The Halloween holiday (#12) inspires the entertainment industry to release scary products in October, and this is reflected by Netflix topping the list with a show about a haunted house (#1, #5), adding in a series starring a teenage witch (#14) — and in an unintended case, there's the equally disturbing subject of miscarriage of the law (#10, #17), along with a fictional assassin (#13) — while Hollywood brings back the Halloween slasher movies (#3, #20, #22), and is still making money out of a questionable comic book movie that evokes more terror than justice (#23). Scares are also provided by terrorism attempts (#11), urban legends (#21), life-threatening disease (#4) and life-ending (#9) manhunts (#6). On less spooky notes, there's movies about musicians (#2, #8, #18) and actors (#19), some sports (#15, #25), video games (#5), Google Doodles (#15) and boneheaded TV moments (#24).

"Here we are, born to be kings, we're the Princes of the Universe!" Or at least of Wikipedia, as the late, great Freddie Mercury (#1) and his band Queen (#14) gather lots of views with the release of Bohemian Rhapsody (#13), starring Rami Malek (#15), in a great performance that to borrow from another musical hit, might lead to people saying "A Star Is Born" (#17). Readers are also celebrating Halloween (#2) – and on a lesser level, the Day of the Dead (#8), them who never leave this list (#12) and have two high entries (#3, #5) – by watching slasher movies (#16) and binging on Netflix shows about haunted houses (#11, #21) and teenage witches (#6, #18). The other prevalent topics are a record-breaking Indian statue (#4, #10), Western-themed video games (#9, #22), wrestling events (#7, #20), and politics, with the results of the elections in my country (#23), to borrow from that man still blaming everything wrong in the U.S. on immigrants (#24, #25), can be summed in just one word: "Sad!"

This week on Wikipedia, the King of Queen (#1) meets the King of Scots (#11), opera rock (#7) meets political theater (#5), and Google heroes (#12, #15) meet Indian greatness (#23), while rising stars (#2, #9, #10, #17) keep on fighting till the end. In a nod to the simulation hypothesis winking at us, a movie focusing on election fraud in India (#21) was released in the midst of U.S. elections (#24, #25), where accusations of fraud have become routine.

A very upsetting week for comic fans, as one of the pioneering champions of the medium died. Stan Lee was a legend, a perennial figure of respect and renown for nerds and dorks worldwide. Lee will be greatly missed. Aside from the passing of a hero, the week was evidently the domain of cinephiles, with films, film subjects, and actors galore reaching the top 25. This week's iteration of the report is strange yet intriguing, and was a joy to compile. Hopefully it is as fantastic to read as it was incredible to pen.

• These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

Writing in Heise Online on 2 November, Torsten Kleinz reports that the State Court of Berlin (file reference 27 O 12/7) has ordered the German Wikipedia to remove a critical passage on language researcher Alexander Waibel. "Just how far can one go in making supposedly reputation-damaging claims without substantiating them?" Computer scientist Weibel had sued Wikipedia following a claim sourced to the MDR magazine Fakt, in which he was linked to surveillance programs of the US intelligence services. Weibel, a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, sees the allegations of being connected with espionage programs as reputation-damaging. "One needs to be very careful before claiming a scientist has connections to the secret service", recommends the presiding judge. Whether the claims were justified or not was not taken into account by the court. The Wikimedia Foundation, which admitted to not being aware of any lack of veracity in the Fakt article, has not appealed the verdict. The corresponding text has since been removed from the encyclopedia's article.

Wikipedia 'Deaditors': The People Who Let The World Know When Famous People Die, says Antoinette Lattouf, senior reporter of 10 daily on 11 November. Revealing that Conor Crawford, a 30-year-old from Missouri who edits Wikipedia as Conman33 was the first to update the Wikipedia biography on the 2009 death of Michael Jackson, she continues by explaining that he was also involved in the reporting of the passing of Prince in 2016. According to Lattouf, "Wikipedia’s page view statistics show that the site is the first stop for many when actors and entertainers pass away". Crawford told 10 daily that "...in the 'era of fake news' Wikipedia needs to be more stringent".

• Consensus: Why some Wikipedia disputes go unresolved – Study identifies reasons for unsettled editing disagreements and offers predictive tools that could improve deliberation. Rob Matheson reporting on November 6 in MIT News . More on the story of the research is published in the 6 November issue of Science Daily.
• Paid editing: Yet another exposé, this time by Stephen Harrison in his 29 October column in Medium which includes a brief interview with admin SmartSE and David King (CorporateM) of Ethical Wiki. Entitled Wikipedia’s Top-Secret 'Hired Guns' Will Make You Matter (For a Price), it demonstrates again how hard it is to both combat undeclared paid editing, and to convince declared paid editors that despite the rules, their work is nevertheless unethical.
• Music: In Loudwire on 31 October, Graham Hartmann claims to prove and disprove what’s written in the Wikipedia article about the Megadeth lead guitarist Marty Friedman. Perhaps a training exercise for would-be New Page Patrollers could be to delve into the history and see who is right and who is wrong. Maybe Tina S the French teenage shred guitar phenomenon would know.
• Wikipedia: Sportfans schiessen bei Wikipedia gerne übers Ziel hinaus (Sport fans like shooting wide of the goal posts). The Executive Director of the WMF was in Berne, Switzerland on 10 November for a ten minute interview with editor Mathias Born of the German language Swiss daily newspaper Tages Anzeiger. The questions were routine and expected, as were the well-practiced answers, emphasizing the problems with contributions from sport fans, the need for more female contributors, and reassurance that the volunteer community's wishes for support are heard by the staff.
• Docufilm: Pitchfork's Kristen Yoonsoo Kim in a 2 November review describes the docufilm Bohemian Rhapsody about Queen as "...Basically Queen's Wikipedia entry as a biopic", "Even without all the problems attached to the production, Bohemian Rhapsody is not so much a film as it is a dramatization of a Wikipedia entry, watered down and overedited."
• Notable vandalism: For obvious reasons, The Signpost doesn't usually cover routine vandalism, but major media have reported on a recent incident at the Donald Trump article. Administrator TheSandDoctor explained the nature of the edit warring vandal or vandals to The Verge in a story widely reprinted (USA Today, Gizmodo, Newsweek and others). The UK media The Independent and Metro also carried a story. It does show that despite our very open policy towards editing, we are fairly quick to revert vandalism.

What was (in my opinion, but perhaps I'm old fashioned after 25 years of the Web) a nice, clean newsletter-style blog, has, like most of the other readily accessible and commentable – and sometimes commendable – stuff, been incorporated into one of those quick-build WordPress sites that are taking over the creative art of web design; those WordPress sites are all instantly recognisable, aren't they? Content management systems have their advantages of course though, but sometimes only for those with privileged access.

The news to come out of the Wikimedia Foundation's effort to the Word Wide Web this month is an eclectic mix of essays and reports, and certainly a worthwhile browse for whatever takes one's fancy, and this is just my quick pick:

• As if they can't give it a rest, Robert Fernandez on November 2018 brings up the issue again on Wikipedia lacking an article on Strickland, but provides some excellent advice on how to volunteer and contribute to Wikipedia.
• Saskia Ehlers, Houssem Abida and Ed Erhart on 9 November 2018 go into compulsory heterosexuality. This concept, reported by Ed Erhart, Senior Editorial Associate, Communications Wikimedia Foundation, describes how heterosexuality is assumed, enforced and viewed as an obligation regardless of one’s own sexual preferences – something they originally discussed at an event way back in August in Stockholm, when in just two days, over 80 LGBT-related Wikipedia articles in more than 10 languages were created, translated, or improved, and added over 300 photos. Now if all editathons could be as productive as this excellent contribution by the LGBT group whose event was supported by the Germany, Swiss, and Austrian chapters.
• Jan Gerlach on 29 October 2018 talks about the Wikimedia Foundation being honored to join the Global Network Initiative (GNI) as an observer, "an opportunity we hope will advance our efforts to champion freedom of expression and privacy for the Wikimedia community and beyond. GNI is a channel for collective action, advocating to governments and international institutions for policies and laws which promote..."

...and much, much more than I had time to read. This will probably change the shape of The Signpost's WMF blog column in future issues. Anyway, it's all out there on Wikimedia Foundation News for anyone who wants to keep abreast.

The Wikimedia Summit 2019 will be in Berlin during 29–31 March 2019 and is accepting registration from Friday, 2 November 2018 to Monday, 17 December at midnight CET (UTC+1). While this is an exclusive conference which typically limits invitations to one person per Wikimedia movement affiliate, the conference broadly affects group Wikimedia engagement everywhere as this global conference seeks to include representation from most or all Wikimedia community organizations. This gathering, previously known as the Wikimedia Conference, and before that the Chapter's Conference, focuses on discussion of global Wikimedia strategy through near future planning at meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20 and longer term ambition of what Wikimedia should be in 2030. Anyone who is part of a Wikimedia community organization should choose and register your representative. Anyone not part of an organization can join one or start one. Anyone who does not want to be in an organization, but who wants to be part of strategic planning, can join a working group and participate online. Anyone else who does not want to join any group can say whatever they want on the talk pages of any of these projects and plans.

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past 12 months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.

Top 10 from the last 365 days:

Rank	Username	Reviews
1	Onel5969	26,554
2	JTtheOG	15,059
3	Boleyn	12,760
4	Cwmhiraeth	9,001
5	Semmendinger	8,440
6	PRehse	8,092
7	Arthistorian1977	5,306
8	Abishe	4,153
9	Barkeep49	4,016
10	Elmidae	3,615

Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years. See also the list of Top 100 reviewers. The 2017 award was received by PRehse. (Data provided by Insertcleverphrasehere)

This was the twelfth edition of the WikiCup, an editing competition which has been held annually since 2007. In its first year it had twelve competitors, the only entrant from that contest who still participates regularly at Wikipedia being The Rambling Man, who came third in the Cup's inaugural year. Two years later there were 60 entrants, and in the ensuing years, contestant numbers peaked at around 150 and stayed steady for several years, although there has been some tailing off of entrant numbers recently. Originally, points were awarded for the number of mainspace edits done as well as for working on articles that were promoted to GA and FA status during the competition. The former criterion has been dropped, and now points are awarded for creating or expanding articles and improving the quality of articles; featured articles, featured lists, featured topics, and featured pictures, good articles and good topics, in the news items, did you knows and good article reviews all qualify, and bonus points are awarded for articles on important topics.

This year's contest was won by Courcelles (submissions), largely on the back of good articles on nations competing in the Olympic Games. Second was Kosack (submissions), who focused on footballers particularly from Cardiff City. Third-placed Kees08 (submissions) mainly scored by improving content on astronauts and the space programme. In fourth place was SounderBruce (submissions), who concentrated on articles relating to the state of Washington, and fifth-placed Cas Liber (submissions) created a range of featured content encompassing astronomy, fungi, plants, and birds.

Altogether, during the course of the ten-month competition, contestants achieved 28 FAs, 18 FLs, 463 GAs, 72 GTs, 210 DYKs, 46 ITN items and 644 GA reviews. Participants who improved featured content helped by reviewing the nominations of others, and the number of good article reviews done greatly exceeded the number of good articles for which points were claimed, and this will have contributed towards reducing the backlog of articles awaiting GA review. The number of DYKs averaged fewer than one a day, so it did not clog up the DYK process as has sometimes been claimed. The next WikiCup will start on January 1st 2019, and anyone who wishes to join in can sign up here.

• The Mediation Committee was closed down on 13 November and marked as historical. Following a debate at the Village Pump proposed by Beeblebrox, the 'ayes' have it at 38 to 13, leaving some tweaks to snippets of text here and there to be updated to reflect the consensus. See also this issue's Discussion Report.
• New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this week's newest Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network, AfroCROWD User Group, and Muj(lh)eres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia
• Special user group notice The Affiliations Committee is accepting applications for new members. Members of this organization determine which community groups should get Wikimedia affiliate status and the benefits that come with that. See details and apply at meta:Affiliations Committee/Candidates/December 2018.
• Worst year ever for new administrators: In this last issue of The Signpost for 2018, we note that there have been fewer than ever successful RfAs, only 9 this year versus an all-time low of 16 the year before last. We won't beat the drum on this any further, but you can read various op-eds on the subject in our archives including a January 2017 News and notes report in which Kudpung prophesied last year's bump to be a "flash in the pan due to the hard work of those who scour the land for possible candidates".
  • Three administrators were desysopped on 1 November in accordance with the admin inactivity policy.
  • One administrator resigned their tools due to heavy commitments in real life.

Dr. Raymond Ward Arritt, who we knew as Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (formerly Raymond arritt), a valued member of the community since 2006, died suddenly on November 14; his last edit was shortly before. Just a sampling of the comments left on his talkpage in the wake of his passing include:

"We lost a friend ... in a rough situation, he was the one to bring me back to serenity." – Gerda Arendt

"His wit is scattered on the pages of WP. Together with his article contributions, they make for a cool monument to him." – Simon Adler

"Ray was one of the best people here. Whenever I saw he'd posted somewhere, I knew it was going to be insightful, or funny, or both." – Floquenbeam

"Absolutely one of the best people here. And people aren't just saying that now. We knew it the whole time." – Swarm

"His guidance in improving and motivating my writing and teaching will forever be appreciated. And his sense of humor, as displayed on this site, shone through in person as well." – Jason Patton

"One of the kindest yet straightest-shooters among us." – Jytdog

"One of my favorite people, which is an odd thing to say about someone whom I never met in person and only interacted with in the context of this website. He was smart, insightful, humane, and funny, and most of all I valued his sense of perspective" – MastCell

"Raymond has made a substantial contribution [to Wikipedia] and to the world at large, for which we can all be grateful and from which we can take inspiration." – EdChem

Since his death, volunteer Wikipedians have created a new article, Raymond Arritt, where readers can find out more about him, including his involvement in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

DiplomatTesterMan takes us on a journey of a new user on Wikipedia, told in their own words. You will read about what the user has been up to here so far, about how the motivations to keep editing have changed over time, what the user thinks of Wikipedia now and some deliberation on what the future aims could be. The user tries to keep it humorous (Wikipedia:Humor) here and there, so bear with them, from the pie at the beginning right till the prayer at the very end. So let's begin...

With a global edit count reaching 3,000, and with 2,641 edits on Wikipedia, I still consider myself a newbie here. On my user page my first line still stays "I am still getting the hang of Wikipedia" and I think that’s gonna stay there now, forever, as a memory to remind myself what it was like to be a newer newbie with around just 50–60 edits ten months ago. (Yes yes edit counts matter, see Wikipedia:Edits Per Day & WP:EDITCOUNT [quality + quantity] hence all the numbers! :P) And I am also a noob since I joined after 2000AD according to Wikipedia:Please bite the newbies.

Wikipedia is an amazing example of collaborative human effort that everyone can be a part of. All Wikipedians know this, but hearing this from just one more person reaffirms the thought, always.

• The Wikipedia community at large has amazing people and amazing editors, even if some love to create sock puppets and pick on each other every now and then.
• Personal motivations to edit Wikipedia will keep changing for a young user like me.
• Editing Wikipedia is a thankless job most of the time (WP:THANKLESS) This is where the community aspect that happens behind the scenes makes a difference in the long run. Simple things like sending "thanks" do work in cheering up people (WP:THANKS,WP:THANKYOU) (I guess psychologists use the term instant gratification for this, a more relatable example maybe would be cat pictures for others, oh the joy!)
• But at the end of the day, Wikipedia does not need you aka "Get over it". If you think Wikipedia owes you something for the stress of editing articles, then no. Read this: Wikistress for getting the facts into your head such as "that you're just getting sucked into a scheme to line Jimbo's pockets" just to feel even more depressed :D :D
• If you think you're the only one cribbing about how flawed Wikipedia is, you haven't seen sites such as Wikipediocracy.
• Wikipedia has more strengths than flaws. The strengths clearly outweigh the faults (only if you are an optimist and you keep your own ego in check, or you like pie).
• The parts of Wikipedia that are transparent are the best parts: being able to see page histories, user histories, talk pages, being able to see how decisions are being made, being able to see whether the core principles of Wikipedia really are honourable or just the biggest Wikipedia hoaxes of all. :D
• Take a break from Wikipedia when your stress goes up. (WP:ENJOY) It helps. Being on Wikipedia should be rewarding, and shouldn't feel blood sucking or even worse, soul sucking! WikiVampire Slayers needed.
• I now have a reason to pray and believe in God... to pray that Wikipedia doesn't implode or explode anytime in the near future. I am young and am so curious related to how Wikipedia will have evolved say after fifty years. (WP:ARMAGEDDON, LOL wiki essays cover it all, WP:TOOMANYESSAYS, stop, no more..... WP:FUCKIT)

On a more serious note, this year I have been consistent on Wikipedia and have managed to create 43 new articles in main space, all which still need improvement, some closer than others to "GA" status such as Delhi War Cemetery. Just recently Cwmhiraeth accepted my first DYK submission for a page I initiated and expanded: National Police Memorial (India). (The day I found out that this memorial had just been revamped and was open to public again, I actually rushed out in the morning to take pictures with my mobile phone just so that I could put it onto Wikipedia! Newbies huh!) Then I voted like a diligent Wikipedian in the Arbitration Committee Elections December 2018 and learnt of Isarra's pie diplomacy. At another level I have got into arguments with users and sock puppets here and there, but now looking back, I was at fault most of the time (WP:CLUELESS, WP:FALLIBLE) and have learnt a lot from the encouragement and guidance of various experienced editors here such as DBigXray, Kautilya3, Vanamonde, Adamgerber80 and so many others.

My first burst of motivation to start editing Wikipedia was related to creating a new article which wasn't there on Wikipedia in 2013. I had noticed that Wikipedia always kept popping up in my Google search results, somehow always managing to appear right at the top of the search results and I felt that this organisation "deserved" to have a page of its own. After a gap of four years the next burst of motivation came when I realised that some of my teachers in college were blatantly picking up matter from the lead of Wikipedia articles word for word and using it as a class presentation without any reference to where that information came from; and just to rub in their laziness even more, the final nail was when a teacher came to me asking if I could collect some matter on interpretative journalism. I soon found that probably the only reason the teacher said that was because Wikipedia didn't have a page on it at the time, which I then created.

Over time my motivations to continue editing Wikipedia have changed, one of the grandest being wanting to learn the secrets that hold the Wikipedia universe together. I wanted to understand who made the gel that keeps the hair straight and sexy, I wanted to understand the hukana to the matata, to understand who is the wife here and who is the husband and who are just the angry neighbours next door. I wanted to understand why Wikipedia editors are volunteers when the joker has clearly told us not to work for free. But trying to understand the secrets of Wikipedia and how it works was in a way like Master Po's revelation in Kung Fu Panda, when he is told there is no secret, there are no secret ingredients.

Another burst of motivation spread from knowing that edits I was making and pages I was initiating on Wikipedia were being viewed by many many people. Just how many I wondered so I even checked once – over 1.2 million views at the time of counting in August 2018. This was mainly because of Satyameva Jayate which already has crossed 2 million page views in just a few months. Now pageviews do not give me the same motivation as it did before. Pageviews also aren't a good way to decide whether to contribute to a particular page or not in the long run. This hunger for pageviews and recognition also resulted in a classic example of 'Wikipedia:Most ideas are bad' as depicted in the picture.

Aims of mine in the future include:

• Not letting my mainspace contribution fall below 60% (As if that's going to happen)
• Help improve existing articles. (And forgetting about whether this is a never ending process or not. BTW, it is never ending)
• Contribute and help out at The Signpost more!
• Deletion percentage of articles I create needs to reduce and accordingly get a couple of other tags such as autopatrolled and NPR
• Work on idea suggested at Idea Lab
• I am an Indian Wikipedia user living in India. Utilise this to your advantage!
• umm...
• Help out new editors, they may just be a WikiDodo
• Figure out whether a user is better off staying anonymous or revealing a real identity on the userpage in brief? (WP:ANONYMOUS, WP:BLESSING, WP:ANONYOVERUSE)
• Keep sleepwalking the basements of Wikipedia for pages such as Wikipedia:Esperanza, WP:SPIDERMAN and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an MMORPG

(From most serious to least serious, for those who didn't get it. I guess that is the beauty of the humour here too, that the humour is also crowd-sourced from around the world)

As I close this article here,

I request all citizens of Wikiville to please bow your heads in prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the pages I cannot edit,

The courage to edit the pages I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

(Source: WP:HOLIC; adapted from The Serenity Prayer)^[1]

Amen.

A major carrot-teristic of our favorite orange vegetable (sorry pumpkins) is their affectionate nature. Don't be fooled. Just like the smiling family pit bull, they will eventually turn on you. While this underground root can be oddly shaped, others are heralded for their amusing appearance for obvious reasons. Carrots can kill.^[1]