Summary: With most TV shows on hiatus for the northern summer, attention has turned to movies, celebrity and sports. The dramatic events at the 2013 Confederations Cup drew massive attention, as did summer blockbusters like Man of Steel and World War Z. But the most searched event of the week was the tragic and unexpected death of popular actor James Gandolfini on June 19.
For the complete Top 25 report with analysis, see here.
For the week of June 16 to 22, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
The sudden, unexpected death from a heart attack of this hugely popular actor on June 19 sent many shocked fans to his Wikipedia page for confirmation.
The corporation finalised its $1.1 billion purchase of the popular microblogging site Tumblr on June 20, increasing speculation on the implications for both it and the site. Yahoo! promises however, that Tumblr will remain independent.
The second attempt to rework the Superman mythos for modern cinema (after Bryan Singer's Superman Returns) has earned $255 million worldwide in its first week.
The oldest woman in history, who famously said, "I’ve never had but one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it", was the topic of a popular TIL thread on Reddit.
FIFA's warmup to the Football World Cup in 2014 (which pits the winners of the various continental football confederation championships against each other) runs from 15 to 30 June 2013.
Brad Pitt's loose adaptation of Max Brooks's zombie apocalypse novel follows a now-well-worn precedent of the less-popular opening film generating many more hits on Wikipedia. Monsters University, despite winning the weekend, barely broke the top 100.
In a 25 June article entitled "How Wikimedia Commons became a massive amateur porn hub", the Daily Dot examined the perennial controversy over explicit or pornographic media on Commons. This latest salvo was touched off when Russavia uploaded a portrait of Jimmy Wales made by the artist Pricasso, who paints with his genitalia. The conflict between Wales—who declared that the image was "sexual harassment"—and Russavia (with other editors becoming involved along the way) has been brewing over the issue of pornographic material on Commons since 2010 and has intensified in recent months. Recent areas of conflict include the issue of model consent and the scope of Commons itself, which the author calls the "black sheep" of the Wikimedia projects.
Commons hosts a wide variety of media of drastically differing quality, and the categorization scheme means that explicit media is hosted in a variety of categories that may appear innocuous.
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You can't walk down a street on the Commons without stumbling upon some dude's penis, or something equally explicit or shocking. Search for a "wheel," and you'll shortly discover a photo from a BDSM torture session. The same goes for "jumping ball," "bell tolling," or "electric toothbrush."
”
The Daily Dot says that Commons has an "exhibition culture … dominated by men", and cites the example of Hansy2's extensive upload log, including "at least 29" explicit pictures of his genitalia. When the images were all put up for deletion, all were kept because one penis picture exhibits a rare skin disorder and is used in the article on that disorder.
The author asked both Russavia and Pricasso if he commissioned the portrait, and both confirmed that Russavia had requested the portrait, though the latter claims that "there was no exchange of cash or quid pro quo involved"; Pricasso was quoted in the article as saying that the anonymous patron offered a Wikipedia article with him as the subject in exchange for the portrait, yet another controversy in the continuing paid-contribution saga. The debate over this portrait has included a massive deletion discussion at Commons (commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Jimmy Wales by Pricasso.jpg), where it was kept, many noticeboard debates, several discussions on User talk:Jimbo Wales, and two essays in the Signpost. The author concluded that the community's decision to keep the files was wrong, saying "And what better way, incidentally, to prove that Commons is ethically broken than for one of its top bureaucrats to employ the site in a harassment campaign against the cofounder of Wikipedia itself?"
Jimmy Wales accused of contravening policies in hunt for Snowden
The banned English Wikipedia user Gregory Kohs, who is also a member and frequent commentator on Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy, published an article on Examiner.com claiming that the "notorious" co-founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales (User:Jimbo Wales) had looked into whether the PRISM leaker and current fugitive Edward Snowden had ever edited on Wikipedia, due to his active online presence. The article goes on to chastise Wales for what Kohs claims was a violation of Wikipedia's policy against "outing" editors. The article, to which the Signpost cannot link because of the English Wikipedia's spam blacklist, states:
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Certainly as the man who co-founded the Wikipedia project and who has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from speaking to assembled audiences about Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales should know better than to ask others to violate one of its community's most respected rules. But that does not appear to be the case.
”
After Wales’ initial comment on his talk page, a thread on the Administrators' Noticeboard was initiated by Wikipedia administrator Fram. The article quotes several Wikipedians' responses (without revealing their usernames in the article), commenting that editors "picked apart Jimbo with a precision only Wikipedians could exact":
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the complaint has some merit. In the case Snowden is an editor, and could continue to edit, outing him seems a bad thing to do, just like for any other editor.
...I agree that Fram's concern has foundation, and I am concerned with Jimbo's removal [of talk] page posts, as well as his dismissal of them as 'trolling.'
...I disagree with Jimbo when he says that this isn't a case of 'outing'.
...I fully support Fram's concern here. Journalists are entititled (sic) to investigate whether Snowden had an account on Wikipedia (and if so; which account/s); Wikipedians are not entitled to speculate on Wikipedia about real-life identities.
...Jimbo, you send mixed messages when you encourage us to out a Wikipedia editor just because he's in the news.
”
The article then quotes Wales, who said that all editors except Fram are welcome to discuss the issue at his talk page, and finally goes on to harshly criticize Wales and Wikipedia in general.
Wales and Kohs later directly exchanged perspectives on the popular Q&A site Quora.
As to whether or not Wales actually did violate Wikipedia policy, views in the ANI thread were mixed. Fram, who started the thread, said, "Speculation on which accounts may be used by named (notable) persons, for the sake of curiosity, have no place on Wikipedia." Nick, who closed the thread, remarked in his closing comments, "BLP policy and our civility guidelines apply everywhere so if Edward does have any publicly acknowledged accounts, they need to be kept free from inappropriate comments and behaviour. The same care and attention will need to be lavished upon any accounts discussed in the press, regardless of whether they are confirmed to be Edward's accounts." Dennis Brown fell somewhere in the middle: "Jimmy, I don't think you were trying to out him directly, but your comments are what some might call a 'red flag' comment, an indication that a user is trying to connect dots. If you weren't 'Jimbo' and were instead a <5k editor, I would have given a polite notification and a pointer to WP:OUTING. The comments as they are might be seen as you encouraging or condoning others outting him, even if that isn't your intention."
This story was widely covered in the international media, including ITPro, Softpedia, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tech2. France24pointed out that usernames similar to TrueHOOHA, Snowden's username on sites like ArsTechnica, came under suspicion by Wales and others following an investigation into his other online activities. However, as of now, it has not been verified whether or not Snowden edited, nor under what name, had he edited. France24 noted that the outing policy is a "golden rule" of Wikipedia and reported Fram's criticism of the search for Snowden's username, as did Der Spiegel (Germany) and Der Standard (Austria). Both of these latter articles later had statements by Wales added to them. According to Der Spiegel, Wales told them it was the community that had asked questions about Snowden's activities on Wikipedia, while he himself had warned against an outing – a statement that seems hard to reconcile with the discussions that took place on his talk page and at the administrators' noticeboard. The article in Der Standard was updated after an an exchange of views on Twitter between Wales and Florian Hirzinger.
In brief
Doc Rivers' Wikipedia page hacked after news of Clippers trade: Larry Brown Sports reported on vandalism to Doc Rivers after the former Boston Celtics coach was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers, and declared the Clippers fans the "winners" of the vandalism back-and-forth.
Irate fan changes Kurtley Beale's Wikipedia page after penalty slip-up: Another article on sports vandalism came from the Score, who said that Kurtley Beale's article was vandalized to blame him for a loss in a rugby unioninternational match.
Wikipedia caught in German heat wave: Der Spiegelnoted that the recent heat wave in Germany had led to unusually high page views for the German article on air conditioning. The entry for banana peel, too, had experienced record page views of nearly 38,000 in a single day. The reason, it turned out, was that the German Wikipedia main page had hosted a DYK noting that more than 20 million tonnes of banana peel were generated each year, which could be used to clean waste water and treat arteriosclerosis. The Spiegel article also reviewed recent stories on the Wikipedia Live Monitor and the apparent relationship between Wikipedia traffic statistics and such economic variables as stock market developments, or box office takings of cinema releases.
Treat Wikipedia with respect: The Holmes Report, a website for PR professionals, featured a write-up of an interview with Jimmy Wales conducted at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world's largest advertising festival. In the interview, Wales asked PR professionals to treat Wikipedia "with respect". He told the Holmes Report that "reputable, honest PR firms find it very easy to use Wikipedia. The issue comes when unethical, or more often, stupid people think that the right thing to do is to create a fake ID, argue with people in an unfair way and that just ends up embarrassing the client. You wouldn't hack into the New York Times' computers to change a story – you'd call them up to complain about something that's wrong. We'd ask to be treated with the same level of respect." Wales dismissed complaints from PR people that correcting errors in Wikipedia often turned out to be a laborious process: "It's very fast, it's very easy, I don't buy that argument at all. Obviously a PR firm has an interest in presenting their client in the best possible light, and we're certainly happy to run corrections or add perspective if they've published a response. But if you have unrealistic expectations that you can somehow go on Wikipedia and make something disappear that's a legitimate controversy, then of course you're going to be disappointed in the end." He urged PR professionals to be transparent about who they were, and said he could only think of rare cases where Wikipedians had "dropped the ball" and failed to respond adequately.
UK primary school teachers use Wikipedia to prepare themselves for RE lessons: An article in the Telegraph reported that according to a recent study, "[p]rimary school teachers know so little about religion that more than two thirds are now relying on websites like Wikipedia to plan their RE lessons." Parentdish.co.uk also covered the story.
Just edit it: Lexology.com, a web service for company law departments and law firms, posted an overview of how best to deal with "unfair, inaccurate, misleading or defamatory statements" in Wikipedia. Written by staff members of Heenan Blaikie, the article gave an overview of Wikipedia's policies and internal mechanisms and recommended a "self-help" approach: "Just edit it. Wikipedia is a 'wiki' which means that anyone can edit an unprotected page. Unlike most other sites with user-generated content (for example, online message boards), persons other than the poster or a site administrator can alter or remove existing content. The quickest and best solution when someone is posting unfair statements on an article will often be to just change it back and monitor the article. Such an edit can be justified if, say, the article contained an un-sourced personal attack, or if the cited source does not support the information. However, simple editing will not necessarily stop a determined user from re-posting defamatory content, nor will it necessarily be effective when the line between truth and fiction is not black and white. Wikipedia has internal mechanisms for dealing with these sorts of issues." The article advised against pursuing legal action, owing to the "cost of finding out who the proper defendants are".
¿Sabías que hay robots que escriben en la Wikipedia? [Did you know that robots write on Wikipedia?]: ABC Tecnología reported on the Swedish Wikipedia controversy over Lsjbot, a bot that writes articles. Sv.wikipedia recently reached the milestone of 1 million articles with the help of bots; this has generated debate over the value and quality of these articles (see Signpost coverage: "Swedish Wikipedia's millionth article leads to protests").
Alternativas a Wikipedia [Alternatives to Wikipedia]: Bitelia published an article on Spanish-language Wikipedia alternatives, including Wikilengua, Vikidia, Frikipedia, Encyclopedia Espasa, Kalipedia, Archiplanet, Wikitravel, and Ballotpedia.
La page Wikipedia en anglais d’el-Assir piratée [The English Wikipedia page on el-Assir hacked]: L’Orient-Le Jour reported on vandalism to Ahmed al-Assir.
Community-elected trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation Board ... the three successful candidates (red) and the eight unsuccessful (blue). Samuel Klein gained the support of 43.5% of the 1809 voters (y-axis). Top-right is the strongest direction, in which supports are high and opposes are low; bottom-left is the weakest direction, in which supports are low and opposes are high. Using the S/S+O formula (x-axis), the rightmost three candidates were successful.
WMF election results
Samuel Klein, WMF trustee 2013–15Phoebe Ayers, WMF trustee 2013–15María Sefidari, WMF trustee 2013–15Delphine Ménard, elected member of the FDC, 2013–15Cristian Consonni, elected member of the FDC, 2013–15
Less than three days after the close of voting, the volunteer election committee posted the results on Meta. The worldwide Wikimedia movement has elected three WMF trustees for two-year terms on the 10-seat Board: Samuel Klein (supported by 43.5% of voters), Phoebe Ayers (38.3%), and María Sefidari (35.6%). The new trustees will take their seats at a critical time for the movement: one of the first tasks in their terms will be to help the Board to find and approve the new executive director to take up the top job when Sue Gardner departs.
Samuel Klein, from the United States, has expertise in digital libraries and participates in an internet research group. His academic qualifications are in physics, mathematics, algorithms and language. He has been closely involved in outreach and community content for the One Laptop per Child project. Samuel speaks intermediate-level German, Spanish, and French. He is just completing his second term as a WMF trustee.
Phoebe Ayers, also from the US, is a science and engineering librarian. She has experience in Wikimania coordination and administration, and is a co-author of the book How Wikipedia Works (2008). Phoebe served as a chapter-selected WMF trustee from 2010 to 2012.
María Sefidari (Raystorm), from Spain, has qualifications in psychology and was vice-president of Wikimedia Spain (2010–12). She speaks near-native-level English and intermediate-level French. María is the treasurer of the WMF's Affiliations Committee and has been a member of the IEG Committee.
The first two elected members of the Funds Dissemination Committee will be Delphine Ménard (notafish) and Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro). The FDC recommends to the Board the funding it believes FDC-eligible Wikimedia affiliates should receive, based on applications made to it in two rounds each year.
Delphine Ménard, from France, studied in the US and Austria, and holds an undergraduate degree in political science and a postgraduate degree in international communication and marketing. She has worked as an event manager and has experience in managing budgets, and has near-native-level English, good German, and intermediate-level Spanish. Delphine is a board member of Wikimedia Germany and has worked for the WMF as chapters coordinator. Cristian Consonni has experience in the GNU/Linux and Free Software worlds, and is a member of the Board of Wikimedia Italy. He speaks intermediate-level English and French.
Susana Morais (Lusitana), from Portugal, speaks advanced-level English and German, and intermediate-level Spanish. Her interests lie in the arts and photography. Susana was appointed as the inaugural FDC ombudsperson last year. The FDC ombudsperson is charged with receiving and publicly documenting complaints about the FDC process, and providing feedback and recommendations to the WMF Board about how the FDC process can be improved.
One of the surprises of the election was that only 1809 members of the global community voted, just over half of the numbers who had their say in the election of community-elected trustees in 2011, against a much less marked shrinkage over that time in the number of active editors, from about 90,000 to about 80,000. In the so-called support–oppose electoral system—imported for the first time from the English Wikipedia's ArbCom elections against doubts expressed by several editors at the election talk page—voters faced three choices for each candidate: to support, to oppose, or to leave the setting at neutral.
Brief analysis of the vote
The scatter graph at the top of the page shows each candidate as a diamond point—red for the three successful candidates and blue for the eight unsuccessful candidates. By definition, the three rightmost candidates were successful, based on the S/S+O formula, where supports are divided by supports plus opposes; this formula is represented by the x-axis. As a simple guide, all possible votes fall within a triangle bounded by theoretical lines representing zero supports, zero opposes, and zero neutrals (the top half of the triangle is not shown to produce a clearer display).
Faced with 11 candidates and three vacant seats, voters cast an average of 3.2 supports, 1.9 opposes, and 5.9 neutrals. Compared with the pure support votes on the y-axis, the use of the formula resulted in only two differences in the order of candidates: the inversions of Kat Walsh's and Michel Aaij's positions, and John Vandenberg's and Jeromy-Yu Chan's positions. The fact that the red–blue boundary between the successful and the unsuccessful remained untouched by these differences has avoided immediate debate about the operation of the formula.
The Signpost's attempts to locate the voter list for the last community-elected trustee positions in 2011 were unsuccessful—despite the apparent significance of the ability this would give to analyse the patterns of shrinkage in the active electorate throughout the world over this period.
FDC members and FDC ombudsperson
Seven candidates competed for the two FDC positions. Delphine Ménard gained the support of 45.7% of voters, and Cristian Consonni 32.0%. Voters cast an average of 1.8 supports, 1.1 opposes, and 4.1 neutrals; relative to the number of candidates for each body, this was a much higher proportion of neutrals. The two new members will join an FDC that is grappling with the need to streamline the process for applicants, while at the same time to deliver to the FDC and the staff the right type and level of detail to make its judgements fair and accurate.
The two candidates for ombudsperson gained 42.8% (Susana Morais) and 35.4% (Matt Bisanz). Voters cast an average of 0.8 supports for this single position, with 0.2 opposes and 1.0 neutrals.
Conclusions
As for previous elections, comments on this year's election are being gathered on a Meta post mortem page. While the results were released abnormally quickly, issues included a perceived difficulty on the voting page itself, which was extremely confusing to get to. In the words of one editor:
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I think this statement is really nonsensible: Go to the wiki page "Special:SecurePoll" on one wiki you qualify to vote from. For example, if you are most active on the wiki meta.wikimedia.org, go to meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll. I cut and pasted Special:SecurePoll in the search box. It took me to what looked like the right place to vote. So I tried to vote. It said I was disqualified. After looking around for an hour and trying different things I realized I was going to a meta page. So I backed out to the main page and pasted it there. Then it took me to a place I could vote. You all really need to rethink how this voting process works. I'll bet there are lots of editors who give up in frustration.
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However, in replying to this user, Risker (a member of the election committee and its principal public face) pointed out that a direct link to the poll page would allow readers to vote without seeing the candidates. The voting wiki was also rife with problems; MZMcBride pointed out several partway through the election. Translation of the election introduction and candidate statements was also slow to come in, a problem occasionally exacerbated by a need to clarify texts after they had already been translated.
Translations were also a major part of what was possibly the largest issue: the sudden delay of the election by one week at very nearly the literal last minute. The election committee gave as its reasons:
We have been unable to verify that the list of eligible voters is complete and that all voters meet the published criteria
We have been unable to verify that the SecurePoll setups for the election are properly functioning
The voter interfaces have not been translated and are not currently available in any language other than English, thus disadvantaging Wikimedians who do not read English.
The diamond points are candidates for the FDC—successful (red), and unsuccessful (blue). The two ombudsperson candidates are represented by the red and blue small bars.
In brief
Legal victory: The Wikimedia Foundation has prevailed in a defamation case brought against it by a former cabinet member of Italy.
New user group: The GLAM-Wiki community in the United States awoke on 26 June to find that their application to become an official Wikimedia user group was approved by the Affiliations Committee. The GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium will remain as a user group for a minimum of one year before it needs to reapply for that status.
First World War edit-a-thons: Given the upcoming centennials of events related to the First World War, several edit-a-thons are being organized for 29 June. Further information is on Meta.
CAPTCHA for each edit?: While the Portuguese Wikipedia voted to require a CAPTCHA before saving any edit from an anonymous or unconfirmed user, comments from the wider Wikimedia community on the resultant Bugzilla thread have been overwhelmingly negative.
Freedom of panorama: A legal intern with the Wikimedia Foundation has published an opinion that Wikimedia users "generally cannot use [freedom of panorama] as a reason to host an otherwise copyright-protected photo of a statue on Commons."
When humans disappear...: An intriguing blog post in Scientific American this week has explored how transcribing Wikipedia for a nascent population left after an apocalyptic event could (possibly) work. According to the post, doing this with the current size of Wikipedia, which is measured at approximately 1800 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, would require a significant number of pencils.
In the case, brought by Lecen, an editor was accused of systematically skewing several articles involving former Argentine president Juan Manuel de Rosas to portray a brutal dictator as a democratic leader, in keeping with the political motives of Argentine "nationalists" or "revisionists".
The committee was unanimous in passing findings that 1) the locus of the dispute involved allegations of POV-pushing in Juan Manuel de Rosas and other articles related to the history of Latin America, that 2) Cambalachero "has edited in a manner inconsistent with the neutral point of view policy" including the citation of a source "whose reliability they themselves have disavowed", and that 3) MarshalN20 engaged in "tendentious editing and battleground conduct." Also passing 5 to 3, with 1 abstention, was a finding that Lecen "has not always conducted himself with an appropriate level of decorum".
The committee unanimously passed remedies that Cambalachero and MarshalN20 be topic banned "indefinitely from all articles, discussions, and other content related to the history of Latin America". A remedy that Lecen is "reminded to conduct himself in accordance with Wikipedia's behavioral guidelines" passed 5 to 3, with 1 abstention.
The Race and politics case, brought by UseTheCommandLine and dealing with sourcing methods in articles pertaining to race and politics, has been suspended, after one of the editors central to the case withdrew from editing. The case will remain open for two months from the May 26, 2013 passage of the motion to suspend; if by that time the editor has not returned to editing, the case will be closed and a topic ban will be imposed.
This case involving an American political group, brought by KillerChihuahua, was suspended until the end of June, pending a moderated discussion. Pages related to the Tea Party movement are placed under discretionary sanctions. The case, along with any progress towards resolution, is to be reevaluated on 1 July 2013.
Other requests and committee action
Amendment request: Doncram: A request by Nyttend to amend the Doncram arbitration case to add a prohibition against Doncram commenting on contributors was declined, with the statement that the language of the existing remedy already contains sufficient flexibility.
Clarification request: Senkaku Islands: A request by User:Oda Mari to clarify the naming conventions for "Senkaku" and "Diaoyui" islands similar to the conventions for the Sea of Japan was withdrawn, after noting that the arbitration committee does not handle decisions about naming islands.
Postponed actions: discretionary sanctions: Three requests involving discretionary sanctions remain postponed. The discretionary sanctions portion involving notices and warnings of a request filed by NewsAndEventsGuy was moved elsewhere to solicit community comment. A request for clarification of several issues relating to arbitration enforcement brought by Gatoclasswas archived with the comment that a review of the issues of arbitration enforcement and discretionary sanctions was scheduled for May 2013. A request to clarify the appeal process for discretionary sanctions warnings filed by Sandstein was scheduled for May of 2013.
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