In other EU news, Wikimedia Europe reported that, on November 27, a new European Commission was officially approved by the European Parliament, and started its five-year term on December 1. As kindly highlighted by Wikimedia Europe itself and euronews, the Commission – once again led by Germany's Ursula von der Leyen – includes some faces who will likely become more and more familiar to tech experts and Wikipedia members in the next few years.

First up, it's Finland's Henna Virkkunen (EPP), who will serve as Executive Vice President and European Commissioner for Digital and Frontier Technologies. After serving two terms as an MEP and being elected for a third term last June, Virkkunen will be tasked with managing the Commission's digitalisation strategy, including matters such as the Copyright Directive and the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) – which she had led the EU Parliament's work on – as well as the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). Then, there's Bulgaria's Ekaterina Zaharieva (also from the EPP), who will be the European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, whose primary targets will include improving conditions for start-up and scale-up companies and setting up a new research council on AI.

In their analysis of Zaharieva and Virkkunen's November hearings, Communia highlighted a few key insights on copyright policy:

"From a copyright perspective, there was nothing surprising or unexpected in the hearings. While we understand the heavy emphasis on generative AI, we would like to see more work being done to promote the public interest.

The commitment to the idea of a 'fifth freedom' for knowledge and the support for a European Research Area Act are commendable. We fully support this proposal, but would encourage the incoming Commission to be even bolder and, in addition, propose a more comprehensive intervention – a Digital Knowledge Act – that benefits all kinds of knowledge institutions, including universities and research institutions, but also libraries, archives and cultural heritage institutions. If we want to unlock the full potential of European knowledge institutions, we need to address the barriers that currently prevent them from fulfilling their public service mission, including in the field of copyright."

The Wikimedia Europe "deep-dive" article also shed a light on two more relevant Commissioners for the organization: Ireland's Michael McGrath (RE) and Malta's Glenn Micallef (PES). McGrath will serve as the European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, and the Rule of Law: although his portfolio is quite wide, The Irish Times reported that he will have responsibility on developing the Digital Fairness Act – which aims to tackle dark patterns and influencer marketing – and improve co-operation between national data protection regulators. During his hearing, McGrath stated that he would "deepen the work to counter foreign information manipulation and interference and disinformation", among other tasks needed to "put citizens at the heart of our democracy".

On the other hand, as the new Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture, and Sport, Micallef will contribute to address the issues of child protection, cyberbullying and "addictive design" that might trick users and consumers into increasing their engagement on digital platforms. The youngest member of the Commission by far, Micallef pointed out during his hearing that "social media's ability to amplify voices and movements has made them a powerful tool for youth engagement, but navigating them requires critical thinking."

In their own conclusions, Wikimedia Europe noted how the work and the positioning of the new Commission on each of the aforementioned topics might be significantly impacted by the thin supporting majority and the rise of new right-wing political groups in the Parliament, writing quote:

"For Wikimedia, the new political landscape comes with some unforeseeable risks, but could also open up new avenues.

For the time being, it seems that the EPP [group], and its chair, Manfred Weber, can play the pivotal role. Developments at the national and international level, and a different political stance of the S&D group, could overturn this situation. It would not be bold to say that the EU has challenging years ahead."

On December 5, Wiki Loves Earth publicly announced the top 20 of the best pictures submitted by users around the world for the 2024 edition of the annual photographic contest, which historically aims to highlight the conservation areas of each participating country and collect new images under free licenses.

According to the official data, a record 56 countries and territories took part in this year's competition, with more than 80,100 submissions from over 3,800 different uploaders. Germany registered by far the highest number of submissions, with 16,921 total uploads; Ukraine ended in second place with 6,438 uploads, while Senegal came in third (just) with 3,774 uploads.

After each country had chosen their local winners, the jury of WLE, formed by professional photographers, experts, and Wikimedians, gathered to select the 20 international winners of the contest, divided as usual in two categories: "Landscapes" (including individual trees that are considered natural monuments) and "Macro/close-up" (involving pictures of animals, plants and fungi). Two more special sections dedicated, respectively, to human rights-themed images and video nominations were also hosted.

You can discover the international winners of WLE 2024 here and here. Enjoy! – O

Since the latest Signpost issue covering them in October this year, there have been three Wikimedia Foundation bulletins: early November, late November, and early December.

The 2023-24 Fundraising report was published. Fundraising grew by 0.51% since 2022-23 (in comparison to a 2.7% growth from 2021-22 to 2022-23) to reach $170.5 million. The number of unique donations increased by 2.5 million to total 17.4 million. The WMF published a post about the 2024 Fundraising Campaign in English.

The WMF Board of Trustees met in August 2024, voting to dissolve its Talent & Culture Committee (BoT minutes can be read at the Foundation wiki). Tulu Wikisource and Moore Wikipedia went live.

An open call went out for Wikimania 2027 and 2028. Any communities interested in hosting should make an 'Expression of Interest' by 27 January 2025.

Charts Extension, planned to replace the abandoned Graphs extension, was enabled on Commons and three pilot Wikipedias. The Graphs extension had been disabled sitewide in April 2023 over security concerns. – S

As part of the Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation saga, the Foundation published an update on 3 December 2024. WMF staffer Quiddity (WMF) clarified that the Foundation had delivered a summons to the three editors involved in the case without disclosing information about them to ANI. There have been two more hearings since then, and a Delhi High Court Justice is now planning to read the sources used to reference the defamation lawsuit – see more in-depth coverage at "In the media". – S

• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Hog Farm, who returned to adminship via a reconfirmation RfA (with roughly 93% support) after voluntarily stepping away in September 2023. Some discussion occurred regarding the appropriateness of reconfirmation RfAs in the wake of other high-profile reconfirmations (for more, see Graham87's writeup on his own in this issue's Opinion). As The Signpost was approaching publication, the RfA of user Sennecaster was also being evaluated.
• U4C hears first case: With the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) accepting cases since November 2024, the first case was recently concluded, resulting in the lifting of a user's block on German Wiktionary. There is also currently one open case.
• Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones in November and December 2024:
  • Wikipedia articles
    • 1,000 articles: Swazi Wikipedia, Mooré Wikipedia
    • 10,000 articles: Moroccan Amazigh Wikipedia
    • 20,000 articles: Pashto Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia
• Wikipedia Day: First celebrated by common acclamation in 2002, this year's celebrations will be held between January 11 (in Seattle) and January 25 (NYC) according to the list compiled by Wikimedia NYC, with other meetups in San Francisco, Minnesota, and Toronto. Be bold: don't bother asking anybody for permission to organize an event, just do it. Kwara State University is running a month-long series of editing events between December 17 through February 21.
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Architect (beginning 23 December 2024) followed by Entomology (beginning 30 December 2024). Please be bold in helping improve this article!

Bar and Bench, an Indian source for news on the judicial system, reported that Justice Subramonium Prasad, who is hearing the Wikimedia Foundation's appeal of a possible injunction in the Asian News International case, has said that he will read the sources used to reference the alleged defamation, with a particular focus on articles published by The Caravan and The Ken. A similar article appeared in Medianama. If the sources cited support the text included in the Wikipedia article about ANI, then Justice Prasad may not impose an injunction upon the WMF.

As per the Bar and Bench report, the Justice said that "the courts in case of 19 1(a) ... have said that injunction must be exception and not the rule. Keeping that in mind, I have to then look into the question of irreparable loss, prima facie case and balance of connivance."

"I will also read the articles ... to see whether the (edits) are borne out of the articles or not. Obviously, if they are not borne out of the articles, they cannot do it [publish the claims]. Therefore, I can, to that extent, even ask them to take down those offending statements," the Court said.

The Court added that if it finds that such inference, as made in the edits, can be drawn from the articles, then it may not pass a takedown order.

However, it also wondered whether it can go into such detail at the interim stage.

"This is an understanding of the editor of what the source means. If the understanding is so defamatory that it is relying on something which actually does not mean it at all, then the person can be restrained... again the question is even if it can be understood in that way, then would the court go deeper into that aspect to come to a conclusion as to whether in no circumstances can it be construed it as that at all."

Pertinently, The Caravan and The Ken are not party to ANI's defamation suit before the High Court.

The defamation suit was filed alleging that Wikipedia was allowing defamatory edits to its page on the online encyclopedia.

The Court also said it would later examine whether Wikipedia is only an intermediary or a publisher to whom different rules will apply.

–Bar and Bench

Justice Prasad may not even have too much reading to do. As of July 1, 2024, just before ANI filed their lawsuit, there were only two references to The Caravan in the whole article about the news agency:

• "The Image Makers – How ANI reports the government's version of truth" (behind paywall, cited 28 times);
• "ANI, Srivastava Group named in massive EU disinformation campaign to promote Modi government's interests" (not paywalled, cited only once);

And just one reference to The Ken:

• "How ANI quietly built a monopoly" (paywalled, cited 12 times).

The page contains eight more news stories cited from Alt News, BBC, The Diplomat, The Guardian, Le Monde, Newslaundry, Outlook magazine, and Politico.

See previous Signpost coverage about the ongoing case here and here. – S

In a recent article for Boing Boing, named "From keyboard to prison cell: The dangerous side of Wikipedia editing", Ellsworth Toohey reminds us of four Wikipedia editors who have been imprisoned and one editor who has been executed for editing Wikipedia.

• Bassel Khartabil was a Syrian open source software developer, who had worked with Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Mozilla and other open source projects; he was arbitrarily arrested in March 2012 and tortured, before being charged with "spying for an enemy State" and sent to the Adra Prison in Damascus. Despite the global efforts to secure his release, Khartabil was executed shortly after being transferred from the Adra Prison in 2015.
• Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani are two Saudi medical doctors and Wikipedia volunteers who were arrested in 2020 for "swaying public opinion" and "violating public morals". Khalid (formerly an admin on the Arabic Wikipedia) received a five-year prison sentence, which was later increased to 32 years, while al-Sofiani received an eight-year sentence.
• Pavel Pernikaŭ is a Belarusian human rights activist and Wikipedia editor was sentenced to two years in prison in April 2022 for "discrediting the Republic of Belarus" through editing activity that had taken place before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He was reportedly released in August 2023.
• Mark Bernstein is a Belarusian blogger and contributor to the Russian Wikipedia who spent several weeks in jail awaiting trial apparently based on an alleged violation of a Russian law rather than a Belarusian one. He was arrested on March 11, 2022, then released from custody on June 24, when he received a sentence of three years of restricted freedom for "organizing and preparing activities that disrupt social order".

See List of people imprisoned for editing Wikipedia and previous coverage in the Signpost. – S

The Smiths' former frontman Morrissey laments what he considers to be inaccuracies on the Wikipedia page about him. As reported by NME, Morrissey listed the purported inaccuracies about his alleged past affiliations to two different punk rock bands: The Nosebleeds – briefly active between 1976 and 1978 – and Slaughter & the Dogs – formed in 1975 and still going. Morrissey's "Madness" missive, posted on his own website on December 1, stated:

“Wikipedia confidently list me as an ex-member of Slaughter And The Dogs, and an ex-member of The Nosebleeds. I did not ever join The Nosebleeds and I have no connection whatsoever with Slaughter And The Dogs. Is there anyone at Wikipedia intelligent enough to set the record straight? Probably not.”

But somebody has been quick enough to edit out details about both bands from Morrissey’s article, with a few users engaging in reciprocal reverts. The page, which has been white-locked for a while now, no longer contains any reference to Slaughter and The Dogs; on the other hand, phrases about Morrissey’s ties to The Nosebleeds both in the introduction and the "Early life" section are now referenced by the NME article. The Wikipedia page about the Nosebleeds had also been modified to reflect Morrissey’s claims, before user Martey reverted the edits. The article for Slaughter & the Dogs has actually stayed untouched since October 21, and never included any major reference to Morrissey.

Morrissey is not shy about controversies, and he might have a point, so Stereogum put together a lengthy investigation on his past relationships with both bands. According to their report, in John Robb’s 2006 oral history Punk Rock, Slaughter & the Dogs' guitarist Mick Rossi stated that Morrissey auditioned for the band right after their first singer, Wayne Barrett-McGrath, had departed. Morrissey recorded four demos in the process, but none of these recordings have ever surfaced, and the artist never joined the group on a stable basis.

However, the game gets trickier when discussing The Nosebleeds. The Italian edition of Rolling Stone noted that the only significant reference to that band left on Morrissey's Wikipedia page, which mentions that Morrissey had agreed to join them as the lead vocalist in November 1977, is supported by a citation of David Bret's 2004 biography Morrissey: Scandal and Passion. The Stereogum report managed to find an even older source supporting this version: Johnny Rogan's 1992 biography Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance, where a mutual friend of the future Smiths leader and his fellow member Johnny Marr confirmed that Morrissey had briefly joined The Nosebleeds, while Rogan himself stated that the artist had even co-written several of the group's songs with guitarist Billy Duffy.

Duffy's website provides more evidence of Morrissey's involvement with the punk rock band, as he joined him for at least two live gigs in 1978, the latter of which was even reviewed by NME, and later recreated in the 2017 biographical film England Is Mine. To his credit, Morrissey did acknowledge this performance in his 2013 memoir Autobiography, but insisted that it was a one-off and that he was "lumbered" with the line-up for that evening being billed as The Nosebleeds.

So, while Stereogum tried their best to fact-check Morrissey's claims, it’s safe to say that the trip down his past music ventures is just as confusing as some of the various recent controversies. Still, as suggested by the magazine, if anyone manages to put the man himself "in touch with Mr. Wikipedia", maybe we can finally "set the record straight". Let us just make all those involved aware of the rules on paid editing and COI, and let a reliable source sort it all out before editing the articles again. – O

• Wikipedia-ing Kimchi snakes: Josiah Gogarty reported for the UK edition of GQ on how "Wikipedia boyfriends" have resorted to binge-searching on the site as a healthier alternative to doomscrolling, even noting that a study published in the American Political Science Review in March 2023 had named the encyclopedia "the last good place on the internet".
• More Wiki sociology: Shakespeare and dreck: Annie Rauwerda, of Depths of Wikipedia fame, explained to Boing Boing why our seven-year-long yogurt spelling war was "longer than three Shakespeare plays", why WikiProjects such as Military history and Tropical cyclones are so respected, and why biographies of social media influencers are dreck.
• Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19 deemed hard-to-read: A long paper published in the Universal Access in the Information Society last November analyzed the readability of information about COVID-19 on Wikipedia. As per the paper: "A total of 36 Wikipedia pages on COVID-19 were analyzed with 7 validated indices. The results revealed that the text in Wikipedia pages on COVID-19 is difficult to read and is suitable primarily for advanced readers. All pages are above the recommended readability level, and none of the pages are suitable for the general public."
• JPost reports on recent ArbCom verdict on Palestine-Israel articles: In "Wikipedia suspends pro-Palestine editors coordinating efforts behind the scenes", the Jerusalem Post commented on the recent Arbitration Committee decision on a new case involving Palestine-Israel articles (see prior Signpost coverage), and media coverage of PIA. JPost states that "an arbitration committee set up by Wikipedia for 'Palestine-Israel Cases' has banned two editors indefinitely and imposed restrictions on three others." The Signpost notes that user Ïvana was banned in a private-evidence case, but we're unable to find a second banned editor in the public case, named Palestine-Israel articles 5.
• Xmas cram session "like reading War and Peace": As per the Daily Mirror, Irish actor Nicola Coughlan said she didn't know anything about Doctor Who when she was cast for a part on the series' newest Christmas special, "Joy to the World", and that cramming on the related Wikipedia article was "like reading War and Peace".
• Long Live Regina Claudia: Italian newspaper la Repubblica recently interviewed and made a reference to the it.wiki article for supercentenarian Claudia Baccarini [it], which is currently the joint-eighth oldest living person in the world (together with Izabel Rosa Pereira), according to the Gerontology Research Group. Baccarini, who turned 114 on 13 October, is also the oldest living person in Italy, having first gained the special crown following the death of Domenica Ercolani in November 2023.
• Wikipedia blocked in Edinburgh schools: According to Glasgow-based newspaper The Herald, schools in Edinburgh have had Wikipedia blocked from access on school devices, but it wasn't clear if it was intentional. As per the report, the main goal of the block was actually to prevent access to any search engine other than Google over pre-existing concerns with online safety and filtering systems.

Six years ago on Christmas Eve, we published Where to draw the line in reporting? in our From the editors column. One of the comments from readers – namely, the late Nosebagbear – suggested that we continue asking the same question, annually if possible, so we are taking up that request with a delay. The original article follows, complete with its original introduction.

As anyone paying attention to The Signpost in 2018 would have noticed, the publication was struggling. So was the team. One of the struggles that has recently cropped up again is in how to deal with reporting that involves specific members of the Wikipedia community and the wider Wikimedia movement. For example, what type of Wikimedian-specific content, if any, should we cover? Are critical pieces of specific Foundation members acceptable? What about controversies surrounding members of the community, such as chapter board members or notable Wikimedians? Is the line drawn at trawling AN/I for juicy threads, or is that acceptable, too? At what point does investigative journalism become sensationalism, or community news become gossip?

Prior issues have contained content which criticized specific people, and which reported on conflicts and controversies between particular users; reader responses have been mixed, with some condemning it, others criticizing it, and still others commending the commentary. While the support is encouraging, the criticisms, some of which are borderline personal attacks and harassment in a venue that is considered by some to be a safe haven from our Wikipedia policies, and complaints tell us where we may be falling short of the hopes and expectations of our readers.

At The Signpost, as in Wikipedia generally, the readers come first. We write for you, so your input is paramount in deciding the content of what we write; and if you write, we publish. Like the rest of Wikipedia, we also value consensus in determining what to publish—and not just the local consensus that may be achieved in the newsroom. That is why we are bringing this to you, the readers:

Please, tell us what you think in the reader comments below! We want to understand where the line is—and what you want to be reading—when it comes to reporting on controversies, conflicts, scandals, and other news involving specific members of the community. The better we do, the better we can provide the content you will want to read - or in the worst case scenario, if you wish to continue reading The Signpost at all, and whether or not the editorial team is fighting an uphill battle to keep it in print.

Finally, the editors and contributors to The Signpost would like to wish our readership and the Wikipedia community a very happy holiday season. Enjoy a well deserved break, and we'll see you after the new year.

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

A paper in The Economic Journal, titled "Public Good Superstars: a Lab-in-the-Field Study of Wikipedia",^[1] presents results from a nine-year (2011–2020) study of the motivations and contributions of English Wikipedia editors. From the abstract:

Over 9 consecutive years, we study the relationship between social preferences – reciprocity, altruism, and social image – and field cooperation. Wikipedia editors are quite prosocial on average, and superstars even more so. But while reciprocal and social image preferences strongly relate to contribution quantity among casual editors, only social image concerns continue to predict differences in contribution levels between superstars. In addition, we find that social image driven editors – both casual and superstars – contribute lower quality content on average. Evidence points to a perverse social incentive effect, as quantity is more readily observable than quality on Wikipedia."

The study operationalizes these concepts using data from several sources. The sample consists of 730 English Wikipedia editors who volunteered to participate in a 2011 online survey and experiment designed to gauge their reciprocity and altruism: Participants were classified as "free-rider", "weak reciprocator", "reciprocator" and "altruist" according to their decisions in a public goods game. A topline result here indicates, perhaps unsurprisingly, that among Wikipedians there are fewer free-riders and more altruists than usual:

[...] the overwhelming majority of our subjects behave either as full or weak reciprocators (38 and 47%, respectively). The proportion of free-riders (about 7% in our data) does appear lower than the proportion of 20-30% usually obtained with more standard subject pools, however. Similarly, more subjects behave as pure altruists in our data (about 9%).

Furthermore, the paper uses the concept of "superstar contributors", defined generally as "highly regarded community members with impressive contribution records", and operationalized in case of Wikipedia as editors who have received a barnstar. Among these, the editors who chose to display at least one such award on their user page are classified as "social signalers." (More precisely, the authors try to control for the fact that editors who contribute more may be more likely to display a barnstar simply because they are more likely to have received one – e.g. by taking into account the size of the editor's user page and the total number of barnstars received.)

The authors had already used this data in some publications which we covered here back in 2013 ("What drives people to contribute to Wikipedia? Experiment suggests reciprocity and social image motivations"). In the new paper, they also look these 730 editors' contributions over the period from 2011 to 2020, specifically

• Quantity of contributions (using both edit counts and number of bytes added)
• Quality of contributions, measured using content persistence (i.e. whether or not other editors later removed the contributed content)
• "Interpersonal cooperation", measured by how likely editors are to delete (i.e., “revert”) the contributions of others without providing an explanation [...] Wikipedia contributors typically consider non justified reverts as highly uncooperative and harmful to the project.

Among other results, the authors

uncovered a surprising negative correlation between our measures of contribution quantity and quality at the editor level. Namely, the social signalers in our data, if they contribute significantly more content to Wikipedia, also contribute lower quality material on average. In practice, this means that, as vetted by their peers, social signalers contribute content that persists about 38% less revisions on average.

Two of several "interesting patterns" highlighted by the authors concern editors' age and education level (two of the demographic variables from the 2011 survey):

older editors appear more cooperative by two of our measures: (i) they tend to contribute significantly more content [...], and (ii) they are less likely to leave their reverts unexplained [...]
[..] editors’ level of education is strongly associated with the quality of their edits [...]. Out of an 8-points scale, each additional degree level yields an average increase of 6% in content persistence. This represents a sizeable number: all else equal, an editor moving from the lowest education level in our data (i.e., who did not complete high school), to the highest (i.e., earned a PhD), would thus see the persistence of their contributions increase by 48% on average.

From the article:^[2]

"In this overview, we will discuss how to go about creating or editing an article on a mathematical subject. [...] We will also discuss biographies of mathematicians, articles on mathematical books, and the social dynamics of the Wikipedia editor community."

The authors (all experienced Wikipedia editors) aptly cover various misunderstandings and pitfalls that academic mathematicians might encounter when contributing to Wikipedia. (For example, the "Writing About Your Own Work" section advises that "Rather than advertising their own super-specialization, experts can make themselves useful by explaining the prerequisites to understanding it. What articles would a student read in order to understand the background and broader context of your research?"). Somewhat ironically, the paper's first paragraph illustrates one such tension between the conventions of academia and Wikipedia:

This essay incorporates with permission material from our pseudonymous colleague XOR'easter,^{[supp 1]} who also contributed many suggestions during the writing process. By the extent of XOR’easter’s contributions, they would normally be credited as an author. However it was not possible in time to find a way to strictly preserve anonymity and assign legal copyright. All four contributors disagree with this exclusion. I regret its necessity — Ed.

The paper's title includes a rather cringe-y pun referring to the Principia Mathematica.

• See the page of the monthly Wikimedia Research Showcase for videos and slides of past presentations.

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

From the abstract:^[3]

we introduce the SustainPedia dataset, which compiles data from over 40K Wikipedia articles, including each article's sustainable success label and more than 300 explanatory features such as edit history, user experience, and team composition. Using this dataset, we develop machine learning models to predict the sustainable success of Wikipedia articles. Our best-performing model achieves a high AU-ROC score of 0.88 on average. Our analysis reveals important insights. For example, we find that the longer an article takes to be recognized as high-quality, the more likely it is to maintain that status over time (i.e., be sustainable). Additionally, user experience emerged as the most critical predictor of sustainability."

From the abstract:^[4]

"Using a large-scale examination of publicly available data, we assessed whether species across 6 taxonomic groups received more page views on Wikipedia when the species was named after a celebrity than when it was not. We conducted our analysis for 4 increasingly strict thresholds of how many average daily Wikipedia page views a celebrity had (1, 10, 100, or 1000 views). Overall, we found a high probability (0.96–0.98) that species named after celebrities had more page views than their closest relatives that were not named after celebrities, irrespective of the celebrity threshold."

From the abstract:^[5]

"This qualitative discourse analysis of editors' debates around climate change on Wikipedia argues that their hesitancy to 'declare crisis' is not a conscious editorial choice as much as an outcome of a friction between the folk philosophy of science Wikipedia is built upon, editors' own sense of urgency, and their anticipations about audience uptake of their writing. This friction shapes a group style that fosters temporal ambiguity. Hence, the findings suggest that in the [English] Wikipedia entry on climate change, platform affordances and contestation of expertise foreclose a declaration of climate crisis."

Supplementary references and notes:

This article first appeared a year ago in The Signpost. A couple of the staff here liked it enough to ask me to resubmit it this year. I'm happy to do it, I just really love Christmas carols. Of course I had to make a few changes, and I'll make more next year if I get the chance again. Please post some of your own favorite carols in the section for comments, along with any holiday wishes or Christmas cards you like. I'll try to include some of these next year. Happy holidays! – S

I love Christmas carols, especially the old ones. Charles Dickens's story A Christmas Carol is not that old — first published in 1843 — but is written in the form of a "Christmas carol in prose", according to the title page. Its chapters are even called staves. In the first stave, a passing caroler sings a small snippet of an old carol to Scrooge. Do you know the Christmas carol sung in A Christmas Carol?

"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" goes back to the 1650s, but songs have been associated with mid-winter holidays for over 2,000 years. For example, the Roman holiday Saturnalia was associated with song, as well as wine and political incorrectness — though it should not be confused with Bacchanalia. There's even a modern Saturnalia song, sung in Latin, titled "Io, Saturnalia" (In English: "Yo, Saturnalia") which might be better to skip.

Carols are not necessarily religious, but they are almost always happy music you can dance to. "O Tannenbaum" means "Oh, fir tree" in German but is usually translated into English as "Oh, Christmas Tree". Other than the word "Christmas", the song has little to do with religion. It just praises the fir tree's "faithfulness" — its ability to stay green all Winter. In German, in French, and in English.

My favorite religious carols include:

"Good King Wenceslas" — celebrates the day after Christmas, the Feast of Stephen, and emphasizes the importance of charity (and gift-giving in general).

"It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" — a song that has lyrics from a poem of the same name, and is a very intellectual expression of the author's personal interpretation of the meaning of Christmas. It may mark his joy at the announcement of peace ending the Mexican–American War.

"O Holy Night" — sends a similar message.

Ramsey Lewis gives a jazz version of "We Three Kings".

To fully appreciate "O come all ye faithful", you need to hear it in a large, packed church with a powerful organ belting it out on Christmas Eve. The original Latin version, Adeste Fideles, can be even more powerful. Strangely, though I only know a few words of Latin, I always think of it as Venite Adoremus from the words in the chorus that translate to "Oh come let us adore (him)".

The explanation is the quirky, sprightly carol "The Snow Lay On the Ground", which also uses the words venite adoremus. The lyrics are attributed to a 19th-century Italian folk song, but three quarters of the time you just sing venite adoremus.

Another folk song, an African-American spiritual, "Go Tell It on the Mountain", is an expression of pure joy. It was first mentioned in 1901, and published in 1909.

There aren't many African-American folk songs that have become classic Christmas carols, but there is the ultimate "Christmas Song" sung and played by some of the best musicians on this page, including by the composer. [1]

And another great December song.

Modern Christmas carols and songs express many of the same themes as the earlier carols, adapted to the current state of the world. But I'm not going to link to "All I Want for Christmas is You" — you know where to find it, and you know that you have heard it enough already this year.

There are also many people who live in different circumstances in other countries, who celebrate different winter holidays, and worship in different faiths. Nobody should be left out at this time of year. We are sorry that there is not enough time to cover everybody's circumstances.

"Silver Bells" brings great memories of "Christmastime in the city". But I also have mixed feelings on its message. Is it meant to honor the Salvation Army? Or is it just an advertisement for the modern commercialized holiday that seems to start in October? Or maybe it is just a great song, in a bad movie, starring an even worse comedian?

There is no doubt that Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas" is a great song. But sometimes I wonder if it has anything to do with Christmas.

José Feliciano's song [2] "Feliz Navidad" causes no such mixed feelings. A little bit of repetition never hurt a Christmas song.

Russia and Ukraine both have long traditions of celebrating Christmas and New Year's Day. And they share some of them.

В лесу родилась ёлочка ("In the woods is born a fir tree") is a Russian children's New Year's song. It mirrors Oh, Christmas Tree but includes a cute little bunny, an angry wolf, and most kiddy videos include Father Frost (a Slavic Santa Claus).

The music to this little Christmas dance was written by a gay Russian composer whose grandfather was born in Ukraine.

Do not be fooled by a bit of chaos at the start to this video of Ukrainian carolers.

These shared traditions only make the current war more tragic.

There are other tragedies happening right now that involve different religions that share, in part, a common heritage.

You might think it would be difficult finding a Jewish Christmas carol, but a song often called "The best selling Christmas song of all time" was written by Irving Berlin, a Jew.

Hanukkah songs include "The Dreidel Song", "8 Days (Of Hanukkah)" by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings [3], and "Hanukkah Rocks" [4] by The LeeVees (the last two links are to NPR's Tiny Desk Concert).

You might think there are no Muslim Christmas songs, and perhaps you are right. But Muslims are allowed to borrow the Christmas carols they like and even compose their own, just like anybody else. This is the view put forward in these two thought-provoking videos.

• Raef - The Muslim Christmas Song
• A Muslim Christmas

We all share part of our common human heritage. We all share in our common human tragedy.