WMF cuts budget for 2016–17 as scope tightens
The Wikimedia Foundation has published its revised annual plan for the 2016–17 financial year (July–June), which has been finalised for board approval after a month-long community consultation on Meta. Responding to a challenging fundraising environment, the organisation is cutting its planned expenses for the first time after more than a decade of unabated growth—from US$65m in 2015–16 to $63m in 2016–17. While the organisation has a track record of underspending actual expenses, the reduction of about 3% represents a shift in its planning. The change includes a slight reduction in planned headcount and adjustments to budgets such as that for grantmaking. Among identified risks, the ongoing Executive Director transition and relatively high rates of staff departure over the past months stand out as significant challenges alongside structural issues like the decline in readership, the increasingly challenging fundraising environment, and the well-being of the volunteer communities.
The centrepiece of the annual plan is "reach"—the WMF's ability to effectively reach our readers and distribute the community's free knowledge to them. This priority emerged from the strategy draft and from related community consultation in early 2016. There are a number of highlights. Field research in Nigeria and India will help WMF Tech's Reading Department to launch a new reader interface for one of the targeted regions—readership in Mexico have been studied in 2015–16. WMF Product will continue to improve the editing interface by upgrading tools such as VisualEditor (which is expected to reach mobile), and expanding the content translation tool. Community Tech will continue to work through the top 10 of the community wishlist, which includes improving diff comparison, numerical sorting in categories, cross-wiki talkpage communication, and the plagiarism detection bot; and the pageview stats tool; the creation of a central global repository for templates, and an integrated cross-wiki watchlist.
The Foundation is rolling out a new process to work with the communities in researching and building better software products. How best to integrate community voices in product decision-making has traditionally been controversial, leading to repeated stand-offs. In cooperation with Wikimedia Germany, Wikidata—which now has the third-largest community after those of the English Wikipedia and Commons—will be more deeply integrated into key aspects of all projects, such as search and infoboxes. WMF Technology is investing in better analytics and research capabilities, APIs, Tool Labs (for community developers working on tools and bots that help users maintain and use wikis), privacy protection, and site reliability.
Following the debates on how to address harassment in 2015–16, the staff aim to build online learning modules on the subject, including one on how to improve the safety of offline community meetings. The Foundation is also restructuring its grantmaking schemes and is resuming support for GLAM volunteers with a staff facilitator. The Communications Department will be enhancing the movement's reach by researching and interacting with new audiences, especially on social media, while the Advancement department (formerly Fundraising) is expanding Wikipedia Zero and new types of partnerships to foster readership. Advancement aims to raise $5m for the Foundation's newly established endowment on top of the $63m target for funding regular operations. WMF Legal will continue its input into the NSA lawsuit.
Brief notes
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Tavix.
- Milestones: The WMF's executive director search steering group is seeking input from editors on the process. The survey is here. The first question invites respondents to select "the three top areas" that the ED should focus on. Oddly enough, providing technological leadership is not listed. When "Other" is ticked, no dialogue box appears to enable a write-in choice.
Jimmy Wales on net neutrality—"It's complicated"—and his $100m fundraising challenge
The Economic Times, part of the Indian Times Group, features an interview with Jimmy Wales (also available in video format) on the topic of net neutrality and zero-rated Internet offerings (May 30).
Net neutrality has been a highly controversial issue in India for the past two years. In 2015, a pro-net neutrality Save the Internet campaign arose that vehemently criticised Indian telecom companies along with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's Internet.org initiative.
The campaign against Free Basics was spearheaded by lawyers, IT experts, and cultural figures like the All India Bakchod comedy collective, which made three influential YouTube videos urging people to write to the Indian Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) in support of net neutrality, and to express their opposition to zero-rating schemes like Free Basics on the grounds that they mainly serve to cement existing monopolies, to the detriment of smaller and local competitors.
In February 2016, TRAI upheld the net neutrality principle and banned Free Basics and similar zero-rated services in India, a decision widely attributed to the popular campaign.
The Economic Times asked Wales for his opinion about these developments (time code 6:14 in the video), given that the Wikimedia Foundation has its own zero-rated offering, Wikipedia Zero. Wales defended Wikipedia Zero:
Our Wikipedia Zero offering follows a very strict set of principles such as no money is ever exchanged and so on. Net neutrality is such a very, very complicated topic. It's something that I am very passionate about; I think net neutrality is incredibly important. And at the same time I think that getting access to knowledge for the poorest people in the world is also very important.
Sometimes those two things can be to some degree in tension and we have to be really careful about it. I think the most fundamental thing is that it's really important that we maintain a very open and free Internet and a free flow of information. So the detailed policy options ... well, it gets very subtle ... but net neutrality is very important.
Wales has in the past commented favourably on Facebook's Internet.org project, saying in 2014 that the Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia Zero people were in contact with the Internet.org team and that "In my personal capacity, I am a big fan of what they are trying to do and support it fully".
In the Economic Times interview, however, Wales remained non-committal about the recent developments in India outlawing zero-rated services, saying he lacked the knowledge to give an opinion on whether the Indian government had done the right thing in clamping down on Free Basics:
I am not an expert on the specific legislation, the specific details of the Indian case. What I do say is I encourage people on all sides to come together and really think about all of the different competing values and how to best balance them. Was this the best balancing act? I'm not really in a position to say.
Wales also commented on a number of other issues in the video interview, such as the importance of getting enough good sleep, the spread of smartphones in India, the development of Wikipedias in India's regional languages and Wikimedia Foundation fundraising.
On the latter topic, Wales said that in order to fund the Wikimedia Foundation's recently started endowment, he would be approaching tech billionaires this year and ask them to "chip in" (time code 5:30 in the video). He affirmed this intent in an interview (May 30) with Austrian business magazine Trend as well, saying his main fundraising job this year is to "raise 100 million dollars".
In brief
- Wrong venue: The Courier Mail reports that the venues listed in Wikipedia's article for the 2017 Rugby League World Cup were wrong and "not even close" to organisers' actual plans. The article has now been protected.
- Wikipedia vs. textbooks: In The Indian Express, Nishant Shah, a professor of new media and co-founder of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, celebrates Wikipedia's successes while criticising the editing of Indian textbooks. (June 5)
- Timeline of the far future: In its "Wiki Wormhole" series focusing on Wikipedia oddities, The A.V. Club reviews the Wikipedia article Timeline of the far future. (June 5)
- Racism accusation removed: The Daily Caller reports that accusations by a black Washington Post employee that the paper's owner "is responsible for 'systemic' racism at the paper, including white managers shrieking at her and other African-American subordinates with impunity, were ... removed from his Wikipedia page by an anonymous user on Wednesday" who cited possible "vandalism". The Daily Caller opines that "the only 'vandalism' here was the removal of the information, which damages the whole purpose of Wikipedia: make crucial factual information, particularly about powerful public figures, available to the public." (June 4)
- Depp–Heard divorce sparks BLP violation on Wikipedia: The Daily Mail reports that Amber Heard's Wikipedia biography was edited on Friday to say that she was a "gold digger" who "married the super talented and respected actor Johnny Depp to take advantage of his kind nature. She feels she no longer needed him therefore began blackmailing him with abuse allegations." The edit, made by single-edit account Hillstar523, was reverted 11 minutes later and its content is no longer visible in the Wikipedia article's edit history. The Daily Mail illustrates its story with before-and-after images of Google's Knowledge Graph panel for Heard quoting the Wikipedia wording. Heard's biography has been subject to pending changes protection since January 2014 because of persistent vandalism. As noted in this Signpost issue's traffic report, both Depp's and Heard's biographies were among the ten most viewed Wikipedia articles this week. (June 4)
- Gender gap: Nicole Torres asks in the Harvard Business Review, "Why do so few women edit Wikipedia?" Her article reviews academic research on the matter that has highlighted factors such as women's inclination to avoid conflict (resulting in a greater reluctance to edit other people's work), men's tendency to be overconfident in their own abilities even in the face of negative feedback, and a tendency for women to be punished more severely for expressions of anger than men are. The article concludes with a discussion of recent initiatives by the Wikimedia Foundation to identify and curb online harassment. A brief summary of Torres' piece also appears on the website of The Economic Times. (June 2, 4)
- Improving the coverage of Jewish women on Wikipedia: The Forward reports on efforts by the Center for Jewish History to expand Wikipedia's offerings on Jewish women. (June 3)
- Year of Science: The Daily Bruin reports on programs at the UCLA and other universities that involve students in writing Wikipedia articles as part of their coursework. The article quotes the Wiki Education Foundation's Eryk Salvaggio. (June 2)
- Sebastian Bach: On Loudwire, Sebastian Bach plays "Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?", resulting in "a memorable episode filled with correcting falsehoods about his life and career." (June 1)
- Wikiversity Journal of Medicine: The Conversation reports on the Wikiversity Journal of Medicine, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. (May 24)
Overwhelmed ... by pictures
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Featured articles
One featured article was promoted this week.
- George Tucker (nominated by Hoppyh) (1775–1861) was an American attorney, politician, historian, author, and educator. His literary works include the first fiction work about colonial life in Virginia and another which is among the nation's earliest science fiction. Tucker also published the first comprehensive biography of Thomas Jefferson, as well as a history of the United States. He was elected in 1816 to the Virginia House of Delegates for one term, and served in the United States House of Representatives from 1819 to 1825. He served as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the newly-founded University of Virginia until 1845.
Featured lists
One featured list was promoted this week.
- Piku is a 2015 Indian comedy-drama film directed by Shoojit Sircar and produced by N.P. Singh, Ronnie Lahiri and Sneha Rajani. It tells the story of a headstrong Bengali architect, who along with her hypochondriac father and a helpful businessman embark on a road trip from New Delhi to Kolkata. Made on an estimated budget of ₹420 million (US$5.0 million), Piku grossed approximately ₹1.41 billion (US$17 million) worldwide. The film garnered awards and nominations (nominated by Ssven2 and Krimuk90) in several categories, with particular praise for its writing, music, and the performances of Deepika Padukone and Amitabh Bachchan. As of May 2016, the film has won at least 32 awards.
Featured pictures
Seven featured pictures were promoted this week.
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Space Shuttle Endeavour docked to the International Space Station
(created by NASA/Paolo Nespoli; edited and nominated by Mikael Häggström) -
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Frontispiece of Rootabaga Stories
(created by Maud and Miska Petersham; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) -
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Pop goes the culture, again.
Pop culture rules the top 10 this week; the list is bookended by the week's top film at the US box office X-Men: Apocalypse, while Captain America: Civil War remained in the top 10 for the fifth consecutive week. Game of Thrones gained a burst of popularity thanks to a deeply affecting final few minutes of last week's episode, "The Door", while another eternally popular manufactured conflict, professional wrestling, reappeared on the list thanks to Extreme Rules. The failing marriage of Hollywood stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has drawn some undeserved ogling, showing that pop culture need not confine itself to screens and stages.
For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of May 22 to 28, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WMF TopViews, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 X-Men: Apocalypse 
1,385,606 
Hopes were high for this after the rapturous critical and commercial reception given to Bryan Singer's previous X-Men film, Days of Future Past; unfortunately the reviews for the followup have been largely negative, with the film struggling to reach a 60% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The $250 million it has so far earned so far worldwide is in line with Fox's expectations, but in a world where Batman v Superman can be considered a failure for not making $1 billion, this film is looking a bit pallid. 2 Game of Thrones (season 6) 
964,616 
The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. And after this week's shock revelation, people doubtless turned to Wikipedia to check out future titles and see if they could guess where the story was going. 3 Captain America: Civil War 
796,085 
Off the top for the first time this week, though it can rest easy now that it has joined the increasingly not exclusive $1 billion club. 4 Frankie Manning
730,246 
The pioneering dancer and co-creator of the Lindy hop got a Google Doodle on his 102nd birthday on May 26. 5 Game of Thrones
693,475 See #2. 6 Amber Heard
679,903 
Oh boy, here we go again. It was bad enough readers revelled in the public humiliation meted on her and Johnny Depp (see #7) by the people of Australia, now there is more attention directed at what appears to be a very rapid and messy marital dissolution. I could go into specifics, but I won't, because I neither know these people, nor care about their private lives. 7 Johnny Depp
658,094 
After a string of tabloid-fuelling relationships in the 1990s, the cult star appeared to settle down for good with French actress Vanessa Paradis, only to separate from her in 2012 after 14 years. His subsequent much shorter relationship with actress Amber Heard (see #6) has not proven as successful. 8 Deaths in 2016 
641,993 
The annual list of deaths, always a fairly consistent visitor to this list, saw its average views jump after the death of David Bowie. 9 Extreme Rules (2016)
561,021 
WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime took place on May 22, 2016, at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The designated winner was Roman Reigns (pictured). 10 X-Men (film series) 
561,021 The ever-more convoluted film series looks safe for now, and, thanks to the rather boring but still perplexing post-credits tease, people want to know what happens next.
ArbCom case Gamaliel and others concludes
For this week in the arbitration report: the Gamaliel and others case concludes. We will be covering the findings of fact and remedies.
- Findings of fact
On 4 June, the case involving Gamaliel and others (DHeyward, JzG, Arkon) concluded. In the findings of fact, seven addressed Gamaliel. These included that Gamaliel "worked on the GamerGate topic area to such an extent that he has painted many opponents with the same brush, leading to an erosion of confidence in his objectivity", his withdrawal from enforcement of the topic area, the creation of and subsequent edit-warring over a satirical Signpost news report related to Donald Trump, the creation of a userbox continuing the dispute, casting aspersions, his resignation from the arbitration committee and his edit-warring in an ANI discussion about him.
Other findings of fact included that JzG's "close of the ANI discussion indicates a standard of conduct below that expected of an administrator", that Arkon reverted Gamaliel's and JzG's attempts to close the ANI discussion he himself had started, and that DHeyward had acted in an incivil manner towards Gamaliel and made personal attacks.
- Remedies
The following remedies were enacted:
- Gamaliel is admonished for multiple breaches of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, including disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, removing a speedy deletion notice from a page he created, casting aspersions, and perpetuating what other editors believed to be a BLP violation.
- DHeyward and Gamaliel are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing each other anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
- DHeyward is admonished for engaging in incivility and personal attacks on other editors. He is reminded that all editors are expected to engage respectfully and civilly with each other and to avoid making personal attacks.
- For conduct which was below the standard expected of an administrator — namely making an incivil and inflammatory close summary on ANI, in which he perpetuated the perceived BLP violation and failed to adequately summarise the discussion — JzG is admonished.
- Arkon is reminded that edit warring, even if exempt, is rarely an alternative to discussing the dispute with involved editors, as suggested at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.
- The community is encouraged to hold an RfC to supplement the existing WP:BLPTALK policy by developing further guidance on managing disputes about material involving living persons when that material appears outside of article space and is not directly related to article-content decisions.
- The community is encouraged to hold an RfC regarding whether the leniency for April Fools' Day jokes should be continued and if so, what should be allowed.
Along with his resignation from the arbitration committee, Gamaliel has also stepped down as editor-in-chief of the Signpost and has retired from Wikipedia.
WikiProject Video Games
Hello! This week I interviewed Czar, Masem, Jaguar and Salvidrim of WikiProject Video Games (WPVG). The members of WikiProject Video Games revealed to the Signpost some interesting facts and information about the members of WPVG and the project itself.
Many of the members are passionate about gaming. For example, Salvidrim has been gaming for 22 years. He sought out a project that fits his interests: “Joining WPVG is practically the first thing I did when I started editing Wikipedia!” Jaguar began by writing articles on upcoming video games and learned from his mistakes, “by creating a dozen articles on upcoming video games.” Masem was drawn to Wikipedia’s “academic treatment of video games”. Czar became involved by watching the talk page of WPVG. Czar received feedback from members of the project for their video game-related articles and continued working on WPVG.
I asked if these editors preferred working on articles about the video games they liked playing themselves. Czar works on anything that needs help, and has even written several "good articles" on games they haven’t played, or articles about people they don’t know. Jaguar and Masem, however, enjoy writing about video games from the video game golden era of the 1990s. Masem prefers indie games over commercial titles, and Salvidrim enjoys writing about “obscure video games”.
Curious about their contributions to other WMF sites, I asked these members about whether they were able to add content to Wikimedia Commons. Salvidrim has been able to “negotiate the free-licensing for a game ... on the official subreddit for the game with the dev himself.” Jaguar has also sought permission from developers, but has often found free licensing difficult to obtain, aside from screenshots. Masem adds that indie developers are more likely to contribute media to Wikimedia than other video game creators. Czar has managed to upload hundreds of free-use files to Wikimedia, especially from smaller developers. Czar adds that becoming an admin on Commons has been useful to WPVG.
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Like all projects, WPVG has significant gaps in certain areas, especially games that are not published in English. Czar points out that many of the older Japanese games have not been covered properly based on paper sources, which still haven’t been digitized. However, it is even more difficult to find reliable sources on games from the early 2000s – both web and print coverage is missing, according to Czar. Masem echoes some of these concerns: stating that “we sometimes miss out on other areas of the world that produce non-English titles.” Salvidrim adds: “some German MMO might be hugely notable, but because of systemic bias, we are a lot more likely to have articles about less notable English-language games.” Jaguar points out an impressive fact: more than 13,000 articles under the WPVG umbrella are stub class.
Overall, WPVG is seen as a place with a good sense of community support and the ability to discuss differences in a constructive way. Salvidrim says that “while sometimes more disruptive editors do crop up, they’re often discouraged quickly.” Nevertheless, many of the articles are created by single editors with far less collaboration than projects like MILHIST, according to Salvidrim. Jaguar enjoys the sense of “common interest” that the project fosters, though they also tend to work alone. Masem says “We fall somewhere between collaborative and individual workers. We’ll help each other out and there are several articles that once a GA or FA nomination starts, many editors will come to help.” Czar points out that WPVG is a good place for editors to ask for help “without dismissing their concerns”. Czar is critical of how the AfD process for video games can become “inaccessible” through the use of excessive jargon or by focusing on niche topics. Discussing rules and best practices for the project is another area of collaboration for WPVG, according to Salvidrim.
The most important question concerns the most urgent needs facing WPVG. Czar points out that many wikignoming activities are needed, whether it be speaking up at AfD or reviewing articles. For Masem, it's that many articles, even those at the “top" level, still need improvement. Jaguar’s advice is to “do whatever [a new editor feels] like they would enjoy doing: writing quality content.” Salvidrim pointed us to the very long page of requested articles. It’s not important that an article is long, he said, just as long as it gets started at all.
The English Wikipedia's articles on video games are huge in number and cumulatively receive extraordinary numbers of visits by readers. This wikiproject has a lot on its hands!