership, but has become the most popular Netflix show of all time. It focuses on broke people playing children's games such as Red Light Green Light, Tug of war and marbles for an enormous cash prize, with the horrifying twist of elimination meaning their deaths. Following its release on Netflix in September, Squid Game became a worldwide phenomenon, gaining critical acclaim and bringing worldwide media attention to the majority of its cast, including Lee Jung-jae, HoYeon Jung and Wi Ha-joon. It's also become the top-viewed Netflix program in 94 countries, and has surpassed Bridgerton as the most-watched show in Netflix history. It's also had a huge impact on internet culture, notably inspiring an SNL country music video starring |
Oct. 3 (breaks Netflix records) |
| 5 | Spider-Man: No Way Home | 
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The most-anticipated movie of the year was undoubtedly the final film in Jon Watts' Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Spider-Man trilogy, which wraps up the character arc for Tom Holland's Peter Parker that began with Captain America: Civil War back in 2016. No Way Home sees Spider-Man accidentally break the Marvel Multiverse wide open when trying to erase the world's knowledge of his identity (which was made public in the previous film), causing villains from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man duology to show up in the MCU and wreak havoc.
No Way Home is one of the darkest and most violent films to come out of the relatively light and upbeat MCU, but it's also a massive celebration of Spider-Man's cinematic history, filled with fan service and appearances ranging from Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin to Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's incarnations of the Wall-Crawler. When rumors emerged that Marvel and Sony were bringing back old Spider-Man actors for No Way Home, fans were driven into a frenzy, and only got more excited as the studios and actors scrambled to deny it. Fans got so ravenous that in late August they leaked the film's first trailer. Marvel/Sony's attempts at secrecy were also for naught as numerous set photos leaked showing things they didn't want shown ahead of release. After months of intense anticipation, No Way Home was released in the U.S. on December 17. In addition to scoring some of the best reviews of any MCU film (which was good news for Marvel after Eternals released to a massive thud critically), it was the first post-COVID blockbuster to pass the $1 billion mark at the global box office. A sequel is already in development, though whether Holland will return is still unclear (as he's said he's unsure if he wants to continue playing Spider-Man). |
Dec. 17 (theatrical release) |
| 6 | Cristiano Ronaldo |
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Without COVID interrupting the season like in 2020, CR7 had good views all year long and returns to the Annual Report in a very high position. At the age of 36, he's still one of the Beautiful Game's best, breaking many records regarding goals scored and games played, and made headlines upon his signing with Manchester United, marking a return to the team of his breakthrough nearly 20 years ago. 2022 has another important landmark for Ronaldo to seek, namely qualify his Portugal to the World Cup and put him among the select few who appeared in five tournaments. | Aug. 27 (announcement of Man U deal) |
| 7 | Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh |
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In Wiki, as in life, he followed his wife. The grand old Duke of Edinburgh (and, according to him, the world's most experienced plaque unveiler) died this April. As Queen Elizabeth II's consort for 69 years, he was entitled to a state funeral but in typical no-nonsense style, he said he "did not want a fuss". Throughout his life, Philip was the definition of duty; he put aside his naval career to become what one could term the world's most professional house-husband. He worked to make his wife's job as fruitful as possible while standing in her shadow for longer than most people are alive. Besides standing loyal to the crown, he was a keen pilot, equestrian, and patron of around 800 charities. He founded an award to encourage young people's personal development, completed by millions world-round. He was also known for his verbal gaffes (including telling a photographer to "take the fucking picture!"), and even inspired a cargo cult! | Apr. 9 (died) |
| 8 | UEFA Euro 2020 |
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The England men's national football team (a.k.a "England") made it to the final, not having gone that far in competition since they won the World Cup in 1966. With a bit of national pride from having decent vaccine rollout, little else to care about, and a brain on sports in anticipation of the Olympics, Football Fever took over the nation. They thought it was coming home! But it instead went to Rome, in the first of Italy's perhaps-surprising sporting victories this year (see: men's 100m sprint). And it was again the dreaded penalties that spelt England's fall. | June 21 (final round of groups B and C) |
| 9 | Joe Biden |
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Joe Biden has been commander-in-chief for almost a year. Compared to the scandals of his predecessor, Biden began his presidency with a high approval rating due to his success with the vaccine rollout in the United States. However, he has since faced controversy over his handling of the Fall of Kabul, resulting in a dip in his approval ratings. | Jan. 20 (inaugurated as President) |
| 10 | Donald Trump |
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After four years of scandals and fake news, the presidency of The Donald came to an end this year. His claims of election fraud did not turn out well for him, as they led to the United States Capitol attack and Trump's subsequent second impeachment and being banned from almost every social media platform, including (sadly for him) Twitter. Trump skipped Biden's inauguration, becoming the first president since Andrew Johnson not to attend their successor's inauguration. Since leaving office, Trump has frequently teased a presidential run in 2024. | Jan. 20 (forgoes Biden's inauguration) |
| 11 | United States |
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Make America Democratic Again (see above) | Jan. 20 (Joe Biden's inauguration) |
| 12 | WandaVision |
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Upon watching the first two episodes, I enjoyed the "clip-show of sitcoms" style it had. I did wonder how they were going to keep that up once they got to the 2010s. Then a mystery emerged, and all the main characters (as well as the viewers) are invited to work out why those episodes were fake sitcoms. Each of the characters has different bits of information, and, yes, did it get a bit stringy as they finally reveal the villain? Sure. Did that undermine how cool the show was? Not really, especially with the villain being the highlight among a whole cast of fan favorites. Oh, and it gave us the first look at an all grown up Monica Rambeau ready for her real superhero debut in The Marvels at some point in the near-ish future! | Jan. 14 (two episode debut) |
| 13 | 2020 Summer Olympics |
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*clears throat* Caeleb Dressel, Ma Long, Marcell Jacobs, Ingebrigtsen Covid tests, Sifan Hassan, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn Faith Kipyegon, Galal Yafai, Who's that boxing?, Lauren Price North Korea, Fake Russia, Kellie Harrington Record-breaking, Rojas, Warholm-and, McLaughlin Warner, Nowicki, and The Guys who split the prize Lonely flags, Stay with your team, England's got a new queen Worthington, Cheptegei, El Bakkali, goodbye We didn't win the medals But they've been regarded, since the Olympics started We didn't win the medals But all of these did win and we celebrate it Lorenzo Patta, Desalu, Filippo Tortu Thompson-Herah, Fraser-Pryce, Williams and Jackson Lee Yang, Wang Chi-lin, Kiesenhofer, Irie Prim-ož Rog-lič, He beat the clock Tom Daley, Matty Lee, The USA's the winning team Logan Martin, Liu Yang, Russian gym teams, Shin Jea-hwan Kirpu, I. Embrich, Beljajeva, Lehis Lee Kiefer, Sun Yiwen, Three fen-cing "Russian" wins Daniel Ståhl, Pichardo, Neeraj Chopra, he can throw Stano, Duplantis, boy, he's gone very high Axelsen, Jalolov, Japanese baseball Jean van der Westhuyzen, Julio César La Cruz Arlen López, Roniel, Andy Cruz, Conceição Sürmeneli, Savšek, How do you say Prskavec? Gazoz, Jang Min-hee, South Korea archery Romashina, and, er, Svetlana Kolesnichenko Gardiner, Crouser, Selemon Barega De Grasse, Jess Fox, Isaquias Queiroz Annemiek van Vleuten, Lasse Norman Hansen Matt Walls, Kimmann, Harrie Lavreysen Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny, British cycling victor-ny Shi Tingmao, Xie Siyi, double golds in div-ing We didn't win the medals But they've been regarded, since the Olympics started We didn't win the medals But all of these did win and we celebrate it Krajewski, Ben Maher, Jessica von Bredow-Werndl Sweden, GB, Germany, horse teams Cannone, Kano, Cheung Ka Long, swords and suits don't go wrong Netherlands win field hockey, and Belgium in the men's game Nelly Korda, Xander Schauffele, golfing goes to USA Dolgopyat, Max Whitlock, Daiki Hashimoto China get some more, and USA on the floor France win twice playing handball, and we've barely touched the new sports! We didn't win the medals But they've been regarded, since the Olympics started We didn't win the medals But all of these did win and we celebrate it |
July 24 (first day of competition) |
| 14 | Afghanistan |
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The Taliban are back in power following the Fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021. | Aug. 16 (Fall of Kabul) |
| 15 | Dune (2021 film) |
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This movie – but none of its promotional material – touts itself as Part One. I mean, it did very well so I doubt that Part Two won't come, but you never know. It begs disaster, especially as this movie itself is the fourth attempt to adapt the 1965 novel Dune (no "part" subtitle).
Besides #5's star Zendaya, this movie has an ensemble cast of, er, everyone? Like, there are a dozen main characters. Lots of sand. And that isn't a stray observation: the hero comes from a water planet, so the sand is a lot of the story. |
Oct. 23 (after US release) |
| 16 | Lionel Messi |
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Messi's year didn't get off to the best of starts, after he received his first red card in his club career, on Jan 17. Then his team suffered their worst UEFA Champions League performance in 14 years, getting knocked out in the last 16. However, Messi's fortunes improved, as he took a host of records: first player to score at least 20 (as well as 30) goals across 13 consecutive seasons in the top leagues, most appearances for F.C. Barcelona, most decorated player at a single club (with 35 trophies) and most times as top scorer in La Liga (8). Messi then went forth to compete in the 2021 Copa América, competing for his country, Argentina. At the tournament he would win the Golden boot, break the record for most appearances on the Argentine team (150), and, most significantly, Argentina won the tournament, Messi's first major international title, and the countries first since 1993. Messi would later also take the record for highest South American international goal scorer, beating the record set by (possibly) the greatest and most famous player of all time, Pelé. After coming back from his victory in the Copa América, Messi was forced to leave Barcelona, with whom he had been contracted to for over 21 years, leading to a highly emotional press conference. Messi would move to Paris Saint-Germain F.C. for the next chapter of his career, where his team (currently) comfortable lead the league. Messi's year ended with a record seventh Ballon d'Or. |
Aug. 10 (PSG deal) |
| 17 | Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings |
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It was the busiest year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who had to compensate for pandemic-related delays by issuing four movies in six months (and that's not counting five Disney+ shows: #12, #44, Captain America's friends, a cartoon and Hawkeye finally being given his due). In-between the two with returning Avengers (#5, #32), there were two films highlighting mostly obscure characters and offering new story paths to explore, while also facing opposition of China in spite of Asian influence in front of and behind the cameras. Audiences and reviewers were very pleased with the mystical martial arts of Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu, and very split on whether the ancient astronauts Eternals fully delivered on their sci-fi epic ambitions. In any case, each made $400 million worldwide to remind us that people are happy to go back to theaters. | Sep. 3 (US release) |
| 18 | List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films |
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Dec. 19 (Spider-Man is released) | |
| 19 | Eternals (film) |
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13,292,272 |  |
Nov. 5 (US release) | |
| 20 | No Time to Die |
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The most recent Bond film came out this year, with Daniel Craig uttering the iconic "The name's Bond, James Bond" for the last time. The next big question is: who will replace him? | Sep. 29 (UK release) |
| 21 | India |
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Is that Bollywood scandal still going on? I know they rounded up more presenters than anywhere else for Global Citizen this year. Bad weather. Pakistan. Modi. Sorry, I'm just listing again. | Aug. 16 (day after Independence Day) |
| 22 | Tom Brady |
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Could the quarterback's legendary NFL tenure continue without the New England Patriots? We got a definitive answer on February 7, when Brady led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV. Brady was named Super Bowl MVP for a record fifth time, making him the first player to win the award for more than one franchise. He shows no signs of slowing down; during the 2021–2022 season, he became the fourth quarterback in NFL history to record a win against all 32 current teams, the sixth quarterback to have a victory against every incumbent NFL franchise, and the first quarterback in NFL history to record 600 regular season touchdown passes. | Feb. 8 (wins Super Bowl) |
| 23 | Diana, Princess of Wales |
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24 years after the fatal car crash of the "Princess of the People", her article earned three view spikes, two by association (when her son and his wife went on Oprah, and when Prince Philip died) and one by cause (Martin Bashir, already unpopular with Michael Jackson fans for obvious reasons, was found guilty of deceit for what he had done to get an interview with Diana in 1995). Somehow, there weren't so many visits with the release of Spencer, a movie with Kristen Stewart as Lady Di during the divorce from Prince Charles. In any case, 2022 had the return of The Crown, where an enormous woman will take over as Diana. | Apr. 9 (former father-in-law died) |
| 24 | Godzilla vs. Kong |
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Is there plot? Apparently. Did people just want to see and hear CGI spectacle and Dolby sound in a cinema after a year out? Absolutely. | Apr. 1 (US release) |
| 25 | Charles, Prince of Wales |
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Charles inherited the title of Duke of Edinburgh following the death of his father, Prince Philip. | Apr. 9 (father died) |
| 26 | COVID-19 pandemic |
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Even after 2020 ended, it's still the end of the world as we know it as this pandemic shows no sign of stopping just yet. This year saw the arrival of several variants of concern, most notably the Delta and Omicron variants, which have contributed to rising cases and caused confusion via the World Health Organization's usage of letters of the Greek alphabet. | Mar. 10 (anniversary of being classified as a pandemic) |
| 27 | Taliban |
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This Islamist organisation was thrown out of power in 2001, but came back to power this August following the end of the War in Afghanistan and subsequent Fall of Kabul. | Aug. 16 (took over Kabul) |
| 28 | Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Four |
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Post-Endgame MCU. Disney had claimed several dates for future releases and were happy to swap them all around in light of the pandemic, being one of the best-prepared failures-to-launch of the whole thing. It still felt like far too many came out this year. And every sign in town will tell you when the next one is out. | July 14 (Loki season finale) |
| 29 | Critical race theory |
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The core anxiety goes back as far as the Scopes Monkey Trial: public schools have been co-opted by the liberal elites that want to corrupt your children. A few months ago, Fox News and Republican strategists decided to start blaming a niche legal academic movement. This has been an unparalleled success, leading many states to ban discussion of race from classrooms. The controversy is probably also responsible for Democrats losing Virginia's off-year gubernatorial election this November. | June 18 (joint statement opposing ban) |
| 30 | Zack Snyder's Justice League |
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After years of fan rallying, protesting, and/or bullying, HBO Max finally #ReleasedTheSnyderCut on March 18. The do-over of 2017's Justice League presents the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) crossover event exactly as director Zack Snyder had intended before he'd left the production due to a personal tragedy. The 2017 theatrical version had been completed under the supervision of former MCU architect Joss Whedon, whose attempts to add humor and levity to Snyder's trademark darkness resulted in a jumbled, unsatisfying mess of a film that bombed with critics and audiences. (Allegations that Whedon's on-set behavior was abusive and unprofessional certainly didn't help matters.)
HBO Max gave Snyder an estimated $70 million to restore his vision, and a portion of that budget went to filming a new scene featuring Jared Leto reprising his role as the Joker from 2016's Suicide Squad. And yes, Snyder made him say "We Live In a Society" for the hell of it. While some aspects of Zack Snyder's Justice League were mocked, like its excessive use of slo-mo, a ridiculous four hour runtime, and its 4:3 aspect ratio, critics largely agreed it was Snyder's best DCEU film and vastly superior to Whedon's version. The film was intended to mark the end of Snyder's association with the DCEU, but fans immediately began lobbying for a sequel, even if that's probably never going to happen. |
Mar. 18 (released on HBO Max) |
| 31 | Bridgerton |
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A really popular Netflix show that was set in period costume days but was raunchy and modern. Some people didn't like that there were fictional black members of the aristocracy, I didn't like that (besides the raunchiness) I found it didn't meet my expectations. To be fair, it was sold to me as a great critique on aristocracy and race, and it isn't, it's a soap opera with petticoats. Many people absolutely loved it, I think it's based on some books, and it's obviously getting another season. | Jan. 3 |
| 32 | Black Widow (2021 film) |
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Probably my favorite of the seemingly-endless MCU movies that this year spit up.
Sure, most people wanted one of: an actual Red Room Natasha origin story; Natasha and Clint in SHIELD adventure; What Happened In Budapest; Dark and Moody adventure with the Winter Soldier. And in that sense it didn't deliver at all. Would it have perhaps been better with less post-GOTG comedy, like Iron Man 2 level of comedy? Almost certainly. Was it the best standalone the MCU has done since Avengers came out? Well, ditto. Also, star Scarlett Johansson brought a lawsuit against Disney for breach of contract regarding the multiplatform release, in a move possibly defining 2021 in its three core aspects: MCU movie; directly caused by the pandemic; and female empowerment, especially against a corporation. |
July 9 (US premiere) |
| 33 | Kamala Harris |
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US Vice President Harris's article got the most views right after her momentous inauguration, but failed to attract even a sliver of the same amount of attention in the following months. Sure, Kamala Harris became the first woman with presidential powers and duties (for 85 minutes) after President Biden underwent anesthesia for a colonoscopy – although I'm not sure why he couldn’t have kept his powers & duties while that was happening, seeing as how he would barely be the first US president to be asleep at the wheel – but that only happened for about an hour and a half.
Critics have complained that Kamala Harris's historic role as the first female vice president, African-American vice president, and Asian-American vice president has overshadowed her subpar performance as all of those things, and it's not hard to see why. Some of her staff either hated working for her or left after growing to hate her – a trend that only worsened as the year came to a close – her approval rates were alarmingly low among American citizens, and she apparently spent most of her time in office being sidelined by the only individual with more political power than her. As far as events that truly shook the nation, though, Harris was involved in very few, regardless of how busy her first year as VP may have been. She visited Southeast Asia to address US–China tensions, met with Narendra Modi, told Guatemalan migrants not to enter the US, led a push for voting rights, and did a bunch of other stuff that failed to grab the nation's attention. Keeping an eye on leadership is always helpful, but it's doubtful that Harris made it onto this list because people were as tuned into what she was doing as they were with Biden. Her nondescript reputation is a step up from her predecessor's, I suppose, seeing as how his became defined by his comments advocating for conversion therapy. Then again, only one of them ever ended up in a Top 50 list, and it wasn't the one with the fly in his hair. Maybe Harris will do something groundbreaking in 2022, but until then, all we have is this video. We did it, Joe! |
Jan. 20 (inaugurated as VP) |
| 34 | QAnon |
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We are more than a year out from the last post by Q (the author). While Q's theories—that Donald Trump was planning a righteous coup against the conspiring elites—have probably proven to be false (QAnon proponents believe in deep states and secret executions, after all), QAnon still has an outsized influence on American culture. 15% of Americans believe in the theory, and they are represented in Congress—and I'm not just talking about the guys who visited on January 6. | Jan. 7 (day after Capitol attack) |
| 35 | The Suicide Squad (film) |
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The Justice League wasn't the only DCEU property that saw redemption this year. In 2016, David Ayer made Suicide Squad, and it was terrible. Jump to 2021, when James Gunn (director of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy who jumped ship to DC after Disney temporarily fired him for some unsavory old tweets) made The Suicide Squad, a sequel/reboot/some weird combination of the two... and it was amazing! The Suicide Squad retains some Suicide Squad members from Suicide Squad (of course, Warner Bros. would never get rid of Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn) but mostly follows a new set of characters including Idris Elba's Bloodsport, Sylvester Stallone's King Shark, and Daniela Melchior's Ratcatcher as they attempt to destroy Starro the Conquerer, a giant alien starfish.
Despite critical acclaim, the film underperformed in theaters thanks to a simultaneous HBO Max release, a release coinciding with the emergence of the Delta variant, the poor reception of the first film, and confusion over whether it was a sequel, spin-off, or reboot. Nonetheless, HBO Max has greenlit a spin-off series starring John Cena as Peacemaker, set to premiere next year. |
Aug. 7 (after US release) |
| 36 | DMX |
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A Ruff Ryding, record-breaking East Coast emcee who forced us to question where the hood was really at, reminded us that there was always a party somewhere, but mostly up in here, and promised to give it to ya, no matter who ya may be, DMX passed away at only 50 years old this year due to complications brought on by a cocaine overdose. In his half-century here on Earth with us, the Dark Man pioneered a certain, self-explanatory kind of rap known as hardcore hip hop, replete with shouting, growling, and even a few barks here and there. It started with his widely revered, multi-platinum debut record It's Dark and Hell is Hot in 1999, and was expanded upon in four more consecutive number-one albums that cemented him as one of the most important rappers to ever live.
Despite mostly being known for his impeccable rap skills, a good chunk of DMX's life was consumed by the oft-violent crime, both streetwise and otherwise, that he depicted in his own lyrics, making him a complicated and unpredictable figure. Also, remember that cocaine that I mentioned a few sentences ago? Both that and the crime tie into DMX's untimely passing, as his mentor, Ready Ron, got him hooked on crack cocaine at only 14 years old after secretly giving him a blunt laced with it. DMX's pageviews actually spiked twice this year, the first time being around April 4, when news that he had been rushed to White Plains Hospital after a heart attack began to spread. The following week was a tense one for fans, as his state only worsened, going from losing oxygen in his brain to going into a coma, until finally, on April 9, his multiple organ failures led to the death that put him on this list. Most recently, it was discovered that DMX, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, recorded a gospel album in the late 2000s. With all of the gloomy, semi-Satanic imagery in his songs and videos, one wouldn’t be mistaken for forgetting that X considered himself a devout Christian. It begs the question: If there is a (Christian) God, what will He (or She or They or It) choose to do with someone as complicated as DMX? |
Apr. 9 (died) |
| 37 | Richard Ramirez |
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Netflix has been a boon for true crime shows, which is reflected in how viewers use the "second screen" nature of Wikipedia for further research – Ted Bundy even managed to be the third most viewed article of 2019. And in the January release Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer, the subject was this utterly terrible human being – as listed on the article, "serial killer, serial rapist, kidnapper, child molester, and burglar" – that terrorized California in 1985, killing at least 15 people before being subdued by a mob and subsequently arrested, leading to decades in the death row before Ramirez died in 2013 of lymphoma. | Jan. 16 (after Netflix show) |
| 38 | United Kingdom |
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Rule, Britannia, as the year managed to push the UK into the Annual Report alongside its two former colonies that always get in (#11, #21). There were notable British things in culture with the return of James Bond (#20), and in sports with among others, the English team that got to the continental finals (#8), 65 Olympic medals (#21), and a tennis player that on September 11 had more views than the tragedy completing 20 years. And of course, views came in thanks to the monarchy that is spread all over this list. | Apr. 9 (royal consort died) |
| 39 | Dwayne Johnson |
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The WWE superstar turned box-office superstar had a big year, pandemic notwithstanding. A sitcom based on his life, Young Rock, premiered in February, and his long-gestating passion project, the DC Comics adaptation Black Adam, finally started filming in April after spending over a decade in development hell. He starred in the film adaptation of Disney's Jungle Cruise ride, which topped the box office in July, and Netflix's Red Notice, which broke streaming records in November. He was also added to Fortnite Battle Royale in December.
And yes, I am now calling him "The Rock from Fortnite" just to piss people off. |
Feb. 17 (after Young Rock premiere) |
| 40 | List of James Bond films |
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Only this year the Marvel Cinematic Universe managed to surpass James Bond in the number of movies (although if you include that parody and that remake, it's a tie until May), specially as the British spy managed to return for the 25th time around in No Time to Die, after a six year absence caused by both production problems and a pandemic. Daniel Craig's tenure is over, making him the one who lasted longer, even with less movies than Sean Connery and Roger Moore, and the producers have stated that 2022, the 60th anniversary of the film series, will be the one where they will announce the 007th actor (and no, it won't be an actress!) to play agent 007. | Oct. 9 (No Time to Die premieres in the US) |
| 41 | George VI |
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Another royal everyone decided to check in when Philip died. Spoiler: George is also dead. In fact, it was his death that made Philip consort. George's appearance is one of the more understandable ones; he and Philip got on very well, and worked closely both in military and royal life before George's death. It is strange to think about Philip being a senior statesman alongside a man that died so long ago – Philip got old, George didn't – but that was the strength of their manly bond.
I imagine a lot of the pageviews came from people wanting to learn more about said friendship after it was mentioned in all the documentaries of Philip's life that took over television following his death. The BBC never seem to get it right when royals die, either too much or too little coverage. Maybe they will have found the happy medium before the Queen goes (I had a weird dream, it has been on my mind), though I don't think anyone could claim even wall-to-wall Rule, Britannia! would be too much then. So, to another Navy man: |
Apr. 9 (son-in-law died) |
| 42 | Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon |
|
9,973,291 | 
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Why is [insert member of the royal family] on the list? Well, people are still catching up on The Crown on Netflix as it spins into more modern times; Meghan and Andrew have been the subject of scandals and those clickthroughs are cheap; and Philip died. | Apr. 17 (brother-in-law's funeral) |
| 43 | Zendaya |
|
9,875,760 |  |
It was quite the busy year for this former Disney star. She had/heard many monologues in Malcolm & Marie, voiced a rabbit returning to the hardwood, appeared briefly in a two and a half hour movie (#15), and filmed the next season of the show which gave her an Emmy, Euphoria. What else... ah, that movie she made with boyfriend Tom Holland (#5). | Dec. 17 (release of No Way Home) |
| 44 | Loki (TV series) |
|
9,860,570 | .jpg) |
2021 gave us more Marvel TV originals than strains of COVID. And while the first Disney+ show being here is no surprise (#12), the second, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, barely missed the list, unlike this third – which started around the same time the MCU returned to theaters (#32). After all, bringing back Tom Hiddleston as the the petulant Asgardian God that has endeared fans for a decade was a winner, and his show even opens up the Multiverse that led to #5's massive success, also with variants on the protagonist. Albeit Loki's were quite different, including a woman and an alligator. And the complex story was full of cliffhangers, only we didn't expect one in the season finale that also announced a season 2 – considering how tight the MCU scheduling is, maybe don't expect a return until at least the show's overarching villain makes his film debut in 2023? | July 14 (season finale) |
| 45 | Jeff Bezos |
|
9,759,385 |  |
He sent Captain Kirk (pictured) to space this year. And also flew to orbit and stepped down as Amazon CEO, but better celebrate destiny being fulfilled in the final frontier. | July 20 (flew to space in Blue Origin NS-16) |
| 46 | Olivia Rodrigo |
|
9,673,015 | _(cropped).jpg) |
This year, the star of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series made her breakthrough into mainstream pop music with the album SOUR. Most of the songs are about breakups, or possibly one breakup, or allegedly her splitting up with HSMTMTS co-star Joshua Bassett. Musically, the album ranges from slow piano pop (like "drivers license," which hit #1 in many countries) to punk-infused pop so similar to Paramore that it accidentally plagiarized ("good 4 u", which went #1 in fewer countries). In July, she visited the White House to advertise COVID vaccinations; hopefully, she's the reason why some TikTok sadgirls aren't dying of Omicron. | May 16 (2 days after "good 4 u") |
| 47 | Keanu Reeves |
|
9,475,319 | 
|
The Internet's Boyfriend returned as computer hacker Neo, one of the roles that made him famous, in the long-awaited Matrix sequel The Matrix Resurrections. The film has proven divisive and was steamrollered by a certain Marvel flick (#5) in its opening weekend, but Reeves still managed to delight the internet by laughing at NFTs in an interview with The Verge. | Dec. 12 (Verge interview with memetic laugh) |
| 48 | Ted Lasso |
|
9,394,740 | _(cropped).jpg)
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Apple TV+ is far from the heights of Netflix, Prime Video or Disney+, but has already scored an award-winning show in Ted Lasso, which further strains the line of what is "football": the title character is an American college football coach (played by Jason Sudeikis), who is hired to manage the sport he knows as "soccer" in the English Premier League, in a move carried entirely out of spite but that somehow actually improves the team. Ted Lasso won many Emmys for its first season, including Outstanding Comedy Series, has released its second season and is already renewed for a third. Maybe I should give it a shot – it can't be any worse than the Emmy winner of 2019. | Sep. 20 (wins Emmys) |
| 49 | Freddie Mercury |
|
9,399,769 |  ]
|
Get your party gown, get your pigtail down, get your heart beating baby! Yes, the iconic frontman of Queen managed to slide back here, no matter if unlike the rest of this list he wasn't much in the news, aside from three landmark anniversaries: 75 years of his birth, 50 years of his band, and 30 of his death. And yet Freddie's fans kept on returning to his page for various reasons, such as Queen's YouTube issuing videos on their history and a seal named after him dying. We might've expected the death that closed the year, the singer who fought for her freedom, another one of those serial killers on Netflix and the event that started the 21st century. But even decades after he's taken his bows and his curtain calls, Freddie is still the champion, my friends. | Feb. 7 (Super Bowl ad?) |
| 50 | Scarlett Johansson |
|
9,389,888 | _(cropped).jpg) |
Despite a literally action-packed year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only one of its lead stars – #43 isn't the heroine of her movie – actually made it onto the list this year thanks to the one-two punch of her starring role in this year's Black Widow (#32), released in July, followed almost immediately in August by the birth of her son, Cosmo, with Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost. Hopefully Wanda is on the way.
The last time she was on this list was back in 2019, due to similar circumstances (a starring role in a Marvel film and an engagement to Jost), because if there are two things we as a society love about actresses, it's their ability to do cool tricks in impractical, skin-tight clothing and our ability to creepily pry into their private lives. |
Aug. 18 (gives birth to son) |
For a long time, many Spanish Wikipedians shared the idea of finding images for all municipalities in Spain. For a long time, we didn't try to carry out that mission (if we could even call it a mission). We thought that with the photographs already in Commons, there would be an ample supply. Maybe there would be a missing village here and there, but we were sure that there was not a lot of real work to do.
Then we started to check out the situation. The number of municipalities in Spain, we thought, was about 8,100. Despite an official policy of mergers, the actual number of municipalities had increased (but fortunately not by much).
Then the hard part began. For all our guesses and suppositions, the real gap between what we had and what we needed was around 2,200 municipalities. Ten times our estimates. And in many cases, the photos available in Commons were not meaningful.
Some more numbers were required. Spain covers some 505,000 square kilometers, including two archipelagos, and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa. We were really lucky this time: only one municipality without a picture was placed outside the Iberian Peninsula. All others could be reached by car; sometimes just a short bus ride was needed. But sometimes we had to drive hundreds of kilometers to reach some places, and we got very skilled in finding odd routes covering as many places of interest as possible. I remember a journey from Valencia to Burgos via Ciudad Real, and other people going from Madrid to Tarragona via Albacete. Or one companion who drove all the way from Calatayud to León and back in a day taking pictures, 400 km each way.
One of the first things we discovered was that when you plan a route, time is always critical: an hour of driving time can mean ten kilometers or one hundred, but it always takes an hour.
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For more than five years, we've been driving and photographing. The numbers gradually improved. From March 2015 to March 2017, our wanted list was cut in half, from 2,231 to 1,126.
We have taken 20,000 photos, and we have learned much. We have seen wonderful places nobody cares to visit. We found that the Emptied Spain exists, and is full of great people. We met many people proud of their towns that have helped us access places. We found municipalities without a cemetery, or with a part-time city hall, or built around a water tower. We learned that helipads are not transportation, but public health infrastructure. We found that the image of a country goes far beyond its monuments. We found great experiences and a challenge well worth achieving. Only 30 municipalities left to go!
Wikipedian Christopher Kent Keen (Twofingered Typist) of South Bay, Ontario, died on November 19, 2021. He was a prolific copy editor and longtime member of the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors (GoCE). A childhood interest in music led to his writing music reviews for the student newspaper at Victoria University, Toronto. As a teenager, Christopher took a part-time job at a Toronto bookstore, beginning a career that led to his becoming an executive at the Canadian publishing house McClelland & Stewart and his involvement with the Canadian Booksellers Association. As a Wikipedian, he primarily worked on requested copyedits; starting in 2015, he fulfilled over 200 such requests annually. In 2018, he became one of just eight editors who have been enshrined in the GoCE's Hall of Fame for "his unfailing, enthusiastic participation in all drives and blitzes for several years, and outstanding assistance on the requests page". Twofingered Typist continued as a copy editor at a high level of productivity for three more years, submitting his final copy edits on the day before his death. He also served four half-year terms as a GoCE coordinator, from July 2019 to June 2021. In addition to his Wikipedia work, Christopher volunteered on Prince Edward County's library board.[1] He also took an interest in ornithology; he participated in bird-population counts and banded birds at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory.[2] Twofingered Typist will be greatly missed by the Wikipedia editing community. Condolences and tributes can be left at his talk page.
On November 19 last year, BBC News published an investigation into climate denial on non-English Wikipedias.[2] It showed Wikipedia is rife with climate myths. BBC journalist and climate disinformation specialist Marco Silva described the denial as 'alive'. Classical climate denial—denying warming occurs, or denying humans are the primary cause—has been on the wane for a while.[3] Within the English Wikipedia, climate denial has become exceedingly rare. The last time the climate change discretionary sanctions were used was in 2019, and that was against somebody exaggerating the dangers of climate change, as if the reality isn't scary enough!
Is it true that it's still alive and kicking within Wikipedia? My hypothesis is that most of these non-English articles are the ruins of a period in which climate denial flourished. Climate denial is dead, but still rotting.
I started a cross-wiki review on Meta two weeks after the BBC article was published. The goal is to assess the breadth of the denial, and to see it removed from all language editions. We advertised it on seven climate change WikiProjects to ensure it's not just an enwiki project. While the most active editors were still from enwiki, Swedish and Czech Wikipedians also contributed. Depending on the size of the community, we either deleted the misinformation ourselves, or tried to find local editors willing to take on the task. On many articles, it was relatively easy to identify denial as Google Translate has come a long way: For most languages, the translated text was understandable.[4]
The climate myths we found varied significantly. Many articles were an outdated translation of the English Wikipedia. Up to 2008, the English version contained a set of primary sources that supported alternative explanations of climate change. While back then this may have been a significant minority opinion, these views now fall squarely in the fringe or pseudoscience baskets. Displaying this outdated research plays directly into the hands of climate deniers. Their main goal is not making people deny that humans cause climate change. Rather, it is to plant seeds of doubt, as doubt paralyses action.[5]
A smaller subset of languages had more blatant issues. For instance, I encountered the myth that global warming has stopped twice. Some articles contained attacks on prominent scientists. For instance, calling Naomi Oreskes, who was the first to research the magnitude of the consensus, incompetent. Accusations of fraud were also common. The Chinese version gave a platform to somebody espousing an antisemitic attack on Al Gore, even if it did this under a heading which translates as 'conspiracy theories'.
So far, the response to our efforts have been mostly positive. In some communities, talk page comments triggered a full update and rewrite (Catalan and Slovak). In others, the comments were addressed one-by-one (Hindi), or promises were made to update the article (Korean). For less active languages, we removed the denial ourselves, and were occasionally reverted (Belarussian). We found climate myths in over a third of the languages. The 52 articles in these languages are read about 7000 times a day.
It's frustrating that many of these language communities do have the capacity to maintain these pages, as shown by how well they responded to our requests. Should these projects become a routine? Or are more systematic approaches to misinformation needed?
Climate change is not the only topic that has been plagued by misinformation. The current pandemic is a prime example. As with climate denial, misinformation on this topic costs lives. Misinformation about abortion puts women around the world in danger.[6] Conspiracy theories surrounding elections are a grave danger for democracy. Can we start similar disinformation monitoring in these areas as well?
There is potential, but perhaps these projects will be more challenging. The misinformation may be spread across more articles, and may be added more recently, so that removal will meet with resistance. Nonetheless, the following steps provide a blueprint
Repeating this for more categories of dangerous misinformation would be beneficial. But it is a time-consuming effort, and in the meantime, our readers will consume heaps of misinformation. It is likely that not all languages will have the capacity to monitor these articles. Should we not be more aggressive? Here are two ideas to add structure to safeguard our readers from misinformation.
Many topics are 'under development' in the real world. There are new scientific discoveries and review papers on a daily basis. Sensitive political situations change, as investigative journalism unearths scandals. For many articles, these timescales are easy to estimate. For climate change, there is typically little value in research older than 15 years, and even 6 year-old research can be outdated.
What if we give each article a best-before date? If I write an article about sea level rise, with a median source age of 2018, it's best read before 2024. We'll save maximum median source age on Wikidata. If, for a given language variant, the median source date is too old, a warning template could be displayed, perhaps on the article talk page. We could restrict this initially to medical articles, and a few other topics where misinformation is truly dangerous. If an article gets even further out-of-date, language communities may decide to automatically archive or delete the articles.
Paper encyclopedias have to make a decision each edition: Does this article get binned, reprinted, or updated? As such, they have a natural decision point to consider deleting outdated research. With over 6.4 million articles just on English Wikipedia, it's completely infeasible to check all articles and make that decision. What if we create a middle ground between deletion and showing articles to our readers? In a (semi-)automatic manner, we could archive many articles that are likely outdated. For instance, articles three years past their 'best before date'. The archive would be accessible to editors, and even readers, with an extra click. No admin intervention needed. A clean slate to write on can be an exhilarating experience. Working in the Dutch Wikipedia, I know how great it feels to start an article on an important topic. Making space in this way might not only help us avoid spreading misinformation, but might also reinvigorate Wikipedia.
According to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, "the closest thing we have to a Prime Directive"[1] is to:
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."[2][3]
And that is the world that we, the Wikipedia community, as part of the Wikimedia movement, are working toward.
Obviously, the body of all knowledge is far too vast to be compiled into a single work. Keep in mind that Wikipedia has never been intended to be "the sum of all human knowledge" (read Jimbo's quote carefully, and the rest of the interview it came from). As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is intended to help provide free access to that knowledge, and be a start in the effort to bring about a world in which all knowledge is freely available to everyone.
How?
Being an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is a highly useful summary of the world's knowledge. As such, it provides specialized jargon which readers may use as search terms to further explore subjects on the Internet. In addition, Wikipedia serves as a direct gateway to the world's knowledge by presenting links and references to further sources of information on all manner of subjects.
In these ways—presenting summaries, search terms, links, and references—Wikipedia provides greater and greater access over time for more and more people to (the sum of all) human knowledge.
Perhaps the rest of the knowledge workers of the world will follow Wikipedia's example as a free and open global resource and turn Jimbo's vision into reality. In that regard, and many others, Wikipedia, and the Wikipedia community, are paving the way.
To clarify his vision, Jimbo told The New York Times (in 2008), that
"'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language', that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal."[4]
It is also the goal of the Wikipedia community: to build and distribute the best encyclopedia that we can.
This is a crucial role Wikipedians are fulfilling in the world. So, when editors get bogged down in a conflict while editing Wikipedia, it might help to think about another quote by Jimbo (from the same interview as the initial quote above):
"I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated about an edit war to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think."[2]
Wikipedia is an excellent project, and Slashdot readers' questions for Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales were just as excellent – as are Jimmy Wales' answers to 12 of the highest-moderated questions you submitted.
When the Wikimedia Foundation first began accepting cryptocurrency donations in 2014,[1] it was still fairly nascent technology. Cryptocurrencies resonated with many in free and open-source software communities and in the Wikimedia movement more specifically, and cryptocurrency projects tended to share similar ideals: privacy, anonymity, decentralization, freedom.
In more recent history, cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based technologies more generally have morphed into something very different from the ideals of their youth. Some proponents continue to speak about freedom and decentralization, but the space has overwhelmingly become an opportunity for self-enrichment at the expense of others and the environment. Cryptomining operations set up shop in locations with low energy costs—until late 2021, most bitcoin mining happened in China, where it relied on coal so heavily that the resulting coal mining accidents from increased demand contributed to a crackdown on the practice.[2] Some of those miners moved to Kazakhstan, where they were using the nation’s supply of lignite (an extremely harmful form of coal) to produce 18% of the global computing power behind bitcoin in January.[3] Bitcoin mining alone rivals the total energy use of countries like the Netherlands or Finland;[4][5][6] emissions from other popular cryptocurrencies like ethereum only compound the problem.
Furthermore, in recent years, more and more enthusiasts are being convinced that they too might strike it rich by buying in early to the next bitcoin or the next ethereum. But unfortunately, the playing field more often resembles a landscape with scammers and marks. Many are convinced that purchasing these currencies is an "investment", rather than risky speculation that would be more accurately described as gambling if not outright investment fraud. People are regularly scammed for enormous sums of money, and the anonymous, nominally decentralized, and largely unregulated nature of the space offers them little recourse.[7]
The purported benefits of cryptocurrencies have also been largely unrealized. Rather than empowering the unbanked and distributing wealth to those in need, as once described, money has been hoarded in incredible amounts by a few wealthy individuals—0.01% of bitcoin wallets collectively own 27% of bitcoin in circulation, equivalent to around $232 billion.[8][9] Furthermore, the underlying technology is enormously slow and difficult to scale when compared to databases used in most modern computing, so many technologies built around blockchains have spawned new, centralized solutions to the problems the blockchains themselves have introduced. As a result, the decentralization of the web that was supposed to result from the adoption of blockchain technologies has only resulted in the centralization of power in a handful of companies and venture capital firms.
The Wikimedia Foundation's acceptance of cryptocurrency donations has had minimal returns, and no longer accepting them is unlikely to have a major impact on the Foundation's ability to fundraise. In 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation only received about $130,000 in donations via cryptocurrency, making it one of their smallest revenue channels at only 0.08% of total donations.[10] The benefits to donors are also minimal: the anonymity that might normally be offered to those who use cryptocurrencies is largely nullified by the WMF's cryptocurrency payment processor, BitPay, which requires prospective donors to disclose their identities.[11]
The most impactful result of the WMF's acceptance of cryptocurrencies has been to normalize their use. As the technology space around blockchains has evolved over the years, so too should we. Cryptocurrencies have been joined by a bubble of predatory, inherently harmful technologies that take advantage of individuals and contribute to the destruction of our environment. It is no longer ethical for the Wikimedia Foundation to tacitly endorse a technology that incentivizes the predatory behavior that has become rampant in the cryptocurrency space in the past few years. I have asked that they stop doing so in an RfC on meta.
Boris Johnson is in danger of losing his job as UK prime minister due to a bit of fuzzy-headed partying which broke COVID lockdown rules. But his possible ignominious exit should not hide what we consider to be one of his major achievements in office. He was quoted this month by The Independent denouncing attempts to "change our history or to bowdlerise it or edit it". He continued "It's like some person trying to edit their Wikipedia entry – it's wrong." He was commenting on a jury's acquittal of the "Colston Four" who tore down the statue of eighteenth-century slave trader Edward Colston during the Black Lives Matter protests in Bristol in 2020.
Perhaps inadvertently, The Independent hinted at a case of somebody who may have tried to change history while editing Wikipedia. Grant Shapps, the Conservative transport minister, was quoted saying "We are introducing via the police crime sentencing bill, new measures which would potentially plug a gap and make it absolutely clear" that people who admit to tearing down historic statues should be convicted.
Shapps was accused in 2015 of whitewashing his own Wikipedia article, and editing those of other British politicians through the account Contribsx. Contribsx was first indefinitely blocked for sockpuppeting, and then acquitted – not by a jury of his peers or by the House of Commons – but by ArbCom. – S
Harete Hipango admitted that she asked a staff member to edit the Wikipedia article about her, according to National MP Harete Hipango 'regrets' Wikipedia edit. An IP editor who removed the entire Controversies section of the article four times is traceable to "PS-NZ-AS-AP Parliamentary Service", and they admitted in an edit summary to being a staff member for Hipango. The media coverage led to the incident being added to the Controversies section, and a side-effect of the attention was the entire article being rewritten and expanded by 15 editors. – G, S
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
A paper titled "Is Wikipedia Easy to Understand?: A Study Beyond Conventional Readability Metrics"[1] presents a novel concept for quantitatively examining how difficult readers may find a Wikipedia article due to lack of knowledge about the concepts used.
The authors first note that the concerns about the readability of Wikipedia articles had already been examined in various earlier studies, but only based on relatively simplistic readability scores such as the Flesch-Kincaid test that "output the US grade level, i.e., the number of education years required to understand a piece of text [but] only take into account the surface level parameters like the average number of syllables, average number of words, and average number of sentences to calculate the readability score".
Instead, they aim to rely on "cognitive [...] theories [which] describe that the knowledge present in the text must be coherent with the background knowledge of the reader [...] the information present must resonate with the background knowledge of the reader." Noting that "Wikipedia encounters readers with varied educational backgrounds", they posit that "to execute successful text comprehension on Wikipedia, we must not assume any background knowledge from the reader. The information present in the Wikipedia articles should be self-sufficient in knowledge". This leads the author to a concept termed "knowledge gaps", i.e. "missing pieces of information in the text, which hinder the comprehension of the underlying text. [...] For example, while explaining the area and perimeter of a circle, the concept of radius must be explained to the reader."
In order to enable a quantitative study, knowledge gaps are operationalized by first partitioning a Wikipedia article into segments using a method known as semantic word embedding (described in somewhat more detail in a 2020 paper by some of the same authors, reviewed below). LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) is used to determine the topic of each segment, technically a probabilty distribution over a set of keywords. The Hellinger distance between these probability distributions for subsequent segments is used to define knowledge gaps: "If the Hellinger distance between any two subsequent segments is more than 0.5, then there is a knowledge gap between the two segments. The threshold of 0.5 has been defined empirically. The knowledge gap parameter is the ratio of the number of knowledge gaps to the total number of segments in the Wikipedia article."
The authors apply this metric to a random sample of 6000 English Wikipedia articles, consisting of 1000 Featured, Good, B-class, C-class, Start-class and stub articles each, with an additional "1000 random articles from the rest of the categories except category A articles". They find that "featured articles experience the least knowledge gap parameter followed by Good Articles", concluding that "Featured articles are self-sufficient in knowledge, leaving little scope for knowledge gaps." Likewise, the knowledge gaps score increases progressing to B-Class, C-Class, Start and Stub articles.
Three of the authors had already developed the concept of knowledge gaps as applied to wiki articles in a paper presented at OpenSym 2020.[2]
The main theme of this earlier paper was the integration of a wiki and a Q&A forum (like StackExchange), such that "whenever a user encounters a question in a wiki article, he can ask the question on the corresponding QnA page". As evidence that there exists a "coherent activity between articles and the corresponding talk pages" on the English Wikipedia, the authors examined a random sample of 100 Featured articles, comparing the daily editing activity of articles and their talk pages (measured in the number of sentences added). They found "coherence in the activity of Wikipedia articles and their respective talk pages [, which] establishes the importance of discussion forums-like talk page for a Wikipedia article. But, it should be noted that only 27% of the Wikipedia articles have talk pages [citing a publication from 2012]". Also, they note that on Wikipedia "only 10% of the total posts on talk pages are by the readers seeking information", making Wikipedia a less suitable model for the integration of wikis and Q&A forums.
The paper goes on to instead apply this concept of Q&A integration to a MOOC wiki (supporting a Python course for computer science students), named "JOCWiki". The aforementioned semantic segmentation method was applied to the pages of this course wiki, resulting in segments that were "at least 6 sentences long, which roughly amounts to 100 words per segment". The purpose of segmentation in this case to determine whether a particular student question in the forum was referring to content on the wiki, and if yes, whether the question can be answered based on that segment. If not, the section was deemed to have a knowledge gap. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used to assign a topic to each segment and each question, and matching topics were interpreted as the question referring to that section. More specifically, Hellinger distance (a measure of the similarity between two probability distributions) was used to quantitatively estimate both whether a particular question matched a particular text segment, and whether it could be answered from that segment - a somewhat crude measure.
The paper goes on to discuss the concept of "triggering", generally defined as a "process by which an idea or a piece of information cascades the generation of more ideas", or in case of wiki pages, addition of new information. (The authors had already examined this for Wikipedia in a 2018 paper, likewise presented at OpenSym - see our coverage: "Triggering" article contributions by adding factoids.) As an example of triggering, "in the 'New York City' article of Wikipedia, the wiki link of financial center is created in the seventh revision, and subsequently, in the twelfth revision, wiki link of New York Stock Exchange is added. These two wiki links added in neighboring revisions are semantically similar." The concept of triggers is applied to the interaction between wiki pages and talk page/Q&A forum, in both directions - either questions triggering article edits ("Q→A triggers), or article edits triggering new questions ("A→Q triggers"). The authors posit that "if there are sufficient Q→A triggers, then it leads to better knowledge building in the wiki article and lesser A→Q triggers." And on the other hand "if there are relatively [fewer] Q→A triggers, this leads to knowledge deficiency in the article giving scope for more A→Q triggers".
The study then compared JOCWiki and Wikipedia regarding the frequencies of these Q→A and A→Q triggers, on a small sample of three topics covered both in the course and on Wikipedia, finding evidence that "there are very few triggers generated by talk pages in Wikipedia" (consistent the aforementioned earlier research result that only 10% of posts on Wikipedia talk pages are reader questions, as they are "mostly used by the editors to discuss the improvements in the article"). In other words, Wikipedia may be more prone to knowledge deficiencies than JOCWiki with its QnA forum that "is used by all types of users (editors and readers) to discuss the concepts as well as improvements to the article [and] provides a more conducive environment to induce triggers."
Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.
From the abstract:[3]
"we have reconstructed networks of personal communication (direct messaging) between Wikipedia editors gathered in so called Wikiprojects - teams of contributors who focus on articles within specific topical areas. We found that effective projects exchange larger volume of direct messages and that their communication structure allows for complex coordination: for sharing of information locally through selective ties, and at the same time globally across the whole group. To verify how these network measures relate to the subjective perception of importance of group communication we conducted semi-structured interviews with members of selected projects. Our interviewees used direct communication for providing feedback, for maintaining close relations and for tapping on the social capital of the Wikipedia community."
Compare our earlier coverage of a contrasting result: "All Talk: How Increasing Interpersonal Communication on Wikis May Not Enhance Productivity", which has since been published in peer-reviewed form.[4]
Author's copy
January 1 is always Public Domain Day: works that were under copyright on December 31 the previous year, enter the Public Domain on this day. The first day of a new year is always a nice day for people who like open access. January 1, 2022 was a special Public Domain Day. Not only did paintings from artists who died in 1951 become openly available, but so did music recordings by Artur Schnabel, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein, and books by André Gide and Abanindranath Tagore – all artists who died in 1951. Lists of writers, musicians and other artists who passed away in 1951 were made public in Wikipedia and beyond. In the United States, there were even more celebrations. Due to a 2018 US law (the Music Modernization Act), 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923 entered the public domain.
The 1998 US Copyright Term Extension Act gave works published from 1923 through 1977 a 95-year term. This meant that a long list of books first published in the US in 1926 entered the public domain on January 1, 2022. A nice overview of works 95+ years old was given by Duke Center for the Study of Public Domain.[1] This means that, in the United States, these books are not bound by copyright any more: Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne (including the drawings by E. H. Shepard). I hear the Brits objecting: Milne died in 1956 and Shepard died in 1976, so according to copyright laws in most European countries their copyright will expire later (2027 for Milne, and 2047 for Shepard). So did these works enter the public domain or not?
Did I say that copyright was simple? No, copyright is almost always complicated, and laws differ from country to country. To make it more complicated, Wikipedia is not organized by country, but by language. In this case, one has to look in which country a book was published. And yes – the first book starring Winnie-the-Pooh was also published in the United States in 1926. The discussion is already flourishing on Commons, and the drawings by E.H. Shepard are now (28 January) in Commons (and in this article)... but they are proposed for deletion. Arguments on both sides are given, and administrators will decide on the matter. A crucial question will, of course, be a decision about the dominance of US copyright. Will the 95 year rule, as laid out in the 1998 US Copyright Term Extension Act, overrule the 70 years PMA (post mortem author) as used in most countries, and will this be the dominant factor in Wikimedia Commons too? I didn't see any reference to the Berne Convention, that lays down a minimal general copyright term of 50 years beyond the death of an author (50 years PMA). In that case, the Pooh drawings would have to wait till 2027 to be used in this Signpost article.
Don’t think I brought in all details. Looking for Tigger? He is still copyrighted, having come to life in the 1928 follow-up book The House at Pooh Corner (so he will enter public domain in 2024.)[2] If you want to read Pooh in the meantime, go to Standard Ebooks, who prepared several books for Public Domain Day, including Winnie-the-Pooh.[3] One thing is quite sure: don’t use images with Winnie-the-Pooh wearing a red shirt. The red shirt is an addition by Walt Disney Studios, and likely copyrighted for years to come (what the heck – bears don’t wear shirts).
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Across | ||
| 1 | When the AGF runs out | RVV |
| 3 | What to cite if you want to win an argument | PAGS |
| 6 | Collegial examination | PR |
| 7 | To build an encyclopedia | NOTHERE |
| 9 | You can do this in articles, but not at other editors | SWEAR |
| 11 | Tool that allows you to easily get in trouble | AWB |
| 14 | Selective distinction given to those with a greatly outsized impact | SANFRANBAN |
| 17 | Tragically underused noticeboard for wrangling out-of-control 15-downs | DFD |
| 18 | The actual shortcut, even though everyone thinks it's just "CU" | CKU |
| 19 | Education for aspiring 1-acrossers | CVUA |
| 20 | Article classification that sounds unimpressive to non-Wikipedians | GOOD |
| 22 | Large driver of Arbitration Report pageviews | DRAMA |
| 25 | Like 21-down, but can also be created at 24-down | GS |
| 26 | Technically, this is | ITN |
| 27 | Justification for block when your 11-across run puts goatse on the Main Page | CIR |
| 29 | Required for IPs but not Danes | MASK |
Down | ||
| 2 | Place to ask why we don't just make a bot to welcome new users | VPT |
| 4 | Beginning of space opera trilogy, consulted after 28-down quadrilogy | ANEW |
| 5 | Summary you use for a quick edit two seconds after sending the MassMessage | SP |
| 7 | What we're not (except for publications such as this one) | NEWS |
| 8 | Sources that don't get 28-downed when you add them | RS |
| 10 | It helps to memorize which ones go to all of Congress first | RANGE |
| 12 | They did a drive for one of these on 20-downs this month | BACKLOG |
| 13 | Graveyard for Esperanza, BJAODN | MFD |
| 15 | Option 1: Make a joke clue for the crossword puzzle. Option 2: Same as Option 1, but it's a self-referential joke. Option 3: Neither (please specify in response) | RFC |
| 16 | You've read 25 crossword clues already. Please consider renewing your Signpost subscription today (or signing up for a free account) to help protect fearless, independent journalism in a world where unbiased reporting is more important than ever; democracy dies in darkness. Keeping The Signpost in publication means that all Wikipedians can benefit from our comprehensive coverage of ongoing events, and that we can continue to hold those in power accountable. And remember, we're always looking for new writers, editors, and contributors – if you'd like to be a part of Wikipedia's most widely respected news publication, have a look at our Quick Start guide today. | ADVERT |
| 20 | Peer review process that's not Peer review | GAN |
| 21 | A notice that you find on your talk page when someone likes you a lot and appreciates your edits on a controversial topic | DS |
| 22 | Informal policy responsible for why Nixon never edited Wikipedia | DICK |
| 23 | Project page noted for her green gables | AN |
| 24 | Project page noted for being a little orphan | ANI |
| 27 | Tag used when you find <ref>This was once revealed to me in a dream.</ref> | CN |
| 28 | Similar in effect to when a pitched ball misses the strike zone, with regards to how many is too much | RV |
