Last April, Smallbones said he was preparing to step down as The Signpost's editor-in-chief. This month, he did... we appreciate his hard work and dedication over the last three years, and hope to keep seeing his ~~~~ around The Signpost.
This April, two guys nominated themselves as replacements, and in May the discussion was closed after unanimous support. It's official: these two guys are now the Editors-in-Chief. But what? Huh? Zuh??
We are the illustrious EpicPupper and JPxG. We're Wikimedians who have both written and edited a lot of Signpost articles, and are stoked to try and hold this thing together. In our new capacity as co-EiCs, we will be assisted by Bri, Ixtal, and Smallbones, the fantastic editors of The Signpost — as well as our contributors and readers.
Our plan is to keep doing what we've been doing: serving the Wikimedia movement by spotlighting the stories of our diverse readership. As a major publication on the English Wikipedia, The Signpost offers an opportunity for people to be heard who otherwise wouldn't be. We aim to advocate for free knowledge and access, and help build a positive community culture. We also aim to publish an absolute banger of a newspaper, which seems likely this month (with a whopping 25 articles).
Along with reviewing previous suggestions, we've identified potential action points in moving toward these goals. These include:
We have already made some improvements, such as creating a short URL for easier navigation (signpost.news).
We invite the community to provide feedback on these proposals and the project at large in our 2022 Reader Survey, open now. We hope that we will be able to conduct one annually. We immensely appreciate your feedback and thank you for your time.
Finally, we would also like to take this opportunity to invite more community members to join The Signpost team. Although many of our segments have active contributors, our writers need rest from The Signpost from time to time, and redundancy is much appreciated. We are looking for volunteers to help us with the following segments:
In sum, The Signpost always needs a hand with publication. If you can, please volunteer by sending us a message here. Thank you so much for volunteering!
The Signpost will continue to inform, entertain, and publish for years to come.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board election process for 2022 started in April. Twelve Wikimedians have submitted their candidacy, and six members of the Analysis Committee have been confirmed at the time of publication. The Analysis Committee is responsible for evaluat[ing] the candidates against the skills and diversity, equity and inclusion criteria shared by the Board of Trustees.
An affiliate shortlisting period will be held from July 1 to 15, and a community voting phase is scheduled for August 15 to 29. To help inform affiliates on the wishes of the community, The Signpost is holding a poll to select a potential shortlist. For more information, please see Community view. – E
Form 990 is a United States Internal Revenue Service document that provides the public with financial information about a nonprofit organization. It is often the only source of such information. The WMF has just published its Form 990 for the 2020 calendar year, along with an associated FAQ on Meta. Here is a very brief summary of some key points:
The form shows that in 2020, eight Wikimedia executives earned more than US$300,000 in compensation and benefits, headed by then-Executive Director Katherine Maher ($423,318). Five of these eight executives (Maher, Ingersoll, Uzzell, Negrin, and Arville) are no longer with the Wikimedia Foundation today; three of them only served for a couple of years before leaving again. Comparing the data in the 2020 and 2019 forms, Chief Product Officer Anthony Negrin's compensation and benefits rose by the highest amount – from $258,896 in 2019 to $324,916 in 2020, an increase of more than 25%. He left in November 2021, after many years with the WMF.
The number of US-based employees went up, from 291 to 320. Overall salary costs (for US-based and non-US-based employees, but excluding contractors) rose from $55,634,913 to $67,857,675, an increase of more than twelve million dollars.
The highest-paid independent contractors were:
The full set of Wikimedia Foundation financial reports – both the filed Form 990s and the annual financial statements, along with their respective FAQs – is available on the Wikimedia Foundation website. Forms 990 are also available on external sites such as propublica.org. – AK
The WMF has announced on Meta that it will run fundraising campaigns in India (which skipped last year's fundraiser because of COVID-19) and Latin America from May 31 to June 28, 2022, with parallel email campaigns from May 23 to June 20.
According to mock-ups linked on Meta, emails will ask existing donors to renew their support "to keep Wikipedia online for yourself and millions of people around the world", "to ensure that Wikipedia remains independent, ad-free, and growing for years to come", and to "keep Wikipedia online, ad-free, and growing for years to come".
The first email (of a total of three) explains, at the top of page 2, that "32% of your gift will be used to support the volunteers". This text is illustrated with a picture of schoolchildren in Rwanda. Based on revenue of $163 million in the 2020–21 financial year (likely to be exceeded this year, judging by the WMF's second-quarter revenue reports for this year and last year), this would correspond to more than $50 million of donations revenue being used to support volunteers. (The same email text and picture was, according to the Meta Fundraising page, also used in Swedish emails sent out in March 2022.) Total expenditure in 2020/2021 was $112 million (this includes $5 million paid to the Wikimedia Endowment and $68 million for WMF salaries and wages).
A fundraising banner campaign is also currently underway in South Africa (May 23 to June 20). – AK
Tamzin, a seasoned and well-respected editor known for their work at SPI and in various other areas, was nominated for adminship on May 1. Initial smooth sailing brought a slew of supports, but the RfA took a sharp turn after Ad Orientem asked about an earlier comment Tamzin made, in which they stated "I'd be fine with a rule that we automatically desysop any Trump supporter. I will never vote for an admin candidate who's right-of-center by American standards (although I wouldn't vote against someone solely on that basis)." In answering, Tamzin moderated their stance only slightly, writing that "avowed, continuing support for Donald Trump constitutes support for an oppressive regime, and thus should be disqualifying" for adminship. "I don't think it's unreasonable to judge someone's fitness for a position of trust based on one's impression of the reasonableness (or lack thereof) of their political views," they wrote, but "it should not be the only consideration, definitely not a litmus test."
This response led to a run of opposes; many of them cited an ardent, later-rescinded !vote by Hammersoft, who wrote: "This lock-step belief that a person can't be trusted if they have political views opposing the candidate's isn't just troubling, it's disgusting in the extreme. That we would embolden a member of this community with such despicable views is horrifying. An administrator must be able to be dispassionate in their assessments. This candidate clearly can not be so."
Meanwhile, Tamzin also continued accruing support, and many editors who had previously supported affirmed their !votes. Most disagreed with Tamzin's specific stance, but testified to their quality contributions as a whole, and noted the lack of evidence that their views had influenced their editing.
The RfA closed with 340 supports, 112 opposes, and 16 neutrals, making it the most widely attended nomination in Wikipedia history. At just over 75% support, the raw !vote total fell a hair above the traditional discretionary zone in which nominations are closed through a discussion among bureaucrats ("bureaucrat chat"). Maxim initiated a bureaucrat chat anyway, citing in part "the acrimoniousness of the discussion". The discussants questioned how much weight to give reaffirmations, and ultimately decided 9-to-2 that there existed consensus to promote. – Sd[1]
As announced on the Wikimedia-l mailing list on May 25, 2022, pages have been opened on Meta to discuss improvements to the Universal Code of Conduct and to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines:
The WMF also published a report (announcement on Wikimedia-l) on the feedback received during the vote on the Enforcement Guidelines, along with what is said to be a full list of anonymised comments users had left along with their votes. – AK
decided to discontinue direct acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of donating(link). The RfC on Meta was started by GorillaWarfare; there is related coverage of GorillaWarfare in this month's In the Media section.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board election process for 2022 started in April. Twelve Wikimedians have submitted their candidacy, and six members of the Analysis Committee have been confirmed at the time of publication. The Analysis Committee is responsible for evaluat[ing] the candidates against the skills and diversity, equity and inclusion criteria shared by the Board of Trustees.
An affiliate shortlisting period will be held from July 1 to 15, and a community voting phase is scheduled for August 15 to 29.
To help inform affiliates on the wishes of the community, The Signpost is holding a poll to select a potential shortlist. To participate, please use this link; contributors can select "yes", "abstain" or "no" for each candidate. The top 6 candidates will be published and recommended for affiliates to select for shortlisting. Please use your username in the "name" field; only the Signpost Editors in Chief (EpicPupper and JPxG) will have access to the vote logs. Once done, please email one of the EiCs to confirm your vote. Duplicate votes will not be counted.
Edit count statistics are tallied below for each candidate, for voter convenience.
Thank you for sharing your views!
In 2016, the Wikimedia Foundation established the Wikimedia Endowment, designed to "serve as a perpetual source of support for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation". The Endowment's target was to raise $100 million by 2026, and it has been hosted as a "Collective Action Fund" at the Tides Foundation.
Financially, the Endowment appears to have been a runaway success, far exceeding communicated expectations.
Hosting by the Tides Foundation was intended to be a temporary arrangement, and the WMF has promised for more than five years now to transfer the Endowment to a standalone 501(c)(3) organization, which would then be legally required to make its own Form 990 disclosures of financial data each year – revenue, expenditure, salary costs, highest-paid contractors, grants, etc. – in line with the minimum standards of transparency for US non-profits.
On 29 March 2017, for example, Lisa Seitz answered community questions about the Endowment on Meta as follows:
"The WMF board has already given us the direction to move it into a separate 501c3 once the endowment reaches $33 million. ... WMF's Executive Director is supportive of moving it to a new 501c3 once it reaches $33 million."
But as the Foundation proudly announced last September, the Endowment passed $100 million in June 2021, five years early. The $33 million mark came and went years ago. The move to a standalone non-profit never happened.
Fast forward a few years, and WMF staff were still making the same sorts of public statements about moving to a 501(c)(3) soon. As Endowment Director Amy Parker and Director of Development Caitlin Virtue told me on Meta in April 2021:
"No grants will be made from the Endowment until its total revenue surpasses $100 million. Updates on funds raised are posted to this page. We are in the process of transitioning the Endowment to a new US 501c3 charity, after which it will begin making grants and will publish its own Form 990. ... As we approach the $100 million funding milestone, we are in the process of establishing the Endowment as a separate 501c3. ..."
"We are in the process of establishing a new home for the endowment in a stand-alone 501(c)(3) public charity. We will move the endowment in its entirety to this new entity once the new charity receives its IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter."
This was more than a year ago.
Note that the promise to post updates on funds raised is no longer kept. The last update on Meta as of this writing was to say that the Endowment had surpassed $100 million in June 2021. There has been no update on funds raised since then. We, and donors around the world who are asked to contribute, or to include the Wikimedia Endowment in their wills, don't know if the Endowment now stands at $120 million, $150 million, $200 million, or higher ...
The Wikimedia Foundation also refuses to disclose how much money it has paid the Tides Foundation (incidentally, an organization the WMF's General Counsel Amanda Keton used to head before she moved to the WMF in 2019) for its administration and management of the Endowment since 2016, or indeed whether – and how much – any other consultants, law firms, advisors, staff, or other help have been paid from Endowment funds.
Asking about these matters yields the terse response:
"As a matter of practice, we do not disclose specific terms of contracts with our vendors."
We also don't know whether grants have already been made – as Amy Parker said could happen upon reaching the $100 million mark – nor do we know who may have received those grants. There isn't a lack of precedent: we have already seen millions of dollars of Wikimedia money being given to outside organizations via Tides without disclosure until months later.
Matters would be considerably more transparent if the Wikimedia Foundation had done what it said it would do years ago: transfer the Wikimedia Endowment to a standalone non-profit publishing its own annual Form 990, with a binding commitment to follow the guidelines of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA).
What is the delay? Is the Wikimedia Foundation having trouble getting the IRS to recognise the Endowment's qualifications for non-profit status? When will we see a Form 990? Will the Foundation make a retrospective declaration of all costs and expenses since 2016, if the Endowment is ever transferred to a 501(c)(3) non-profit?
How about voluntarily publishing properly audited financial statements for the Endowment, covering the period from 2016 to today?
As long as there is no such transparent accounting, anybody donating funds to the Wikimedia Endowment is effectively throwing money into a black hole.
Wikipedia administrator Molly White, known here as GorillaWarfare, runs a blog (Web3 Is Going Great) cataloging misfortunes and scams in cryptocurrency. Today's Washington Post covers her in First she documented the alt-right. Now she’s coming for crypto (archive). Since 2021 White has been documenting ripoffs which she estimates cost cryptocurrency investors $10 billion. You can also find her on Twitter – S
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Short video with subtitles here. Full meeting transcript (in Russian).
The Moscow Times reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Russians to have alternatives to Wikipedia. "You can't just rely on Wikipedia," he says. So far he agrees with Jimmy Wales and most other Wikipedians. While Wikipedia is a wonderful place to start your research on a topic, it's not a good place to end it. A representative of Znanie, a state sponsored non-profit which publishes lecture videos, was called on to agree with Putin on TV. They're ready to help.See previous coverage in The Signpost about Putin's plans to replace Wikipedia with the Great Russian Encyclopedia here, here, and here. – SA "special military operation" is the name given by Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials to exchange of missiles, bombs, and bullets between Moscow's armed forces and Ukraine's which the Kremlin initiated on February 24. Western news sources and much of the rest of the world call it a "war" or an "invasion of Ukraine", as does the Russian-language version of Wikipedia. A new Russian law says that Russian publishers must only use the facts and terminology provided by officials of the Russian Federation when reporting military affairs. On April 26 a Moscow court levied a 3 million ruble fine ($41,594) on the Wikimedia Foundation for violating this law according to Reuters. The WMF has previously addressed this issue: "we will not back down in the face of efforts to censor and intimidate members of our movement. We stand by our mission to deliver free knowledge to the world." Don't expect them to pay the fine. – S
In The War Over Ukraine—On Wikipedia, Catarina Buchatskiy writes for Lawfare that the Kremlin is carrying out an "information war" on Wikipedia. She states "seemingly petty Wikipedia edit wars are actually an important battleground, and unfortunately, they are a battleground on which Russian narratives are much more successful compared to how Russian soldiers have fared on the ground in physical battle against the army of a nation Russians pretend does not exist." She states:
A debate is taking place about whether Russia is engaged in genocide within the meaning of the Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as any of several types of atrocity when “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” ... consider for a moment that this activity is taking place concurrent with mass killings, deportations of children and the deliberate destruction of cities.
The Fake Accounts Whitewashing Oligarchs' Wikipedia Pages (subscription required): Omer Benjakob at Haaretz analyzes an article published here in March. He compares the recent Signpost investigation by Smallbones into "inauthentic behavior" around Russian oligarchs' biographies and related pages to past incidents and concludes that "Wikipedia is on Russia's radar" and that "a shadow war is playing out on Wikipedia between editors seeking to weed out for-profit editing and PR firms working for their clients". – B
CNN published an in-depth look at the Wikipedians who start and maintain breaking news entries. The article, Meet the Wikipedia editor who published the Buffalo shooting entry minutes after it started focuses on the contributions of long-time Wikipedian Jason Moore and several others. Going deeper than many similar pieces, the article does a very adept job of explaining Wikipedia's policies and how these articles are shaped over time. Kudos to the reporter, Samantha Murphy Kelly![1] – G
The world's richest man is obsessed with how he is described on the free internet encyclopedia: in Slate, Stephen Harrison reviews the editing history of the Elon Musk article and notes that Musk has complained several times about aspects of his Wikipedia biography on Twitter. However, Harrison thinks Wikipedians had it right – and feels it is important that there is a place online "where billionaires cannot purchase their preferred version of events, nor own the means of conversation." – AK
Jimmy Wales comments on Elon Musk's buying Twitter. Speaking exclusively to LADbible, he said: "This is the point where I think it’s a huge risk for Twitter and Elon Musk, because if you go to [sic] far – or very far at all down that path from where Twitter is now - I think you start to lose market share. We have to remember, Twitter is not a monopoly, there’s loads of other platforms and places, we should be really focused on thinking about that competitive landscape. If you don’t like the moderation policies on one service, you can go somewhere else." Read the full interview here. – FD
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In Reason, Katherine Mangu-Ward interviews Jimmy Wales [15] (30:48). Reason leads with "Wikipedia continues to quietly grow in utility, trustworthiness, and comprehensiveness" and it "has maintained its reputation and functionality since its founding, even as the rest of the social internet seems hellbent on tearing itself apart".
Reason and its editor, Mangu-Ward, advocate for some controversial positions, so this interview has some interesting sparring, but never breaks out in open debate. Discussion points include:
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Russia's military invasion of Ukraine upended the lives of most Ukrainians, and most members of the country's Wikimedia community. Some people have had to flee their homes, some joined the army – and many are working on expanding free knowledge on Wikipedia and beyond.
For this article, I spoke with three members of Ukraine's Wikimedia community: one who lost his home in the siege of Mariupol, one who made an emotional decision to join the army, and one who was writing a Wikipedia article every day even when traveling across the country to evacuate her relatives.
The Russian siege of Mariupol, a major city in southeastern Ukraine, has become one of the most profound tragedies of the 21st century.
Authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have died since early March, as a result of shelling, and the effects of the siege like lack of food and water. The vast majority of Mariupol's buildings have been destroyed or severely damaged by indiscriminate shelling.
Oleksandr, known on Wikipedia as Wanderer777, was born in Mariupol and spent much of his life in the city. He eventually managed to escape from the city and is safe now, but before that he had witnessed the siege and its effects first-hand.
Oleksandr graduated from the Pryazovskyi State Technical University in Mariupol, specializing in the automatization of metallurgical processes and computer-integrated technologies.
On Wikipedia, he's been most active in the Russian-language edition; over the past 15 years, he had the opportunity to be an administrator, a bureaucrat, a member of the Arbitration Committee, and a mediator on the topic of Ukraine. Oleksandr has also contributed to Ukrainian Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and other wiki projects.
When Russia openly invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Oleksandr and his family contemplated leaving Mariupol but decided to stay, hoping that the war would not reach them quickly. The predictions proved too optimistic – Russian forces advanced rapidly in the east of Ukraine, and soon Mariupol was encircled. On the third day of the invasion, leaving was already impossible, Oleksandr recalls.
Oleksandr's family moved to a safer western part of the city. Within a few days, the occupiers destroyed practically all civilian infrastructure. Supermarkets, electrical transformer substations, water supply pumping stations were shattered, and so were fire stations and funeral homes.
Oleksandr and other people in his building moved to the basement and lived there for a few weeks. He remembers constant shelling – a picture of a Russian tank approaching the neighborhood and indiscriminately shooting at residential buildings was not uncommon. Oleksandr's house was hit and damaged but not destroyed – unlike most of the buildings around it, which collapsed completely.
As soon as possible in mid-March, Oleksandr and his family managed to sneak from the city to a nearby village. This wasn't the end of their ordeal, though – they spent another month looking for ways to escape from occupied territory. Finally, they managed to leave by car in the second half of April, reaching the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia.
Oleksandr says it's a miracle he managed to leave Mariupol. People leaving later, especially military-age men, were either not allowed to leave or placed in filtration camps, effectively being jailed for an indefinite period without trial.
He helped his family move abroad and remains in Dnipro, a city in eastern Ukraine that's controlled by the Ukrainian government and is relatively safe as compared to beleaguered Donbas.
Oleksandr says we'll never know the full extent of the devastation in Mariupol. As he describes on his user page in Russian Wikipedia, "many people died, truly many … People were dying from missiles and shells. In houses and on the streets, in yards and shelters. When they were trying to get at least some food from destroyed shops, when they were cooking food in bonfires, when they were looking for a place that still had mobile connection. People were dying when buildings collapsed from air bombs and in basements from smoke caused by fires. People were dying from the lack of insulin, antibiotics and medications for heart diseases. People were dying from hunger and thirst."
Now, what once was a major industrial center with over 400,000 residents is in ruins – and fully occupied by Russia. Active fighting has stopped, but the humanitarian disaster is not over – the city's infrastructure was destroyed, and the occupying authorities aren't likely to rebuild it soon.
For another account of the Mariupol tragedy, check the diary of doctor Oleh Zyma – also a Wikipedia editor – published by "Bird in Flight".
This article is a first-hand account written by Wikipedia editor Viacheslav Fedchenkov, user fed4ev; translation by Anton Protsiuk
I've been contributing to Wikipedia as user fed4ev for twelve years now; I've also contributed to Wikinews and Wiktionary (mostly the Ukrainian editions). I've volunteered for Wikimedia Ukraine in event organizing and led wiki trainings. I visited two international Wikimania conferences and participated in Ukrainian Wikiconferences.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine didn't take me by surprise; I believed in the assessments made by Western intelligence services before the war. However, to be honest, I did nothing to prepare for the war. My loved ones refused to leave Kyiv even in the first days of the war. During that time, my wife and I, like many other Kyivans, slept in metro stations [which have served as shelters from air attacks]. For a few days, we weren't able to go to the left bank of Dnipro, where my mother lives. We donated to the army and humanitarian causes.
I'm a military reservist – I served in the army as a conscript in 2006–2007. As a loyal citizen of Ukraine, I decided in advance to go to the army. I also voluntarily came to the military enlistment office in 2014, in the first days of the occupation of Crimea and with the beginning of the Russian aggression in Donbas.
It is worth mentioning that I am Russian by origin: Russian is my native language, and more than two thirds of my ancestors were ethnic Russians (from Moscow, Moscow region and Orlov region). I know my family history well, and I've never felt discomfort because of that. At the same time, my origins didn't cloud my judgment, didn't cloud my conscience. I've always seen Ukraine's relations with Moscow as a struggle of the former colony for liberation from the grip of the imperial metropolis. And like any modern person, I've rooted for the freedom-loving colony.
The actions of the Russian government, the lies with which it justified its war, and the crimes of the Russian army only strengthened my readiness to join the Armed Forces.
However, I now understand that my decision to join the Armed Forces was rather emotional – I was not ready for war, and I would be more useful in civilian life with my specialty as a social worker, an expert in the protection of children's rights. In organizing support centers for internally displaced persons, in documenting war crimes against children, in working with a new wave of migration from Ukraine to the west, in the placement of children who have lost their parents, and more. But human stupidity has no limits, and for the second time under the same circumstances, I would probably do the same and go about the same path.
My service is not easy. But I try to support myself with usual civic activities; for example, I write poetry on Twitter; I have already created a selection of haiku (search #хайкуЗСУ on Twitter).
In two months of service, I have not contributed to wiki projects; I hope to return to active editing after Ukraine's victory. But I've used Wikipedia to look up different information. I'm grateful to editors who are developing military articles and I think I will join them, because I found gaps in some military topics (such as tactical and technical characteristics of certain types of weapons and ammunition).
Maybe even now, in calmer conditions, I will add a couple of articles or publish something from the drafts, because Wikipedia is love, and it's love that is the strongest support in times of war and enmity.
In 2015, Bulgarian Wikipedian Spiritia initiated the #100wikidays challenge. The rules are simple – creating at least one article on Wikipedia every single day for 100 days.
Over the next seven years, the challenge grew in popularity. Over 400 Wikipedia users joined the challenge, and over 100 people successfully finished it. The participants jokingly call themselves "victims" – creating a new article every single day is fun but difficult; you have to sacrifice other tasks or even sleep.
Seven years ago Antanana, an experienced Wikipedian and Ukrainian Wikipedia administrator, became one of #100wikidays' first participants. In 2022, she decided to complete the challenge again.
Antanana started her 100-days marathon on January 2nd – and almost half of her #100wikidays had to be completed during Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Still, Antanana managed to complete the challenge successfully. In an interview with me, she shared how she managed to do it, when creating an article was most difficult, and who was inspired by her run to complete the challenge themselves.
The decision to start #100wikidays was a sort of New Year's resolution for Antanana. She says she often "lacked a sense of accomplishment during the day" – the tasks she'd been working on were progressing slowly, and she wanted to see some tangible work completed every day.
She set additional restrictions for herself that are not required by the general rules of the challenge – she covered only Israel-related topics, and each article had to be linked from a different article created in this #100wikidays round.
Antanana chose Israel because she is learning Hebrew – and also because she wanted to visit the country again but hadn't been able to for a long time because of the COVID-19 travel restrictions. Her first #100wikidays article was about Israeli singer Zohar Argov, while the last one, created on April 11th, covered composer and singer Avihu Medina, who created music for Argov.
During her #100wikidays Antanana wrote, for example, about the Montefiore Windmill, the Sasson Report, and the 1931 census of Palestine. (She also joined other challenges on Ukrainian Wikipedia during her run, and she didn't count the articles created then as #100wikidays articles).
Antanana mostly translated articles from English and Hebrew editions of Wikipedia. She says writing articles "from scratch", i.e. not translating from another language, is too difficult when it has to be done every day.
Overall, during her 2022 #100wikidays round Antanana added 685,744 bytes to Ukrainian Wikipedia (one Ukrainian character counts for two bytes).
Late on February 23rd, Antanana wrote her 53rd article for the challenge. A few hours later, Russian missiles hit her city – and many other cities across Ukraine.
In the early hours of the invasion, Antanana thought about giving up on #100wikidays – but soon decided that she would finish it anyway, and Russian aggression would not force her to abandon her plans.
However, the first days of the Russian invasion were still the most difficult. On February 24, Antanana was in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in Western Ukraine, but her mother and brother were in a village near Kyiv with Antanana’s grandfather, some 600 kilometers eastward. They had to be evacuated to Western Ukraine. Getting to that village is difficult even in peacetime, and much more so during the war.
A decision was made to immediately get in the car and drive to get Antanana's family members. The journey was ultimately successful and relatively safe, but long and difficult. They drove for three days – with short breaks for sleep, with large military vehicles on the neighboring lanes, and with long lines at gas stations.
Still, Antanana kept writing a Wikipedia article a day, even in the car (as a passenger) on the way toward Kyiv. She says it was really useful that Wikipedia's translation tool automatically saves progress – it was helpful when connection was spotty during the drive. These several days were the most difficult in terms of keeping up with #100wikidays, but Antanana managed to do it.
A few days after returning to Ivano-Frankivsk, Antanana went to Israel – and, ironically, finished the challenge of writing articles about Israel in that very country, where she couldn't get for a few years before.
For Antanana, one new article took approximately two hours. That's enough to translate an average article – not a long and highly detailed one, but something more than a short stub.
Of course, much depends on the topic of a specific article. For Antanana, it also depends on the language which she is translating the article from; she needs more time to translate from Hebrew than from English.
How to find two hours every day? "If you want to, you'll find a way," Antanana says. Writing an article on Wikipedia becomes an urgent item on the to-do list. When the task has a specific deadline, you can sacrifice other tasks which can wait for a few more days. And, of course, you can sacrifice the time you'd otherwise spend on reading news, scrolling social media feeds, and even sleeping.
One useful lifehack – plan article topics beforehand. When you're more busy on a certain day, you can plan to create a shorter article. For Antanana, for example, the quickest to create were articles about Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. (In theory, one can also prepare full texts of the articles beforehand. The rules of the challenge prohibit it, but they also encourage ignoring all rules.)
Antanana's example inspired a couple of Wikipedian friends to get on a new round of #100wikidays as well.
The first one who couldn't resist was Spiritia, a Wikipedian from Bulgaria and the challenge's founder. Many of her 100 Bulgarian-language articles were devoted to Ukraine; for example, she wrote about the theater destroyed by Russian invaders in Mariupol and about prominent Ukrainian painter Maria Prymachenko.
Then, Israeli Wikipedian Ijon joined. He was also among the first #100wikidays participants in 2015. Now, his personal challenge is "consequences of 100wikidays". The idea is going back to the 100 articles created during the challenge and writing all the articles necessary to turn all the red links blue, i.e. creating all the missing articles linked from the 100 original articles.
Antanana says she doesn't yet have plans to embark on #100wikidays again – but in the future she might start fixing the "consequences" of her previous two rounds.
When thinking about gender diversity in Wikipedia, we often think of the number of biographical articles about men and women. The Humaniki project shows that about 19% of biographical articles on the English Wikipedia are about women. However, this is only one aspect of gender diversity. In this article, I develop a method which measures gender diversity at the article level and show why it's useful.
While working on the article about economics on the French Wikipedia, I was surprised by the low number of women among the people cited in the article. So I've started exploring methods to measure gender diversity. I draw a distinction between gender diversity and gender parity[2]. First, gender parity supposes binary gender, which excludes non-binary people. Second, gender parity implies that the ideal would be a fifty-fifty divide between men and women. After some iterations, I've found a way to measure gender diversity at the article level. This tool can be used to explore gender diversity for articles about academic fields, activities, or occupations. My approach is very basic and simply computes the share of people cited in an article by gender.
This simple quantitative approach to measure gender diversity is similar to many research projects on this theme in computational social sciences. David Doukhan is tracking women's speaking time on the radio[3]. Antoine Mazières and his co-authors are computing the share of screen time with women in popular movies[4] and Gilles Bastin and his co-authors are computing gender frequency of people cited in French newspapers[5].
For each article, I get the list of internal links (also known as blue links). I retrieve them using the Wikipedia links API. Then I combine this query with a Wikidata SPARQL query[6]. I select all links corresponding to human beings in Wikidata (property P31 is Q5) and I retrieve their gender (property P21 in Wikidata). Note that gender in Wikidata can be male, female, non-binary, intersex, transgender female, transgender male, or agender. I'd find it more intuitive to group together transgender males with males and transgender females with females but I prefer to keep the classification of Wikidata.
Last, I count the number of entities by gender and compute the share.
Everyone can compute gender diversity for a single Wikipedia article using the gender diversity explorer tool.
This is a very basic approach. It doesn't distinguish any difference between entities cited in the references and entities cited in the core of the article. It doesn't take into account people cited in the article without a link to a Wikipedia article. But even if it's imperfect, I believe this is a useful approach.
Numbers should be interpreted with caution. The number of gendered entities cited in a single article is often very low. I personally don't interpret proportions if the total number of gendered entities is lower than 50.
Let's have a look at the article about economics. In May 2022, we find 137 males, 6 cisgender females, and 1 transgender female[7]. So fewer than 5% of people quoted in the article are female. Of course, everyone knows that many prominent economists from Adam Smith to Jean Tirole are male. So no one is really surprised to find a vast majority of males in the results. Nobody would be able to say what a fair share of females in the article would be. However, I personally think that 5% is not much and that the contribution of women to economics is more important. Harriet Martineau, Mary Paley Marshall, Joan Robinson, Elinor Ostrom, Anna Schwartz, Janet Yellen, Esther Duflo, or Susan Athey have all made major contributions to economics.
In this section, I compare gender diversity in Wikipedia articles about some important academic fields. As with economics, we know that most academic fields have long been dominated by male figures. So we're not surprised to find a relative low share of women in Wikipedia articles. By comparing Physics, Architecture, Economics, Social science, Computer science, Philosophy, Mathematics, Psychology, Medicine, Music, Political science, Sociology, Biology, Science, Art, History, and Literature, I find that all of them have a proportion of men higher than 80%[8]. Values for computer science and political science should be taken with caution since the number of people cited in those articles is lower than 50. If we exclude computer science and political science, we find that 10 out of 15 articles have less than 10% of women among all gendered entities! If we look at raw numbers, the count of women in each article is really low: 4 women in mathematics, 4 women in medicine, 1 woman in physics.
I believe that measuring helps to raise awareness of the problem of gender diversity in Wikipedia articles. Anyone can play with the gender diversity inspector and discover some insights.
In the next months, I would like to explore gender diversity in articles about occupations (journalist, politician, etc.) and activities (journalism, politics, sports, etc.). I would also like to have large scale studies looking at all articles about academic fields or all articles about an occupation.
My experiments with measuring gender diversity in Wikipedia articles lead me to believe that women are often forgotten or undermined in Wikipedia articles about general topics. It would be worthwhile to give specific attention to this topic. WikiProjects such as Women in Red could focus on this issue to ensure that the role of women hasn't been diminished in articles.
This Discussion Report covers conversations that were closed or archived from April 1, 2022 to May 29, 2022.
George Ho asked on March 9th if using a non-free biographical image of a person immediately after (or upon) the said person's death (date) is acceptable, unacceptable, or neither. The result was a consensus that it is technically acceptable per policy, with some important caveats. There should be a respect for commercial opportunities, which in some cases may mean the immediate use of a non-free image post-death is not appropriate. There remains a consensus that free images are preferred over non-free ones, and that regardless of the time period elapsed after death a serious effort should be made to find free images before deciding to use non-free ones.
Mhawk10 started a discussion on March 15th that asks: when both the username and real name of a Wikipedia editor are widely reported by reliable sources, to what extent should Wikipedia prohibit articles in the mainspace from stating that such a person edits under that account name? Editors brought up policies such as WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:DUEWEIGHT, but the discussion has now been archived without a formal closure.
On 15 March Sdkb and JBchrch proposed removing the portal links from the Main Page, adding a mention of portals in the "Other areas of Wikipedia" section, and adding the language switcher to where the portal links formerly were. Barkeep49 closed the discussion on 14 April, finding consensus to remove the portal links and add a mention to the other areas section, and finding a weak consensus to add the language switcher. Barkeep also noted procedural objections with the neutrality of the RfC, but they found insufficient reason to not honor the proposal.[1]
Worm That Turned proposed on 17 March to increase the administrator activity requirements. An administrator that has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12 months period OR has made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period (coming into force 1 January 2023)
may be desysopped for inactivity. Consensus to implement this proposal was found by Slywriter on April 13. In a follow-up RfC, Worm That Turned suggested that the same change be made to the bureaucrat activity requirements. The discussion was closed on April 22 by Wugapodes with consensus to change.[1]
On April 2nd Bduke made a request for comment about ending Wikipedia's tradition of April Fools' Day jokes. After a gaggle of input in just two days, the discussion was closed with no consensus.[1]
A discussion about using a non-free sample for purposes of identification in an article about a song was started on April 11th by George Ho. It received a decent amount of support, but was not formally closed and is now archived.
On April 20th, Barkeep49 eloquently posed the question of what our policy is regarding changing policies; specifically, is a formal request for comment required? This discussion was not closed, but led to some valuable observations and conclusions before being archived. Most editors agreed that consensus and discussion are required for policy changes, but that doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a request for comment.[1]
In March 2020, we interviewed members of WikiProject COVID-19 right as the pandemic was starting to spread. Two years later, we've invited them back to discuss how their work has progressed and adapted to the changes the pandemic underwent.
Thank you to all participants for their insight on a complex and vast area of editing. We hope to be able to publish more WikiProject interviews in the future!
The software to play video and audio files on pages has now changed on all Wikimedia wikis. The old player has been removed and replaced with Video.js. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years, and uses best practices. For more information, see Tech News.
Over the past four years, the Growth team at the Wikimedia Foundation has developed Growth features, a set of tools that make contributing easier for newcomers. As contributors start editing Wikipedia, they need to learn how the wikis and the community work. These features nudge them to spend time on tasks important to their community. They also make connections through mentorship systems that allow for direct, 1-on-1 contact with an experienced community member. On 26 April 2022, the team also announced a new configuration system, allowing communities to alter the settings of their Growth Features installation.
A policy for MediaWiki gadgets and user scripts is being drafted. Previously, these tools were ill-defined, leading to misunderstandings between engineers and wiki-based code developers when wiki-based code breaks. This also leads to code rot, where developers do not feel empowered to make changes as it's unclear how their changes will impact wiki-based code developers. On top of this, when wiki-based code breaks it's not clear who can and will fix it. Together, a policy is being drafted that has the goal of working for Wikimedia staff, volunteer contributors (on Gerrit and Github), and wiki-based code developers, to lead to a better experience for all parties and try to restore trust and good faith between them. Community input is welcome on the talk page.
The 2022 Wikimedia Hackathon was held as a hybrid event from May 20-22. An online, game-style space was utilized, and 11 local meetups were conducted with the help of community grants. 117 participants signed up, participating in sessions on a variety of topics including infrastructure, localization, Python, Wikibase, and community-building. The next Wikimedia technical event is the Wikimania Hackathon, scheduled for August 11-14, 2022.
A version of the Real Time Preview project has been launched on the Polish Wikipedia by the Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation. The team is working on soliciting community feedback in order to improve the issue. They have decided to roll it out as a Beta Feature before they release the feature to everyone, due to the high-impact environment. This will allow them to collect feedback and make improvements before they release it to everyone. Feedback is welcome on the project's talk page.
Due to the use of nonoptimal workarounds, some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported (see Tech News). Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers, like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. This change follows the MediaWiki compatibility guidelines.
Bots that have been approved for operations after a successful BRFA will be listed here for informational purposes. No other approval action is required for these bots. Recently approved requests can be found here (edit), while old requests can be found in the archives.
| Bot Name | Status | Created | Last editor | Date/Time | Last BAG editor | Date/Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ScannerBot (T|C|B|F) | Open: BAG assistance requested! | 2022-05-05, 01:48:28 | 0xDeadbeef | 2022-05-28, 07:43:47 | Headbomb | 2022-05-17, 10:24:23 |
| ButlerBlogBot (T|C|B|F) | On hold | 2022-03-07, 14:03:04 | Primefac | 2022-03-10, 10:29:19 | Primefac | 2022-03-10, 10:29:19 |
| ZabesBot (T|C|B|F) | On hold | 2022-01-15, 22:43:07 | Zabe | 2022-05-14, 11:56:56 | Primefac | 2022-02-16, 12:39:30 |
| DoggoBot 7 (T|C|B|F) | In trial | 2022-04-03, 22:49:12 | EpicPupper | 2022-05-18, 15:24:21 | Primefac | 2022-05-07, 14:53:51 |
| GalliumBot (T|C|B|F) | In trial | 2022-04-29, 04:02:58 | Theleekycauldron | 2022-05-18, 19:16:10 | Primefac | 2022-05-07, 14:51:13 |
| BareRefBot (T|C|B|F) | Extended trial | 2022-01-20, 21:37:46 | Rlink2 | 2022-05-04, 12:29:37 | Primefac | 2022-03-28, 18:32:02 |
| AssumptionBot (T|C|B|F) | In trial | 2022-02-16, 11:35:09 | AssumeGoodWraith | 2022-04-10, 03:23:38 | Primefac | 2022-03-27, 12:37:16 |
| Qwerfjkl (bot) 12 (T|C|B|F) | Trial complete | 2022-05-14, 09:13:42 | Qwerfjkl | 2022-05-26, 14:53:36 | Primefac | 2022-05-26, 14:31:27 |
| BattyBot 67 (T|C|B|F) | Trial complete | 2022-05-24, 04:14:48 | GoingBatty | 2022-05-24, 19:33:32 | Primefac | 2022-05-24, 08:22:29 |
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2022 #21, #20, & #19. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.
The Wikimedia Enterprise project team welcomes conversations via Zoom on June 9 at 17:00 UTC.
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We showcase the very best articles, pictures, videos, and other contributions from last month and highlight the Wikipedians that helped create them.
31 featured articles were promoted this period.
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17 featured pictures were promoted this period (including one each used as the header and footer for this article).
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One featured topic was promoted this period, nominated by Shahid.
16 featured lists were promoted this period.
For this Pride Month, The Signpost interviewed queer Wikimedians to better understand their views on inclusivity in the Wikimedia movement. Vermont is a steward and administrator on the Simple English Wikipedia. Padgriffin is a vandalism patroller and new page reviewer, primarily active on the English Wikipedia. Tamzin is an administrator on the English Wikipedia and a SPI clerk.
Photos in Wikipedia influence the way people look at the text, because readers can't escape from an image. That's good, as long as photographs in articles give a clear impression of the subject. (I didn't say "neutral", did I?). Wikimedia Commons has an enormous database of photographs, videos, vector images and sounds. This database now consists of 83 million "freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute". That's nice. It's also a database that anyone can steal images from. Roughly 40 million images in Commons are under a Creative Commons CC-BY license – these images require attribution. The other 40 million images have a public domain license, and are up for grabs. In this piece I will show how things work out, and I will give advice on how to prevent stealing of your images.
Rawpixel Ltd. is a stock image company "operating from its HQ in the UK and its creative hub in Bangkok, Thailand", according to their website. Rawpixel takes images that are in the public domain, removes watermarks, and enhances colours and resolution. Collections used by Rawpixel include paintings & prints by Vincent van Gogh, John James Audubon, Jean Bernard, Benjamin Fawcett, Edwin Landseer, Frederick Sander, May Rivers, Henry Sandham et al.; photographs by NASA and many others. The image near this text is a nice depiction of Ramses II, taken from the book L'histoire de l'art égyptien (1878) by Émile Prisse d'Avennes. Rawpixel generously gives the source: New York Public Library. This version (with the Rawpixel logo) is used 150 times in several Wikipedia versions, though there is a version without the logo (also uploaded to Commons by Rawpixel!). Rawpixel now has >9,000 images in Commons, used 1,500 times in Wikipedia. Nothing wrong with that, because the Rawpixel logo can be removed from the images. The only odd thing is that the authors' field in the metadata is often wrongly identified as "Rawpixel". The original author is, of course, the original painter or photographer; Rawpixel has merely simplified and enhanced these pictures. But Rawpixel is fairly open about their business: they mention the source of their images, and offer three types of accounts for usage: Free, Casual and Business, the last one at $9 a month.
Alamy, on the other hand, is completely different. Alamy harvests public domain images and publishes them on their own website (watermarked: Alamy) without mentioning the original source. They scraped 292 million photos to their website, from various sources, including Wikimedia Commons. Alamy even sends infringement letters and invoices to users of the public domain pictures – sometimes even to the original photographers! Photographer Carol M. Highsmith was sternly told "According to Alamy's records your company doesn't have a valid license for use of the image(s)". Mind you, this warning was about her own photographs, as Alexis Jazz showed in his brilliant piece on Commons: How Alamy is stealing your images.
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In 2013 I uploaded a photo of Dutch historian David Cohen to Commons. The original at the Dutch National Archives was a bit frayed, low-res, and had a watermark (number 023 0069, down right). In 2016 I cropped the image a bit, removed the watermark and uploaded a version in higher resolution. Alamy took my version of the photo, upgraded the resolution and now sells it for $11 to $189, depending on intended usage. They bluntly state: "This image is a public domain image, which means either that copyright has expired in the image or the copyright holder has waived their copyright. Alamy charges you a fee for access to the high resolution copy of the image." And of course, Alamy doesn't tell us they took the image from Commons, where anyone can download it freely.
All of this is tantamount to taking your property without your permission: that is, stealing. And yes, you're right: it's legal, with PD images. A public domain image is what it is: public domain. These images are creative works to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply, so they can be used by anyone, without attribution. Remember – Alamy doesn't sell the original image, they say they charge a fee for access to the high resolution image. Stock image companies can't be prevented from offering public domain images and charging people for usage. But anyone can easily prevent Alamy and the like from selling the images of which they own copyright. Even if you want to stimulate usage of your photographs: just give your photographs a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA). Stock image companies don't like to attribute, so they probably won't touch your images. Archives, libraries and museums: if you own copyright on certain collections, please publish them under a CC-BY-SA license, and not in the public domain.
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
This paper,[1] to be presented at next month's ICWSM conference, provides a dataset containing "all Wikipedia links posted on Twitter in the period 2006 to January 2021" - 35,252,782 URLs altogether, from 34,543,612 unique tweets. While framed as a dataset paper designed to enable future research, it also reports various exploratory data analysis results, for example on the distribution of links across Wikipedia languages:
more than half of all links posted on Twitter (54%) are taken from the English language version. Links from the Japanese version account with 24% for the second highest share followed by Spanish, German and French.
The author notes that the Dutch Wikipedia received a high number of Twitter links relative to its share of pageviews.
Analysing the linked articles by topic category (relying on the language-agnostic automated ORES article topic classification rather than Wikipedia categories), the author finds that
"The ranking of article meta categories from most frequent to least frequent is Culture, Geography, STEM and History & Society and this ranking does not change radically through the years. The popularity of Culture might be traced back to biography links which account for 21.3% of all linked items ..."
Concerning the popularity of concepts across languages (i.e. Wikidata items)
"more than half of all concepts were only posted once and that the distribution is again highly skewed. Among the top five most popular concepts we do not find historical figures or events as one could expect, but two boy bands, the South Korean boy band Bangtan Boys (BTS) and the Filipino boy band SoundBreak 19 (SB19). While being among the most linked concepts they still account only for a very small percentage ..."
It is worth bearing in mind that Twitter links provide only a small percentage of the traffic that Wikipedia received from external referrers (where search engines dominate), and in a weekly list of articles that received most social media traffic on English Wikipedia that the Wikimedia Foundation has been publishing until the end of last year, Twitter seems to have appeared less often as referrer than Reddit or Facebook.
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:[2]
"We introduce the task of fact-checking in dialogue, which is a relatively unexplored area. We construct DIALFACT, a testing benchmark dataset of 22,245 annotated conversational claims, paired with pieces of evidence from Wikipedia. There are three sub-tasks in DIALFACT: 1) Verifiable claim detection task distinguishes whether a response carries verifiable factual information; 2) Evidence retrieval task retrieves the most relevant Wikipedia snippets as evidence; 3) Claim verification task predicts a dialogue response to be supported, refuted, or not enough information."
As an example dialogue where the (itself automatically generated) response was successfully refuted by the automatically retrieved evidence snippet from Wikipedia, the authors offer the following:
From the abstract:[3]
"... we present ProWD, a framework and tool for profiling the completeness of Wikidata [...]. ProWD measures the degree of completeness based on the Class-Facet-Attribute (CFA) profiles. A class denotes a collection of entities, which can be of multiple facets, allowing attribute completeness to be analyzed and compared, e.g., how does the completeness of the attribute "educated at" and "date of birth" compare between male, German computer scientists, and female, Indonesian computer scientists? ProWD generates summaries and visualizations for such analysis, giving insights into the KG [ knowledge graph] completeness."
From the abstract:[4]
"The author used an extended example, the Wikipedia article on the Philippine–American War, to illustrate the unfortunate effects that accompany a lack of attention to the kind of sources used to produce narratives for the online encyclopaedia. [...]
- Findings
Inattention to sources (a lack of bibliographical imagination) produces representational anomalies. Certain sources are privileged when they should not be and others are ignored or considered as sub-standard. Overall, the epistemological boundaries of the article in terms of what the editorial community considers reliable and what the community of scholars producing knowledge about the war think as reliable do not overlap to the extent that they should."
See also our coverage of earlier papers by the same author
From the abstract:[5]
"... we propose a task of detecting self-contradiction articles in Wikipedia. Based on the "self-contradictory" template, we create a novel dataset for the self-contradiction detection task. Conventional contradiction detection focuses on comparing pairs of sentences or claims, but self-contradiction detection needs to further reason the semantics of an article and simultaneously learn the contradiction-aware comparison from all pairs of sentences. Therefore, we present the first model, Pairwise Contradiction Neural Network (PCNN), to not only effectively identify self-contradiction articles, but also highlight the most contradiction pairs of contradiction sentences. [...] Experiments conducted on the proposed WikiContradiction dataset exhibit that PCNN can generate promising performance and comprehensively highlight the sentence pairs the contradiction locates."
As an example of a pair of contradictory sentences that were detected successfully (i.e. in accordance with the ground truth), the paper offers the following from the article The Silent Scream (1979 film):
Author's copy (thesis, code: [1] [2])
. (code and data)
An External links section, if any, should always be placed at the end of the article. It should always be spelled with that capitalization, never "External Links" or "external links". The term should be used even if there is only one external link.
Template messages vary in their placement. For example, a {{merge}} notice goes at the top of the article, but the {{stub}} message goes at the bottom. Read the documentation at the bottom of a template for instructions on how to make use of it.
When adding images to an article, be careful where you place them. See the picture tutorial for ideas on image placement.
When you edit a page, you can use the Preview button (located right next to the Save page button) to see in advance what your edits will look like. This lets you check your work periodically without filling up the page history by making lots of smaller edits. The preview function can also help you avoid mistakes, such as when using an unfamiliar type of wiki markup. The preview will appear together with the edit box you have been working in (either above or below it, however you prefer).
An even faster way to preview a page is with the keyboard shortcut ⇧ Shift+alt+P.
When you make use of Wikipedia's desks (Help desk, Village pump, and the Reference desk), please consider putting some time in as a volunteer by reading and answering some questions at whichever desk you think you will be the most helpful. Remember: the Help desk always needs help, and questions asked at the Reference desk span the breadth of all human knowledge. You're likely to know the answer to some of the questions.
When you transclude a page (that is, automate the display of a page's content on another page), all its tags (like {{TOCRight}}) go with it, which will be implemented on the host page. Just add the following code if you want to add a right-aligned TOC to a page, but do not want it to be displayed on "derivative" pages:
<noinclude> {{TOCright}} </noinclude>
For a more detailed explanation, see Help:Wiki markup#Templates and transcluding pages.
Any article with more than three headings automatically gets a table of contents (TOC). The TOC is placed above the first section heading. All text above the first section heading is commonly referred to as the lead section. Depending on the overall length of the article, this introduction should not exceed one to four paragraphs in length and should summarize the article's key points.
If you do not like the TOC placement in an article, you can move it by inserting __TOC__ where you would like it placed. If you do not want a TOC on a particular page, add the text __NOTOC__ anywhere on the page; if you, personally, do not like the TOC feature, you can disable it in your user preferences.
Tips and Tricks is a general editing advice column written by experienced editors. If you have suggestions for a topic, or want to submit your own advice, follow these links and let us know (or comment below)!
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | K.G.F: Chapter 2 | 
|
3,443,321 | 
|
India's latest box-office hit remains at the top spot. It follows the leader of an Indian crime syndicate operating out of the Kolar Gold Fields fighting rivals for supremacy as well as the Indian government. It has received mixed reviews but did very well at the box office and became the highest-grossing Kannada film of all time. It is also quickly ascending #5, currently positioned at lucky number 7. Unsurprisingly, a sequel is in development. |
| 2 | Amber Heard |
|
2,964,855 | .jpg)
|
Depp is currently suing Heard over an op-ed she wrote in the Washington Post in which she detailed her experience with the culture around victims of abuse. In the op-ed, Heard alleged Depp had been abusive throughout their relationship; Depp then sued Heard, alleging he was actually the victim of abuse. Given Heard's accusations were ruled to be "substantially true" in a previous libel case, I don't particularly fancy his chances. Whatever happens, it's in the news (and the Report), and will probably continue to be until the verdict comes out. |
| 3 | Johnny Depp | 
|
2,824,692 | ||
| 4 | 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine |
|
1,336,881 | 
|
Russia has launched a slow offensive through eastern Ukraine. The situation in Mariupol continues to worsen. The war continues to be awful. |
| 5 | List of highest-grossing Indian films | 
|
1,296,418 | 
|
With both #1 and RRR taking runs at the record books, it's hardly surprising this list is here. |
| 6 | The Batman (film) |
|
1,167,044 | .jpg)
|
HBO Max released the biggest hit of 2022 so far, with a box office of $758 million worldwide. It has the Riddler and lasts three hours, but thankfully not by taking a page from Batman: Arkham and having Batman collect question mark-shaped trophies around Gotham. |
| 7 | Cristiano Ronaldo |
|
1,058,195 | .jpg)
|
An adequate number, there. One of football's biggest names became a father again, and for the second time of twins – but in a sad note one died in childbirth. Still he was back on the pitch on Saturday and scored his 100th Premier League goal, leading even the opposing team's supporters to applaud CR7. |
| 8 | Elon Musk | 
|
979,969 | 
|
His bid for Twitter is still in the news. Also in the news over leaked text messages where he argues with Bill Gates who reportedly holds a large short position against Tesla stock. |
| 9 | John Wayne Gacy |
|
896,843 | 
|
This prolific serial murderer was the original killer clown, murdering at least 33 people in Chicago in the 1970s. Why is such a horrific individual who was executed 28 years ago on the list, you say? Why, because of Netflix of course! Or, more specifically, Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes.
Incidentally, this photo is a crop of him with Rosalynn Carter. |
| 10 | Deaths in 2022 |
|
852,550 | 
|
There is one thing that I would die for It's when you say: "My life is in your hands" |
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amber Heard |
|
3,502,940 | 
|
The world continues to pay attention to the big lawsuit. I think it's a shame this has turned into a courtroom drama instead of what it should be; a judicial process to determine if serious allegations of domestic abuse were true. |
| 2 | Elon Musk |
|
3,372,198 | _(cropped).jpg)
|
After two weeks of incessant speculation, the world's richest man bought Twitter this week for $54.20 a share (yes, he managed to sneak a meme into even this), approximately $40 billion. A lot of people are worried that he will axe Twitter's moderation policies while doing little to counter government censorship. The announcement spawned an exodus of users, caused Tesla stock to drop, and has been all over the news. One thing is for certain; I will now refer to him as ******. (Or maybe I'll stop being petty and drop it.) And his placement splitting the feuding couple is adequate, given he dated #1 for a while. |
| 3 | Johnny Depp |
|
2,934,834 | 
|
To be fair, this lawsuit was arguably more about Depp trying to discredit Heard and gain public support than any interest in judicial settlement. |
| 4 | K.G.F: Chapter 2 |
|
2,101,961 |
|
This Kannada production is now fourth on (both this list and) #5, quickly coming for RRR's spot at number three, and is positioning itself to be the highest-grossing Indian film of the year. To put into perspective why this is such a big deal, consider this: before the K.G.F series, the biggest Kannada movie had made just $9.8 million in 2017, a measly number by Indian standards. Then came K.G.F: Chapter 1 in 2018 with a cumulative total of $33 million that was enough to set records for Kannada cinema (but not to break into #5). Its sequel has now quadrupled that achievement, entering the so-called 1000 Crore Club for Indian movies this week, minting big bucks at the box office with $130 million in and counting. For a relatively niche film industry, that is a monstrous success by any measure. |
| 5 | List of highest-grossing Indian films |
|
1,311,975 |
| |
| 6 | 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine |
|
1,142,375 |
|
The war continues to be awful. Some explosions in Transnistria led to worries about it being drawn in. |
| 7 | 2022 NFL draft |
|
1,139,811 | 
|
Gridiron held its latest recruitment of college players. The top pick was Travon Walker, taken by the Jacksonville Jaguars. |
| 8 | John Wayne Gacy |
|
924,271 | 
|
This serial killer is featured in the Netflix documentary Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes, following Ted Bundy three years ago. |
| 9 |
|
874,183 | 
|
Tweet-sized write-up: #2 purchased the social network where he ranks 7th in the most followed accounts. And a guy who could be right below on that list if he didn't get himself banned said Musk's involvement made him give up on any attempts at returning, so not everything is bad! | |
| 10 | Deaths in 2022 |
|
852,296 | .jpg)
|
Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again... |
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | About |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness |
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The first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of the year brings back Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, trying to protect multiversal traveler America Chavez. Director Sam Raimi still has the sensibilities that resulted in the first three Spider-Man movies, and shows his horror movie credentials, as the film has many jump scares, cruel deaths, and makes a terrifying villain out of someone who used be on the side of the heroes. Reviews were positive and Multiverse of Madness beat the Distinguished Competition for the biggest opening of the year with $450 million worldwide. |
| 2 | Amber Heard |
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Ah, Depp v. Heard. My favourite thing to write about. Amber Heard took the stand this week in the defamation trial that has occupied a significant part of the news and the internet since it began on April 11. |
| 3 | Roe v. Wade |
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Ruh-Roe! In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected a pregnant woman's right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, effectively legalising abortion. However, now there are hopes/fears (depending on position on abortions) that the world's most famous court ruling might be overturned following a leak of the first draft of a majority opinion. Many states either have laws that uphold the legality of abortion, or have trigger laws that would outlaw abortion in the event of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision being overturned. |
| 4 | Johnny Depp |
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1,981,410 | 
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It's unusual to see two legal cases in the top 5, but 2022's weird. Depp's lawsuit focusses on the idea that Amber Heard's 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post about the culture around victims of sexual abuse caused irreparable damage to his career, and in particular his firing from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. This seems a bit dubious because Heard's article wasn't really even about the allegations (although the claim was undeniably part of the story), Depp's firing might not have been about the allegations at all, and even if it was, they were ruled to be substantially true in a previous case in 2020. To me it seems pretty hard to argue that Johnny Depp is in the right here, but then again, I'm not the internet. |
| 5 | Naomi Judd |
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A legendary country singer, mother of both actress Ashley Judd and Naomi's partner in the duo The Judds, Wynonna. The Judds split in 1991 after Naomi was diagnosed with hepatitis C, with reunions on occasion, including a Super Bowl halftime show, a 2011 tour and most recently a performance at the 2022 CMT Music Awards. Naomi, who also had a presence as host and judge in television, had long struggled with mental illness and decided to end her life on April 30, at the age of 76, the day before The Judds would be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which also forced the cancellation of a farewell tour The Judds would perform in the second semester. |
| 6 | K.G.F: Chapter 2 |
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1,396,418 |
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The most expensive and most lucrative Kannada film ever is now the third-highest-grossing Indian film of all time. We already detailed its success last week, so there doesn't seem like much point rehashing it, but FWIW it looks like the K.G.F franchise will continue with a third chapter. |
| 7 | Elon Musk |
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1,184,411 |
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Most of this week's Elon Musk news was about how he plans to finance his acquisition of Twitter. You see, Musk doesn't actually have $44 billion because almost all of his wealth comes from his Tesla stock, which he can't sell because then he'd have to pay taxes on it. He's therefore only paying some of the money out of his own pocket. The rest will come from a loan he's taken out from some banks using Twitter and his own Tesla stock as collateral, and he's also got some money from other billionaires. There have been reports he may be able to lower the price he pays for the company in later negotiations, but the plan as it is now will leave Twitter with a substantial amount of debt going forward, which will likely pose significant challenges to the platform. |
| 8 | Cinco de Mayo |
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1,077,194 | 
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The year's most self-explanatory entry returns again. One can only hope this is from people finding out where it comes from as opposed to the date on which it occurs. |
| 9 | List of highest-grossing Indian films |
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1,062,340 |
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Both third and fourth are green on this list, which isn't something you see often. |
| 10 | 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine |
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1,034,627 |
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Ten weeks in, and Russia's invasion is still awful. The news this week was dominated by the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant and U.S. intelligence claims about them helping Ukraine to sink the Moskva and kill Russian generals. |
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness |
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The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film, from the original Spider-Man trilogy's director Sam Raimi, continues to top the box office despite a steep 67% drop in profits, which I'd attribute to it polarizing audiences due to containing much less MCU shenanigans and much more of Raimi's signature comically absurd body horror. (Though personally, I thought the film was excellent and a breath of fresh air for the increasingly samey and fan service-obsessed franchise.) |
| 2 | Eurovision Song Contest 2022 |
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1207777 | 
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Ukraine won the annual song contest this year, represented by Kalush Orchestra with the song "Stefania", which received over 200 points from the 25 country votes, and over 400 points from the audience vote. The UK improved dramatically from last year, going from receiving 0 points to coming second place (thanks to a space man), receiving over 300 points. Although the show's hosts and the viewers likely expected Ukraine would win as a result of #4, it was nice to see Ukrainians finally enjoy something and be happy after months of war. Our #7 also appeared on the show. |
| 3 | K.G.F: Chapter 2 |
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1058176 |
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India continues to bring in the crore to this Sandalwood epic set in the Kolar Gold Fields . |
| 4 | 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine |
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1023189 |
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Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to be awful, and could now cause a worldwide food shortage due to its blockade of the port at Odessa. On the bright side, Ukraine won #2 by a landslide, whereas Russia were excluded from attending the annual song contest completely because of the invasion. |
| 5 | Johnny Depp |
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1013880 |
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Depp v. Heard is still |
| 6 | Amber Heard |
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983264 | ||
| 7 | Mika (singer) |
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912682 | 
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The singer who wanted to be like Grace Kelly then tried a little Freddie was one of the hosts of #2, and also performed a medley of his hits. |
| 8 | Deaths in 2022 |
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888058 | 
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And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love you make... |
| 9 | List of highest-grossing Indian films |
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875766 |
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#3 has now surpassed RRR for third place, meaning the Sandalwood epic is only behind the Tollywood\Kollywood collaboration Baahubali 2: The Conclusion and Bollywood's Dangal. |
| 10 | 2022 Philippine presidential election |
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840705 | 
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Voters in the Philippines went to the polls this week to (among other things) elect their president for the next six years, and elected Bongbong Marcos, whose central promise was to return the country to the days of his father's dictatorship. It's an... odd choice, especially given his opponent seems to be actually competent, but I guess that's what happens when disinformation replaces reason. |
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amber Heard |
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1,540,466 |
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After dropping out last week, Johnny Depp's depressingly successful attempt to publicly discredit Amber Heard has returned to the top spot. |
| 2 | Johnny Depp |
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1,236,120 | ||
| 3 | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness |
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Sam Raimi's return to superheroes was a magnet for fan theories, and even after release the story of sorcerer Stephen Strange trying to stop a mom who lost her kids from killing a kid who lost her moms is still bringing attention (not to mention over $800 million worldwide!). |
| 4 | 2022 Buffalo shooting | 
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Another mass shooting in America. This time, a white supremacist domestic terrorist attack which killed 10 people, on May 14. As usual, the shooting has raised the debate surrounding gun laws, and as usual, nothing will change. |
| 5 | 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine |
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987,902 |
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The defenders of the Azovstal iron and steel works surrendered to Russia this week after over two months trapped inside it; conditions inside the steelworks were horrific. It's not known what will happen to them. In other news, Russia's blockade will likely cause global food shortages, as Ukraine produces about 9% of the world's wheat, which it can't export anymore. Great. Another crisis. |
| 6 | 2021 Southeast Asian Games |
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876,822 | 
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Southeast Asia's regional version of the Olympics took place over the last week and a half, after being postponed a few months for... some reason. Hosts Vietnam won the most medals in front of the crowds in Hanoi. |
| 7 | Deaths in 2022 |
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853,104 | 
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Your talk'll be somethin' that shouldn't be said out loud Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now |
| 8 | Andrew Symonds |
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Australia mourned this retired cricketer who died at just 46 in a car crash. |
| 9 | Eurovision Song Contest 2022 |
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To compensate for #5, Ukraine won here. Wonder if Kalush Orchestra will also follow last year's winner Måneskin in following the competition with a global hit. |
| 10 | Elon Musk |
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Elon Musk's sort-of-aborted Twitter acquisition seems to be the only reason he's on here (unless he's done some other "newsworthy" things I don't know about). |
Articles in this column are sourced from this database report; the period covered is April 8 – May 8 2022.
| Rank | Article | Class | Edits | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deaths in 2022 |
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1869 | The list that never leaves the Top 25 Report also apparently gets enough edits that it's topped this list. I wonder if we'll have to start doing songs about death here too... |
| 2 | 2022 World Snooker Championship |
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1280 | Ronnie O'Sullivan became champion for a record equalling seventh time, beating Judd Trump in the final. The event took place from April 16 to May 2, and has a dispropotional large number of edits (when compared to its views). If I had to guess, I'd say the live updating of scores was to blame? |
| 3 | K.G.F: Chapter 2 |
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1178 | In April 2022, this Kannada film was released, and became the fourth-highest grossing Indian film (now third), as you will know if you've read the writeups about it above. |
| 4 | 2022 NBA playoffs |
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986 | The postseason for basketball's finest started with a bang. And now it seems it might boil down to "six finals in eight years" vs. "17 titles", talk about an anti-climax. |
| 5 | 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine |
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984 | While edit numbers for this article aren't quite what they were two months ago, editors are still documenting the largest war in Europe since 1945. |
| 6 | List of equipment of the Ukrainian Ground Forces |
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979 | As the war continues, the equipment Ukraine has access to changes rapidly, both from Western countries supplying them with arms, and from Russia destroying/capturing them. |
| 7 | List of Chinese football transfers winter 2022 |
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918 | User:Qby is making sure to keep updated the changes to the Chinese Super League and China League One rosters. |
| 8 | 2022 NFL Draft |
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858 | 262 gridiron players were chosen here, no wonder it had so many edits. |
| 9 | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness |
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780 | The latest instalment of the MCU was released near the end of this counting period, and became the highest-grossing film of 2022 so far. The amount of available information about the film massively increased during that time, and (judging by the article length) about half of it was added to the page. |
| 10 | Libs of TikTok |
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751 | The reveal of the responsible for this anti-liberal TikTok led to quite the edit war. |
| 11 | Russian cruiser Moskva |
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738 | Russia's highest profile loss, this cruiser was destroyed 14 April, over half of the pages entire edit history falling in the last 5 weeks, and 6⁄7 coming in this year (at time of writting). |
| 12 | Neoplatonism |
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699 | Unlike most of the other entries on this list, this isn't an article with a lot of recent information. It's just an article a particular editor is working on. |
| 13 | Bigg Boss (Malayalam season 4) |
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682 | The Malayalam version of Big Brother has been running since 27 March 2022, including a 24/7 live stream on Disney+ Hotstar. |
| 14 | 2022 French presidential election |
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682 | The world (well, most of it) breathed a sigh of relief after centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Macron's victory managed to be both emphatic and hollow; he won by a bigger margin than most predicted, but still received 2 million fewer votes than he did last time. Depending on who you ask, this is either a win, a near miss, or somewhere in between. |
| 15 | Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore |
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677 | The return of the Wizarding World aka Warner Bros. doing Harry Potter movies after finishing the main series. Less eventful than The Crimes of Grindelwald, but with less "What is J.K. Rowling doing?", so an improvement. Underwhelming box office might finish what were supposed to be 5 movies in this third, but at least it's a movie with a clear ending rather than an open one that requires a sequel. |
| 16 | 2022 Badminton Asia Championships |
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643 | Along with being one of the favorite sports of our Indian friends (Olympic medalist P. V. Sindhu even went well here too), this continental tournament was held in the Philippines, who also have a significant contingent who manifest every once in a while. |
| 17 | 2022 Pacific typhoon season |
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620 | A season of worry, specially to our many Philippine readers. And the hurricane article will probably get even more edits, we have some very dedicated editors on that. |
| 18 | List of songs recorded by Sabina Yasmin |
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614 | One user is documenting the ouvre of this Bengali singer. The article lead says her output is in the thousands, so it's a lot of work! |
| 19 | Candidates of the 2022 Australian federal election |
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601 | 1,624 candidates nominated for Australia's election, which was held four days ago as I write this. Editors generally added candidates' names as they nominated, which caused this article to get edited a lot. |
| 20 | 2022 Mutua Madrid Open – Women's singles |
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600 | And you thought Wikipedia only cared about Grand Slams. The Tunisian Ons Jabeur took this one. |
| 21 | 2022 in film |
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593 | The year's movies keep on coming, with many good ones. Most of the edits might be to update the table of the highest-grossing. |
| 22 | Lebanese Shia Muslims |
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581 | This page has seen mass editing by Savipolo, dating back to the end of last year. |
| 23 | 1987 in the United States |
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578 | 1987? What the Fuck Is Going On? Well, one user decided to update on the births of that year. |
| 24 | List of highest-grossing Kannada films |
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571 | After all, #3's box office numbers were being frequently updated. And adequately, its predecessor as the biggest overall was K.G.F: Chapter 1. |
| 25 | Beast (2022 Indian film) | 542 | Round out the list is another recent Indian action film release, although this one didn't do nearly as well as #3. |
Since 2014, dozens of countries around the world have organized annual photo contests devoted to their natural heritage within the international Wiki Loves Earth contest. In 2013, we held WLE in Ukraine for the first time, and in 2014 it went international. Overall, WLE collected 767k free photos of protected areas, with around 180k being used in the WikiProjects.
In 2021, we introduced the Human rights and Environment special nomination supporting the initiative Wiki4HumanRights, which partners with the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Its goal is to raise awareness of nature protection and human impact on nature.
The 2021 contest united 34 countries and territories, with 9 of them joining Wiki4HumanRights and receiving submissions for the new nomination. Last week our jurors had a final round evaluating the pictures, and we are delighted to present the top-5 of the Human rights and Environment special nomination!
These pictures taken in the Emas National Park make a powerful triptych referring to the immense challenges Brazil is facing regarding the conservation of its natural ecosystems. The country has experienced unprecedented wildfires in the last decade. The Emas National Park is a part of the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the states of Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil. It covers 1,320 square kilometers of cerrado savannah. Wildfire is a natural factor shaping tropical savannahs and has been present in the cerrado for thousands of years.
Another picture from Brazil depicts a wildfire in Serra do Gandarela National Park. It is situated within the Espinhaço Range and holds the largest intact remnant of Atlantic Forest in Minas Gerais. This transition region between the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes contributes to species diversity.
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| “ | On November 22, beavers built a house under the walls of the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy in protest of the threat of deforestation in Polissia region, Ukraine. Beavers are convinced that cutting down forests to burn them at thermal power plants is an unacceptable blow to the nature of Polissya and the climate on the planet | ” |
— tells the author of picture about the “Don’t burn our houses!” action to protect the forests of Polissia, in particular Polissia Nature Reserve.
The author caught a mysterious view of Thousand Trees location, Doiran Lake, Greece. One of the jurors, Monica Iyer, comments: “The image alone conveys a powerful representation of human interaction with nature and the threats posed by rising waters. The lake was in danger of drying out and now is flood-prone because of human manipulation of the water supply”.
The photo shows us a stunning view at sunset from the top of Serra de Montejunto, a protected landscape in Portugal's Montejunto-Estrela mountain range. We can see some wind farms on small neighboring hills and Serra da Arrábida in the distance. This mountain range, Serra da Arrábida, is a part of Arrábida Natural Park, which comes into contact with the ocean.
The 10th edition of the Wiki Loves Earth contest runs through the end of July, and we are happy to say that we will keep the Human rights and Environment special nomination this year!
We are grateful to our amazing jurors:
Policymakers in the European Union (EU) have finally completed their negotiations over the Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulation that aims to address the spread of illegal content online. Now they have largely agreed on the rules that will govern online content moderation. Some technicalities still have to be ironed out, but the cornerstones of the regulation are known.
The Wikimedia Foundation has been tracking the developments of the DSA since the consultation phase and before the European Commission introduced the draft proposal. We have always supported the core aim of the DSA: to make content moderation more accountable and transparent. At the same time, we have cautioned that designing regulatory structures that only fit the operating models of big, for-profit websites could have devastating consequences for not-for-profit websites like Wikipedia. The legislation will fundamentally shape how online platforms operate in Europe, and also have an impact on the rest of the world online. It is also an opportunity to protect the community-governed, public interest internet, as we asked policymakers to do through four essential measures:
While the DSA, to a certain degree, distinguishes between centralized platforms and those that are community-governed, some concerns remain. Here is how the final outcomes stack up to our requests.
The DSA framework was largely designed to address the rapid and rampant spread of illegal content online by defining some of the processes through which online content is removed. It is our position that regulations need to target the causes, not the symptoms, of the spread of illegal content: i.e., the targeted advertising business model and algorithms driving profit for ad placement. Focusing on these aspects both gets at the root problem of the issue and avoids regulating non-for-profit websites like Wikipedia as if they were operated according to the same model.
The outcomes of trilogue negotiations fall short of what we desired, but are still worth celebrating. The text bans targeted advertising that is based on sensitive information such as political, sexual or religious preferences. The EU is also banning “dark patterns”: i.e., deceptive design tactics that trick users into accepting, rather than refusing, tracking options. The DSA mandates that options to reject and accept tracking must be equally easy to select.
The information on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects is produced, maintained, and debated according to volunteer-developed rules, which are fully transparent. This volunteer-led model of content moderation has its imperfections, but it has also helped make Wikipedia a global source of neutral and verifiable information. To protect this community-governed internet, laws should not require platforms to enforce rules that are set by their users or oblige service providers to engage in top-down content moderation.
We are pleased to see that the DSA will focus only on the rules set by the service providers and their moderation obligations, leaving room for Wikimedia communities to develop and refine their own policies for content and conduct as well as to enforce them. The DSA will not prevent volunteer editors from taking care of our public interest information ecosystem.
It is not enough for regulations like the DSA to just permit community-based content moderation: the law should explicitly promote that people, as members of our information society, play a more significant role in creating digital public spaces. While we applaud EU policymakers for recognizing that the rules of the DSA must not be articulated with only one type of platform in mind, we would have hoped for rules around the process for removal of illegal content that explicitly support community-governed content moderation systems. Even so, the regulation’s new notice-and-action regime has been vastly improved when compared to the original proposal, which could have led to Wikimedia getting constantly “trolled” by bad-faith actors. First, the service provider can determine whether or not to take action after a notice has been submitted. This is particularly important because so many of the notices that the Wikimedia Foundation receives are not about content that is actually illegal. Second, service providers retain the right to ignore notices from individuals or organizations if they consistently provide false or misleading information.
We are, however, concerned about the “crisis mechanism”, because it allows the European Commission to mandate that Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) tackle certain content that contributes to a threat to public health or safety. Through this mechanism — in the case that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia are determined to be VLOPs — the DSA essentially gives the Commission the executive power to override content moderation decisions by the Wikimedia communities. The safeguards, added after civil society organizations have voiced grave concerns, limit the potential for abuse to a certain degree — for instance, through a sunset clause and a high standard for transparency about the Commission’s demands to platforms.
Wikimedia’s open, volunteer editing model is grounded in the belief that people should decide what information is included in the projects, and how it is presented . . . not machines or automated systems. Although the latest version of the DSA does not explicitly rule out automated tools, we find it encouraging that their use is neither explicitly mandated nor done so de facto through very short removal deadlines. The explicit prohibition of general monitoring obligations further alleviates a persistent concern we have had: i.e., that short removal timeframes and the threat of being held liable for user-uploaded information would compel service providers to deploy algorithmic tools in order to swiftly identify and remove any and all allegedly illegal content. What comes next for the DSA?
We are looking forward to seeing the complete text, where any outstanding details have been clarified. The Parliament will vote on the consolidated version in July 2022, and once the regulation is published in the Official Journal of the European Union — the official EU gazette of record — it will come into force 20 days later. Online platforms and websites will have 15 months after that date to prepare for when the rules start to apply.
Once it becomes law, the DSA will shape communication and life online for everyone in Europe, and most likely for everyone around the world as well. The Wikimedia communities have always emphasized transparency about how their projects are built and developed. Now the DSA will make content moderation processes on many other platforms more transparent and predictable as well, which will also benefit Wikimedia editors and readers. Free knowledge as a whole and the Wikimedia projects in particular are an important part of people’s online experience. For that reason, we will continue to advocate public policy that protects and promotes them, and that empowers everyone to participate in the kind of decentralized decision making and content moderation that makes Wikipedia so successful and popular in Europe and the rest of the world.
In honour of World Oceans Day on June 8, here we explore Featured Pictures of the world's oceans on Wikimedia Commons.
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Parody newspaper The Onion poked fun at Wikipedia last week with a "news" story about celebrating the 750th anniversary of American independence. Reactions from Wikipedia editors ranged from enthusiastic appreciation of the joke to advocating major changes in an effort to have Wikipedia taken more seriously. The article [archived link] was part of The Onion's July 26 issue, and described how Wikipedia celebrated the supposed anniversary on July 25 with a featured section on the Main Page. It included excerpts from the "American Inderpendance" article riddled with vandalism, and indicated that it had apparently been protected as a result. A number of farcical facts and subjects were discussed, rounded out by sincere-sounding quotes from Jimmy Wales about the age of the United States relative to other historical events. The Onion even mentioned links to videos of the first Thanksgiving hosted on YouTube.
This is one of several recent uses of Wikipedia in a humor context. A piece in the August issue of Wired by comedian Stephen Colbert refers to Wikipedia as a way to get your own encyclopedia entry. As a bonus, he adds, "You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter." Late Show host David Letterman read the article Cougar (slang) aloud on air earlier this month. Also, the comic strip Working Daze recently featured a series of strips featuring Wikipedia, culminating in a manager ordering one of her employees to write an article about her.
A number of Wikipedia editors thought The Onion parody was one of the better attempts at Wikipedia-related comedy they had seen. Dpbsmith said he found it "hysterically funny". Not all agreed that The Onion's effort was especially witty, however, as a few contributors from outside the United States thought the story was somewhat lacking in the humour department.
Going even further, some editors took this as an opportunity to reiterate calls for significant change. Adam Carr said the piece should be taken as "a very serious warning" that the Wikipedia philosophy of open access to all editors was turning it into "an object of ridicule." Carr, who believes Wikipedia would be better off with both fewer articles and fewer editors, has long advocated eliminating the ability to edit without registering, along with a process for bringing articles to a state of completion.
Meanwhile, Ben Houston wrote an essay criticizing the overuse of anonymity and pseudonymity on Wikipedia. He suggested adopting a system similar to Amazon.com's "Real Name" attributions. Implementing a method to authenticate an editor's identity and encouraging its use, he said, "substantively improve Wikipedia's quality and reputation." Houston thought the authentication process could be outsourced to a commercial partner, possibly fee-supported, with a second option provided for those who don't have credit cards, which is what the Amazon.com system is based on.
Reactions to these proposals were mixed. Some editors agreed with the notion of disabling edits by unregistered users; others defended the importance of anonymity to the principle of free speech. Whether any action will be taken as a result is uncertain — similar proposals have been floated in the past, but so far the primary change is the restriction of article creation by unregistered users (see archived story), a practice that is still officially considered experimental.
Wikipedia articles concerning fiction frequently feature overly long or excessively detailed plot summaries. While any plot section can be trimmed, it can be hard to know what to cut if one hasn't consumed the relevant media, while those who have might be tempted to explain any intricacy that arises to give the reader the full experience of the show. This essay offers a solution: sourced plot summaries.
While editors are encouraged by MOS:PLOTSOURCE to rely on secondary sources, the guideline does not require that they do so; the reasoning goes that it is generally assumed that the work itself is the primary source for the plot summary.
However, relying on this can lead to original research and overly long summaries. Sourcing plot summaries provides clear benefits in terms of overall encyclopedic value to the reader.
Articles on fictional works often cover something a future article editor would never read; novels in genres they have no interest in, TV shows on streaming platforms or channels they don't have, movies in languages they can't speak or translate. Given this, while any editor can in theory verify a plot summary by gaining a detailed understanding of a work in order to find out what's important to the plot, this isn't a widely-utilized solution in practice. Basing plot summaries on reliable sourcing allows the next reader to reassess and re-evaluate the length and content of the plot summary with the same agreed-upon and widely accessible yardstick, thus minimizing the risk of original research slipping in.
It seems not unreasonable to speculate that articles about fictional works have a tendency to be written by fans of the work, and that the in-depth knowledge of a work's plot possessed by a fan tends to lead to plot summaries stretching too long and giving too much detail. Pieces of trivia and other cruft can frequently work their way in, and without having read or watched the original, it can be difficult to know whether the relevant piece of cruft is actually important. By referencing sources for a plot summary, editors can check whether a given fact discussed in enough detail to be relevant, or if it's even mentioned at all. Relying on organizations that have more rigorous editorial processes helps keep the information presented by Wikipedia minimal, relevant, and encyclopedic. This essayist, however, regrets not being able to talk about Bob Murray's kidney stones in their first featured article.
Articles on fictional characters arguably suffer from long and irrelevant plot summaries more than their parent works. Characters can build up long, complicated backstories over years in their movie franchise or book series or television serial; and in an absence of abundant coverage, editors may be tempted to revert to writing long "character biography" sections as a substitute for real-world encyclopedic content. There is a better way; character articles are prime targets for mixing real-world, reliably sourced interpretation with canon. Instead of giving a complete history of the character's appearances and little details found in flashbacks, consider using reliable sourcing to talk about the character's personality, their strengths and weaknesses, how and if they evolve, and if there are weak points in the character's writing or portrayal.[a] Utilizing reliable sourcing in a character's article can provide a clearer, broader set of topics that appeal to all readers, and not just fans.
This problem isn't limited to works of fiction, either; political books, documentaries, scholarly articles, and history books all have lots of content that might need to be summarized if the work qualifies for a Wikipedia article. However, for political books especially, the main idea should not be to summarize every point and argument made, or even the ones that stand out. By referencing reliable sources, critical review especially,[b] editors can get an idea of what parts of the argument are most important, and allows for a minimalist argument summary that is still a valid and comprehensive reference for the reception section.
The crossword is back! The previous Signpost crossword can be found here. The answers to previous crosswords can be found at the following link – thank you all for playing!
We have a new crossword for this month – once more, all of the answers have something to do with Wikipedia, though the clues may seem unrelated.
This month's answers are taken from Wikipedia's Featured Articles – every correct answer will be the verbatim title of one of the articles listed on that page. (Parenthetical descriptors excluded.)
You can play the crossword online at this link (recommended) or manually by printing out the image and clues below. Enjoy! Hints may be given in the comments, so scroll cautiously.
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Across 4. French v. Berber 5. Thickened with okra, filé, or roux 7. Horse with a budget airline named in his honor 8. Can be spiral, elliptical, or irregular 10. Capital of Sikkim 11. Brassica of kraut and cole 12. From Stoker to Meyer 15. Let us cultivate our gardens 16. Born Thelma Ryan 17. DJ, turn it up, mate!
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Down 1. Nippon 2. Welsh fortified river crossing 3. Chinese polymath of the Han dynasty 6. They can open doors! 9. Wife of Gautama Maharishi 13. Her symbol is a mirror 14. Two cues, one baize 17. Luminous spheroid of plasma
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