The Wikimedia Foundation Board election process for 2022 started in April. Twelve Wikimedians have submitted their candidacy, and six members of the Analysis Committee have been confirmed at the time of publication. The Analysis Committee is responsible for evaluat[ing] the candidates against the skills and diversity, equity and inclusion criteria shared by the Board of Trustees. An affiliate shortlisting period will be held from July 1 to 15, and a community voting phase is scheduled for August 15 to 29. To help inform affiliates on the wishes of the community, The Signpost is holding a poll to select a potential shortlist. For more information, please see Community view. – E

Form 990 is a United States Internal Revenue Service document that provides the public with financial information about a nonprofit organization. It is often the only source of such information. The WMF has just published its Form 990 for the 2020 calendar year, along with an associated FAQ on Meta. Here is a very brief summary of some key points:

The form shows that in 2020, eight Wikimedia executives earned more than US$300,000 in compensation and benefits, headed by then-Executive Director Katherine Maher ($423,318). Five of these eight executives (Maher, Ingersoll, Uzzell, Negrin, and Arville) are no longer with the Wikimedia Foundation today; three of them only served for a couple of years before leaving again. Comparing the data in the 2020 and 2019 forms, Chief Product Officer Anthony Negrin's compensation and benefits rose by the highest amount – from $258,896 in 2019 to $324,916 in 2020, an increase of more than 25%. He left in November 2021, after many years with the WMF.

The number of US-based employees went up, from 291 to 320. Overall salary costs (for US-based and non-US-based employees, but excluding contractors) rose from $55,634,913 to $67,857,675, an increase of more than twelve million dollars.

The highest-paid independent contractors were:

• Jones Day at $901,872 (San Francisco, US, legal services)
• Snohetta Design AS at $613,221 (Oslo, Norway, brand strategy)
• Gluzdov.com, Inc. at $538,746 (Philadelphia, US, engineering services)
• Swift + Possible LLC at $461,455 (Portland, US, public relations)
• Minassian Media at $319,214 (New York, US, public relations)

The full set of Wikimedia Foundation financial reports – both the filed Form 990s and the annual financial statements, along with their respective FAQs – is available on the Wikimedia Foundation website. Forms 990 are also available on external sites such as propublica.org. – AK

The WMF has announced on Meta that it will run fundraising campaigns in India (which skipped last year's fundraiser because of COVID-19) and Latin America from May 31 to June 28, 2022, with parallel email campaigns from May 23 to June 20.

According to mock-ups linked on Meta, emails will ask existing donors to renew their support "to keep Wikipedia online for yourself and millions of people around the world", "to ensure that Wikipedia remains independent, ad-free, and growing for years to come", and to "keep Wikipedia online, ad-free, and growing for years to come".

The first email (of a total of three) explains, at the top of page 2, that "32% of your gift will be used to support the volunteers". This text is illustrated with a picture of schoolchildren in Rwanda. Based on revenue of $163 million in the 2020–21 financial year (likely to be exceeded this year, judging by the WMF's second-quarter revenue reports for this year and last year), this would correspond to more than $50 million of donations revenue being used to support volunteers. (The same email text and picture was, according to the Meta Fundraising page, also used in Swedish emails sent out in March 2022.) Total expenditure in 2020/2021 was $112 million (this includes $5 million paid to the Wikimedia Endowment and $68 million for WMF salaries and wages).

A fundraising banner campaign is also currently underway in South Africa (May 23 to June 20). – AK

Tamzin, a seasoned and well-respected editor known for their work at SPI and in various other areas, was nominated for adminship on May 1. Initial smooth sailing brought a slew of supports, but the RfA took a sharp turn after Ad Orientem asked about an earlier comment Tamzin made, in which they stated "I'd be fine with a rule that we automatically desysop any Trump supporter. I will never vote for an admin candidate who's right-of-center by American standards (although I wouldn't vote against someone solely on that basis)." In answering, Tamzin moderated their stance only slightly, writing that "avowed, continuing support for Donald Trump constitutes support for an oppressive regime, and thus should be disqualifying" for adminship. "I don't think it's unreasonable to judge someone's fitness for a position of trust based on one's impression of the reasonableness (or lack thereof) of their political views," they wrote, but "it should not be the only consideration, definitely not a litmus test."

This response led to a run of opposes; many of them cited an ardent, later-rescinded !vote by Hammersoft, who wrote: "This lock-step belief that a person can't be trusted if they have political views opposing the candidate's isn't just troubling, it's disgusting in the extreme. That we would embolden a member of this community with such despicable views is horrifying. An administrator must be able to be dispassionate in their assessments. This candidate clearly can not be so."

Meanwhile, Tamzin also continued accruing support, and many editors who had previously supported affirmed their !votes. Most disagreed with Tamzin's specific stance, but testified to their quality contributions as a whole, and noted the lack of evidence that their views had influenced their editing.

The RfA closed with 340 supports, 112 opposes, and 16 neutrals, making it the most widely attended nomination in Wikipedia history. At just over 75% support, the raw !vote total fell a hair above the traditional discretionary zone in which nominations are closed through a discussion among bureaucrats ("bureaucrat chat"). Maxim initiated a bureaucrat chat anyway, citing in part "the acrimoniousness of the discussion". The discussants questioned how much weight to give reaffirmations, and ultimately decided 9-to-2 that there existed consensus to promote. – Sd^[1]

As announced on the Wikimedia-l mailing list on May 25, 2022, pages have been opened on Meta to discuss improvements to the Universal Code of Conduct and to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines:

• meta:Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Policy_text/Revision_discussions
• meta:Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Enforcement_guidelines/Revision_discussions

The WMF also published a report (announcement on Wikimedia-l) on the feedback received during the vote on the Enforcement Guidelines, along with what is said to be a full list of anonymised comments users had left along with their votes. – AK

• Administrator and bureaucrat activity requirements: Activity requirements for administrators and bureaucrats were raised following an RfC. For more coverage, please see the Discussion report.
• Wikimedia Foundation stops accepting cryptocurrency donations: After an RfC on Meta was closed, with consensus from the community to recommend the WMF stop accepting cryptocurrency donations, the WMF decided to discontinue direct acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of donating (link). The RfC on Meta was started by GorillaWarfare; there is related coverage of GorillaWarfare in this month's In the Media section.
• Leadership Development Working Group formed: Fifteen members of the Leadership Development Working Group were announced on May 16.
• CR&S office hours: Community Resilience & Sustainability is hosting conversations on IRC on June 2 at 17:00 UTC.
• Wikimedia Enterprise conversations: The Wikimedia Enterprise project team welcomes conversations via Zoom on June 9 at 17:00 UTC.
• Hubs Global Conversations event: A Global Conversations event on Regional and Thematic Hubs with a focus on peer-to-peer sharing is occurring on June 24-26.
• Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this week: Igbo Wikipedia (10,000 pages), Saraiki Wiktionary (70,000 entries), Ukrainian Wikivoyage (1,000 articles), Interlingue Wikipedia (10,000 articles), Karakalpak Wikipedia (10,000 registered users).
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Turkey (bird). Please be bold in helping improve it!

The Wikimedia Foundation Board election process for 2022 started in April. Twelve Wikimedians have submitted their candidacy, and six members of the Analysis Committee have been confirmed at the time of publication. The Analysis Committee is responsible for evaluat[ing] the candidates against the skills and diversity, equity and inclusion criteria shared by the Board of Trustees. An affiliate shortlisting period will be held from July 1 to 15, and a community voting phase is scheduled for August 15 to 29.

To help inform affiliates on the wishes of the community, The Signpost is holding a poll to select a potential shortlist. To participate, please use this link; contributors can select "yes", "abstain" or "no" for each candidate. The top 6 candidates will be published and recommended for affiliates to select for shortlisting. Please use your username in the "name" field; only the Signpost Editors in Chief (EpicPupper and JPxG) will have access to the vote logs. Once done, please email one of the EiCs to confirm your vote. Duplicate votes will not be counted.

Edit count statistics are tallied below for each candidate, for voter convenience.

• Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak): ar.wikipedia.org 3,643 en.wikipedia.org 3,182 commons.wikimedia.org 1,926 meta.wikimedia.org 985 www.wikidata.org 546 wikimania2016.wikimedia.org 66 ar.wikisource.org 46 he.wikipedia.org 34 www.mediawiki.org 29 fr.wikipedia.org 29 Other projects 194
  • All projects 10,680 [3]
• Mike Peel (Mike Peel): www.wikidata.org 192,526 commons.wikimedia.org 130,267 en.wikipedia.org 73,789 en.wikisource.org 5,054 meta.wikimedia.org 4,043 simple.wikipedia.org 929 wikimania2018.wikimedia.org 477 pt.wikipedia.org 299 wikimania.wikimedia.org 174 foundation.wikimedia.org 114 Other projects 510
  • All projects 408,182 [4]
• Gilbert Ndihokubwayo (Gilbert Ndihokubwayo): meta.wikimedia.org 211 commons.wikimedia.org 121 rn.wikipedia.org 36 fr.wikipedia.org 19 eo.wikipedia.org 16 en.wikipedia.org 11 www.wikidata.org 9 wikimania.wikimedia.org 2 en.wikivoyage.org 2 eo.wikiquote.org 1 Other projects 0
  • All projects 428 [5]
• Tobechukwu Precious Friday (Tochiprecious): meta.wikimedia.org 1,086 www.wikidata.org 487 incubator.wikimedia.org 310 commons.wikimedia.org 306 ig.wikipedia.org 232 www.mediawiki.org 165 en.wikipedia.org 44 wikimania.wikimedia.org 9 sn.wikipedia.org 4 en.wikiquote.org 4 Other projects 8
  • All projects 2,655 [6]
• Lionel Scheepmans (Lionel Scheepmans): fr.wikiversity.org 23,399 fr.wikipedia.org 4,877 meta.wikimedia.org 2,939 en.wikiversity.org 1,090 fr.wikibooks.org 856 commons.wikimedia.org 738 be.wikimedia.org 442 en.wikipedia.org 259 www.wikidata.org 186 wikimania.wikimedia.org 84 Other projects 566
  • All projects 35,436 [7]
• Abderamane Abakar Brahim (Abakar B): fr.wikipedia.org 577 commons.wikimedia.org 515 meta.wikimedia.org 117 wikimania.wikimedia.org 74 fr.wiktionary.org 18 www.wikidata.org 3 en.wikipedia.org 3 www.mediawiki.org 2 pl.wikipedia.org 1 en.wikivoyage.org 0 Other projects 0
  • All projects 1,310 [8]
• Joris Darlington Quarshie (Joris Darlington Quarshie): commons.wikimedia.org 13,307 en.wikipedia.org 3,588 www.wikidata.org 1,254 outreach.wikimedia.org 1,178 meta.wikimedia.org 1,168 www.mediawiki.org 1,097 en.wikiquote.org 46 af.wikipedia.org 14 incubator.wikimedia.org 4 ak.wikipedia.org 3 Other projects 1
  • All projects 21,660 [9]
• Egbe Eugene Agbor (Eugene233): www.wikidata.org 11,192 commons.wikimedia.org 771 meta.wikimedia.org 547 test.wikipedia.org 467 www.mediawiki.org 90 en.wikipedia.org 24 fr.wiktionary.org 10 fr.wikipedia.org 4 nl.wikipedia.org 2 wikimania.wikimedia.org 2 Other projects 2
  • All projects 13,111 [10]
• Kunal Mehta (Legoktm): en.wikipedia.org 29,898 www.wikidata.org 22,133 commons.wikimedia.org 4,908 www.mediawiki.org 4,059 meta.wikimedia.org 1,269 es.wikipedia.org 573 en.wikinews.org 326 de.wikipedia.org 243 fr.wikipedia.org 241 it.wikipedia.org 233 Other projects 3,721
  • All projects 67,604 [11]
• Shani Evenstein Sigalov (Esh77): he.wikipedia.org 9,968 www.wikidata.org 2,439 meta.wikimedia.org 921 commons.wikimedia.org 865 en.wikipedia.org 361 outreach.wikimedia.org 301 wikimania.wikimedia.org 156 wikimania2014.wikimedia.org 47 wikimania2012.wikimedia.org 36 wikimania2016.wikimedia.org 17 Other projects 48
  • All projects 15,159 [12]
• Gina Bennett (Redwidgeon): en.wikipedia.org 479 en.wikiversity.org 130 commons.wikimedia.org 78 meta.wikimedia.org 59 wikimania.wikimedia.org 45 outreach.wikimedia.org 7 www.wikidata.org 7 en.wikibooks.org 6 en.wikivoyage.org 5 ca.wikimedia.org 2 Other projects 0
  • All projects 818 [13]
• Michał Buczyński (Aegis Maelstrom): pl.wikipedia.org 15,159 www.wikidata.org 2,489 meta.wikimedia.org 969 pl.wikimedia.org 713 en.wikipedia.org 571 commons.wikimedia.org 382 pl.wikinews.org 17 pl.wikiquote.org 13 de.wikipedia.org 11 wikimania2013.wikimedia.org 10 Other projects 83
  • All projects 20,417 [14]

Thank you for sharing your views!

Andreas Kolbe is a former co-editor-in-chief of The Signpost and has been a Wikipedia contributor since 2006. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Signpost. Responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. – E

In 2016, the Wikimedia Foundation established the Wikimedia Endowment, designed to "serve as a perpetual source of support for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation". The Endowment's target was to raise $100 million by 2026, and it has been hosted as a "Collective Action Fund" at the Tides Foundation.

Financially, the Endowment appears to have been a runaway success, far exceeding communicated expectations.

Hosting by the Tides Foundation was intended to be a temporary arrangement, and the WMF has promised for more than five years now to transfer the Endowment to a standalone 501(c)(3) organization, which would then be legally required to make its own Form 990 disclosures of financial data each year – revenue, expenditure, salary costs, highest-paid contractors, grants, etc. – in line with the minimum standards of transparency for US non-profits.

On 29 March 2017, for example, Lisa Seitz answered community questions about the Endowment on Meta as follows:

"The WMF board has already given us the direction to move it into a separate 501c3 once the endowment reaches $33 million. ... WMF's Executive Director is supportive of moving it to a new 501c3 once it reaches $33 million."

But as the Foundation proudly announced last September, the Endowment passed $100 million in June 2021, five years early. The $33 million mark came and went years ago. The move to a standalone non-profit never happened.

Fast forward a few years, and WMF staff were still making the same sorts of public statements about moving to a 501(c)(3) soon. As Endowment Director Amy Parker and Director of Development Caitlin Virtue told me on Meta in April 2021:

"No grants will be made from the Endowment until its total revenue surpasses $100 million. Updates on funds raised are posted to this page. We are in the process of transitioning the Endowment to a new US 501c3 charity, after which it will begin making grants and will publish its own Form 990. ... As we approach the $100 million funding milestone, we are in the process of establishing the Endowment as a separate 501c3. ..."

"We are in the process of establishing a new home for the endowment in a stand-alone 501(c)(3) public charity. We will move the endowment in its entirety to this new entity once the new charity receives its IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter."

This was more than a year ago.

Note that the promise to post updates on funds raised is no longer kept. The last update on Meta as of this writing was to say that the Endowment had surpassed $100 million in June 2021. There has been no update on funds raised since then. We, and donors around the world who are asked to contribute, or to include the Wikimedia Endowment in their wills, don't know if the Endowment now stands at $120 million, $150 million, $200 million, or higher ...

The Wikimedia Foundation also refuses to disclose how much money it has paid the Tides Foundation (incidentally, an organization the WMF's General Counsel Amanda Keton used to head before she moved to the WMF in 2019) for its administration and management of the Endowment since 2016, or indeed whether – and how much – any other consultants, law firms, advisors, staff, or other help have been paid from Endowment funds.

Asking about these matters yields the terse response:

"As a matter of practice, we do not disclose specific terms of contracts with our vendors."

We also don't know whether grants have already been made – as Amy Parker said could happen upon reaching the $100 million mark – nor do we know who may have received those grants. There isn't a lack of precedent: we have already seen millions of dollars of Wikimedia money being given to outside organizations via Tides without disclosure until months later.

Matters would be considerably more transparent if the Wikimedia Foundation had done what it said it would do years ago: transfer the Wikimedia Endowment to a standalone non-profit publishing its own annual Form 990, with a binding commitment to follow the guidelines of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA).

What is the delay? Is the Wikimedia Foundation having trouble getting the IRS to recognise the Endowment's qualifications for non-profit status? When will we see a Form 990? Will the Foundation make a retrospective declaration of all costs and expenses since 2016, if the Endowment is ever transferred to a 501(c)(3) non-profit?

How about voluntarily publishing properly audited financial statements for the Endowment, covering the period from 2016 to today?

As long as there is no such transparent accounting, anybody donating funds to the Wikimedia Endowment is effectively throwing money into a black hole.

Wikipedia administrator Molly White, known here as GorillaWarfare, runs a blog (Web3 Is Going Great) cataloging misfortunes and scams in cryptocurrency. Today's Washington Post covers her in First she documented the alt-right. Now she’s coming for crypto (archive). Since 2021 White has been documenting ripoffs which she estimates cost cryptocurrency investors $10 billion. You can also find her on Twitter – S

Short video with subtitles here. Full meeting transcript (in Russian).

The Moscow Times reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Russians to have alternatives to Wikipedia. "You can't just rely on Wikipedia," he says. So far he agrees with Jimmy Wales and most other Wikipedians. While Wikipedia is a wonderful place to start your research on a topic, it's not a good place to end it. A representative of Znanie [ru], a state sponsored non-profit which publishes lecture videos, was called on to agree with Putin on TV. They're ready to help.See previous coverage in The Signpost about Putin's plans to replace Wikipedia with the Great Russian Encyclopedia here, here, and here. – S

A "special military operation" is the name given by Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials to exchange of missiles, bombs, and bullets between Moscow's armed forces and Ukraine's which the Kremlin initiated on February 24. Western news sources and much of the rest of the world call it a "war" or an "invasion of Ukraine", as does the Russian-language version of Wikipedia. A new Russian law says that Russian publishers must only use the facts and terminology provided by officials of the Russian Federation when reporting military affairs. On April 26 a Moscow court levied a 3 million ruble fine ($41,594) on the Wikimedia Foundation for violating this law according to Reuters. The WMF has previously addressed this issue: "we will not back down in the face of efforts to censor and intimidate members of our movement. We stand by our mission to deliver free knowledge to the world." Don't expect them to pay the fine. – S

In The War Over Ukraine—On Wikipedia, Catarina Buchatskiy writes for Lawfare that the Kremlin is carrying out an "information war" on Wikipedia. She states "seemingly petty Wikipedia edit wars are actually an important battleground, and unfortunately, they are a battleground on which Russian narratives are much more successful compared to how Russian soldiers have fared on the ground in physical battle against the army of a nation Russians pretend does not exist." She states:

A debate is taking place about whether Russia is engaged in genocide within the meaning of the Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as any of several types of atrocity when “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” ... consider for a moment that this activity is taking place concurrent with mass killings, deportations of children and the deliberate destruction of cities.

– FD, B, S

The Fake Accounts Whitewashing Oligarchs' Wikipedia Pages (subscription required): Omer Benjakob at Haaretz analyzes an article published here in March. He compares the recent Signpost investigation by Smallbones into "inauthentic behavior" around Russian oligarchs' biographies and related pages to past incidents and concludes that "Wikipedia is on Russia's radar" and that "a shadow war is playing out on Wikipedia between editors seeking to weed out for-profit editing and PR firms working for their clients". – B

CNN published an in-depth look at the Wikipedians who start and maintain breaking news entries. The article, Meet the Wikipedia editor who published the Buffalo shooting entry minutes after it started focuses on the contributions of long-time Wikipedian Jason Moore and several others. Going deeper than many similar pieces, the article does a very adept job of explaining Wikipedia's policies and how these articles are shaped over time. Kudos to the reporter, Samantha Murphy Kelly!^[1] – G

The world's richest man is obsessed with how he is described on the free internet encyclopedia: in Slate, Stephen Harrison reviews the editing history of the Elon Musk article and notes that Musk has complained several times about aspects of his Wikipedia biography on Twitter. However, Harrison thinks Wikipedians had it right – and feels it is important that there is a place online "where billionaires cannot purchase their preferred version of events, nor own the means of conversation." – AK

Jimmy Wales comments on Elon Musk's buying Twitter. Speaking exclusively to LADbible, he said: "This is the point where I think it’s a huge risk for Twitter and Elon Musk, because if you go to [sic] far – or very far at all down that path from where Twitter is now - I think you start to lose market share. We have to remember, Twitter is not a monopoly, there’s loads of other platforms and places, we should be really focused on thinking about that competitive landscape. If you don’t like the moderation policies on one service, you can go somewhere else." Read the full interview here. – FD

In Reason, Katherine Mangu-Ward interviews Jimmy Wales [15] (30:48). Reason leads with "Wikipedia continues to quietly grow in utility, trustworthiness, and comprehensiveness" and it "has maintained its reputation and functionality since its founding, even as the rest of the social internet seems hellbent on tearing itself apart".

Reason and its editor, Mangu-Ward, advocate for some controversial positions, so this interview has some interesting sparring, but never breaks out in open debate. Discussion points include:

• Is the Wikipedia model generalizable?
• friendly societies versus insurance companies,
• public spaces for heterodoxy,
• the libertarian response to online harassment,
• ejecting trolls in a bible study group should never be illegal,
• Wales' WT.social social media site, which like Wikipedia eschews ads, is "not a great business model, it's not lucrative at all, we're not making money",
• and creating meaningful content versus merely controversial content.

– B, S

• Meet the Press Reports: Chuck Todd interviews WMF CEO Maryana Iskander (14:26)
• Stossel TV – Commentary from John Stossel, with content from a past interview of Jimbo Wales and a new interview of longtime editor Jonathan Weiss.

• Councillor edits own Wikipedia page to "repair misinformation": The Otago Daily Times reports that a member of the City Council in Dunedin, New Zealand edited his own Wikipedia biography. The edit was made under an account bearing his name; readers can come to their own conclusions as to the merits or demerits of the changes made. Both the Otago Daily Times article and the Wikipedia article claim that the changes were reverted; a perusal of the edit history shows, however, that a number of them were subsequently incorporated.
• The many fake lives of a pro cyclist: Cycling Tips reports that the owner of a Virginia bicycle shop built a completely fake history of himself as a professional cyclist. "Until 2020, the first page of results for 'Nick Clark cyclist' brought up a Wikipedia page corroborating details of his path into the sport and his racing career, the events he said he rode at and teams he said he rode for." For a while, he was "credited on Wikipedia as the winner of the U23 Australian Time Trial Championship in 1999 and 2000 – when he would have been 23 and 24 years old, again in years that the category didn’t exist." See the 2020 AFD.
• The saints of Wikipedia: High praise for those who "have done a good job of collecting" Space Force insignia (Gizmodo).

• How academic institutions can help bridge Wikipedia's gender-gap: This column in Nature provides possible solutions to addressing the encyclopedia's bias that favors male achievements.

• U.S. Senate candidate deletion: [16] Christian Post runs down deletion criteria pretty soundly but still disagreed with the May 9 deletion of the biography article for candidate Kathy Barnette, then 2% behind the front runner in the Pennsylvania Republican primary for U.S. Senate. She finished third with 24% of the vote according to Ballotpedia; vote counting is under way for a two-way tie between the front runners (heavily covered in U.S. media as of writing deadline). The article Kathy Barnette was re-created and re-nominated for deletion on May 19 for the third time in 45 days. The latest discussion was closed with consensus to keep.

• How I Got Here: A pivot from music to computer science paved Tajh Taylor's path to Wikimedia VP: in Technical.ly documents how Tajh Taylor, the VP of data science and engineering at the WMF, switched from applying for university programs in music to computer science degrees from Morehouse College and UC Berkeley. Thank his mother! He is now the highest-ranking Black staff member at the WMF.
• #KnowWithWiki is a social media campaign in India that the WMF is using to introduce Indians to Wikipedia via social media influencers. Exchange4media interviews Khanyi Mpumlwana, the WMF's Creative Director, and she tells readers about the WMF, how Wikipedia works, and about the campaign. The one message that she wants Indians to understand is "Whatever you want to know, you can know it with Wiki!"
• Bollywood vs Wikipedia: Karma Cola with more fizz than substance?: There's controversy over the Wiki article characterizing the film The Kashmir Files as fiction.
  • (Hindustan Times) "Dear @Wikipedia, You forgot to add ‘Islamophobia… propaganda… sanghi… bigot… etc’. "
  • (Firstpost) "a self-help quick fix cocky rack of righteous knowledge" Also "dubious authenticity", "arrogant show of I-know-best knowledge for a civilization looking for instant knowledge. Wikipedia is Karma Cola with more fizz than substance".
• Wikipedia Italia e l'invasione dell'Ucraina: la storia di una bozza lunga 19 giorni: (subscription required) in Italian about Mark Bernstein in la Repubblica.
• British historian Paul Kennedy writes book with 80+ citations to Wikipedia: "Many university professors would mark down a student paper that included uncorroborated Wikipedia citations", according to the New York Times book review of Victory at Sea published by Yale University Press. But Kennedy breaks from the pack in this book about World War II, with an unprecedented 80+ citations to Wikipedia.

• Wikipedia readers uninterested in two moths: In a personal research narrative blogger Colin Morris shares their methods and tools for determining that for 2021, the Wikipedia articles for two particular moths were the least read articles in all of Wikipedia. Other commentary covers Wikipedia's traffic reporting, the random article feature, and speculation on the browsing paths of Wikipedia readers. In response and speaking for Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera, moth editor user:SchreiberBike said "I support the assumption that every species should have an article."
• They should have read WP:NOTDIR: "Hotel Chain Index" derived from Wikipedia data, among other things (probably locations, but these are routinely deleted due to WP:NOTDIR policy).
• Texas secessionist wants to stay in ... Wikipedia, that is: "To Miller, his page's potential removal is par for the course of the raging war against the 'mini-Stalins of the world'" (Dallas Observer).

Russia's military invasion of Ukraine upended the lives of most Ukrainians, and most members of the country's Wikimedia community. Some people have had to flee their homes, some joined the army – and many are working on expanding free knowledge on Wikipedia and beyond.

For this article, I spoke with three members of Ukraine's Wikimedia community: one who lost his home in the siege of Mariupol, one who made an emotional decision to join the army, and one who was writing a Wikipedia article every day even when traveling across the country to evacuate her relatives.

The Russian siege of Mariupol, a major city in southeastern Ukraine, has become one of the most profound tragedies of the 21st century.

Authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have died since early March, as a result of shelling, and the effects of the siege like lack of food and water. The vast majority of Mariupol's buildings have been destroyed or severely damaged by indiscriminate shelling.

Oleksandr, known on Wikipedia as Wanderer777, was born in Mariupol and spent much of his life in the city. He eventually managed to escape from the city and is safe now, but before that he had witnessed the siege and its effects first-hand.

Oleksandr graduated from the Pryazovskyi State Technical University in Mariupol, specializing in the automatization of metallurgical processes and computer-integrated technologies.

On Wikipedia, he's been most active in the Russian-language edition; over the past 15 years, he had the opportunity to be an administrator, a bureaucrat, a member of the Arbitration Committee, and a mediator on the topic of Ukraine. Oleksandr has also contributed to Ukrainian Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and other wiki projects.

When Russia openly invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Oleksandr and his family contemplated leaving Mariupol but decided to stay, hoping that the war would not reach them quickly. The predictions proved too optimistic – Russian forces advanced rapidly in the east of Ukraine, and soon Mariupol was encircled. On the third day of the invasion, leaving was already impossible, Oleksandr recalls.

Oleksandr's family moved to a safer western part of the city. Within a few days, the occupiers destroyed practically all civilian infrastructure. Supermarkets, electrical transformer substations, water supply pumping stations were shattered, and so were fire stations and funeral homes.

Oleksandr and other people in his building moved to the basement and lived there for a few weeks. He remembers constant shelling – a picture of a Russian tank approaching the neighborhood and indiscriminately shooting at residential buildings was not uncommon. Oleksandr's house was hit and damaged but not destroyed – unlike most of the buildings around it, which collapsed completely.

As soon as possible in mid-March, Oleksandr and his family managed to sneak from the city to a nearby village. This wasn't the end of their ordeal, though – they spent another month looking for ways to escape from occupied territory. Finally, they managed to leave by car in the second half of April, reaching the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia.

Oleksandr says it's a miracle he managed to leave Mariupol. People leaving later, especially military-age men, were either not allowed to leave or placed in filtration camps, effectively being jailed for an indefinite period without trial.

He helped his family move abroad and remains in Dnipro, a city in eastern Ukraine that's controlled by the Ukrainian government and is relatively safe as compared to beleaguered Donbas.

Oleksandr says we'll never know the full extent of the devastation in Mariupol. As he describes on his user page in Russian Wikipedia, "many people died, truly many … People were dying from missiles and shells. In houses and on the streets, in yards and shelters. When they were trying to get at least some food from destroyed shops, when they were cooking food in bonfires, when they were looking for a place that still had mobile connection. People were dying when buildings collapsed from air bombs and in basements from smoke caused by fires. People were dying from the lack of insulin, antibiotics and medications for heart diseases. People were dying from hunger and thirst."

Now, what once was a major industrial center with over 400,000 residents is in ruins – and fully occupied by Russia. Active fighting has stopped, but the humanitarian disaster is not over – the city's infrastructure was destroyed, and the occupying authorities aren't likely to rebuild it soon.

For another account of the Mariupol tragedy, check the diary of doctor Oleh Zyma – also a Wikipedia editor – published by "Bird in Flight".

This article is a first-hand account written by Wikipedia editor Viacheslav Fedchenkov, user fed4ev; translation by Anton Protsiuk

I've been contributing to Wikipedia as user fed4ev for twelve years now; I've also contributed to Wikinews and Wiktionary (mostly the Ukrainian editions). I've volunteered for Wikimedia Ukraine in event organizing and led wiki trainings. I visited two international Wikimania conferences and participated in Ukrainian Wikiconferences.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine didn't take me by surprise; I believed in the assessments made by Western intelligence services before the war. However, to be honest, I did nothing to prepare for the war. My loved ones refused to leave Kyiv even in the first days of the war. During that time, my wife and I, like many other Kyivans, slept in metro stations [which have served as shelters from air attacks]. For a few days, we weren't able to go to the left bank of Dnipro, where my mother lives. We donated to the army and humanitarian causes.

I'm a military reservist – I served in the army as a conscript in 2006–2007. As a loyal citizen of Ukraine, I decided in advance to go to the army. I also voluntarily came to the military enlistment office in 2014, in the first days of the occupation of Crimea and with the beginning of the Russian aggression in Donbas.

It is worth mentioning that I am Russian by origin: Russian is my native language, and more than two thirds of my ancestors were ethnic Russians (from Moscow, Moscow region and Orlov region). I know my family history well, and I've never felt discomfort because of that. At the same time, my origins didn't cloud my judgment, didn't cloud my conscience. I've always seen Ukraine's relations with Moscow as a struggle of the former colony for liberation from the grip of the imperial metropolis. And like any modern person, I've rooted for the freedom-loving colony.

The actions of the Russian government, the lies with which it justified its war, and the crimes of the Russian army only strengthened my readiness to join the Armed Forces.

However, I now understand that my decision to join the Armed Forces was rather emotional – I was not ready for war, and I would be more useful in civilian life with my specialty as a social worker, an expert in the protection of children's rights. In organizing support centers for internally displaced persons, in documenting war crimes against children, in working with a new wave of migration from Ukraine to the west, in the placement of children who have lost their parents, and more. But human stupidity has no limits, and for the second time under the same circumstances, I would probably do the same and go about the same path.

My service is not easy. But I try to support myself with usual civic activities; for example, I write poetry on Twitter; I have already created a selection of haiku (search #хайкуЗСУ on Twitter).

In two months of service, I have not contributed to wiki projects; I hope to return to active editing after Ukraine's victory. But I've used Wikipedia to look up different information. I'm grateful to editors who are developing military articles and I think I will join them, because I found gaps in some military topics (such as tactical and technical characteristics of certain types of weapons and ammunition).

Maybe even now, in calmer conditions, I will add a couple of articles or publish something from the drafts, because Wikipedia is love, and it's love that is the strongest support in times of war and enmity.

In 2015, Bulgarian Wikipedian Spiritia initiated the #100wikidays challenge. The rules are simple – creating at least one article on Wikipedia every single day for 100 days.

Over the next seven years, the challenge grew in popularity. Over 400 Wikipedia users joined the challenge, and over 100 people successfully finished it. The participants jokingly call themselves "victims" – creating a new article every single day is fun but difficult; you have to sacrifice other tasks or even sleep.

Seven years ago Antanana, an experienced Wikipedian and Ukrainian Wikipedia administrator, became one of #100wikidays' first participants. In 2022, she decided to complete the challenge again.

Antanana started her 100-days marathon on January 2nd – and almost half of her #100wikidays had to be completed during Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Still, Antanana managed to complete the challenge successfully. In an interview with me, she shared how she managed to do it, when creating an article was most difficult, and who was inspired by her run to complete the challenge themselves.

The decision to start #100wikidays was a sort of New Year's resolution for Antanana. She says she often "lacked a sense of accomplishment during the day" – the tasks she'd been working on were progressing slowly, and she wanted to see some tangible work completed every day.

She set additional restrictions for herself that are not required by the general rules of the challenge – she covered only Israel-related topics, and each article had to be linked from a different article created in this #100wikidays round.

Antanana chose Israel because she is learning Hebrew – and also because she wanted to visit the country again but hadn't been able to for a long time because of the COVID-19 travel restrictions. Her first #100wikidays article was about Israeli singer Zohar Argov, while the last one, created on April 11th, covered composer and singer Avihu Medina, who created music for Argov.

During her #100wikidays Antanana wrote, for example, about the Montefiore Windmill, the Sasson Report, and the 1931 census of Palestine. (She also joined other challenges on Ukrainian Wikipedia during her run, and she didn't count the articles created then as #100wikidays articles).

Antanana mostly translated articles from English and Hebrew editions of Wikipedia. She says writing articles "from scratch", i.e. not translating from another language, is too difficult when it has to be done every day.

Overall, during her 2022 #100wikidays round Antanana added 685,744 bytes to Ukrainian Wikipedia (one Ukrainian character counts for two bytes).

Late on February 23rd, Antanana wrote her 53rd article for the challenge. A few hours later, Russian missiles hit her city – and many other cities across Ukraine.

In the early hours of the invasion, Antanana thought about giving up on #100wikidays – but soon decided that she would finish it anyway, and Russian aggression would not force her to abandon her plans.

However, the first days of the Russian invasion were still the most difficult. On February 24, Antanana was in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in Western Ukraine, but her mother and brother were in a village near Kyiv with Antanana’s grandfather, some 600 kilometers eastward. They had to be evacuated to Western Ukraine. Getting to that village is difficult even in peacetime, and much more so during the war.

A decision was made to immediately get in the car and drive to get Antanana's family members. The journey was ultimately successful and relatively safe, but long and difficult. They drove for three days – with short breaks for sleep, with large military vehicles on the neighboring lanes, and with long lines at gas stations.

Still, Antanana kept writing a Wikipedia article a day, even in the car (as a passenger) on the way toward Kyiv. She says it was really useful that Wikipedia's translation tool automatically saves progress – it was helpful when connection was spotty during the drive. These several days were the most difficult in terms of keeping up with #100wikidays, but Antanana managed to do it.

A few days after returning to Ivano-Frankivsk, Antanana went to Israel – and, ironically, finished the challenge of writing articles about Israel in that very country, where she couldn't get for a few years before.

For Antanana, one new article took approximately two hours. That's enough to translate an average article – not a long and highly detailed one, but something more than a short stub.

Of course, much depends on the topic of a specific article. For Antanana, it also depends on the language which she is translating the article from; she needs more time to translate from Hebrew than from English.

How to find two hours every day? "If you want to, you'll find a way," Antanana says. Writing an article on Wikipedia becomes an urgent item on the to-do list. When the task has a specific deadline, you can sacrifice other tasks which can wait for a few more days. And, of course, you can sacrifice the time you'd otherwise spend on reading news, scrolling social media feeds, and even sleeping.

One useful lifehack – plan article topics beforehand. When you're more busy on a certain day, you can plan to create a shorter article. For Antanana, for example, the quickest to create were articles about Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. (In theory, one can also prepare full texts of the articles beforehand. The rules of the challenge prohibit it, but they also encourage ignoring all rules.)

Antanana's example inspired a couple of Wikipedian friends to get on a new round of #100wikidays as well.

The first one who couldn't resist was Spiritia, a Wikipedian from Bulgaria and the challenge's founder. Many of her 100 Bulgarian-language articles were devoted to Ukraine; for example, she wrote about the theater destroyed by Russian invaders in Mariupol and about prominent Ukrainian painter Maria Prymachenko.

Then, Israeli Wikipedian Ijon joined. He was also among the first #100wikidays participants in 2015. Now, his personal challenge is "consequences of 100wikidays". The idea is going back to the 100 articles created during the challenge and writing all the articles necessary to turn all the red links blue, i.e. creating all the missing articles linked from the 100 original articles.

Antanana says she doesn't yet have plans to embark on #100wikidays again – but in the future she might start fixing the "consequences" of her previous two rounds.

This Discussion Report covers conversations that were closed or archived from April 1, 2022 to May 29, 2022.

George Ho asked on March 9th if using a non-free biographical image of a person immediately after (or upon) the said person's death (date) is acceptable, unacceptable, or neither. The result was a consensus that it is technically acceptable per policy, with some important caveats. There should be a respect for commercial opportunities, which in some cases may mean the immediate use of a non-free image post-death is not appropriate. There remains a consensus that free images are preferred over non-free ones, and that regardless of the time period elapsed after death a serious effort should be made to find free images before deciding to use non-free ones.

Mhawk10 started a discussion on March 15th that asks: when both the username and real name of a Wikipedia editor are widely reported by reliable sources, to what extent should Wikipedia prohibit articles in the mainspace from stating that such a person edits under that account name? Editors brought up policies such as WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:DUEWEIGHT, but the discussion has now been archived without a formal closure.

On 15 March Sdkb and JBchrch proposed removing the portal links from the Main Page, adding a mention of portals in the "Other areas of Wikipedia" section, and adding the language switcher to where the portal links formerly were. Barkeep49 closed the discussion on 14 April, finding consensus to remove the portal links and add a mention to the other areas section, and finding a weak consensus to add the language switcher. Barkeep also noted procedural objections with the neutrality of the RfC, but they found insufficient reason to not honor the proposal.^[1]

Worm That Turned proposed on 17 March to increase the administrator activity requirements. An administrator that has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12 months period OR has made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period (coming into force 1 January 2023) may be desysopped for inactivity. Consensus to implement this proposal was found by Slywriter on April 13. In a follow-up RfC, Worm That Turned suggested that the same change be made to the bureaucrat activity requirements. The discussion was closed on April 22 by Wugapodes with consensus to change.^[1]

On April 2nd Bduke made a request for comment about ending Wikipedia's tradition of April Fools' Day jokes. After a gaggle of input in just two days, the discussion was closed with no consensus.^[1]

A discussion about using a non-free sample for purposes of identification in an article about a song was started on April 11th by George Ho. It received a decent amount of support, but was not formally closed and is now archived.

On April 20th, Barkeep49 eloquently posed the question of what our policy is regarding changing policies; specifically, is a formal request for comment required? This discussion was not closed, but led to some valuable observations and conclusions before being archived. Most editors agreed that consensus and discussion are required for policy changes, but that doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a request for comment.^[1]

In March 2020, we interviewed members of WikiProject COVID-19 right as the pandemic was starting to spread. Two years later, we've invited them back to discuss how their work has progressed and adapted to the changes the pandemic underwent.

1. How has the work of the project evolved for the last two years?

   Kencf0618: I do not know. There are forests and trees. Parsing is an art.

   Gtoffoletto: We have entered a crucial phase of maintenance after the initial flurry of activity.

   FormalDude: At the beginning of the pandemic, it was a rush to get the best and most important information onto the encyclopedia. Now that two years have passed and so much more research is available, the result is a comprehensive network of articles that in my view are some of Wikipedia's most useful informative content.

2. How will the future look for the WikiProject?

   Kencf0618: I do not have a crystal ball.

   Gtoffoletto: A lot of consolidation will be needed now to reduce some of the excesses of the first years.

   Tenryuu: I don't watch a lot of COVID-19 related pages, but it feels like new activity has died down. Maintenance seems to be on the rise.

   FormalDude: There's some unanswered questions in the overarching narrative of the pandemic, that, if answered, will drastically effect articles and content from the project. I think neutrality in light of revelations will be something we have to continue to work towards.

3. How has your work on the WikiProject reflected your own experiences with COVID-19?

   Kencf0618: Timing: I began the timeline article the day they shut Wuhan down. I had been following an epidemiologist on Twitter and he said he was getting masks; I followed suit. Two or three days later, they were not to be found (I gave my stash to clergy, a rabbi and my parents' minister ‐I figured that they would be on the front lines whereas I could just go to ground).

   Gtoffoletto: I was able to vastly increase my efforts during the lockdown phase. I felt ensuring our articles were accurate was my contribution to fighting the pandemic. Now I can contribute much less as thankfully the acute phase of the pandemic has passed and most are now vaccinated.

   Bondegezou: I found my own work on COVID-19 research, including advising government, left me unable to have the same input to Wikipedia because I had a conflict of interest and found it difficult to separate Wikipedia's epistemological positioning from that of my own work. It also made editing Wikipedia feel too much like work and I want to enjoy editing Wikipedia! I became much more of a user and less of an editor of Wikipedia's COVID-19 content. I often found myself going to Wikipedia for clear timeline information or details of what restrictions applied where/when.

   Tenryuu: I took over contributing to COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia for a while, but I haven't updated it much now that my life has gotten busier.

4. The disease has become increasingly politicized as the pandemic progressed. How has your WikiProject dealt with this?

   Kencf0618: Documentation, documentation, documentation.

   Gtoffoletto: Stick to reliable sources.

   Bondegezou: We have long accepted that health information on Wikipedia is especially sensitive and we have special rules at WP:MEDRS for medical information. However, there are grey areas over what MEDRS covers. The community faced tensions around how to cover questions of the origin of SARS-CoV-2, particularly the so-called lab leak hypothesis. My experience was of many discussions and proposals over how to apply MEDRS that were really a back door for the same recurring argument over what credence and coverage to give to the lab leak hypothesis. These seemed a particular cause of Wikipedia stress. In those contexts, it remains hard for editors to reach a settlement that everyone can accept.

   Tenryuu: I find this tough to answer as many parties insist they have evidence supporting their hypotheses. Like Bondegezou mentioned above, WP:MEDRS is good for viral mechanics and trends, but not over any human-involved action.

   FormalDude: All COVID-19 related articles are under a stricter set of guidelines called discretionary sanctions, and that makes it easier for experienced editors to prevail even when POV-groups push fringe ideas. It ultimately is a group effort and it plays out much like it does on the rest of Wikipedia, where due weight is typically a primary concern.

5. I imagine working in this topic area must have been stressful. Do you have tips for other editors working in contentious topic areas on how to deal with wikistress?

   Kencf0618: Heh. I am officially 100% disabled; I am an autistic; severe mental illness is my jam. "Wikistress" is, shall we say, bupkis. That said, I hove into subjects with great focus and intensity –and I rely on the corporate nature of Wikipedia thereafter.

   Gtoffoletto: I try to remember to take it slow and accept that no article will ever be perfect. Some trust is needed that the process will work in the long run.

   Bondegezou: I think it's important to be able to walk away and trust that everyone else will look after Wikipedia's work. That can be difficult with some less edited Wikipedia articles, but the COVID-19 articles generally all had so many editors contributing that I think it felt easier to rely on the community.

   Tenryuu: Find another niche here. I primarily focused on copy editing with the GOCE before the pandemic, and I continue to do so now along with frequenting the Teahouse to help newcomers.

   FormalDude: It is stressful, and I recommend taking breaks. Stepping away from the wiki, or at least a certain area of the wiki for several days or even a week can be rejuvenating.

6. As a more positive note, what are the contributions to Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19 that you are most proud of?

   Kencf0618: Undoubtedly the timeline. Swine Flu made a deep impression on me. An entire branch of my family does not exist because of the Spanish Flu.

   Gtoffoletto: I'm really proud of the way we were able to share the consensus reached in some articles across the entire project to ensure that we wouldn't be repeating the same discussion multiple times. I think this is something that can be replicated in other areas too.

   Bondegezou: I started Hedgehog coronavirus 1 in early January 2020 and then Beluga whale coronavirus SW1 the next month as a spin-off of reading about coronaviruses as the threat of the pandemic first reared. I'm still proud of those!

   Tenryuu: Timelines are quite detailed (at least, the big ones I've seen). Aside from PEIS issues, the large amount of citations helps support Wikipedia's pillar of verifiability.

   FormalDude: I created Chinese government response to COVID-19 that merged sections from two articles with another article. I really like working on scope related issues and finding the best way to present our content to readers, and this was the culmination of months long discussion, so it was really rewarding.

7. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

   Kencf0618: Wikipedia has a steep learning curve.

   Gtoffoletto: Science rocks! We got incredible vaccines in record time. Really grateful.

   Tenryuu: Hopefully this will be an area that only historians will work on one day.

   FormalDude: It has been an honor to take part in Wikipedia's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thank you to all participants for their insight on a complex and vast area of editing. We hope to be able to publish more WikiProject interviews in the future!

• The Journals Cited by Wikipedia compilation now analyzes over 3 million total citation templates.
• WikiProject Wisconsin is requesting photographs of Door County. A Reward Board item is available!

The software to play video and audio files on pages has now changed on all Wikimedia wikis. The old player has been removed and replaced with Video.js. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years, and uses best practices. For more information, see Tech News.

Over the past four years, the Growth team at the Wikimedia Foundation has developed Growth features, a set of tools that make contributing easier for newcomers. As contributors start editing Wikipedia, they need to learn how the wikis and the community work. These features nudge them to spend time on tasks important to their community. They also make connections through mentorship systems that allow for direct, 1-on-1 contact with an experienced community member. On 26 April 2022, the team also announced a new configuration system, allowing communities to alter the settings of their Growth Features installation.

A policy for MediaWiki gadgets and user scripts is being drafted. Previously, these tools were ill-defined, leading to misunderstandings between engineers and wiki-based code developers when wiki-based code breaks. This also leads to code rot, where developers do not feel empowered to make changes as it's unclear how their changes will impact wiki-based code developers. On top of this, when wiki-based code breaks it's not clear who can and will fix it. Together, a policy is being drafted that has the goal of working for Wikimedia staff, volunteer contributors (on Gerrit and Github), and wiki-based code developers, to lead to a better experience for all parties and try to restore trust and good faith between them. Community input is welcome on the talk page.

The 2022 Wikimedia Hackathon was held as a hybrid event from May 20-22. An online, game-style space was utilized, and 11 local meetups were conducted with the help of community grants. 117 participants signed up, participating in sessions on a variety of topics including infrastructure, localization, Python, Wikibase, and community-building. The next Wikimedia technical event is the Wikimania Hackathon, scheduled for August 11-14, 2022.

A version of the Real Time Preview project has been launched on the Polish Wikipedia by the Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation. The team is working on soliciting community feedback in order to improve the issue. They have decided to roll it out as a Beta Feature before they release the feature to everyone, due to the high-impact environment. This will allow them to collect feedback and make improvements before they release it to everyone. Feedback is welcome on the project's talk page.

Due to the use of nonoptimal workarounds, some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported (see Tech News). Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers, like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. This change follows the MediaWiki compatibility guidelines.

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We showcase the very best articles, pictures, videos, and other contributions from last month and highlight the Wikipedians that helped create them.

For this Pride Month, The Signpost interviewed queer Wikimedians to better understand their views on inclusivity in the Wikimedia movement. Vermont is a steward and administrator on the Simple English Wikipedia. Padgriffin is a vandalism patroller and new page reviewer, primarily active on the English Wikipedia. Tamzin is an administrator on the English Wikipedia and a SPI clerk.

• Vermont: I started out on the English Wikipedia working mostly on article topics that interested me, like Charles Mattocks and other important Vermonters. Did a lot of NPP and AfC work, and eventually shifted away from the English Wikipedia to more global stuff.
• Padgriffin: I started out by doing anti-vandal work and patrolling new pages, mostly reverting cases of vandalism and CSDing blatant cases of advertising.
• Tamzin: (Setting aside some sporadic IP edits and bored afterschool vandalism...) My favorite geography trivia fact has always been that France's longest border is with Brazil, so when I noticed that the article France treated that country's overseas departments like territories, I put in an edit request. A day later, I noticed an article that I incorrectly thought was OR, and created an account so I could AfD it. Whoops. But hey, the edit request was granted, and the footnote I added to the article's lede after becoming confirmed is still there.

• Vermont: The people. Editing a website without friends seems quite boring to me. It also allows me to keep a good balance – some weeks I’ll spend most of my Wikimedia-related time editing, other weeks I’ll spend most of it chatting with people. Or I’ll change up how I contribute, maybe I’ll answer VRT queues or close RfCs or do some spam cleanup. The wide variety of ever-changing work, and the diversity and awesomeness of the people we have, has kept my attention for years.
• Padgriffin: I would say that would be the sense of working towards a greater goal and the people- the knowledge that my work actively contributes towards maintaining the overall quality of the Wiki is quite satisfying. It has also allowed me to meet and chat with other (mostly) like-minded people, and I've met plenty of interesting personalities over my 8 years of editing.
• Tamzin: Editing Wikipedia is a rewarding experience, whether that's writing an article, completely restructuring a complex template, or sifting through a convoluted sockpuppet investigation.

• Vermont: The movement has a decent way to go, and so does the world. A queer person’s experience on Wikimedia projects depends, to a large extent, on the project that they’re editing and the areas that they focus on. Some projects are rife with intolerance, others are warm and welcoming. I think there’s certainly a lot that can be done here, especially in terms of developing properly-nuanced global standards for conduct, as well as outreach and small-project capacity building through affiliates and communities. My experience with this is certainly skewed, as someone who hears so much more about the bad things than good when it comes to inclusivity; regardless, as a movement that has members from all parts of the world, levels of tolerance vary dramatically across and within Wikimedia projects.
• Padgriffin: While my personal perspective is quite limited, as I mostly stick to my personal circles, I believe that the movement is overall quite inclusive, and I've met numerous other members of the LGBTQ community on those platforms.
• Tamzin: I'm for it!

• Vermont: In aggregate, I think the movement is becoming more inclusive. Again, I am certainly skewed on this; as I’ve started to become more public with my queerness the circles of people I talk and contribute with have shifted, and I feel a high level of inclusivity. I also am not looking at this from the position of a new contributor, who can be more vulnerable to intolerance and exclusive behavior. Venturing away from my usual groups, however, is often uncomfortable and can lead to exclusive/intolerant situations. There are various projects with anti-LGBT userboxes, for example, and though it does provide a helpful list of people to avoid, it’s less than optimal knowing that people you collaborate with may very well believe you shouldn’t have rights.
• Padgriffin: I personally believe that it has become a lot more inclusive over the years, at least on the English Wikipedia, as I've never personally encountered editors who have been intolerant towards my sexuality- I would personally attribute this to the environment created by policies WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL, as members of the community are expected (and required) to act in a civil manner.
• Tamzin: When I started editing, you could get away with most forms of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on-wiki as long as you weren't painfully blatant about it, and with certain forms even if you were. That's changed, and I guess makes us both more and less inclusive. It's still easier to get away with LBGTQ-phobia than, say, racism, but often that may come down to admins not being aware of relevant dogwhistles. Overall, I'm very proud of the progress the community has made in the past decade. We've continuously had at least one openly queer arbitrator since 2013, if I recall correctly, which is a very uplifting statistic.

• Vermont: One of the larger difficulties in the Wikimedia movement as a whole is differences in inclusivity between projects and cultures. A good (though not particularly recent) example is from the Amharic Wikipedia, where an admin enforced a ban on queer contributors in line with Ethiopian anti-gay laws. The movement decided nearly unanimously to globally ban this user (who has since become an LTA), but no one really noticed this problem until a globally-aware, active contributor was affected by it. We don’t know how many potential local contributors were lost due to this exclusivity and intolerance. I think this is somewhere that the UCOC can help, to some extent. One of what I believe to be the more important parts of the Enforcement Guidelines is the section that prevents local projects from maintaining policies contrary to the UCOC. Though this does not necessarily make it easier to find these local issues, it will speed up enforcement and removal of problematic policies when found. This also does not prevent local contributors from being intolerant, as we know from the various projects which are open to queer contributors on paper but which may have hostile contributors in positions of power. The Wikimedia movement, as with the rest of the world, is going through a time where large populations of internet-users hold very differing culturally-informed stances on LGBT+ issues. We cannot press a button to make it go away on Wikimedia projects, but we can do everything possible to make explicitly clear that the Wikimedia movement seeks to be a tolerant one.
• Padgriffin: I believe that the single biggest challenge faced by the movement is that it is close to impossible to truly stamp out hate, especially in a large, global and community-driven project such as Wikimedia, where members will be inevitably divided over social, cultural and political lines. The sheer size of the movement creates the risk that intolerant and hostile environments can form in pockets of the community without being noticed, and that damage will have been done by the time they are identified and stopped.
• Tamzin: We always need to be on the lookout for any attempts to assert a "right to exclude" (on the basis of religion, politics, culture, etc.). Another thing we need to remain vigilant against is internecine conflict within the LGBTQ community. There was a trans user who made a number of deeply transphobic remarks that admins didn't initially recognize as such because they were unfamiliar with that brand of rhetoric. But we'll never fix the problem of bigotry in Wikimedia, or in any space with a dynamic population. The best we can do is always stay aware of common strategies being used to undermine inclusivity.

• Vermont: Make friends. Talk to people. Some people love editing in the corner, updating articles on some specific genus of plant, but many like to mix in the social aspect, whether it be to ask for help and learn, or just to be social. Finding people with experience, mentors, who you can also develop friendships with is truly one of the most fun and productive parts of engaging in a community like Wikipedia.
• Padgriffin: My personal advice would be to read up on basic policies and interact with other users, as Wikipedia is, after all, a community project- if you have questions, don't be afraid to ask up on resources such as the Teahouse or on the talk pages of other users, and don't be discouraged if your edits get reverted. At the end of the day, we're not flawless, and we're a work in progress- this applies to both users and the project as a whole. If you see something that you disagree with or are unsure of, be sure to speak up or ask.
• Tamzin: Find something that's wrong on a page that doesn't seem very busy. Fix it. If you make a mistake, ask for help. If you wind up in conflict, move on to something else.

Photos in Wikipedia influence the way people look at the text, because readers can't escape from an image. That's good, as long as photographs in articles give a clear impression of the subject. (I didn't say "neutral", did I?). Wikimedia Commons has an enormous database of photographs, videos, vector images and sounds. This database now consists of 83 million "freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute". That's nice. It's also a database that anyone can steal images from. Roughly 40 million images in Commons are under a Creative Commons CC-BY license – these images require attribution. The other 40 million images have a public domain license, and are up for grabs. In this piece I will show how things work out, and I will give advice on how to prevent stealing of your images.

Rawpixel Ltd. is a stock image company "operating from its HQ in the UK and its creative hub in Bangkok, Thailand", according to their website. Rawpixel takes images that are in the public domain, removes watermarks, and enhances colours and resolution. Collections used by Rawpixel include paintings & prints by Vincent van Gogh, John James Audubon, Jean Bernard, Benjamin Fawcett, Edwin Landseer, Frederick Sander, May Rivers, Henry Sandham et al.; photographs by NASA and many others. The image near this text is a nice depiction of Ramses II, taken from the book L'histoire de l'art égyptien (1878) by Émile Prisse d'Avennes. Rawpixel generously gives the source: New York Public Library. This version (with the Rawpixel logo) is used 150 times in several Wikipedia versions, though there is a version without the logo (also uploaded to Commons by Rawpixel!). Rawpixel now has >9,000 images in Commons, used 1,500 times in Wikipedia. Nothing wrong with that, because the Rawpixel logo can be removed from the images. The only odd thing is that the authors' field in the metadata is often wrongly identified as "Rawpixel". The original author is, of course, the original painter or photographer; Rawpixel has merely simplified and enhanced these pictures. But Rawpixel is fairly open about their business: they mention the source of their images, and offer three types of accounts for usage: Free, Casual and Business, the last one at $9 a month.

Alamy, on the other hand, is completely different. Alamy harvests public domain images and publishes them on their own website (watermarked: Alamy) without mentioning the original source. They scraped 292 million photos to their website, from various sources, including Wikimedia Commons. Alamy even sends infringement letters and invoices to users of the public domain pictures – sometimes even to the original photographers! Photographer Carol M. Highsmith was sternly told "According to Alamy's records your company doesn't have a valid license for use of the image(s)". Mind you, this warning was about her own photographs, as Alexis Jazz showed in his brilliant piece on Commons: How Alamy is stealing your images.

In 2013 I uploaded a photo of Dutch historian David Cohen to Commons. The original at the Dutch National Archives was a bit frayed, low-res, and had a watermark (number 023 0069, down right). In 2016 I cropped the image a bit, removed the watermark and uploaded a version in higher resolution. Alamy took my version of the photo, upgraded the resolution and now sells it for $11 to $189, depending on intended usage. They bluntly state: "This image is a public domain image, which means either that copyright has expired in the image or the copyright holder has waived their copyright. Alamy charges you a fee for access to the high resolution copy of the image." And of course, Alamy doesn't tell us they took the image from Commons, where anyone can download it freely.

All of this is tantamount to taking your property without your permission: that is, stealing. And yes, you're right: it's legal, with PD images. A public domain image is what it is: public domain. These images are creative works to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply, so they can be used by anyone, without attribution. Remember – Alamy doesn't sell the original image, they say they charge a fee for access to the high resolution image. Stock image companies can't be prevented from offering public domain images and charging people for usage. But anyone can easily prevent Alamy and the like from selling the images of which they own copyright. Even if you want to stimulate usage of your photographs: just give your photographs a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA). Stock image companies don't like to attribute, so they probably won't touch your images. Archives, libraries and museums: if you own copyright on certain collections, please publish them under a CC-BY-SA license, and not in the public domain.

This paper,^[1] to be presented at next month's ICWSM conference, provides a dataset containing "all Wikipedia links posted on Twitter in the period 2006 to January 2021" - 35,252,782 URLs altogether, from 34,543,612 unique tweets. While framed as a dataset paper designed to enable future research, it also reports various exploratory data analysis results, for example on the distribution of links across Wikipedia languages:

more than half of all links posted on Twitter (54%) are taken from the English language version. Links from the Japanese version account with 24% for the second highest share followed by Spanish, German and French.

The author notes that the Dutch Wikipedia received a high number of Twitter links relative to its share of pageviews.

Analysing the linked articles by topic category (relying on the language-agnostic automated ORES article topic classification rather than Wikipedia categories), the author finds that

"The ranking of article meta categories from most frequent to least frequent is Culture, Geography, STEM and History & Society and this ranking does not change radically through the years. The popularity of Culture might be traced back to biography links which account for 21.3% of all linked items ..."

Concerning the popularity of concepts across languages (i.e. Wikidata items)

"more than half of all concepts were only posted once and that the distribution is again highly skewed. Among the top five most popular concepts we do not find historical figures or events as one could expect, but two boy bands, the South Korean boy band Bangtan Boys (BTS) and the Filipino boy band SoundBreak 19 (SB19). While being among the most linked concepts they still account only for a very small percentage ..."

It is worth bearing in mind that Twitter links provide only a small percentage of the traffic that Wikipedia received from external referrers (where search engines dominate), and in a weekly list of articles that received most social media traffic on English Wikipedia that the Wikimedia Foundation has been publishing until the end of last year, Twitter seems to have appeared less often as referrer than Reddit or Facebook.

• 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:^[2]

"We introduce the task of fact-checking in dialogue, which is a relatively unexplored area. We construct DIALFACT, a testing benchmark dataset of 22,245 annotated conversational claims, paired with pieces of evidence from Wikipedia. There are three sub-tasks in DIALFACT: 1) Verifiable claim detection task distinguishes whether a response carries verifiable factual information; 2) Evidence retrieval task retrieves the most relevant Wikipedia snippets as evidence; 3) Claim verification task predicts a dialogue response to be supported, refuted, or not enough information."

As an example dialogue where the (itself automatically generated) response was successfully refuted by the automatically retrieved evidence snippet from Wikipedia, the authors offer the following:

• Context: "Biathlon means two sports right? What is the other sport?"
• Response: "Biathlon combine the two sports into one event called the cross country ski race. It’s a lot of fun!"
• Evidence from the article Biathlon: "The biathlon is a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting."

From the abstract:^[3]

"... we present ProWD, a framework and tool for profiling the completeness of Wikidata [...]. ProWD measures the degree of completeness based on the Class-Facet-Attribute (CFA) profiles. A class denotes a collection of entities, which can be of multiple facets, allowing attribute completeness to be analyzed and compared, e.g., how does the completeness of the attribute "educated at" and "date of birth" compare between male, German computer scientists, and female, Indonesian computer scientists? ProWD generates summaries and visualizations for such analysis, giving insights into the KG [ knowledge graph] completeness."

From the abstract:^[4]

"The author used an extended example, the Wikipedia article on the Philippine–American War, to illustrate the unfortunate effects that accompany a lack of attention to the kind of sources used to produce narratives for the online encyclopaedia. [...]

Findings

Inattention to sources (a lack of bibliographical imagination) produces representational anomalies. Certain sources are privileged when they should not be and others are ignored or considered as sub-standard. Overall, the epistemological boundaries of the article in terms of what the editorial community considers reliable and what the community of scholars producing knowledge about the war think as reliable do not overlap to the extent that they should."

See also our coverage of earlier papers by the same author

From the abstract:^[5]

"... we propose a task of detecting self-contradiction articles in Wikipedia. Based on the "self-contradictory" template, we create a novel dataset for the self-contradiction detection task. Conventional contradiction detection focuses on comparing pairs of sentences or claims, but self-contradiction detection needs to further reason the semantics of an article and simultaneously learn the contradiction-aware comparison from all pairs of sentences. Therefore, we present the first model, Pairwise Contradiction Neural Network (PCNN), to not only effectively identify self-contradiction articles, but also highlight the most contradiction pairs of contradiction sentences. [...] Experiments conducted on the proposed WikiContradiction dataset exhibit that PCNN can generate promising performance and comprehensively highlight the sentence pairs the contradiction locates."

As an example of a pair of contradictory sentences that were detected successfully (i.e. in accordance with the ground truth), the paper offers the following from the article The Silent Scream (1979 film):

• "The film was released theatrically by American Cinema Releasing in limited theaters in November 23, 1979 in Victor, Texas, and in January 30, 1980 in Bismarck, North Dakota."
• "The film is released 1980/1/18" [sic]

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	About
1	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness		3,442,958		The first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of the year brings back Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, trying to protect multiversal traveler America Chavez. Director Sam Raimi still has the sensibilities that resulted in the first three Spider-Man movies, and shows his horror movie credentials, as the film has many jump scares, cruel deaths, and makes a terrifying villain out of someone who used be on the side of the heroes. Reviews were positive and Multiverse of Madness beat the Distinguished Competition for the biggest opening of the year with $450 million worldwide.
2	Amber Heard		2,513,708		Ah, Depp v. Heard. My favourite thing to write about. Amber Heard took the stand this week in the defamation trial that has occupied a significant part of the news and the internet since it began on April 11.
3	Roe v. Wade		2,373,194		Ruh-Roe! In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected a pregnant woman's right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, effectively legalising abortion. However, now there are hopes/fears (depending on position on abortions) that the world's most famous court ruling might be overturned following a leak of the first draft of a majority opinion. Many states either have laws that uphold the legality of abortion, or have trigger laws that would outlaw abortion in the event of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision being overturned.
4	Johnny Depp		1,981,410		It's unusual to see two legal cases in the top 5, but 2022's weird. Depp's lawsuit focusses on the idea that Amber Heard's 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post about the culture around victims of sexual abuse caused irreparable damage to his career, and in particular his firing from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. This seems a bit dubious because Heard's article wasn't really even about the allegations (although the claim was undeniably part of the story), Depp's firing might not have been about the allegations at all, and even if it was, they were ruled to be substantially true in a previous case in 2020. To me it seems pretty hard to argue that Johnny Depp is in the right here, but then again, I'm not the internet.
5	Naomi Judd		1,704,981		A legendary country singer, mother of both actress Ashley Judd and Naomi's partner in the duo The Judds, Wynonna. The Judds split in 1991 after Naomi was diagnosed with hepatitis C, with reunions on occasion, including a Super Bowl halftime show, a 2011 tour and most recently a performance at the 2022 CMT Music Awards. Naomi, who also had a presence as host and judge in television, had long struggled with mental illness and decided to end her life on April 30, at the age of 76, the day before The Judds would be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which also forced the cancellation of a farewell tour The Judds would perform in the second semester.
6	K.G.F: Chapter 2		1,396,418		The most expensive and most lucrative Kannada film ever is now the third-highest-grossing Indian film of all time. We already detailed its success last week, so there doesn't seem like much point rehashing it, but FWIW it looks like the K.G.F franchise will continue with a third chapter.
7	Elon Musk		1,184,411		Most of this week's Elon Musk news was about how he plans to finance his acquisition of Twitter. You see, Musk doesn't actually have $44 billion because almost all of his wealth comes from his Tesla stock, which he can't sell because then he'd have to pay taxes on it. He's therefore only paying some of the money out of his own pocket. The rest will come from a loan he's taken out from some banks using Twitter and his own Tesla stock as collateral, and he's also got some money from other billionaires. There have been reports he may be able to lower the price he pays for the company in later negotiations, but the plan as it is now will leave Twitter with a substantial amount of debt going forward, which will likely pose significant challenges to the platform.
8	Cinco de Mayo		1,077,194		The year's most self-explanatory entry returns again. One can only hope this is from people finding out where it comes from as opposed to the date on which it occurs.
9	List of highest-grossing Indian films		1,062,340		Both third and fourth are green on this list, which isn't something you see often.
10	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine		1,034,627		Ten weeks in, and Russia's invasion is still awful. The news this week was dominated by the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant and U.S. intelligence claims about them helping Ukraine to sink the Moskva and kill Russian generals.

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness		2523503		The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film, from the original Spider-Man trilogy's director Sam Raimi, continues to top the box office despite a steep 67% drop in profits, which I'd attribute to it polarizing audiences due to containing much less MCU shenanigans and much more of Raimi's signature comically absurd body horror. (Though personally, I thought the film was excellent and a breath of fresh air for the increasingly samey and fan service-obsessed franchise.)
2	Eurovision Song Contest 2022		1207777		Ukraine won the annual song contest this year, represented by Kalush Orchestra with the song "Stefania", which received over 200 points from the 25 country votes, and over 400 points from the audience vote. The UK improved dramatically from last year, going from receiving 0 points to coming second place (thanks to a space man), receiving over 300 points. Although the show's hosts and the viewers likely expected Ukraine would win as a result of #4, it was nice to see Ukrainians finally enjoy something and be happy after months of war. Our #7 also appeared on the show.
3	K.G.F: Chapter 2		1058176		India continues to bring in the crore to this Sandalwood epic set in the Kolar Gold Fields .
4	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine		1023189		Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to be awful, and could now cause a worldwide food shortage due to its blockade of the port at Odessa. On the bright side, Ukraine won #2 by a landslide, whereas Russia were excluded from attending the annual song contest completely because of the invasion.
5	Johnny Depp		1013880		Depp v. Heard is still polluting making headlines as the he-said-she-said legal drama continues.
6	Amber Heard		983264
7	Mika (singer)		912682		The singer who wanted to be like Grace Kelly then tried a little Freddie was one of the hosts of #2, and also performed a medley of his hits.
8	Deaths in 2022		888058		And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love you make...
9	List of highest-grossing Indian films		875766		#3 has now surpassed RRR for third place, meaning the Sandalwood epic is only behind the Tollywood\Kollywood collaboration Baahubali 2: The Conclusion and Bollywood's Dangal.
10	2022 Philippine presidential election		840705		Voters in the Philippines went to the polls this week to (among other things) elect their president for the next six years, and elected Bongbong Marcos, whose central promise was to return the country to the days of his father's dictatorship. It's an... odd choice, especially given his opponent seems to be actually competent, but I guess that's what happens when disinformation replaces reason.

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	Amber Heard		1,540,466		After dropping out last week, Johnny Depp's depressingly successful attempt to publicly discredit Amber Heard has returned to the top spot.
2	Johnny Depp		1,236,120
3	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness		1,166,564		Sam Raimi's return to superheroes was a magnet for fan theories, and even after release the story of sorcerer Stephen Strange trying to stop a mom who lost her kids from killing a kid who lost her moms is still bringing attention (not to mention over $800 million worldwide!).
4	2022 Buffalo shooting		1,004,206		Another mass shooting in America. This time, a white supremacist domestic terrorist attack which killed 10 people, on May 14. As usual, the shooting has raised the debate surrounding gun laws, and as usual, nothing will change.
5	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine		987,902		The defenders of the Azovstal iron and steel works surrendered to Russia this week after over two months trapped inside it; conditions inside the steelworks were horrific. It's not known what will happen to them. In other news, Russia's blockade will likely cause global food shortages, as Ukraine produces about 9% of the world's wheat, which it can't export anymore. Great. Another crisis.
6	2021 Southeast Asian Games		876,822		Southeast Asia's regional version of the Olympics took place over the last week and a half, after being postponed a few months for... some reason. Hosts Vietnam won the most medals in front of the crowds in Hanoi.
7	Deaths in 2022		853,104		Your talk'll be somethin' that shouldn't be said out loud Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now
8	Andrew Symonds		819,768		Australia mourned this retired cricketer who died at just 46 in a car crash.
9	Eurovision Song Contest 2022		753,443		To compensate for #5, Ukraine won here. Wonder if Kalush Orchestra will also follow last year's winner Måneskin in following the competition with a global hit.
10	Elon Musk		752,385		Elon Musk's sort-of-aborted Twitter acquisition seems to be the only reason he's on here (unless he's done some other "newsworthy" things I don't know about).

• 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.

This month, the Traffic Report is trying out a new section for the most-edited articles. Commentary provided for these pages will include potential reasons for why certain pages are "hotter" for editors. The Signpost hopes that this will unveil interesting editing patterns inside Wikipedia. – E

Articles in this column are sourced from this database report; the period covered is April 8 – May 8 2022.

Rank	Article	Class	Edits	Notes/about
1	Deaths in 2022		1869	The list that never leaves the Top 25 Report also apparently gets enough edits that it's topped this list. I wonder if we'll have to start doing songs about death here too...
2	2022 World Snooker Championship		1280	Ronnie O'Sullivan became champion for a record equalling seventh time, beating Judd Trump in the final. The event took place from April 16 to May 2, and has a dispropotional large number of edits (when compared to its views). If I had to guess, I'd say the live updating of scores was to blame?
3	K.G.F: Chapter 2		1178	In April 2022, this Kannada film was released, and became the fourth-highest grossing Indian film (now third), as you will know if you've read the writeups about it above.
4	2022 NBA playoffs		986	The postseason for basketball's finest started with a bang. And now it seems it might boil down to "six finals in eight years" vs. "17 titles", talk about an anti-climax.
5	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine		984	While edit numbers for this article aren't quite what they were two months ago, editors are still documenting the largest war in Europe since 1945.
6	List of equipment of the Ukrainian Ground Forces		979	As the war continues, the equipment Ukraine has access to changes rapidly, both from Western countries supplying them with arms, and from Russia destroying/capturing them.
7	List of Chinese football transfers winter 2022		918	User:Qby is making sure to keep updated the changes to the Chinese Super League and China League One rosters.
8	2022 NFL Draft		858	262 gridiron players were chosen here, no wonder it had so many edits.
9	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness		780	The latest instalment of the MCU was released near the end of this counting period, and became the highest-grossing film of 2022 so far. The amount of available information about the film massively increased during that time, and (judging by the article length) about half of it was added to the page.
10	Libs of TikTok		751	The reveal of the responsible for this anti-liberal TikTok led to quite the edit war.
11	Russian cruiser Moskva		738	Russia's highest profile loss, this cruiser was destroyed 14 April, over half of the pages entire edit history falling in the last 5 weeks, and 6⁄7 coming in this year (at time of writting).
12	Neoplatonism		699	Unlike most of the other entries on this list, this isn't an article with a lot of recent information. It's just an article a particular editor is working on.
13	Bigg Boss (Malayalam season 4)		682	The Malayalam version of Big Brother has been running since 27 March 2022, including a 24/7 live stream on Disney+ Hotstar.
14	2022 French presidential election		682	The world (well, most of it) breathed a sigh of relief after centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Macron's victory managed to be both emphatic and hollow; he won by a bigger margin than most predicted, but still received 2 million fewer votes than he did last time. Depending on who you ask, this is either a win, a near miss, or somewhere in between.
15	Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore		677	The return of the Wizarding World aka Warner Bros. doing Harry Potter movies after finishing the main series. Less eventful than The Crimes of Grindelwald, but with less "What is J.K. Rowling doing?", so an improvement. Underwhelming box office might finish what were supposed to be 5 movies in this third, but at least it's a movie with a clear ending rather than an open one that requires a sequel.
16	2022 Badminton Asia Championships		643	Along with being one of the favorite sports of our Indian friends (Olympic medalist P. V. Sindhu even went well here too), this continental tournament was held in the Philippines, who also have a significant contingent who manifest every once in a while.
17	2022 Pacific typhoon season		620	A season of worry, specially to our many Philippine readers. And the hurricane article will probably get even more edits, we have some very dedicated editors on that.
18	List of songs recorded by Sabina Yasmin		614	One user is documenting the ouvre of this Bengali singer. The article lead says her output is in the thousands, so it's a lot of work!
19	Candidates of the 2022 Australian federal election		601	1,624 candidates nominated for Australia's election, which was held four days ago as I write this. Editors generally added candidates' names as they nominated, which caused this article to get edited a lot.
20	2022 Mutua Madrid Open – Women's singles		600	And you thought Wikipedia only cared about Grand Slams. The Tunisian Ons Jabeur took this one.
21	2022 in film		593	The year's movies keep on coming, with many good ones. Most of the edits might be to update the table of the highest-grossing.
22	Lebanese Shia Muslims		581	This page has seen mass editing by Savipolo, dating back to the end of last year.
23	1987 in the United States		578	1987? What the Fuck Is Going On? Well, one user decided to update on the births of that year.
24	List of highest-grossing Kannada films		571	After all, #3's box office numbers were being frequently updated. And adequately, its predecessor as the biggest overall was K.G.F: Chapter 1.
25	Beast (2022 Indian film)		542	Round out the list is another recent Indian action film release, although this one didn't do nearly as well as #3.

The crossword is back! The previous Signpost crossword can be found here. The answers to previous crosswords can be found at the following link – thank you all for playing!

We have a new crossword for this month – once more, all of the answers have something to do with Wikipedia, though the clues may seem unrelated.

This month's answers are taken from Wikipedia's Featured Articles – every correct answer will be the verbatim title of one of the articles listed on that page. (Parenthetical descriptors excluded.)

You can play the crossword online at this link (recommended) or manually by printing out the image and clues below. Enjoy! Hints may be given in the comments, so scroll cautiously.