Above, you can see (and scroll across) a beautiful timeline of every interval between the 645 Signpost issues, from 2005-01-10 to today. Notice anything? Besides the tasteful graphic design, I mean.
Yes, that's right: this used to be a weekly rag! Not always – there was a 102-day drought between February and June 2017 (and more recently a 63-day skip between April and June 2021). But the average interval over the whole period has been a little over ten days: with a couple of exceptions, the Signpost maintained a weekly schedule until 2016, when it switched to fortnightly publication. That lasted, more or less, until the "death knell" of 2018, when rumours of the Signpost's demise flourished; and it seemed to be in terminal decline, and we arrived at a sedate monthly schedule.
But things have been speeding up lately. We had a couple of thick issues in 2022 – so thick, in fact, that they broke the tubes and we had to frantically poke around in the source code of display templates designed to top out at 18 articles per issue. Take the "July" issue (published 1 August – yeesh!), with 22 articles in it. Not only is this too much for the templates, but we suspect it's a little much for the readers ... even for a Wikipedian some walltexts are too high.
So anyway, we're going to take a shot at running the presses every two weeks, until we either run out of stuff to say (i.e. never), get bored of it, or become too employed to commit to a biweekly schedule (or is it semiweekly? It turns out nobody actually knows).
In other news, editor-in-chief JPxG fails to finish his sentences so gets them finished by his copyeditor is embarking on a deep odyssey into the deepest recesses of Signpost history to properly format old articles, fix broken templates, and remove random detritus accumulated over the course of 20 years of publication. So far this has involved one BRFA, 14 Python scripts, 19 years of updated module metadata, 426 speedy deletions, and several thousand article reformatting edits. He claims he will have something to show for these efforts – by next issue, probably. In the meantime check out the single talk page for this issue!
Despite the rush to get this published, we have quite the full issue. Some regular columns don't appear, but not to worry: those columns are remaining monthly, so will appear every other issue. So, welcome to this [ NEW ERA | QUICKLY ABANDONED EXPERIMENT ] (delete as appropriate), from all of us at the Signpost!
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Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup
20 November 2023
Legal status of Wikimedia projects "unclear" under potential European legislation
4 February 2023
Twenty-six words that created the internet, and the future of an encyclopedia
4 February 2023
Missed and Dissed
28 November 2022
From Russia with WikiLove
31 October 2022
On January 5, 2023, we learnt that two Wikipedians, Osama Khalid (User:OsamaK) and Ziyad Alsufyani (User:Ziad), have been sitting in jail for more than two years, sentenced to serving 32 and 8 years respectively in al-Ha'ir Prison, a Saudi Arabian maximum security facility. The offenses with which they were charged, according to the press release that broke the news, were "swaying public opinion" and "violating public morals".
The press release in question was published jointly by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN, a human rights organisation co-founded by slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi) and Lebanese NGO Social Media Exchange (SMEX). It said that Osama and Ziyad had been arrested on the same day in 2020, and sentenced to 5 and 8 years respectively. In September 2022, Osama's sentence was increased to 32 years after an appeal by the prosecutor; this reflects a recent trend in Saudi Arabia of imposing ever more draconian prison sentences for online criticism of the Saudi government, as reported by human rights organisation ALQST and The Washington Post. DAWN reports that in 2022, Saudi Arabia's Specialized Criminal Court sentenced women to 34 and 45 years of imprisonment for "tweeting in support of reform".
The DAWN/SMEX press release combined its report on Osama's and Ziyad's prison sentences with the news that the WMF had recently banned sixteen Wikipedians in the Middle East/North Africa region, including seven Arabic Wikipedia administrators, for alleged conflict-of-interest editing and advancing "the aims of external parties" (see Signpost coverage earlier this month).
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Internal Wikimedia Investigation Results in Termination of Entire Saudi-Based Team of Administrators
(January 5, 2023 – New York and Beirut): The Saudi Arabian government infiltrated Wikipedia by recruiting the organization's highest ranked administrators in the country to serve as government agents to control information about the country and prosecuting those who contributed critical information about political detainees, said SMEX and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) today.
Following an internal investigation in 2022, Wikimedia terminated all of its Wikipedia administrators in Saudi Arabia in December. DAWN and SMEX documented Wikipedia's infiltration by the Saudi government based on interviews with sources close to Wikipedia and the imprisoned administrators.
The authors of the press release added:
It's wildly irresponsible for international organizations and businesses to assume their affiliates can ever operate independently of, or safely from, Saudi government control.
The DAWN/SMEX press release was quickly picked up by AFP, resulting in a spate of media reports led by The Guardian and Middle East Eye, followed the next day by Ars Technica and many others.
While these press articles followed the pattern set by DAWN and SMEX, covering the sixteen WMF bans and the imprisonment of the two editors together, it is unclear what connection there is between these two sets of events, or indeed if there is any connection at all. Ars Technica hypothesizes that the prior arrest of Osama and Ziyad may have been related to Saudi infiltration efforts that led to the bans. The Wikimedia Foundation's Trust & Safety office has stated that the December 2022 bans were unrelated to the 2020 arrests.
Both were longstanding Wikimedia contributors. Osama's first contributions to the English and Arabic Wikipedias date back to 2007. All in all, he made over 870,000 contributions to Wikidata, over 19,000 to the English Wikipedia, around 16,500 to the Arabic Wikipedia, over 16,000 to Commons, over 5,000 to the Arabic Wiktionary, and nearly 800 to Meta-Wiki.
Ziyad started editing Arabic Wikipedia in 2009, making over 20,000 edits to Wikidata, around 7,500 to Commons, about 6,500 to Arabic Wikipedia, and exactly 100 to English Wikipedia.
As medical students, both were particularly involved in editing and translating medical topics in Wikipedia. The Wiki Project Med Foundation, a Wikimedia affiliate specialising in improving Wikimedia projects' coverage of medical topics, issued the following statement to The Signpost:
Wiki Project Med appreciates the medical editing which Osama Khalid and Ziyad Alsufyani contributed to Wikipedia. They are both Wikimedia editors in good standing who have organized medical editing, training of physicians to edit Wikipedia's medical topics, and good community discussions about improving Wikipedia's coverage of medical topics for Arabic language. The arrest is shocking to us and beyond our understanding. We know nothing about this except that these two are friendly Wikipedia editors who have been highly engaged in our Wikimedia community activities.
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Both attended Wikimedia conferences. Osama joined multiple Wikimania events in person, and participated in the medical meetups there (see images on Wikimedia Commons); he also organized the Translation task force, importing Wikipedia medical articles from English to Arabic (and from Arabic to English).
Responding to the media coverage, Wikimedia Foundation spokespeople highlighted "material inaccuracies" in the press release. According to Ars Technica, for example:
A Wikimedia spokesperson told Ars that there are "material inaccuracies in the statement released by SMEX/DAWN" and in a Guardian report. "There was no finding in our investigation that the Saudi government 'infiltrated' or penetrated Wikipedia's highest ranks," Wikimedia's spokesperson told Ars. "And there are in fact no 'ranks' among Wikipedia admins. There was also no reference to Saudis acting under the influence of the Saudi government in our investigation. While we do not know where these volunteers actually reside, the bans of any volunteers who may have been Saudi were part of a much broader action globally banning 16 editors across the MENA region."
The Wikimedia Foundation also published a longer statement on the Wikimedia-l mailing list on 6 January, titled "Recent press around December Office Action":
Hello everyone,
Over the last couple of days, there have been several media reports about the Foundation’s most recent office action, taken on December 6. More are certain to follow. These media reports are based on a release from SMEX and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) that contains many material inaccuracies. Some of the errors will be obvious to our community – for perhaps the most obvious, the report states that the 16 users are all based in Saudi Arabia. This is unlikely to be the case. While we do not know where these volunteers actually reside, the bans of any volunteers who may have been Saudi were part of a much broader action globally banning 16 editors across the MENA region. Indeed, many of them are not active in the Arabic language projects. These organizations did not share the statement with the Foundation, and "sources of knowledge" as cited in their release can get things wrong. In addition, we do not have staff in the country named and never have, contrary to a message put out by the same groups on social media.
As we noted in December in our statement, we are unable to discuss Foundation office actions in detail. The Foundation always lists accounts banned as a result of its investigations. It is our goal to be as transparent as we can be within essential protection policies, which is why we do not ban in secret, but instead disclose accounts impacted and (when large numbers are involved) have disclosed the rationale.
The roots of our December action stretch back over several years. We were initially contacted by outside experts who made us aware about concerns they had about Farsi Wikipedia. We can’t comment on that report right now, but it will be published by that organization soon. This report not only contributed to our August 23, 2021 modification of our non-disclosure agreement to make it harder for rights-holders to be coerced, but led to further evaluation of issues across MENA. The December bans were the culmination of those evaluations.
Wikimedia is, as mentioned above, an open knowledge platform, and it thrives on open participation. Investigations and global bans are not things that any of us take lightly, but the Foundation is committed to supporting the knowledge-sharing models that have created so many valuable information resources in hundreds of languages across the world. Our first line of defense of our Terms of Use are our volunteers themselves. Where issues present a credible threat of harm to our users and to the security of Wikimedia platforms, we will do the best we can to protect both.
We trust and hope that our communities understand that misinformation about this action has the potential to cause harm to the individuals involved. We believe in the incredible value produced by our volunteers across the globe, but even so we recognize that being found in contravention of a website’s Terms of Use — even in a manner that organization finds serious enough to warrant a ban — is not the equivalent of being convicted of any crime. Accordingly, we ask you to please be conscious of the real people involved, in the spirit of our long established respect for living people on our sites. We realize that it is tempting to speculate, but we do ask you all to recall that people’s employment options, their relationships, and even their physical safety may be compromised by speculation.
If anyone feels unsafe on Wikimedia projects, please use the local community processes or contact us. The Foundation and community will work together or in parallel to enhance the safety of all volunteers. To contact the Trust & Safety team please email ca(a)wikimedia.org .
Best regards,
WMF Office/Trust and Safety
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Notably, this statement does not contain any reference to the two imprisoned Wikipedians. On the other hand, it does express consideration for the people behind the accounts banned last month, whose role in Wikipedia has suddenly become international news, in a way the Wikimedia Foundation clearly had not intended during their initial listing of the bans.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) Executive Director Sarah Leah Whitson, a Human Rights Watch veteran, responded to the WMF statements in an update to the Ars Technica article, added a few hours after publication:
Whitson told Ars that Wikimedia is "playing technical word games" in its statement and that "it's really important for Wikimedia to be transparent about what they have described as a conflict of interest among its editors." She said that Wikimedia should "provide more transparency about the 16 users that they banned" and "the safety precautions they're going to take to avoid further endangering Wikipedia editors in totalitarian states, because there's no denying that two of them are now languishing in Saudi prisons" and the problem goes "well beyond Saudi Arabia." Whitson urges Wikimedia to reconsider its global model of relying on Wikipedia editors based in totalitarian states, not just because it can endanger the editors, but also because Wikipedia "loses its credibility" when information edited in these states cannot be trusted.
These are important points. The WMF is now widely reported to have "denied claims the Saudi government infiltrated its team in the Middle East" – as a BBC article puts it – but this does create some inconsistencies. A month ago, on December 6, the WMF's Trust & Safety office issued a confident assertion that "we were able to confirm that a number of users with close connections with external parties were editing the platform in a coordinated fashion to advance the aim of those parties". The post stated that "these connections are a source of serious concern for the safety of our users that go beyond the capacity of the local language project communities targeted to address" and emphasised that the Foundation had issued these bans "to keep our users and the projects safe". But it has provided no information on who these parties threatening users' safety are, if they are indeed unrelated to the Saudi government.
The WMF statement does mention that the roots of the December 2022 bans lie in concerns expressed to the WMF about the Farsi Wikipedia some years ago. There is a public record of concerns about state interference in the Farsi Wikipedia being voiced by Open Democracy, for example, in a September 2019 article titled "Persian Wikipedia: an independent source or a tool of the Iranian state?", and by Justice for Iran in an October 2019 Radio Farda article titled "Critics Say Some Persian Wikipedia Content Manipulated By Iran's Government".
The DAWN/SMEX press release and the many press reports based on it did contain errors. The press release referred to "16 Saudi administrators"; as reported earlier this month in The Signpost, only seven of the ten banned Arabic Wikipedia users were administrators, and six of the 16 banned users were contributors to the Farsi Wikipedia rather than the Arabic Wikipedia. Moreover, Osama and Ziyad, the two imprisoned Wikipedians, were not administrators at the time of their arrest – both had had their admin rights on Arabic Wikipedia withdrawn years before. The reason? They weren't using them, both having scaled down their Wikipedia activity considerably in recent years, presumably to focus on their medical studies. Ten years ago, however, Osama had uploaded pictures of a number of Saudi human rights activists to Commons; Ziyad uploaded Wikipedia's image of Loujain Alhathloul in 2016.
The headline of the article in The Guardian read: "Saudi Arabia jails two Wikipedia staff in 'bid to control content'". This will have left many readers once again with the false impression that Wikimedia Foundation staff administer Wikipedia's day-to-day content and community processes. (There is a reason headlines are not considered reliable sources in Wikipedia – the body of The Guardian's article referred correctly to "volunteer administrators".)
The WMF's claim that admins have "no ranks", however, is less persuasive. Two of the banned users, for example, had bureaucrat and checkuser rights in addition to administrator privileges (elevated rights that require users to sign non-disclosure agreements). Moreover, the entire Arabic Wikipedia – a project with 1.2 million articles – only had a grand total of 26 administrators prior to the global bans (it is now down to 20). To a person in the street, surely that makes any of the 26 people administering the project "high-ranking".
Even more significant is the fact that the banned Arabic Wikipedia administrators include three of the four people who founded the Saudi Wikimedia User Group, the Wikimedia Foundation's official affiliate in Saudi Arabia – among them the affiliate's principal contact person. In total, seven of the ten banned Arabic users are listed as members of the Saudi user group. As for the other three, two, including one of the checkusers, say on their user pages that they are members of the Arabian Gulf Wikimedia User Group, which does not seem to be an officially recognised affiliate yet, and one (the other checkuser) says they're from Kuwait.
The Wikimedia Foundation made another statement on 8 January, saying, in part:
Our investigation and these bans are not connected to the arrest of these two users. The ban decision impacted 16 users, not all of whom were administrators, from Arabic and Farsi Wikipedia. As stated below, we have no reason to believe that these individuals are all residents of Saudi Arabia; on the contrary, this seems extremely unlikely. Further, we imagine you are all aware that editors are volunteers, not paid by the Foundation, and that the Foundation does not have offices or staff in Saudi Arabia.
While, as stated, the December office action is unrelated to the arrests of two Wikimedians in Saudi Arabia, the safety of Wikimedia volunteers always remains our utmost concern. We understand the desire to take action or speak out. Know that we need to act in the interests of any volunteer whose safety is under threat. As indicated in yesterday's message, additional publicity around such cases can cause harm, as can speculation and misinformation. We are confident that everyone values the safety of their fellow volunteers and can understand the constraints this might create.
The Arabic Wikipedia community has released a statement on the global bans, adopted with 38 in support, 2 opposed, and 0 neutral. What follows is an English translation of the community statement originally issued in Arabic:
Wikipedia: Statement regarding the events of December 6, 2022
This is a statement issued by the Arabic Wikipedia community to comment on the events of December 6, 2022, and the accompanying global ban that included ten user accounts on the Arabic Wikipedia, including seven administrators.
In the Arabic Wikipedia, we focus on a decentralized governance model in which all community members play roles in the decision-making process, oversight over the drafting of the encyclopedia's policies as well as guidelines, and their enforcement. This can be achieved through direct participation in the election of administrators, and in resolving conflicts and disagreements that occur in the encyclopedia. We do expect the Wikimedia Foundation, which has always supported this governance model, to follow it when dealing, not only with the Arabic community but with all other communities to ensure full transparency and mutual accountability.
We do condemn, in the strongest terms, the work model based on confidential complaints and non-public investigations, which creates a toxic work environment that is incompatible with the nature of volunteering and undermines the main Wikipedia principles of transparency and the assumption of good faith. At the same time, we call on the Foundation to adopt a transparent model in which it has no guardianship over communities, and where it accepts, without restrictions, mutual accountability from communities. The relationship should be based on the grounds that all parties, involved in a transparent governance process, are equal in all the stages of the process.
We also understand the existence of complications associated with attempts to manipulate the content of the Arabic Wikipedia, to polish or distort the image of certain parties; we condemn all these attempts without any reservations and stress the need for Wikipedia to be a platform that adopts a neutral point of view. At the same time, we call on the Foundation to involve local communities in the content protection process by sharing information with them in a way that does not harm the privacy of the users involved in the process and does not put them at risk.
If a user violates the policies, even if they hold administrator rights, they will be dealt with firmly in accordance with the local policies approved by our community. We do not tolerate the abuse of administrative powers nor the manipulation of encyclopedic content to serve third parties whatsoever, including directed editing, and we have policies governing these matters. They apply to all users equally without distinction. Therefore, we are surprised, in light of all this, that the institution imposes its supervision on our self-governing society without prior notice and issues irrevocable decisions without explanation.
We also point out the severe harm that the ban has done to our local community. We lost seven active administrators in one fell swoop! This represents 30% of the administrators in our community, including two bot operators. This has set our community back years and does not, surely, contribute to encyclopedia growth. Mainly, we have suffered the consequences of this ban at the technical level in the encyclopedia, and we appeal to the technical team in the Foundation and the open-source communities to provide the necessary technical assistance to maintain the continuity of the project as much as possible.
The Arabic community has chosen a committee of four people to follow up with the Wikimedia Foundation on the basis of mutual accountability on the issue of the above bans. We are waiting, and we hope, for the Wikimedia Foundation to cooperate with this committee, facilitate its work and share with it the information in its possession without harming the privacy of any user on the Arabic Wikipedia or its sister projects.
On 10 January, the Wikimedia Foundation replied to the Arabic Wikipedia community statement on the associated talk page. It is the first Foundation statement to actually use the imprisoned Wikipedians' names. The reply was posted in Arabic; a machine-aided (Google/Bing) translation follows below:
Update from the Wikimedia Foundation
Hello all
We know the past few weeks have been difficult for the community. We also realize that this situation remains confusing and worrying in light of the media reports that have emerged. As an organization, we regret the distress and concern this situation has caused the community. While we know we can't answer all of your questions, we want to make sure you understand our processes and the rationale behind them. We also want to ensure that our actions are in the best interests of the community to the best of our ability and with the tools available to us. As mentioned, the measures were not linked in any way to the recent media reports that are currently circulating, nor in any way to the arrests. The Foundation has learned of the arrest of Osama and Ziyad, and is actively following up on their situations.
As we know that not everyone will have read all of the data, we would like to reiterate that the process of reaching the decision to take action in December 2022 was not easy or rushed. The investigation into violations of the Terms of Use took a long time starting with the Persian Wikipedia and moving on as new information emerged, and the final decision was guided by multiple levels of review by several employees across different functions. After consideration, it was unanimously agreed that the action is necessary to keep the community and platforms safe. Proper implementation of this measure was equally important in keeping the community and platforms safe, and thus adhering to established policies and procedures.
We realize that media reports and recent actions in December 2022 make many of you skeptical and perhaps even apprehensive about participating in the projects. We want you to know that the projects are owned by everyone, and most of all, that you are the creators and curators of the content. Foundation interventions in content or management issues on the sites are rare and limited to exceptionally problematic circumstances. No one should fear that the Foundation will take action on unintentional mistakes made while participating as editors in good faith.
As many of you already know, the Foundation fully supports community autonomy and the principle of subsidiarity as part of our commitment to respecting and promoting community autonomy. Not only do we feel this is the right approach to our shared values, but it is the only approach that can make these amazing projects work. To ensure we maintain this commitment, we do not deal with general community or community member disputes that might otherwise be addressed through existing community actions, nor do we act as a means of appealing community policies and decisions. If such situations arise, we look forward to working to help the community members who need help, but most of the time, this assistance will consist of guiding the community members to find the right community avenue that will solve their problem.
On some occasions, the Foundation considers cases of abuse. This only occurs when it has been brought to our attention that the local community lacks the necessary processes to effectively address the situation, or when the organization has a legal obligation as a platform provider to act in the interests of the safety of users and the platform. When we intervene, we are limited in the course of action we can take. Our procedures are guided by the Office's work policies, which allow us to issue global bans, event bans, issue warnings, interaction bans, and advanced permission removal. While this responsibility rests with us, we do not take our interventions lightly; these investigations take a lot of time and effort and require multiple staff members across different departments to ensure that we provide a comprehensive understanding of the matter before we take any action. For the size of our communities, we have issued very few centralized global bans. Collective global bans like the one we issued in December 2022 are only put in place in the most exceptional circumstances, when the evidence strongly supports a serious threat to the organization's Terms of Use that all contributors must agree to abide by when editing the projects.
Our December 6 Office action was the result of the Foundation's multiple, long-term investigations undertaken as part of our duties as a platform provider. It was not related to the media reports currently circulating. While there are still limits to what we can disclose in order to protect the safety and privacy of our users, we truly understand and sympathize with the fact that this continues to be an upsetting situation and would like you to know that we would not have taken this action if it were not necessary.
We also want to acknowledge that the media reports have created significant doubt in people's minds about the safety of participating in Wikimedia projects, because of their direct linkage to cases of volunteers being arrested. It is unfortunate that many organizations relied on incomplete facts and indirect sources in their coverage, which directly contradicts our principles. Regardless of the current situation, the Foundation is well aware that such risks exist globally, and we want our community members to be aware too - and work with us to take precautions to stay safe. Six months ago, the United Nations published an article describing the rise of disinformation as a "global disease".
In late May 2020, the Board included protecting projects and communities from "misinformation and bad actors" in its Statement on Community Culture. On August 23, 2021, we amended our Non-Disclosure Agreement to make it more difficult to coerce rights holders, by restricting access in certain high-risk regions where individuals may be particularly vulnerable to threats to themselves and their families. We continue to work to secure the safety of those combating this "global disease" – disinformation – not just through Office actions but in terms of proactively encouraging safe practices, as in our recent blog post on protecting online anonymity. This assessment by external experts has identified a number of areas to support our approach, the Board has issued a policy symbolizing our commitment to this improvement, and our Human Rights Team continues to work to provide resources of information and support to users on the ground. We are also working on making additional digital security resources available to community members who feel unsafe online, which we will finalize soon.
We respect and realize that this action represents a major setback for the community and that is why we are open to providing the community with the support needed and what help we can provide. If there is anything we can do to help the community during this time, please do not hesitate to let us know via ca@wikimedia.org. As mentioned earlier, we are ready to provide you with the required support to the best of our ability.
Best Regards,
Wikimedia Foundation Office WMFOffice (talk) 09:09, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
The WMF mentioned a change to the Non-Disclosure Agreement in the statements above. This concerns a document VRT volunteers, CheckUsers, Oversighters and Stewards are required to sign. The change, made on 23 August 2021, added the following words to the relevant page on Meta-Wiki:
The Foundation shall not grant Foundation volunteer NDA recognition to applicant(s) for volunteer roles if the applicants live in jurisdictions that block(ed) access to Wikimedia projects AND there is reason to believe that their domicile is known to others than the individual applicant(s) and the Foundation. Exemptions may be granted in individual cases following a request for review by the Legal department. Granting such NDAs would put the applicant(s) as well as other volunteers relying on the Foundation’s platform at undue risk. All NDA-based access rights granted to users fulfilling both criteria in the proposed adjustment shall be revoked at the point of policy adjustment.
This still seems weak, given the risk of decade-long prison sentences served in high-security facilities. Even if an editor's place of residence is only known to them and the Foundation today, there is no guarantee at all that others won't discover it at some point in the future. A checkuser whose identity becomes known to a present (or future) authoritarian government would not just be at risk personally, but could also be compelled – legally or otherwise – to collect user data and pass these on to state organs, putting other users at risk of prosecution.
There is much to ponder here about project governance, government influence on Wikimedia projects, and the vulnerability of editors and administrators to coercion and imprisonment. But the most pressing question is perhaps what we, as a movement, can do to help Osama and Ziyad.
The Wikimedia Foundation, DAWN and SMEX clearly got off on the wrong foot – it would be good to see them engage in constructive dialogue now, and pool their resources, at least inasmuch as our fellow Wikimedians are concerned. According to DAWN Executive Director Sarah Leah Whitson, who discussed the case with The Signpost, campaigning for their release at this point, over two years into their sentences, is very unlikely to do them harm, and may do some good.
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced, on the mailing list and on Meta, that there will shortly be another vote on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct:
In mid-January 2023, the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct will undergo a second community-wide ratification vote. This follows the March 2022 vote, which resulted in a majority of voters supporting the Enforcement Guidelines. During the vote, participants helped highlight important community concerns. The Board’s Community Affairs Committee requested that these areas of concern be reviewed.
The volunteer-led Revisions Committee worked hard reviewing community input and making changes. They updated areas of concern, such as training and affirmation requirements, privacy and transparency in the process, and readability and translatability of the document itself.
The revised Enforcement Guidelines can be viewed here, and a comparison of changes can be found here.
Voting will open on 17 January. For information on how to vote, eligibility, and the like, see the detailed Voter information page on Meta. – AK
WMF General Counsel Amanda Keton has announced that she will move on to her "next adventure". She joined the Wikimedia Foundation in 2019, having previously served as head of the Tides Foundation and CEO of Tides Advocacy.
Amanda will be succeeded in her role as General Counsel by current Deputy General Counsel Stephen LaPorte (also known as User:Slaporte), who will take over on 1 February 2023.
The Signpost wishes Amanda and Stephen all the best. – AK
For the last few weeks, a discussion at the Village Pump has been ongoing about the potential use of text generated by large language models (like GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-J and ChatGPT) in Wikipedia; near the end of December, a thread on the wikimedia-l mailing list discussed the issue as well, going over the potential benefits, drawbacks and use cases for these models.
Recent coverage in Slate describes a series of discussions which took place at Talk:Artwork title concerning the article (Artwork title), whose initial draft consisted of prompted output from ChatGPT. Various demonstrations have been done of the use of these models to assist in writing, editing and formatting (User:JPxG/LLM demonstration and later User:Fuzheado/ChatGPT). Currently, a proposed set of guidelines for the use of these models is under discussion (and, frankly, could use some more eyes on it).
The August 2022 issue of The Signpost explored some of these issues as they concern this publication; see the From the editors page titled "Rise of the machines, or something" for an introduction. – J, B
Last month's global bans of sixteen users in the Middle East/North Africa region, including over a quarter of Arabic Wikipedia admins and three of the four founders of the Saudi Wikimedia User Group, sparked a spate of press coverage over the past two weeks.
During the fracas, there was much coverage of a seemingly unrelated event that came to light during investigation: that two Wikimedians with a long history of editing in medical topics, Osama Khalid (User:OsamaK) and Ziyad Alsufyani (User:Ziad), had been serving long prison sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020. For detailed coverage see our Special report. – AK, J
Legalis.net, a French site specializing in legal news in the tech sector, reports that a Paris court has ordered the Wikimedia Foundation to hand over a user's data, under article 145 of the code of civil procedure – with a penalty of 500 euros for each day of noncompliance. Previously, the WMF had refused to provide the information, prompting the plaintiff to seek a court order. The editor in question, Sulpyensid, is a banned user accused of creating an attack article on a French businessman.
For discussion of the case in the French Wikipedia community, see fr:Wikipédia:Le Bistro/6 janvier 2023#Laurent de Gourcuff. Opinion there seems divided: one user, says: "In my opinion, this is something that had to happen. In this case, it affects a user already banned by Wikipedia. For the rest, we'll see." However, asks: "So is the end of the protection of IP addresses by the WMF for France? (Even if here, the request is quite justified) What obliges an institution under American law to obey a French summary?"
One point made in the discussion is that the user was banned in May 2022, so the IP data – usually only kept on WMF servers for 90 days – ought to no longer be available. Given the speed at which courts operate, this may well be a common occurrence. – AK, J
Larry Sanger, known to some as the co-founder of Wikipedia, prefers to be called the "ex-founder". He's announced – well, he's announced a lot of things, and we've covered most of them: Digital Universe in 2005, Textop in 2006, the Encyclopedia of Earth (also in 2006), Citizendium (also also in 2006), WatchKnowLearn in 2008 (which we missed), Everipedia in 2017, and Encyclosphere in 2019. Time has not been kind to them: Digital Universe and Textop are deadlinks; Encyclopedia of Earth and Citizendium are basically zombies if their recent changes are any guide; WatchKnowLearn was last updated in 2020 (but wished Wikipedia a Happy Birthday on its main page back then. How nice!); and Everipedia... "rebranded" into IQ Wiki and now exclusively covers Cryptocurrency and NFT scams. The jury is still out on this latest thing, a browser plug-in that may be the solution to your tiredness. It lets you see articles from the multi-headed mega-'pedia known as Encyclosphere. You can even block Wikipedia articles from your searches. His general take is that our project has overrun the net, squashing out other perspectives in favor of a biased view run by a cabal of libs. Sanger's 'sphere allows those other perspectives to write their own articles in their own encyclopedias, which are then collected in the 'sphere, where you can choose an article in whatever flavor you like best. And now there is a browser plug-in to display them when you search at Google and DuckDuckGo. There is even an option to rinse the taste of Wikipedia out of your mouth by automatically removing our articles from results. It only works with Chrome and Brave, though (no Firefox compatibility – ouch!).
That is the idea, anyway. Encyclosphere's main page looks fairly impressive (nice gradients!) but The Signpost couldn't find a way to search for articles there (or a link to the aforementioned plugin). Homesick Wikipedians will be relieved, however, to see that they are also asking for donations. The list of projects has some neat links, but no articles. If you actually want to use Encyclosphere, you need to do some scrounging – or read the results of our scrounging – to wind up at Encyclosearch. As of press time, searching here resulted in a HTTP 500, although they were helpful enough to return a stacktrace: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.io.FileNotFoundException: /mnt/sdd/encyclosearch/encyclosearch/public/index.html (Too many open files). When they're back, have a look at the results for "Larry Sanger", "Gilbert and Sullivan", or "Fermat's Last Theorem" – all of which rapidly go off-topic within a handful of results. Trying a few subjects that are more difficult to explain well, the first relevant result (after a bunch on software, games, and a dictionary definition) for "Evolution" comes from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia and is barely comprehensible. Another way of searching for articles is the Encycloreader, a web application that is operational as of press time; it uses a different configuration and includes Wikipedia (as well as Citizendium) by default in its searches. Feel free to report your results in the comments.
This is being advertised with Sanger's usual bluster: according to his Knowledge Standards Foundation, "If you want to participate in the world's largest encyclopedia, you must collaborate with a shadowy group of anonymous amateurs and paid shills on exactly one article per topic." He adds, "No small group of elites deserves the power to declare what is known for all of us." However, Encyclosphere does not really seem to provide a vastly different viewpoint – there aren't any pages endorsing Qanon, or slobbering over Donald Trump. Encyclosphere, in the end, seems to consist of at least somewhat decent, somewhat neutral, and somewhat reliable sources: it seems Conservapedia didn't make the cut, and there is no weal of Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About. The worst you can say about the encyclopedias it draws from is that they aren't necessarily as well-written, well-polished, in-depth, or as consistent as Wikipedia. Well, that and they use Java. – AC, Sb, J
Wikipedia's twenty-second birthday was celebrated by the multilingual news site Pressenza. They quickly review Wikipedia's founding with the roles played by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger; the movement's cumulative achievements; and the idealistic motives behind what we do. "It shows the strength of voluntary, collective, and collaborative action dedicated to the common good and shared knowledge, [which is] far superior to the pettiness of the private, the restricted, the exclusive, and the paid." While these motives may seem simplistic or naïve to those who have struggled to build our encyclopedia over two decades, we should never forget that these ideals are the rock that supports the encyclopedia.
Pressenza may be biased toward Wikipedia, however. They were founded in 2009 and publish multilingual news and commentary with unpaid contributors. Their articles are all published under a Creative Commons license.
Other media noting the anniversary include Wired Italia, Firstpost, and an Argentinian website called Tecno.
Congratulations to all who have helped build our encyclopedia! – Sb, B
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View it! is a new tool to access all the images related to articles on Wikipedia. It was created to show Wikipedians relevant Commons media depicting, or otherwise related to, the article they are looking at.
The goal of View it! is to enrich content pages by illustrating a given subject, and aid Wikipedia editors by surfacing images that can be used in articles. This tool allows readers access to the breadth of images available on Commons, beyond the limited images (if any) curated for inclusion in the article.
The primary way to use View it! is a user script, which can be installed using the instructions on Meta.
View it! has two different versions which can be installed, depending on the type of experience you would like. With the Lite version, the user script simply adds a "View" tab to the page, which will link you to the image results from our Toolforge project. The Full version will actually display the images on the Wikipedia page, with a “View” tab that opens a full-screen gallery. Both of these versions ultimately lead to the view-it.toolforge.org page, where more advanced features can also be accessed.
In the Lite version, which is now mostly stable, the "View" tab will have the number of results (if any) in parentheses. Clicking the button will take users in a new window to Toolforge and the results. In the Full version, which is actively being developed, users will see an image carousel across the top of articles. The carousel can be expanded, while clicking the tab opens a dedicated gallery page. Eventually, we plan for the carousel to be accessible from the edit mode, so that editors can use this tool to click to select images to insert while editing.
View it! uses the Commons API to search for images based on properties associated with the article. The default configuration displays images which are either in an article’s associated Commons category (as listed in its Wikidata item) or where the article matches the value of a Commons image's Wikidata "depicts" statement. When searching directly on Toolforge, you can search any Q-number. And with the advanced search, you can view results with other properties: "Main subject" (P921), "Created by" (P170), and "Commons Category" (P373). You can also add freeform text to the search, which comes in handy when looking for images of buildings or neighborhoods in a particular city, specific images from a creator (like images of the moon from NASA), or similar situations. You can also adjust the results for specific assessments and resolutions. When an image is clicked, you're taken directly to the file on Commons, where you can copy code to add the image to the article. The tool runs on a View it! API we built, which is the same one that powers the user scripts.
NEW: You can now add an image directly from the View it! results! When you edit an article, you will see a copy button on each image in the View it! results. You can copy the code for the selected image and paste it into the editor - works in both visual and source editor.
During development, we held many community discussions about the tool, and collected additional feedback through View it! talk pages on Wikipedia and Meta. From user suggestions, further features were developed, such as the advanced search (which can be accessed through Toolforge). Advanced search allows for more refined searching, including free text, using alternate statements, and Commons category results.
View it! is currently in use by 114 users, and has particularly been helpful on smaller wikis to help add images to articles that previously did not have any. View it! is also valuable for identifying items with inaccurate data statements, and can be used to improve associated metadata and results.
While the Full version is currently usable, it is under active development. We are working on more editor-focused features, such as improving the inserting an image while editing feature. If you'd like to provide suggestions or feedback on those features, or anything else, please comment on this Signpost article, or visit the View it! Talk page. The team responds to all comments we receive, and we incorporate good ideas into our design. Please check out our Launch video from January 12th!
Everything you're ever told in a tour is wrong. Well, maybe not everything, but stories and ideas turn into facts, which telephone-game into new facts. For a historian who loves to tour historic sites, it's a deeply concerning notion.
If you've ever taken a guided tour of Grand Central Terminal in New York City, I humbly hope you will put aside what you've learned. It's been my single largest project to rewrite this Wikipedia entry – on one of the busiest train stations in the country – and find out the truth behind widely repeated myths. I teamed up with about a half-dozen other Wikipedians, historians, journalists, and photographers to find the truth and write out this immense project. It's there that we began myth-busting most of the modern works about Grand Central.
There's four bold statements, repeated in semi-official tours of the terminal (and especially for its centennial in 2013) that we'll cover in this article. Journalists attending the celebratory events that year are responsible for repeating these statements. They've stood out as so unbelievable that I felt they warranted looking into.
I'm hoping to better establish a permanent record on these. Let's dive into the first tale. While some sources have identified it as opalescent glass, due to its opacity, news began spreading the myth of "pure opal" in 1999 and 2000 – and again in 2006. Wikipedia (!) picked up this tale in 2006, where it remained until 2013. In this time, Smithsonian Magazine, PBS, LA Times, CNET, Mass Transit Magazine, 6sqft, Time Out New York, and even Grand Central Terminal's official website picked up this idea as a fact. Bill Burns was the first one to act against this myth, emailing research to the news site Untapped Cities. He emailed me as well, and working with User:Epicgenius, we found enough reliable sources to dispel the myth, and found no mentions of "opal" prior to 1999; instead sources referred to the clockfaces as glass. The New York Transit Museum, which has one of the original clock faces (replaced after being shot out with a bullet or BB), confirmed that their clock face is made of opal glass. And so, using all of our research, Untapped Cities published "Is the Grand Central Clock Worth $20 Million?", finally disproving this rumor in a concrete way.
The second "fact" is easy to disprove, again simply with how it's been described over time. There is a massive glass-faced clock on the building's exterior, but it's not from Tiffany Studios. Sources from 1995 into the present day claim it, again including Grand Central Terminal's own website. But yet most of the sources that mention the clock, and all those from before 1995, do not mention Tiffany. Some go far into detail about the clock, and the notable glassmaker would have been mentioned.
The third "fact" is a little trickier. All good lies have some truth to them. The M42 sub-basement and power station actually was an area of concern during World War II, according to reputable author Sam Roberts. Its entrances were patrolled by armed guards, and the space was removed from any floor plans of the building. He even claims the saboteurs met in the terminal, by its information booth and in its newsreel theater. These facts are themselves somewhat questionable, though the reliable source merits their inclusion in the M42 article. But any ideas of a failed sabotage event taking place there are debunked by Roberts in his Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America. The more obvious falsehood is about secrecy: the station was far from secret, it was even advertised! It saw an incredible amount of press coverage over the century.
The fourth myth is perplexing. Every source states something similar, but different. It is a plain fact that several of the constellations are correct, and some are reversed, along with the overall arrangement on the ceiling. So the ceiling is neither fully correct or fully backwards. A pamphlet from when the terminal opened claimed "it is safe to say that many school children will go to the Grand Central Terminal to study this representation of the heavens." So at least some of the New York Central Railroad's staff believed the mural to be correct. What's great is you can read The New York Times' March 1913 account of a Westchester commuter who noticed the constellation mistakes, not even a month after the station opened in 1913. I believe the Vanderbilts claimed the mural to represent a "divine perspective" as a cover-up for such a literally massive mistake. So there's never been agreement over what's incorrect or why, and the only way I imagine finding the truth is if some of the artists, painters, or astronomers had some private notes or journals. All of the explanations either involve disinterest in the technicalities, finger-pointing, or the boisterous claim that it was intentionally incorrect.
My takeaway is, why even bother making up or believing in such tall tales? The strongly-documented history of the terminal is an interesting story enough. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
I bought Wikipedia last week. Well, in fact, I only bought volume 147 of the German print version of Wikipedia, which started with the article on 'Anarchismus in den Niederlanden' and ended with the article on 'Anatopia'. As it happens, it wasn't even the complete German language version of Wikipedia that was printed, as it was missing images and even recent references – and it was the 2016 version. This volume of over 700 pages cost me EUR 87.03, including postage and taxes. Foolish, of course: the information was, first of all, already outdated at the moment I bought this volume. Secondly, it was incomplete, given the lack of images and recent text and references, and overall, the paper version doesn’t have all the extras that an online version has (like working hyperlinks, searching, zooming in, and switching to other language versions). But then again, I like to do foolish things.
A printed version of Wikipedia is nonsense, of course, as Wikipedia holds not just the current version, but the history of all its articles. Well, is it nonsense? Some call it art, or use it to show the size of all human knowledge. The exhibitions of Michael Mandiberg in New York (2015), Berlin (2016), Ghent and Belgium (2018) were clearly intended to help understand the true size of Wikipedia, or in the artist's words "both a utilitarian visualization of the largest accumulation of human knowledge and a poetic gesture towards the futility of the scale of big data".[1]
We were lucky: Mandiberg, helped by the Lulu company, didn't print the complete Wikipedia. In New York he made his case with 106 printed volumes out of the 7,473 volumes that would have been needed to print the complete English language version of Wikipedia in 2015. In Berlin dozens of volumes were displayed (out of the needed 3,406 for the full German language version). If you want to buy a volume, print-on-demand technology will still cater to you. If you want to see how a print Wikipedia looks in 2023, you have to go to Eindhoven (in the Netherlands) and visit the current exhibition (open till March 2023) in the futuristic building Evoluon, where the Dutch language Wikipedia can be seen printed in 68 books of 700 pages each.
It gets far wackier than art exhibits, though: Books LLC, in Memphis, was a company that sold books compiled from a category of articles from Wikipedia. In 2009, they had some 224,000 titles for sale, but it looks like they went defunct some time around 2017. One of the last volumes they published was Graffiti in the United States (2013), ISBN 9781233100187. Earlier publications included such titles as Dam disasters (2011) ISBN 9781156436356 and 20th-century national presidents in Africa (2010), ISBN 978-1-15-597499-6, the latter of which consisted of fifty Wikipedia articles glued together in one volume, for sale at $32. No kidding: see the photo.
Back to where we started: the economics of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not for sale, for several reasons. The most important reason is that the capital of Wikipedia is its community. Members of our community write the text, create the images, and edit the encyclopedia. The articles may be licensed under Creative Commons, but the users are not. One nice thing about our licensing arrangement is that, in theory, we could just pick up the content and continue elsewhere (although this still requires the support of a large community that can help build the house further). The Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers on which the different language versions run, but the Foundation doesn't own the content. Indeed, Wikipedia as a concept looks like something so odd it can never work in practice. That's why it does.
Specifically, I'm referring to images that may be valuable, but which need loads of context – and how we should treat them at featured pictures, picture of the day, and other places where that context might end up getting stripped. And I should warn: This might get pretty uncomfortable. The examples I've chosen largely relate to racism and racial violence, and, while I haven't shown the worst image discussed, there are dead people on this page.
Let's start with the least disturbing examples (at least visually), because I would rather that people reading this know what's coming before the worst images are on their screen.
"If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." This is Hitler's prophecy in a poster from 1941 that was displayed at Nazi Party offices. Given the claims the German populace didn't know about the Holocaust, this is actually rather good evidence to counter falsehoods. But it's also a literal quotation from Hitler, in a visually attractive form. This one was actually up for featured picture, but was rejected. I'm not sure if we made the right choice or not, because since then it's found a use – countering propaganda in various other articles.
This is Jefferson Shields, who's described as the "personal servant" – which may well be a euphemism for "slave" – of Colonel James Kerr Edmondson of the 27th Virginia Infantry Regiment. He did nothing wrong. However, let's look at our article, Military history of African Americans in the American Civil War:
| “ | Shields attended many reunions and was voted in as a member of the Stonewall Brigade at a reunion in Staunton, Virginia. He was buried with a military grave marker that reads "Jefferson Shields, Pvt. Co. H 27th Va. Inf., Stonewall Brigade, Confederate States Army" at Evergeen Cemetery, Lexington, Virginia.
Jefferson Shields was not enlisted in the Confederate Army. The Sons of Confederate Veterans awarded him the honorary rank of Private decades after his death. The Confederate Army did not allow slaves to enlist. His image, along with other "black Confederates", helped to reinforce the stereotype of the "happy slave" narrative, according to historian Kevin M. Levin. |
” |
So, if I were to restore this image and get it to the main page, would this help open a conversation about how, in the 1970s, as the Civil Rights Movement was fighting for African American rights, groups in the South tried to make the case that everything was fine before the American Civil War, and were rewriting the past to do so? Or would it just give a nice image to racists who can strip out all this context and use it to promote their views?
File:Lynching2.jpg is a featured picture, and it has never – and likely will never – appear on the main page. In fact, it can't even appear in this article unless I get this page whitelisted, because images of lynching were used for vandalism. There's a lot of problems with this type of image: first of all, the original publications often came with captions describing who the people supposedly were, and these were inevitably based on the accusations of the racist mob who lynched the person. So, not only are they images of a murder victim, they're also connected to claims that said murder victim raped a white woman, or murdered a white man, or other such claims meant to incite hatred against them. There is no evidence that any of that's true: this was a common lie used to justify random murders. And there are racists who would be very, very excited to see photographs of dead black people.
In a discussion in May 2022, it was pretty much universally agreed that this image was exploitative, poorly documented, and more shocking than encyclopedic.
I do have a sort of solution to this one:
These are illustrations of, respectively, the 1906 Atlanta race riot from Le Petit Journal, and the Rock Springs massacre from Harper's Weekly. There are advantages, sometimes, to not using photographs: it preserves the victims' dignity, as opposed to just showing corpses posed sensationally.
Of course, that does lead to the question of why I'm fine with this picture of the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, by Alexander Gardner. But then, I don't think there are easy solutions to any of this, and I also don't think that one person should decide policy all by themselves. Give your own opinions in the comments, and I'll continue with my policy of trying to alert the community to anything controversial coming up on Picture of the Day.
Wikipedia:Offensive material and WP:NOTCENSORED provide some advice. The first is perhaps most relevant here:
| “ | Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission encompasses the inclusion of material that may offend. Wikipedia is not censored. However, offensive words and offensive images should not be included unless they are treated in an encyclopedic manner. Material that would be considered vulgar or obscene by typical Wikipedia readers should be used if and only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available. | ” |
And that's great advice when it comes to articles. Other than the lynching image (which has issues of being especially poorly documented: We don't even know where it was taken), all of the above add a lot to their respective articles. But once we begin looking at featured pictures or putting them on the Main Page as part of Picture of the Day, we start to strip the context, begin to move them away from that encyclopedic context that moves us from simply offensive or upsetting. We also draw much more attention to them, and draw attention in places where people won't be expecting such images. People coming to our articles on battles, tragedies, racial violence and suchlike can reasonably expect there might be some challenging material. Pictures of lynchings aren't entirely unexpected in our article on lynching. Pictures of dead soldiers aren't entirely unexpected in articles on wars and battles.
But we also have to consider, even if only briefly, what it means when that image gets released into the wild. Will it primarily serve to educate, or is it more likely to be spread around by racists as propaganda for their views, or to intimidate groups of people away? I think we need to consider just how educational the image is, and weigh that against the potential harms, and the acceptable balance between those two is going to change when we move away from the context of an article into the much more limited context of the main page.
As I said, I don't think these are easy questions, but they're ones we should at least consider. I think the potential good should outweigh the potential harms, at least once you consider the chances of each.
Sick of waiting eons for a proposed deletion to go through for a landmass that obviously needs it?
Many kilobytes of discussion, workshopping, and debate at Wikipedia:Village Asthenosphere (policy) concluded this week with a decision to adopt several new criteria – L3, L4 and L5 – for speedy deletion of land masses, rock formations, and other geological features.
Long-time editor User:Ariana Granite said, in opening the RfC:
| “ | The problem we're having now is that there is a lot of new material being formed on Wikipedia, typically when articles in suspension settle out of the fluid in which they're entrained, come to rest against a barrier, and over a period of time, ions carried in groundwater chemically precipitate to form new crystalline material between the infoboxes and categories. And there are too damn many of them, and they aren't very good. It's not the Hadean eon anymore. | ” |
Many who supported the RfC, including Ariana, argued that problems were being caused by outdated policies enacted billions of years ago, when Wikipedia was still cooling down from its original formation. Wikipedia:Be volcanic, a policy written during the Hadean eon (and still one of our 5 Speleothems), encourages users to "simply deposit material without talking about it". Some argued that this was no longer appropriate for an encyclopedia whose surface is now mostly covered by water.
"I'm not saying that we never see writing created by exposing reliable sources to elevated temperatures and pressures which cause them to recrystallize dramatically", said administrator User:CliffordWeathering. "Just that they overwhelm our review processes, and we need some way to handle substandard content without waiting seven million years for an Articles for Subduction discussion to close. That's too long."
Several geologically speedy deletion criteria already existed, like L1 (patent scree) and L2 (uncooled magma), but RfC participants reached a solid consensus that more were necessary to deal with quality issues. In fact, the discussion broke records, meriting its inclusion in Wikipedia:Times that Wikipedians reached a consensus harder than Mohs 9.5.
The three criteria to be added are L3 (pure sediment and blatant alluvium), L4 (recreation of material that was subducted at a convergent boundary), and L5 (formations available as identical copies on Wikimedia Plutons).
Like the previously existing geologically speedy deletion criteria, L3, L4 and L5 can be added to any formation that meets them, whether during newly uplifted land patrol or in the course of editing Wikipedia normally. It is estimated that it will take some time to get through an initial surge in articles tagged under the new criteria. Admin User:JasperQuartz, who carries out speedy deletions regularly, told the Signpost:
| “ | There's going to be a lot to deal with in the beginning. It's going to take us a while to get to the point where you can expect someone to take care of blatant alluvium the same millennium you tag it; it still requires some manual review, and realistically, for this first spate of tags, it's been taking a couple of glacial periods for someone to get around to it. But if you're an administrator, and you're reading this, I encourage you to help out and deal with the backlog: it's fun, it's rewarding, and it helps keep Wikipedia a quality resource. | ” |
Of course, there have been concerns that deletions may proceed without sufficient care. User:Ash Slater warned, in her RfC close, that editors should "avoid going pyroclastic" and avoid the urge to tag something as soon as it's created: "Newly uplifted land patrollers have a guideline to wait 7,000 years for the original editor to improve articles before tagging them, which it would be wise for us to keep in mind".
The new criteria are as follows:
This applies to pages that consist solely of material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, or loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. This also applies to redirects that exist because of glacial deposition. Articles about notable sedimentary or alluvial deposits are acceptable if it is clear that they have undergone lithification.
This applies to sufficiently identical copies, having any title, of a page brought to the mantle via its most recent discussion (whether it is Wikipedia:Landmasses for subduction, Wikipedia:Miscellany for magmification, Wikipedia:Categories for compression or Wikipedia:Templates for liquefaction.
It excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the subducted version, and landmasses for which the subduction zone is no longer active. It excludes pages in userspace and draftspace where the content was converted to a draft for explicit metamorphic processes (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's subduction policy). This criterion also does not cover content brought to the surface via a subduction review or diapir, or that was only subducted via proposed deletion (including discussions closed as "soft subduct").
Provided the following conditions are met:
When asked about the broader implications of this new policy, members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Geology had a number of comments, including "This isn't real", and "What the hell are you talking about?"
Project coordinator Hubert Glockenspiel said:
| “ | This whole article is made up, including the part where you reached out to WikiProject Geology for comment and they had no idea what you were talking about. No such communication ever occurred. And neither did this one you're quoting from right now. Indeed, there is no such editor as "Hubert Glockenspiel" on the English Wikipedia, and he certainly isn't the coordinator of WikiProject Geology. This paragraph was not written by a real person; it is just JPxG shitposting. | ” |
Thanks, Hubert! We'll be looking forward to your takes in the months going forward.
I'd like to credit the inspiration behind writing this to a piece by Samo Burja in Palladium Magazine that got me thinking about the tendency of institutions to evolve over time to incorporate more and more inwardly-focused and rules-bound processes.
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From shortly after its creation in the early wiki-days of 2003, until a point in November 2006, the article Gadsby (novel), about a work that is a lipogram, was itself a lipogram. In other words, both the novel, and the Wikipedia article about the novel, were written without the letter "E". There had been some attempts before 2006 to revert the article to standard English, but it looks like either the joke was too good to spoil, or the sense of fun and wonder in creating not just an incredible free contribution to human knowledge extended to the fun and wonder of trying out constrained writing.
What happened on that fateful day in November? Why did the forces of normality and mundanity win? Was it a sign of the future of a rigid, formalized, bureaucratized, and un-fun experience for contributors? Will another recursive word-experiment ever be possible again?
As for the original author, an anonymous user – perhaps they joined us as a named account, and are still around? The editor who broke the three-year E-less run is now an administrator, and the person who first lipogram-ized it hasn't been seen since 2020.
Lipogram-izing the article was a Wikifun challenge in 2004. Now, Wikifun was not exactly a big deal, but it wasn't outlandish at the time, nor attended by the officially irredeemable. Remember when Wikifun was allowed? Or any fun? We all knew it was too good to last.
The anti-anti-lipogrammers used edit summaries like "Deleted non lipogrammatical sentence" as late as 2008. The word "novel" appeared in the lede sporadically, apparently shoving aside "work of fiction" to come home to roost for good in late 2008.
In-article comments asked well-meaning editors who were not in on the joke not to add the dreaded vowel, even being upgraded to ASCII art in a December 2008 edit just before they were removed. Things went on like that, with strictly under-the-radar fun allowed, until late 2010, when an official, sternly worded editnotice, with promises of "administrator action or warnings" for those who dare to restore the fun, was added.
The editnotice is still in place, and I sure don't encourage anybody to test it. They helpfully say you can go have your fun on another website, an active community devoted to all manner of wiki-flavored jokes and japes. You can tell it's from 2010 because this other website is Uncyclopedia.
What else happened in November ought-six? Google made its first billion-dollar purchase.
Coincidence, or are these both symptoms of the beginnings of the modern, corporatized, hyper-real, buttoned-down, no-fun-allowed (unless profitable) World Wide Web? Or to use a more modern word, "cyberspace" – whose usage has more often than not seemed to me to ironically miss the intent of the term's creator (or at least its popularizer). William Gibson was not praising a future digital Eden: quite the opposite, he was sharing his dystopian future visions with us as a warning.
The Signpost is trialling a bi-monthly issue frequency, which is a very good thing: Next issue, we'll have a more reasonable half a month's worth of featured content, which I think is a lot more digestible than the summaries of twenty-one articles and fifteen featured lists we have this issue. In addition, if we keep this up, when I inevitably miss a deadline at some point, instead of having to spike an entire month of featured content, I can just do a full month of coverage next issue. (You can't put two months of content in an issue – it makes the article too long – but we've proven for years you can put one month in them.)
So, Happy New Year, and may the new reign of bimonthly issues reign eternal, as long as "bimonthly" never gets its other meaning of "once every two months".
This month, I've borrowed two descriptions, Robert Nimmo and Thomas Hardy, from the other newsletter I work on, The Bugle. They were written by Ian Rose after Nick-D.
See you in two weeks!
Twenty-one featured articles were promoted this period.
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Twenty-five featured pictures were promoted this period, including the ones at the top and bottom of this article.
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One featured topic, by Parsecboy, was promoted this period.
Fifteen featured lists were promoted this period.
It's that tiiiiiiime of year...
The five topics up top exert the most influence over this list. First up it's Jeffrey Dahmer, which at least one of us is very angry about, who also brought in the man who killed him. Then it's the war in Ukraine, which not only came in second, but also brought in the two countries (#9, #40), their leaders (#7, #29) and two other related articles; the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which brought in FIFA World Cup and the stars of the final (#11 and #39); the ever-present Deaths in [year], accompanied by two individuals who died, including Queen Elizabeth II, who brought in her son, father and daughter-in-law.
Other than those, this list is mostly populated by the usual serving of film and TV. Nine films made it on this year, including all three Marvel films, the Dark Knight's latest outing, Tom Cruise's latest vehicle (and Tom Cruise), the big one from last year, two Indian action films, and the biggest film of the year in multiple senses. There's also the returns of Stranger Things, Westeros, Middle-Earth and debaucherous teens. Three biopics other than #1's also brought their subjects onto here. Outside of the world of entertainment, there's also a man who loves to entertain, two people far too many saw as entertainment, and a man whose fall was very entertaining. Modern British politics also brought in Elizabeth's last prime minister and her successor. This report was slightly later than usual (largely my fault), but we hope you enjoy!
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | About | Peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jeffrey Dahmer | 
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54,931,777 | 
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In the short time this annual list has been made, including a test run before the first, the top article tends to be unquestionable: Deaths in [year] because it's a part of life with a link on the main page, 2016 was the year Donald Trump got elected, 2019 was the year of Avengers: Endgame and 2020 was the year of COVID-19. But 2022 is not the year of Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Unlike overtly sensitive people, my problem is not that a show on Dahmer exists (was never going to to watch it anyway), only that all its viewers went to Wikipedia afterwards and led to this disgrace - fascination with serial killers is nothing new, as Ted Bundy was third in 2019, but giving #1 to a cannibal murderer who's been dead for 28 years because of a Netflix show is disgusting. And sadly, there was no Wednesday Addams to overtake him here. Starting off with the armed conflict right below would be a sad beginning, but at least it would be an entry that represented this year! In short, shame on everyone who let this happen. | Sep. 25 (4 days after the Netflix show) |
| 2 | 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine |
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"War, huh, yeah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"
In the early hours of the European morning, on 24 February, Russian forces entered Ukraine. Some expected it, others did not, but the reality in Ukraine was now that of war. Millions chose to flee. Others remained, choosing to face the coming onslaught. Many, including Russia's president (#7) and the Russian Army, did not expect the war to last long, with Russian troops on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine's president (#29) was offered an airlift. However, to the surprise of most, Ukraine did not fall. Russia's forces achieved some success, but not much, and were for the most part humiliated by a nation less than a third their size. In the end they gave up on taking Kyiv and retreated to focus on the east, leaving behind the vestiges of the haunting crimes they had committed in towns such as Bucha. Thereafter it became a slow, grinding conflict slowly advancing through cities in ruins, as images of the hell on earth in Azovstal filtered around the world. As western aid began to filter through into Ukraine's army, it began to drive back in some areas, and managed to retake large tracts of the Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts taken at the start of the war. Today the war remains largely static, as the missiles still rain down. |
Feb. 24 (starts) |
| 3 | 2022 FIFA World Cup |
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46,794,250 | 
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Once again, we've come around to the biggest sporting event in the world! This one was controversial before it even began. The tournament was hosted by Qatar - because of FIFA corruption. And then FIFA banned teams from protesting about it. However, once the football started, boy it was good. The group stages ended with a number of upsets itself - Argentina lost their opening game to Saudi Arabia, dubbed the biggest world cup upset of all time (Argentina would still qualify). Some teams that should have qualified didn't: Denmark (ranked 11th globally), Germany (ranked 12th, and 2014 champions) and Belgium (ranked 2nd, and third-placed last time around). And a team qualified that nobody expected: Morocco. The Dec. 1 games - at one point or another all four of the teams in Group E were in a position to qualify. The round-of-16 featured only one upset - Morocco dispensing Spain in a penalty shoot-out. The quarter finals almost featured the greatest comeback, with Netherlands scoring with the final kick of the game to force extra time, only to lose on penalties. Meanwhile, #10 left the pitch in tears after his Portugal were dispensed by shock performer Morocco. The semis featured no shocks, as Argentina beat Croatia (preventing a second consecutive final) and France beat Morocco. The final was a classic for the ages - although France only bothered turning up with 10 minutes of regular time to go, they managed to force penalties - which they ultimately lost. And so, Argentina won the tournament, making #11 (in my humble opinion) the undisputed GOAT (although others are welcome to disagree). Interestingly, Argentina's last title was 1986, when a contender for undisputed GOAT played for the team. |
Dec. 1 (a very insane final day of two groups) |
| 4 | Deaths in 2022 | 
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46,512,168 | 
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Death is a depressing thing, and 2022 marked many prominent deaths. The most notable included heads of state, such as United Arab Emirates president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (who fell victim to an assassin's bullet in July), this report's #5, former Chinese paramount leader Jiang Zemin (who died from leukemia in November), and Pope Benedict XVI (who died just as the year came to a close). Beyond leaders, we lost Pelé, Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, Barbara Walters, Vivienne Westwood, Kevin Conroy, and (sadly) too many more to list here. It may be inevitable that much-loved figures will ultimately pass on, but that doesn't make it any less sad. | Sep. 8 (see below) |
| 5 | Elizabeth II | 
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45,348,181 | 
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2022 would already be the year where Her Majesty celebrated 70 years as the British monarch. And ultimately it also ended her reign as London Bridge fell and Elizabeth died the age of 96 - her mother lived a century, it was clear she would last long. After her death, the Queen's article received a massive amount of views seen only every few years, such as Michael Jackson and David Bowie after their deaths in 2009 and 2016 respectively. Her Majesty only got less views in a week than Kobe Bryant after his death in January 2020 (and then the second biggest week was taken by the real life horror story atop this list, as if I didn't have enough to gripe against that guy and those who watched his show). Similar commotion happened during the national mourning period of 10 days, where the Queen lay in state in Westminster Hall from 14 to 19 September, during which time an estimated 250,000 people queued (confirming the British do indeed like a good queue!) to pay their respects, and her state funeral, one of the United Kingdom's most watched special television broadcasts, surpassing the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, the previous most watched royal event of the 21st century. Elizabeth was interred with her husband Philip in a chapel named after her father, and her eldest child was promoted from Prince of Wales to King Charles III after decades waiting.
And if you didn't have enough of the British Royals as they took over the news in September, The Crown returned in November, with Elizabeth played by Imelda Staunton and remembering how the early 90s was one of the worst periods for the House of Windsor, with divorces, scandals, fires, and the like. |
Sep. 8 (died) |
| 6 | Elon Musk | 
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In last year's report, a user said they had "no real interest in discussing Elon Musk anymore", and that they didn't want to talk about him and didn't want to hear about him. While there's no Wario costume this time around, the user will have undoubtedly heard about Elon Musk this year, so I'll do him a favour and write the report on him instead. To put it simply, Elon Musk bought Twitter this year. Then he started Q-ceiving his fans into thinking they've all suddenly figured out Wikipedia (look, we're in the report, too!) is run by the CIA and conspiring against him, because [redacted]; the fans now want him to buy Wikipedia. I officially want to scream into the void, too, Wario, and now never want to hear this man's name again. | Apr. 26 (buys Twitter) |
| 7 | Vladimir Putin |
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25,808,228 | 
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This was the year Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sorry to begin by stating the obvious, but it was unquestionably the biggest thing he did this year, as well as the worst, and the biggest mistake. After all, he is now seen across the free world as a warmongering mass murderer, even though this was not the year he became that. Rather, it was the year we finally saw him for who he was. | Feb. 24 (orders invasion) |
| 8 | Charles III |
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Charles has got a promotion! A promotion that he has been in line for 70 years. Most people celebrate a promotion, but Charlie's came on the same day his mum died. Talk about bad luck! In all seriousness, he took it rather well. As soon as his mum died, and he became King, he was busy, and in the centre of public attention. His only hiccup was when a pen wouldn't work. Can you blame him, few people are rational after a loss, and most of us get more personal time. All-in-all I would say a relatively successful first few months in the role. Get prepared to see him here again next year, though probably further down, following his coronation in May. | Sep. 8 (becomes King) |
| 9 | Ukraine | 
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23,612,535 | 
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Contrary to popular belief, the nation of Ukraine has had a long history of independent existence, or as part of various empires, before it was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1793. That's right. The Russian/Soviet province of Ukraine had a shorter existence than the United States. The confusion comes from equating "Russia", the country established by the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1547, with "the Rus", the Slavic-speaking descendants of Norse invaders ("Rus" is derived from the Old Norse word for "rowers") who founded various settlements around the Volga River in the first millennium AD. While some people wish us to equate the two, doing so is akin to saying that, as Europeans have always existed, the European Union has always existed. | Feb. 24 (invaded) |
| 10 | Cristiano Ronaldo |
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12 months ago, one of my colleagues reported a relatively strong year for the Portuguese super-star, the year in which he re-joined Manchester United. Unfortunately, I am here today to report on his fall. And boy, it was a bad one. Ronaldo started this year with his longest goal scoring drought for 12 years - finally scoring his first goal of the calendar year in mid-February, amoungst a background of strained relationships with the manager and team-mates. Although he hit a few milestones, and picked up a few domestic league accolades, he had a disappointing 2021-22 season, by Ronaldo's standards. One of the most significant "failings" of the year was United's sixth placed finish, meaning the team wouldn't qualify for the 2022-23 Champions League. Ronaldo (or more specifically his manager) spent the summer break trying to secure a transfer to a team who would compete in the Champions League, but to no avail. Ronaldo's 2022-23 season (to date) was even worse than the end of the 2021-22 season, scoring just 3 goals in 16 appearances for his club. But, in mid-November, domestic football took a break for the FIFA World Cup, widely seen as Ronaldo's last chance to make a lasting mark on the stage of international football (he already made a mark on continental football by taking Portugal to the UEFA Euro 2016 title). Ronaldo and Portugal started their campaign relatively strongly finishing top of their group. Ronaldo scored one goal in the process - becoming the first player to score in five World Cups. Portugal went on to dominate Switzerland in the round of 16, although Ronaldo wouldn't join the fun until the 74th minute. Ronaldo didn't start in the quarter final with Morocco either, joining the match in the 55th minute. However, Portugal lost. Ronaldo left the field in tears, in the knowledge that this would likely be his last World Cup. But, believe it or not, this wasn't the biggest Ronaldo story of the World Cup. On 14 November, the week before the World Cup, a bombshell interview was published. I won't go into details, but he criticised almost every aspect of his club. United responded by seeking legal action under breach of contract. On 22 November, 2 days before he started his world cup campaign, United and Ronaldo parted ways, under mutual agreement. Despite Ronaldo stating that he wanted to "to retire with dignity - Not In USA, Qatar Or Dubai", Ronaldo is going to play for Al Nassr, in Saudi Arabia. So much for retiring with dignity. |
Dec. 10 (eliminated by Morocco) |
| 11 | Lionel Messi |
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21,973,661 | 
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Below his rival here, but certainly proven to be the better one, as La Pulguita finally matched Diego Maradona - who Argentina considers God for what he did one year before Messi was born - by winning #3 in a way comparable to Noah in how many beasts of burden he was carrying around. Unlike in 2014, where the loss in the final showed he didn't deserve to be chosen as the best player in the championship, Messi was the unquestionable greatest to hit the Qatari fields, with seven goals at mostly crucial times and breaking the record for most World Cup matches played to finish off a run of five tournaments showing why so many people call the Argentinian the greatest footballer ever, or at least the only one who could be mentioned in the same breath as Maradona and Pelé. And to bring it back to CR7, the Portuguese one only didn't finish the year out of a job because the nation who gave the one bad moment of Messi's World Cup went to his rescue (Leo's still a crucial part of Paris St. Germain, thanks for asking). | Dec. 18 (won World Cup) |
| 12 | Amber Heard |
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I Heard this case may be out of my Deppth, but I'll give it a go anyway.
Before this year, the most you might have heard about these two was that they were married, broke Australian biosecurity laws and gave a lifeless apology, and then got a divorce. And then all of a sudden, they were everywhere. Based on the publicity these two got this year for the lawsuit you have no doubt heard (!) about, the unacquainted observer might assume that Depp sued Heard for abuse or battery or at the very least a little robbery. But nope, all of the hubbub for Heard was actually thanks to a mere defamation suit that Depp filed against his ex-wife after she mentioned being the victim of domestic abuse in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed that, and I feel the need to emphasize this, never mentioned him by name. The suit might have been a long time coming, though, since their contentious dropped divorce suit in 2016 involved Heard referencing his abuse, and he lost a case in the UK against The Sun after a judge ruled that 12 out of the 14 instances of his abuse alleged by Heard were true. Third time's a charm, I guess! There's plenty out there to suggest that the case was skewed in his favor, including unearthed documents (that were unearthed by none other than his own fans) that reveal just how much was kept from being used against him in the trial. But the most striking part of all of this has less to do with the case itself, which arguably should have never been televised at Depp's request to begin with, and more to do with the public's reaction: the cultish support of Depp measured against the vicious, unrelenting vitriol toward Heard. No matter where you fall on this case, there is no denying that there was a hate campaign against Amber Heard, and it worked like a charm. Dozens of videos made by quack "body language analysts" alleging that, because Amber's thumb twitched seven minutes into her testimony, she must be lying. Droves of fans parked outside of the courthouse waiting with signs to support Depp while booing and cursing at Heard. Memes aplenty about stepped-on bees and shat-in beds that didn't ever really prove much other than that the general public considers not being likable as a woman in Hollywood a criminal offense. Entire studies done to analyze the behaviors of Twitter accounts dedicated entirely to turning the algorithm against Heard. Derisive parodies of Heard's behavior in the courtroom coupled with the first Google result after their two names together being "funny moments". Experts worrying that this case alone could open up whole new avenues for abusers to trap their victims. If you have ever wondered why the #MeToo movement took so long to happen, look no further! How charming. |
Apr. 21 (Depp testifies in the trial) |
| 14 | Johnny Depp |
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19,971,788 | |||
| 13 | FIFA World Cup |
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150 years ago, the first international 150 years ago, the first international association football game was played, between England and Scotland
This year (#3), the men have been displaced 5 months because FIFA elected to host it in a desert for some reason. Next year, the women will have their turn. |
Dec. 18 (2022 final) |
| 15 | United States |
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18,846,032 | 
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When I was a kid, I was flooded with media depicting the clash of the global titans: Wargames, Rocky IV (That one wasn't subtle), Red Dawn, and my personal favourite, "Two Tribes", which has crept up my playlist again in recent months. Now we seem to be playing out a repeat, only now the rules have been thrown out, and no one knows what the outcome will be. Odd thing is, for all the messianic demonization Vladimir Putin has been throwing at the US in the last year, the US and Russia actually have a lot in common. They're both founded on the internal colonisation, subjugation and cultural destruction of their native populations, they both embrace the mysticism of their wild frontiers, and they both have a strong sense of their own cultural destiny. Events have shown that, at least as far as Putin is concerned, those destinies, as of now, cannot coexist. | Feb. 24 (Russia invades Ukraine) |
| 16 | Russo-Ukrainian War |
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18,817,027 | 
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This year's pedant's article (I, ironically, probably apostrophe'd that wrong) is Russo-Ukrainian War, the umbrella term for the period of conflict between Russia and Ukraine stretching back to the little green men. You see, Russia has basically been at war with Ukraine for the past nine years, although they weren't officially so until this year, and still aren't officially "at war". The previous fighting consisted of Ukraine fighting rebel groups in Crimea and the Donbass, all of which were supported by Russia and Russian soldiers pretending to be separatist rebels. What a weird dance to avoid retribution. | Feb. 24 (invasion) |
| 17 | Andrew Tate |
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17,641,062 | 
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Ah, karma. She is a bitch, and that's probably exactly how Tate described her after meeting her at the end of this year, just like how he seems to describe most women. Don't believe me? That means you've managed to avoid the social media maelstrom conjured up by a man who proudly wears the badge of being "absolutely a misogynist" and also unironically calls himself "Cobra Tate". Lucky you.
The former kickboxer started his Hustler's University program (real classy name) last year, which promised to teach men and boys as young as 13 how to take advantage of ever-reliable ventures like cryptocurrency and dropshipping. This was, of course, in exchange for their flooding TikTok with clips of him on manosphere podcasts, where he, among other things, encouraged violence against women, called women men's property, and said women can't drive. Despite him earning an ever bigger following of impressionable young men due to social media algorithms heavily promoting these clips, his content promptly got banned from nearly every notable social media platform in the middle of this year. Not long after, #6 on this list reinstated his Twitter account, which led to him briefly beefing with and then getting absolutely roasted by climate activist Greta Thunberg at the end of this year, then getting arrested in Romania on charges of human trafficking, rape, and organized crime. So, yes, karma is a bitch. And bitches get stuff done. |
Dec. 30 (arrested) |
| 18 | House of the Dragon |
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Three years after the epic misfire that was the Game of Thrones final season, HBO decides to go back to Westeros, in a prequel series based on the novel Fire & Blood focusing on the incestuous dragonriders of House Targaryen. Delivering the same high production values, court intrigue, occasional battles, and well-regarded British actors (this time with many of them having to wear blonde wigs), House of the Dragon got great reviews and showed disillusioned fans that some good can still come from the world created by George R. R. Martin, even if the author himself struggles to deliver new material, resulting in record-breaking viewership numbers on television and streaming. A second season has already been greenlit. | Aug. 21 (premiere) |
| 19 | Top Gun: Maverick |
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17,563,247 | 
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Top Gun, the classic 1986 Tom Cruise vehicle, was one of the last films I expected to get a sequel, let alone a sequel that was good. But lo and behold, Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski managed to pull it off and give us a movie that was not only far better than the first film, but simply one of the best theatrical experiences I've seen in ages. With a poignant story and fantastic supporting performances from Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, and many more, Maverick made $1.4 billion, making it the highest-grossing film of Cruise's career and the highest-grossing film of the year. At least until Avatar: The Way of Water inexplicably grosses billions of dollars and leaves even less of a cultural impact than the first one.
If only all US military propaganda was this good. |
May 29 (finishes weekend atop box office) |
| 20 | Anna Sorokin |
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17,066,155 | 
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2022 was apparently the year of the scam, or at least the year of the scam discovery. Even if no one started any Madoff-level Ponzi schemes this year (that we know of), we found out about quite a few con artists through TV adaptations of their lives, such as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout and this woman in the latest Shonda Rhimes project Inventing Anna. It didn't receive rave reviews and, according to this SNL sketch starring Scientologist Chloe Fineman, it likely dives into the same dramatics and tropes we've grown to expect from a Shondaland production, even if it's the company's first attempt at being biographical. But it did give a lot of people a glimpse into the wacky biography of this faux-heiress.
The Russian-born Sorokin moved to NYC at age 19 and soon took on the last name Delvey, which she at first attributed to her parents but later admitted she just came up with. She spent years going to high-profile events and clubs, making rich friends, and convincing everyone around her that she was loaded by charging money to invalid credit cards and printing fake financial documents. It all caught up with her in 2019 and landed her in prison for quite some time. |
Feb. 13 (shortly after Inventing Anna) |
| 21 | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness |
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This movie did receive a tempered reception from critics (74% score and an average rating of 6.5/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and fans (6.9 on IMDb and 3.2/5 on Letterboxd; don't let the always wonky RT fan score trick you). Is Phase 4 just a blip (with some exceptions) of declining quality in the MCU or has the MCU begun its endgame (at least with general audiences)? We'll have a better idea in February. Aaaaand seeing that that joke has already been made for another MCU film later on in this Report... I guess I have to write the obligatory: "More like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Midness, amirite?" (or something like that). |
May 6 (released) |
| 22 | Elvis Presley |
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On the 45th anniversary of his death, the King of Rock 'n' Roll snagged a spot on this list thanks to a Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic, appropriately titled Elvis, in which he was portrayed by Austin Butler. The film was a decent success and allegedly it was good. I didn't watch it so I can't confirm. I saw the trailers and can confirm that Tom Hanks heavily channels his inner Jared Leto-as-Paolo Gucci energy as Colonel Tom Parker, but otherwise I can't tell you anything. Elvis did make pretty good music though. | Sep. 3 (Elvis enters HBO Max) |
| 23 | RRR (film) |
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16,373,131 | 
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S. S. Rajamouli is one of the biggest directors in India. A few years ago, he had a massive hit with the Baahubali series, the second part of which actually made the 2017 edition of this report. This year, his RRR took India by storm, joining the fictitious 1000 Crore Club and garnering praise from reviewers both in India and the West. Epic, action-filled and entwined with Indian nationalism, RRR just edged out another film as the most viewed Indian film, but wasn't the most successful. That was... | Mar. 26 (released) |
| 24 | K.G.F: Chapter 2 |
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The biggest hit in a year of Indian cinema was not from Bollywood, and not from the entry above, but from an arena long a mere regional industry, namely Kannada cinema. As the name would suggest, the film is a sequel to 2018's Chapter 1, and sees the assassin Rocky fight to maintain control of the gold-trading empire he built in the first chapter. Action-packed and slightly mad, the film delivered movie theatre spectacle to an audience largely kept away from it for two years, and became the third-biggest Indian film of all time, just ahead of the above. | Apr. 15 (released) |
| 25 | The Batman (film) |
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We got a lot of superhero movies (or "capeshit", as the internet has termed the genre) this year, but by far my favorite—in fact, possibly my favorite film of the year, alongside The Northman, this list's #19, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2—was Matt Reeves' reinvention of my favorite superhero. The Batman is a dark, gritty, and long crime epic that sees Batman (Robert Pattinson) pursuing the Riddler (Paul Dano), a vicious serial killer whose efforts to expose corruption rocks Gotham City to its core.
With an intricate narrative, brilliant cinematography, a fantastic score, and excellent supporting performances by Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, and Colin Farrell, The Batman received rave reviews—in my opinion, it stands alongside The Dark Knight as one of the World's Greatest Detective's finest outings—and grossed over $770 million worldwide. A sequel and a spin-off television series starring Farrell's Penguin are already in development. |
Mar. 2 (released) |
| 26 | Rishi Sunak |
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After the short and disastrous tenure of Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, the wealthy former Chancellor of the Exchequer, became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. His appointment resulted in way more views than would be normal for a new PM, which I suspect was because his appointment was fairly big news in the land of his ancestors, India. Sunak inherited a flagging situation from his predecessors, to which his main response was to implement austerity policies. | Oct. 24 (becomes Conservative leader) |
| 27 | Diana, Princess of Wales |
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Been 25 years since a globalized disaster - British ex-royal and her Egyptian boyfriend crashed a German car in a French bridge while in pursuit by Italian reporters, and a Brazilian doctor tried to save her life - and the draw of the 'Princess of the People' remains strong. The year started with Kristen Stewart an awards contender playing Lady Di in Spencer, August had the 25th anniversary of her death, the following month her ex-husband (#8) became king once his mother (#5) died, and in November Elizabeth Debicki played Diana in The Crown, now depicting the divorce and her meeting the Fayeds. Even if showrunner Peter Morgan already covered the impact Diana's fatal accident caused in the British Royals with The Queen, the show's sixth and last season will probably need to thread those grounds. | Sep. 9 (former in-law died) |
| 28 | Avatar: The Way of Water |
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A CGI technical marvel blockbuster from director James Cameron that had Kate Winslet film in water tanks a lot. | Dec. 17 (released) |
| 29 | Volodymyr Zelenskyy |
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It was an unexpected turn of events that Volodymyr Zelenskyy became, for a time, one of the most admired men in the world. After all, at home he was unpopular and ineffective, and abroad he was a bit of a joke (partially due to his literally comedic origin story). However, when the war started, he managed to lead his people in opposition to Russia's invasion, while successfully securing western support for the country when it looked rather uncertain. He became a hero to the people of Ukraine when they needed one most, and to many around the world when the war dominated the world's discourse. For the rest of the year, he showed up in various legislatures exhorting them to support Ukraine, and received various meaningless honours, including being named TIME Person of the Year. | Feb. 26 (refuses US offer to evacuate) |
| 30 | George VI |
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#5's father. When the head of the World's most famous family dies, you can expect her father and predecessor to pick up a healthy number of views too. | Sep. 9 (daughter died) |
| 31 | India |
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The number of English speakers in India is hard to estimate. Knowledge of a language is a fluid concept. If you speak English, for instance, you likely know more words of Japanese than you realise. Wikipedia uses the 2011 census results, which, while arguably the most reliable source available, are massively outdated by now. But even that estimate of 128.5 million is still higher than those of the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand combined. So it's not surprising that, once the subcontinent got sufficiently wired, en.wikipedia started seeing Indian viewers arrive in droves. This year saw five spikes in viewership for the nation: Jan 26 (Republic Day), Feb 24 (Russia's invasion of Ukraine), Jul 21 - Aug 8 (2022 Commonwealth Games), Aug 15 (Independence Day), and Oct 29 (final day of Diwali). | Aug. 2 (Commonwealth Games) |
| 32 | Thor: Love and Thunder |
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My immediate exclamation upon leaving the theatre was "MORE LIKE THOR: MID AND MIDDER!", which should tell you everything you need to know about how I felt about this movie.
Superhero movie fatigue has started to settle in for me, and I felt like Thor: Of course, audiences still ate |
July 8 (released) |
| 33 | Stranger Things |
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It seems weird in retrospect, but prior to its release, there were some doubts as to whether season 4 of Stranger Things would live up to its predecessors. Thanks to Covid, its production was delayed a year, and Netflix was seeing a drop in overall viewership, which critics blamed on their splurging release strategy that prevented shows from becoming water cooler talk. Well Netflix took that to heart, releasing the season in two parts, with a perfect mid-season zinger to whet appetites. It worked. Season 4 became Netflix's biggest hit since the lightning in a bottle that was Squid Game. It even managed to make Kate Bush's best song, "Running Up That Hill", a global hit nearly 40 years after its release. | July 2 (Season 4's Volume 2) |
| 35 | Stranger Things (season 4) |
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13,730,990 | May 28 (Volume 1) | ||
| 34 | Marilyn Monroe |
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Norma Jeane Mortenson was the quintessential sex symbol, eternized in the first Playboy centerfold and Andy Warhol paintings among other things. 2022 marked 60 years since her tragic death, and attention was renewed, with documentaries, Kim Kardashian wearing one of her dresses to the Met Gala, and most prominently, the biopic Blonde, starring a perfectly cast Ana de Armas under tons of make up as Marilyn. The movie itself is not an easy watch, because Marilyn did have a hard life, but Blonde blew it out of proportion - helps it's based on a biographical fiction novel rather than an actual book on her life - and even made up a few of the events of abuse and trauma, which combined with graphic sexual content earned criticisms as being exploitative and overtly focused on misery. Hopefully people washed it down by actually seeking Marilyn's movies, as Some Like It Hot (best closing dialogue ever!), The Seven Year Itch (source of that enduring image of her skirt being lifted by an air vent) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (pictured to the left, an oft-copied scene) have the laughs one would need after watching so much suffering. | Oct. 1 (3 days after Blonde) |
| 36 | Spider-Man: No Way Home |
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2021's top movie. Possibly the savior of cinemas along with Top Gun: Maverick. And it was such a beloved event, that it is only the second film (since at least 2013, when The Top 25 Report began) to holdover and have two appearances on the Top 50 Report. Yes the December release helped with that, but it's still only happened before with The Force Awakens back in 2015/2016. And doggone it, this movie does deserve to have achieved such a feat. | Jan. 2 (3rd straight weekend at #1) |
| 37 | Jenna Ortega |
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...I did mention Wednesday Addams in the top slot, didn't I? Well, Wednesday was Netflix's second most viewed show of the year behind #33, showing how enduring The Addams Family is. And a consequence is that the one playing the creepy loner with some impressive dance moves made it onto Wikipedia's most visited articles. That show was one of many spooky works this former child actress had in 2022, as she was also murdered in the opening scene of the Foo Fighters horror movie, almost murdered in the opening scene of Ghostface's latest killing spree, and a part of a slasher film that disrupts a porn shoot. Ms. Ortega certainly hopes her career will be as enduring as the early 90's Wednesday Christina Ricci, who even appears in the Netflix show. | Nov. 27 (4 days after Wednesday) |
| 38 | Tom Cruise |
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Thomas Cruise Mapother IV turned 60, and next year it'll be the 40th anniversary of his breakout role in Risky Business. He had a few snags in his career, from box office disappointments like Rock of Ages to that stretch where we only thought of him as a crazy Scientologist who jumped on Oprah's couch. But his return to a past hit in #19 reminded us on why Cruise remains one of the most reliable Hollywood stars, as following his perfectionist standards - Cruise made his co-stars go through extensive training to make it look as if they were actually piloting jets, and the actor only didn't fly an F-18 himself because the Navy denied him - delivered one incredibly good blockbuster that also made all the money possible. 2023 has more of our favorite actor who forgoes stunt doubles and seemingly stopped aging around the mid-2000s, as Cruise returns for the seventh time as secret agent who possibly has a death wish Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. | May 30 (#19 gives biggest opening of career) |
| 39 | Kylian Mbappé |
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The successor-elect of #11 won the previous edition of #13. He couldn't repeat the feat this time around - but he still had a stellar tournament. His three goals in the final forced a penalty shoot-out and won him the golden boot in the process. | Dec. 18 (hat trick in the final) |
| 40 | Russia |
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Russia has never been good at PR. Their founding tsar was named Ivan the Terrible for God's sake. And he insisted on calling his empire "Russia" even though it would be nearly a quarter of a millennium before it controlled all of the Rus people. As a statement of intent, that takes some beating. Doubtless the meaning was clear to those of the Rus not under his control, and remains so today. Russia is the world's largest country for a reason, and the current internal Russian narrative appears to be echoing the words of Catherine the Great: "I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them". | Feb. 24 (invades Ukraine) |
| 41 | United Kingdom |
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Oh dear. The UK is not having a very fun time right now, even by the standards of our decidedly unfun age. It's even difficult to talk about it because, while everyone knows they're not having fun, no one can agree as to precisely why. I mean, from my personal perspective, it started when we gave the collective middle finger to 450 million of our closest trading partners, then suddenly realised we no longer had access to 450 million of our closest trading partners, and yet still insisted on giving them the collective middle finger. Then our greatest soft power export turned out to be not as inclusive as we thought, and our greatest connection to our glorified past, well, passed. And then our largely imaginary reputation for competence and stability was shot when we had three Prime Ministers in as many months, (fun fact! 2022 United Kingdom government crisis is a disambiguation page!) leading that beacon of the collective British myth, The Economist, to describe us as "Britaly." Now we're facing endless strikes as our public services are cut into the bone. God bless us, everyone! | Sep. 8 (monarch died) |
| 42 | List of highest-grossing Indian films |
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The Indian news media has three great obsessions: politics, cricket and movies. Within that last one is an obsession with box-office takings, with a whole subsection of the Indian media devoted to chronicling the takings of various films. This year saw two huge successes (#23 and #24) both take big runs up the record books and become the third and fourth films to make more than 100 crore (10 billion) rupees, which caused a lot of views for this article as the media framed it as a race to make more money. | Apr. 29 (#23\#24 climb) |
| 43 | NATO |
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NATO OTAN was founded in 1949 as a "defensive alliance formed to protect Western Europe from those dastardly commies." Today its function is mostly the same, except "commies" is now "Russians" and "Western" has been removed. Some in Russia, including its current president, see NATO's expansion into Russia's former stomping ground in eastern Europe as a Threat to the Motherland, and cited this Threat as a reason for invading Ukraine. Ironically, the war has likely caused further NATO expansion, as it prompted Sweden and Finland to... reevaluate their priorities somewhat and apply to join the alliance, with all but Hungary and Turkey having ratified their applications. | Feb. 24 (Russia invades Ukraine) |
| 44 | Anne Heche |
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She stayed at the Bates Motel. She wagged the dog. And she knows what you did last summer. Anne Heche isn't exactly the household name you might expect to see on a list like this, but Heche was still a heavy hitter in Hollywood – with some pretty heavy baggage – before her untimely passing this year.
Heche had her fair share of high-profile, low-profile, and medium-profile film roles, like in a movie about the guy at the top of this list or in a movie starring alongside #14 on this list, but her career was equally defined by her high-profile relationship with Ellen DeGeneres and a string of not-so-becoming moments in the 2000s. One might classify these moments, like going to a random lady's house to use her shower and claiming to be Jesus's sister, as "psycho" if they wanted to make an inappropriate pun referencing one of her most famous movie roles, which becomes even harder not to do with the whole shower thing. In August of this year, Heche got into three car accidents, one of which involved her crashing her car into a house, setting fire to both the car and the house and leaving her in critical condition. Like DMX last year, much of the prolonged publicity surrounding Heche's death was thanks to the prolonged wait to find out what the haps was with her. Reports swirled around her status, some saying she would make it and some saying she wouldn't, before she was taken off of life support about a week after the crash. |
Aug. 12 (one day after her death) |
| 45 | List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films |
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At San Diego Comic Con in July, Kevin Feige announced the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Four would finish by the year's end, marking a sudden ending to what many considered a fairly underwhelming slate - just see the reception to the three theatrical releases of the year, #21, #32 and #49, ranging from "this could've been better" to "good enough, but the main character is sorely missed" (2021 holdover #36 had more positive remarks). Fatigue from viewers could also be seen in how unlike 2021, the MCU Disney+ shows, this time dealing with mercenaries living |
July 27 (SDCC panel) |
| 46 | Euphoria (American TV series) |
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As Euphoria's second season aired on HBO this year, it became the second most-watched HBO show of all time, only behind Game of Thrones—though it ended up slipping to third place thanks to the popularity of #18. For those unaware, the teen drama, featuring an ensemble cast that includes Zendaya (pictured), Hunter Schafer, Maude Apatow, and Sydney Sweeney, is a remake of an Israeli miniseries. It deals with dark subject matter, including drug addition, self-harm, depression, and a bevy of other mature topics, which of course has courted controversy. Nonetheless, it's received acclaim and, if the viewership numbers are any indication, it's extraordinarily popular.
Unfortunately for you all, however, I didn't watch Euphoria and have absolutely no intention to do so because I would rather do anything else than watch a bunch of unlikeable teenagers do drugs and get abused and engage in all sorts of depraved nonsense. Rather, I was too busy racing to finish Breaking Bad in time to catch up for Better Call Saul, a much better series whose final season aired this year. I got to watch Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) complete his transformation into Saul Goodman, the sleazeball lawyer who represents everyone's favorite methamphetamine cooks Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) for much of Breaking Bad. And it was very good and I recommend you watch both series. And El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, because that is also very good. Did I claim the Euphoria spot just so I could talk about Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul because I'm bitter Euphoria made this list and Better Call Saul didn't? Yes, yes I did. |
Feb. 28 (season finale) |
| 47 | Liz Truss |
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I mentioned Liz Truss's disastrous tenure earlier, didn't I! Liz Truss acceded to the premiership of the UK after Boris Johnson was forced out due to a continuing series of scandals (the most notable one being Partygate). Within two months, she was out of office. Why? Well, her flagship policy was implementing massive unfunded tax cuts that wouldn't really benefit anyone except the rich. The fallout from this, and her complete failure to manage it, ended up bringing down her government and she was replaced by the guy she ran against (#26); it was all very funny, and also extremely serious. She ended it all as the shortest-serving PM in British history, with a tenure of just 45 days, and was rather famously outlasted by a lettuce placed on a desk by a tabloid newspaper. | Sep. 5 (elected Prime Minister) |
| 48 | Black Panther: Wakanda Forever |
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Black Panther was widely considered one of the MCU's best offerings and finished its box office run among the ten highest-grossing movies ever. The sequel was inevitable. And then the biggest setback possible happened once leading man Chadwick Boseman died of a cancer he kept secret. Back to the drawing board the follow-up went, while only pushing the already scheduled 2022 release date a few months forward. The final product decides T'Challa died with Boseman, and the film runs too long by trying to compensate that great absence by giving plots to just about everyone - most prominently T'Challa's sister Shuri, who eventually takes up the mantle of the Black Panther - while also introducing antagonist Namor and his underwater civilization. Still, the expected Marvel action and jokes combined with the eye-catching Afrofuturism aesthetic (now paired with an equally inspired "Mesoamerican Atlantis") and emotional tributes to Boseman led to a much warmer reception compared to all the heated arguments and complaints ignited by #21 and #32, and Wakanda Forever only left the top of the box office upon the arrival of another water-heavy blockbuster (#28). Audiences clearly are always willing to return to Wakanda, but before they can do that again, the first continuation for the movie's story is for a side-character who's not even from there - gadgeteer genius Riri Williams, whose Disney+ show comes out in 2023. | Nov. 11 (released) |
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He killed #1 in prison. That's it. One awful entry at the top and a downright wasted slot at the bottom? This list deserves more, let's discard this one and add #51. | ||||
| 49 | The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power |
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11,639,471 | Amazon spent $715 million for eight episodes of television ($250 million for the rights, $465 million for the production, not including marketing) to adapt a work that didn't exist, and couldn't even secure all the necessary background material. In the end, it garnered a 7/10 from critics, pissed off the fans, alienated audiences, who turned to House of the Dragon instead, hobbled the rise of an up-and-coming actress, and made Sauron a tall dark snarker. All for what amounted to the most ambitious fanfic of all time, even beating season eight of Game of Thrones. | Sep. 2 (premiere) | |
| 50 | Ponniyin Selvan: I |
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Landing a film adaptation of a beloved classic novel (not a classical novel, that's a different thing) is always difficult, particularly when it's a highly complex, well-regarded work that several others have failed to adapt (see Lord of the Rings?). But Mani Ratnam just about pulled it off, delivering an engaging, visually beautiful and well-directed spectacle. Set in the early years of the Chola empire, it centres around the eponymous son of the Kaveri before he became the formidable Rajaraja Chola I. A lot of people watched it, mostly in Tamil Nadu, and the second part of the project will be released next year. | Oct. 1 (released) |
And while it may not be on English Wikipedia, and so we don't care, our congratulations to the French article on web cookies, a globally very popular article. I assume this is because GDPR warnings (for the EU, which operates in French) now include a link for information. So it's as meaningful a success as Google devices telling everyone to ask for Cleopatra during set-up, but, hey, it did it, something endless K-Pop fanclubs didn't.
Toolforge's list, along with not including redirect views (for instance, Avatar has more than a million views originating from Avatar 2), has many pages we eliminate for suspicious numbers or activities:
The Signpost was founded in 2005, as the Wikipedia Signpost. Whether published weekly, monthly or bimonthly, it is worth looking back over the past five, ten, or fifteen years of Signpost publishing. The Signpost is, without doubt, the most independent and reliable publication available to date.[citation needed]
There's an interesting report about a seemingly active attempt to edit Brigid Hughes out of the history of The Paris Review. However, our big story that month was an interview with Ser Amantio di Nicolao, who was (and remains) the top contributor to Wikipedia by edit count. At the time, he had over two million edits; he now has over five million, nearly double the edit count of BrownHairedGirl in second place. Here's a couple samples:
| “ | How did you come to Wikipedia?
Oh, Lord...been so long I hardly remember. I was in college back when Wikipedia got started, and like a lot of us early adopters I can recall seeing it creeping up the ranks of the Google search results as I was doing research for class. I remember seeing the tagline, "the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and honestly rolling my eyes at it a bit – it all sounded too good to be true. But it kept seeming to get more popular, and somewhere in 2004 I started making a few IP edits. That was back when IPs could create articles, too, and I created one on Peter Francisco that June. (I probably shouldn't admit to this, but he's my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather...I still think he's notable, though. :-) ) I created a couple of others (Francisco's Fight, Francis Salvador) and sort of kept popping in and out over the next couple of years, creating a couple of accounts, making a handful of edits, forgetting passwords, etc. Finally, in January 2006 (my last semester of college) I created my current account (as AlbertHerring) and affixed to it a password that I was sure of remembering. I did a few more edits than usual, but with finals, graduation, and the job search I let it slide again. Looking back over my contributions, I find that I was reasonably active until the beginning of 2007, which is when I got my first job. I didn't really begin editing in earnest until late in the year, when they finally installed a computer at my desk and when I started having some downtime between phone calls (I was an office assistant for a tour company.) It was about that time that Dr. Blofeld was beginning his campaign of mass-adding the communes of France; I saw a way that I could do a fairly large level of useful work, and followed suit. Haven't looked back since. :-) |
” |
| “ | How has Wikipedia changed in your time here?
I think it's become much less-welcoming to new members; I applaud efforts to change that, but I think we've got a lot of work to do yet. Bureaucracy has become more of a hassle than it used to be. More arcane, too – I think there are vast swaths of behind-the-scenes stuff that confuse even established editors, let alone new ones. There has been a much more concerted attempt at addressing the variations of systemic bias...we still have a lot of work to do, but I think we've made incredible strides over the past few years. |
” |
The whole article is well worth reading, but the nice thing about a wiki is that you can dangle a taster and then hyperlink the rest.
We started the year with a Op-Ed, "Meta, where innovative ideas die", detailing the problems and benefits of that vitally important but very poorly attended sister site. We also predicted 2013 would be the year of "Wikidata, Lua and the Visual Editor", which was largely true, although given the disastrous launch of the Visual Editor later that year, one of those wouldn't be for the right reasons. I don't think we talk about Lua enough, though: Lua is a programming language that got added in to Wikipedia via MediaWiki and managed to replace a lot of complicated workarounds used by templates with more elegant code. I'm not even sure its full potential has appeared yet; for example: Could we use Lua to make filling out forms for our featured content candidates easier by, for example, letting people choose which category they want to file the featured content into from a list before starting the nomination? Wikivoyage launched 15 January, and we attempted reform of Requests for Adminship. However, the saddest story was the death of Aaron Swartz, who died by suicide after downloading content from JSTOR, not disseminating it, reaching an agreement to delete the files, and then being prosecuted for it anyway:
| “ | Comforting those grieving after the loss of a loved one is an impossible task. How then, can an entire community be comforted? The Internet struggled to answer that question this week after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a celebrated free-culture activist, programmer, and Wikipedian at the age of 26.
Aaron wore many Internet hats during his life. At the age of just 14 he played a key role in the initial RSS specification. While still a teenager, he served on the RDF core working group at the World Wide Web Consortium, defined the RDF XML content type and founded Infogami, which quickly merged with the social news and entertainment website, Reddit. Around the same time, he was part of the team that started Creative Commons. In 2006 he ran into controversy for downloading and posting the bibliographic metadata of every book in the Library of Congress, which was in the public domain but available only for a fee. A more serious controversy occurred in 2008 when he downloaded about 20% of the entire PACER database, which allows public access to public domain US federal court documents, although ironically this required users to pay a fee. By taking advantage of a pilot program offering free access at certain public libraries, Aaron was able to download nearly two million documents before his access was revoked. He posted these documents openly on the Internet, prompting an FBI investigation, but no charges were ever filed. In 2010, he co-founded the Internet activist organization Demand Progress, which played a central role in the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), alongside Aaron's separate, personal contributions to the debate. In July 2011, Aaron was charged with four felonies, three stemming from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. At issue was his use of an automated program to download 4.8 million scholarly articles from JSTOR by deploying the network infrastructure of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (Signpost coverage). Ironically, Aaron did not disseminate any of the files, and after he handed over to JSTOR the copies he had made, the digital library settled "any civil claims [it] may have had". These felony charges could have sent Aaron to prison for 35 years and have fined him more than $1 million. Carmen Ortiz, the federal prosecutor overseeing the case, said "stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars." In September, the government added nine charges, moving the total from four to thirteen felonies, which could have put Aaron behind bars for more than 50 years, with a fine of $4 million dollars. On January 9, Ortiz's office rejected an arrangement that would have kept Aaron out of prison. Two days later, he was found dead in his New York apartment. |
” |
Tributes and a rather deeply felt comment section can be found here.
Kind of a quiet month. From a Signpost perspective, perhaps the most notable thing was WikiWorld, that long running comic series, starting to reach its end. On 28 January 2008 we announced, "WikiWorld has ceased its weekly schedule, but will continue to run occasional new comics, as well as 'classic' previously-published comics." In fact, new comics would come to an end by the end of the year. I'm sure CommonsComix will one day follow suit. Or be opened up to more creators.
In Wikipedia news, the big announcements were the "controversial" creation of rollback rights, which lets one instantly revert an edit with a click of a link, if you're trustworthy enough to be given the right. Rollback is now pretty uncontroversial, and a boon to vandal fighters.
Secondly, two articles detailed the new parser preprocessor, which, not remembering the 2007-era parser is kind of hard to fully grasp. It did give the new #iferror parserfunction, though, so that's something.
Finally, we interviewed User:John Broughton, who had just written Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. This would later be released under a free license and incorporated into the help pages of Wikipedia.
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