The top spot is taken by a nuclear disaster whose story is currently being told by HBO, who in the meantime contrasted the atomic plant going out with a bang by finishing their biggest hit show with whimper (#4, #5). On television there is also Netflix providing material on a serial killer (#8). From TV to movies, Disney getting heaps of money (#3) out of superheroes (#2) and cartoon remakes (#10), and lesser studios also making profits out of a killer (#7, #9). Closing it off, India went en masse to elect their parliament (#8).

For the week of May 19 to 25, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	About
1	Chernobyl disaster		2,063,994		In 1986, a Soviet nuclear plant had one of its reactors explode, spreading radiation all over Europe and creating enough of a disaster that only the 2011 post-tsunami meltdown in Japan managed to match it. Both the accident at Chernobyl and the contamination cleanup efforts are currently dramatized in an eponymous HBO miniseries (#14).
2	Avengers: Endgame		2,022,223		The culmination of the previous 21 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies finally leaves the top slot after a month in the lead. Viewer interest is still pretty high, which should be clear by both the high position and how much money Endgame is making, as it's behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the US and Avatar worldwide. Speaking of that...
3	List of highest-grossing films		1,746,719		The above entry continues to move closer and closer to finally ending the reign of Avatar (just to show much a phenomenon a movie must be to earn $2.7 billion, no matter if tickets are more expensive now). And maybe our #10 will soon join this list, given there are three of those Disney remakes in the top 50?
4	Game of Thrones (season 8)		1,717,867		"And now my watch is ended." The series finale became the most seen HBO telecast ever. Most of whom were certainly frustrated at what D. B. Weiss and David Benioff (pictured) gave them: on the good side, it wasn't a bleak and depressing gut punch like quite a few GoT episodes; on the bad side, it was a succession of anti-climactic moments that basically felt like a filmed book epilogue. Previous television sensation Lost, whose conclusion was also a point of contention, at least moved me when I watched it. And so Game of Thrones, along with being the biggest show of the decade, also joins fellow 2010s productions Dexter and How I Met Your Mother in the "are you seriously ending with that?" category.
5	Game of Thrones		1,600,763
6	2019 Indian general election		1,399,845		The biggest election ever, given a 67% voter turnout translates into 600 million people casting their ballots. No wonder India managed the seemingly impossible: kicked the Deaths in 2019 page out of the report, given six of the involved political parties entered the Top 25.
7	John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum		1,054,267		The franchise where seemingly everyone either has connections to a secret guild of assassins or doesn't care at the people being slaughtered next to them returns, and seeing Keanu Reeves (#9) killing people left and right is still fun as hell. Critics and viewers agree.
8	Ted Bundy		1,010,258		In-between entries regarding a fictional assassin, a very real serial killer who has both a non-fiction miniseries and a dramatized biopic on him on Netflix.
9	Keanu Reeves		961,787		The star of our #7, who will also have a voice acting gig this June in Toy Story 4, and whose slow aging probably means there is a painting of a decayed Keanu hidden in his house.
10	Aladdin (2019 film)		911,300		Ever since Alice in Wonderland made a billion in the box office (it's still 36th in the list on #3!), Disney has decided to not hold back on taking their animated classics and remaking them with actors. The latest one is Guy Ritchie's Aladdin, based on a film released the same 1992 where lead actor Mena Massoud was born and new Genie Will Smith was still just the Fresh Prince (his first movie came out one year later). Reviews were mixed - and as someone who likes the original enough to make a Good Article out of it, this here writer was entertained but had objections to many of the additions\changes to make the movie longer - yet audiences didn't care as the movie already opened atop the box office with a $95 million gross.

Liverpool won the Champions League. This is not on the report (I suppose it is old news when you have done something six times), but I'll be damned if I don't mention it. You're honestly lucky that every entry is not just me talking about the squad, to be frank. Anyway, apparently some other stuff happened in the past week, and some of it is below. Enjoy.

Without further ado, for the week of May 26 to June 1, 2019 the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Chernobyl disaster		2,903,001		As documented in #3, on 26 April 1986, during a supposedly routine test on reactor no. 4, the worst nuclear meltdown in the history of mankind occurred at the Chernobyl power plant, with a simulated power outage (and related lack of circulating coolant) leading to an uncontrolled chain reaction and explosion. Radioactive material was released and precipitated over much of the Soviet Union and Europe, leading to thousands of deaths, the establishment of an exclusion zone, and the complete abandonment of a city.
2	Avengers: Endgame		1,529,550		You know what this is, even if you are one of the few who haven't witnessed the follow-up to the Snappening. The culmination of eleven years of movies has utterly dominated the pop culture of the past few weeks, and will likely persevere on the report for some more weeks to come.
3	Chernobyl (miniseries)		1,293,067		Following the disappointing conclusion to Game of Thrones, many at HBO likely feared for their subscription numbers. Luckily, while their fantasy flagship was hitting every script-writing iceberg, it was also airing a fascinating and intricate miniseries investigating the nuclear meltdown of reactor 4 some 33 years ago. The series has evidently captivated Wikipedians and other internet denizens alike, as it now sits atop IMDb's list of highest rated TV shows.
4	Aladdin (2019 film)		1,253,745		Unless your genie can do this, I am not interested.
5	List of highest-grossing films		1,124,486		Ever since the gargantuan opening weekend of #2, hordes of people have clamoured to watch the progression of the Earth's Mightiest Heroes up the list, with many hoping the film could best the box office exploits of Avatar a decade ago. It seems now that this is unlikely to happen, owing to the large amount of competition faced by Endgame, and that Jimmy C will continue to rule the list, as he has done for twenty-two years.
6	Naomi Scott		1,108,131		Previously best known as the Pink Power Ranger, Naomi Scott may just have found her breakthrough role following in the footsteps of Lea Salonga and introducing audiences to a whole new world as Princess Jasmine in the rebooted Aladdin, where she steals the show.
7	Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019 film)		1,086,049		Critics have largely lambasted Legendary's second swing at Japan's beloved radioactive lizard. Apparently, it focuses too much on spectacle, and on the various battles of the monsters. Not entirely sure what the critics were expecting, to be perfectly honest, but the film is supposedly visually stunning, and has appeased those in the fanbase who wanted to see monstrous mayhem following the distinct lack of Godzilla in the previous entry to the series. Next on the titan's menu is a certain ape.
8	Kawhi Leonard		872,214		I don't particularly follow the NBA, but even I have heard about the tale of Toronto's hero, who scored a buzzer beater to triumph over the 76ers en route to the Finals, and has continued a resurgence of form, accumulating scores of points both against the Bucks and the Warriors as the Raptors charge towards an illustrious title.
9	Beauty Revealed		801,549		An unexpected (and perhaps slightly NSFW) entry into the report comes courtesy of the fine people of r/todayilearned. The 1828 painting (pictured) by Sarah Goodridge and given to her friend Daniel Webster was considered by TIL to be one of the first cases of sending nudes, hitherto erroneously thought by many to be a modern phenomenon.
10	Keanu Reeves		752,428		One of the internet's favourite actors, Keanu's incredibly personable nature and devotion to his roles has endeared him to the masses. Recently, his career has been rejuvenated by his starting turn as John Wick, where he has justifiably received ample plaudits for his expert execution of the gun fu ballet vision of Chad Stahelski.

The report might be about new events that are bringing in reader interest, but the subjects are mostly very old. The most represented decade are the 1980s: a nuclear disaster from 1986 (#1, #6); a crime from 1989 (#2, #7), plus a boxer from that year (#3); and a movie adapting a comic from 1980 (#5). Also on movies, there's an action star already into his fifties (#10), and superheroes that can go as far back as 1941 (#8) while making loads of cash (#9). And there's an historical event from 1944 (#4)!

Without further ado, for the week of June 2 to 8, 2019 the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Chernobyl disaster		3,194,812		HBO just finished a miniseries (#6) about the worst nuclear incident ever, where a simulated power outage instead lead to an explosion in the Chernobyl power plant, spreading radiation across Europe and killing thousands. And yet the show has turned the Exclusion Zone into a hot tourist attraction.
2	Central Park jogger case		2,641,123		From a continental tragedy to a localized one, as back in 1989 Trisha Meili (pictured) ran some laps in Central Park before being assaulted and raped to the point of being left in a coma for 12 days. The lives of the five men accused of the crime, all of whom had to spend time in prison without actually being guilty, were documented in a Netflix miniseries (#7).
3	Andy Ruiz Jr.		1,605,524		The new unified boxing heavyweight champion, having just defeated Anthony Joshua (#11) in an upset many compared to Mike Tyson's first loss.
4	Normandy landings		1,440,387		How long, on this longest day, 'Till we finally make it through? June 6 marked 75 years since D-Day, which helped the Allies turn the tides over in World War II and has been eternized by two movies, The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan (the latter of whom is my favorite movie and could be counted among the victims of Harvey Weinstein).
5	Dark Phoenix (film)		1,437,421		In 2006, The Dark Phoenix Saga was partially adapted in the contentious but financially successful X-Men: The Last Stand. 13 years later, the X-Men films have another go at it, with Sophie Turner's Jean Grey getting cosmic-level powers through the Phoenix Force in the franchise's last salvo - aside from an already delayed movie that got pushed to next year - before the Mutants are engulfed into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Critics didn't like it (this here writer thought it was OK, no matter if it wasn't anywhere as good as Logan), and box office is slow, with Dark Phoenix being topped at the weekend ranking by The Secret Life of Pets 2 (though international numbers were better).
6	Chernobyl (miniseries)		1,293,067		The miniseries telling the story of the 1980s incidents topping this list, one for HBO by Craig Mazin (who knew the guy behind dumb comedies such as Superhero Movie had a more serious interest?) and a Netflix one by Ava DuVernay (a quick rebound following the mess that was A Wrinkle in Time).
7	When They See Us		1,277,071
8	Avengers: Endgame		1,273,295		It's been nearly two months since Marvel Studios took the world by storm with the epic conclusion to 11 years of superhero movies, making $1 billion in one weekend and two by the following week. And yet what seemed to be poised to finally take down Avatar as the highest-grossing movie ever might need to settle for second place, given blockbuster season is slowing down the money made by Endgame to the point the $50-60 million necessary seem like a tall order. Not that distributor Disney is complaining, specially as the previous Marvel movie also broke a billion, and the studio is bound to release many other potential candidates in amassing revenues with ten digits.
9	List of highest-grossing films		1,002,125
10	Keanu Reeves		947,092		Born in Lebanon, raised in Canada, with a name out of Hawaii... and in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Keanu also goes international in his stylish slaughter of people.

Wikipedia Calling to the faraway towns
Now movies (#3, #5, #7, #11, #20, #24) and the dead (#2 - who brought along #14 - #15, #25), are plenty when you come down
London calling, in the political world (#22, #23)
Come out to play in the grass, you boys (#9, #10, #13) and girls (#4)
Wikipedia calling, Chernobyl (#1, #17) and When They See Us (#6, #17)
Their stay up on the list hasn't yet bit the dust
Wikipedia calling, we got some assorted things
Google (#19), holidays (#8), nudes (#12), and people in the court (#16) and ring (#18)

I never felt so much alike alike alike. For the week of June 16 to 22, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Chernobyl disaster		1,728,190		For the fifth week in a row, the top article is the nuclear power plant explosion that happened back in 1986, currently documented by an HBO\Sky miniseries (#17).
2	Gloria Vanderbilt		1,492,191		A socialite who accomplished much in life - even before things such as becoming a fashion model and then designer and being the mother of Anderson Cooper, she was subject of a high-profile child custody trial - Mrs. Vanderbilt ("What's the use of worrying? What's the use of hurrying? What's the use of anything?") died at the age of 95.
3	Toy Story 4		1,464,897		The living toys that launched off Pixar's feature career return for another go at a grand finale: part three had them moving onto another owner (their lives there earned some fun shorts), and now there's another go at "feeling useless" as Sheriff Woody starts getting neglected. It's the same emotional entertainment that Pixar (almost) never fails to deliver, scored glowing reviews and scored a massive $118 million to open atop the box office (followed by the revival of another franchise based around a living doll, but one much less family friendly).
4	2019 FIFA Women's World Cup		993,457		Doesn't matter if the biggest winner of this tournament calls it "soccer", here we refer to it as football! And unfortunately the championship's all time top scorer Marta again fell short given that her team just got eliminated to France in a goal by Henry (oh no, not again). For all its love of the sport, Brazil has a tendency to neglect the females who play it, and the national team suffers as a result.
5	Keanu Reeves		979,420		It's been quite the summer for Keanu, who is killing people in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, showed up at E3 to reveal he's starring in a video game, and now voices a funny Evel Knievel-esque doll in our #3.
6	Central Park jogger case		970,560		If the 1986 tragedy told by HBO at #1 hasn't left the list, why shouldn't the 1989 one told by Netflix remain for another week as well?
7	Avengers: Endgame		890,592		Kevin Feige won't settle for second place in the list of highest-grossing films and just announced that the conclusion of the first 22 Marvel Studios productions will return to theaters with added scenes (extended cuts used to be something reserved for the Blu-Ray, but when it's about taking down Avatar, getting them earlier seems fair).
8	Juneteenth		823,109		On June nineteenth, 1865, Texas abolished slavery, two and a half years after they were supposed to. 46 states celebrate this late liberation as a holiday, also known as Emancipation Day.
9	Gary Woodland		816,782		After more than a decade as a professional, this golfer won his first major at the U.S. Open.
10	2019 Cricket World Cup		795,890		India's favorite sport (also beloved in England, who is hosting, and many of its former colonies) continues to have its quadrennial tournament pretty high on our list.

• 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.

In the Information Age, disinformation is all around us: photos in our encyclopedia meant to sell clothing, a spy possibly editing Wikipedia, company names that mean nothing, citogenesis. Is Wikipedia part of the solution or part of the problem?

• There's a lot Wikipedia can teach us about fighting disinformation in Wired discusses the case of Maria Butina – a Russian convicted in the United States of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of the Russian Federation – and how she possibly tried to edit the Wikipedia article about herself. Wired then compares the effectiveness of Wikipedia's methods to combat disinformation with the efforts of Facebook, YouTube, etc.
• The sad decline of the sensible company name in the Financial Times uses the "Wikipedia test" which asks whether finding out what a company actually does is easier to determine from its name, from its website, or from Wikipedia.
• 'The case of an iconic watch: how lazy writers and Wikipedia create and spread fake "facts"' a good case study of citogenesis from KSNV TV.
• DJBooth points out Wikipedia's errors in rap articles and how they spread across the internet.
• The battle for Craig Wright's Wikipedia page on Decrypt describes the Wiki-battle by possibly paid editors over the old, and likely irrelevant question of who is Satoshi Nakamoto.
• Using Wikipedia for medical research? What to watch for, American Medical Association includes a link to AMA Journal of Ethics How Should Clinicians Engage With Online Health Information?
• The New York Times crossword rewarded readers who know the answer to a tussle between Wikieditors. (7 letters starting with E)
• An edit war at Timothy Parker (puzzle designer) erupts according to Forbes after Parker is accused of plagiarizing crosswords from, among others, The New York Times.

In May 2019 The Signpost reported that The North Face, a global chain clothing store, paid their marketers to replace Wikipedia's photos of parks, mountains and other nature sites with their advertisements. Media coverage of the scandal continues.

• Of the dozens of articles covering the vandalism only Fast Company tells it exactly like it is: "This seemingly cheeky move is actually at the vanguard of a pernicious emerging movement that we’ll call asshole advertising."
• The North Face’s Wikipedia Stunt Goes South by law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips states "The North Face’s manipulation of Wikipedia images is a form of native advertising and may be subject to the FTC’s advertising disclosure requirements."
• Deseret News "If you want to market your product, don’t mess with Wikipedia to do it." We'd like to think so, but doesn't this kind of editing happen every day?
• Engadget states that "moderators and the site itself may have to be more prepared for surreptitious plugs like this, even if they're unlikely to happen again in the near future." How unlikely is that?
• Stephen Harrison on Slate gives a excellent summary of the hack itself, then focuses on a "highly meta" followup "a discussion taking place on Wikipedia about whether Wikipedia should include information within that subject’s Wikipedia article about how that subject covertly and unethically edited Wikipedia."
• A History of Brands Hacking Wikipedia in AdAge mentions Burger King, SeaWorld and NBC News and links to Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia.
• PR Week quotes Francis Ingham, director general of the Public Relations and Communications Association, who packs so much right and so much wrong into so few sentences. "It is absolutely and always wrong for PR practitioners to break the PRCA Code of Conduct by posting fake pictures or fake facts on Wikipedia. Sadly, it is also the case that Wikipedia’s procedures are opaque, confusing, and often self-defeating. While the organisation is correct to ask that its customers abide by its rules, it is completely at fault for ensuring that those rules remain quite frankly so strange and so confusing. Wikipedia would be a more reliable source of factual information if it engaged more constructively with those offering to provide those facts." So who is completely at fault?
• Outdoors emphasizes that TNF Brazil – a licensee, not a subsidiary – ran the program.
• Travel Weekly quotes TNF Brazil's CEO Fabricio Luzzi's initial statement “Our mission is to expand our frontiers so that our consumers can overcome their limits. With the ‘Top of Images’ project, we achieved our positioning and placed our products in a fully contextualised manner as items that go hand in hand with these destinations.”

• Video: The Wikipedia gender gap in the University of Washington's UW News

External videos
Exploring the gender gap in Wikipedia editors, 3:09, June 11, 2019, University of Washington

Rosiestep and FloNight appear in this video about UW research into the reasons for Wikipedia's gender gap. Rosiestep says "Amanda Menking and Wanda Pratt's work is important, so I was happy to participate in this project, and the follow-up video... I'd be interested in hearing feedback from members of the Wikimedia community as well as non-Wikimedians after they view the video."

• A Ridiculous Gender Bias On Wikipedia Is Finally Being Corrected on Refinery29 describes a women's football (soccer) project sponsored by Adidas. Bustle joins in with "Wikipedia Is Getting More Female Footballer Profiles, Thanks To This Much-Needed Initiative." The North Face could learn something from this.
• Male Wikipedia editors are deleting women, says Sandi Toksvig in The Times. Good try, but she gets a few facts wrong. "There are about 350,000 uber-volunteers and they tend . . . to be the same kind of guy . . . sitting in his pants. They are actively editing women out and women’s achievements are not being inputted."

• The Culture War Has Finally Come For Wikipedia is the first of many articles that will likely appear on the Fram-ban. It's got all the pieces in place, harassment, ArbCom, editor revolt, the WMF, though "culture war" seems a long stretch.
• Associations Now shows how linguists really know how to throw an editathon: “having snacks really helps.”
• Sacramento Report: The New Front in the SB 50 Battle Is Toni Atkins’ Wikipedia Page in the Voice of San Diego shows how California politicians know how to write an article, having money really helps.

For further coverage of Wikipedia in the news see List of articles about Wikipedia

For more than a decade, I have worked with clients of all kinds to help improve the quality of information about them on Wikipedia. I began by offering simple changes at my employer's behest, applying my experience as a volunteer, and later started my own digital marketing and PR firm, Beutler Ink, which counts Wikipedia engagement as one of its key services.

Given this background, readers may be surprised to learn that I am not a proponent of "paid editing" as such. I agree very much with editors concerned that COI editing poses a risk to Wikipedia's credibility and reputation for neutrality. That is not to say I've never edited client articles myself, but I have long preferred sticking to discussion pages, making suggestions for volunteer editors to consider on the merits. My last direct edit for a client was in late 2011.

When the Wikimedia Foundation announced its update to the Terms of Use prohibiting undisclosed paid editing in June 2014, I was a prominent advocate. Earlier that same month, I had helped to create a statement signed by ten major PR agencies committing to follow Wikipedia's rules, and I had already been publicly supportive of the WMF's decision.

From my perspective as a guideline-compliant COI editor, the Terms of Use change was the best endorsement that I could have asked for, and the dynamics surrounding disclosed paid editing have since improved. The COI guideline now recommends using the "request edit" template, and a small group of volunteers have largely kept up with the resulting queue.

But in another sense, both the Terms of Use change and PR agency statement that I led have fallen short. Though there is no reliable estimate for how much undisclosed paid editing occurs, it obviously remains a problem. Even Wiki-PR, the company whose undisclosed sock puppet operation inspired both initiatives, simply rebranded as Status Labs and kept right on going.

Indeed, undisclosed paid editing is notoriously difficult to detect and impossible to stamp out entirely. Despite the valiant efforts of volunteers on the COI Noticeboard, it's long seemed clear to me that the whack-a-mole approach is not a solution, but a stopgap.

What should be done now? I am careful to offer suggestions, as I realize some Wikipedia volunteers disapprove even of the disclosed, hands-off style of Wikipedia engagement that I specialize in. Caveat in place, I have years of experience with this topic, and strongly believe there are actionable steps the community and WMF can take to create meaningful change.

First, I believe that many COI contributors do not intentionally set out to break Wikipedia's rules. The problem is that they know little about the rules if they even know they exist, and certainly don't know how to follow them. Of course there will always be bad actors, especially those who view Wikipedia from a purely SEO perspective—*cough* The North Face *cough*—so the COI Noticeboard's role is assuredly safe.

Second, it's a mistake to think COI contributors will ever learn to engage with Wikipedia exactly as the community would like. The rising number of queries on the edit request queue proves that the interest is there, but it's simply too difficult for most outsiders to learn how to ask effective questions. Unfortunately, too many of these requests are TLDR or have unrealistic goals. This wastes volunteer time, and doesn't resolve the underlying issues.

The current edit request system, wherein someone with a COI posts a message on a talk page, affixes a template, and the request goes into a queue for a volunteer to consider at an unknown date according to unspecified criteria, is confusing to uninitiated outsiders and frankly not even that user-friendly for experienced volunteers.

Making matters worse, Wikipedia currently maintains approximately a dozen pages that serve as a possible starting point for advice to COI contributors. Should one follow the "Plain and simple conflict of interest guide" or "Best practices for editors with close associations" or "Suggestions for COI compliance"? Who's to say?

To improve the situation, Wikipedia should simplify the process and meet outsiders halfway. And to be effective, the solution will have to look less like a Wikipedia project page and more like a customer feedback form.

At the very least, the public-facing advice pages should be streamlined and the edit request system turned into a full-fledged WikiProject. Another solution might be the development of a "wizard" tool asking COI contributors to fill out input fields explaining their issue or problem, proposing a solution, and providing links to journalistic sources.

A predictable and transparent process would be helpful not just to COI contributors with realistic goals, but perhaps even more so to those whose requests cannot be satisfied. For them, simply feeling that they were heard and the system worked, even if it didn't achieve the desired result, may soften the blow and reduce the likelihood they will turn to the dark side.

Since amending the Terms of Use, the WMF has mostly shied away from COI topics, yet it still has a role to play here. After all, the WMF is used to working with outside organizations in a way that individual Wikipedians are not. It could appoint a small team to help the community evolve the process, and be a powerful voice to recommend its adoption to the broader public.

Finally, although the PR industry and communications field is no monolith, and the types of COI actors are as varied as the Wikipedia pages that concern them, I can vouch that there is considerable demand for an accessible, reliable means of interfacing with Wikipedia.

Wary as Wikipedians may be to normalize or publicize the fact that outside interests can influence Wikipedia, there's little to be gained by avoiding the obvious. And as much as I agree that direct paid editing is problematic, I hope I can persuade skeptical volunteers that a well-organized system for reviewing and adjudicating COI requests can be part of the solution.

In response to the WMF's ban of Fram, in protest to the responses of others, and for other reasons, a record number of administrators, bureaucrats, and functionaries have resigned in the last few weeks. As of 20:05, 30 June 2019 (UTC), the following administrators have resigned:

Many of these users also published personal statements on their user talk pages explaining their actions.

Furthermore, Flyguy649, Moink, and Syrthiss were desysopped for inactivity, and Od Mishehu and Rama were desysopped by the Arbitration committee.

English Wikipedia currently has 1,146 administrators. The Signpost routinely reports the coming and going of administrators and community discussions related to the institution. English Wikipedia itself has an article on Wikipedia administrators. The decline of the number of administrators sometimes inspires predictions of the end of Wikipedia among both Wikimedia community members and mainstream media sources as documented in that Wikipedia article. In general, the Wikipedia community expresses gratitude to get even a single new administrator and remarks on the departure of every individual who leaves the role.

Wikimedia Thailand became a Wikimedia chapter on 14 June 2019 through a resolution by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and on the recommendation of the Affiliations Committee. Previously the organization was designated as a Wikimedia User Group in the system of Wikimedia Movement Affiliates. In that scheme, groups of 10 people can register a user group, and if their organization grows in participation, administration, and impact, then it may commit to additional responsibility and become a chapter in recognition of Wikimedia community trust and as a prerequisite for access to greater funding.

The difference between a chapter and a usergroup is not entirely documented. In general, user groups have smaller membership, make few reporting commitments, and receive little or no organization funding from the Wikimedia Foundation Grants program. In contrast, chapters demonstrate stability in administration and reporting and usually seek funding through either the Funds Dissemination Committee's Annual Plan Grant process or the Simple Annual Plan Grant process.

The last time a Wikimedia user group became a chapter was in April 2019 when Wikimedia Korea got recognition. Before that, Wikimedia Belgium became a chapter by an October 2014 resolution.

The promotion of Wikimedia Thailand is part of a plan for Wikimedia development in the region, including Thailand hosting the 2020 Wikimania conference. Available information on Thailand at this conference is at meta:Talk:Wikimania 2020. Thailand seems to have not published a Wikimania proposal and perhaps the Wikimania Foundation is assisting in the organization of the event. Organizations which made proposals or bids in the public process were Armenia, Perth, and Indonesia.

• Following an RfC, a new noticeboard, the current events noticeboard, was created.
• Wikipedia:Office actions has been relabeled from a procedural policy to an information page.

WikiJournals are an experiment applying scholarly peer review to improve Wikimedia content. From professors to students, all authors are treated the same. Their work is sent out to experts in the topic for comments, criticism and recommendations. Articles that pass through this process are published as citable 'versions of record', assigned a DOI, formatted up into a PDF as a permanent read-only version separate from any associated Wikipedia article, and indexed like articles in other science journals in the major scholarly databases.

Started in 2012 with the medical journal (WikiJMed), the group has expanded to include two additional sister journals that cover science, technology, engineering, and mathematics topics (WikiJSci) and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences topics (WikiJHum). WikiJournals were profiled in The Signpost back in 2016 and in 2017, with similar projects mentioned in 2012 and in 2014.

Many WikiJournal articles become Wikipedia pages - some written from scratch (e.g. a two-sentence stub expanded into a full article), and some submitted straight from Wikipedia (e.g. Rosetta Stone). As well as these articles that can form Wikipedia pages (or sections of pages, e.g. table of pediatric medical conditions and findings named after foods), the WikiJournals have also published original research (e.g. A card game for Bell's theorem and its loopholes), medical case studies (e.g. acute gastrointestinal bleeding from a chronic cause: a teaching case report), images and galleries (e.g. cell disassembly during apoptosis and medical gallery of Blausen Medical).

The journals use a radical form of academic publishing - they are free both for readers and for authors (an extreme rarity in the academic world). Other journals are paid for either by their readers, who subscribe to a journal or belong to an institution like a university or a library which pays a subscription, or by their authors, who are obliged by open access journals to pay for the cost of review and publication. With the WikiJournal model, open access publishing becomes affordable for all authors, including researchers from less wealthy countries, early career researchers, and even students.

Not only that, but parts of the academic publishing process that are usually done behind closed doors are also published openly, such as peer reviewer comments and author responses. Indeed, more than 75% of WikiJournal peer reviewers choose to forgo anonymity, reviewing openly under their names. Even much of the journal's organisation and planning is done publicly: for example the assessment of whether the journals will be Plan S-compliant (here), and indexing applications for Free Journal Network (here), ASAPBio ReimagineReview (here), or SCOPUS (here).

The WikiJournal format is a good way of getting outside expert feedback on existing Wikimedia content (as peer reviewers), as well as attracting contributions from academics who'd otherwise have been unlikely to contribute (as authors). At scale, a more developed platform could even improve knowledge equity by lowering the cost and technical barriers to academic publishing.

Within the wiki ecosystem, these have a number of unusual features. Firstly, peer reviewers are specially contacted based on their expertise, so often it is their first ever contribution to a Wikimedia project. There is also a large amount of partnership with outside organisations. The journals' publication ethics statement has been audited by the Committee on Publication Ethics. There is also thorough vetting in order to be added to included in academic indexes (e.g. the Directory of Open Access Journals).

The WikiJournal model aims to be complementary to Wikipedia's existing Featured article and Good article review systems. These systems involve review by an editor (in the case of GA) or 5-15 editors (in the case of FA) who are not necessarily subject-specialists, but implement extensive criteria checklists to assess citations, comprehensiveness, and readability. A WikiJournal review is more formal, in that the journal editors invite external experts in the field, who may review anonymously if they wish, and the decision to accept is made by the editors on the basis of those reviewers' comments and author responses. Another major difference is that the reviewed article is then stable; its text may well be used to update the corresponding Wikipedia article, but even if the Wikipedia article drifts away from the reviewed version, the journal article's text remains as the reviewed, approved and citable WikiJournal version. New versions can be made but have to remain as preprints until they've been peer reviewed and assigned an updated DOI. This may be particularly useful for attracting additional contributors for some of the high/top importance stubs, articles in need of expert attention, or articles in need of rewriting.

2018/19 has seen particular growth, with the creation of WikiJSci and WikiJHum and expansion of WikiJMed to bring the joint editorial boards up to 63. In 2018, of the 27 articles submitted, 9 were published, 3 were declined, and 1 was withdrawn from consideration. The turnaround time still varies pretty widely, but is improving. Readership from DOI-clicks is reaching levels typical of academic journals (800 per article) and is increasing. Journal articles that have been incorporated into Wikipedia unsurprisingly dwarf this readership, at 4.2 million during 2018 (WikiJMed, WikiJSci, WikiJHum).

So what're the plans for the future? Well, one major question is whether it is beneficial for the initiative to become a full sister project. Please take a look and comment in the discussion section.

Proposal: WikiJournals as a new sister project

This would entail new technical features better suited to the journals' workflow, their own dedicated website, and increased visibility and support from the WMF.

The journals also aim to stay agile and experimental, looking at new ways to tackle peer review, assessment, community engagement and integration with other Wikimedia projects. Perhaps closer partnerships can be formed with existing academic journals to help find reviewers. The platform could even compete with non-free platforms like Google Scholar and ResearchGate by integrating multiple free services like Scholia academic profiles, Wikicite's bibliographic indexing, the machine reading of ContentMine or hosting for author self-archived 'green open access' articles through commons/wikisource.