• CBS broadcast a remarkable story on Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19. It was not just a repeat of the laudatory coverage Wikipedia received from other news outlets in the early months of the pandemic. Trustee James Heilman, aka Doc James, stated that the only proven way to control COVID-19 was through social distancing. He added "I do not recommend people trust Wikipedia blindly ... doing so would be silly. Yet, you know, people shouldn't trust other sources of information blindly, either." Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight said the Wikipedia editors were "like a learning machine," and explained the importance of references. Foundation CEO and Executive Director Katherine Maher outlined why people want to influence Wikipedia. "Knowledge is power. And that means that it is fundamentally disruptive, often to those in power. If you think about the history of what Wikipedia is, it's actually pretty radical... I mean, that it is an inversion of power structures, this idea that information can and should be available to all."

• Future Historians Will Rely on Wikipedia’s COVID-19 Coverage in Slate by Stephen Harrison, shows how Facebook and other social media platforms erase, rather than just remove, debunked propaganda and entries from conspiracy theorists. The back and forth struggle involved with editing difficult articles on Wikipedia, however, is preserved, leading Harrison to conclude that Wikipedia will be a popular source for future historians to study how the pandemic was reported.

• Wikipedia sets new rule to combat “toxic behaviour” on the BBC, following a WMF press release, outlines how harassment and other abuse will be combated, especially as it affects women and LGBTQ editors. New policies will be finalized by the end of the year. The editing community quickly reacted with a discussion on the Village pump.
• The Verge gives more details of the board resolution, including that the new Universal Code of Conduct will be drawn up with extensive input from editors.

Despite promising to be "finished with Wikipedia criticism" in 2013 Larry Sanger's blog post of May 14 titled Wikipedia Is Badly Biased claims that "Wikipedia's NPOV is dead". "The notion that we should avoid 'false balance' is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy. As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science."

Fox News reported that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says online encyclopedia scrapped neutrality, favors lefty politics on May 22, giving an accurate summary of Sanger's blog post.

Gerard Baker, former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal wrote in The Times "Big tech is blatantly biased against Trump" (paywall), lumping in Wikipedia with all the big tech social media platforms, based on Sanger's blog.

A plague of faux nez (aka false noses or sockpuppets) has been reported by Le Monde in France as hundreds of accounts have been blocked by French Wikipedia admins for undeclared paid editing. Other coverage of the story is reported in Numerama, FranceInter, and La Reclame aka The Advertisement – all in French. The Signpost covers the story (in English) at News & notes.

Online magazine ZME Science highlighted the 5 most prolific contributors on enWiki as ranked on WP:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. ZME relied on information from user pages and other Wikipedia pages as well as on previously published interviews from other publications. The Signpost asked these editors for their reaction to the article and a few related questions. The prolific five are:

• Ser Amantio di Nicolao (3,538,835 edits as of May 26)

was widely covered in the press in 2018-2019 and feels that ZME got his story mostly right. But he no longer has the sideburns that show in the photo and he has changed his place of employment to another government agency. The quantity and quality of edits are both important in his opinion, but quantity is not the most important aspect of editing. Quantity of edits might be a good starting point in discussing what editors do, but "hopefully that can lead to a broader, richer, and deeper discussion of the Wikipedia experience." His favorite article contributions are Pohick Church, which recently was rated a Good Article, and Fanny Eckerlin, an Italian opera singer.

• Koavf (2,081,346 edits)

has also been widely covered in the press, starting in 2012 when he made his one-millionth edit. The information ZME presented was correct. "I really like the fact that they framed my contributions to the site in terms of something that anyone can do, which is what I believe. There are some things I have done that not everyone can do but nothing that only I could do and everyone can do something (including many things that I can't)." He and the other four editors at the top of the list have all had some contact, but nothing out of the ordinary. "All five of us are fairly different human beings who have at least one common interest." His favorite contributions were to the article George Orwell bibliography.

• BrownHairedGirl (1,860,409 edits)

was "saddened by the poor quality" of the article. The author "paid no attention to the caveat lector section of that page, which explains the multiple ways in which a high edit count is a poor indication of the value of an editor's contribution." She believes that all five editors' high edit counts are "due to a focus on repetitive maintenance work," but that writing articles and lists such as her creations James Balfour (died 1845), William Grant, Lord Grant, and List of women cabinet ministers of the Republic of Ireland add more to the encyclopedia than a similar number of maintenance edits.

• Rich Farmbrough (1,698,486 edits)

has had good interactions with all four of the other editors mentioned in the article. He considers quantity vs. quality to be a false dichotomy. Rather "many small pieces of quality versus fewer large pieces is a better question. And the truth is that it is easier to deliver some types of quality in small increments." His favorite contributions include Whittington's Longhouse and the Industrial Christian Home for Polygamous Wives.

• BD2412 (1,556,366 edits)

says that ZME accurately summed up his user page and that Wikipedia's "goal is quality, but in quantity". The five prolific editors are similar because "you have to be in a certain socioeconomic and educational space to be someone who has the time, the resources, and the motivation to rack up that number of edits, so we are all that." His favorite contribution by far is Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States. Other favorites include Scholar, Hesitation and Please.

• Wikipedia for personal insight: BBC shares a personal story in which a native Yiddish speaker in the United States learns about LGBT culture through a Hebrew-language Internet search which led to Wikipedia.
• Was the COVID-19 pandemic planned in January 2017 or 1917? FactCheck.org debunks the nut-case conspiracy theory that used screenshots from Wikipedia to a suggest a piece of legislation dealing with the response to the virus had been proposed well in advance of the pandemic. FactCheck states "All they show is a typo on Wikipedia and a misrepresentation of the bill’s legislative history."
• No personal attacks may be our policy, but that didn't stop a Chilliwack (Canada) school district trustee, Barry Neufeld, from citing "suspicions on Wikipedia" to deride a health official's gender as reported in Global News. He apparently referenced vandalism at Theresa Tam. Neufeld later apologized and there is now a Wikipedia article on him.
• Yes Deputy Chief Minister: The Pioneer reports that Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, suggests that everyone go read about Happiness Curriculum on Wikipedia. If you're happy and you know it, you get an A.
• Can a Virtual Edit-a-Thon make Wikipedia More Inclusive? asks Houstonia Magazine. Jaison Oliver organized an edit-a-thon via Zoom because of the pandemic. The brief answer is "yes."
• Representing the pretty criminals: The Cambrian News reports on our Wikimedian-in-residence at the National Library of Wales taking advantage of his spare time during the pandemic lockdown to upload the institution's archive of criminal mugshots to Commons.
• False alarm: In an analysis of fake news' effects on publicity in Africa, Andrew Christian of WeeTracker reviews how a misreported death on Rema (musician), despite being fixed in minutes, quickly spread across Nigerian social media. The Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that the incorrect edit was vandalism.
• Section 230: Slate carries Mike Godwin's op-ed The Trump–Twitter war shows that section 230 can work beautifully (May 29, 2020). Godwin is former Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and was counsel of record in the United States Supreme Court case Reno v. ACLU.

• Kremlin drops plans for state-approved Wikipedia: The Times (paywall) reports that the Russian government has scrapped plans to build an online encyclopedia based on the Great Russian Encyclopedia to replace Wikipedia in Russia. While no reason was given for the shutdown, The Times speculates that the collapse of oil prices and the Russian economic crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic have made the project too expensive. Earlier coverage this month (not paywalled) stated that the working group charged with creating the Russian online encyclopedia was disbanded but that project would continue. Boris Chernyshov, Chairman of the Duma Committee for education and science, called the idea of such an online encyclopedia impractical.
• "Worth Every Goddamn Second": The satirical newspaper The Onion gives a nice send-up to our article on Steven Seagal.
• "And this is where they saying it started?!": Hip-hop outlet SOHH discusses how rapper Cam'ron takes umbrage with the way our article on the phrase "No homo" credits him with popularizing its usage.

Commons announced the results of the 2019 Picture of the Year contest. Congratulations to all winners and thanks to everyone who participated by submitting images to Wikimedia Commons, by evaluating Featured Picture Candidates throughout the year, and by voting in the selection process.

French Wikipedians announced on May 27 that they had shut down more than 200 accounts that had conducted undisclosed paid editing. Eighty of these accounts are believed to belong to several French language PR firms who specialize in Wikipedia editing. Most of these firms have also been blocked on the English-language Wikipedia. The remaining 120 accounts are likely single-purpose accounts working at company PR departments, which only wish to edit the articles about their own firm.

They were caught after two French admins posed as customers and asked for examples of past work. In an interview with The Signpost admin Jules* said "We have uncovered dozens of undeclared paid accounts, abuse of sockpuppets, patent lies, promotional additions (often relatively subtle), ballot box stuffing in Pages to delete, etc." They had collectively made around 19,000 edits.

Jules* did not believe that contacting the firms directly without fully disclosing their intentions was an issue since they did not impersonate anybody and the firms they were investigating purposely broke Wikipedia's rules by sockpuppeting and refusing to declare their paid status on-Wiki.

The French investigation was first reported on the English Wikipedia on the COI noticeboard by Bri based on a tip to The Signpost and was soon acted upon by MER-C, an administrator with a long-term interest in combatting undeclared paid editing. He soon blocked 85 accounts on the English Wikipedia, 41 of which had made an edit here. Many of the edits were to pages for French companies, such as Air Liquide and Ardian.

In 2018 French Wikipedians started a semi-annual event called "Mois anti-pub" (Anti-advertising month) to neutralize promotional pages. The same year they started the Wikiproject Antipub to fight the use of Wikipedia as an advertising tool.

They have since found undeclared paid edits (UPEs) on French Wikipedia (see Par le passé), "but this month was the first time we found paid edits on this scale. It's a bit like our own Wiki-PR scandal" according to Jules*.

In early April this year the two French admins, Jules* and 0x010C, decided to contact "e-reputation agencies" posing as potential customers interested in creating a Wikipedia page for a real company where one of the admins worked. When they asked for a price estimate, they also asked for examples of the paid-editing firm's previous work.

Jules* stated that "Using those examples, I started researching the page histories of the clients reported by the agencies. I spent dozens of hours and found many accounts, used by several agencies, including agencies we had contacted and agencies we had not contacted. Almost all of these accounts had not disclosed their paid editing and many of them also used several sockpuppets."

He said that the paid-editing firms know Wikipedia's rules in detail, as well as ways to avoid following the rules without attracting attention. "For example, one agency said to us it was not possible to remove well-sourced negative content because 'moderators' would just revert the removal. Instead they proposed 'hiding' the negative content inside newly added positive content." Some paid editing companies, though, did try to remove well-sourced content.

Jules* and 0x010C published their work on May 27th at the French sysop noticeboard, with detailed results in the subpage. The subpage shows that the same editors edited English Wikipedia as well, as seen in the "crosswiki" column. The French community is now reviewing the paid content here.

The French newspaper of record Le Monde covered the scandal, and spoke with François Jeanne-Beylot, founder of the PR companies Inmediatic and Troover, who had his accounts blocked following the investigation. He offered (in French) a strained defense of his work, arguing that his firm was only training companies to contribute, and that the contributions were therefore not paid.

"I find it brutal to suspend accounts without trying to understand our approach", he said in French. "It is difficult to convince Wikipedia administrators that companies also have their place".

MER-C, for his part, was not surprised by the announcement. This "may jolt the French, but we've seen a lot worse" at English Wikipedia, he said. He is waiting for more developments from the French Wikipedia, though he hasn't as yet had contact with French admins. He wants to establish "a cross-wiki version of COIN as a paid-editing noticeboard. Cross-wiki UPE is becoming increasingly problematic and the approach taken to counter it is very piecemeal."

The May GOCE copy editing drive ended today, marking ten years of GOCE drives. Their backlog reached zero – the previous drive reduced the backlog by 75%, with this one reducing it a further 209 articles to end at 156 articles, all of which were tagged during May. To learn more about the GOCE's work, you can read last month's Wikiproject Report.

While this drive has not been particularly different from most others in terms of copyedited articles, it has seen many new members helping out – this month saw an large influx of new members and new users participating. The result of of this was double-sided – on the one hand, many new editors are learning the ropes of copyediting, which in the long run will lead to better progress and performance, but in the short run leads to more experienced copyeditors checking the newer work instead of copyediting articles themselves. The Guild is conducting their twice yearly coordinator elections this June – all editors in good standing are welcome to participate, voting starts mid-month. Another Guild event beginning mid-June is a week-long copyediting blitz, focused mainly on reducing the increasingly large number of articles on the Requests page. -- P²

• RfA dry spell ends: CaptainEek's hat thrown into the Requests for Adminship (RfA) ring marked the end of a 60-day absence of new candidates since March 5. According to research by The Signpost staff, only three months in the last decade had zero requests for adminship: March 2019, May 2019, and April 2020 – a reflection of the overall decline in RfA candidacies (see previous Signpost coverage). – B
• New administrators: Following CaptainEek's candidacy for administrator status, two other Wikipedia editors stood for consideration and passed. The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators,
  • CaptainEek, passed May 12
  • Cwmhiraeth, passed May 15
  • Creffett, passed May 17
• New user experience for newcomers being designed: The WMF Growth Team, which seeks to boost editor retention, has been piloting several features aimed at making it easier for newcomers to contribute on increasingly large Wikipedias in different languages. They are now seeking feedback on a prototype from English Wikipedia. The features include a newcomer homepage with links to resources, tasks, and positive reinforcement, as well as structured tasks, an algorithmically-generated feed of suggested newcomer-friendly edits. -Sdkb
• Wiki Education Foundation appoints new board members Wiki Education Foundation, best known for Wikipedia outreach to universities and their outreach management tool the Program & Events Dashboard, has appointed two new board members.
• New Wikimedia Sister Project proposal: While proposals for new projects come with regularity, it is unusual for one to get the discussion which Wikilambda is getting. Wikilambda promises a series of miracles including global templates which would work across Wikimedia projects. Support, oppose, or question this and other submissions in meta:Category:Open new project proposals. – B
• Introducing the Sports Wiki Visibility Project: A new organization has been created to promote the creation of content related to Ultimate Frisbee with special attention given to countering systemic bias. The tagline on the official website describes the project as "An effort to raise the visibility of folks from historically marginalized groups in ultimate and other sports, through Wikipedia pages." – Ib
• Letter to media platforms, Wikimedia Foundation cc'd: A group of journalism and research organizations led by Center for Democracy and Technology have sent an open letter to the representatives of various media platforms to preserve all instances of misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic that may have been otherwise deleted and archive it for future research. The Wikimedia Foundation is one recipient.
• Wikipedia editing levels back at 2010 levels. According to one simplistic, but correspondingly robust measure, Wikipedia editing is back at levels not normally seen since 2010. Wikipedia:Time Between Edits measures the time taken for each ten million edits, and the ten million done between April 9th and May 31st took just 52 days. Since 2010 there has only been one ten million interval faster than that, and that was during the move of intra wiki links to Wikidata – a process that involved millions of bot edits. Recent years seem to have stabilised at a million edits every six to six and a half days, so the lockdown period with its editing levels of a million edits every five days is a significant increase. 2020 isn't truly comparable to 2010, we have more edit filters since then to reject vandalism without logging an edit, the interwiki links and consequent (mostly) bot edits have moved to Wikidata, and some of the infobox edits have also gone to Wikidata; but The Signpost welcomes the new and returning editors involved in this increased activity. -WSC

Carmaker1 case was requested 17 April 2020; declined on 2 May.

Medicine case

• Workshop closed 12 May 2020
• Proposed decision posted 26 May 2020

Last month, The Signpost stated "many of the workshop proposals appear to favor letting the editors solve the content dispute on their own." An unprecedented "topic moratorium" was proposed by active Arbcom member David Fuchs.

One quarter of the twelve active arbitrators recused themselves: Casliber, DGG, and Newyorkbrad. Recusal is usually done when an arbitrator considers him- or herself unable to make an impartial decision, often due to closeness to the subject in either a positive or negative way, but there is no requirement to give a reason for recusal. The Signpost notes without comment that one of the involved parties, Doc James, was appointed as a community-selected Wikimedia Foundation trustee in August 2017.^[1]

Remedies proposed as of publication deadline include (reminders/admonishments have been omitted; a Y means the remedy has passed as of publication deadline):

• New discretionary sanctions topic: pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing broadly construed Y
• Topic moratorium (applied to community): to include prices only after development of local consensus
• Editing restriction (applied to Doc James): to not include prices in articles Y
• Topic ban (applied to QuackGuru): to not edit medicine articles Y

Jytdog case

• Closed 13 April 2020

Jytdog is indefinitely banned from the English Wikipedia. 11 yea, 0 nay (DGG recused). Issues identified in the findings include Jytdog's history of oversight blocks, Jytdog's other sanctions (two voluntary interaction restrictions/bans with another, and an indefinite topic ban), a history of edit warring and incivility, and uninvited off-wiki contact with another editor.

Due to the inclusion of the Op-Ed "Where Is Political Bias Taking Us?" by Atsme, we are taking the unusual step of reviewing an amendment request from several months ago. American politics 2 (AP2) discretionary sanctions were taken up by Arbitration Committee in a December 2019 amendment request. It was the twelfth request for amendment or clarification and perhaps is of special importance during this U.S. election year. In the December request, Atsme objected to unilateral actions based on [a specific administrator's] customized DS which has lead to POV creep and specific DS for specific editors as he sees fit. He is micromanaging AP2 and controlling the narrative.

Atsme said this month (May) to the administrator who had applied the discretionary sanctions to her under the aegis of AP2 (which were lifted in March), your response is why I have made it my mission to draw attention to the problems you and a few other admins have created with DS and AE, specifically unilateral actions, and the POV creep associated with sole discretion. Your response solidifies my position, and I will use it in my arguments until the community is aware of why this is an extremely important issue to the future of the project as it relates to maintaining NPOV, and the ability for editors to engage in discussions where the exchange of free thought and ideas is paramount. Other respondents at the December amendment request made observations about the expansion of DS to become "boutique" or "tailored" sanctions at the unreviewed discretion of a single administrator. Comments by two arbitrators either noted their own concerns or the concerns of others: DGG said Delegating [DS] to whatever one of the several hundred individual admins may choose to exercise their imagination is another matter entirely ... no one admin should repeatedly engage in arb enforcement on the same individual or take a disproportionate share for any large area, and GorillaWarfare said [T]his does not seem to be a great place to also address whether admins should be creating their own sets of custom sanctions for use in areas where discretionary sanctions have been authorized. However it does seem like it would be worth visiting that issue somewhere, since there seem to be many people who share concerns about them.

Correction: The original headline made it appear that the Medicine case decision was closed. Currently the votes for an editing restriction on Doc James stand at 7-0, with 5 votes needed to pass, and the votes for closing the case at 2-0, with a net +4 needed to close. We regret the error.