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2023-01-01

Wikimedia Foundation ousts, bans quarter of Arabic Wikipedia admins

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By Andreas Kolbe, Lane Rasberry, Bri and Smallbones

Wikimedia Foundation bans 16 MENA editors, including seven Arabic Wikipedia admins

On December 6, the Wikimedia Foundation enacted a group ban on 16 editors, all from the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. The announcement was made in a post to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and re-posted on Meta, saying

As Wikimedia projects have risen in prominence across the world, it has attracted increasing attention of those who would like to control the information published on it, for political or other reasons. Community members have addressed concerns of this sort for many years, but sometimes volunteers who intervene in such cases may themselves face retaliation for their actions....
In January of 2022, the Foundation began an investigation into alleged conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the MENA region. In that investigation, 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. 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.

There was a request for comment at ar:ويكيبيديا:الميدان/إدارة (in Arabic). NANöR reflected the views of many in his community:

Did the Foundation take into account whether the Arab Wikipedia community was able to receive such a shock in this way and on such a scale? Are we able to recover? The decision was harsh and the way it was issued made it harsher on a community that has enough problems. I think it's time to think about changing the mechanism for making decisions and for empathy to be a priority for everyone before anything else.

Ten of the banned editors, including seven admins, edited mainly on the Arabic Wikipedia. Six edited mainly on the Persian Wikipedia.

Arabic Wikipedia administrators

The Wikimedia Foundation globally banned 7 of the 26 administrators that were active in the Arabic Wikipedia. The banned accounts are listed in order of edit count on the Arabic Wikipedia. They all also had contributed to the English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata.

Editors primarily active on Arabic Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation also banned the following 3 Arabic Wikipedia editors who are listed by their edit counts in Arabic Wikipedia. They all had also contributed to Commons and Wikidata.

Editors primarily active on Persian Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation banned the following 6 editors of the Persian Wikipedia, listed in order of edit counts on the Persian Wikipedia. Most had also contributed in Arabic and English Wikipedias, as well as to Commons and Wikidata.

Articles created on English Wikipedia by the banned editors

One of the editors also significantly softened descriptions of Saudi government detention of journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was later murdered and dismembered. – AK, Blu, Bri, SB

Admin highs and lows

As of December 30, the number of active administrators for the English-language Wikipedia stood at 497, the year's high point.

In a News and notes column of January 2022, we touched on the "Administrator cadre continues to contract" issue. Since then, not much has changed and according to Signpost analysis, 2022 was the first year in modern wikihistory that the number of active administrators never rose above 500. In 2022, the high point for active administrators was 497 – compared to 521 in 2021. The low point was 449 on April 4 – compared to 434 in 2021.

During the entire year there were only fourteen new admins, the third lowest since adminship started in 2002. While not as bad as last year's low of seven, and better than the ten in 2018; fourteen a year would only maintain the current admin cadre if the average new admin lasted over thirty years as an admin. We will reiterate our statement from a 2019 special report, and say about all these data "Whether that is a problem, or how a problem would manifest, are questions still to be answered." – Bri

2022 Coolest Tool Awards

On Friday December 16 the Coolest Tool Award committee announced this year's winners. The 30-minute award presentation is on YouTube. Winners were

Brief notes

Logo for The Bugle.



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2023-01-01

Odd bedfellows, Elon and Jimbo, reliable sources for divorces, and more

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By Lane Rasberry, Bri, JPxG, Kudpung, Sdkb, and Smallbones

The stories you are about to read are true, or at least they have been reported in sources we generally consider to be reliable. But on some of them you might think we are pulling your legs, or that we just made them up out of whole cloth. Is the WMF really climbing in bed with Google and Facebook? Do Russian troops in Ukraine really train by reading Wikipedia? Can you really announce your divorce in a Wikipedia article? Does Elon Musk really think that anybody will believe a word he tweets? Does a single Wikipedia article get 250 million pageviews each month? No, we didn't make these stories up. But please use your own better judgement in evaluating whether what the media writes about us is true.

Odd bedfellows, journalists, and the WMF

The proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act was defeated with the help of a dormitory-full of odd bedfellows including Alphabet (formerly Google), Meta (Facebook), the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and the Wikimedia Foundation. Editor & Publisher reported the defeat of the bill, which was not included in the final omnibus bill of the 117th US Congress.

The proposed act would have given news organizations the right to collectively bargain with social media organizations – by creating a four-year antitrust exemption – to get a share of the social media's advertising revenue for news posted on the platform (similar to the News Media Bargaining Code implemented in Australia). Meta responded that, rather than being forced to pay for news content that it did not post on their own platform, they would "consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations," according to CNN.

CNN and The National Review highlighted the WMF's participation. – Sb

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Rebecca MacKinnon, WMF's Vice President, Global Advocacy, and Phil Bradley-Schmieg, WMF Lead Counsel, point out in the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA):

The UK's proposed Online Safety Bill would require platforms to screen and monitor all activity and content when uploaded to predict whether it is illegal or harmful. Such a general monitoring obligation is prohibited in the European Union's Digital Services Act.

One may be forgiven for predicting that this is not a simple task, and probably not possible; accordingly, the authors urge the UK to reconsider the proposed bill. – Sb

Untrained Russian troops learn from Wikipedia how to use their guns

Men in civilian clothing standing in a military formation
Ruslan probably was mobilized in 2022 as a civilian into the Russian Army, as these men were.

According to an hour-long read in The New York Times on the way the combat in Ukraine is being managed [1], "Russian soldiers go into battle with little food, a few bullets and instructions grabbed from Wikipedia for weapons they barely know how to use." A printout of the Wikipedia article VSK-94 [ru] (probably from the Russian Wikipedia) was in the possession of a soldier named Ruslan, who "seemed to be learning to use his weapon on the fly" and "had little else besides the printouts" in his pack, which Ukrainian soldiers recovered with what they believed to be his body in September. The rifle next to him suggested he was a sniper. But while snipers in modern military units often go through weeks of additional special training, "Ruslan's teacher appeared to be the internet."

A banner article on banners

Prolific Wikipedia reporter Stephen Harrison turned his attention to Wikipedia's fundraising banners (covered in last month's issue) in his latest column for Slate, headlined "The Huge Fight Behind Those Pop-Up Fundraising Banners on Wikipedia".

Though "many people see the banner ads on Wikipedia as something like the site's version of a PBS fundraising drive – a bit annoying because they distract you from your regularly scheduled wiki browsing, but not particularly painful," for others, "many of Wikipedia's most dedicated contributors, this year's proposed banner ads presented something like a moral crisis," he writes. "The Wikipedia editing community recently held a poll rejecting the proposed banner ads, pressuring the foundation that supports the site into drafting alternative ads with softer language."

Harrison discusses the aforementioned RfC and the foundation's response, quoting extensively from well-known Wikipedians including Lane Rasberry, Jim Heaphy, and Ryan McGrady.[a]

Harrison explains to readers the difference between the foundation and the community, the latter of which CEO Maryana Iskander tells him produces "healthy democratic noise." He also traces the foundation's growth from its early days operating on a "shoestring budget" to its current status as a large, well-funded nonprofit.

On the question of whether or not those with means should donate, Harrison writes, "It depends. In my view, people who volunteer a lot of time improving Wikipedia's content have already made their 'gift' and should feel no obligation. For everyone else, the calculus is personal."

He concludes: "Clearly, Wikipedians are right to engage in vigorous discussion about how donations are solicited from visitors, and to oversee how those funds are actually spent." – Sdkb

  1. ^ Disclosure: all editors quoted by Harrison are present or past contributors to The Signpost.

How to get divorced on Wikipedia

"Hi Example! Thanks for letting us know that your last name contains two q's and a z rather than two z's and a q. But can you prove it with a reference to a reliable source?" This sort of interaction may be part of our daily grind, but the outside world still finds it more than a little perplexing.

Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel recently had this experience trying to get the article on her updated to reflect her divorce earlier this year. An unidentified IP, presumably Mandel, made a COI edit request for the update at the article talk page, surpassing the vast majority of COI requests by including a source in the form of a court record number. But it was declined, with the comment, "The requested edit violates Wikipedia policy as expressed in WP:NOR and more specifically in WP:BLPPRIMARY: 'Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person.' Basically, Wikipedia should not be the place of first publication of any information that has not already been published elsewhere, particularly in WP:BLP articles. If this information is sufficiently public and important enough to be reported by reliable third-party sources, then it may be updated here."

Emily St. J. Mandel Twitter
@EmilyMandel

Friends, did you know that if you have a Wikipedia page and you get a divorce, the only way to update your Wikipedia is to say you're divorced in an interview?

December 17, 2022

Mandel then took to Twitter, tweeting, "Friends, did you know that if you have a Wikipedia page and you get a divorce, the only way to update your Wikipedia is to say you're divorced in an interview?"

She continued, "It sounds crazy, but wikipedia runs on citations! So anyway all I want for Christmas is for a journalist writing a story for publication (online-only is fine!) to ask me if I'm still married. Also if you're reading this and you're one of my girlfriend's friends, she's not actually dating a married woman, it's just that my wikipedia page is a time capsule."

Wikipedian Hayden Schiff replied to her that, per WP:ABOUTSELF, her tweet should be sufficient. But Mandel had been (mis-)informed by "a guy who's been a Wikipedia editor for a very long time" that nothing short of media coverage would do.

Thus, two hours after her tweet, Slate ran the article, "A Totally Normal Interview With Author Emily St. John Mandel," in which Dan Kois asked her, "So, are you married these days?"

"My Wikipedia entry was essentially a time capsule," Mandel told him. "It bothered me that it was no longer accurate, but also it was kind of awkward for my girlfriend. I didn't love that if her friends looked me up, they'd think she was dating a married woman."

The BBC, which had gotten scooped, ran their own article a few days later, which referenced a similar incident in 2012 with author Philip Roth. Business Insider also ran coverage, choosing to contact a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson rather than learn to read a talk page. Upworthy arrived late to the party the next day with a GIF-filled article that nevertheless ran with "scoop" in the URL.

Back on Wikipedia, discussion has moved to whether we ought to modify WP:BLP (consensus is leaning no as of press time) and whether we ought to mention the incident in Mandel's bio (consensus is leaning yes). – Sdkb

Twitter files, tweet, tweet, delete, no keep, and Wikipedia is not for sale

A remarkable spat started on December 2 when Elon Musk promised an "awesome" announcement and then the Twitter files were released via a series of tweets, followed by a series of similar stories in cooperation with Musk, all critical of Musk's newly purchased Twitter platform and its reaction to a news story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

A Wikipedia article on the Twitter files was soon started and quickly nominated for deletion. An AfD participant called the story a "nothing burger". Musk was tweeted and he called the proposed deletion evidence of Wikipedia's "non-trivial left-wing bias" tweaking Jimmy Wales in the process. Another tweeter asked Musk if he was considering buying Wikipedia. Wales said that Wikipedia was not for sale.

Fox News, Metro (UK), Vice, Gizmodo and others noticed the Twitter spat between Elon Musk and Jimmy Wales involving the supposed offer from the former to buy Wikipedia. Fox characterized it as a "slam" against Wikipedia for considering deleting the article Twitter Files. Vice countered with the label "conspiracy theory" for reading left/right content inclusion intent into the deletion debate. Gizmodo, puzzlingly, says in a headline that Wales "Indirectly Tells Elon Musk the Site 'Is Not for Sale'" emphasis ours, but in the same article states that he's "going head-to-head with" the billionaire.

The deletion request was snow closed as "Keep".

In the meantime

Jimmy Wales, who has serious experience running a social media platform, is not likely to be foolish enough to apply. Neither would any other qualified applicant. So was this whole episode a charade or a publicity stunt right from the beginning? – B, Sb

In brief

Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi, and Giorgia Meloni
"The world's largest e-waste dump" (see 3:00 minutes)
 
March of the Volunteers, the national anthem of the People's Republic of China since 1982
External videos
video icon Glory to Hong Kong, written by "Thomas dgx yhl" and Hongkongers in 2019 on YouTube
The official Hong Kong anthem is March of the Volunteers – Mainland China's anthem. An alternative that has been used by protesters is Glory to Hong Kong.

The top results of an English search of "Hong Kong national anthem" on Google is the Wikipedia page for "Glory to Hong Kong" with text saying that some have dubbed it the "national anthem of Hong Kong." The next result is the Wikipedia entry for "March of the Volunteers"

See "Hong Kong demands Google bury protest song in online anthem search results", from The Washington Post via MSN.
Monthly pageviews were over 250 million in November (note logarithmic scale)


Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next month's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.



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2023-01-01

ComplexRational's RfA debrief

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By FormalDude

Recently selected administrator ComplexRational answers some questions about their Request for Adminship (RfA) which ended on December 21, 2022 with 175 supporters, one neutral, and none opposed.

1. Congratulations on your unopposed RfA. Why do you think it was so successful?

Thanks for your congratulations! I believe that among the most significant factors were my nominators, Vanamonde93 and Barkeep49, who are highly regarded by the community and whose words (which I am very thankful for) therefore carry considerable weight. Additionally, I would say that experience gained over time and a clear track record in both content creation and back-end areas were important (not to boast, of course), as opposed to hypothetically spreading myself too thin or prematurely aiming for something for which I was not ready.


2. What made you decide to run for admin and how did you prepare for the process?

I had not given adminship serious thought until a few months ago. At that time, I was on the fence because despite having familiarity in some areas, primarily new page patrol and recent changes patrol, I felt that long periods of semi-activity risked putting me out of touch with recent policy changes or otherwise would not inspire confidence in !voters who understandably want active admins. This was also during a three-month period without RfAs (May–August 2022), during which I followed (but did not comment on) threads on the RfA talk page in which this gap and a need for more admins were discussed, which led me to carefully consider my credentials and do an optional RfA candidate poll (ORCP) in September; I sought feedback from longtime editors and RfA regulars to figure out where I was standing.
My ORCP was short but went surprisingly well; words of confidence from SandyGeorgia and Vanamonde93 (both on- and off-wiki) – which led to Vanamonde offering a nomination and SandyGeorgia recommending me to Barkeep49 – gave me the clarity and confidence boost to commit to RfA. However, I knew that I would not have time for an RfA until this month due to real-life commitments and also believed that a three-month buffer would be enough time to build a plan with my nominators and nip any potential issues in the bud. This preparation included drafting and revising answers to the three standard questions, pointers on how to conduct myself during the process, and discussing some plausible scenarios so as not to feel overwhelmed or overly surprised during the RfA.


3. How would you describe your experience being a candidate at RfA?

In all honesty, I did not expect my RfA to go as smoothly as it did. At some points, I was uncertain about the wording of my responses and whether anything directly challenging the question (above all for Q4 pre-rewording and Q9) would lead to an influx of opposes, but I was relieved when other users commented on these matters, essentially reading my mind. This allowed me to reformulate my responses before posting them, and eased tension built upon my reading of some contentious RfAs in which a single "wrong" answer or "damning diff" could be enough to change the minds of many – especially if there was a deliberate trick in the question – or even sink the RfA altogether. By the halfway point, though, I felt much more relaxed and also somewhat flattered, thanks to the votes of confidence from many experienced users and knowing that my answers were considered satisfactory. While I had also read through very uncontroversial RfAs and realized mine wasn't a statistical outlier in this sense, I wondered until the very end whether my recurring periods of lower activity or relative lack of experience in controversial areas would draw some opposition (I expressed this both at ORCP and in correspondence with my nominators), and therefore was very pleasantly surprised that this was not the case.


4. What do you think of neutral votes like HelpingWorld's?

Neutral. It's certainly a fair point for users to have no opinion on a candidate with whom they have not interacted or point to possible inexperience in certain admin areas. Although the onus is typically on the !voter to research the candidate, and it's not uncommon to remain undecided after doing research, I notice that most !voters – even those who don't "know" the candidate, as was the case at my RfA – decide to support or oppose. Along those lines, I'd say that with roles reversed, if I could not decide to support or oppose along similar lines, I would probably abstain rather than !vote neutral unless I felt there was something important to present. Nevertheless, there's nothing harmful about such a neutral !vote, and in principle I feel that neutral !votes can still meaningfully contribute to the discussion at RfA.


5. What suggestions, if any, do you have on how to improve the RfA process?

Fundamentally, I agree with the issues highlighted in the 2021 review, and so I would say that anything promoting the idea that "adminship is no big deal" or giving candidates a clearer idea of what to expect when stepping up would improve the process and encourage prospective candidates to run. It's hard to suggest specific improvements, though; the atmosphere of an RfA is inherently unpredictable and some possible solutions to this have been recently rejected. One thing I could suggest would be a detailed statistical analysis of recent RfAs and a compilation of various user criteria to offer greater insight as to what unwritten expectations are for candidates.


6. What do you look forward to most now that you're an admin?

Although admin work is generally unglamorous, I look forward to being able to make a dent in administrative backlogs as they appear, and to directly address issues such as copyright infringement and fast-paced vandalism to maintain the integrity of the affected articles. It's really just a few extra buttons to save some steps and time while doing work similar to what I did before, with the same end goal.


7. What advice would you give to an editor considering running for adminship?

Adminship is fundamentally about demonstrating trust and proficiency to use additional tools to maintain the high quality of the encyclopedia – as I said before, it's unglamorous work at face value, but it's for the benefit of the project. As such, my advice to you as a prospective admin is to stay focused on a handful of areas in which you are knowledgeable and enjoy working, while avoiding inflating your résumé or collecting hats in preparation for an RfA. I would also say that being undecided about whether to go through RfA is not a bad thing at all – two of the biggest potential pitfalls are overconfidence and power hunger – so I recommend that you open a poll at ORCP or privately contact more experienced editors (ideally someone you "know" on-wiki) and ask them for feedback. If someone offers to nominate you without an explicit request, even better. Lastly, in preparation for the RfA (this is advice from my nominators), don't rush into it: take time to prepare answers for the standard questions, tie up any loose ends in things you've worked on (e.g., ensure your content creations are tidy and updated), and wait until you can fully commit to the RfA before starting it – in the sense of having ample time and being in the right headspace.


See also

Category:Wikipedia RfA debriefings



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2023-01-01

Wikimedia Foundation's Abstract Wikipedia project "at substantial risk of failure"

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By Tilman Bayer

Could Abstract Wikipedia fail?

People sitting around an outdoor dining table with a view of a lake and Swiss landscape in the background
Members of the Foundation's Abstract Wikipedia team with the Google.org Fellows and others at an offsite in Switzerland this August. Left-hand side of the table, from front to back: Ariel Gutman, Ori Livneh, Maria Keet, Sandy Woodruff, Mary Yang, Eunice Moon. At head of table: Rebecca Wambua. Right-hand side of the table, front to back: Olivia Zhang, Denny Vrandečić, Edmund Wright, Dani de Waal, Ali Assaf, James Forrester

In 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation began working on Abstract Wikipedia, which is envisaged to become the first new Wikimedia project since Wikidata's launch in 2012, accompanied and supported by the separate Wikifunctions project. Abstract Wikipedia is "a conceptual extension of Wikidata", where language-independent structured information is rendered in an automated way as human-readable text in a multitude of languages, with the hope that this will vastly increase access to Wikipedia information in hitherto underserved languages. Both Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions are the brainchild of longtime Wikimedian Denny Vrandečić, who also started and led the Wikidata project at Wikimedia Deutschland before becoming a Google employee in 2013, where he began to develop these ideas before joining the Wikimedia Foundation staff in 2020 to lead their implementation.

An evaluation published earlier this month calls the project's future into question:

"This is a sympathetic critique of the technical plan for Abstract Wikipedia. We (the authors) are writing this at the conclusion of a six-month Google.org Fellowship, during which we were embedded with the Abstract Wikipedia team, and assisted with the development of the project. While we firmly believe in the vision of Abstract Wikipedia, we have serious concerns about the design and approach of the project, and think that the project faces a substantial risk." [...]

"We find [Abstract Wikipedia's] vision strongly compelling, and we believe that the project, while ambitious, is achievable. However, we think that the current effort (2020–present) to develop Abstract Wikipedia at the Wikimedia Foundation is at substantial risk of failure, because we have major concerns about the soundness of the technical plan. The core problem is the decision to make Abstract Wikipedia depend on Wikifunctions, a new programming language and runtime environment, invented by the Abstract Wikipedia team, with design goals that exceed the scope of Abstract Wikipedia itself, and architectural issues that are incompatible with the standards of correctness, performance, and usability that Abstract Wikipedia requires."

That Fellowship was part of a program by Google.org (the philanthropy organization of the for-profit company Google) that enables Google employees to do pro-bono work in support of non-profit causes. The Fellow team's tech lead was Ori Livneh, himself a longtime Wikipedian and former software engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation (2012–2016), where he founded and led the Performance Team before joining Google. The other three Google Fellows who authored the evaluation are Ariel Gutman (holder of a PhD in linguistics and author of a book titled "Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic", who also published a separate "goodbye letter" summarizing his work during the Fellowship), Ali Assaf, and Mary Yang.

The evaluation examines a long list of issues in detail, and ends with a set of recommendations centered around the conclusion that –

"Abstract Wikipedia should be decoupled from Wikifunctions. The current tight coupling of the two projects together has a multiplicative effect on risk and substantially increases the risk of failure."

Among other things, the Fellows caution the Foundation to not "invent a new programming language. The cost of developing the function composition language to the required standard of stability, performance, and correctness is large ..." They propose that –

  • "Wikifunctions should extend, augment, and refine the existing programming facilities in MediaWiki. The initial version should be a central wiki for common Lua code", Lua being "an easy-to-learn and general purpose programming language, originally developed in Brazil" that is already widely used on Wikimedia projects, with the added benefit of satisfying "a long-standing community request" (for a "Central repository for gadgets, templates and Lua modules", which had been the third most popular proposal in the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey).

Regarding Abstract Wikipedia, the recommendations likewise center on limiting complexity and aiming to build on existing open-source solutions if possible, in particular for the NLG (natural language generation) part responsible for converting the information expressed in the project's language-independent formalism into a human-readable statement in a particular language:

  • Rather than present to users a general-purpose computation system and programming environment, provide an environment specifically dedicated to authoring abstract content, grammars, and NLG renderers in a constrained formalism.
  • Converge on a single, coherent approach to NLG.
  • If possible, adopt an extant NLG system and build on it."

The Foundation's answer

A response authored by eight Foundation staff members from the Abstract Wikipedia team (published simultaneously with the Fellows' evaluation) rejects these recommendations. They begin by acknowledging that although "Wikidata went through a number of very public iterations, and faced literally years of criticism from Wikimedia communities and from academic researchers[, the] plan for Abstract Wikipedia had not faced the same level of public development and discussion. [...] Barely anyone outside of the development team itself has dived into the Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions proposal as deeply as the authors of this evaluation."

However, Vrandečić's team then goes on to reject the evaluation's core recommendations, presenting the expansive scope of Wikifunctions as a universal repository of general-purpose functions a done deal mandated by the Board (the Wikimedia Foundation's top decision-making authority), and accusing the Google Fellows of "fallacies" rooted in "misconception":

The Foundation’s Board mandate they issued to us in May 2020 was to build the Wikifunctions new wiki platform (then provisionally called Wikilambda) and the Abstract Wikipedia project. This was based on the presentation given to them at that meeting (and pre-reading), and publicly documented on Meta. That documentation at the time very explicitly called out as “a new Wikimedia project that allows to create and maintain code” and that the contents would be “a catalog of all kind[s] of functions”, on top of which there would “also” (our emphasis) be code for supporting Abstract Wikipedia.

The evaluation document starts out from this claim – that Wikifunctions is incidental to Abstract Wikipedia, and a mere implementation detail. The idea that Wikifunctions will operate as a general platform was always part of the plan by the Abstract Wikipedia team.

This key point of divergence sets up much of the rest of this document [i.e. the evaluation] for fallacies and false comparisons, as they are firmly rooted in, and indeed make a lot of sense within, the reality posed by this initial framing misconception."

(The team doesn't elaborate on why the Foundation's trustees shouldn't be able to amend that May 2020 mandate if, two and a half years later, its expansive scope does indeed risk causing the entire project to fail.)

The evaluation report and the WMF's response are both lengthy (at over 6,000 and over 10,000 words, respectively), replete with technical and linguistic arguments and examples that are difficult to summarize here in full. Interested readers are encouraged to read both documents in their entirety. Nevertheless, below we attempt to highlight and explain a few key points made by each side, and to illuminate the underlying principal tensions about decisions that are likely to shape this important effort of the Wikimedia movement for decades to come.

What is the scope of the new "Wikipedia of functions"?

In an April 2020 article for the Signpost (published a few weeks before the WMF board approved his proposal), Vrandečić explained the concept of Abstract Wikipedia and a "wiki for functions" using an example describing political happenings involving San Francisco mayor London Breed:

"Instead of saying "in order to deny her the advantage of the incumbent, the board votes in January 2018 to replace her with Mark Farrell as interim mayor until the special elections", imagine we say something more abstract such as elect(elector: Board of Supervisors, electee: Mark Farrell, position: Mayor of San Francisco, reason: deny(advantage of incumbency, London Breed)) – and even more, all of these would be language-independent identifiers, so that thing would actually look more like Q40231(Q3658756, Q6767574, Q1343202(Q6015536, Q6669880)).

[...] We still need to translate [this] abstract content to natural language. So we would need to know that the elect constructor mentioned above takes the three parameters in the example, and that we need to make a template such as {elector} elected {electee} to {position} in order to {reason} (something that looks much easier in this example than it is for most other cases). And since the creation of such translators has to be made for every supported language, we need to have a place to create such translators so that a community can do it.

For this I propose a new Wikimedia project [...] to create, maintain, manage, catalog, and evaluate a new form of knowledge assets: functions. Functions are algorithms, pieces of code, that translate input into output in a determined and repeatable way. A simple function, such as the square function, could take the number 5 and return 25. The length function could take a string such as "Wikilambda" and return the number 10. Another function could translate a date in the Gregorian calendar to a date in the Julian calendar. And yet another could translate inches to centimeters. Finally, one other function, more complex than any of those examples, could take an abstract content such as Q40231(Q3658756, Q6767574, Q1343202(Q6015536, Q6669880)) and a language code, and give back the text "In order to deny London Breed the incumbency advantage, the Board of Supervisors elected Mark Farrell Mayor of San Francisco." Or, for German, "Um London Breed den Vorteil des Amtsträgers zu verweigern, wählte der Stadtrat Mark Farrell zum Bürgermeister von San Francisco."

Wikilambda will allow contributors to create and maintain functions, their implementations and tests, in a collaborative way. These include the available constructors used to create the abstract content. The functions can be used in a variety of ways: users can call them from the Web, but also from local machines or from an app. By allowing the functions in Wikilambda to be called from wikitext, we also allow to create a global space to maintain global templates and modules, another long-lasting wish by the Wikimedia communities.

In other words, the proposal for what is now called Wikifunctions combined two kinds of functions required for Abstract Wikipedia ("constructors" like the elect example and "translators" or renderers for natural language generation that produce the human-readable Wikipedia text) with a much more general "new form of knowledge assets", functions or algorithms in the sense of computer science. While the examples Vrandečić highlighted in that April 2020 Signpost article are simple calculations such as unit conversions that are already implemented on Wikipedia today using thousands of Lua-based templates (e.g. {{convert}} for the inches to centimeters translation), the working paper published earlier that month (recommended in his Signpost article for "technical aspects") evokes a much more ambitious vision:

Imagine that everyone could easily calculate exponential models of growth, or turn Islamic calendar dates into Gregorian calendar dates. That everyone could pull census data and analyze the cities of their province or state based on the data they are interested in. [...] To analyze images, videos, and number series that need to stay private. To allow everyone to answer complex questions that today would require coding and a development environment and having a dedicated computer to run. To provide access to such functionalities in every programming language, no matter how small or obscure. That is the promise of Wikilambda.

Wikilambda will provide a comprehensive library of functions, to allow everyone to create, maintain, and run functions. This will make it easier for people without a programming background to reliably compute answers to many questions. Wikilambda would also offer a place where scientists and analysts could create models together, and share specifications, standards, or tests for functions. Wikilambda provides a persistent identifier scheme for functions, thus allowing you to refer to the functions from anywhere with a clear semantics. Processes, scientific publications, and standards could refer unambiguously to a specific algorithm.

Also, the creation of new development environments or programming languages or paradigms will become easier, as they could simply refer to Wikilambda for a vast library of functions. [...]

Indeed, a function examples list created on Meta-Wiki in July 2020 already lists much more involved cases than unit conversion functions, e.g. calculating SHA256 hashes, factorizing integers or determining the "dominant color" of an image. It is not clear (to this Wikimedian at least) whether there will be any limits in scope. Will Wikifunctions become a universal code library eclipsing The Art of Computer Programming in scope, with its editors moderating disputes about the best proxmap sort implementation and patrolling recent changes for attempts to covertly insert code vulnerabilities?

This ambitious vision of Wikifunctions as spearheading a democraticizing revolution in computer programming (rather than just providing the technical foundation of Abstract Wikipedia) appears to fuel a lot of the concerns raised in the Fellows' evaluation, and conversely motivate a lot of the pushback in the Abstract Wikipedia team's answer.

Would adapting existing NLG efforts mean perpetuating the dominance of "an imperialist English-focused Western-thinking industry"?

Another particularly contentious aspect is the Fellows' recommendation to rely on existing natural language generation tools, rather than building them from the ground up in Wikifunctions. They write:

Clearly, as Denny pointed out, the bulk work of creating NLG renderers would fall on the community of Wikipedia volunteers. [...] Hence, the necessity of a collaborative development and computation environment such as Wikifunctions.

While the core argument is correct, the fallacy lies in the scope of the Wikifunctions project, which is intended to cover any conceivable computable function (and also using various implementation languages [...]). Since NLG renderers are specific types of functions (transforming specific data types into text, possibly using specific intermediate linguistic representations) it would suffice to create a platform which allows creating such functions. There are many extant NLG systems, and some, such as Grammatical Framework, already have a vibrant community of contributors. Instead of creating a novel, general computation system such as Wikifunctions, it would suffice to create a collaborative platform which extends one of these existing approaches (or possibly creating a new NLG system adapted to the scope and contributor-profile of Abstract Wikipedia, as suggested by Ariel Gutman).

The Foundation's response argues that this approach would fail to cover the breadth of languages envisaged for Abstract Wikipedia:

Some of our own colleagues, like Maria Keet, have noted the inadequacy of those systems for many of the languages Abstract Wikipedia is intended to serve.

In particular, according to Keet, Grammatical Framework notably lacks the flexibility to handle certain aspects of Niger-Congo B languages’ morphology. The traditional answer to this kind of critique would be to say, “Let’s just organize an effort to work on Grammatical Framework.” The design philosophy behind Abstract Wikipedia is to make as few assumptions about a contributor’s facility with English and programming experience as possible. Organized efforts around Grammatical Framework (or otherwise) are not a bad idea at all. They may well solve some problems for some languages. However, the contributor pools for under-resourced languages are already small. Demanding expertise with specific natural languages like English and also specific programming paradigms contracts those pools still further.

(However, in a response to the response, Keet – a computer science professor at the University of Cape Town who volunteers for Abstract Wikipedia – disputed the Foundation's characterization of her concerns, stating that her "arguments got conflated into a, in shorthand, 'all against GF' that your reply suggests, but that is not the case.")

The Abstract Wikipedia team goes on to decry Grammatical Framework as a –

[...] solution designed by a small group of Westerners [that] is likely to produce a system that replicates the trends of an imperialist English-focused Western-thinking industry. Existing tools tell a one-voice story; they are built by the same people (in a socio-cultural sense) and produce the same outcome, which is crafted to the needs of their creators (or by the limits of their understanding). Tools are then used to build tools, which will be again used to build more tools; step by step, every level of architectural decision-making limits more and more the space that can be benefitted by these efforts.

Grammatical Framework would probably give a quick start to creating the basis for a NLG system perfectly suited to "about 45 languages of various linguistic families" – less than 10% of all existing written languages. However, while designing a system that is explicitly focused at covering the knowledge gap of languages that are underrepresented on the Internet, basing the architecture on a framework that gives support to less than the 10% most represented languages defies – by design and from the very start – the bigger purpose of the project.



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2023-01-01

Mobile editing

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By Clovermoss

Sometimes, you hear about editors who edit on their phones. There are two main ways experienced editors edit using a mobile device: using desktop view on a mobile device[a] or using mobile view through a standard web browser. What you don't usually hear about are people who download the dedicated Wikipedia app on their mobile devices even if it is technically an option. As far as I know, I'm the only experienced editor who has tried to edit somewhat frequently with the Android version of this app. I don't have an iOS device so my observations may not be relevant in that context. While I have had brief experiences with the app before this essay, typically when editing on my phone I would use desktop view.

As an experienced editor, what stood out to me immediately was this:

  • It is impossible to create a new page[b]
  • It is impossible to see recent changes
  • In preview, redlinks show up as blue (or sometimes as bold text).
  • There's a box that claims my edit quality is "perfect"
  • Typically, you can only edit individual sections, but you cannot edit subsections directly. If you know how to access it, there is also a way to edit a page in its entirety.
  • Most templates do not display
  • There is no access to help resources or learning how to contribute literally anywhere unless you manually know how to search for the exact page titles. Almost no new editor is going to know how to do that.

I'm a 20-year-old with basically no understanding of computer science. My perspective is mostly from someone who has grown up in a world geared towards user friendliness and the Android Wikipedia app does not perform the way I've become accustomed to expect. While mobile view doesn't have the full functionality of desktop view, it functions much better in comparison. Despite all of this, the app has definitely grown on me over time. I'm glad that technical issues were fixed even if I was surprised that I had any sort of role in identifying them. I plan to keep using the app and seeing how it improves over time – I think it can get better and I'm cautiously optimistic after my experience interacting with WMF staff.

What it was like at the start

When I first started trying to edit through the app, what got to me most was the sheer frustration of it all. Very few things felt like they were intuitive, it was like learning how to edit all over again. The first thing that surprised me was that when I logged in, it automatically downloaded articles from when I briefly experimented with the app in 2019 because of a default setting to sync across devices, which makes sense in hindsight even if it caught me off-guard.

I tried to see if I could create this page through the app, it let me search existing subpages of my userpage but it would not let me create a page that did not yet exist. Once I had created this page in desktop view on Chrome, the page automatically loaded because I had previously searched for it. From a reader's perspective, I did not like the default way to browse functions. I didn't even realize there was a way to change this until JTanner (WMF) pointed it out to me. The default option mimics a web browser: unless you click "new tab", you have to click the back arrow x times (depending on how many links you have clicked) to get back to the main page or have the option to see your contributions. This felt clunky and unnecessarily frustrating from my perspective. A lot of things felt like that, honestly. Not exactly intuitive and things kept surprising me. It took me a few days to even notice that I could access my watchlist.

Screenshots

Since most people are not familiar with the app, here are some screenshots that demonstrate what it is like:

  • An example of what "sharing a diff" looks like on my phone. There is an intended copy link function that does not work on my device.[c]
    An example of what "sharing a diff" looks like on my phone. There is an intended copy link function that does not work on my device.[c]
  • What the share a diff option looks like on a Pixel 5 phone, when the copy a link function is working as intended.
    What the share a diff option looks like on a Pixel 5 phone, when the copy a link function is working as intended.
  • The homepage I see when I click edits. Clicking my contributions shows my actual contributions across global projects, not just enwiki.[d]
    The homepage I see when I click edits. Clicking my contributions shows my actual contributions across global projects, not just enwiki.[d]
  • An example of what an editing streak looks like when it replaces the date of your latest edit
    An example of what an editing streak looks like when it replaces the date of your latest edit
  • What previewing an edit before you publish it looks like outside of a user talk page. Notice that four tildes appear instead of my signature.
    What previewing an edit before you publish it looks like outside of a user talk page. Notice that four tildes appear instead of my signature.
  • Example of the overlapping text issue that happens sometimes when editing larger pages
    Example of the overlapping text issue that happens sometimes when editing larger pages
  • Another example of the overlapping text issue. This is the worst that I've ever seen it.
    Another example of the overlapping text issue. This is the worst that I've ever seen it.
  • All pages are referred to as articles, regardless of namespace[e]
    All pages are referred to as articles, regardless of namespace[e]
  • My reply on my own talk page is not a "seen" page because interactions through the app do not count as pageviews.
    My reply on my own talk page is not a "seen" page because interactions through the app do not count as pageviews.
  • This is what it looks like when you're on the talk page. Each escalating warning just shows up as an extra number beside the replies section, so it's possible someone wouldn't necessarily be super aware of that.
    This is what it looks like when you're on the talk page. Each escalating warning just shows up as an extra number beside the replies section, so it's possible someone wouldn't necessarily be super aware of that.
  • Example of syntax highlighting. Bold text is bolded, tags are green, links are blue, etc
    Example of syntax highlighting. Bold text is bolded, tags are green, links are blue, etc

Technical issues

There was one time I spent 7 minutes trying to type two sentences and the text scrambled across the screen. The end result looked like a test edit: [4]. A previous time, this caused the app to freeze and crash.

I also noticed that whenever I tried to edit an AfD, it would cause the app to crash. I emailed a video documenting the issue since I could not figure out how to upload video to Commons. This actually had a larger impact than even I realized:

Hey there @Clovermoss, nice to meet you.

That crash didn't really have to do with participating in an AfD discussion, but rather with the native wikitext editing interface itself, regardless of which article is edited. The crash occurred when putting the cursor all the way at the bottom of the text and pressing Enter.

When building our native app, we care about squeezing every bit of performance from the Android platform, so that features like editing could be more responsive and usable than the web interface. This often involves some complex logic and system-level optimizations. And although we do as much testing as we can, the occasional crash can sometimes slip through. If you're curious, this is the exact change that fixed the crash. Interestingly, it was a single incorrect character of code that was causing the crash, not even a single line.

— DBrant (WMF), 15:09, 18 November 2022

I try my best to sympathize with people who are actually experienced in regards to technical matters. I don't understand the context or the underlying situation, so to some extent it's impossible to truly understand. I don't have the knowledge to offer feasible solutions. But I realize that it must really suck for people to come to you whenever something goes wrong and not see the massive amount of work that's involved to prevent other massive mistakes. In a manner of speaking, remaining issues are like the tip of an iceberg. I can't offer feasible solutions. However, I do think it's worth pointing out that I've never experienced issues like this on literally any other app and that it's very frustrating from that perspective. The Wikimedia Foundation as a whole exists at a scale that other organizations do not and has access to resources that other open source projects do not have. As someone who has grown up in a user-friendly world, I've never felt frustration to this extent in regards to technical issues with something that is associated with a top website.

Phabricator tickets

While my experiences with this essay have sparked an interest in learning more about the technical side of Wikipedia, I did not file these tickets myself. JTanner (WMF) did this for me in response to this essay. The phrasing attributed to me in the tickets are not exact comments of mine, although overall they paraphrase my observations/suggestions.

Tickets that were started because of my observations Pre-existing tickets that were relevant to my observations
The possibility of explaining what the syntax highlighting means The possibility of VisualEditor on the app
Removing prompts for adding short descriptions outside of mainspace The possibility of creating articles on the app
Removing "profile" as a description for userpages
Resolved
 Improving edit summaries
Renaming "quick facts" so there's consistency across platforms Syntax highlighting speed
Making redlinks actually redlinks in preview Enhancements to the app editor
Colour consistency in diffs across platforms
Whether your contribution is the current version of a page
Resolved
Remove option for thanking IP editors because you can't thank them
Resolved
Remove option to thank bots because you can't thank them
Investigating how AfDs display through the app
Fixing the "copy a diff" feature on my device
Resolved
Change "read article" to "read page"
Resolved
Not automatically pinging someone on a reply on their own talk page
Resolved
Not automatically showing my edits as changes in my watchlist  Not done[f]

Conclusion

In general, my experience communicating with WMF staff was fairly positive. I think that if this was considered the norm when the WMF recieves feedback from experienced editors, people would typically have a more positive view of the WMF. Instead, I've noticed that there's a lot of precedent for distrust and past conflicts. Ignoring these issues doesn't make them go away and acknowledging them is a crucial part in moving forward.

At the same time, I do appreciate that my concerns were validated, even if it was mostly by chance that I even got to have the opportunity to raise them to someone who was able to fix them. My adventure into learning more about editing via the app started from a tangential discussion at my talk page that had sprung from a previous discussion at Levivich's. I remembered that I had a WMF staff member post on my talk page once two years ago (MMiller (WMF)), pinged him, and he brought my concerns to JTanner (WMF), who could actually do something about any of this. She took the time to write lengthy replies and actually take action, like file Phabricator tickets on my behalf. My interactions with both of them have been more positive than what I had been expecting. Maybe it's because I'm mostly used to reading about the times where things go wrong. There's also something weirdly satisfying about my opinion mattering even if I realize that it might not be the best from a PR-perspective to have a random 20 year old identifying such issues. I doubt Facebook or Reddit would care that much about my opinion of their websites, so it's amazing to actually have a voice in a conversation like this.

This is the initial response I received about this essay:

Hey there @Clovermoss, thanks for taking the time to use the app and write such detailed feedback. It is very helpful and valued.

At a meta level, to find who works on what, a good place to visit is the Product Department MediaWiki page where it says product teams. You can comment on talk pages for that team and someone should get back to you. The Android team's project page can give you a good idea of what projects we worked on in the past, and what we are actively working on. We make it a priority to also work on tickets that come into our Phabricator Board filed by helpful folks like you when we have capacity. However, our team always makes it a point to give an idea of the "when we have capacity" will be. I share this so if you have feature ideas or notice bugs, outside of what you've listed here and want us to triage it within a week, that is the fastest way to grab our attention. However, we do our best as well to keep an eye out on talk pages or when we get pinged on helpful pages like yours. I have some time scheduled with our team's engineer who has been on the team longer (I have been on this team for 2 years), and can help me better understand why things that predate me may not have been prioritized previously so that I return to this talk page beginning of next week and provide some context for why things are the way they are, and more importantly what plans we have to address it in the future (and an estimate of how far in the future).

Zooming in specifically about the scrambling issue, it is a very unpleasant experience that has to do with syntax highlighting for devices like yours. What is happening there is the system freezing momentarily and causing keystrokes to queue up in the background, so when it unfreezes the keystrokes fall out at once, and is particularly prevalent when trying to edit a full page due to the amount of content that is there. Although with section editing depending on the type of device and amount of content in that section, it can be somewhat sluggish as well. For a while we disabled the ability to edit a full page and only allowed section editing, to limit performance issues. Recently we enabled full page editing because people (understandably) wanted to edit text that sometimes exists above a section, in a template for example, and the only way to allow that was to enable full page editing. The app was originally created for reading, in the past few years editing capabilities have been added based on requests we've received and our desire to serve mobile app users more holistically. That has come with a number of challenges, that I am very excited for us to work on in collaboration with people like you. Specifically concerning fixing the syntax highlighting issue, I can tell based on the engineer in 2017 abandoning the ticket it is quite a large task, but I will have a better understanding by the end of this week of just how heavy a lift it will be to give a better idea of when to revisit it, that is, if fixing this issue specifically is even appropriate. Our team is investigating somewhat showing the mobile web editor by building a layer over it, which would fix the syntax highlighting issue as well as other issues, while also keeping some of the unique features of our editor like Dark Mode. It is a very big project but something being prioritized because ensuring people can have a holistic experience in the app is very important to us. In the interim, any changes we can make to improve the existing native editor like link preview or easier ways to add an image, we are making based on requests that have come in, so it is still helpful to point these things out.

— JTanner (WMF), 22:50, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

There was a lot more back-and-forth from May 2022 to December 2022 (which is the month that I am writing this, I anticipate this to continue to happen). All of these comments can be seen in full at User talk:Clovermoss#Software development challenges. Most of these were comments pointing out issues as I identified them, what my general thoughts were, what I had written in previous versions of this essay, and JTanner helping me by placing Phabricator tickets on my behalf. This discussion actually technically started from a previous conversation about generalized newcomer experiences at User talk:Levivich/Archive 3#Growth team. Reading all of these conversations would probably take someone a few hours but they're there for anyone to read them.

Overall, I would say that I had a good experience communicating with WMF staff, but not everyone can say the same. One essay I think that explains the tension between the WMF and community to people who may be unfamilar with this is User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Community tension with the WMF. The overlap between the WMF and the community should not be comparable to a Venn diagram. Ideally, there should be more communication to limit misunderstandings and unnecessary conflicts.

Notes

  1. ^ Cullen328 is the most vocal advocate of this method and describes it thoroughly in his own mobile editing essay: User:Cullen328/Smartphone editing
  2. ^ The sole exception to this is using the "new thread" feature on a talk or user talk page. This has some issues though because if you want to leave a templated message, you'll get two conflicting headings. It is impossible to create pages in other namespaces through any method on the app.
  3. ^ This has been fixed and I can copy diffs now.
  4. ^ This has been changed in an update. The homepage still shows my total global contributions but clicking on it will display my total edits to enwiki. The 'views' option displayed in this screenshot is also no longer statically zero for my device since being updated.
  5. ^ This specific issue has been fixed but you still see similar issues elsewhere in certain contexts. An example is that if I go to the overflow menu to edit a page outside of mainspace, it will always say "edit article".
  6. ^ I was under the impression that edits outside of the mobile app edit interface not showing your own contributions was the default setting. That is not the case, as pointed out by CFeng (WMF)




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2023-01-01

Arbitration Committee Election 2022

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By Kudpung
votes cast per day

The 2022 election of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee closed on Monday 13 December 2022, with about 1,570 votes cast in the secret poll (a very similar number to the 2021 election). Twelve candidates contested the eight seats to be filled.

Having completed their previous two-year terms, Barkeep49, Primefac, CaptainEek, and user:L235 were re-elected to serve for a further two years. Other candidates elected for two-year terms were SilkTork and Guerillero, both former arbitrators; new to the committee (and also for two years) are GeneralNotability and Moneytrees.

Sdrqaz and Robert McClenon (a non-admin) achieved over 60%, which would have qualified them for positions if the eight seats had not already been filled. Candidates neither elected nor achieving a threshold for a seat were Tamzin and BoldLuis. The Signpost thanks all candidates for having volunteered to serve the project as arbitrators.

Additionally, seven sitting arbs will complete the second year of their terms.

Just over half the votes were cast on day 1, and 83% of the votes were cast by the end of day 7 (2021: 84%). There was a slight uptick on the final day. The full results table was published on 21 December, at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022.




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2023-01-01

Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement in talk page disputes

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By Tilman Bayer


A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.


"How to disagree well: Investigating the dispute tactics used on Wikipedia"

Graham's hierarchy of disagreement

This paper,[1] presented earlier this month at the Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference, applies a modified version of Graham's hierarchy of disagreement to classify talk page comments on the English Wikipedia. As explained by the authors:

"[English] Wikipedia recommends the hierarchy of disagreement formulated by Graham (2008) as a guide for constructive dispute resolution [in the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution policy]. Graham’s hierarchy posits that there are seven levels of disagreement, ranging from namecalling (at the bottom) to refuting the central point. [...] Despite its popularity, this hierarchy has not been verified empirically."

The authors call these "rebuttal tactics", and distinguish them from a second category of dispute tactics, "attempts to promote understanding and consensus (referred to as coordination tactics)." Coordination tactics are classified with a separate set of "non-disagreement labels" which is combined from comment types identified in several previous research publications about Wikipedia talk pages (e.g. a paper by Ferschke et al. that was summarized in our March 2012 issue: "Understanding collaboration-related dialog in Simple English Wikipedia").

  • "Bailing out" ("An indication that an editor is giving up on a conversation and will no longer engage.")
  • "Contextualisation" (where "an editor 'sets the stage; by describing which aspect of the article they are challenging. This does not directly disagree with anyone")
  • "Asking questions"
  • "Providing clarification"
  • "Suggesting a compromise"
  • "Coordinating edits" to the article page ("This can signal that a compromise has been found.")
  • "Conceding / recanting"
  • "I don’t know" (i.e. "Admitting that one is uncertain. This signals that an editor is receptive to the idea that there are unknowns which may impact their argument.")
  • "Other"

The authors provide a dataset "of 213 disputes (comprising 3,865 utterances) on Wikipedia Talk pages, manually annotated with the dispute tactics employed in the process of resolving a disagreement between editors", allowing multiple labels for each comment ("up to three rebuttal strategies and two resolution strategies per utterance", see examples below).

These discussions are drawn from the authors' own "WikiDisputes" dataset, which provides information "which is annotated according to whether the dispute was resolved without the need for a moderator." This allows the researchers to identify relations between specific dispute tactics and the risk of a conversation escalating. For example, they

find that a lower mean rebuttal level in a disagreement is correlated with less constructive dispute resolutions, providing empirical validation of the ordering proposed by Graham (2008) and recommended by Wikipedia to its editors.

In particular, they examine the effect of personal attacks, finding e.g. that conversations can still recover after a personal attack happens:

"We define recovery in terms of having an utterance labeled as rebuttal level 5 or higher and no further personal attacks. By this definition, half of the disputes were found to recover after a personal attack, indicating that personal attacks do not necessarily result in conversational failure."

Furthermore,

Of the escalated disputes with personal attacks, only 44.3% are found to recover, whereas 59.2% of resolved disputes recover post attack. This indicates that although personal attacks also occur in non-escalated disputes, participants are better adept at moving beyond them. We further find that immediate retaliation (i.e. a personal attack being followed by another personal attack) occurred in 25.7% of cases. In disputes where at least one personal attack had occurred, the probability that the initial offender will re-offend in the same conversation is 53%, while the probability of another user using a personal attack at some point subsequently is 64%.

The study proceeds to use machine learning for automatically classifying talk page comments with these multi-labels. A BERT-based model performed best (according to three different performance metrics), but still struggled with some of the labels:

"The label most frequently correctly predicted is coordinating edits (111 of 137 cases), which is also the most common label in the training set. The next most correctly predicted label, proportionally, is contextualisation (75%, or 24 of 32 cases), despite not being a commonly used label. This is likely due to the additional positional information available to the model, since this label is often applied to the first utterance in a conversation. On the other hand, refutation and refuting the central point are never correctly predicted (out of 44 cases), with counterargument often mistakenly predicted instead."

Lastly, they apply this to the separate task of predicting whether a conversation will escalate, already examined in their earlier paper that gave rise to the "WikiDisputes" dataset. Namely, they use "multitask training with escalation as the main task and tactics as the auxiliary task, such that the features that are predictive of dispute tactics are incorporated in the escalation predictions." This improves upon their earlier prediction algorithm, "indicating that knowledge of these dispute tactics is useful for tasks beyond classifying the tactics employed."

The following table (adapted from Figure 1 in the paper) shows the labeling of several comments by two different users in one talk page discussion:

"An example from the WikiTactics dataset"
Utterance Coordination tactic(s) Rebuttal tactic(s)
The community put WP:ENGVAR in place exactly because there is no rational way to resolve a style dispute like this. The notion is that if English style X is established in article, don't change it without prior consensus. Without that [policy], articles would be beset by endless edit wars over style issues that would become a time sink across the encyclopedia. Contextualisation
Hi, I am aware of WP:ENGVAR and would like to point out to you the policy says that one should "use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety". In the case of this article, that is "a herb", which was introduced in the original article. I will leave the current wording for a few weeks to see if anyone else decides to weigh in, and intend to then change the page to align with policy. Suggesting a compromise DH6: Refutation
It is impossible to get local consensus on this kind of thing, which is why ENGVAR exists. Leave it alone, or waste the community's time with an RfC but stop wasting your time and mine making useless arguments here. I don't care if it says "an" or "a" - what is not acceptable is messing with it. DH4: Repeated argument
DH3: Policing the discussion
I admit that when I made those edits, I didn't realise it was actually a ENGVAR issue but rather just a mistake, hence my zeal in making the changes. To emphasise: the policy exists to recanting unamIbiguously resolve these debates and for this article, it should be "a herb". I see no real arguments for the contrary, and for what it's worth, my having made policy-incorrect edits (in good faith), doesn't diminish the fact that policy is clear on this one. Conceding / recanting DH4: Repeated argument
I have warned you to walk away from being a style warrior and wasting everyone's time. You will do as you will. DH1: Ad hominem attack
No one further has weighed in on this and so I am making the change in accordance with policy, as I have done on each of the herb-related pages. Each of these articles is now in accordance with WP:ENGVAR. Please do not edit it without an RFC or DR. We are now within the spirit and letter of policy on each of these pages and I hope we can draw a line under this ridiculous matter. Coordinating edits DH3: Policing the discussion

Briefly


Other recent publications

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.


"Analyzing Digital Discourses: Between Convergence and Controversy"

From the abstract:[2]

"This study analyses Wikipedia’s sites for negotiating convergence, conflict and identity, concentrating on two aspects. First, convergence and conflict at the macro-level of intercultural comparison are investigated using the example of the construction of concepts of nationalism, citizenship, identity and tribe in their English and German language versions. Second, the English articles serve as a basis to examine the types of convergence and conflict tendencies at the micro-level of the Talk-section."

From the paper's section on talk pages:

"[...] in our data, criticism of content (81 instances/31% of all 259 conflictual codings) is the most frequent conflictual category [...], followed by general metapragmatic criticism concerning clarity and more general stylistic features [...], metapragmatic criticism related to Wikipedia's principles (each comprising about half of the total of 81 metapragmatic tokens), or a mixture of both [...].

Giving reasons for disagreeing is the mitigating strategy used most frequently in all for Talk1-sections, followed by suggesting, inviting and hedged imperatives to induce further improvement of an article, agreement and additional explanation to clarify an issue [...]."

Discursive Perspective on Wikipedia: More than an Encyclopaedia? (book)

From the publisher's description:[3]

"This book provides a concise yet comprehensive guide to Wikipedia for researchers and students of linguistics, discourse and communication studies [...]. Drawing on Herring's situational and medium factors, as well as related developments in (critical) discourse studies, the author studies the online encyclopaedia both theoretically and empirically, examining its origins, production and consumption before turning to a discussion of its societal significance and function(s). "

"What’s hot and what's not in lay psychology: Wikipedia’s most-viewed articles"

From the abstract:[4]

"We studied views of articles about psychology on 10 language editions of Wikipedia from July 1, 2015, to January 6, 2021. We were most interested in what psychology topics Wikipedia users wanted to read, and how the frequency of views changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. [...]. We made two important observations. The first was that during the pandemic, people in most countries looked for new ways to manage their stress without resorting to external help. [...] We also found that academic topics, typically covered in university classes, experienced a substantial drop in traffic, which could be indicative of issues with remote teaching."


"Building a Public Domain Voice Database for Odia"

From the abstract and paper:[5]

"The pilot detailed in this paper is about creating a large freely-licensed public repository of transcribed speech in the Odia language as such a repository was not known to be available. The strategy and methodology behind this process are based on the OpenSpeaks project [which is hosted on the English Wikiversity at https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/OpenSpeaks ].

"The 'Methodology' section details the process of collecting words [from a dump of Odia Wikipedia], compiling a wordlist [making use of Wikidata lexeme forms to generate additional forms], recording the pronunciation of those words, and uploading the speech data to Wikimedia Commons using Lingua Libre."


References

  1. ^ Kock, Christine De; Vlachos, Andreas (December 2022). How to disagree well: Investigating the dispute tactics used on Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. pp. 3824–3837. Data
  2. ^ Kleinke, Sonja; Landmann, Julia (2021). "Cross-Cultural Observations on English and German Wikipedia Entries at the Interface of Convergence and Controversy". In Johansson, Marjut; Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa; Chovanec, Jan (eds.). Analyzing Digital Discourses: Between Convergence and Controversy. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 135–162. ISBN 9783030846022. Closed access icon Google Books
  3. ^ Kopf, Susanne (2022). A Discursive Perspective on Wikipedia: More than an Encyclopaedia?. Cham: Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783031110238. Closed access icon
  4. ^ Ciechanowski, Kaśmir; Banasik-Jemielniak, Natalia; Jemielniak, Dariusz (2022-10-12). "What's hot and what's not in lay psychology: Wikipedia's most-viewed articles". Current Psychology. doi:10.1007/s12144-022-03826-0. ISSN 1936-4733.
  5. ^ Panigrahi, Subhashish (2022-04-25). "Building a Public Domain Voice Database for Odia" (PDF). Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2022. WWW '22. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1331–1338. doi:10.1145/3487553.3524931. ISBN 9781450391306.



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2023-01-01

Wikipedia about FIFA World Cup 2022: quick, factual and critical

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By Vysotsky
Lionel Messi (Qatar, 2 Dec. 2022)
(Photo Hossein Zohrevand - Tasnim)

I am an ardent lover of poetry, but I understand the beauty of football. Ballet-like movements, wonderful goals, the ecstasy of the crowd, and yes: even the tension that comes with a penalty shoot-out. It comes as no surprise that the match results during FIFA World Cup 2022 were reflected immediately on Wikipedia. Many Wikipedians love the game, and took pride in updating articles on this championship as quickly as possible.

The power of Wikipedia: speed & mass

Cartoon depicting slave labour in the construction of the stadiums in Qatar

The power of Wikipedia showed in three aspects during this football tournament:

  • accurate, balanced and factual reports about the tournament and the matches;
  • fast reporting of new match results and other facts;
  • reflection of all positive and negative aspects, such as the corruption allegations over the bid, and the horrific working conditions in Qatar during the building of the stadiums.

Photos: Creative Commons, Iran and freedom of panorama

Iranian protests during England-Iran 22 Nov. 2022

Iranian photo press agencies deserve special mention. Fars, Tasnim & other photo agencies from Iran have been using Creative Commons licenses for years, and their photos are used thousands of times across many language versions of Wiki. FIFA World Cup 2022 also showed Iranian craftmanship, with photographers Hossein Zohrevand, Mehdi Marizad and Nima Najafzadeh shooting photographs all over. More than 500 of the photos from Fars & Tasnim Photo Agency made in Qatar were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Their photographers are professionals. Of course Tasnim and Fars mainly show the more official photos. Personal photographs made by visitors add a special flavour, like photos of the crowd and photos of protests in the stadiums. And yes: Mehr News Agency from Iran even made videos from the tournament available online under a CC-license. Regarding copyright: as there is no freedom of panorama in Qatar, detailed photos of football stadiums are not allowed to feature on Wiki. A pity? Well, I didn't like the stadiums anyway.

Africa & poetry

Wikipedia editors proved to be able to deliver a quick, balanced and competent reflection of the FIFA World Cup Football Tournament 2022. I do wish that poetry and Africa would at least once get the same attention.



Reader comments

2023-01-01

Would you like to swing on a star?

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By Adam Cuerden
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted in November. Quotes are generally from the articles, but may be abridged or simplified for length.

Well, here we are! While the featured content promoted in December won't appear until our January issue, this marks the end of the featured content we'll be reporting on this year. We used to try to work a bit less behind, but, well, I've not been a consistent Signpost contributor, but I have done it over many, many years....

Tell you what, here's a peek behind the writing process, and why things are the way they are:

When The Signpost was published weekly or thereabouts, the amount of featured content in that week was small, and you could just copy-paste the lead in the worst case scenario. If you missed a week, having two or even three weeks in one article isn't that bad. You also have seven days to write about seven days of content; this isn't that bad.

But with monthly publication, if you miss a month, you just miss a month. Two months of content is simply too much to fit in one article. So it really needs to get out on time.

However, we publish around the 25th of each month. So, for example, let's say this month we covered things promoted from, say, November 15 to December 15. That gives ten days from the time the list of content meant to appear in the article is complete to publication time. Now, you can start preparing a bit in advance, but the period just before publication of an issue is full of a lot of other things that happen, like everyone trying to copyedit everyone else's articles and trying to get everything ready for publication. So that first ten days is probably lost, at the minimum. It's a lot harder, and it gets harder from there.

First off, unlike weekly publication, it's important to keep the writeups of the content short, so the article as a whole isn't too long. There used to be a huge push on Wikipedia to always make sure the first paragraph of the lead summarised the article as whole, after which the rest of the lead was meant to go back and fill in detail. Some featured articles are still written this way. Very few featured lists are. So you can't just copy the leads, you have to spend some time editing them down. So you need the time.

Of course, the way I set these up, at least, involves a search and replace on entries from WP:GO. So, for this month, I went to Wikipedia:Goings-on/October 30, 2022, Wikipedia:Goings-on/November 6, 2022, Wikipedia:Goings-on/November 13, 2022, and so on, and compile everything into one big file, keeping articles and lists seperate.

Here's the last few entries for this month in featured articles, as taken from there, using the editor so we get them in wikitext:

* [[Theodora Kroeber]] (28 Nov)
* ''[[Zork]]'' (28 Nov)
* ''[[Dime Mystery Magazine]]'' (28 Nov)
* [[Prince Alfred of Great Britain]] (29 Nov)

The list would be a lot longer, of course. I delete the dates at the end, then do a series of searches and replaces:

Search for Replace with Why?
"* " ";" Starting a line with a semicolon is how you make a description list.
"]]" "]], nominated by [[User:|]]:" Sets up the rest of the basic formatting

This gets us:

;[[Theodora Kroeber]], nominated by [[User:|]]:
;''[[Zork]], nominated by [[User:|]]:''
;''[[Dime Mystery Magazine]], nominated by [[User:|]]:''
;[[Prince Alfred of Great Britain]], nominated by [[User:|]]:

...And, with a bit of fixing of the italics that moved to the wrong place, we're done with the first step. There's ways around having to fix the italics, but are only really worth doing as code, not something you type anew each time.

I then go to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log before pasting these in, and fill out the user(s) responsible for each nomination before that [[User:|]] gets evaluated. Paste that into the featured article section, and the lists (which I process at the same time, since it's the same formatting) into the lists section, and I can move to images.

Now, if I had this set up as a simple press a button and the search and replace gets done thing, it wouldn't be big deal to do multiple batches. But I haven't done this. So instead, I.... type out all those search and replaces, and the variant ones used for featured pictures anew every month. Or, if I want to do multiple batches, then... every time I do a batch. Not ideal. Also, there's some polishing up to do after writing all the descriptions: Space the featured articles with illustrations so the images don't crowd, adjust the featured pictures to alternate tall and wide images so they look better on various screensizes (and ideally get a pleasant colour balance as you scroll down), and so on.

So it's better to do everything at once. And that means I want as much time to do it in. And that means I need to start work as soon after the last publication of the Signpost as possible, so that I don't get busy and miss completing it.

Anyway, with that overly-detailed explanation of simple regular expressions that I should probably just break down and write a bot to do, this is your Signpost correspondent, signing off!



Featured articles

Nineteen featured articles were promoted in November.

Margaret Rhea Seddon
Rhea Seddon, nominated by Hawkeye7
Margaret Rhea Seddon (born November 8, 1947) is an American surgeon and retired NASA astronaut. After being selected as part of the first group of astronauts to include women in 1978, she flew on three Space Shuttle flights: as mission specialist on STS-51-D and STS-40, and as payload commander for STS-58, accumulating over 722 hours in space. On these flights, she built repair tools for a US Navy satellite and performed medical experiments.
Growing Up Absurd, nominated by Czar
Growing Up Absurd is a 1960 book by Paul Goodman on the relationship between American juvenile delinquency and societal opportunities to fulfill natural needs. Contrary to the then-popular view that juvenile delinquents should be led to respect societal norms, Goodman argued that young American men were justified in their disaffection because their society lacked the preconditions for growing up, such as meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance.
This Year's Model, nominated by zmbro
This Year's Model is the second studio album by the English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, released on 17 March 1978 through Radar Records. Embracing new wave, power pop and punk rock, the songs draw from bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The lyrics explore subjects such as technologies of mass control and failing relationships, but in a manner that some reviewers found misogynistic. In later decades, This Year's Model has been acclaimed as one of Costello's best works, some critics commenting on its influence on punk and new wave.
"To Be Loved" (Adele song), nominated by MaranoFan (NØ)
"To Be Loved" is a song by English singer Adele from her fourth studio album 30 (2021). The song is about the sacrifices one must make upon falling in love and addresses Adele's divorce from Simon Konecki, attempting to justify to her son why their marriage did not succeed. The song received rave reviews from music critics, who highlighted Adele's vocal performance as one of her best, and one of the best of the year.
Science Fiction Monthly, nominated by Mike Christie
Science Fiction Monthly was a British science fiction magazine published from 1974 to 1976 by New English Library. It was launched in response to demand from readers for posters of the cover art of New English Library's science fiction paperbacks, and was initially very successful, its circulation reaching 150,000 by the third issue. It reprinted artwork by Chris Foss, Jim Burns, Bruce Pennington, Roger Dean, and many others. Well-known writers who appeared in its pages included Brian Aldiss, Bob Shaw, Christopher Priest, and Harlan Ellison. The high production costs meant that a high circulation was necessary to sustain profitability, and when circulation fell to about 20,000 after two years NEL ceased publication.
1905–06 New Brompton F.C. season, nominated by ChrisTheDude
During the 1905–06 English football season, New Brompton F.C. competed in the Southern League Division One. The team began the season in poor form; they failed to score any goals in six of their first eight Southern League games. By the midpoint of the season, the team had won only three times and were close to the bottom of the league table. The team's form improved in the new year, with three wins in the first seven Southern League games of 1906, but they ended the season in similar fashion to how they had started it, failing to score in eight of the final nine league games. New Brompton finished the season in 17th place out of 18 teams in the division.
Cover of the August 1934 issue of Dime Mystery Magazine
Dime Mystery Magazine, nominated by Mike Christie
Dime Mystery Magazine was an American pulp magazine published from 1932 to 1950 by Popular Publications. Titled Dime Mystery Book Magazine during its first nine months, it contained ordinary mystery stories, including a full-length novel in each issue, but it was competing with Detective Novels Magazine and Detective Classics, two established magazines from a rival publisher, and failed to sell well. With the October 1933 issue the editorial policy changed, and it began publishing horror stories. Under the new policy, each story's protagonist had to struggle against something that appeared to be supernatural, but would be revealed to have an everyday explanation. The new genre became known as "weird menace" fiction; the publisher, Harry Steeger, was inspired to create the new policy by the gory dramatizations he had seen at the Grand Guignol theater in Paris. Stories based on supernatural events were rare in Dime Mystery, but did occasionally appear. In 1937 the emphasis on sex and sadism in Dime Mystery's stories increased, but in 1938 the editorial policy switched back to detective stories.
"Sweetheart" (Rainy Davis song), nominated by Heartfox
"Sweetheart" is a song originally recorded by American singer Rainy Davis. It was written by Davis and Pete Warner, and they produced it with Dorothy Kessler. The track was released in 1986 by independent record label SuperTronics as a single from Davis's 1987 studio album Sweetheart. A freestyle, hip hop pop, and synth-funk song, "Sweetheart" appeared on R&B and dance music-based record charts in the United States.
Matthew Quay, nominated by Wehwalt
Matthew Stanley "Matt" Quay (September 30, 1833 – May 28, 1904) was an American politician of the Republican Party who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1887 until 1899 and from 1901 until his death in 1904. Quay's control of the Pennsylvania Republican political machine made him one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the country, and he ruled Pennsylvania politics for almost twenty years. As chair of the Republican National Committee and thus party campaign manager, he helped elect Benjamin Harrison as president in 1888 despite his not winning the popular vote. He was also instrumental in the 1900 election of Theodore Roosevelt as vice president.
Ulf Merbold, nominated by Kusma
Ulf Dietrich Merbold (born June 20, 1941) is a German physicist and astronaut who flew to space three times, becoming the first West German citizen in space and the first non-American to fly on a NASA spacecraft. Merbold flew on two Space Shuttle missions and on a Russian mission to the space station Mir, spending a total of 49 days in space. Between his space flights, Merbold provided ground-based support for other ESA missions. He continued working for ESA until his retirement in 2004.
"Water Under the Bridge" (song), nominated by MaranoFan (NØ)
"Water Under the Bridge" is a song by English singer Adele from her third studio album 25 (2015). Adele wrote the song with its producer, Greg Kurstin. Inspired by her relationship with charity founder Simon Konecki, who Adele dated for seven years and married in 2018, the song speaks of forgiveness and details the crucial point in a courtship of determining whether one's partner is willing to put in the work to make it succeed.
Project Waler, nominated by Nick-D
Project Waler was an unsuccessful Australian defence procurement exercise which sought to replace the Australian Army's M113 armoured personnel carriers with more capable armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs). It was initiated in 1980 and cancelled in 1985 without any vehicles being procured. The M113s used by the Army's armoured reconnaissance units were replaced by ASLAV wheeled armoured fighting vehicles that were similar to the designs considered under Project Waler. Most of the remaining fleet of M113s were upgraded. The M113 upgrade project was also unsuccessful, with the resultant vehicles being unfit for combat, and the Australian Government launched a new project in 2018 to replace them.
"Alejandro" (song), nominated by FrB.TG, IndianBio, and Sricsi
"Alejandro" is a song by American singer Lady Gaga from her third extended play (EP), The Fame Monster (2009). A synth-pop track with Europop and Latin pop beats, it opens with a sample from the main melody of Vittorio Monti's "Csárdás". The song was inspired by Gaga's fear of men and is about her bidding farewell to her Latino lovers named Alejandro, Roberto and Fernando.
Ai-Khanoum, nominated by AirshipJungleman29
Ai-Khanoum is the archaeological site of a Hellenistic city in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. The city, whose original name is unknown, was probably founded by an early ruler of the Seleucid Empire and served as a military and economic centre for the rulers of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until its destruction c. 145 BC. Rediscovered in 1961, the ruins of the city were excavated by a French team of archaeologists until the outbreak of conflict in Afghanistan in the late 1970s. The onset of the Soviet-Afghan War halted scholarly progress, and during the following conflicts in Afghanistan, the site was extensively looted.
Zork, nominated by PresN
West of House.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>
"Love Story" (Taylor Swift song), nominated by Ippantekina
"Love Story" is a song by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released as the lead single from Swift's second studio album, Fearless, on September 15, 2008. Inspired by a boy unpopular with her family and friends, Swift wrote the song using William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet as a reference point. The lyrics narrate a troubled romance that ends with a marriage proposal, contrary to Shakespeare's tragic conclusion
Fatima Whitbread, nominated by BennyOnTheLoose
Fatima Whitbread (née Vedad; 3 March 1961) is a British retired javelin thrower. She broke the world record with a throw of 77.44 m (254 ft 3⁄4 in) in the qualifying round of the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, and became the first British athlete to set a world record in a throwing event. Whitbread went on to win the European title that year, and took the gold medal at the 1987 World Championships. She is also a two-time Olympic medallist, winning bronze at the 1984 Summer Olympics and silver at the 1988 Summer Olympics.
Theodora Kroeber, nominated by SusunW and Vanamonde
Theodora Kroeber (March 24, 1897 – July 4, 1979) was an American writer and anthropologist, best known for her accounts of several Native Californian cultures. She published The Inland Whale, a collection of translated Native Californian narratives in 1959. Two years later she published Ishi in Two Worlds, an account of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi people of Northern California, whom her husband, Alfred Kroeber, had befriended and studied between 1911 and 1916. She also collaborated with her daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin.
Prince Alfred of Great Britain, nominated by Unlimitedlead
Prince Alfred of Great Britain (22 September 1780 – 20 August 1782) was the fourteenth child and ninth and youngest son of George III and his queen consort, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In 1782, Alfred became unwell after his inoculation against the smallpox virus. His early death, along with the demise of his brother Prince Octavius six months later, deeply distressed the royal family. In his later bouts of madness, King George had imagined conversations with both of his youngest sons.

Featured pictures

Twenty-six featured pictures were promoted in November, including the ones at the top and bottom of this article.

Featured lists

Nine featured lists were promoted in November.

Amorphophallus titanum, the corpse flower, is one of the alismatid monocots.
List of alismatid monocot families by Dank
Alismatid monocots are a group of 15 interrelated families of flowering plants. Like the earliest monocots, many of them are aquatic, and some grow completely submerged.
List of Lionhead Studios games by PresN
The now-closed video game studio behind such 2000s-era hits as Fable and Black & White.
List of accolades received by Drive My Car (film) by Harushiga
Drive My Car is a 2021 Japanese drama film based on the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami from his 2014 collection, Men Without Women. It follows Yūsuke Kafuku (Nishijima) as he directs a production of Uncle Vanya, while still grieving over the death of his wife.
List of Coppa Italia finals by Dr Salvus, Foghe, and Snowflake91
The Coppa Italia is an annual football cup competition established in Italy in 1922. The competition is open to all Serie A and Serie B clubs, as well as four teams from Serie C.
List of FIA World Endurance champions by EnthusiastWorld37
The FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) is an endurance auto racing series administered by the governing body of motorsport, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The series awards international championships, cups, and trophies to the most successful drivers, teams, and manufacturers in each of the series' categories over the course of a season.
List of accolades received by CODA (2021 film) by Birdienest81
CODA is a 2021 coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Sian Heder. An adaptation of the French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier (2014), it stars Emilia Jones as the titular child of deaf adults (CODA) and the only hearing member of a deaf family, who attempts to help their struggling fishing business while pursuing her desire to be a singer.
List of international cricket centuries by Babar Azam by CreativeNorth
Babar Azam is a Pakistani cricketer and current captain of the Pakistan national cricket team. A century is when a player scores 100 runs in a single game of cricket. Azam has done this impressive feat tweny-six times in international matches.
List of Billboard number-one R&B songs of 1957 and List of Billboard number-one country songs of 2022 by ChrisTheDude
The magazine Billboard published its first chart, a list of popular sheet music, in 1913. Since then, it's become the American standard for lists of the most popular music, both as a whole and by genre. You can probably guess which genres and years these ones are for.



Reader comments

2023-01-01

Football, football, football! Wikipedia Football Club!

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By Igordebraga, ElijahPepe, SSSB, Soulbust
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, ElijahPepe, SSSB and Soulbust.

Ball in the post doesn't change the score
Ball in the box with no one going for
Ball in the net makes a goal...

The cup of life! Ale, ale, ale! (November 27 to December 3)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 2022 FIFA World Cup 11,004,144 The World Cup continues this week, met by upsets and close wins. The group stage ended with several upsets - namely, the elimination of 2014 champions Germany (who also failed to progress to the knockouts in 2018) and world number 2, Belgium. The knockout stages have begun with Netherlands knocking out USA, and having Argentina disposing of Australia in the games played so far. This coming week (Sunday-Saturday) will see the remaining 6 round of 16 matches and the quarters being completed. So the next time you hear from us, we will know our 4 semi-finalists. Enjoy the football!
2 FIFA World Cup 3,032,398
3 Jenna Ortega 2,797,886 They're creepy and they're kooky
Mysterious and spooky
They're altogether ooky
The Addams Family.
This Netflix TV series centered on the eldest daughter of the Addams, played by Jenna Ortega (who had previously starred in other Netflix projects You and Yes Day), was released last week to moderate reception.
4 Wednesday (TV series) 2,374,187
5 Christine McVie 2,007,559 This English musician and songwriter died this week at 79. Most of her recognition comes from her work with Fleetwood Mac, one of the most acclaimed bands of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as one of the most turbulent, given their best-selling album Rumours is basically the members writing songs on how their relationships were going downhill, such as McVie's own "Don't Stop".
6 2026 FIFA World Cup 1,457,917 The results of #1 have made some curious—and potentially hopeful—for the next World Cup. Others, not so much. But 4 years is a long time, as shown by the fact the World Cup retention rate is 10% (2/20), and only happened twice, Brazil in 1958-1962 and Italy in 1934-1938.
7 Cristiano Ronaldo 1,259,895 In spite of qualifying for round 2 of #1, this Portuguese footballer left Manchester United last week, and is in more controversy this week.
8 Lionel Messi 1,247,602 Unlike #7, this Argentine footballer is enjoying the spotlight with his 1,000th career game, securing a win for Argentina against Australia in #1.
9 2018 FIFA World Cup 1,184,865 Some are looking back to the previous World Cup, held in Russia, where France was able to defeat Croatia. Croatia are yet to perform at the level they did in Russia, but France have shown themselves to be serious contenders.
10 Nick Fuentes 1,156,982 This white supremacist met with Donald Trump and Kanye West, a grim omen for the future of American politics.

Tsamina mina eh eh, Waka Waka eh eh (December 4 to 10)


Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 2022 FIFA World Cup 4,565,186 Football fans continue delighting themselves with the tournament in Qatar. Following two rounds of the knockout tournament, the finalists are two out of a team defeated by Tunisia, a team defeated by Saudi Arabia, and two countries with less appearances in the World Cup (6) than appearances in the final by Brazil (7) and Germany (8).
2 Kirstie Alley 3,968,686 This actress died at 71 of cancer, finishing a career that included Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Cheers, Look Who's Talking, Veronica's Closet, and most recently, The Masked Singer.
3 FIFA World Cup 2,726,859 Brazil have won the most (5), yet haven't beaten a European team in the knockout stages since the 2002 final. And if losing to the overhyped Belgium in 2018 wasn't bad enough, now they fell to Croatia, stupidly conceding a tie in the final minutes of extra time before displaying some incompetence in the penalty shootouts (why not send the team's best kicker for the first, or anticipate him from fifth to fourth when elimination is on the line?!). Tite can't leave this team soon enough, even if there's no idea on who will coach the team next! (can you tell this writer is upset?)
4 Viktor Bout 2,287,352 A Russian weapons dealer arrested in 2008 and serving time in an American prison since 2012, until he was involved in a quite lopsided prisoner exchange with #10 - one side's crimes are conspiring to kill Americans, acquiring and export anti-aircraft missiles, providing material support to a terrorist organization, the other picking the wrong cartridges for her vape.
5 Jenna Ortega 2,280,539 The star of #8, who has been having a spooky 2022, being murdered in the opening scene of the Foo Fighters horror movie, being almost murdered in the opening scene of Ghostface's latest killing spree, and also appearing in a slasher film that disrupts a porn shoot.
6 Kylian Mbappé 1,649,558 Two footballers in different times of their careers: a 23 year old Frenchman who in #1 is seeking his second title in two appearances, having just won the quarterfinal over England and being the tournament's current top scorer; and a 37 year old Portuguese who finished off a five Cup run by losing the quarterfinal to Morocco, and in a demonstrative of not being the same powerhouse, started both elimination games in the bench.
7 Cristiano Ronaldo 1,599,406
8 Wednesday (TV series) 1,585,156 Tim Burton had already revived a spooky family in Dark Shadows, and now he went for the biggest one in the Addams Family in this Netflix show.
9 Paul Whelan (security director) 1,468,456 Joe Biden tried to exchange #4 for two Americans made prisoners by the Russians, Marine Paul Whelan, arrested in 2018 accused of espionage, and basketballer Brittney Griner, arrested in February (just one week before Russia's worst act of the year) for carrying vaporizer cartridges with hash oil from medicinal cannabis, which is illegal in Russia. The Kremlin refused to release Whelan, and thus only Griner was freed in the prisoner exchange on December 8.
10 Brittney Griner 1,422,254

Oooh eeeh aaah (December 11 to 17)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 2022 FIFA World Cup 2,943,571 During the week there were the semifinals, where dark horses Croatia and Morocco couldn't stop the more traditional Argentina and France. Given that the final happened as this Report was being written, let's say right away that Argentina won in a game of much suffering, opening 2-0, conceding the tie, opening 3-2 on extra time and conceding again, and finally coming through in the penalties.
2 Avatar: The Way of Water 2,612,572 James Cameron is such a damn perfectionist it took 13 years for him to finally release the sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time, where the humans return to Pandora wanting to hunt Jake Sully, who is forced to run along with his Na'vi family and take refuge in a distant archipelago. Just about the whole cast returns, with Sigourney Weaver now playing the Na'vi daughter of her character (meaning it's a 73 year old as a teenager!), and Stephen Lang's villain having been revived in one of those Avatar bodies. The Way of Water delivers more of the same spectacle, with a world that looks impressively real, lots of underwater scenes, and another extensive battle as the third act climax. But just like the movie could have taken less than 13 years to be released, it certainly did not need to be three hours long (many articles already came out discussing when it's better to have a bathroom break, and Cameron hopes people watch it a second time to see what they missed relieving themselves). Hope the next movies are back to the 2+1⁄2 , if not less - and that if The Way of Water ends up making all the money possible, that Disney throws Cameron a bone and allows him to make the Alita: Battle Angel sequel.
3 Stephen "tWitch" Boss 2,209,493 A dancer who broke out in So You Think You Can Dance, remained on the media in among other things The Ellen DeGeneres Show and the Step Up movies, and took his own life at the age of 40.
4 FIFA World Cup 2,139,989 On his fifth attempt at football's greatest stage, Leo Messi managed to reach the final for a second time, and unlike in 2014 he was scoring Argentina's goals in the knockout rounds, including two in the final. Now he's certainly as big as Diego Maradona for having carried La albiceleste to the title.
5 Lionel Messi 1,937,840
6 Jenna Ortega 1,693,728 #10 brings this actress to the illustrious company of among others Lisa Loring, Christina Ricci (who also appears in Ortega's show), Krysta Rodriguez and Chloë Grace Moretz in having portrayed Wednesday Addams.
7 Kylian Mbappé 1,494,579 One went all the way to the finals of #1, and even if he lost (though he already has the 2018 gold medal) ended as the top scorer, 8 goals, including all three of France in the final. The other left in the quarterfinals, a game he started in the bench, and to make matters worse saw his rival #5 come through with the title he couldn't win for Portugal.
8 Cristiano Ronaldo 1,485,185
9 The White Lotus 1,237,422 The second season of this HBO anthology set in a resort chain (last season was in Hawaii, this one in Sicily) released its final episode, while having rising audience numbers every week.
10 Wednesday (TV series) 1,219,711 This here writer has yet to finish this show, but already gives it points given who it beat to become Netflix's second most popular series behind Stranger Things.

Mi Buenos Aires Querido (December 18 to 24)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Lionel Messi 7,000,827 Scoring two goals and assisting on another in the 2022 FIFA World Cup final (#17), Messi helped La Albiceleste (#9) lift their third FIFA World Cup trophy on Sunday. For many fans, this put the finishing touches on his case to be football's GOAT 🐐.
2 Kylian Mbappé 4,688,225 The French phenom tried his damnedest to get the French national team their second consecutive World Cup trophy. While his three goals were not enough for the win, they did help him secure his spot as the tournament's top goalscorer. His opponents in the 2026 FIFA World Cup should be on the lookout for an even hungrier Mbappé.
3 Avatar: The Way of Water 3,699,324 Preventing a top 10 sweep by the World Cup, James Cameron (pictured) has once again cashed in at the box office as his latest film opened at #1. However, his Way of Water will have to settle for third on this list.
4 2022 FIFA World Cup 2,837,301 Marred in all sorts of controversy off the pitch, the actual games of the World Cup's latest edition proved to be some of the most exciting in recent memory.
5 FIFA World Cup 2,798,526 As viewers were glued to the screen throughout the 2022 tournament, many readers were also curious about the competition in general.
6 List of most-liked Instagram posts 2,498,373 The GOAT of football also happens to be the GOAT of Instagram. After hoisting the World Cup Trophy, Messi posted an image of him doing just that. It surpassed the Instagram egg to become the most-liked in the history of the platform and in fact, half of the top 10 are Messi's posts.
7 List of FIFA World Cup finals 1,836,904 2022 really delivered quite possibly the best game on this list: a back-and-forth 3–3 draw decided in penalties. Lots of Argentina fans happy to see the team log its third victory in six appearances on this list. The opposing French were of course the previous winners (Ousmane Dembélé pictured with the WC trophy back in 2018).
8 Cristiano Ronaldo 1,718,988 Even though his team was knocked out in the quarter-finals, Ronaldo proved to be popular among Wikipedia readers. His rivalry with Messi probably surged his pageviews, as even the most ardent Ronaldo fans realized Messi likely ended the debate for most fans.
9 Argentina national football team 1,585,787 CAMPEONES DEL MUNDO
10 Emiliano Martínez 1,526,712 Emi Martínez showed a lot of gamesmanship throughout the cup, and while Mbappé's brilliance couldn't be denied, Dibu was able to make what might go down as the most iconic and important save in World Cup history en route to a Golden Glove.

Exclusions

  • These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.



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2023-01-01

#4: The Course of WikiEmpire

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By Adam Cuerden

Note: The next Comix appeared in the 4 December 2023 issue's comix column.



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2023-01-01

Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

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By Adam Cuerden


Five years ago: December 2017

In December 2017, we reported on an allegedly stolen seagull on a banknote from Kazakhstan.
Marcel Burkhard (User:Cele4)'s photograph of a seagull...
Suspiciously similar 500 tenge bill from Kazakhstan

WIKIPEDIANS IN SPACE!: Paolo Nespoli records himself aboard the International Space Station, the first creation of content specifically for Wikipedia to happen outside the Earth's atmosphere. The Women in Red WikiProject held a contest that blasted through their original plan to create 2,000 new articles and ended up with around 2,900 new articles on women who had been left off the project.

We also interviewed Charles J. Sharp, a prolific photographer here and on Commons. Here's a few samples, and the full interview is here

Ten years ago: December 2012

We already covered the history of the Toolserver saga in some detail back in October, but things were particularly bad this month: The same report that covered MediaWiki's update covered DaB. agreeing to stay and help out, but by Christmas Eve everything was in crisis again.

Visual Editor, the now-rather-good default functionality that allows you to edit without knowing Wikiformatting, launched ten years ago this month as an opt-in process. We'll cover the many problems of its launch as the window moves forwards, but long story short: It was pushed out too aggressively, too soon, too early in development, and that caused a lot of issues that overshadowed it being a really good idea.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened 14 December 2012. Back then we used to edit our articles to update them, so there's a bit of overlap, but we had an op-ed on the 17th and an update on the 31st. It seems madness today that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was repeatedly nominated for deletion, but how much and when Wikipedia should cover recent news, since encyclopædias traditionally couldn't do that, was still a matter of debate back then. Of course, that it would still be in the news ten years later thanks to the Alex Jones trials couldn't have been predicted back then, nor how normalised school shootings happening would become.

In a lighter vein, an interview with Brion Vibber, the Wikimedia Foundation's first employee. It documents Wikipedia's early development, and a film school graduate who got pulled into the world of tech through Wikipedia.

However, given the report in today's (New Year's Day 2023) issue about the mobile interface, that it focuses heavily on how well and how quickly the mobile interface was coming together is somewhat ironic.

Finally, we had a "From the Editor" which began:

In the interests of clickbait, I shan't explain.

Fifteen years ago: December 2007

This... was a big month for Wikipedia. First off, in 2007, Jimbo was still in charge of basic things, and, in December, could be found appointing arbitrators and ruling, by himself, that inactivity was enough for an arbitrator to be removed from the position. Also around the start of the month Sue Gardner was appointed executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from 2007, a job she would keep until 2014, and The Signpost, naturally, had an interview with her. Well worth reading!

On the technical side, after Commons had began accepting Creative Commons licenses a few months before, the first seeds of Wikipedia switching to Creative Commons were sown, but it literally required an update to the GDFL license Wikipedia was licensed under for the switch to be able to happen, which it eventually did in June 2009. On the even-more-technical side, the number of uses of the #ifexist parser function on a single page had to be curtailed because it was creating such a heavy load on Wikipedia's servers and better options existed, which just goes to show that if you give people access to a really simple-to-use bit of code, you'd better expect them to abuse it. Also, Google Knol launched, which arguably was the first forays into what would eventually become those Wikipedia-based infoboxes Google puts on searches, albeit as an attempt to compete with Wikipedia that died five years later, in 2012.

Meanwhile, over on German Wikipedia, Wikipedia had a criminal complaint filed against it for using too many Nazi symbols while talking about Nazis, on the basis of German's law against using Nazi symbols except for educational purposes. Yeah. We don't seem to have updated on The Signpost, but it appears that "[a]fter a conversation with Wikimedia representatives, Schubert withdrew her complaint the next day".

And, finally, Antonio Santiago (User:Marine 69-71/Tony the Marine) was honoured by the Puerto Rican senate for his work documenting Puerto Ricans on Wikipedia.




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