The Signpost
Single-page Edition
WP:POST/1
4 November 2016

News and notes
Finally, a new CTO; trustee joins Quora; copyright upgrade impending
In the media
Washington Post continues in-depth Wikipedia coverage
Wikicup
WikiCup winners
Discussion report
What's on your tech wishlist for the coming year?
Technology report
New guideline for technical collaboration; citation templates now flag open access content
Featured content
Cream of the crop
Traffic report
Un-presidential politics
Arbitration report
Recapping October's activities
Recent research
Why women edit less, and where they are overrepresented; article importance and quality; predicting elections from Wikipedia
 

2016-11-04

Finally, a new CTO; trustee joins Quora; copyright upgrade impending

Victoria Coleman, the new chief technology officer, will be vital to the Foundation's performance

The Wikimedia Foundation has hired Victoria Coleman to serve as its chief technology officer (CTO). (blog post; press release; email list announcement). The CTO role, widely seen as vital to an organization for which technology has always been the central focus, has been vacant since Danese Cooper left the organization in July 2011. Several former and current WMF staff, however, noted that various others have played the role of CTO in the interim, to some degree, without adopting the formal title. According to the announcement, Coleman "will be responsible for setting the vision and strategy for technology and operations behind the Wikimedia projects, in cooperation with the global communities of volunteer contributors, users, and researchers."

Coleman’s resume includes roles with Technicolor, Harman, Yahoo, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Intel, and SRI International. She also worked on security-related projects, including authoring a report on creation of a legal framework for the safety of programmable electronic systems procurement in the UK, and the establishment of a cybersecurity research center in the US.

Executive director Katherine Maher said in the announcement: "Victoria brings the right combination of deep technical knowledge, operational expertise, and the steady hand that is needed in this unique role."

One message from an email list participant, inquiring into Coleman’s perspective on a user privacy issue that may intersect with her past work, prompted an extended response from Maher. Maher emphasized the importance of having a diversity of backgrounds represented among staff, and the value of Coleman’s security experience in the government IT sector.

Coleman will take up the role on November 7. PF

Foundation trustee to join Quora as finance officer

WMF trustee Kelly Battles

Foundation trustee Kelly Battles announced that she has taken a position as chief financial officer (CFO) for Quora. The announcement, which addresses the possibility of a legal conflict of interest arising from the new position, appears to be Battles' first public communication since her brief introductory statement on joining the Board of Trustees in January 2016. Battles was Bracket Computing’s CFO when she assumed the unpaid WMF Board position.

Quora, a for-profit company, runs a question-and-answer website that has drawn frequent comparisons to Wikipedia since its launch in 2010 (past Signpost coverage). Quora co-founder Adam D'Angelo noted the influence of Wikipedia on the site's design in a TechCrunch article, and computer scientist Seb Paquet addressed the connection in the popular article "Why Quora is not Wikipedia" for Quora Review, both in 2011. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales describes himself as “an advisor to and (very small) investor in Quora,” and has answered some 864 questions on the site. Quora itself features many questions and answers related to the connections between the two sites.

Some discussion about the potential for COI in Battles’ new role ensued on the email list.PF

Editorial note: Wiki Strategies, the company owned by editor Pete Forsyth, advised the Quora team prior to the site’s 2010 launch.

The WMF seeks input on whether to update the Wikimedia Terms of Use to specify version 4.0 of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (CC BY-SA) (an upgrade from version 3.0 of the same license); the consultation runs to November 8. The change would be the first since the WMF's move in 2009 from the old GNU FDL that had been in use since Wikipedia launched. The 2009 change was spearheaded by deputy director Erik Möller and trustee Kat Walsh. At the time, some European Wikimedians objected to the legal interaction with their own copyright codes; this may be prompting some expressions of caution about the current proposal.

For the 4.0 version, released in 2013, Creative Commons prioritized creating a “more global license,” consulting with hundreds of volunteers around the world to improve the fit with various legal jurisdictions, and to simplify and translate the legal code and the simpler “deeds,” or summaries for non-lawyers, into many languages. In addition, the 4.0 version for the first time presents a unified CC BY-SA license for various legal jurisdictions, rather than separate “ported” versions designed specifically for each country’s laws.

Two changes noted in the discussions to date are database rights and the process whereby reusers who violate the license can correct their actions within a 30-day window. Database rights have been assuming ever-greater online importance, with significant implications for the way societies deal with the ongoing explosion in structured information. While most jurisdictions still lack database copyright law—in which compiling a database apparently confers copyright, whether online or in hard copy—uploaders in jurisdictions that do have database copyright law must satisfy both the local law and the provisions of the Creative Commons license. For this reason, the WMF's adoption of the new version is planned to present a waiver of potential database rights, which, according to that link target on Meta Wiki, gives permission to use material that is ineligible for copyright protection, but is eligible for protection as part of a database. The proposal intends "that the rights in Wikimedia content are internationally consistent and consistent with Wikipedia's past rights in contributions under version 3.0 of the license." Wikidata, however, will not be transitioning to a new license under the proposal; it has used, and will continue to use, the CC0 public domain dedication rather than CC BY-SA. T




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2016-11-04

Washington Post leads the pack in this edition's roundup of media stories

The Washington Post, the most widely circulated newspaper in the U.S. capital, published several insightful pieces about Wikipedia in the space of a few days.

Robert Gebelhoff's "Science shows Wikipedia is the best part of the Internet" glows about a "first-of-its-kind" study from Harvard Business School, which found that Wikipedia "reduces ideological segregation and is remarkably good at finding neutrality, even on the most contentious topics".

Gebelhoff acknowledged that Wikipedia does suffer at times from the "mean-spiritedness seen in the darker corners of the Internet" (like Facebook and Twitter), but focused on the benefits that can accrue when ideologically opposed Wikipedia editors talk through their differences as they construct articles. He observed that while Wikipedia does not strive to be an "experiment in democracy", it has an "essentially democratic" characteristic. (Oct. 19)

Chris Alcantara of the Washington Post described Wikipedia editors' efforts to select the best images to depict U.S. presidential nominees.

Jeff Guo covered the same study for the Post's Wonkblog: "Wikipedia is fixing one of the Internet’s biggest flaws" (Oct. 25)

Chris Alcantara dove into the particulars in yet another piece, "The most challenging job of the 2016 race: Editing the candidates’ Wikipedia pages." Describing Wikipedia as producing what amounts to an "election guide", Alcantara summarized Wikipedia editors' efforts to choose the most appropriate photos to illustrate articles on U.S. presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and presented graphics summarizing the frequency of edits to a number of presidential candidates' Wikipedia biographies, in several election cycles. The article featured interviews with several Wikipedia editors.

These stories from the Post add to the paper's wide variety of Wikipedia-related coverage in the last year. In December 2015, reporter Caitlin Dewey published "Wikipedia has a ton of money. So why is it begging you to donate yours?", which was followed up by stories in Germany, England, Italy, and elsewhere. The next month, it ran Wikipedia historian Andrew Lih's op-ed for Wikipedia's 15th birthday, "Wikipedia just turned 15 years old. Will it survive 15 more?" And, as we reported in last week's In the media, columnist Gene Weingarten recently wrote about his frustrations in trying to update the photo on his own Wikipedia biography. (Oct. 27) PF

In brief

This is not Wikipedia.
  • Not so neutral!: The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, posted an article on the same day as the first Washington Post piece above calling Wikipedia "broken, biased, and corrupt". Their primary concern appears to be editing disputes over the Institute's own article, which is part of a long-running debate. (Oct 19)
  • Are you ready for some football?: English football magazine FourFourTwo highlighted four Wikipedia editors who keep football (soccer to Americans) pages up to date. (Oct 19)
  • LGBTQ edit-a-thon: Bucknell University hosted a Wiki Loves Pride edit-a-thon on October 14. (Oct 20).
  • Wikipedia is not Wikileaks: Democratic member of Congress Sheila Jackson Lee mistakenly blamed Wikipedia instead of WikiLeaks for the recent release of emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign. The two organizations are completely unrelated, as one can see from reading the WikiLeaks article. Just a regular slip of the tongue, it appears. (Oct. 22)
  • Area politician article vandalized: Unlike the Hillary Clinton article, where vandalism was quickly reverted, a New York state legislator's article was vandalized to say he "has been on the public dole for more than three decades", and this edit was not caught for almost three days, as reported by local media. (See diff.) The article appears to average only 50 views per day, so the delay in being caught, though regrettable, does not seem surprising. (Oct 22).
  • Paid editing to go: The Register spotted a car in London with full-coverage advertising for paid BLP reputation services. (Oct 24)
  • Anonymous edits from political staffers: In Australia, "The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has ordered the heads of the Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Health, Agriculture and Parliamentary Services departments to urgently investigate possible breaches of government IT policy and report back in a week." An investigation was launched after discovery that public servants and staffers had made "tens of thousands" of Wikipedia edits. Some were mildly amusing or otherwise innocuous, but others were offensive and potentially embarrassing to public officials. (Oct. 26)



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.



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2016-11-04

WikiCup report

2016 WikiCup

The ten-month-long run of the tenth WikiCup competition is finally over, and the winners have been announced. Having taken place annually since 2007, the WikiCup encourages editors to improve Wikipedia and engage in the various featured content processes (and the lesser ones such as good articles and In the News) through friendly competition and encouragement.

The top three finalists were:

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top contestants and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to acknowledge participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:

  • Featured articles – Cas Liber (actually a three-way tie with themselves for two FAs in each of R2, R3, and R5).
  • Good articles – MPJ-DK had 14 GAs promoted in R3.
  • Featured lists – England Calvin999 (submissions) produced 2 FLs in R2
  • Featured pictures – Adam Cuerden restored 18 images to FP status in R4.
  • Featured portals – Yakutsk SSTflyer (submissions) produced the only FPO of the Cup in R2.
  • Featured topics – Connecticut Cyclonebiskit (submissions) and Calvin were each responsible for one FT in R3 and R2, respectively.
  • Good topics – MPJ-DK created a GT with 9 GAs in R5.
  • Did you know – MPJ-DK put 53 DYKs on the main page in R4.
  • In the news – India Dharmadhyaksha (submissions) and New York City Muboshgu (submissions), each with 5 ITN, both in R4.
  • Good article reviews – MPJ-DK completed 61 GARs in R2.

Over the course of the 2016 WikiCup the following content was added to Wikipedia (only reporting on fixed value categories): 17 featured articles, 183 good articles, 8 featured lists, 87 featured pictures, 40 in the news items, and 321 good article reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.

Each finalist produced some excellent work. We've included a representative sample.




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2016-11-04

What's on your tech wishlist for the coming year?

The new pageviews analysis tool.
Danny Horn is the Senior Product Manager, Wikimedia Foundation.

The Wikimedia Foundation established the Community Tech team in 2015 as a product team devoted to building features and making changes that active Wikimedia contributors need the most. Rather than those of us on the team coming up with our own ideas and proposing them to the community, the team decided to let the community tell us what to work on. To do this, we invited the community to participate in a cross-project survey to set our agenda for the year. This consisted of two weeks for contributors to propose ideas, followed by two weeks of support voting. On November 7, we’ll be starting the process all over again, and we want you to participate in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey.

The 2015 Wishlist Survey engaged more than 600 Wikimedians, and produced a ranked list of 107 ideas. Community Tech committed to investigating and addressing the top 10 wishes—designing and building new tools ourselves, or collaborating with other teams and volunteers who were working in those areas. For the two wishes where we could not offer help, we investigated the issues and explained why those wishes weren’t feasible for us to tackle.

Progress on the 2015 wishlist

The new CopyPatrol plagiarism patrolling tool.
Comparisons of the new Numerical sorting collation.

Our first year is coming to a close, and here’s what happened with 2015's top 10:

We've completed our work on five wishes:

  • Wish #1: Migrate dead external links to archives. Volunteer Cyberpower678 created a bot that replaces dead external links on English Wikipedia articles with links to the relevant pages at the Internet Archive. At the beginning of the year, Cyberpower’s bot only fixed links that were marked with a deadlink template. Community Tech contributed code that can examine all the external links on a page, and detect dead links that haven’t been caught by contributors. The new version is currently running on English Wikipedia, and Cyberpower is working on bringing the service to Wikipedias in other languages.
  • Wish #2: Improved diff comparisons. When the length of a paragraph exceeds 10,000 bytes, the diff page wouldn’t show any changes made in that paragraph. WMF developer Max Semenik worked on raising the byte limit significantly, and deployed a fix in July that’s live on all wikis.
  • Wish #5: Numerical sorting in categories. This project fixes a longstanding problem on category listings – that pages which begin with numbers were sorted by initial digit. A list should be ordered like this – 7 Dwarfs, 12 Monkeys, 101 Dalmatians – but the old category collation had it the other way around. In September, Community Tech deployed a new collation system, which lists the numbers in the correct order. This fix is live on 18 Wikipedia languages now. If your home wiki doesn’t have numerical sorting yet, you can request it, after an RFC discussion on your wiki.
  • Wish #7: Pageview stats tool. The new Pageviews Analysis tool is live for all wikis now; we developed the tool with volunteer MusikAnimal, who later joined the Community Tech team.
  • Wish #9: Improve the plagiarism detection bot. Volunteer Eran created a bot that compared new text added to English Wikipedia with a search database, to identify potential plagiarism cases. The reporting interface that he created was difficult to use, and there was a mounting backlog of unchecked cases. Community Tech built CopyPatrol, a new tool that makes it easier for patrollers to find and fix the problems flagged by Eranbot. There’s currently a group of around six patrollers using CopyPatrol, and they’ve eliminated the backlog; suspected plagiarism cases are now being handled within a day. Community Tech is currently working on expanding the tool to work on other Wikipedia languages.

We're currently working on one wish:

Wireframe for the in-progress Cross-wiki watchlist.
  • Wish #4: Cross-wiki watchlist. Community Tech has created a technical plan for a global watchlist, and we’re currently making some necessary database changes. We’ll build a proof-of-concept prototype over the next few months, and our work on the new feature will continue into 2017.

Other WMF teams are currently working on two wishes:

We declined two wishes:

  • Wish #8: Global cross-wiki talk page. In order to work effectively, this would require a structured discussion system, which would probably be built on top of the existing Flow feature. However, since the Wishlist Survey, the Collaboration team has released cross-wiki notifications, and Community Tech is currently working on a cross-wiki watchlist, so the need for a single cross-wiki talk page is not as urgent as it was at the time of the survey. See the project page for a more in-depth discussion.
  • Wish #10: Add a user watchlist. This request for a watchlist based on other users’ edits was flagged by WMF’s Support and Safety team as a tool that could be used to facilitate hounding and harassment. People have offered several suggestions to reduce the likelihood that the user watchlist would be used in bad faith; those are discussed in detail on the project page.

There's more information about each of these, and the full list of 107 wishes, in our latest status report.

Call for participation: Building the 2016 wishlist

2016 Community Wishlist Survey, starting November 7!

The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey will start November 7, and we’re changing parts of the process to reflect what we learned in the first one. This year, the focus of the initial two-week proposal period is for the community to collaboratively craft each proposal, to present the idea in a way that's most likely to succeed in the voting phase. When a proposal is submitted, everyone is invited to comment on that proposal, and help to make it better—asking questions, and suggesting changes. Duplicate proposals can be combined; very broad proposals should be split up into more specific ideas. The goal is to create the best possible proposal for the voting phase.

In the two-week voting phase that follows, contributors vote to support the proposals that they think are worthwhile, and the ideas are ranked by the number of support votes. This process gives us a way to measure the community’s enthusiasm for each idea.

The Community Tech team will work on the top ten wishes in 2017, as we did with last year’s survey, but we also want to make sure that we can help affiliates, admins, campaign leaders, and people who work on smaller projects. To accomplish this, we’ll also pick a number of proposals to work on that didn’t make it into the top 10, but are potentially of significant impact for smaller projects or user groups.

So we’re inviting all of you smart, passionate, and opinionated Wikimedians to come and help us figure out which problems need our attention the most. Join us to submit and discuss proposals (November 7–20), and then for the voting phase (November 28–December 12). We’ll see you there!


Other discussions

Pending changes to pending changes

The English Wikipedia has used pending changes protection since 2010, deferring non-autoconfirmed users' edits to administrators and those granted the pending changes reviewers right. One feature of the pending changes extension remains unused: the feature, referred to as PC2 (pending changes level 2), defers all edits by all editors except those able to review pending changes. In 2014, consensus was formally established for the use of pending changes. The community has left the criteria for the feature's use unaddressed, until the introduction of extended confirmed protection galvanized discussion on protection levels.

A new RfC proposes the use of PC2 as an alternative to extended confirmed protection, which bars editing from users with less than 500 edits and 30 days of editing history. The RfC seems to be gaining traction, potentially putting an end to the years of discussion on PC2.

Number swap

A long discussion has recently been closed on whether the articles from "1" to "100" (specifically the natural numbers from 1 to 100, or for math geeks) should be used for the numbers themselves rather than the year in the Gregorian calendar.

Consensus has emerged that the years should find new homes as the numbers themselves move in to take the place as the primary topic (for example, the natural number 1 will be covered in 1 instead of the year 1). The debate now lies on whether to use CE or AD to describe the calendar era with increasing years, and whether to place the qualifier before or after the year.



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2016-11-04

New guideline for technical collaboration

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More articles

Over the past few months, Trappist the monk, Pintoch, Headbomb, and many commenters have toiled on citation templates to facilitate the flagging of freely accessible content, in line with Wikipedia's commitment to promoting free culture and open access where possible. As part of the overhaul, access icons have been designed to be displayed for various levels of access:

– for a full version of a source that is freely accessible, with no conditions
– for a full version of a source that is freely accessible, with some conditions (e.g. free registration is required, only the first 5 reads are free, etc.)
– for a full version of a source that is not freely accessible (e.g. paid subscription is required).

The appearance of these icons is currently under debate, and should not yet be considered final or set in stone. The access icons are supported by both Citation Style 1 (like {{cite book}} and {{cite journal}}) and Citation Style 2 ({{citation}}) templates. Identifier templates like {{arxiv}}, {{bibcode}}, and {{doi}} will be updated to match the behaviour of the citation templates so that manually formatted references can benefit from the new locks. The exact behaviour of the citation templates as to when those locks should be displayed is also currently under debate. What is presented below is the as-of-writing behaviour of the template, after the first round of updates, and should not yet be considered final.

URL

Because links from |url= are normally freely available, non-free links (given in |url=) can now be flagged as restricted/non-free via |url-access=

  • |url-access=free – unsupported, per the convention that unflagged URLs should be free. If it does become supported, it will display a green open lock, for when full versions are freely accessible to everyone
  • |url-access=registration – will display a yellow dashed lock, for when a free registration is required to access the full version of an article
  • |url-access=limited – will display a yellow dashed lock, for when free access is provided on a limited basis, for example if only the first few views of an article are free
  • |url-access=subscription – will display a red closed lock, for when payment is required to access the source.

The |registration=yes and |subscription=yes options are now discouraged, and should be replaced with |url-access=registration and |url-access=subscription, respectively. This will resolve the ambiguity of the message in a case like:

where it is unclear which link requires registration; whereas the new style will make it clear:

  • (new) Smith, J. (2016). "Fictitious title". Fictitious Journal. 1 (2): 3. arXiv:1001.1234. doi:10.1234/123456.

Whether the templates should support |url-access=free to display green locks after the primary link is currently under debate. The full deprecation of |registration=yes and |subscription=yes will depend on the outcome of the RFC.

Always-free identifiers

Several identifiers, namely:

will always link to freely available sources, and will automatically display the green open lock.

Sometimes-free identifiers

Identifiers that link to sometimes freely available full versions can now be flagged with |<id>-access=free, where <id> stands for the associated identifier parameter. That is:

Whether the templates should support |<id>-access=limited/registration/subscription to display yellow and red locks after these identifiers is currently under debate.

Always non-free identifiers

Non-free identifier, or identifiers that never link to full versions of the reference, remain plain. These include:

Whether the templates should support |<id>-access=limited/registration/subscription to display yellow and red locks after these identifiers is currently under debate.

But what does this mean for me?

Flagging free-to-read identifiers (or articles that are not free-to-read) is optional: no one is required to make use of the new features of the citation templates. However, those who like to go the extra mile should easily be able to adapt to the new system.

If you cite freely accessible sources with a template like {{cite web|url=http://www.example.com|title=...}}, or offline sources through templates like {{cite book}}, there is (as of now) no need to change how you do things. However, if you cite registration- or subscription-based online mainstream publications, it is best to add |url-access=registration or |url-access=subscription. These replace the current |registration=yes and |subscription=yes (which are now discouraged and will likely be phased out over the next few months), or alternatively, the need to append {{registration required}} and {{subscription required}} templates after citations.

If you cite scientific journals with a template like {{cite journal|doi=10.1234/123456|title=...}}, it can be tricky to determine whether the source is freely accessible, especially if you work in academia or are a college/university student. Academic institutions will often have subscriptions, and all internet traffic going through the institution's servers will be granted access. For those reasons, it is best if you verify whether a source is free to read when you are at home before adding |doi-access=free, unless you know the journal has an open-access policy. (The same applies for the other identifiers, like |jstor= and |jstor-access=free.)

New bots like User:OAbot will be developed to make use of the new parameters (subject to trial and community consensus), while existing bots like User:Citation bot and User:Bibcode Bot can be updated to make use of them.

I don't use citation templates. Does this affect me?

If you don't use citation templates, then this shouldn't affect you. However, if you do make use of identifier templates like {{arxiv}}, {{bibcode}}, and {{doi}}, those will be updated to match the behaviour of the citation templates. If they end up supporting only |doi-access=free, so will {{doi}}. But if they end up supporting |doi-access=free/limited/registration/subscription, then so too will {{doi}}.

Community resources and coordinated efforts

Readers interested in improving the flagging of free-to-read sources can coordinate efforts at WP:SIGNAL, a subsection of WikiProject Open Access. If you have an idea for a new bot but lack the technical skill or time to make one, you can make request for one at WP:BOTREQ. If you know of additional identifiers (especially free ones) that should be supported by citation templates, make a request at Help:CS1. H



Reader comments

2016-11-04

Cream of the crop

The Cleveland Centennial half dollar was designed by Brenda Putnam, which was approved by the Commission of Fine Arts after suggestions by sculptor Lee Lawrie.

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 9 to 29 October.
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

SMS Kaiser Karl der Grosse in 1902
Cover of the May 1952 issue of Weird Tales, art by Virgil Finlay
Crystals of osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead.
Sudeep, Nani and S. S. Rajamouli during the filming of Eega
Alyssa Milano recorded her last song in 1995.
Clacton Cliffs and Foreshore is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Essex.

Fourteen featured articles were promoted.

  • The Divisional Cavalry Regiment (nominated by Kges1901) was an armoured cavalry regiment of the 2nd New Zealand Division during the Second World War and was New Zealand's first armoured unit. It served as a reconnaissance force for the 2nd New Zealand Division. Formed in 1939, the regiment embarked for Egypt in 1940. It fought with the division, as part of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, in Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy. The regiment formed part of J Force, New Zealand's contribution to the occupation of Japan at the end of the war. Stationed in southern Kyushu, it was disbanded in 1947.
  • SMS Kaiser Karl der Grosse (nominated by Parsecboy) was a German pre-dreadnought battleship of the Kaiser Friedrich III class, built around the turn of the 20th century for the Kaiserliche Marine. It was built in Hamburg, at the Blohm and Voss shipyard. Completed in 1902, it served with the active fleet until 1908, when it was withdrawn from active service and placed in the Reserve Division. At the outbreak of World War I, the ship was placed back in active duty as a coastal defense ship, though in 1915 she was again placed in reserve. Kaiser Karl der Grosse was briefly used as a training ship and ended her career as a prison ship. Following the German defeat in 1918, she was sold to ship-breakers and scrapped in 1920. The ship was armed with four 24 cm (9.4 in) guns in two twin gun turrets and had a top speed of 17.5 knots (32.4 km/h; 20.1 mph).
  • Weird Tales (nominated by Mike Christie) is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in 1923. The first editor, Edwin Baird, printed early work by H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Clark Ashton Smith, but within a year the magazine was in financial trouble. Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher to Lansinger and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks it prospered over the next fifteen years. In 1938 the magazine was sold to William Delaney, and within two years Wright was replaced by Dorothy McIlwraith as editor. The magazine is considered by critics to have declined under McIlwraith from its heyday in the 1930s. Weird Tales ceased publication in 1954, but since then numerous attempts have been made to relaunch it, starting in 1973. The longest-lasting version began in 1988 and ran for over 20 years under an assortment of publishers. As of 2016, the most recent published issue was dated Spring 2014.
  • Neal Dow (nominated by Coemgenus) (1804–1897) was an American prohibition advocate and politician. In 1850, Dow was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union, and the next year was elected mayor of Portland. As mayor of Portland, Dow enforced the Maine Law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators. In 1855, his opponents rioted and he ordered the state militia to fire on the crowd. One man was killed and several wounded, and when public reaction to the violence turned against Dow, he chose not to face the voters for reelection. Dow was later elected to two terms in the state legislature, but retired after a financial scandal. He joined the Union Army shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general. In 1880, Dow headed the Prohibition Party ticket for President of the United States. He gained very few votes, but continued to write and speak on behalf of the prohibition movement for the rest of his life.
  • Secretariat (nominated by Montanabw and Jlvsclrk) (1970–1989) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse who, in 1973, became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years. During his racing career, he won five Eclipse Awards, and was elected to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1974. His record-breaking win in the Belmont Stakes, where he left the field 31 lengths behind him, is widely regarded as one of the greatest races of all time.
  • Hope (nominated by Iridescent) is a Symbolist oil painting by the English painter George Frederic Watts, the first two versions of which were completed in 1886. Radically different from previous treatments of the subject, it shows a lone blindfolded female figure sitting on a globe, playing a lyre which has only a single string remaining. The background is almost blank, its only visible feature a single star. Watts intentionally used symbolism not traditionally associated with hope to make the painting's meaning ambiguous. While his use of colour in Hope was greatly admired, at the time of its exhibition many critics disliked the painting. Hope proved popular with the Aesthetic Movement, who considered beauty the primary purpose of art and were unconcerned by the ambiguity of its message. In the 20th century Martin Luther King Jr. and Jeremiah Wright both based influential sermons on the painting. Obama took "The Audacity of Hope" as the theme of his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address, and as the title of his 2006 book; he based his successful 2008 presidential campaign around the theme of "Hope".
  • Heavy metals (nominated by Sandbh) are generally defined as metals with relatively high densities, atomic weights, or atomic numbers. The criteria used, and whether metalloids are included, vary depending on the author and context. More specific definitions have been published but none of these have been widely accepted. The definitions surveyed in this article encompass up to 96 out of the 118 chemical elements; only mercury, lead and bismuth meet all of them. Despite this lack of agreement the term is widely used in science.
  • Eega (nominated by Pavanjandhyala) is a 2012 Indian bilingual fantasy film written by K. V. Vijayendra Prasad and directed by his son, S. S. Rajamouli. It was produced by Varahi Chalana Chitram with an estimated budget of 260 to 400 million, and was made simultaneously in Telugu and Tamil. The narrative of Eega is in the form of a bedtime story told by a father to his daughter. Its protagonist is Nani, who is in love with his neighbour Bindu. Nani is murdered by a wealthy businessman named Sudeep, who is attracted to Bindu and considers Nani a rival. Nani reincarnates as a housefly and tries to protect Bindu while avenging his death. The performances of the principal cast, Rajamouli's direction, and visual effects received critical acclaim upon release.
  • Chad Harris-Crane (nominated by Aoba47) is a fictional character on the American soap opera Passions, which aired on NBC from 1999 to 2007 and on DirecTV in 2007–08. Developed by the soap's creator and head writer James E. Reilly, Chad was portrayed by two actors over the course of the show: Donn Swaby and Charles Divins. Critical response to Chad was mixed; some reviewers praised the sensationalism of the incest storyline with Whitney Russell, while others criticized his relationship with Vincent Clarkson as an irresponsible and problematic representation of racial and sexual identity. The character marks a notable step in daytime television and soap opera history; as it was the first depiction in a soap opera of two men having sex. Chad has also been cited as expanding the representation of LGBT characters of color on daytime television.
  • Ontario Highway 420 (nominated by Floydian) is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario that connects the Queen Elizabeth Way with downtown Niagara Falls. It continues east as a limited-access expressway to connect with the Rainbow Bridge international crossing between Canada and the United States over the Niagara River. West of the Queen Elizabeth Way, the freeway ends at an at-grade intersection with Montrose Road.
  • The Cleveland Centennial half dollar (nominated by Wehwalt) is a commemorative United States half dollar struck at the Philadelphia Mint in 1936 and 1937, though all bear the earlier date. It was issued to mark the 100th anniversary of Cleveland, Ohio as an incorporated city, and in commemoration of the Great Lakes Exposition, held in Cleveland in 1936.
  • HMS Alceste (nominated by Ykraps) was built at Rochefort in 1804 for the French Navy as Minerve, an Armide-class frigate. The British seized her in an action in 1806, and the Royal Navy took the ship into service as Alceste in 1807; Alceste then continued to serve throughout the Napoleonic Wars. In 1814, Alceste was converted to a troopship and used to transport British soldiers to North America during the War of 1812. Following the Treaty of Paris in 1815, Alceste carried Lord Amherst on his 1816 diplomatic mission to China. On the return journey, she struck a reef in the Java Sea; her wreck was subsequently plundered and burned by Malayan pirates.
  • "Don't Say You Love Me" (nominated by Freikorp) is the debut single by M2M. The song first appeared on Radio Disney before its official US radio and single release in 1999. It was released on the soundtrack to the film Pokémon: The First Movie and appears in the film's closing credits. The song was featured on M2M's debut album, Shades of Purple, and also appeared on their compilation album The Day You Went Away: The Best of M2M. The song received positive reviews. It reached number 2 in Norway, number 4 in both Australia and New Zealand, number 16 in the UK and number 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It was certified gold in the United States and Australia and remained M2M's biggest hit.
  • The Turboliners (nominated by Mackensen) were a family of gas turbine trainsets built for Amtrak in the 1970s. They were among the first new equipment purchased by Amtrak and represented an attempt to update its fleet with faster, more modern trains. The new trains led to ridership increases wherever they were used; the fixed consist proved a detriment as demand outstripped supply. The last Turboliner trainsets left revenue service in 2003.

Six featured lists were promoted.

  • Alyssa Milano (born 1972) is an American actress, producer, and former singer. She recorded songs (nominated by Aoba47) for four studio albums, two compilation albums, and an exercise video.
  • In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoueverable, long-distance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, short-range attackers. Sixteen destroyers have served, or currently serve, in the Indian Navy. (nominated by Krishna Chaitanya Velaga) The navy operates 10 guided-missile destroyers from three classes: Kolkata class, Delhi class, and Rajput class. Six other destroyers (three R class and three Hunt class) have been decommissioned and scrapped.
  • Square Enix Europe is a British video game publisher which is wholly owned by Square Enix. Square Enix acquired game publisher Eidos plc in 2009, which was then merged with Square Enix's European publishing wing and reorganized as Square Enix Europe. Since its formation Square Enix Europe published 35 retail, downloadable, and mobile games. (nominated by PresN)
  • In professional wrestling, championships are competed for in pre-determined matches and as a result of storylines by a professional wrestling promotion roster of wrestlers. As of 2016 the Mexican Lucha libre or professional wrestling promotion known as Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre promotes 23 different championships (nominated by MPJ-DK); 12 championships designated as World Championships in various divisions, 5 championships on a national level and 6 championships on a regional level. There are thirteen male singles championships spread out over various weight classes, three championships for tag teams, three for Trios (three-man teams), two for female competitors and two for Mini-Estrella competitors.
  • The Ariel Award for Best Director (nominated by Jaespinoza) is an award presented by the Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas in Mexico. It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the Mexican film industry. With the exception of the years 1959 to 1971, when the Ariel Awards were suspended, the award has been given annually. Nominees and winners are determined by a committee formed every year consisting of academy members, previous winners and individuals with at least two Ariel nominations. David Pablos is the latest recipient.
  • Essex is a county in the east of England. It has an area of 1,420 sq mi (3,700 km2), with a coastline of 400 mi (640 km), and a population of 1,393,600 (according to the 2011 census). As of August 2016, there are 86 Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Essex (nominated by Dudley Miles). There are 19 sites with a purely geological interest, 64 sites for biological interest and a further three sites are designated for both reasons.

Fourteen featured pictures were promoted.



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2016-11-04

Un-presidential politics

Your Traffic Reports for the weeks of October 9-15, 15-22, and 23-29, 2016.

October 9–15, 2016

The U.S. presidential election dominated the charts for another week, keyed off of the rather distasteful second presidential debate held on October 9. Is it over yet? NO! Not until November 8.

For the full top-25 lists (and 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 week of October 9–15, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Donald Trump C-Class 1,951,789
The second U.S. presidential debate occurred on October 9 and it was a rather nasty one by American standards.
2 Billy Bush Start-Class 1,451,164
It's been an interesting time for the cousin of Jeb and Dubya. First he was blasted for failing to catch Ryan Lochte out on his preschool lying, and then the tape of his 2005 talk with Donald Trump came out.
3 Hillary Clinton Featured Article 1,009,711
That Billy Bush got more views than Clinton tells you the 2005 Trump videotape was a huge story of interest.
4 Bhumibol Adulyadej C-class 921,863
The King of Thailand died on October 13, after 70 years on the throne. Think about that for a minute. During his reign, David Bowie was born, lived his whole life, and died of old age. His subjects revered him (he is already being called "the Great") but his son, the crown prince Vajiralongkorn (see #12), is generally seen in unflattering terms, though thanks to Thailand's merciless Lèse-majesté laws, which ban public criticism of the Royal Family, such opinions are not expressed openly. Thailand has been in a state of semi-permanent political crisis for more than a decade, and is currently under the control of a military junta. Much now depends on how the Thai people react to the succession, though given the myriad pressures involved, no one can guess what the outcome will be.
5 Bob Dylan Featured Article 915,438
The famed singer-songwriter won the Nobel Prize for Literature. A rather unusual pick, the first musician in the history of the award, and thus is getting a fair amount of attention.
6 Westworld (TV series) C-Class 910,820
To be clear: this is not based on a novel by Michael Crichton: Crichton was a filmmaker as well as a novelist, and Westworld was a film he both wrote and directed back in the 1970s. But whereas that was a straightforward "monsters on the loose" movie, about a Western-themed amusement park staffed by hyperrealistic robots who go insane and start murdering the guests (sound familiar?), this series looks like it will be taking a more thoughtful, hard scifi approach, with the robots' gradual evolution from programming to quasi-consciousness forming the main plot thread. With a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and ratings of just under 2 million (roughly what Game of Thrones received when it began), it's off to a solid start, though whether it will be the show to carry HBO past Game of Thrones's end remains to be seen.
7 MS The World C-Class 681,608
Courtesy of Reddit: [1]
8 Seat belt C-Class 648,726
As learned in a Reddit thread this week, Volvo invented the seat belt, but gave the patent away because they believed lives were more important than profit. And yet, we still buy other cars.
9 Bill Clinton Featured Article 638,332
Bill Clinton's and Donald Trump's relationships with women have been the stuff of gossip columns for some time. Not going to say anything more to feed the internet troll machines.
10 Luke Cage C-class 629,293
Down from #1 last week. Marvel's Blaxploitation-themed superhero (a.k.a. Power Man) has been a cult favourite for decades (Nicolas Cage named himself after him), but has never seen mainstream success, until now; as played by Mike Colter, pictured, he stars as the hero of his own eponymous series on Netflix.

Week of October 16–22, 2016

As the U.S presidential election approaches, Donald Trump is again number one in our Halloween edition rankings. His refusal at the last debate to say whether he will accept the election result if he loses raised much concern in the press. In other news, Reddit cracked the 5-topic barrier again. I wonder if this is the new normal or just an artifact from the end of summer?

For the week of October 16–22, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Donald Trump C-Class 2,140,830
The second U.S. presidential debate was nasty; the final one was scary. Trump's statement that he would "keep us in suspense" regarding whether or not he would accept the election result (an election he has already repeatedly described as "rigged") may have engendered more suspense than he intended (or not. Who knows?).
2 Witch window C-Class 831,274
I'd need to check but this could be the highest-charting Reddit thread since we started the project. These diagonal windows, found almost exclusively in 19th-century farmhouses in Vermont, were intended to ward off witches, since they couldn't fly their broomsticks through them. OK, so what about all the other windows? The thread's popularity is likely due to the approach of Halloween, a holiday that usually has little impact on this list.
3 2004 Harvard–Yale prank Start-Class 739,821
Another Reddit thread, this one concerning a practical joke at the annual Harvard–Yale football game in which Yale supporters handed out cards for the Harvard supporters to flash, and when used together spelled out "WE SUCK". You gotta hand it to whoever came up with that, and even more for pulling it off.
4 Westworld (TV series) C-Class 729,784
To be clear: this is not based on a novel by Michael Crichton: Crichton was a filmmaker as well as a novelist, and Westworld was a film he both wrote and directed back in the 1970s. But whereas that was a straightforward "monsters on the loose" movie, about a Western-themed amusement park staffed by hyperrealistic robots who go insane and start murdering the guests (sound familiar?), this series looks like it will be taking a more thoughtful, hard scifi approach, with the robots' gradual evolution from programming to quasi-consciousness forming the main plot thread. With a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and ratings of just under 2 million (roughly what Game of Thrones received when it began), it's off to a solid start, though whether it will be the show to carry HBO past Game of Thrones's end remains to be seen.
5 Logan (film) Start-Class 669,776
The next film in the X-Men film series will feature the final outings of both Patrick Stewart as Professor X and Hugh Jackman as Logan, a.k.a Wolverine. The surprisingly touching trailer launched this week, and generated a great deal of positive buzz.
6 Hillary Clinton Featured Article 650,343
Clinton continues to be less interesting to our readers than "what will he do next?" Trump, despite public opinion appearing to agree that she won all three debates.
7 Michel'le C-Class 646,377
The R&B singer and former girlfriend of both Dr Dre and Suge Knight, both of whom she claims beat her repeatedly, was the subject of a hit docudrama on Lifetime this week, Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge & Michel'le.
8 Melania Trump C-Class 631,945
Spouse of #1.
9 Deaths in 2016 List 606,553
The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day to day basis. It is consistently higher in the first half of 2016 with a string of highly notable deaths, but things seem to be calming down a bit. Where the article appears in this chart is entirely dependent on how many subjects in a week happened to exceed this bellwether in views.
10 Dr. Dre Good Article 486,086
The billionaire music producer and ex-boyfriend of Michel'le (see above) filed a cease and desist order against the premiere of the docudrama Surviving Compton, claiming that he never beat her, as the program alleges. He also threatened to sue Michel'le for defamation of character.

Week of October 23-29, 2016

In a week where no article could break one million views, a Google Doodle celebrating Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who discovered bacteria, tops the chart. Replacing the dominance of U.S. politics with an article about the human search for knowledge is heartening. Beyond that, Wikipedia readers filled their brains with The Walking Dead television show, filling up three slots in the Top 10, and six in the Top 25.

For the week of October 23 to 29, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek B-Class 970,522
For the first time this year, the top article of the week received under one million views. (The last time was when Donald Trump led with 914K views for December 6-12, 2015.) Yet, the top honors still go to the Dutch scientist, whose birthday was celebrated by a Google Doodle on October 24 which celebrated his discovery of "little animals", or animalcules, now known as bacteria.
2 The Walking Dead (TV series) Good Article 967,104
Season 7 (#8) of the popular television show, a mainstay of this chart when it is airing, debuted on October 23.
3 Donald Trump C-Class 898,740
No matter what you do, Donald Trump is always near the top of your Internet. Pageviews show his views were steady this week, in the general range of 110-150K per day, except for Saturday Oct 29 when it received only 81,915 views.
4 Pete Burns C-Class 771,654
The leader of the band Dead or Alive, best known for the 1985 hit You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), died on October 23 at age 57 of cardiac arrest. You Spin Me Round was a fairly eccentric song to became a hit in the United States. In later years, Burns received attention in British media when he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother 4 in 2006.
5 Chicago Cubs C-Class 764,703
The American baseball team has not won a World Series since 1908, but made it to the 2016 World Series, playing against the Cleveland Indians.
6 Negan Start-Class 742,226
The Walking Dead character first appeared in the last season's finale.
7 Halloween B-class 728,419
Views were up in anticipation of the October 31 holiday.
8 The Walking Dead (season 7) Good Article 719,418
See #2.
9 List of Black Mirror episodes C-class 711,183
Series 3 of the British show Black Mirror (#14) created by Charlie Brooker (pictured) debuted on October 21.
10 Doctor Strange (film) C-class 684,854
The Marvel superhero film based on the character of Doctor Strange had its Hollywood premiere on October 20, and in the UK and some other markets on October 25. It will debut in the United States on November 4. Benedict Cumberbatch stars in the title role.




Reader comments

2016-11-04

Recapping October's activities


This edition of the Arbitration Report covers the month of October 2016.

Michael Hardy case

On 1 October, the Michael Hardy case closed. ArbCom issued remedies, reminders were given to Michael Hardy and MjolnirPants, and ArbCom reminded itself to exercise care about scope creep when taking up future cases.

The Rambling Man case

The Rambling Man case closed on 13 October. The Rambling Man resigned his administrator role and is "prohibited from insulting and/or belittling other editors." Other remedies include The Rambling Man and George Ho having an interaction ban and George Ho being restricted from selecting main page content. ArbCom also encouraged the Wikipedia community "to review the selection process for the Did you know and In the news sections of the main page."

Administrator desysoped and banned

On 5 October, a CheckUser on Ricky81682, a ten-year administrator with more than 100,000 Wikipedia edits, revealed that they had used multiple accounts from 13 July to 7 August 2016. Activities included articles for deletion; the user did not account for the sock puppetry. The Committee removed Ricky's administration rights and banned them indefinitely. In the event the ban is lifted, the user will be eligible for a new request for adminship.

In brief

  • Changes in CheckUser and Oversight teams: Throughout the month of October, a change of positions in CheckUser and Oversight occurred. Coren had CheckUser permissions removed due to inactivity. Euryalus, FloNight, and Roger Davies also resigned from their teams. In their place, ArbCom appointed KrakatoaKatie as a CheckUser and Oversighter and MusikAnimal as a CheckUser. Ks0stm returned to Oversight duty after being inactive and Beeblebrox returned to the Oversight and CheckUser teams after resigning in May 2015.



Reader comments

2016-11-04

Why women edit less, and where they are overrepresented; article importance and quality; predicting elections from Wikipedia

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



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