A Wiki Education course went awry last month when controversy over a deletion discussion spilled onto Twitter, leading to harassment of a 15-year-old editor. The course, Black Women and Popular Culture, was taught by Msia Kibona Clark. Clark, whose Wikipedia username is Mkibona, is an associate professor of African cultural and feminist studies at Howard University. As of press time, 12 out of the 24 articles linked on the course page are redlinks. One of those, about the activist organization Black Women Radicals (archive link), was nominated for deletion on December 13; it was deleted a week later, after a clear consensus formed that the group was not notable (editors also identified copyright violations and promotionalism issues).

During the nomination, Clark posted on Twitter "I don't know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving" the article, in a thread where she tagged the group's Twitter handle. The AfD nominator joined the Twitter conversation, identifying themselves, linking to the canvassing guideline, and stating "I am 100% not trying to erase anything cultural. I based my decisions on notability guidelines and what other editors said about the content."

Other users, including the Black Women Radicals account, responded with hostility, particularly after the editor revealed that they were 15 years old. @uchenna (Uchenna Kema) wrote "Delete your Wikipedia account and go to school". @moontomysea mockingly paraphrased their comments as "yes i erased your nigger page from wikipedia and if you talk about it the rules say we can ban you", commenting "they sure do make white fifteen year old kids bold now don't they". The Black Women Radicals account tweeted "It's a shame the ways Wikipedia (particularly its overwhelming[ly] white editors) gatekeep what is considered 'notable' enough to have a Wiki article. Most of the time, Black women's work is not considered 'notable' enough." They also shared a screenshot showing that the nominator had blocked them.

The nominator brought the matter to the Education Noticeboard, where they expressed intense distress. "I am now scared of what they will do next, if they'll follow me into other social media or even here to make attacks or potentially doxx me as an act of 'revenge'," they wrote. "Please help."

Many editors responded. Ian Ramjohn, the Senior Wikipedia Expert for WikiEd, wrote "I'm horrified at what has happened here" and communicated information about how Wikipedia operates to the group in replies on Twitter. Administrator Joe Roe pointed out that many non-Wikipedians on Twitter likely misunderstood the role of an editor to be "someone with special authority over Wikipedia content", rather than anyone who edits.

Clark explained and defended her actions in the noticeboard thread. "I initially only turned to my community on Twitter because I was frustrated, I was not being heard, and I didn't know what to do," she wrote. "I needed help getting resources and ideas for the article, as well as help navigating Wikipedia. I also needed support from my community because it is not a good feeling to feel like you're not being heard and to feel powerless to do anything about it." Regarding the nominator, she wrote "when he went on Twitter, identified himself, and continued with the tone of criticism and chastising that I had experienced on Wikipedia, I anticipated the reaction. I wish it had not happened, but it did not have to happen."

In a statement for WikiEd, LiAnna Davis (its chief programs officer and deputy director) wrote "I'm very sorry this situation has resulted in multiple people feeling harassed." However, the bulk of her statement focused on thanking Clark for her work trying to combat systemic bias on Wikipedia, reminding editors to assume good faith about her intentions in going to Twitter, and urging the community to take into account the "systemic bias in our sources" when assessing articles. Administrator Barkeep49 criticized this response, saying that WikiEd was responsible for "blasé handling of demonstrable harassment". Davis later clarified that "my post yesterday should have read 'being harassed', not 'feeling harassed'. My apologies for my poor wording choice." Discussion about WikiEd continued from there, with the harassment issues referred to WMF Trust and Safety for private handling.

African Americans are severely underrepresented among Wikipedia editors, according to a 2020 WMF survey, which found that they make up only 0.5% of American editors, despite being around 14% of the American population. There remain many content gaps in Wikipedia's coverage of Black history and culture.

The incident highlights the ongoing challenges faced by WikiEd's student editing program. Supporters argue that a few troublesome instances overshadow many quieter successes, point to its thorough training modules, and note that it helps bring in a more diverse group of editors. Detractors emphasize the disruption to the community from courses that produce problematic content and note that few students go on to make productive contributions after their course ends.

The incident also highlights the challenge of communicating Wikipedia's complex processes to unfamiliar audiences, especially in heated situations where people may be inclined to view community decisions through a political or ideological lens. Marginalized communities, in particular, may be reticent to assume good faith after having endured systemic discrimination. "The experience was hurtful for me and for my students who witnessed it," wrote Clark in the noticeboard thread.

A Call for Feedback on the upcoming Board of Trustees elections was launched by the Wikimedia Foundation and is open until 16 February 2022. Unlike previous Calls for Feedback, this discussion incorporates community feedback from 2021, replacing Board-suggested proposals with key questions from the Board of Trustees sourced from the feedback about the 2021 Board of Trustees election with the hope of inspiring collective conversation and collaborative proposal development. There are three questions regarding diverse representation, expectations for candidates, and affiliate participation. Interested editors can participate on Meta. – E

The Signpost special report "Administrator cadre continues to contract" in 2019 noted that the number of active administrators had dropped below 500 for the first time. Since then, the numbers have continued falling and have not risen above 500 in the last six months. Another milestone was set in September 2021: the number of active administrators was under 450 for most of the month. By January 1 this year, the number had "recovered" to 469. – B

When we last heard from the (non-recognized) Wikimedians of Mainland China User Group they were planning on creating a "hard fork" of zhwiki, the largest Chinese-language Wikipedia and a project of the WMF. The WMC hard fork encyclopedia was expected to copy current articles from zhwiki and then independently edit from there. Several zhwiki admins and other users had been blocked by the WMF, leading up to the fork. An anonymous source, claiming to be a spokesperson for WMCUG, has informed The Signpost that their encyclopedia has now copied 600,000 zhwiki articles and has about 50 regular editors. Editors must be approved by the managers of the project and their numbers are soon expected to rise to 75-100. A new large commercial partner is expected to join the project within days and will guarantee their minimal financial needs and community independence. New text will be freely licensed CC BY SA 4.0. None of this information could be independently verified. – S

• Universal Code of Conduct development: The last meeting of the Universal Code of Conduct development team was last week. The theme this time was procedure for enforcement of the policy, or policing violations. The Signpost expects to report on their final report after it is completed next month.
• Steward elections: The 2022 Steward elections will open for voting on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC).
• Community Wishlist Survey: The Community Wishlist Survey voting phase is open until February 11. This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year.
• New Affiliations Committee members: The Affiliations Committee has officially appointed Camelia Boban as Chair, Jeffrey Keefer as Vice-Chair, Houcemeddine Turki as Secretary, and Suyash Dwivedi as Treasurer, for a one-year term.

After a five month long search process Maryana Iskander was selected in September to succeed Katherine Maher as the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. She then started a "listening tour" to hear the views of Wikipedians across the world. On January 1, 2022 she began her official duties as CEO.

Iskander was born in Egypt, grew up in the United States, and now lives in South Africa. She presented her thoughts in September in her Welcome letter and summarized the results of the listening tour two weeks ago in Puzzles and Priorities.

Signpost: Welcome to your new job at the Wikimedia Foundation! I hope you’ve settled in a bit and have a good idea of your “routine schedule” and basic responsibilities. Has anything surprised you so far? Will you be working out of San Francisco? Do you intend to fly around the world on a regular basis or has COVID put an end to that?

Maryana Iskander: Four weeks in, one thing that's clear is that there is no "routine" in this job! Although South Africa is my home, I plan to be where I am needed until I figure out what the job requires. I am spending a lot of time in the US (West and East Coasts) to meet with staff, partners and volunteers who are there, but will also be traveling (COVID willing!) to many other parts of the world. One thing that maybe shouldn't have been a surprise is how weird and wonderful the Wikimedia Foundation office is – as quirky and brilliant as our people!

SP: The COVID pandemic has forced the whole world to change the ways that we work. Do you see permanent changes to how WMF employees, affiliates, and volunteers will work?

MI: Even before the pandemic, the Wikimedia Foundation was already moving to more remote work. This was certainly accelerated by COVID-19. A very positive consequence is that this has enabled hiring an even more diverse and multilingual workforce (as of now about 43% of staff are from outside the US). I don't think anyone in the world is heading back to "life before the pandemic", but I also believe that people who can crack the code on hybrid events will point the way to the future. We'll have to figure out how to bring people back together safely without losing the inclusiveness and accessibility created by virtual formats. I definitely see an opportunity for the Foundation to learn from communities that will also be bridging virtual and in person formats for future events.

SP: In your Welcome letter on Diff you've written "I am driven by the question of what it will take to create—not just imagine—a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge?" This is a very big question! I've always thought of Jimmy Wales's statement "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge” to be a wonderful inspiration, but impossible to create in practice. But look how far we’ve come toward achieving that goal! How would you ever know if we have even temporarily achieved that goal? Would 100 million articles in each of 300 languages within 20 years possibly achieve the goal? How do you think we could do that?

MI: You are right that quantifying the sum of all knowledge is an impossible question! BUT the very existence of this unexpected community as a digital wonder of the world is proof that impossible ideas can be created, not just imagined. I am not sure if success will be a numerical number of articles or also other data assessing the health and vibrancy of our global movement. I do know that these metrics will have to be responsive to what the world needs from us now, not just what we think matters. In my listening tour letter, I shared some reflections about how we make many different kinds of contributions 'count' in building online and offline communities that are committed to our mission. Even as I’ve started making my first edits, I can see that there are many types of ways of contributing to the movement. I don’t have all the answers, but know this is a puzzle we have to figure out collectively.

SP: In the Welcome letter you also said you want to use your "position of leadership to champion often unheard voices." Please pick just one of the following groups – indigenous people throughout the world, or more specifically First Nations in Canada; or Chinese living on the mainland; or incarcerated people in the U.S. How can you – or Wikipedians in general – help these people participate in Wikipedia?

MI: Let's pick "indigenous people throughout the world" as that is a very large and diverse group to name! I am confident that there is so much culture, history and perspective that these groups can add to the sum of all human knowledge. Indeed, without them, it literally can't be the "sum of all human knowledge". I think we can enable these communities to participate in Wikipedia by opening the doors more widely – through many of the things volunteers are trying now like preserving endangered languages or innovating across language dimensions – but also by targeted outreach, and by listening and learning what they would need to walk through those doors and join us. We should never assume that we know. I also think we can build creative partnerships with other organizations who can help us connect more authentically to indigenous communities they know well who also want to contribute to the mission of free knowledge. This helps to bring our movement strategy to life, as there are Wikimedia volunteers who already work closely with indigenous groups in their region.

SP: Wikipedia has created a new hobby over the last 20 years. Thousands of people throughout the world now write encyclopedia articles on a regular basis for fun. Are Wikipedians some special type of person who were born with this idea of fun, or perhaps developed it early on? Or can we help people develop into Wikipedians by special programs and training?

MI: I have met enough people now to know that ANYONE can become a Wikimedian – there is no obvious list of characteristics or traits. One thing that has struck me about most of the people I’ve met is their deep curiosity – this feels like more of a shared value than an attribute. And our challenge is how to make ourselves an easy place for the many deeply curious humans out there in the world to get involved and contribute.

From a Signpost reader: What is your understanding of disinformation on Wikipedia, how are you going to tackle this problem? How would you determine an adequate level of resourcing?

MI: I think there is broad consensus that disinformation poses a threat to societies around the world. What should be done about it – and what is our role in that – feels that it has a lot less consensus. I have been trying to learn more about past approaches, like how the movement dealt with COVID and also the 2020 US election. I am also trying to first understand what current Foundation resources are being allocated to this issue, so that we can determine what more may be needed.

From a Signpost reader: Many people assume that the WMF CEO is a key link in the chain of command of the WMF, a manager working under the supervision of the Board of Trustees who supervises other managers and ultimately helps decide how WMF employees "on the shop floor" spend their working time. Others say it hasn't worked this way at the WMF. The CEO has been busy consulting with volunteers and chapters, and potential partner institutions (like GLAMs) and even donors. In short the CEO has been flying around too much dealing with external stakeholders, to have the time to deal with the internal situation at the WMF. What type of CEO will you be?

MI: I am not sure there is a "type" of CEO in a role this complex. As I shared in my Puzzles and Priorities, this job requires balancing the needs of many stakeholders within the Foundation and the movement, without losing sight of what the world needs from us now. While I am certainly formally accountable to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, I also see myself as accountable to many of these other stakeholders, internally and externally. I think people often focus on how much "power" is in a role, whereas for me it is often the case that more "power" really just means a lot more accountability.

SP: Thank you for your candid answers. The Signpost wishes you well in your new job, and hopes that you help lead the Wikipedia community to new successes.

January marked the start of a new term for several arbitrators appointed in the 2021 elections. The election, its outcomes, and the cute photo montage of the new arbs' namesakes can be found in the previous Arbitration Report. So what have they been up to in the last month? A few things, as it turns out. Several cases were declined, a topic ban was lifted, and some old cases were modified. Additionally, a comprehensive review of old discretionary sanctions began, and one case was opened.

On 16 January, a case was opened regarding potential issues of coordinated editing by members of at least one group, Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW), led by Susan Gerbic (who is both a party to the case and the subject of one of the articles involved in the case). I made a preliminary statement in the case urging it to be accepted, which means I will refrain from going off about it at length in the Arbitration Report. The basic issue at hand is whether the activities of the group, which are often conducted in an opaque manner off-wiki, embody conflict-of-interest editing; sources and articles involved include the Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and Center for Inquiry Investigations Group (among others).

Several categories of discretionary sanctions are up for review, following a 2021 review of the practice. The discussion, located here, concerns a number of rarely-used sanctions areas, whether they should continue to be covered by DS, and in some cases modifications to existing DS regimes. The sanctions being considered for abolition are:

• Scientology (instituted in 2009)
• Senkaku Islands (instituted in 2011)
• Waldorf education (instituted in 2013)
• Ancient Egyptian race controversy (instituted in 2014)
• Abolition of DS for Landmark Worldwide (instituted in 2015)
• Transcendental Meditation movement (instituted in 2011)

Additionally, some article probation remedies are being considered for abolition. These are:

• Remedy 5 ("Mentorship") of the Neuro-linguistic programming case (instituted in 2006)
• Remedy 2 ("Article-related Probation") of the Shiloh case (instituted in 2006)
• Remedy 2.1 ("Article probation") of the Occupation of Latvia case (instituted in 2007)
• Remedy 14.3 ("Articles semi-protected") of the Obama articles case (instituted in 2009)
  • Finding of Fact 3 ("Articles placed on probation") of the Obama articles case (instituted in 2008), which was the subject of a 2009 review in Remedy 1.1 ("Article probation review") and addressed by a March 2015 ANI thread

Finally, two DS regimes are being considered for amendment. They are:

• Remedy 5 of the India-Pakistan case (instituted in 2012). The current scope is "all pages related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan"; the amendment would expand it to cover "all pages related to political or religious topics and closely related people in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, including but not limited to castes".
• DS remedies of the Armenia-Azerbaijan 2 case (instituted in 2011) would be rescinded, and a remedy added to the case authorizing DS for "all pages related to political or religious topics and closely related people in Armenia and Azerbaijan, including but not limited to the Armenian genocide".

• A requested case, Warsaw concentration camp, was declined by the Committee; several motions were nonetheless passed resolving the request and issuing an admonishment to one editor. Jehochman, an administrator and party to the case, requested a voluntary desysopping.
• The Scientology case was amended by motion on January 7, with the removal of open-proxy-style blocks on Church of Scientology IP addresses placed in 2009.
• Following an amendment request, the committee passed a motion to modify editing restrictions on Crouch, Swale placed in 2019.
• A clarification request regarding extended confirmed restrictions, made on January 2, sought to determine whether topic-based EC restrictions placed by the Committee applied to discussions of source reliability, deletion, and the like. Generally, the answer was "yes".
• A case request, "Legitimacy about the imposition of never approved rules" (related to political parties in Italy), was declined.
• Amortias was re-appointed as a full clerk on December 28.
• Atsme's post-WWII anti-fascism in the United States topic ban was provisionally lifted.

Nine enforcement requests were closed in January.

• "RafaelJC12" (2 January), resolved with the user in question blocked from editing the article Human shield for 61 days
• "Encyclopædius (5 January), resolved by indefinite COVID-19 topic ban
• "Saad Arshad Butt" (19 January), closed "without comment on the merits, and without prejudice to bring up the same diffs in a future filing if the issues resurface".
• "Cygnis insignis" (19 January), resolved with a 96-hour block for 1RR violations and personal attacks.
• "Lokeshwaran V R" (22 January), resolved with an indefinite block as a standard administrative action.
• "in re Sushant Singh Rajput" (23 January), resolved with Talk:Sushant Singh Rajput protected as a standard administrative action.
• "Devesh.bhatta" (26 January), resolved with an indefinite topic ban from articles related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
• "Davidbena" (29 January), resolved with a topic ban from Israel-Palestine articles.
• "Critchion" (29 January), resolved with an indefinite block as a standard adminstrative action.

Additionally, two enforcement requests are currently open.

• "Grandmaster" (opened 23 January).
• "Arbitration enforcement action appeal by FDW777" (opened 30 January).

So far, there have been 52 actions logged for 2022. They are as follows:

• American politics 2 (6)
• Antisemitism in Poland (1)
• Armenia-Azerbaijan 2 (2)
• Biographies of Living Persons (6)
• COVID-19 (3)
• Eastern Europe (11)
• Gender and sexuality (1)
• India-Pakistan-Afghanistan (5)
• Iranian politics (2)
• Palestine-Israel articles (12)
• Pseudoscience (1)

Wikipedian Christopher Kent Keen (Twofingered Typist) of South Bay, Ontario, died on November 19, 2021. He was a prolific copy editor and longtime member of the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors (GoCE). A childhood interest in music led to his writing music reviews for the student newspaper at Victoria University, Toronto. As a teenager, Christopher took a part-time job at a Toronto bookstore, beginning a career that led to his becoming an executive at the Canadian publishing house McClelland & Stewart and his involvement with the Canadian Booksellers Association. As a Wikipedian, he primarily worked on requested copyedits; starting in 2015, he fulfilled over 200 such requests annually. In 2018, he became one of just eight editors who have been enshrined in the GoCE's Hall of Fame for "his unfailing, enthusiastic participation in all drives and blitzes for several years, and outstanding assistance on the requests page". Twofingered Typist continued as a copy editor at a high level of productivity for three more years, submitting his final copy edits on the day before his death. He also served four half-year terms as a GoCE coordinator, from July 2019 to June 2021. In addition to his Wikipedia work, Christopher volunteered on Prince Edward County's library board.^[1] He also took an interest in ornithology; he participated in bird-population counts and banded birds at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory.^[2] Twofingered Typist will be greatly missed by the Wikipedia editing community. Condolences and tributes can be left at his talk page.

The contributor of this op-ed is a member of WikiProject Climate change and has been a Wikipedian for over eight years.

On November 19 last year, BBC News published an investigation into climate denial on non-English Wikipedias.^[2] It showed Wikipedia is rife with climate myths. BBC journalist and climate disinformation specialist Marco Silva described the denial as 'alive'. Classical climate denial—denying warming occurs, or denying humans are the primary cause—has been on the wane for a while.^[3] Within the English Wikipedia, climate denial has become exceedingly rare. The last time the climate change discretionary sanctions were used was in 2019, and that was against somebody exaggerating the dangers of climate change, as if the reality isn't scary enough!

Is it true that it's still alive and kicking within Wikipedia? My hypothesis is that most of these non-English articles are the ruins of a period in which climate denial flourished. Climate denial is dead, but still rotting.

I started a cross-wiki review on Meta two weeks after the BBC article was published. The goal is to assess the breadth of the denial, and to see it removed from all language editions. We advertised it on seven climate change WikiProjects to ensure it's not just an enwiki project. While the most active editors were still from enwiki, Swedish and Czech Wikipedians also contributed. Depending on the size of the community, we either deleted the misinformation ourselves, or tried to find local editors willing to take on the task. On many articles, it was relatively easy to identify denial as Google Translate has come a long way: For most languages, the translated text was understandable.^[4]

The climate myths we found varied significantly. Many articles were an outdated translation of the English Wikipedia. Up to 2008, the English version contained a set of primary sources that supported alternative explanations of climate change. While back then this may have been a significant minority opinion, these views now fall squarely in the fringe or pseudoscience baskets. Displaying this outdated research plays directly into the hands of climate deniers. Their main goal is not making people deny that humans cause climate change. Rather, it is to plant seeds of doubt, as doubt paralyses action.^[5]

A smaller subset of languages had more blatant issues. For instance, I encountered the myth that global warming has stopped twice. Some articles contained attacks on prominent scientists. For instance, calling Naomi Oreskes, who was the first to research the magnitude of the consensus, incompetent. Accusations of fraud were also common. The Chinese version gave a platform to somebody espousing an antisemitic attack on Al Gore, even if it did this under a heading which translates as 'conspiracy theories'.

So far, the response to our efforts have been mostly positive. In some communities, talk page comments triggered a full update and rewrite (Catalan and Slovak). In others, the comments were addressed one-by-one (Hindi), or promises were made to update the article (Korean). For less active languages, we removed the denial ourselves, and were occasionally reverted (Belarussian). We found climate myths in over a third of the languages. The 52 articles in these languages are read about 7000 times a day.

It's frustrating that many of these language communities do have the capacity to maintain these pages, as shown by how well they responded to our requests. Should these projects become a routine? Or are more systematic approaches to misinformation needed?

Climate change is not the only topic that has been plagued by misinformation. The current pandemic is a prime example. As with climate denial, misinformation on this topic costs lives. Misinformation about abortion puts women around the world in danger.^[6] Conspiracy theories surrounding elections are a grave danger for democracy. Can we start similar disinformation monitoring in these areas as well?

There is potential, but perhaps these projects will be more challenging. The misinformation may be spread across more articles, and may be added more recently, so that removal will meet with resistance. Nonetheless, the following steps provide a blueprint

1. Fact-check the English version. Good Article and Featured Article reviews are great to sniff out final inaccuracies.
2. Write understandably. We tend to overestimate the educational level of our readers^{[7][8][9][10][11][12][overcitation for needed emphasis]}. Fact-checked information is useless if only half of our readers can understand it. Translators will not be able to translate well.
3. Set up a meta page. Make a selection of languages, based on viewership. Find editors with technical abilities to help out.
4. Find editors of major language groups to coordinate with, for instance via User Groups.
5. Approach interested local editors, translators, and local admins to help out. While misinformation can be deleted with machine translations, keeping it out will require local help.

Repeating this for more categories of dangerous misinformation would be beneficial. But it is a time-consuming effort, and in the meantime, our readers will consume heaps of misinformation. It is likely that not all languages will have the capacity to monitor these articles. Should we not be more aggressive? Here are two ideas to add structure to safeguard our readers from misinformation.

Many topics are 'under development' in the real world. There are new scientific discoveries and review papers on a daily basis. Sensitive political situations change, as investigative journalism unearths scandals. For many articles, these timescales are easy to estimate. For climate change, there is typically little value in research older than 15 years, and even 6 year-old research can be outdated.

What if we give each article a best-before date? If I write an article about sea level rise, with a median source age of 2018, it's best read before 2024. We'll save maximum median source age on Wikidata. If, for a given language variant, the median source date is too old, a warning template could be displayed, perhaps on the article talk page. We could restrict this initially to medical articles, and a few other topics where misinformation is truly dangerous. If an article gets even further out-of-date, language communities may decide to automatically archive or delete the articles.

Paper encyclopedias have to make a decision each edition: Does this article get binned, reprinted, or updated? As such, they have a natural decision point to consider deleting outdated research. With over 6.4 million articles just on English Wikipedia, it's completely infeasible to check all articles and make that decision. What if we create a middle ground between deletion and showing articles to our readers? In a (semi-)automatic manner, we could archive many articles that are likely outdated. For instance, articles three years past their 'best before date'. The archive would be accessible to editors, and even readers, with an extra click. No admin intervention needed. A clean slate to write on can be an exhilarating experience. Working in the Dutch Wikipedia, I know how great it feels to start an article on an important topic. Making space in this way might not only help us avoid spreading misinformation, but might also reinvigorate Wikipedia.

This Wikipedia essay, originally titled Prime objective was started in 2012 and written by The Transhumanist and 28 other editors. You may edit the essay, but please do so at WP:PRIME and not on The Signpost.

According to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, "the closest thing we have to a Prime Directive"^[1] is to:

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."^[2][3]

And that is the world that we, the Wikipedia community, as part of the Wikimedia movement, are working toward.

Obviously, the body of all knowledge is far too vast to be compiled into a single work. Keep in mind that Wikipedia has never been intended to be "the sum of all human knowledge" (read Jimbo's quote carefully, and the rest of the interview it came from). As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is intended to help provide free access to that knowledge, and be a start in the effort to bring about a world in which all knowledge is freely available to everyone.

How?

Being an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is a highly useful summary of the world's knowledge. As such, it provides specialized jargon which readers may use as search terms to further explore subjects on the Internet. In addition, Wikipedia serves as a direct gateway to the world's knowledge by presenting links and references to further sources of information on all manner of subjects.

In these ways—presenting summaries, search terms, links, and references—Wikipedia provides greater and greater access over time for more and more people to (the sum of all) human knowledge.

Perhaps the rest of the knowledge workers of the world will follow Wikipedia's example as a free and open global resource and turn Jimbo's vision into reality. In that regard, and many others, Wikipedia, and the Wikipedia community, are paving the way.

To clarify his vision, Jimbo told The New York Times (in 2008), that

"'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language', that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal."^[4]

It is also the goal of the Wikipedia community: to build and distribute the best encyclopedia that we can.

This is a crucial role Wikipedians are fulfilling in the world. So, when editors get bogged down in a conflict while editing Wikipedia, it might help to think about another quote by Jimbo (from the same interview as the initial quote above):

"I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated about an edit war to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think."^[2]

• Wikipedia:Purpose
• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
• The Wikipedia Creed (just another essay but you might like it)

• In a nutshell, what is Wikipedia? And what is the Wikimedia Foundation? - The Wikimedia Foundation
• Mission statement - The Wikimedia Foundation
• Wikimedia values - The six values of the Wikimedia Foundation
• Wikimedia founding principles - Principles generally supported by all of the Wikimedia communities

GorillaWarfare is Molly White, a software engineer and longtime Wikipedia editor. She has been editing the English Wikipedia since 2006, has served several terms on the Arbitration Committee, and is an administrator and functionary.

When the Wikimedia Foundation first began accepting cryptocurrency donations in 2014,^[1] it was still fairly nascent technology. Cryptocurrencies resonated with many in free and open-source software communities and in the Wikimedia movement more specifically, and cryptocurrency projects tended to share similar ideals: privacy, anonymity, decentralization, freedom.

In more recent history, cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based technologies more generally have morphed into something very different from the ideals of their youth. Some proponents continue to speak about freedom and decentralization, but the space has overwhelmingly become an opportunity for self-enrichment at the expense of others and the environment. Cryptomining operations set up shop in locations with low energy costs—until late 2021, most bitcoin mining happened in China, where it relied on coal so heavily that the resulting coal mining accidents from increased demand contributed to a crackdown on the practice.^[2] Some of those miners moved to Kazakhstan, where they were using the nation’s supply of lignite (an extremely harmful form of coal) to produce 18% of the global computing power behind bitcoin in January.^[3] Bitcoin mining alone rivals the total energy use of countries like the Netherlands or Finland;^[4][5][6] emissions from other popular cryptocurrencies like ethereum only compound the problem.

Furthermore, in recent years, more and more enthusiasts are being convinced that they too might strike it rich by buying in early to the next bitcoin or the next ethereum. But unfortunately, the playing field more often resembles a landscape with scammers and marks. Many are convinced that purchasing these currencies is an "investment", rather than risky speculation that would be more accurately described as gambling if not outright investment fraud. People are regularly scammed for enormous sums of money, and the anonymous, nominally decentralized, and largely unregulated nature of the space offers them little recourse.^[7]

The purported benefits of cryptocurrencies have also been largely unrealized. Rather than empowering the unbanked and distributing wealth to those in need, as once described, money has been hoarded in incredible amounts by a few wealthy individuals—0.01% of bitcoin wallets collectively own 27% of bitcoin in circulation, equivalent to around $232 billion.^[8][9] Furthermore, the underlying technology is enormously slow and difficult to scale when compared to databases used in most modern computing, so many technologies built around blockchains have spawned new, centralized solutions to the problems the blockchains themselves have introduced. As a result, the decentralization of the web that was supposed to result from the adoption of blockchain technologies has only resulted in the centralization of power in a handful of companies and venture capital firms.

The Wikimedia Foundation's acceptance of cryptocurrency donations has had minimal returns, and no longer accepting them is unlikely to have a major impact on the Foundation's ability to fundraise. In 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation only received about $130,000 in donations via cryptocurrency, making it one of their smallest revenue channels at only 0.08% of total donations.^[10] The benefits to donors are also minimal: the anonymity that might normally be offered to those who use cryptocurrencies is largely nullified by the WMF's cryptocurrency payment processor, BitPay, which requires prospective donors to disclose their identities.^[11]

The most impactful result of the WMF's acceptance of cryptocurrencies has been to normalize their use. As the technology space around blockchains has evolved over the years, so too should we. Cryptocurrencies have been joined by a bubble of predatory, inherently harmful technologies that take advantage of individuals and contribute to the destruction of our environment. It is no longer ethical for the Wikimedia Foundation to tacitly endorse a technology that incentivizes the predatory behavior that has become rampant in the cryptocurrency space in the past few years. I have asked that they stop doing so in an RfC on meta.

Boris Johnson is in danger of losing his job as UK prime minister due to a bit of fuzzy-headed partying which broke COVID lockdown rules. But his possible ignominious exit should not hide what we consider to be one of his major achievements in office. He was quoted this month by The Independent denouncing attempts to "change our history or to bowdlerise it or edit it". He continued "It's like some person trying to edit their Wikipedia entry – it's wrong." He was commenting on a jury's acquittal of the "Colston Four" who tore down the statue of eighteenth-century slave trader Edward Colston during the Black Lives Matter protests in Bristol in 2020.

Perhaps inadvertently, The Independent hinted at a case of somebody who may have tried to change history while editing Wikipedia. Grant Shapps, the Conservative transport minister, was quoted saying "We are introducing via the police crime sentencing bill, new measures which would potentially plug a gap and make it absolutely clear" that people who admit to tearing down historic statues should be convicted.

Shapps was accused in 2015 of whitewashing his own Wikipedia article, and editing those of other British politicians through the account Contribsx. Contribsx was first indefinitely blocked for sockpuppeting, and then acquitted – not by a jury of his peers or by the House of Commons – but by ArbCom. – S

Harete Hipango admitted that she asked a staff member to edit the Wikipedia article about her, according to National MP Harete Hipango 'regrets' Wikipedia edit. An IP editor who removed the entire Controversies section of the article four times is traceable to "PS-NZ-AS-AP Parliamentary Service", and they admitted in an edit summary to being a staff member for Hipango. The media coverage led to the incident being added to the Controversies section, and a side-effect of the attention was the entire article being rewritten and expanded by 15 editors. – G, S

• Edits by police: Offensive edits came from the Australian state police network. The edits made to an indigenous tribe's Wikipedia article came from within Victoria Police network – Herald Sun (Melbourne) (paywall)
• Even more offensive edits: News about Wikipedia being vandalized keeps generating newspaper clicks. This time however it wasn't just a newspaper that reported on a single run-of-the-mill bad edit. Instead, The Rakyat Post observed that people on Twitter were tweeting about the Wikipedia article about Rina Harun having been vandalized multiple times, and attributed the rise of bad edits to a photograph of her using a water jet that was making the rounds. Many of these edits were to change her name to slurs.
• Government contractor edits Wikipedia, causes an internal investigation: An anonymous editor using the the IP address of Taiwan's Directorate General of Highways edited a Chinese Wikipedia article about a political commentator. An internal investigation and examination by cybersecurity specialists found the computer that was used. A temporary contractor was named and he voluntarily went to the police following the revelation. Multiple Chinese language newspapers (ETtoday, UDN), and the English-language Taiwan News "Wikipedia entry edited by contractor: DGH" reported the incident. It was also added to the article in question on Chinese Wikipedia for future historians.
• Government cites Wikipedia?: The Epoch Times, the favorite newspaper of the Falun Gong new religious movement, reports that an NIH spokesperson told them to look at Wikipedia to assess their position on the Great Barrington Declaration. The article implies that Wikipedia is not to be trusted, a position we (occasionally) agree with.
• Website Liar.co.uk redirects to Boris Johnson Wikipedia page according to Walesonline.uk. Believe it. – B, J

• We missed at least one: The Washington Post in an article stating that More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people notes that the slaveholdings of many of the congressmen are not commonly known. As an example they give Senator Rufus King's Wikipedia article which misses the fact. See a related article in this month's Signpost.

• Citation needed?: Normally we leave academic papers out of this column in favor of our Recent research column. But this paper is about Wikipedia's coverage of Covid-19, a topic first mentioned in this column in March 2020 citing Omer Benjakob's news article. The academic paper's three authors include Benjakob.

• NFT speculators are angry: after Wikipedians declined to classify NFTs as "artworks". See coverage in Artnet and Smithsonian magazine.
• Addictive substance for Wikipedians: Vice reviews a new simple game called WikiTrivia which uses factoids from Wikipedia and Wikidata to create timelines. It's addictive. Go straight to the game site, beat 13 in a row, and then never – never ever – use it again.
• Smithsonian: held an edit-a-thon on 100 women Smithsonian scientists.
• Translation into Arabic: WikiDowen project, University of Jeddah translate Wikipedia articles into Arabic, an initiative of the Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Foundation (Arab News)
• 21 and still going: anniversary noted by WIO News (owned by Zee Media)
• We're weird, according to U of Toronto's newspaper The Varsity [1]
• Ageism: Entertainer Aijaz Aslam is unhappy with focus on ages in Wikipedia bios, especially when wrong facts are presented. (Dawn)
• No thanks to crypto donations?: TechRepublic says Wikipedia (sic) may stop accepting cryptocurrency pending the outcome of GorillaWarfare's request for comment on meta-wiki (see her related Opinion column in this issue of The Signpost).
• Local "flavour" wanted: A WikiAfrica AfroCuration event will be held in Zimbabwe just a few days after publication, in partnership with the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (TechZim)
• Wikipedia's bias exposed again: Conservative personality Steven Crowder has received over 430,000 views for his YouTube video "EXPOSED: Wikipedia’s Bias Tested and PROVEN!" Crowder and a compatriot made a number of edits to Wikipedia pages, and argue that the reversal of their changes exposes Wikipedia's bias. Bizarre interpretations of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, as well as misreadings of messages from fellow editors, are shown. A subsequent AN/I thread was opened regarding the accounts (whose names he showed in the video).

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

A paper titled "Is Wikipedia Easy to Understand?: A Study Beyond Conventional Readability Metrics"^[1] presents a novel concept for quantitatively examining how difficult readers may find a Wikipedia article due to lack of knowledge about the concepts used.

The authors first note that the concerns about the readability of Wikipedia articles had already been examined in various earlier studies, but only based on relatively simplistic readability scores such as the Flesch-Kincaid test that "output the US grade level, i.e., the number of education years required to understand a piece of text [but] only take into account the surface level parameters like the average number of syllables, average number of words, and average number of sentences to calculate the readability score".

Instead, they aim to rely on "cognitive [...] theories [which] describe that the knowledge present in the text must be coherent with the background knowledge of the reader [...] the information present must resonate with the background knowledge of the reader." Noting that "Wikipedia encounters readers with varied educational backgrounds", they posit that "to execute successful text comprehension on Wikipedia, we must not assume any background knowledge from the reader. The information present in the Wikipedia articles should be self-sufficient in knowledge". This leads the author to a concept termed "knowledge gaps", i.e. "missing pieces of information in the text, which hinder the comprehension of the underlying text. [...] For example, while explaining the area and perimeter of a circle, the concept of radius must be explained to the reader."

In order to enable a quantitative study, knowledge gaps are operationalized by first partitioning a Wikipedia article into segments using a method known as semantic word embedding (described in somewhat more detail in a 2020 paper by some of the same authors, reviewed below). LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) is used to determine the topic of each segment, technically a probabilty distribution over a set of keywords. The Hellinger distance between these probability distributions for subsequent segments is used to define knowledge gaps: "If the Hellinger distance between any two subsequent segments is more than 0.5, then there is a knowledge gap between the two segments. The threshold of 0.5 has been defined empirically. The knowledge gap parameter is the ratio of the number of knowledge gaps to the total number of segments in the Wikipedia article."

The authors apply this metric to a random sample of 6000 English Wikipedia articles, consisting of 1000 Featured, Good, B-class, C-class, Start-class and stub articles each, with an additional "1000 random articles from the rest of the categories except category A articles". They find that "featured articles experience the least knowledge gap parameter followed by Good Articles", concluding that "Featured articles are self-sufficient in knowledge, leaving little scope for knowledge gaps." Likewise, the knowledge gaps score increases progressing to B-Class, C-Class, Start and Stub articles.

Three of the authors had already developed the concept of knowledge gaps as applied to wiki articles in a paper presented at OpenSym 2020.^[2]

The main theme of this earlier paper was the integration of a wiki and a Q&A forum (like StackExchange), such that "whenever a user encounters a question in a wiki article, he can ask the question on the corresponding QnA page". As evidence that there exists a "coherent activity between articles and the corresponding talk pages" on the English Wikipedia, the authors examined a random sample of 100 Featured articles, comparing the daily editing activity of articles and their talk pages (measured in the number of sentences added). They found "coherence in the activity of Wikipedia articles and their respective talk pages [, which] establishes the importance of discussion forums-like talk page for a Wikipedia article. But, it should be noted that only 27% of the Wikipedia articles have talk pages [citing a publication from 2012]". Also, they note that on Wikipedia "only 10% of the total posts on talk pages are by the readers seeking information", making Wikipedia a less suitable model for the integration of wikis and Q&A forums.

The paper goes on to instead apply this concept of Q&A integration to a MOOC wiki (supporting a Python course for computer science students), named "JOCWiki". The aforementioned semantic segmentation method was applied to the pages of this course wiki, resulting in segments that were "at least 6 sentences long, which roughly amounts to 100 words per segment". The purpose of segmentation in this case to determine whether a particular student question in the forum was referring to content on the wiki, and if yes, whether the question can be answered based on that segment. If not, the section was deemed to have a knowledge gap. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used to assign a topic to each segment and each question, and matching topics were interpreted as the question referring to that section. More specifically, Hellinger distance (a measure of the similarity between two probability distributions) was used to quantitatively estimate both whether a particular question matched a particular text segment, and whether it could be answered from that segment - a somewhat crude measure.

The paper goes on to discuss the concept of "triggering", generally defined as a "process by which an idea or a piece of information cascades the generation of more ideas", or in case of wiki pages, addition of new information. (The authors had already examined this for Wikipedia in a 2018 paper, likewise presented at OpenSym - see our coverage: "Triggering" article contributions by adding factoids.) As an example of triggering, "in the 'New York City' article of Wikipedia, the wiki link of financial center is created in the seventh revision, and subsequently, in the twelfth revision, wiki link of New York Stock Exchange is added. These two wiki links added in neighboring revisions are semantically similar." The concept of triggers is applied to the interaction between wiki pages and talk page/Q&A forum, in both directions - either questions triggering article edits ("Q→A triggers), or article edits triggering new questions ("A→Q triggers"). The authors posit that "if there are sufficient Q→A triggers, then it leads to better knowledge building in the wiki article and lesser A→Q triggers." And on the other hand "if there are relatively [fewer] Q→A triggers, this leads to knowledge deficiency in the article giving scope for more A→Q triggers".

The study then compared JOCWiki and Wikipedia regarding the frequencies of these Q→A and A→Q triggers, on a small sample of three topics covered both in the course and on Wikipedia, finding evidence that "there are very few triggers generated by talk pages in Wikipedia" (consistent the aforementioned earlier research result that only 10% of posts on Wikipedia talk pages are reader questions, as they are "mostly used by the editors to discuss the improvements in the article"). In other words, Wikipedia may be more prone to knowledge deficiencies than JOCWiki with its QnA forum that "is used by all types of users (editors and readers) to discuss the concepts as well as improvements to the article [and] provides a more conducive environment to induce triggers."

• Until February 7, the Wikimedia Foundation is inviting community feedback on 33 proposals under consideration for its newly launched research fund, which is to distribute grants up to USD 50,000 to selected research projects.
• See the page of the monthly Wikimedia Research Showcase for videos and slides of past presentations.

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.

From the abstract:^[3]

"we have reconstructed networks of personal communication (direct messaging) between Wikipedia editors gathered in so called Wikiprojects - teams of contributors who focus on articles within specific topical areas. We found that effective projects exchange larger volume of direct messages and that their communication structure allows for complex coordination: for sharing of information locally through selective ties, and at the same time globally across the whole group. To verify how these network measures relate to the subjective perception of importance of group communication we conducted semi-structured interviews with members of selected projects. Our interviewees used direct communication for providing feedback, for maintaining close relations and for tapping on the social capital of the Wikipedia community."

Compare our earlier coverage of a contrasting result: "All Talk: How Increasing Interpersonal Communication on Wikis May Not Enhance Productivity", which has since been published in peer-reviewed form.^[4]

January 1 is always Public Domain Day: works that were under copyright on December 31 the previous year, enter the Public Domain on this day. The first day of a new year is always a nice day for people who like open access. January 1, 2022 was a special Public Domain Day. Not only did paintings from artists who died in 1951 become openly available, but so did music recordings by Artur Schnabel, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein, and books by André Gide and Abanindranath Tagore – all artists who died in 1951. Lists of writers, musicians and other artists who passed away in 1951 were made public in Wikipedia and beyond. In the United States, there were even more celebrations. Due to a 2018 US law (the Music Modernization Act), 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923 entered the public domain.

The 1998 US Copyright Term Extension Act gave works published from 1923 through 1977 a 95-year term. This meant that a long list of books first published in the US in 1926 entered the public domain on January 1, 2022. A nice overview of works 95+ years old was given by Duke Center for the Study of Public Domain.^[1] This means that, in the United States, these books are not bound by copyright any more: Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne (including the drawings by E. H. Shepard). I hear the Brits objecting: Milne died in 1956 and Shepard died in 1976, so according to copyright laws in most European countries their copyright will expire later (2027 for Milne, and 2047 for Shepard). So did these works enter the public domain or not?

Did I say that copyright was simple? No, copyright is almost always complicated, and laws differ from country to country. To make it more complicated, Wikipedia is not organized by country, but by language. In this case, one has to look in which country a book was published. And yes – the first book starring Winnie-the-Pooh was also published in the United States in 1926. The discussion is already flourishing on Commons, and the drawings by E.H. Shepard are now (28 January) in Commons (and in this article)... but they are proposed for deletion. Arguments on both sides are given, and administrators will decide on the matter. A crucial question will, of course, be a decision about the dominance of US copyright. Will the 95 year rule, as laid out in the 1998 US Copyright Term Extension Act, overrule the 70 years PMA (post mortem author) as used in most countries, and will this be the dominant factor in Wikimedia Commons too? I didn't see any reference to the Berne Convention, that lays down a minimal general copyright term of 50 years beyond the death of an author (50 years PMA). In that case, the Pooh drawings would have to wait till 2027 to be used in this Signpost article.

Don’t think I brought in all details. Looking for Tigger? He is still copyrighted, having come to life in the 1928 follow-up book The House at Pooh Corner (so he will enter public domain in 2024.)^[2] If you want to read Pooh in the meantime, go to Standard Ebooks, who prepared several books for Public Domain Day, including Winnie-the-Pooh.^[3] One thing is quite sure: don’t use images with Winnie-the-Pooh wearing a red shirt. The red shirt is an addition by Walt Disney Studios, and likely copyrighted for years to come (what the heck – bears don’t wear shirts).