The Signpost
Single-page Edition
WP:POST/1
9 June 2017

From the editorsSignpost status: On reserve power, help wanted!
News and notes
Global Elections
Arbitration report
Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis
Op-ed
Wikipedia's lead sentence problem
Featured content
Three months in the land of the featured
In the media
Did Wikipedia just assume Garfield's gender?
Recent research
Wikipedia bot wars capture the imagination of the popular press
Technology report
Tech news catch-up
Traffic report
Film on Top: Sampling the weekly top 10
 


2017-06-09

Signpost status: On reserve power, help wanted

That tectonic meeting of crust and cloud.


Dear Readers,

It is hard to believe it has been over three months since the last issue. We apologize for the hiatus in Signposting. We love publishing it, but are missing a few regular contributors. As a result some regular articles cover only part of recent months, and we can't yet say when the next issue will come out.

Help us return to a regular schedule! We are looking for editors, news submissions, and ways to simplify and publish. If you can help, or at least lob puns from the sidelines, please join us.



2017-06-09

Film on Top: Sampling the weekly Top 10 from recent months

The Wikipedia:Top 25 Report summarizes the most popular articles each week, drawing from Andrew West's Top 5000 list. We often republish the top 10. Here are two interesting weeks from recent months.

Indian film dominance, May holidays (April 30 to May 6, 2017)

There are 125 million English speakers in India. And when there's something big there, it can get really big. Top of the list for the week of April 30 - May 6, 2017, is the new film Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (#1), and this list also contains the previous film in the series. (#8). And the lead actor (#7). And the lead actress (#16). And the director (#23). With all this interest, no surprise to see that Baahubali 2: The Conclusion is also top of the list of highest-grossing Indian films of all times. A list which is also on this list. (#3).

Of course, American culture can also get on the list. There's a new Marvel Cinematic Universe film at #4 and the still popular The Fate of the Furious at #24. On the smaller screen (or maybe not? Some people have really big TVs) 13 Reasons Why (#5) remains huge; a new adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale has brought people to the book (#12); a series on Albert Einstein has brought people to the physicist (#22); and the new series of American Gods has brought people to articles on both the original book and the adapted series. (#17 & #19).

In sport, both fighters in last week's big fight at Wembley keep the interest (Joshua: #6; Klitschko: #11); another WWE event pulls in the viewers (#13); and basketball star Isaiah Thomas made a points-scoring return to the courts following the death of his sister (#25). There were the standard start of May commemorations - of Cinco de Mayo (#2) and of May Day (#9). Reddit has been learning about red pandas, the Vietnam War and John Clem (#14, #18, #20). Last, but by no means least, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (#15) announced his impending retirement, which also brought interest to the Queen herself. (#21)

For the week of April 30 to May 6, 2017, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Baahubali 2: The Conclusion start Class 3,087,414
The Telugu / Tamil language (versions were made in the two languages simultaneously) historical fiction film opened on April 28th and, in just seven days, has become the highest grossing Indian film of all time. The film, a follow up to 2015's Baahubali: The Beginning (#8), was directed by S. S. Rajamouli (pictured, also #23), and stars Prabhas (#8), Anushka Shetty (#16) and Rana Daggubati.
2 Cinco de Mayo c Class 2,348,709
The commemoration of the Mexican Army's victory over the French on 5 May 1862, at the Battle of Puebla makes its standard return to the chart. The date is now associated with celebrations of Mexican-American culture. Compared to last year, the article holds onto second place and is up about 200k views.
3 List of highest-grossing Indian films list 1,575,865
After one week on release, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (#1), has become the highest-grossing Indian film of all time. At time of writing, our article gives a value of ₹1,227 crore for the film, which is about 190 million dollars or 175 million euro.
4 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 c Class 1,224,608
This is the fifteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and your writer has seen all of them, except for the minute the woman in front of me at Doctor Strange took to sit down. The James Gunn (pictured) directed superhero / sci-fi comedy is topping most charts worldwide, with its star cast including the likes of Vin Diesel and Kurt Russell. Worldwide, the film is currently on $430 million, which is about 390 million euro or ₹2,768 crore.
5 13 Reasons Why start Class 1,116,202
Continued popularity for Netflix's hit drama series, starring Dylan Minnette (pictured) and Katherine Langford. A second season of the drama has been commissioned, which is not surprising from a business point of view but may be slightly from an artistic view; there being, as yet, no second book to base the second season on.
6 Anthony Joshua c Class 1,043,010
Joshua claimed the WBA and IBO heavyweight boxing championships, in addition to retaining his IBF title; following his 19th straight knockout victory since becoming a professional boxer on his 29 April fight with Wladimir Klitschko (#11) at Wembley Stadium - a fight held in front of a post-war record crowd of 90,000 and setting a British record for PPV buys.
7 Prabhas start Class 879,302 Unsurprisingly high interest for the star of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (#1), who also appeared in the previous film in the series, Baahubali: The Beginning. Speaking of which...
8 Baahubali: The Beginning c Class 858,506
The first film in the series which was followed this week by Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (#1). The film is currently the fourth highest-grossing Indian film of all time, but its takings have already been almost doubled by the continuation.
9 May Day b Class 679,361
You might think that this, like Cinco de Mayo, would be an annual recurrence. But it failed to chart last year, and both it and the concurrent International Workers' Day have seen a roughly 2.5x increase in views. The May 1 spring festival has many ancient traditions associated with it, like the crowning of a May Queen, dancing round a maypole, and luring Edward Woodward to a Scottish island before burning him to death in a wicker man. All good, clean, pagan fun.
10 Deaths in 2017 list 678,371
The near-ever-present list of the deceased rises two places this week despite falling about 3000 views in total.


An Evening at the Pictures (February 26 to March 4, 2017)

Where is Steve Harvey's cameo?

Wikipedia readers this week focused on one thing above all others: the land of undersized seats and over priced popcorn! A combination of the 89th Academy Awards and interest in current box office hits results in 19 out of 25 coming from the world of film; led by the sad death of actor Bill Paxton. All four acting award winners are represented here, as are 5 of the 9 Best Picture nominees.

Away from the world of film, rapper Remy Ma attracted interest for her new diss track and Ash Wednesday began the Christian fasting period of Lent. Before the fast begun, however, Reddit discovered an interesting fact about Rice. Also, Donald Trump (#16) continues.--OZOO

For full Top 25 this week, see Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/February 26 to March 4, 2017

For the week of February 26 to March 4, 2017, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Bill Paxton Start Class 4,823,745
The American actor, known for his roles in films such as Aliens, Titanic and Twister, died this week at the age of 61.
2 Moonlight (2016 film) C Class 3,098,888
Winner of three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The first all-black Best Picture and the first LGBT Best Picture; the win was unfortunately overshadowed by an envelope mixup, resulting in La La Land holding the award for about five minutes. Director Barry Jenkins pictured.
3 89th Academy Awards List 1,982,265
The main page for the week's big award show (pictured: host Jimmy Kimmel) was unsurprisingly popular, with readers likely trying to catch up on the list of winners or the envelope mixup.
4 Logan (film) C class 1,862,573
The 10th movie associated with the X-Men and the final appearence for Hugh Jackman (pictured) as Wolverine; Logan opened this week to near-unanimously positive reviews and almost $250m worldwide gross.
5 Casey Affleck C class 1,574,510
The American actor won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Manchester By the Sea.
6 Get Out (film) Start class 1,400,249
Jordan Peele's directorial debut, the satirical horror movie has received, if anything, even more unanimous positivity from reviewers than Logan; and sits second in the US box office.
7 La La Land (film) C class 1,253,551
The other half of the envelope mixup (see #2); the incident did rather overshadow the rest of the night, which saw the musical pick up six Awards, including Best Director for Damien Chazelle. (pictured)
8 Mahershala Ali Stub 1,217,057

Won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moonlight (#2); Ali is the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.

9 Emma Stone Featured Article 1,119,576
Another Academy Award winner, this time for Best Actress. It is interesting to note that Wikipedia readers seem more interested in the actors than the actresses, isn't it?.
10 Manchester by the Sea (film) C-class 874,133
Rounding off our cinematic top 10, Kenneth Lonergan's drama won two awards from six nominations, including Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor.

In other news:



2017-06-09

Did Wikipedia just assume Garfield's gender?


This Signpost "In the media" report covers media primarily from 19 February to 17 March.

Is Garfield male? Only the Creator knows. A silly edit war erupts.

In one of the more silly Wikipedia editing disputes of all time, an "edit war" over whether the comic strip character Garfield is really male received major press coverage. As evidenced at Garfield's talk page, a semi-well known internet troll found a 2014 interview with Garfield's creator Jim Davis, that said "Garfield is very universal. By virtue of being a cat, really, he’s not really male or female or any particular race or nationality, young or old." This springboarded a war over whether Garfield's gender in his infobox should be "none." The whole thing was chronicled in a number of lighthearted press stories, including this one in the Washington Post (which I am partial to because it ends with a dumb quote from me). The faux edit-war was put to a complete end, however, when Davis told the Post: "Garfield is male." (Heat Street (February 27); Washington Post (March 1); Mashable (March 1); New York Magazine (March 1); New York Daily News (March 2); Zet Chilli (March 3, in Polish); NTDTV (March 3, in Chinese); Helsingborgs Dagblad (March 5, in Swedish); Süddeutsche Zeitung (March 9, in German); El Nuevo Diario (March 13, in Spanish); and many more)

In brief

Editathons all over
The Daily Mail's answer to whether it has been treated unfairly by Wikipedia.
  • The battle for stubs: Slate published an op-ed by WMF Trustee Dariusz Jemielniak (speaking only on his own behalf) about how Wikipedia treats short articles in its deletion processes, in a follow-up to Andrea James' piece in Boing Boing covered in our last column. (Slate, March 7)
  • All-Women edit corps in Mangalore: The Hindu reported on a 47-team of all women editors from Mangalore who have created over 300 articles in the Kannada, Tulu, and Konkani language Wikipedias. (March 8).
  • Detroit edit city A women in the arts edit-a-thon was held in Detroit, Michigan on March 11 as part of the international campaign by Art + Feminism. (Detroit Free Press, March 9)
  • Everwhere edit city: Other planned women focused edit-a-thons also received coverage: Windsor, Ontario (CBC, March 10); Luxembourg, (Delano, March 10); Cambridge, UK (Varsity, March 10); New Haven, Connecticut, (New Haven Independent, March 9); Washington D.C. , (Washington City Paper, March 15); and more.
  • For women architects, too: The Sydney Morning Herald highlighted a group in Australia working to increase the coverage of female architects on Wikipedia. (Sydney Morning Herald, March 17)
  • The Daily Mail at war: The Daily Mail continues to chafe at its reduced status as a Wikipedia citation source (see last issue's In the media), publishing a long story tilted towards proving unfair treatment. (Daily Mail, March 3)
  • Wikipedia printouts considered not reliable in court: A case against a torrent site proxy operator in the UK was dismissed, in part because the judge was apparently not happy at the prosecution relying on printouts from Wikipedia to explain what a reverse proxy actually is. (Torrent Freak, March 7)
  • Right to forget watch: A bill introduced to the New York State Assembly would attempt to secure a "right to be forgotten" that would require censorship of Wikipedia and other sites. Writing on his Volokh Conspiracy blog, law professor Eugene Volokh concludes that the bill is unconstitutional on its face. (Washington Post, March 15)
  • Vandal watch: Among the usual press coverage of recent vandalism on the articles of public figures, the Houston Chronicle noted recent trolling of U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert's article. (Houston Chronicle, March 17) Another source described the vandal edits as a "hack", which is no doubt a sexy word to use in a headline, although Wikipedia editors know that malicious edits required no hacking skills or really any skills whatsoever, aside from the occasional creative flair seen in Garfieldgate. (Roll Call, March 15)
  • My BLP is awesome if I say so myself: Utah State Representative Mike Winder has been reported to have used multiple Wikipedia accounts to create and primp up his own biography. (Salt Lake Tribune, March 14)
  • Response to Wikipedia has cancer: A popular Reddit thread reviewed Guy's provocative Signpost editorial from February, raising concerns about Wikimedia's spending growth. That thread, and a similar review published in Quartz, concluded that Wikimedia is healthy for a non-profit, and remains efficient compared to libraries and publishers. (Quartz, May 8)



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.


2017-06-09

Tech news catch-up

Tech news: February to June 2017

Tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2017 #9#23. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

  • Problems
    • On 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file. (Wikitech incident documentation)
    • Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time in the first week of March. This has now been fixed. (Wikitech mailing list)
    • Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately. (Phabricator task T158502)
    • On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. (Phabricator task T160465)
    • Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. (Phabricator tasks T160916, T160983)
    • Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. (Phabricator task T161263)
    • After the data centre test on April 19 the content translation tool was disabled. This is because of a database problem. It was restored on April 25.(Phabricator task T163344)
    • Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on Hide categorization of pages in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. (Phabricator task T164059)
    • There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. (Phabricator task T164157)
    • May 25th’s MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. It was fixed late the following week. (Phabricator tasks T163512, T165957)
  • Recent changes
    • Editing:
      • You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor. (Phabricator task T153365)
      • The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. (Phabricator task T116417)
      • When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+X on PCs or Cmd+Shift+X on Macs. (Phabricator task T153356)
      • When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. (MediaWiki.org documentation)
      • The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. (Phabricator task T108626)
      • Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it. (Phabricator task T141586)
      • DMOZ no longer works. Templates that use DMOZ can be redirected to archive.org or another mirror. DMOZ has been removed from the RelatedSites extension on Wikivoyage. (Phabricator task T128326)
      • The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. (Phabricator task T160743)
      • The Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias, and on other Wikimedia wikis except for Wikinewses. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. Information on Meta-Wiki)
      • When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say Visual editing and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. (Phabricator task T162864)
      • You can now use ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid. (Phabricator task T145462)
      • String comparisons in Scribunto modules are now always done case-insensitively by byte order. Before they were sometimes in a case-sensitive US-English collation order. This could break some modules. (Phabricator task T107128)
      • The 2006 wikitext editor will be removed the week of 27 June. This is the old toolbar with small square blue buttons. You can see a picture of it. 0.03% of active Wikimedia editors use this old tool. They will not see a toolbar at all.(MediaWiki.org documentation, Phabricator task T30856)
    • Interface:
    • Administrators:
    • Scripts:
    • Other projects:
      • You will be able to show references from <references /> tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use <references /> tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. This feature will be deployed turned off by default. It can be turned on at a local wiki by requesting a configuration change. (Phabricator task T33597, MediaWiki.org project)
      • The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. (Phabricator task T148609)
      • The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. (Phabricator task T161980)
      • Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. (MediaWiki.org announcement)
      • The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. (Wikitech mailing list)
      • Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word __NOGLOBAL__ to your Meta user page to stop this. (Phabricator task T90849, MediaWiki.org documentation)
      • The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.
      • You can upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work with the STL first; the AMF format will be available later. (Phabricator tasks T132058 & T158830)
    • New tools
      • The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. (Phabricator task T152827)
      • Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron already works on German Wikipedia. It will be on English Wikipedia later this week so you can test it there too. (Phabricator task T165956)
  • Future changes
    • CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. (Q&A, discussion on MediaWiki.org)
    • stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
    • Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. Notes on Meta-Wiki)
    • All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. (Phabricator task T5233)
    • The Publish changes, Show preview and Show changes buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding &ooui=1 to the URL. (Phabricator task T162849)
    • You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. (Phabricator task T142102)
    • Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use -{ in a template: {{1x| sad :-{ face }}. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. (Wikimedia code review, MediaWiki.org documentation)

In brief

New tools

  • MTC! (short for "Move to Commons!") by User:Fastily is an easy-to-use tool that simplifies and streamlines the transferring of files to Commons. MTC! includes mass-transfer options and a built-in file filter which skips non-free and other Commons-ineligible files.

New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience

Newly approved bot tasks

Installation code

  1. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Caorongjin/wordcount.js' ); // Backlink: User:Caorongjin/wordcount.js
  2. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:WikiMasterGhibif/capitalize.js' ); // Backlink: User:WikiMasterGhibif/capitalize.js
  3. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Kangaroopower/rawtab.js' ); // Backlink: User:Kangaroopower/rawtab.js
  4. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Erutuon/footnoteCleanup.js' ); // Backlink: User:Erutuon/footnoteCleanup.js
  5. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Erutuon/scripts/imageSize.js' ); // Backlink: User:Erutuon/scripts/imageSize.js
  6. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Evad37/XFDcloser.js' ); // Backlink: User:Evad37/XFDcloser.js
  7. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Uglemat/RefMan.js' ); // Backlink: User:Uglemat/RefMan.js

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-09/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-09/Opinion


2017-06-09

WMF Board results released, FDC election runs through June 11

A public stand.

Global elections: WMF Board results, FDC voting ends soon

Results of the WMF Board election

Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation held its biannual election for the community-elected seats on its board. Nine candidates participated, with somewhat less on-wiki discussion than in previous years. The results of the election were announced on May 20: 5120 community members voted to elect María Sefidari, Dariusz Jemielniak, and James Heilman, each a current or former WMF Trustee, and each receiving roughly 80% support.

FDC election begins

The annual election for members of the Funds Dissemination Committee, which determines funding allocations for annual plan grants to the largest Wikimedia affiliates, began this week. Eleven candidates with a wide range of experience, from all six continents, are standing in the election. Along with their candidate statements, they have answered a few questions on the wiki.

Voting is open this week: it runs from June 3rd–11th.


Brief notes

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-09/Serendipity


2017-06-09

Wikipedia's lead sentence problem

Thomas Spencer Baynes, genius or pedant?

In the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, editor Thomas Spencer Baynes introduced the convention of including a person's birth and death year after their name in all biographical articles:

CAMPBELL, John, LL.D. (1708–1775), a miscellaneous author, was born at Edinburgh, March 8, 1708.

This allowed a reader to more easily distinguish between the 100+ notable people named John Campbell (only one of whom was actually lucky enough to get an article in the 9th edition). Although this convention was a bit awkward and redundant, it served a useful purpose (in the absence of disambiguation pages), and was kept in all subsequent editions.

When Wikipedia was created in 2001, it sought to emulate the successful model of the Encyclopædia Britannica and many editors adopted the convention of including birth and death years in the lead sentence.[1] Here is the lead sentence for Christopher Columbus as it appeared on June 13, 2001:

Christopher Columbus (1451?–1506) was a probably Genovian sailor who crossed the Atlantic in service of Spain.

Little did Thomas Spencer Baynes realize, Wikipedia editors would eventually expand on his convention, including not only birth and death years, but entire birth and death dates, birth and death dates in alternate calendars, birth and death locations, alternate names, maiden names, foreign names, pronunciations, foreign pronunciations, and transliterations. Fifteen years later, here's what Christoper Columbus's lead sentence had become:

Christopher Columbus (/kəˈlʌmbəs/; Ligurian: Cristoffa Combo; Italian: Cristoforo Colombo; Spanish: Cristóbal Colón; Portuguese: Cristóvão Colombo; Latin: Christophorus Columbus; born between 31 October 1450 and 30 October 1451 in Genoa – died on 20 May 1506 in Valladolid) was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer, and citizen of the Republic of Genoa.

Flesch Reading Ease scores for the lead sentence of Christopher Columbus from 2002 to 2016

What began as a concise, encyclopedic sentence had slowly grown into a sprawling mess of multiplying metadata—a sentence so complicatingly packed as to render it unreadable.[2] This isn't just a subjective opinion, either. If you chart the Flesch Reading Ease score of the sentence over the years, you'll see an almost continuous decline since 2002. This is by no means an isolated example, either. The metadata virus has spread from biographical articles to other subjects as well, like geography:

Israel (/ˈɪzrəl/; Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל Yisrā'el; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل Isrāʼīl), officially the State of Israel (Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל Medīnat Yisrā'el [mediˈnat jisʁaˈʔel]; Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل Dawlat Isrāʼīl [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea.

The problem has become so noticeable that many reusers of Wikipedia content (including the WMF itself) have started stripping out parenthetical phrases from the lead sentence in certain contexts. If you search for "Christopher Columbus" on Google, you'll see a much more digestible description, both in the Knowledge Graph and under the Wikipedia search result. If you turn on the Page Previews beta feature in your preferences and hover over Christopher Columbus, you'll also see a much shorter version. The Wikipedia apps even experimented with removing parenthetical phrases from the lead sentences in the articles themselves. This has led to heated debates about whether or not we are potentially removing important information (as some parenthetical phrases consist of content other than metadata). Without a clear way to identify which parenthetical phrases are useful and which are detrimental, I'm sure these issues will remain unresolved. What's really needed is a vigorous debate by the Wikipedia community about how to bring this problem under control and make our articles readable again.

If we don't take significant steps to address this problem, the metadata disease is only going to keep multiplying and spreading. If left unchecked, I fear this is what our future will look like:

[Excerpt from the Americapedia article about Wikipedia, copyright 2034, used with permission.]

...Like frogs in a pot of boiling water, the proliferation of lead sentence metadata happened so slowly that no one noticed until 2021 when John Seigenthaler's son published a devastating video on ClickNews in which he read aloud the lead sentence of his Wikipedia article, and then wept for 3 minutes.

John Michael SeigenthalerQ1701714 on Wikidata (English pronunciation: /ˈdʒɑn ˈmaɪkəl ˈsiːɡənθɔːlər/ ; German pronunciation: [ˈjuːˈan ˈmaɪkəl ˈziːkənθɔːlər] ; born December 21, 1955 in Nashville, TennesseeQ23197 on Wikidata, current resident of Weston, ConnecticutQ662537 on Wikidata (as of 2008), not yet deceased), also known as John Seigenthaler Jr. (English pronunciation: /ˈdʒɑn ˈsiːɡənθɔːlər ˈdʒunjəɹ/ ; German: John Seigenthaler jünger, pronounced [ˈjuːˈan ˈziːkənθɔːlər ˈdʒunjəɹ] ), is an American news anchor, most recently working for ClickNews.

Seigenthaler's video caught the attention of the recently re-elected Donald Trump, who only weeks before had dissolved The New York Times and Washington Post by executive order. Trump immediately posted a flurry of tweets eviscerating the venerable online encyclopedia. By the next day, Wikipedia was no more.

Let's avoid this sorry fate and make Wikipedia great again!

  1. ^ German Wikipedia also adopted the convention of preceding all death dates with a dagger (called a "Kreuz" in German), which has led to endless debates about whether or not the symbol is Christian and thus inappropriate to use for non-Christian biographies. Luckily, such a convention doesn't seem to exist in English encyclopedias!
  2. ^ Another famous example:
    Genghis Khan (English pronunciation:/ˈɡɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/ or /ˈɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/;[1][2]; Cyrillic: Чингис Хаан, Chingis Khaan, IPA: [tʃiŋɡɪs xaːŋ] ; Mongol script: , Činggis Qaɣan; Chinese: 成吉思汗; pinyin: Chéng Jí Sī Hán; probably May 31, 1162[3] – August 25, 1227), born Temujin (English pronunciation: /təˈmɪn/; Mongolian: Тэмүжин, Temüjin IPA: [tʰemutʃiŋ] ; Middle Mongolian: Temüjin;[4] traditional Chinese: 鐵木真; simplified Chinese: 铁木真; pinyin: Tiě mù zhēn) and also known by the temple name Taizu (Chinese: 元太祖; pinyin: Yuán Tàizǔ; Wade–Giles: T'ai-Tsu), was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-09/In focus


2017-06-09

From March: Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis

War of the Pacific case closed

  1. Keysanger (talk · contribs) and MarshalN20 (talk · contribs) are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with, or commenting on, each other anywhere on Wikipedia (subject to the ordinary exceptions).
  2. Keysanger (talk · contribs) is warned not to cast aspersions on other editors, or to unnecessarily perpetuate on-wiki battles.
  3. Where the dispute relates specifically to the interpretation of individual military history sources, the Committee recommends that these disputes in this topic area be formally raised at the Military History Wikiproject talkpage to ensure a wider audience and further expert input. Evident manipulation of sources, or disregard of a MILHIST consensus, should be considered disruptive editing and addressed via regular administrative action where appropriate.
  4. Where any content dispute involves both Keysanger (talk · contribs) and MarshalN20 (talk · contribs), those editors must seek wider input by raising the matter at any one of: the Military History Wikiproject talkpage, WP:3O, or WP:RFC. Both editors must abide by any subsequent consensus that arises from this process. Disregard of consensus should be considered disruptive editing and addressed via regular administrative action where appropriate. Nothing in this remedy restricts the editing of the disputed topic area by other editors.

Magioladitis case closed

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

  1. The community is encouraged to carefully review the lists of items in AWB's "general fixes" and the Checkwiki project's list of errors to determine whether these items are truly uncontroversial maintenance changes. A suggested approach would be classifying existing fixes as cosmetic or non-cosmetic and thereby identifying fixes that should be ineligible to be applied alone. The groups who currently invest their efforts in maintaining these lists are encouraged to improve their change management practices by soliciting broader community input into the value of adding proposed new items to the lists, and specifically to make their proposals accessible to members of the community who are not bot operators or whose interests are non-technical.
  2. The community is encouraged to hold an RfC to clarify the nature of "cosmetic" edits and to reevaluate community consensus about the utility and scope of restrictions on such edits. The committee notes that an RfC on this topic is currently under development.
  3. While the Arbitration Committee has no direct authority over the volunteer developers of open-source tools, we encourage the AWB developers to carefully consider feedback gathered in this case in order to use technical means to avoid problematic edits more effectively.
  4. The Bot Approvals Group is encouraged to carefully review the proposed scope of any new bot request for approval to ensure that the scope and tasks are clearly defined and will resist scope creep.
  5. Magioladitis is restricted from making any semi-automated edits which do not affect the rendered visual output of a page. This restriction does not apply to edits which address issues related to accessibility guidelines. Further, Magioladitis may seek consensus to perform a specific type of semi-automated edit that would normally fall under this restriction at the administrators' noticeboard. Any uninvolved administrator may close such a discussion with consensus to perform a specific type of semi-automated edit. All discussions should be logged on the case page, regardless of outcome.
  6. Magioladitis is reminded that performing the same or similar series of edits in an automated fashion using a bot and in a semi-automated fashion on his main account is acceptable only as long as the edits are not contentious. Should Yobot be stopped or blocked for a series of edits, Magioladitis may not perform the same pattern of edits via semi-automated tools from his main account where this might reasonably be perceived as evading the block. In this circumstance, Magioladitis (like any other editor) should await discussion and consensus as to whether or not the edits are permissible and useful, and resume making such edits through any account only if and when the consensus is favorable.
  7. Magioladitis is restricted from unblocking their own bot when it has been blocked by another administrator. After discussion with the blocking administrator and/or on the bot owners' noticeboard, the blocking administrator or an uninvolved administrator may unblock the bot.

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