Serbia takes the stage with Filip Maljković

The Island with the Golden Gun

Eight featured articles were promoted this week.

• Harta Berdarah (nominated by Crisco 1492) was a 1940 film from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The story tells of a young man who convinces a stingy pilgrim to be more charitable and, in the process, falls in love with the man's daughter; it is a cautionary tale about valuing money over social obligations and the needs of society. Sadly the film is now lost, although thanks to the work of Crisco 1492 we have a permanently accessible record of its background.
• Blue men of the Minch (nominated by Sagaciousphil and Eric Corbett) are mythological creatures in human form who inhabit the Minch, a strait between the northern Outer Hebrides and mainland Scotland. The creatures look much like humans, and are about the same size and have the power to create storms. They may be a tribe of fallen angels, Picts, or North African slaves taken to Scotland by the Vikings.
• Fantastic Novels (nominated by Mike Christie) was an American minor science fiction and fantasy pulp magazine of the 1940s, a companion to Famous Fantastic Mysteries. Consisting of 25 editions, the magazine mostly reprinted science fiction and fantasy classics from earlier decades of the 20th century, but also occasionally published reprints of more contemporary work.
• Gemini (2002 Tamil film) (nominated by Sriram) is a 2002 masala film—one that mixes genres—which was written and directed by Saran, and features Vikram and Kiran Rathod as the film's love interest, and Kalabhavan Mani as the antagonist. Although the film received mixed critical reviews, it became the most commercially successful Tamil film of the year and won a series of awards in India.
• Queen Elizabeth Way (nominated by Floydian) was the first intercity freeway in North America, and one of the most historically important roads in Ontario and Canada. 139.1 km (86.4 mi) long, the Queen Elizabeth Way connects the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and the Highway 427, although the roads into which it feeds link Toronto with the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo, New York.
• Flight Unlimited II (nominated by JimmyBlackwing) is a flight simulator video game that was developed in 1997 by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive, and the successor to the successful and popular Flight Unlimited. The player controls one of five planes in the airspace of the San Francisco Bay Area, in contrast to the aerobatics focus of its predecessor. Although highly praised by the critics, sales were not as buoyant as the first version.
• Mischief Makers (nominated by Czar) is a side-scrolling platform video game that was developed in 1997 by Treasure and published by Enix and Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. The player assumes the role of Marina, a robotic maid who journeys to rescue her creator from the emperor of Planet Clancer. The game—displayed in "2½D"—received mixed reviews at the time of its release, perhaps because of the unpopularity of a 2D game during great hype for 3D technology.
• Freedom of Worship (painting) (nominated by TonyTheTiger) is a 1943 oil painting by the American artist Norman Rockwell. It is the second of the Four Freedoms series, based on the "Four Freedoms" goals enunciated by the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his 1941 State of the Union Address. The series of paintings has subsequently become part of a good topic.

Three featured lists were promoted this week.

• John Barrymore on stage, screen and radio (nominated by SchroCat) John Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio who appeared in more than 40 plays, 60 films and 100 radio shows in a career that ran between 1904 and 1942. Nicknamed "the Great Profile", he was one of the finest and most influential actors of his day, although his career suffered in later years from monumental bouts of drinking, the effects of which included memory loss and the inability to remember his lines.
• List of Major League Baseball players with unidentified given names (nominated by Seattle) There are thirty-seven individuals who played professional baseball at the major league level who lack identified given names, all in the late 19th-century. Surprisingly, newspapers have mentioned a few players in write-ups without identifying their first name but, in essence, these individuals have been lost to history and it is unlikely their true identity will ever be uncovered.
• List of unprotected cruisers of Germany (nominated by Parsecboy) In the 1880s and 1890s the German navy built nine unprotected cruisers in three classes. These ships all served in Germany's colonial empire and required great endurance and relatively heavy firepower. The ships were mostly out of service by the First World War, though one did see some (limited) active service. These ships proved to be transitional designs, and experience gathered with them and a series of avisos helped to produce the first light cruisers of the German Navy.

28 featured pictures were promoted this week.

• Blenduk Church (created and nominated by Chris Woodrich) The oldest church in Central Java, it was built in 1753 and continues to hold Sunday services. This image was nominated after its author felt that our readership was growing bored with temples.
• A Young Girl Reading (created by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, nominated by Hafspajen) is a painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, "whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance and hedonism", according to the nominator.
• Comparison of Wakatobi flowerpeckers and grey-sided flowerpeckers (created by multiple individuals, nominated by ThaddeusB) The promoted image is adapted from one published with a 2014 article which classified the Wakatobi flowerpecker as a unique species for the first time in a hundred years. Odd, these birds don't look that old...
• Flying gurnard (created by Beckmannjan, nominated by Crisco 1492) You may not expect this from its name, but the flying gurnard does not actually fly. Rather, this family (better known to science as Dactylopteridae) almost appears to glide with its greatly enlarged pectoral fins.
• One-dollar, two-dollar, five-dollar, ten-dollar, twenty-dollar, fifty-dollar, one-hundred-dollar, five-hundred-dollar, and one-thousand-dollar banknotes of the United States Notes ("Greenback") series (scanned and nominated by Godot13) These greenbacks were scanned from the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian. Issued between 1862 and 1863, they were only backed by the United States' good name – in a time of civil war.
• Three temples at Sam Poo Kong (created and nominated by Crisco 1492) Sam Poo Kong (unrelated to the latest vogue in ape hair care products) is a Chinese temple in Semarang that was built in honor of Zheng He's landing in the area in the 17th century. It has been rebuilt and refurbished numerous times since then.
• Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (created by Édouard Manet, nominated by Coat of Many Colours) This portrait of Berthe Morisot, a French painter, was completed in 1872. She later married the artists brother; sources are unclear whether this painting was a factor.
• Yogapith, Mayapur (created and nominated by Cinosaur) The Temple of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was established at his birthplace (Yogapith) in Mayapur (West Bengal) in the 1880s. Sadly Temple of Caitanya Mahaprabhu is a redlink; does anyone feel like turning it blue?
• Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (created by Vincent van Gogh, nominated by Coat of Many Colours) This is but one of a series of paintings which van Gogh did with a sunflower motif. Readers should get ready for a burst in van Gogh images over the next few weeks; seems the seed planted by these sunflowers has started blooming in full force.
• Three Beauties of the Present Day (created by Kitagawa Utamaro, nominated by Hafspajen) Three Beauties of the Present Day is a c. 1793 woodprint. This copy is not a first edition, which can be differentiated by the inclusion of the sitters' names; keeping in mind that Utamaro attempted to idealize their likenesses, we'll let you decide which was best.
• Woman with a Mirror (created by Titian, nominated by Hafspajen) The sitter of Woman with a Mirror, painted by Titian in 1515, is debated, and among the candidates are the lovers of two other men. Or, of course, she could have just been a model.
• Round, chancel, altar, and organ of the Temple Church, London (created and nominated by Diliff) The four high-resolution images show different aspects of the Temple Church in London. Built by the Knights Templar in the 12th century, the church is now home to two Inns of Court and welcome to visitors. And no, there is no grail.
• Indonesian one rupiah (scanned and nominated by Godot13) This scan is of a one rupiah note, one of few featured banknotes from Godot13 that are not from the US. Most of these notes were captured, meaning a delay in circulation. Today, one rupiah would not buy you even a sip of water.
• Khao Phing Kan (created by Diego Delso, nominated by Crisco 1492) Forty years ago, Scaramanga asked Bond how he liked this island. Bond may have thought it out of the way, but this image shows that is no longer true. Perhaps the beauty (and lack of 24 carat weapons) has changed things.
• City of Workers (created by Hans Baluschek, nominated by Sca) Berlin Secessionist Hans Baluschek's City of Workers (right), painted two years after Germany's defeat in World War I, is described by the Milwaukee Art Museum as a "a powerful critique of what political and social issues can do to ordinary citizens", with the city as a "menacing and dehumanizing force". Now, aren't you curious about his illustrations for children's books?
• Time lapse of the Falkirk Wheel (created and nominated by Diliff) Not content to wow us with panoramas of churches, gifted photographer Diliff presents us with this time lapse video of the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland. Reports that looped versions of this film have kept cats busy for hours are unconfirmed.
• Sgùrr nan Gillean (created and nominated by Diliff) Sgùrr nan Gillean is a mountain in the northern section of the Cuillin range on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It is one of eleven Munros in its range; cousin Marvin was last spotted somewhere in North Takoma.

2014-07-16

Bot-created Wikipedia articles covered in the Wall Street Journal, push Cebuano over one million articles

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By The ed17

The Swedish Wikipedia's prolific Lsjbot, which has created a significant proportion of the site's 1.7 million articles and has nearly single-handedly pushed it to being the fourth-largest Wikipedia, was covered in the Wall Street Journal this week.

In its front page article, the US newspaper reported that the bot has created 2.7 million articles, which is apparently a reference to the Waray-Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias (where Lsjbot is also active), and that "on a good day", it creates 10,000 articles.

The Wall Street Journal's article comes as the Cebuano Wikipedia is now the twelfth Wikipedia to cross the million article mark, almost entirely from the boost of these formulaic articles. Of these, over 40% (Swedish, Waray-Waray, Cebuano, Vietnamese, and Dutch) have received significant help from automated article creation scripts. The highest depth of these five is Vietnamese, with 18; Swedish follows with 11, and the others are all under ten. By comparison, the German Wikipedia has a depth of 90.

The process of bot-created articles has proved controversial among Wikimedians; by way of commenting, German Wikipedian Achim Raschka pointed the Signpost to an entry Denis Diderot wrote for the Encyclopédie, titled "Aguaxima". Diderot lamented that all they knew about the Aguaxima was that it was a plant in Brazil, yet he still had to describe it: "If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all."

Disagreement with these edits even led to a proposal last year that would have banned the overuse of bot-created articles on Wikimedia projects.

Still, they are not the first Wikipedias to utilize bots to augment human article creators: in 2007, Volapük and Lombard were expanded by over 100,000 bot articles each; Tagalog saw a similar rise. Lombard editors later placed a moratorium on new automated articles and deleted most of them; the Lombard Wikipedia currently has around 31,000 articles. Volapük is hovering around 120,000, and the Tagalog Wikipedia has close to 63,000.

Waray-Waray, Cebuano, and Tagalog are three of the largest languages of the Philippines. Volapük is a 19th-century constructed language from Germany, and Lombard is a Romance language from northern Italy. Vietnamese is primarily limited to Vietnam, while Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname.

In brief

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