See previous coverage: "Portland politician spends $6,400 in taxpayer dollars to 'spruce up his profile on Wikipedia'" about the article Rene Gonzalez (politician)

The 2020 Oregon Ballot Measure 107 allows campaign finance disclosure regulations in the state of Oregon, which may have been violated by the Gonzalez campaign, in addition to Gonzalez authorizing irregular expenditures of taxpayer funds not allocated to campaigning. Alt-weekly Portland Mercury said "It's unclear which fund the money for the Wikipedia edits came from, and why the money didn't instead come from Gonzalez's mayoral campaign funds."

Two Portland-based television stations had stories on an investigation into the expenditures. KOIN, the CBS affiliate, said that Gonzalez claims "the money went to train staff on how to follow Wikipedia standards", not to conduct impermissible campaigning; KGW, the NBC affiliate, also carried a full story about the case, titled "Commissioner Rene Gonzalez now the subject of Portland campaign finance investigation". – B

In a recent article for The New Yorker, titled Was Linguistic A.I. Created by Accident? (paywalled), Stephen Marche focuses on the role of chance and good luck in the research that led to the landmark 2017 AI paper "Attention Is All You Need", which introduced the transformer architecture. The paper was originally supposed to focus on using the transformer to make English-to-German translations.

Instead, as part of the AI model's training process, the Google team asked the transformer to read Wikipedia entries for two days, covering almost half of the platform's pages. The model was then asked to create five new Wikipedia-style articles from scratch, all about made-up subjects called "The Transformer": a fictitious Japanese hardcore punk band formed in 1968, a fictitious video game, a fictitious 2013 Australian sitcom, a fictitious studio album by an alternative metal group called Acoustic, and even a fictitious science-fiction novel. At first reading, the articles produced by Transformer on the made-up topics all looked like real Wikipedia articles: they were almost too good, "filled with inconsistencies, but [...] also strikingly detailed", suggesting that AI had made a jump of twenty or more years of progress:

Why was a neural network designed for translating text capable of writing imaginative prose from scratch? "I was shocked, blown away," (researcher Aidan) Gomez recalled. "I thought we would get to something like this in twenty years, twenty-five years, and then it just showed up." The entries were a kind of magic, and it was unclear how that magic was performed.
— Was Linguistic A.I. Created by Accident?, Stephen Marche

The historical bond between Wikipedia and machine-learning based natural language processing goes back even further. The first attempts to provide the encyclopedia with text generated using artificial neural networks trace back to at least 2009.

But artificial intelligence and large language models are not just derived from Wikipedia; they are important topics for discussion and policy about the platform's future.

The rapid rise of ChatGPT has raised the most interest and sparked dozens of research efforts towards the implementation of LLMs in the creation and improvement of Wikipedia articles, among other tasks, with the STORM system prototype being the latest example. The Wikimedia Foundation has taken note of AI's progress, for example, by expanding its Machine Learning team and even testing an experimental ChatGPT plugin between July 2023 and February 2024. The Signpost itself has included DALL-E-generated images in various articles. On the other hand, in somewhat Jumanji style, the more we get invested in the AI game, the more traps we discover: without proper checks and balances, machine-generated content can pose a threat to the integrity of Wikipedia, should the number of unsourced and fictitious articles keep increasing and causing more problems with COI-related material and disinformation.

The Spanish newspaper El País recently interviewed Wikimedian and Wikimedia España member Miguel Ángel García, along with the WMF's Director of Machine Learning, Chris Albon (in Spanish, free registration might be required). García, who joined Wikipedia in 2006, noted how many newly-registered users introduce themselves by "[pasting] a giant text, apparently well-structured and well-developed", which turns out to be poorly-written and redundant after a closer look. Luckily, the platform is usually able to handle this material through mechanisms such as speedy or proposed deletion, as well as the continuous efforts of its volunteers, which have also been acknowledged by Albon. (Everyone interested can give a helping hand by joining initiatives such as the WikiProject AI Cleanup.)

However, both expressed concerns over the long-term impact of automatic content on the encyclopedia: while García is mainly worried about the incorporation of "pseudo-media" hosting bot-generated articles as sources on Wikipedia - a phenomenon that could actually be mitigated through reports at the noticeboard - Albon took a brief detour from his usually optimistic view on AI tools, explaining that "if there's a detachment between the places where knowledge is created, like Wikipedia, and the places where it is accessed, like ChatGPT, we're at risk of losing a generation of volunteers". He also said that LLMs providing the platform with poorly-sourced or unreferenced content could "introduce an unprecedented amount of disinformation" on the Internet, since "users will not be able to easily distinguish accurate information from [AI] hallucinations"; quite an ironic situation to find ourselves in, considering that chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini are being fed with thousands of Wikipedia articles as part of their training schedules.

Titled "ENC-AI-CLOPEDIA. AI is mining the sum of human knowledge from Wikipedia. What does that mean for its future?", a separate interview by Sherwood News (the media arm of trading platform Robinhood Markets) also featured Albon, together with his colleague Lane Becker, Senior Director of Earned Revenue at the Wikimedia Foundation and president of its for-profit subsidiary Wikimedia LLC, which runs Wikimedia Enterprise.

The interviewer first confronted them with "Data from Similarweb [which] shows that traffic to Wikipedia has been in decline" since about 2020. In response, Albon pointed to the Foundation's own (presumably more precise) pageview and unique devices data, with Becker asserting that "We have not seen a significant drop in traffic on Wikimedia websites that can directly be attributed to the current surge in AI tools." (This conclusion is somewhat in contrast with two recent academic papers, see our coverage: "ChatGPT did not kill Wikipedia, but might have reduced its growth", "'Impact of Generative AI': A 'significant decrease in Wikipedia page views' after the release of ChatGPT")

However (similar to Albon in the El País interview), Becker voiced "concern [...] about the potential impact that these AI tools could have on the human motivation to continue creating and sharing knowledge. When people visit Wikipedia directly, they are more likely to become volunteer contributors themselves. If there is a disconnect between where knowledge is generated (e.g. Wikipedia) and where it is consumed (e.g. ChatGPT or Google AI Overview), we run the risk of losing a generation of volunteers." (Not mentioned, but presumably on Becker's mind as well, was the fact that these visitors are also, via Wikipedia's well-known donation banners, the Foundation's most important source of revenue by far.)

Asked "How do you feel about practically every LLM being trained on Wikipedia content?", Becker stressed that "we welcome people and organizations to extend the reach of Wikipedia's knowledge. Wikipedia is freely licensed and its APIs are available for free to everyone, so that people all over the world can use, share, add to, and remix Wikipedia content." However, "We urge AI companies to use Wikimedia's free APIs responsibly and include recognition and reciprocity for the human contributions that they are built on, through clear and consistent attribution. They should also provide pathways for continued growth and maintenance of the human-created knowledge that is used to train them" - such as "Clearly attributing knowledge back to Wikipedia", but also, for "high-volume commercial reusers of Wikipedia content to use our opt-in paid for product, Wikimedia Enterprise." Becker shared that its total revenue (i.e. not accounting for the staffing and other costs of Wikimedia Enterprise itself) "for FY 2022-23 was $3.2 million - representing 1.8% of the Wikimedia Foundation's total revenue for the period." However, he declined to disclose how much of that came from Google (one of the few publicly known customers, another one being yep.com).

– S, O, H

See also in this issue's News and notes: "AI policy positions of the Wikimedia Foundation"

• Wikimedian of the Year gets recognition within her local community: Local Canadian newspaper Thorold Today recently dedicated a full article to Wikipedian Hannah Clover, who has recently become the latest recipient of the Wikimedian of the Year award at Wikimania 2024 in Katowice; the newspaper likely cited Hannah's acceptance speech at the convention, where she broke down her most fond memories about the platform, as well as her successful RfA from last year. Among the other key contributions she was recognized for in the award, there's also a notable Signpost essay from January 2023, where she gave feedback on mobile editing of Wikipedia: you can find it here.
• Wikipedia discussion about the war in Gaza keeps spilling over into the real world: A recent decision to rename the article Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza as Gaza genocide, which followed a lengthy talk page discussion, is being covered by an ever-growing number of media outlets worldwide. The latest ones to join the list are Israeli newspaper Haaretz (behind pay-wall), which has also highlighted a notable rise in the amount of daily pageviews since the title was changed, and German portal Israelnetz--published by evangelical association Christliche Medieninitiative pro [de]--which has stated that the page's title was "altered to Israel's detriment", while noting how a deletion discussion over the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia was also taking place (it has since been deleted).

See previous Signpost coverage about the controversy surrounding this article, as well as the discussion about the reliability of the Anti-Defamation League on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, here and here.

• Edit wars over the noisiest Olympic culture war: Italian online newspaper Fanpage.it recently covered the edit wars on the English Wikipedia page of Imane Khelif; during her participation at the 2024 Summer Olympics, where she eventually won the gold medal in her weight, the born female Algerian boxer became the subject of extensive controversy, as sports functionaries, conservative politicians, (former) social media CEOs and writers all falsely claimed^{[neutrality is disputed]} that she had XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone that could give her some kind of advantage over her opponents. As of this issue's publication, Khelif's article remains extended protected, having been blue-locked since August 1.
• The Editors reviews and events: Wikipedia beat reporter Stephen Harrison, who is best known for his articles on Slate, has recently been busy promoting his debut novel, The Editors, focused on a fictionalized version of the platform (named Infopendium) that is suddenly caught up in global cyberwarfare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following his interviews in July, Harrison sat down with WFAA and Numlock News, as well as New America and Arizona State University, as part of Future Tense event. WashU newspaper Student Life also published a review of the novel. KAMR (NBC in Amarillo) has an under-three-minute video if you are in a rush.
• We'll be with you down every road: In a recent episode of NPR's radio program 1A, fittingly titled "Why All Roads Of Inquiry Lead To Wikipedia", host Jenn White talks about how "much of our factual questions get answered by the site", and interviews Stephen Harrison. They emphasize the collaborative nature of Wikipedia and how this can lead to heated debates, for example on Donald Trump's conviction, which The Signpost extensively covered back in June.
• Boolean roulette: Musicians and YouTubers Andrew Huang and Tom McGovern recently challenged themselves to write a full song from scratch by using a random Wikipedia article as an inspiration. Helped by Matt Inouye's tool WikiRoulette, the two artists eventually resolved to turn a... Boolean circuit into a metaphor for a meaningful relationship. You can hear the final result of their efforts--with some help from Gabi Rose--at this link.
• Lawsuit against Taiwanese chapter rejected: Taiwan's Liberty Times [1] (Google Translate) and United Daily News [2] (Google Translate) both report that businessman Tsai Eng-meng has lost a lawsuit he filed in Taipei's district court against Wikimedia Taiwan, after edits he made to the Chinese Wikipedia's coverage of his ties to the Chinese Communist Party and purchase of media organizations, including the China Times, had been reverted. The chapter pointed out that it is not the owner, nor the operator of the website.

The 2024 WikiCup, hosted by users Cwmhiraeth, Epicgenius and Frostly, is entering its final phase, after Round 4 ended on 29 August. A total number of 135 users, including the late Vami IV, joined the contest at the start of this year; however, just eight of them have made it to the ultimate showdown. Here are the finalists, ranked from first to last as per their scores in the latest round:

• Generalissima (1150 points);
• Arconning (791 points);
• AirshipJungleman29 (718 points);
• BennyOnTheLoose (714 points);
• Hey man im josh (601 points);
• BeanieFan11 (579 points);
• AryKun (499 points);
• Sammi Brie (472 points).

Since its creation back in 2007, the WikiCup has strived to "encourage content creation and improvement and make editing on Wikipedia more fun", and this year's edition is no exception: according to the official data, competitors have so far contributed to 44 featured articles, 72 featured lists, 385 good articles, 94 In the News credits, and over 300 Did You Know credits; thanks to their efforts, 38 articles were also added to featured topics and good topics.

On behalf of The Signpost, we would like to thank the judges and every participant in the 2024 WikiCup, and wish good luck to the eight finalists.

– O

As of 18 August, the Journals cited by Wikipedia (JCW) compilation (see previous Signpost coverage) now tracks the number of distinct DOIs present on Wikipedia, and how many are flagged with |doi-access=free. Several of these are automatically tracked and tagged as free to read by templates and bots (see previous Signpost coverage). As of the 1 August dump, the compilation kept track of 3.70M citations, of which 2.41M had DOIs. Of the citations that had DOIs, 661,103 were identified as free to read, or about 27.44%.

The 17–18 August 2024 update of the CS1/CS2 modules further identified the Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (doi prefix 10.4230) and the Living Reviews journal series (doi prefix 10.12942) as free-to-read registrants, as well as 11 individual journals that can be identified by the starting pattern of DOIs (like 10.1046/j.1365-8711..., 10.1093/mnras.., and 10.1111/j.1365-2966... for the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society). Citation bot will automatically flag those with |doi-access=free when it runs on the article (see our guide on how to use Citation bot yourself).

If you notice a DOI link that takes you to a free-to-read article that wasn't flagged by the bot, you can flag the citation manually with |doi-access=free. You can also try to use WP:OABOT (see our guide on how to use OAbot yourself). If you are aware of fully free-to-read journals/publishers that aren't already kept track of by the CS1/CS2 templates (see CS1/2 FAQ), leave a note at Help talk:CS1 and User talk:Citation bot.

Following the 20 August dump, the compilation kept track of 3.72M citations, of which 2.42M had DOIs. Of the citations that had DOIs, 663,976 were identified as free to read, or about 27.46% (up from 27.44%). It took a few days for the server cache to clear and tracking categories to be populated. I estimate that the 'true' count should have been about 666K, mostly due to MNRAS and MNRAS Letters being identified as free to read.^[a]

Related to the JCW update, all CS1/2 templates (like {{cite journal}} and {{citation}}), and the standalone templates {{doi}} and {{doi-inline}}, now support the flagging of free-to-read DOIs with |doi-access=free. The standalone versions, however, are not currently supported by any bot, nor do they have tracking categories.

Thanks to Trappist the monk for their efforts on templates and the identification of free-to-read publishers/journals (I was also involved), as well as the maintainers of Citation bot, JL-Bot, and OAbot (particularly AManWithNoPlan, JLaTondre and Nemo bis) for facilitating the mass-tagging of free-to-read articles.

– H

In a blog post, the Wikimedia Foundation provides an overview of several statements it has submitted since last year in response to

[...] governments and international organizations [...] seeking stakeholder feedback about how [AI] policies should be formulated in order to best serve the public interest. [...] The Foundation’s comments have fallen into two categories. Some are directly relevant to the work being done by volunteer Wikipedia editors around the world, such as on copyright and openness of foundational AI models. Others applied our values and the valuable lessons we have learned from our AI/ML work to benefit public interest projects focused on free knowledge and the online information ecosystem—i.e., decentralized community-led decision-making, privacy, stakeholder inclusion, and internet commons.
— "AI for the people: How machines can help humans improve Wikipedia" (Wikimedia Foundation)

For example, in a response to the US Copyright Office's Request for Comments on AI and Copyright, the Foundation states that it "generally supports uses of Wikipedia content for purposes including AI model development", but (as summarized in the blog post) argues that

At a minimum, AI developers who include Wikipedia in the training data used to create large language models (LLMs) should publicly acknowledge that use and give credit to Wikipedia and the volunteer editors who made this rich source of raw materials for LLMs.

At the same time, the Foundation's statement indicates that this attribution might not always be legally required, depending on whether courts decide that the unauthorized use of copyrighted content in training of such AI models is covered by fair use (in which case the attribution requirements of Wikipedia's CC BY-SA 4.0 license would be moot). The Foundation refrains from taking a categorical position on this legal question: "Based on our analysis, we do not believe that training AI models should either be categorically fair use or categorically not fair use. Rather, the particulars of the training process and the way courts view the purposes of a use should inform whether a particular training process is fair or not." The analysis does however offer some detailed if speculative observations on how courts might evaluate the four fair use factors in this context. For example, it is argued that because "the vastness of the datasets used in training mean that any single copy [of a copyrighted work] is barely a drop in the ocean of the whole", judges may want to focus on "the extent to which a work is weighted in the development of a model": "Hypothetically, if a copyright protected work was manually weighted to have an outsized impact in model development, then one could argue that although the uses of other full works may be fair, the amplification of one particular work in the training set is not." (Various LLMs are known to have weighted Wikipedia more highly than other parts of their training dataset, for example GPT-3.)

On the other hand, the Wikimedia Foundation's statement also urged the Copyright Office to take not only the perspective of copyright owners into account, but also that of the users of copyrighted works and of AI-based tools – noting that "The Foundation is somewhat uniquely positioned as both the host of a primary source of training material for generative AI and a user of many AI and ML tools that aid human editors with the creation of free knowledge." In particular, it cautions to keep public interest in mind in possible future changes to copyright laws and AI regulations, e.g.

On the use of data, specifically, we encourage regulators and legislators to align their approaches with existing models, such as the European Union’s inclusion of an exemption for text and data mining in the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, that enable public interest research and other beneficial uses of protected works.

[...] we encourage the Office to consider the potential impacts that changes to copyright law could have on competition among AI developers. If copyright law changes are enacted such that the acquisition and use of training materials becomes more expensive or difficult, there is a risk that dominant firms with greater resources will become further entrenched while smaller companies, including nonprofit organizations, struggle to keep up with mounting development costs.

– H

Chosen by communities, selected by affiliates, and appointed by the WMF, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC), a committee of 15 Wikimedians, first took on the job of drafting a Charter for the Wikimedia movement in November 2021.

There were multiple feedback rounds, a lot of conversations, more discussions and a final ratification vote where the community and affiliate support was overwhelming (albeit with a low turnout in both cases due to the voter eligibility criteria), but the WMF's Board of Trustees decided the draft was not good enough (not safe to try). As reported in the previous issue of The Signpost, the Foundation published three pilot projects to take the work forward.

In August 2024, the committee (which still included 11 people), shared their process and ratification reflections pre-Wikimania. Before dissolving on 30 August, they also published their recommendations for next steps, including a response to the three pilots proposed by the WMF.

– Ciell, former MCDC member

• China blocks Wikimedia Foundation's WIPO accreditation for the fourth time: In what has become an annual tradition, an application by the Foundation to be accredited as a permanent observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) failed because of opposition by the Chinese government, despite support from several other countries. As explained by the Foundation's Global Advocacy team, the WIPO is "the specialized United Nations (UN) agency that determines global policies on copyright, patents, and trademarks. Observer status would enable the Foundation to participate in and contribute to WIPO committees where intellectual property norms are set." The Foundation first applied in 2020, when Beijing's delegate objected to "a large amount of content and disinformation in violation of [the] ‘One China’ principle" (see Signpost coverage: "Beijing blocks WMF from World Intellectual Property Organization, citing Wikimedia Taiwan"). China has since also blocked several Wikimedia chapters from gaining permanent observer status.
• Wikimedia ESEAP Conference: Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia has uploaded a video with highlights of the May 2024 Wikimedia ESEAP Conference to YouTube.
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Cancel culture. Please be bold in helping improve this article! Next week's Article for Improvement (beginning 9 September 2024) is Caroline Islands.
• New record low count for active administrators: A new low point of 427 active administrators was reached on 26 August, marking a new decline after the slight increase in July. Meanwhile, the first RfA since June was initiated just a few days before we went to press with this issue.
• The curtain rises on a new edition of WLM: The fifteenth edition of Wiki Loves Monuments kicked off on 1 September. For this year's photo contest, which will focus on built heritage, 53 countries have enrolled. The respective national campaigns will be hosted until 31 October, and then each nation will send their Top 10 to the international jury for the Grand Finale in December.
• Article on non-existent species removed: "Pratylenchus dulscus," a ten-word article without references, was deleted on 22 August, after existing in the encyclopedia for over 17 years. Though not strictly speaking a hoax – it appears to have been created in good faith, based on a species name in a Wikipedia list article that had been altered by an IP – it is currently listed among the longest-lived hoaxes on Wikipedia.
• The Campaigns teams would like to learn about how you collaborate online: Editors can take this Google Form survey or share examples of successful collaborations on Meta Wiki.

I attended my first Wikimania this year in Katowice, Poland. I thought about applying for a scholarship when the process was open, but ultimately decided against it. I figured that attending WikiConference North America was enough for one year; obviously, I changed my mind once I was chosen as the Wikimedian of the Year. I had never been outside of North America before this event, so this experience was a lot of firsts for me. If I had told younger me that my first trip to Europe would be in Poland, she would have been very confused.

In late May, I received an email telling me that I was one of the five people shortlisted for the award. I tried not to think about it too much: I didn't think I'd actually be the winner and that one of the other four editors would be chosen. I didn't consider my accomplishments to be even remotely comparable to those of Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight or Emily Temple-Wood, so why would it be me? I was told to expect a response within three weeks, but it ended up taking longer than that (apparently, there were unexpected challenges internally, and I was told it wasn't my fault). I found out that it was actually me on July 4, which gave me about a month to come to terms with my upcoming fame. I was excited for the most part, but I was also terrified; sometimes it felt like a countdown of doom, where my life would never be normal again.

This was a pre-conference culture crawl day, so there were no sessions to attend. Katowice is six hours ahead of Niagara Falls, where I live, so I was also trying to recover from jet lag. I didn't really see much of the city other than getting a super secret tour of the venue and hanging out with some staff members in the attached café. We had some interesting conversations, though: I found out that the Wikimedia Foundation owns their data centres for privacy reasons, that this practice is incredibly expensive, and that it's unusual for tech companies to do this. A new data centre was recently built in Brazil, and this took a lot of work: you can read about it here. I was also told that the codebase for MediaWiki is incredibly old: as a result, this presents unique challenges and a lot of things are "hacks on top of hacks". I was encouraged to attend a session where this topic was featured, which can be watched here. Unfortunately, I did not manage to do so.

I had breakfast in the hotel lobby and talked to New Zealand user Giantflightlessbirds, who told me about some interesting work he does as a Wikipedian at Large (an alternative name for a Wikipedian in Residence) in his home-country. I also talked to a few other Wikimedians... but did not get their usernames. Finally, I showed one young woman my knitting and we took a selfie together.

• I attended the orientation from 9:00 to 9:45 am. It was mostly some background on how the 2024 Wikimania conference was moved from Kraków to Katowice (including some friendly banter about how they were going to gaslight us with the slides and merchandise), some anecdotes about Polish cuisine and culture (did you know that pierogies can have a blueberry filling?), to follow the friendly space policies (essentially, don't be a jerk), and to exercise caution regarding alcoholic beverages.
• I attended the Volunteer Supporter's Network session from 10:00 to 10:25 am. I noted that these resources were only offered to affiliates, so at the end of the session, I asked someone from the audience about my desire to know more about the type of activities affiliates participate in, since I think this process can be somewhat confusing from the outside looking in. However, I have not heard back yet.
• I attended the blocking and temporary accounts sessions by Trust and Safety, and I found them incredibly informative. The latter session ran into unexpected challenges when the pre-recorded video lost audio, but I think Dreamy Jazz did a good job stepping in and making the best of it.

Preparation for the opening ceremony started at 1 pm. I was one of two recipients who misunderstood that I was supposed to have lunch before meeting Jimmy Wales; luckily, Vermont saved the day by finding us meals and beverages. Apart from that, my introduction to Wales and the rest of the recipients went smoothly. We sat next to each other in one big circle and shared who we are and which category we were chosen for. Then, we rehearsed the ceremony itself.

After the rehearsal finished, I spent time with a bunch of friends behind a staircase (we had a table and it's way less gloomy than it sounds). Some plans were made for after the opening ceremony, because "it's not like any of us will have anything to do". It was incredibly difficult to keep a straight face and not give the secret away at that point. When we all sat down at a table in the room for the opening ceremony, at 5 pm, my heart was pounding, but I tried my best to remain calm and just act like everything was normal, and I think I did a good job acting the part. On the inside, I felt like I was experiencing something akin to an adrenaline rush: it's difficult to explain precisely what I was feeling, but it was incredibly intense. I was sitting next to Seddon, and he was determined to update all the award recipients as they were announced. However, he had no idea that I was going to be one of them, and his laptop died, so he switched to his tablet to edit through the app when my time came. It was oddly fitting, given that I'm known for mobile editing... The secret was out once Natalia started describing me; Seddon suddenly looked up from his tablet and literally blurted out, "It's you!" We shared a knowing look: sure enough, it was me. My name was announced, the lights that gave everyone a headache went crazy, and I forced myself to walk onto the stage.

I admit I have very limited experience with public speaking: I had never been on a stage before, and I had a thousand people watching me for the first time in my life. I could literally feel my legs shake, and I spent a lot of my mental effort just trying to stay still and not fall. I was told by a few people afterwards that I did look a little nervous, but the situation didn't look as dire as it felt. If you wish to watch it, you can do so here. In retrospect, I'd empty my pockets beforehand (my wallet and passport are bulky)... I would also have spoken more slowly, deliberately, and with less filler words. After the ceremony ended, I mingled with the other conference participants, because I'm a social butterfly. A bunch of people congratulated me and asked for a selfie, and one person even asked me to sign their copy of All the Knowledge in the World.

• I attended the Opening the Academia keynote session from 9:00 to 9:55 am. It was a panel with four participants, and I listened to what the speakers had to say about their experiences; I particularly agreed with the argument that academic publishing should be more open access than it currently is. Later on, I heard something that stood out to me: "If you're a scholar and you do not ask your students to write Wikipedia articles as a form of submitting your essay for a grade, you're a loser. You're a massive loser." This comment concerned me for multiple reasons: one question posed in editor reflections is about WikiEd, with numerous people having used this space to share that they have cleaned up after student editors and that they found this experience frustrating. I don't think this conclusion is surprising to anyone who has read an WP:ANI thread where a WikiEd class has gone wrong. So hearing someone say, "If you do this, Wikipedia editors will oftentimes check to see if it's plagiarized or not, they will make comments, they will edit it for you", and, "If from a class of thirty people... five articles remain, it's zero versus five", it came across as a somewhat reckless mentality to have. I expressed these concerns when questions and comments were opened up to members of the audience:

"You mentioned you were very pro-student editing and how you think everyone should do it, right? Obviously, I'm cool with young people editing, because I'm 21 and if I was against that, I wouldn't be editing at all. But I think maybe there are more factors to consider than just seeing if some articles stay. From the newcomer's perspective, you don't want to be setting people up to fail. Then, from the community outreach perspective, [...] yes, people will clean up after the people who are doing things that they aren't supposed to be, but it kind of diminishes the volunteer morale a bit? [If] they're constantly flooded with content that they need to clean up, then it can be a bit of a vicious cycle where they're less welcoming to student editors. So, I was just wondering if you've ever considered that, and if you had any thoughts on how you might want to mitigate factors like that?"

• In response, they said:

"I think it's a very good argument that you're making, but there's two things that I wanted to add to that. First of all, editors are already flooded with bad quality edits. [I interrupted them to clarify that my concerns were related to the scale in which these issues can arise. Then they said:] I would still argue that the average quality of professor-supervised class editing will be higher than the average quality of a newcomer edit. Mainly because students have access to all those journal libraries and are, by design, probably the top 1% of knowledge-privileged people. By design, their edits will most likely not be horrible, although probably not great, either. Second, I think the problem you're raising is super important, that we do not discourage people by hanging them out to dry, go out and edit Wikipedia and of course, prepare them. I think you're very right that, first of all, we need to let people know what the rules are, maybe get them familiar with the format, but isn't that true of academic writing in general? You do not ask people to start writing journals."

• In retrospect, I wouldn't have interrupted them as they were speaking, as I did a few times in that exchange: I think I was treating it like a conversation, but in this context, it comes across as somewhat rude. If I meet him again someday, I'd likely apologize for that. Afterwards, I had a brief conversation with other audience members in the hallway, where I discussed how I think Wikipedia works best when someone's heart is in it, and not because they're doing it for a grade. I mentioned another editor I had met at a Toronto meetup, who has a Wikipedia club at their university: I brought this up as an example of how one can mitigate the potential disadvantages of large scale student editing without getting rid of the advantages, such as new editors and access to university resources.
• I attended this session about human rights from 10:00 to 10:55 am: it was not uploaded on YouTube, but the slides are available here. It was a bit odd to hear about general internet safety after outing myself to more than a thousand people the night before, but I think it was interesting, nonetheless. Here are some key takeaways: women are more likely to be harassed online, people have gone to jail for editing Wikipedia, and it's important to respond quickly to safety concerns. I asked a question about how they determine the "realness" of a threat, and it turned out that it depends a lot on the context of the specific situation. Do they live in a country with a good human rights record? Does the project itself, or the person, see the threat as concerning? Sometimes the foundation does not get involved because they don't want to do any harm (e.g. if they make a public statement, they might put the victim's family in danger). There was some audience participation about the general nature of how some editors are more open about their identities than others, and how it's very much a personal choice that we should not judge others for.
• I attended the Information Integrity during Elections session from 11 am to 11:55 am. One key takeaway was that disinformation on Wikipedia looks different from how it would on a social media site (for example, targeted ads cannot be bought), but Wikipedia's increased visibility raises the motivation for bad actors. If a government fails to censor its opponents, they usually try to discredit the information source and threaten people: at the start of election cycles, sometimes people will contact political parties directly to remind them of the rules. When there's political violence, chapters and admins collaborate in private channels. Trust and Safety performs investigations and has a disinformation team. I learned that the Anti-disinformation Repository is a resource that exists. I also learned that occasionally the foundation does policy advocacy when it has implications for Wikimedia projects. An example was a Texas law, which would later become the subject of a Supreme Court case, that would make it possible to construe reverting content from an unreliable source as political speech. Other examples given were surveillance reform advocacy and Section 230 protections.
• I attended the Frontlines of Truth and Learn from each other with linked data sessions to fulfill my duties as a volunteer. Anyone who receives a scholarship to attend Wikimania is required to do this; I had to send a few emails to get this rearranged a few times, though. The first time I was chosen to do video editing (which I have no idea how to do), while the second time I was chosen to take notes for a session that was being presented in Spanish (a language I do not understand). I tried my best to take notes during these two sessions for the Etherpad, but I had no idea how that was supposed to work, and it stressed me out a little. The latter session was aimed towards a very technically minded audience, so I asked the speaker a bunch of questions during a break, just to make sure I was not misrepresenting what was being said.
• I attended the Fireside Chat with the Wikimedia Foundation Executives from 5 to 5:55 pm. There was a demo of Edit Check, which was incredibly exciting to see! The gist is that this feature will encourage editors to cite a source before adding content, or explain why they do not want to do so. It'd be a game changer. Apart from that, there was some discussion about how the foundation is concerned about the future of search engine traffic and keeping younger editors engaged. The time for questions was extended to allow me to ask one:

"[How did] you [come] to the conclusion that there are less younger editors that are interested in contributing? I think I actually had a conversation with Selena about this briefly at WikiConference North America, [where] I talked a bit about how I know lots of people my age that edit. [Obviously,] anecdotal experience isn't everything, but I assume you have pretty good reasons for coming to that conclusion?"

• In response, Selena Deckelmann said:

"I think there's editing and there's readers, so I can talk about the editing piece of it. With editors, it's complex. There are things that have shifted over time, and I actually have this really promising report the Community Metrics team put together, that says we're starting to see a rise in younger editors overall. That doesn't [necessarily] translate to functionaries, but I don't have as good data on [them] overall. They're a crucial population of people that make the whole system work, so for me there's data that shows that younger editors are kind of turning in a different direction, and if you dig in and look at each region, you start to see different stories. So it's quite a complex picture. Overall, I would say I get a lot of feedback from the administrators, in particular, that they're just seeing their numbers drop, that we're not getting enough new people into that system, so those are the factors and data that I have about admins and I'm really interested in more."

• I had breakfast, and then arrived at the conference venue absurdly early (like 7 am). I had trouble sleeping after the intensity of the previous night, and I woke up around 4 am. I had a conversation with Ocaasi, as I talked a bit about my personal life and my ambitions, and we discussed how he wants more experienced Wikimedians to be a part of Residence programs. We also discussed how he does a lot of work guiding newbies, noting that when they don't make mistakes, they're often accused of being sockpuppets. He stated that I'm good at "constructive dissent": I'd never heard that phrase before, but I think it describes me well.
• During the election disinformation session, I had a whispered conversation with Shikeishu, who is an active editor on Wikidata. They showed me some interesting things, like Wikidata query, their community portal and project chat.
• At lunch, I had a conversation with Tohaomg: I told him about my goal to understand affiliates and what they do a bit more. He was willing to talk about what Wikimedia Ukraine does, being a board member of the organization since February 2021. He said that a lot of what they do when interacting with the public is correcting common misconceptions (an example being that projects don't operate like a business and there are no clearly defined hierarchies). We talked a lot about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine impacted daily life and in turn, Wikimedia Ukraine itself: a lot of Wikipedians either died, were conscripted, or moved to Poland, so the organization asked for help from other projects to help keep up with the maintenance of the Ukrainian Wikipedia, while assigning temporary admin rights to volunteers who were interested. However, most people had other priorities than editing Wikipedia, and even if they wanted to, power outages were common. There were also other practical issues, like how most European keyboards do not support typing in Ukrainian, and highly skilled workers having to take lower-paying jobs because their qualifications were not transferable to other countries. Other concerns were Russian disinformation and being contacted by Ukrainian government officials (he said that sometimes people will ask how to add an image, or that they don't like that certain content exists, in which case they are told that they would be reverted if they tried to remove it, and that Wikimedia Ukraine cannot control what's on the Ukranian Wikipedia). I was somewhat shocked, because it must be really intimidating to receive a phone call from government officials out of the blue like that. What's more, Ukraine does not have freedom of panorama, and that impacts what images are allowed to be uploaded to Commons: Tohaomg said that the organization had tried to get members of the national parliament to recognize why changing these rules would be useful, but it took so long that other people got elected, and so they would have to start over if they tried again. Then the war happened, so obviously politicians have different priorities. Still, Wikimedia Ukraine supports local contests to improve articles and add photos, while also partnering with other affiliates to do something called CEE Spring, which involves a lot of cross-project collaboration. For example, Polish Wikipedians will write content about Ukraine, and vice versa. Wikimedia Ukraine also does outreach work with libraries and museums. Finally, they have monthly awards where the most active editor and newbie win... a can of condensed milk. If you're as confused as I am, it's a play on words in Ukrainian, where the phrasing for "condensed milk" and "milk you don't pay for" is similar. They also support an annual event called Wikimarathon.
• I talked for an hour with cscott about template parsing and a possible new feature regarding talk pages. I repeatedly emphasized the importance of how the community would much rather have years of backlogs worth of technical issues dealt with, compared to radically reinventing features. We also talked a bit about how sometimes people in the community and the WMF don't understand each other that well and some possible sources of that tension (what I refer to as the "Venn diagram situation"). He told me that when the fundraising banners were less manipulative and also less effective last year, they had to lay off 20% of their staff. Apparently, the endowment was created as a buffer, so when people donate less often, the foundation will still be okay.

• I attended the Exploiting Wikimedia foundation platforms session, because it sounded fascinating. Unfortunately, I did not find it to actually be that way, and ended up leaving early. It mostly seemed to be about... one editor being upset that Commons did not block a specific person? They suggested a foundation committee needed to be established for this, which confused me. It's possible I didn't understand the importance of what they were trying to get at.
• I attended the Citation Watchlist session after I left the previous one. I learned that the foundation has not given technology grants for awhile, so the project was being supported by Hacks/Hackers. More information about the script can be found on this page.
• I attended the Universities and Wikimedia session from 10:30 to 10:55 am. Some key takeaways were: most Wiki Education efforts have been in North America, targeting faculty and databases; libraries are a vast resource of pay-walled or otherwise hard to access sources, and if 1% of American university students made a contribution, it'd be 150,000 contributions. Then the talk switched to something I had talked about with other people yesterday: Wikipedia clubs! The speaker made the argument that students can write about what they're interested in, which provides a lot of good long-term engagement. One of the downsides, though, is that it can take a lot of work to establish one of these clubs.
• I attended the 10 Years and 20 Million Links Fixed session from 11:00 to 11:25 am. This session was about InternetArchiveBot, and I thought it was really interesting. The foundation does not fund this; that comes from a partnership with the Internet Archive itself.
• I attended the Student Engagement with Openness session from 11:30 to 11:55 am. I thought it was a very interesting success story for what Wikimedian in Residence programs can accomplish. The slides are linked at the session page for others who are curious.
• I attended the Remixing Open Culture session from 3:30 to 4:10 pm. The poster I created can be found here.

• Before the sessions started, I had a conversation with other editors. Someone told me about how they attended a wedding of two Wikipedians and the lead section of marriage was read at the ceremony. He also said that there have been people that got married at Wikimania. I also got some advice about how the foundation might offer me a job at some point, because they like "poaching" prominent community members; however, I was warned that this experience can be incredibly frustrating. Another editor, Ragesoss, showed me something called Impact Visualizer, which I thought was a really cool tool. I then talked to central notice admin TheresNoTime about how they improved Wikimedia UK budgets (this affiliate does a lot of GLAM work with museums and libraries). Vermont told me about how they broke temporary accounts during the hackathon: they found a way to give a temporary account sysop rights and the ability to block an admin. It's only possible because they're a steward, but the issue is going to be fixed, regardless. This is also when I found out I now have a Commons category and a Wikidata item.
• While I did not attend this session, I was told that my mobile editing essay was mentioned at the Board of Trustees meeting.
• I had lunch with HJ Mitchell, ToBeFree and Hawkeye7. Then, I got an email from a Foundation employee to tell me that BBC's Tech Life wanted to interview me, so I cut lunch a bit short and headed up to the press room. My interview starts at 20:20. I talked for longer than what was actually included in the interview. For example, I was asked what my favourite article was: it was a question that caught me somewhat off-guard, but I said that it was ketchup chip, due to its novelty. If you tell any Canadian that this article didn't exist until I wrote it this year, they'd be shocked. Anyways, I realized that the article could be in better shape than it was, so I expanded it after I finished the interview. I bought an e-book about the history of Canadian snack food and read portions of it while hanging out with other editors in the hackathon room. I did this for the rest of the day and hung out with editors Chlod, Dreamy Jazz, Novem Linguae, Leaderboard, Harej and Cyberpower678 (I did take a quick break to attend the remixing open culture session linked above).

• I attended the Older vs younger generations session from 10:00 to 10:25 am. There were fancy charts, pie charts, and conclusions, but I believe that the sample size was far too small to do any of that, since all of this was based off a survey where there had been just 28 participants. I talked with DerHexer after the session concluded, and he let me know about an equivalent German Wikipedia survey with more than 1,000 participants. Unfortunately, I don't understand German, but I think that's a more representative sample size than 28.
• I attended the Understanding and assisting with undisclosed paid editing enforcement session from 11:00 to 11:55 am. The speaker was employed by the Foundation's legal department and it was a pre-recorded presentation. Details were limited, because there's only so much that can be shared, but I found what was presented interesting. Key takeaways were that they've taken down 150 domains, have created lines of communication with platforms where UPE scams are provided, and have performed more than 50 informal settlements. He repeatedly thanked the members of the community who offer leads into these investigations, as the team has to focus on the worst offenders due to limited resources.
• I attended The Future of the Wikipedian in Residence Position from 1:30 to 1:55 pm. I admit to being intrigued about the concept of the position itself (it's near the top of the list for my dream job aspirations).
• I attended the closing ceremony, and then the closing party, where I mostly just had conversations with other editors. Someone shared a screenshot of a mobile fundraising project with me, which prompted me to start a thread over at the village pump.

• I wanted to watch the Wikipedia and television session, as well, but I got lost trying to find the room, so I gave up and returned to the hackathon to hang out with people again. It was mostly the same group as yesterday, although Samwalton9 also joined us. Whenever I was not attending a session, I was there.
• I had lunch with Pacita (WikiNYC): she's a relatively new editor, and we had a very interesting conversation together, mainly talking about perennial sources, RfA, and sources of tension between the Foundation and community.
• I received a coffee mug and keyboard mouse as a gift from the city of Katowice. The organizers of the conference itself handed these gifts to me and the other Wikimedian of the Year winners.

I woke up early to check out of the hotel, because my shuttle back to the Katowice Airport would leave at 9 am. It was about a half-hour drive, and I had a fun time talking with several other editors on the bus.

When we arrived at the airport, I said an official goodbye to some editors, and we arranged a group photo where we all showed our passports. However, plenty of us didn't have flights for hours, so we organized an impromptu edit-a-thon in the airport café. I unpacked my backpack to show Kingoflettuce the books I had brought to the conference, and he did start reading one of these books: Jehovah's Witnesses: A New Introduction by George Chryssides. He got about halfway through it, and then we talked a bit about the lack of active editors in the topic area, and how I've been trying to reduce the reliance on primary sources; he told me what he knew about the group's history in Singapore. On a side note, Chlod said that he was going to try to nominate an article for good article status for the first time, so we all encouraged him to go for it!

Finally, I learned a little bit about how Malaysian names worked from Taufik Rosman, and he also told me about the work he does across projects. It was really cool to have an extended conversation with the previous Wikimedian of the Year!

• 
  The buildings to the left and right of the conference venue. I coined the term "Lego building" to refer to the latter when giving people directions and it caught on. Someone else coined "UFO" to refer to building on the left.
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  The ICC building where Wikimania was held.
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  Inside the conference venue.
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  Ice cream I bought at the plaza across from my hotel on the first day.
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  A selfie with Jimmy Wales.
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  Being interviewed by another Wikimedian in front of the hack-a-thon room.
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  A selfie with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight.
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  A talented artist creating a representation of Wikimania.
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  My spot on the board :)
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  The food I ate at the closing party.
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  Edit-a-thon at the airport.
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  I'm the maple leaf in the top right.

VILLAGE PUMP — Lamenting his lack of diligence, longtime Wikipedia editor Hubert Glockenspiel, 42, told reporters that halfway through writing a response to a comment, he has completely forgotten why he hated the guy whose signature he recognized.

"Originally I had been planning to oppose whatever stupid proposal he was making, or support his siteban, or whatever," said Glockenspiel. "You know, on account of the fact that he's repeatedly demonstrated himself to be an arrogant incompetent moron, or an incorrigible POV warrior, or a disingenuous cheat who routinely misrepresents both sources and policy. But then I couldn't remember which of these things he was, or what he had done, or why. You know, now that I think of it, maybe he was one of those damn deletionists. Or worse, one of those damn anti-deletionists."

Glockenspiel's attempts to jog his memory proved fruitless, as neither the guy's userpage nor the guy's top hundred or so contributions turned up anything obvious. Even external tools were no help; an Xtools list of his most-edited pages, a Startist list of all the discussion threads he had opened, and an afdstats analysis of his deletion votes all depicted a completely normal editor with no visible agenda or obsession.

"I cannot for the life of me remember why I hate this guy," Glockenspiel said. "I can't open a proposal for a siteban, because someone might ask me to give actual evidence, but I'm sure as heck going to support it if someone else does." He added that he had consulted WP:CONFUSED to make sure he hadn't mixed him up with anyone else having a similar name.

Despite a failure to recall anything about the circumstances that gave rise to his seething disdain, Glockenspiel reiterated a commitment to keep hating.

"Well, I don't decide to hate somebody's guts for no reason. It had to have been something."

At press time, Glockenspiel was trying to find the hard drive with his old IRC logs from during the Esperanza MfD, in the hopes that he might discover a long-forgotten flamewar.