The Economist [1] (paywalled, syndicated here) notes that Ruwiki.ru, Putin's fork of the real Russian Wikipedia, censors "the sensitive zones of Putinist ideology: LGBT rights, oral sex, Soviet history, and the war in Ukraine." (See also The Signpost's June 2023 coverage about the project's genesis: "Wikimedia Russia director starts Russian fork and is replaced").

The Week expands upon the Economist article (also on Yahoo News). It states that the majority of the articles on Putin's fork are just copies from the real Russian Wikipedia, but gives five articles from the real Russian Wikipedia as examples of heavy censorship: Yevgeny Prigozhin, Battle of Bucha, Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Oral sex and Russian-Ukrainian war (starting in 2014).

This reporter has examined how Putin's fork covered those subjects.

• There is no article on Putin's fork on the Russian-Ukrainian war starting in 2014.
• The article on Prigozhin does not include a sentence in the real Russian Wikipedia, "According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)... the order to kill Prigozhin was almost certainly given by Putin." But it does include a photo of Putin and Prigozhin together, that might be embarrassing to Putin.
• The battle of Bucha is best represented on Putin's fork in a section of the article Military operations in Ukraine (since 2022) named Incident in Bucha which essentially denies that an incident occurred. As The Signpost noted in January, an entry corresponding to the Wikidata item for Bucha massacre was also deleted from what appears to be a fork of Wikidata on the ruwiki.ru website, titled "РУВИКИ.Данные" ("RUWIKI.Data"), according to that wiki's deletion log (archive).
• The Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal has an article of the same name in Putin's fork. About 64% of the article has been removed, but almost all of the photos of related buildings and other locations have been kept.
• The article on oral sex is about one-third the length of the article on the real Russian Wikipedia and all 3 illustrations have been removed.

Meduza [2] and Invariant-T [3], two Russian news websites which are considered "foreign agents" in Russia, report that the Great Russian Encyclopedia (BRE) has lost its state funding, maybe in favor of Ruviki and Znanie (Knowledge), another state-funded educational site.

BRE announced its closure last month, saying that it had received no funds in the previous five months. Though wages and author royalties have not been paid during that time about 6,000 new articles have been posted. According to the announcement,

both resources of the Great Russian Encyclopedia - the portal and the electronic version of the printed edition - have published more than 100 thousand articles, and the number of reader requests to our encyclopedia reaches 1 million per week. We - more than 300 editorial staff and a team of 7,000 authors - are now able to prepare and publish up to 30 thousand scientifically verified articles per year.

– S

Mass media in India continues to take an interest in how the government of India reacts to Wikipedia in India. The Hindu [4] and Outlook [5] report that media house Asian News International (ANI) objects to the Wikipedia's article about ANI.

According to The Hindu;

The case pits, potentially for the first time in such a significant way, Wikipedia’s volunteer-centric editorial norms against Indian regulations like the IT Rules, 2021, which require all loosely defined internet "intermediaries" to take action against content online if it is, among other things, defamatory, and a court or government order is issued against them.

The court case is scheduled for August 20 with ANI claiming damages of 2 crore rupees – about US$240,000.

Live Law, a legal reporting service, states (archive) that ANI's plea (or complaint) claims that "Wikipedia had closed the ANI page for editing by the news agency except for its own (Wikipedia) editors". This suggests that ANI is claiming a right to have its own employees edit the article despite Wikipedia's policy prohibiting undeclared paid editors.

Live Law also says that "ANI has alleged that Wikimedia, through its officials, has actively participated in removing the edits to reverse the content." This claim appears to confuse actions by unpaid volunteers with actions by Wikimedia Foundation employees.

The Wikipedia article appears to summarize and cite reliable journalism covering ANI, and the complaint seems not to be about the journalism, but rather that Wikipedia presents what journalists wrote elsewhere then links to those articles.

One possible complication is that the Wikipedia community does not consider ANI to be a generally reliable source. The report at The Wikipedia project Reliable sources/Perennial sources says

For general reporting, Asian News International is considered to be between marginally reliable and generally unreliable, with consensus that it is biased and that it should be attributed in-text for contentious claims. For its coverage related to Indian domestic politics, foreign politics, and other topics in which the Government of India may have an established stake, there is consensus that Asian News International is questionable and generally unreliable due to its reported dissemination of pro-government propaganda.

This view is based on a 2021 request for comment where a BBC news report on disinformation in India was prominently mentioned.

- S, BR

Wikipedia beat reporter Stephen Harrison, whose novel The Editors will be published August 13, was interviewed at least three times this month. The editor of Student Life, the student newspaper at Washington University in St. Louis where Harrison attended, published a long, detailed interview which gives the best overview of Harrison's career, but is mostly about the new novel, and about Wikipedia and its fictionalized version, Infopendium, which is the focus of the story.

Harrison has started another book, a murder mystery set at the Federal Reserve, where he used to work.

it gets into what I am really interested in, which are institutions that are experiencing a crisis. The Fed currently fits that description — people are not happy about inflation, and there’s even questions about: what is money, and what is currency?

Another interview, posted at Medium by Taylor Dibbert, focuses on Harrison's writing routine. He tries to write 1–2 hours a day before going to his day job as a lawyer, but first he starts with a cup of coffee and reading 15 minutes worth of fiction. He starts writing with his favorite pen and paper, but often switches to computer.

Citing the epigraph of the forthcoming book "this is a reported work of fiction", Harrrison continues "ultimately, I hope to be known for producing smart and well-researched stories throughout my career."

A third interview, this one by Caitlin Dewey on her "Links" blog, is more quirky. She starts with a question about "the four 'periods' of Wikipedia journalism", citing an essay Harrison co-authored with Omer Benjakob for the book Wikipedia @ 20 which was reprinted in The Signpost. Which period does the novel take place in? Harrison invents a new period and answers it "falls in the pre-AI, post-glory-days period of Wikipedia."

Dewey also asks about whether Wikipedia is past its glory days, and about Harrison's day-to-day interaction with Wikipedians, as well as about celebrity Wikipedians.

• Get over yourself: "Can Wikipedia Editors Get Over Themselves and Embrace AI?" (The Arabian Post) Perhaps as a reminder that Wikipedia is old enough to drink, and many of our community processes, policies, and norms are now decades old, the author states "The Wikipedia community should embrace a spirit of experimentation."
• What if you tried to print Wikipedia?: Following a 2013 cartoon, a July 2024 video from Randall Munroe of XKCD goes deep into the details. Laughing Squid essentially provides a text version of the video.

• The road not taken: "What is Conservapedia? The right-wing, conservative alternative to Wikipedia" explains how Conservapedia presents Einstein's Theory of Relativity as a liberal conspiracy, among other differences from Wikipedia (Here and Now radio program from Boston)
• Mi'kmaq edit-a-thon: Dal News at Canada's Dalhousie University reports on an edit-a-thon focusing on the Mi'kmaq of the Atlantic provinces. Articles improved include "fiddler Lee Cremo, artist Ursula Johnson, activist Anna Mae Aquash, [and] the first Mi'kmaq elected as Grand Chief, Gabriel Sylliboy."
• Wales warns of addictive nature of social media: Jimbo is interviewed in NikkeiAsia. Much of his message is standard Jimbology: social media can be addictive (which is bad), Wikipedians fact-check articles (which is good), but we have vandals and trolls (bad), the WMF's finances are fairly solid (good). It gets more interesting when he is asked about AI. "I think it's better if AI is trained on Wikipedia than if it's trained on Facebook or X. What we ask for in return is citation credit. A link back to us, this is important, so people can understand where the knowledge comes from."
• The most amazing Wikipedia page in history: After the Trump assassination attempt on July 13, The Intercept writer Murtaza Hussain tweeted "Say what you want about Trump but he is going to have the most amazing Wikipedia page in history." [6] Obviously Hussain has never read the articles on Seth Kinman or Yola Letellier.
• Come to the dark side: dark mode now available for mobile [7]
• Edit-a-thon in India: The Times of India and The Mooknayak cover an edit-a-thon in Dehli that sought to take on Wikipedia's gender gap.

This draft, including the opening note about it sitting around unpublished for two years, was from 2011, meaning that as of now it's a whopping fifteen years old. Nonetheless, it sat around for quite some time, and was only found during recent attempts to reorganize the plethora of strange abandoned pages in the annals of the Signpost. But cobwebs aside: it is true now, as it was true then, and we hope that you may find it enlightening.

Resident Mario is an editor of volcanism and occasional writer for the Signpost. In this piece he shares his reflections on becoming a registered user, on editing, and on Wikimedians' obsession with collecting achievements and accolades.

The views expressed are those of the author only. Responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds. If you have one in mind, please leave a message at the opinion desk.

The original version of this essay was finished just under 2 years ago. A lot of time has passed since its writing, and in adapting it for this publication I have come to the realization that I was terribly naive when I first joined the project. Still, I hope this essay will provide an interesting view to our readers, who might just be dogs.

When you have a change of pace and stop to contemplate what Wikipedia really is, you realize something. It is not just a collection of articles—it is a living, breathing behemoth, with a sampling of all the people of the real world. In a way Wikipedia can be seen as a pseudonym for reality, a golem of much thought and yet of much drama, and of just as much bureaucratics as love for the text. When I first joined Wikipedia, I thought, well, it's simply a collection of bored writers and semi-interested experts biding away their free time. Truly, I could not have been wronger. I was baffled by the immediate extensiveness of the project, the extensive guidelines and categorization, the organization and categorization, the multitude of pages and their subpages. You can't get a true appreciation for what Wikipedia is simply by browsing; whiling away your time reading articles of interest, or searching for a nitpick of information, you never stay far behind the main namespace. You may stray over to the talk page occasionally, click on that little green + mark or bronze star, or even follow the little box down in the references section to a Portal page. But these incidents are rare. For the most part you browse, following links that strike your interest, reading the leads and interesting bits and looking at the pretty pictures. If the article seems interesting, you may even read the whole thing, god forbid.

All this time, the "Log into/create account" button looms small yet proud in the corner of your screen. It is the gateway to a community; after all, what is our motto? Try typing "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" into the search bar. Where does it take you? At Wikipedia we let anyone edit. We truly are a slice of life. Our reasons for trying it are as varied as we are. Some have too much spare time. Some want to improve something, and settle on Wikipedia. Some want to apply their knowledge somewhere useful, or learn how to do something through Wikipedia. Regardless that first step, clicking the button, leads to a whirlwind of new things.

You choose your username, make a password, and log in for the first time. At first, nothing much changes. You still browse your interests; occasionally, you make a small edit or two. Your edits often get reverted quickly; you still don't know how it all works. As you linger around, you start to get drawn into the site, coming across the userpages of the people involved. Very quickly your universe expands once again, with the discovery of the "WikiProject"; and from there you find yourself staring at the seemingly endless pile of processes, standards, ideas, organizations, and guidelines that Wikipedia harbors.

I remember my first week of Wikipedia. I lingered here and there, staring endlessly, vastly bewildered by Wikipedia's new-found depth. Those who press the button wind their way to the center of Wikipedia, and realize that its radius is much larger than they had previously perceived. Our critics consider Wikipedia inaccurate rubbish, but they know not of how meticulously oiled the project is, and how much work goes into constantly expanding it. The vandal-hunters, stub-writers, dyk'ers, article-writers, copyeditors, image buffs, experts, administrators, bureaucrats, and legal buffs all have a place here, and when they work together the machinery powering this massive projects runs uninterrupted. When this spectrum comes together, the fabric works in harmony and Wikipedians churns out information at a rate faster then anything else in the world.

Many people complain, indeed, leave, over the various increasing pressures here; the standards are getting tighter, the work more frustrating, the bureaucracy piled higher and deeper, the wikidrama picking up pace. As the projects expands to beyond the 3-million-article horizon, one cannot help be lost in the sea of contributors. Individual contributions become less and less prominent, and the community starts to follow a herd mentality. Most especially, quality gradients have increased fivefold since Wikipedia's inception; what would have been considered FA in 2004, became GA in 2006, and today would only be considered C class or thereabouts. As if to illustrate the shift in quality, WP:FT used to outline a 30% Featured article gradient; it became 50%, then indeed 75%; and some users are pushing to have the standard raised to a full 100%.

All this does is place more stress on the importance of the community. While individual accomplishments have, and should, be heralded, it is the community that makes and breaks all of the decisions. Wikipedia is built not on one man's ambition but, from the very start, on the collective thinking process of millions of organic organisms, also known as humans. What I am not saying is that the community is perfect. Far from it. It included a swarm of vandals, trolls, and people who come to Wikipedia for, among other things, a free chat service (Wikipedia passes through school webpage filters; chat sites do not).

One thing I dislike is when new members of the community speak out, but are silenced on the basis of their experience. All that does is push them farther to the rim. New editors are the lifeblood of Wikipedia. The lifetime of an average Wikipedia editor is very short, so why uproot them at the very beginning? Although I am not the first person to stress the importance of new editors, Wikideath is still too common among green editors. Wikipedia's recent history has been a competition between openness and quality, and judging by the recent stagnation we should be leaning more to the left on this issue. In the end, we are a community; so don't be a dick, get along, and start writing. You'll be happy you did.

Here at Wikipedia, we're obsessed with certain things. A passing reader would be puzzled at how some editors put big shiny bronze stars at the top of their page saying, "I did this!" We want some of these, some of those, lots of these, maybe one of those, lots of those, but never one of these. Greedy greedy. But that's how content writers work. They want to be recognized for doing this and that and for being generally all-around awesome. Obsession drives the majority of the editing community. Wikipedia was designed well in that it has low-hanging fruit (WP:DYK, WP:ITN), fruit that requires some jumping to get (WP:GA, WP:BARNSTAR), and high-hanging fruits requires building long editing ladders to finish (WP:FA, WP:FL, WP:GT, WP:FP, WP:FS), and the really commemorable stuff that requires quite a few ladders and chutes fruits, to use my allegory, to complete (WP:CROWN, WP:FT).

But the system does have its limitations. If you're writing a DYK, you are tempted to write it only up to the point that it would pass the standards for the process, no further. Nitpicking articles for FL, instead of choosing ones that might be difficult, is a constant there, and the FL director has expressed unhappiness about this fact. But for the most part, we want shiny things, and if you're here to get said shiny objects, you're writing for the right reasons.

Disclosure: One of the contributing authors of this article is a candidate in the WMF Trustee election. Remaining contributors ensured neutral tone and wording.

As The Signpost has recently reported, the Wikimedia Movement Charter is a document which negotiates power sharing between the Wikimedia Foundation as a corporation and the Wikimedia community of volunteer content contributors. One way to describe the situation is that the Wikimedia Foundation does fundraising and holds the money which sponsors the Wikimedia Movement, but the Wikimedia community of users actually produce the content and define the ethics and values which motivate donors to give money.

With increasing regularity, the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia user community have differing opinions of right versus wrong, which strategic direction is preferable, and what projects get funding when resources are scarce. The hope is that a Movement Charter would clarify which powers and responsibilities are in the control of paid staff versus the volunteer user community. The stakes of this discussion include determining who decides how to spend Wikimedia Movement money, which include the US$250 million in assets and $180 million in revenue for the last reported year. The Wikimedia Foundation is keen on using the money to support programs of interest to Wikimedia Foundation staff, and the user community of content creators wishes to use the money for different programs of interest to content creators.

The present news is that the Movement Charter ratification vote was held between 25 June and 9 July 2024. The results were as follows:

• ✅ Ratified by individual Wikimedia users - Individual voters like you voted 73% in favor and 27% opposed. There were 2,446 valid votes, with 1,710 “yes”; 623 voted “no”; and 113 "neutral".
• ✅ Ratified by Wikimedia affiliate organizations - Wiki community organizations voted 84% in favor and 16% opposed. There were 93 votes for “yes”; 18 “no”; and 18 "neutral".

On 8 July the Wikimedia Foundation board held their own vote for ratification and on 11 July, before the community's election committee announced the results of the community vote, the WMF gave their position:

• ❌ Not ratified by the Wikimedia Foundation The Board of Trustees voted 11:1 to approve a Resolution rejecting the movement charter and setting out a timeline for alternative steps. The only dissenting vote was by Mike Peel, who according to the Minutes stated his support for the draft movement charter in the meeting. Board member Nataliia Tymkiv (user:antanana) announced that the board would not ratify the Movement Charter.

WMF Trustee Victoria Doronina criticized the Movement Charter, saying it "clearly presents an attempt at a power grab by the affiliates." She also noted that "in the proposed form, GC would not work effectively and would be only a waste of resources". Regarding the Wikimedia community election on ratification, she said "'The quorum' is only 2% (!) of the eligible voters, and who know how many of them are the affiliates members". The Wikimedia Foundation board has proposed its own alternative plan, the Appendix to the Vote on the proposed Movement Charter.

Wikimedia community members are discussing the results on Meta-Wiki talk pages and in the Wikimedia-l email mailing list. –B, BR, AK

The 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Trustee Election, arguably the world's most important Internet election, will run from 3–17 September 2024. Wikimedia editors will choose 4 of the 12 trustees to serve on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Duties of trustees include reviewing the progress of the Wikimedia Foundation CEO, and deciding to approve or reject the plan and budget which the CEO presents to the board every year. Mark your calendar, and prepare yourself and your colleagues to vote.

On 1 July, candidates finalized their answers to questions which the election committee presented to them. Read the questions and answers and consider discussing at meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024 or wherever concerned Wikimedia voters convene. –BR

The Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is "an experiment on establishing a regular communication on highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation's technical work, work with communities and affiliates, as well as other stakeholders like readers, donors, regulators, the media and the public."

• Listing of 2024 issues: Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin/2024
• Latest bulletin (as of 11 July 2024): Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin/2024/07-01
• Subscribing to it: meta:Global message delivery/Targets/Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) special election is accepting candidates through 19 July, with voting from 27 July – 10 August. The first U4C election which concluded in June only filled 7 of the 16 seats, one short of a quorum. There are four community-at-large seats, plus five regional seats open.

The regional seats are for:

• North America (United States and Canada)
• Latin America and Caribbean
• Central and East Europe (CEE)
• Sub-Saharan Africa, and
• South Asia

A rule to ensure diversity across home projects, means that candidates from the English, German, and Italian Wikipedias – which each had two members elected in the first election – cannot run in this election. This rule has resulted in the odd case that the North America (United States and Canada) regional seat cannot be filled by somebody who claims the English Wikipedia as their home project.

• Annual reports: Wikimedia Community User Group Tanzania
• New AffCom newsletter: The Affiliations Committee published the first issue of its newsletter Affiliations Committee/News/Issue 1
• Global bans: Nipponese Dog Calvero/KAGE/影武者, since 2024-07-09
• New low ebb for active administrators: While we were getting ready to go to press with the last issue of The Signpost, a new low point of 430 active administrators was reached on June 30. It has risen above 440 just once since mid May.

█████ ███ █████ ██████████ █████████ ████ ███ ███, Joe Biden ██████████ █████ ███ █████████████ ███████████ ██ █ ██████ ██/█ ██████. ████ ████ █ █████ ██████████ █████████ ████ ██████ ███ ███ ██ ████ █████, ███ ███-██████ ██████ ████ ██████████ ██ ████ █████ ███ Donald Trump ████ ████ ████████ ████ ██████████ ██ █████ ████ ███ ███ ███████ █████████ ████ ███ ██████ ██ ███████ ████████ ████ ████████ ███. ███ ███ ███████ ██? ████ ██ ██████ ████ █████. █████'█ ██ ███ ████ ██ █████ ██ ███.

██'██ █████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ████ ███████████, ███ ███ ████? ███ ███ █████'█ ████ ████ ████████. ███ ██ ██ ████, █████'█ ████ ██ ██ ███ "waffle-cone-eating" ██████ ██ █████ █████████ ███ ███ ██, ████ ████ ██ ██████ ████████, ████ ████ ██████████ ███████ ███ ██ ██ █ ███ ████ ████ █████████ ███ ██ ████ ██ ████, █████ ██ █████████ █████████ █████'█ ████. ████ ██ ███ ██████ █████████, ████ ███'█ ████ ████ ███ ██████ ███ ███████ ████ a "freaking cheeto" █████ ████, ██ █████'█ ██ ███ ███ ████ ██ ████ █████. ███ ███ ███ ██'█ ████ ████████ ███████ ████████? ██ ███ ███ ████ █'█ ██████ ████?

███ ███████ ████ ████ ███ ███ ███ ██ ████ ███ █████ ██ █████... ███ ███ ███'█. ███████ ███ ███████ █████ ██ █████ ███ ████. ███ █████'█ █████ █ █████ ███ ██. ███ ████ ███████ ██ ██ ████ ████! ███ ███ ██ ██████. ████'█ █████ ██ ██ ███ ██████? ███████, ███████ ██ ████ ███████ ██ ███ ██ █ ████████ ██ ███ ████████, ███ ████ ███ ██ ███ █████ ██ ███ ████ ██████ ██ █████ ████ ████ ██ █████? ██ ███ ████ ████ ███ ██ █████████████ ██ ████? ████ ████'█ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ████████, ████'██ ████ ███ Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood. ████ ███ ██████? ███? █ ███ ████ ██'█ ████ █ ███ ███ ███ █████ ███████, ███ ██ █████ ███ ██ ████ █████ ██ █ ███████████ █████, ██ ██'█ ███ █████ ██ ██ █████. ███'██ █████ ██ ████ ██ ████████ █████ ██ █████████ ██ ███ ███, ███ ██ ███'█ ████ ███ █████. ██, ██'██ ███ █████ ██ ███████ ████, ██'█ █████.

(NB: due to time constraints, the result of this article's Administrators' Noticeboard thread, Arbitration Committee case request and/or Miscellany for Deletion nomination was predicted and implemented ahead of press time.)