The Wikimedia Foundation released its Form 990 tax return for 2021 on 9 May 2023. This shows that outgoing CEO Katherine Maher was paid a severance package of US$623,286 in 2021 – slightly more than one-and-a-half times her base compensation in her last full year at the Wikimedia Foundation. So Maher – who left Wikimedia at the end of April 2021 to join the Atlantic Council and currently serves on the US Department of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board – earned a total of US$798,632 in the 2021 calendar year.

COO Janeen Uzzell, who was hired by the Wikimedia Foundation in late January 2019 and left at the end of June 2021 to become the CEO of the National Society of Black Engineers on 7 July 2021 (see also the profile in this issue's In the media section), received a severance package of US$324,748 in 2021. This is roughly equivalent to her last full annual salary; she earned a total of US$515,553 from the Wikimedia Foundation in 2021.

The severance payments made in 2021 set a new record for the Foundation. The highest previous severance payment was US$262,500. Paid to outgoing CEO Lila Tretikov in 2016, this was about 75% of her last full year's salary.

The Foundation noted in its post on the Wikimedia-l mailing list that it would in future use a new, standardised severance policy for staff at all levels, described in a Diff post published last month.

The new policy sets a cap on severance pay of one month's salary for each year worked at the WMF, up to a maximum of nine months (unless local law dictates otherwise). Under this scheme both Maher and Uzzell, who spent less than two-and-a-half years at the WMF, would have qualified for much smaller severance payments. But even the new scheme allows for "exceptions":

The guidelines have also provided an opportunity to better align our processes globally when staff leave the Foundation. This includes a new standardized severance policy for staff at all levels of one month of severance pay for every year of their employment, up to nine months (unless local laws require otherwise) – any exceptions require a joint recommendation by the Head of Talent & Culture and the General Counsel, with final approval from the CEO.

So it seems by no means assured that the new policy will prevent the recurrence of such large severance payments – which are ultimately paid from global Wikipedia donations.

Former WMF Board of Trustees Chair Florence Devouard asked some further questions about the new severance policy on the mailing list, which she then also submitted as discussion topics for the Conversation with Trustees that took place on 18 May 2023 and is available on YouTube.

The discussions related to executive pay took up about 15 minutes of the 80-minute meeting, beginning here at time code 23:42 and ending at time code 38:36. First, WMF trustee Nataliia Tymkiv took the following question:

"I would like to know the trustees' characterisation of the growth of executive compensation and whether they think reducing it to historical levels is preferable to layoffs."

Nataliia said that while US compensation may seem high to someone from Europe, it was data-based rather than based on fundraising success and always reflected local salary levels, adding that going back to past compensation levels was not feasible:

"There is also no way of returning back to historical, unless we actually start hiring people who are really rich, and they can just allow to be philanthropic, and you know, not receiving salaries, but I think that's also not sustainable to just expect that rich people who don't need to care for their bread in the morning can just come and work for us."

Next came some of the questions about the severance policy that Florence had submitted before the meeting:

1. Is the one month of severance pay entirely based on the last month's salary, the last year or previous years?
2. Will this policy affect severances for executives?
3. For staff that are "exceptions", are there particular staff members that are able to negotiate exceptions when they join the Foundation, do they negotiate their exception when they depart, or is it something that can be discussed during their tenure?
4. How many staff are considered "exceptions" and will there be a maximum number of exceptions?

These questions were partially answered (time code 28:47) by CEO Maryana Iskander. Maryana explained at length that the new severance policy was part of an effort to harmonise the Foundation's approach as much as possible across different countries, including for executives, but allowed that there would always be exceptions for various reasons. The policy might also need adjusting in the light of experience. However, she confirmed that the policy will take the last month of paid salary as the basis for calculating the severance.

This is an important point, as there have already been cases of Wikimedia executives being awarded steep pay rises towards the end of their tenure with the Foundation (see Wikimedia Foundation salaries on Meta-Wiki). Indeed, according to the Form 990, Katherine Maher was paid US$164,567 in base compensation for four months' work in 2021. This would appear to be equivalent to an annual base compensation of US$493,701, considerably more than her US$404,053 base compensation in 2020. Questions submitted by Florence that remained unanswered in the meeting were:

1. When severance packages would be negotiated or re-negotiated
2. Whether the WMF would report the numbers or percentages of staff qualifying for an "exception"
3. Whether there were plans for a maximum severance for those in the exception segment (for example, at most x months per year of employment)
4. Whether anything is being done to better address the serious escalation of severance packages of the high-level executives

Next, Maryana answered a question on whether there was an incentive system in place to invite Foundation staff to make donations to the Foundation or other Wikimedia entities. She said there was no such system in place, but some staff did voluntarily make such monetary contributions; many of course also volunteered on the projects.

The next question was about who approved the above severance packages. Nataliia explained that the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees approved them (with input from the Talent and Culture Committee), but that severance agreements and related Board votes and resolutions were confidential and not made available to the public.

The last question in this section of the meeting concerned Maryana Iskander's and Selena Deckelmann's compensation. While their salaries were not yet reflected in the 2021 Form 990 (both only joined in 2022, and the 2022 data will only need to be reported in 2024), they were proactively disclosed a few weeks ago on Meta: Iskander's base compensation is currently US$453,000 and that of Selena Deckelmann, Chief Product and Technology Officer, is US$420,000. When asked if it was planned to make this kind of proactive disclosure of current executive compensation a regular practice, Iskander gave a non-committal answer:

"It's not clear that this type of disclosure will be necessary – now that it has been disclosed – in future years. But the intent certainly is to continue to use the Annual Plan as a place to increase visibility, transparency and accountability of information from the Foundation, I think with the intentionality that we, I hope, demonstrated this year."

For a summary of other topics discussed at the meeting see the notes on Meta-Wiki. – AK

There is an ongoing referendum on a proposed amendment to the arbitration policy. The proposed amendment is:

At the time of writing, "Yes" votes are outnumbering "No" votes 154:93.

– AK

• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Ingenuity (15 May 2023) with a near-unanimous 232 community members in support of their request.
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement (beginning 22 May) is Vandal Kingdom. It will be followed the week after by Japanese beetle. Please be bold in helping improve these articles!

Scholars from both sides of the scholarly debate around World War II and the history of Jews in Poland are expressing their dissatisfaction with Wikipedia this week.

Shira Klein, co-author of the paper with Jan Grabowski that triggered the arbitration case on this topic area, criticized the Arbitration Committee's decision even before the case officially concluded. In a press release by Chapman University, she stated that the "Ruling on Wikipedia's Distortion of Holocaust History Lacks Depth". While the release acknowledges that the ruling includes a topic ban of "two distortionist editors" (appealable in 12 months), Klein argues that these "remedies lack depth and consequence" and that "[b]y ignoring the egregiously false content our article flagged for them and focusing only on editors' conduct (e.g. uncivil language), Wikipedia has once again failed, and miserably so." Fundamentally, she holds the view that ArbCom was ill-equipped to deal with the problem: "[Arbitrators] have zero content expertise, so they have no idea when an editor is spinning lies. More than that: They are bound by Wiki policy to steer clear of content. ArbCom was simply the wrong solution to begin with. What they should have done, which some editors suggested, was to ask historians for help."

Meanwhile, Richard C. Lukas, one of the scholars criticized in Grabowski and Klein's essay, published an editorial in the May–June issue of the Polish American Journal, titled "Is it History or Propaganda?" Lukas relates that after he had been "informed by interested friendly sources of the changes in my Wikipedia biography" that were prompted by the essay, "[m]y belief that the editors of Wikipedia genuinely tried to be fair and balanced in their presentations has been seriously shaken." However, he argues that "The larger issue is not Wikipedia but the hijacking of Polish wartime history by a group of Jewish historians who, in this post-fact world, seem more interested in exaggeration and hyperbole than in facts and analysis."

Whatever the merits and demerits of their respective arguments, it is clear that Wikipedia will never be able to satisfy everyone. – AK, H

Face2faceafrica.com has a celebratory profile of former Wikimedia COO Janeen Uzzell, titled: "How Janeen Uzzell rose through corporate ranks to manage a Wikipedia Foundation fund worth $4.5M". The piece describes her early decision to study engineering and her subsequent work for women in STEM at General Electric, for the Wikimedia Foundation and today as Chief Executive Officer at the United States' National Society of Black Engineers.

The 4.5M fund referred to in the headline is the controversial Knowledge Equity Fund held by Tides Advocacy (see previous Signpost coverage). Wikimedia CEO Maryana Iskander announced in January 2023 that the remainder of the fund would be moved back to the Wikimedia Foundation (see previous Signpost coverage). Janeen Uzzell was with the Wikimedia Foundation for just under two-and-a-half years; her executive compensation and very substantial severance, as disclosed by the Wikimedia Foundation in its recently published Form 990, are discussed in this issue's News and notes. – AK

• Legal maneuvers against Indian censorship: Further developments have emerged in the Indian court case concerning the documentary India: The Modi Question (refer to previous Signpost coverage): In response to a May 3 summons by an Indian court, the Wikimedia Foundation and BBC stated they had not been properly served according to the Hague Service Convention. As a result, they refused to accept service at the court, as they were appearing "under protest". The third foreign organization summoned, the Internet Archive, informed the court that it had already removed links to the BBC documentary. This action was taken in January following DMCA takedown requests from the BBC itself. Reports by ANI News and Times of India.
• Twitter censorship: Elon Musk, the Twitter boss, finds himself in hot water over censoring tweets in Turkey. Facing criticism, Musk defended his decision by saying that it was a choice between partial censorship or a complete Twitter blackout in Turkey. Meanwhile, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales chimed in, proudly boasting how we fought Turkey all the way to the Supreme Court and emerged victorious. It seems even in the battle of censorship, Musk and Wales are tweeting from different playbooks! Reports by Fortune and Billings Gazette.
• How Kiwi comic got banned: On the the Australian TV show The Project, New Zealand comedian Melanie Bracewell confirmed that she and her sister had once been banned from Wikipedia for re-writing the articles of minor celebrities in the first person, so as to make them appear to be autobiographies (Video time code 3:51.)
• Techdirt on Chatbots: Techdirt reports that "Wikipedia Grapples With Chatbots: Should It Allow Their Use For Articles? Should It Allow Them To Train On Wikipedia?"

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

"A game-theoretic analysis of Wikipedia's peer production: The interplay between community's governance and contributors' interactions"^[1], published earlier this month in PLoS ONE, investigates what it calls fundamental but still unresolved questions about "the way in which governance shapes individual-level interactions" in peer production.

Specifically, the authors build a complex game theory model to answer the following two research questions about English Wikipedia, and validate its predictions empirically by examining the revision histories of 864 articles (up to 2012):

"RQ1: What is the optimal strategy for a contributor who is attempting to balance the costs and benefits of peer production? Namely, how many sentences within an article should be owned by a contributor that is characterized by a certain cooperative/competitive orientation and a particular creator/curator activity profile?

RQ2: How does the community governance mechanism, particularly the attempt to ensure a NPOV, affect the dynamics underlying Wikipedia's co-production process?"

These concepts are operationalized as follows (among other variables used to construct the the quantitative model):

• "Owned" here refers to having authored text that persists in a Wikipedia article, surviving subsequent revisions (as opposed to ownership in the sense of contributors being entitled to a form of control over the content – a notion that, as the authors discuss, is explicitly discouraged by the community). An editor's utility – i.e. the benefit that they derive from contributing to Wikipedia – is modeled using both their individual "fractional ownership" and the communal "benefit derived from the co-production of high-quality articles".
• An editor's "creator/curator" orientation is quantitatively represented by a metric that assumes that "Creators are characterized by large-size edits [..]; curators’ edits are smaller".
• The "cooperative/competitive orientation" was quantified "based on [contributors'] role in the community (those closer to the community’s core are assumed to be more cooperative)." Based on previous research, editors were "organized in four strata, reflecting contributors’ commitment and involvement within the community: unregistered members, registered members, privileged members (holding a special privilege), and core members (i.e. administrators)." The authors theorize that "the greater one’s rights and responsibilities within the Wikipedia community, the more one is considered to have a cooperative orientation. Specifically, we assigned the values of 0.1, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.9 to the different strata (e.g., an administrator is assigned w1 = 0.1, reflecting the least competitive and most cooperative orientation)."
• Lastly, an editor's cost is quantified as the sum of
  • a. "the effort expended in producing content and editing an article", where the authors "assume that changing an existing sentence requires less effort than originating a new sentence, such that the effort expended by a contributor is a linear function the contributor’s position in the creator-curator continuum" (obviously a simplification, considering that an editor's individual contribution may well vary between adding and changing content).
  • b. "the effort associated with participation in coordination and administrative work, such as editing the articles’ Talk Pages". Again, the authors model this solely based on the editor's overall "cooperative/competitive orientation", reasoning that "This cost element is more applicable for the cooperative contributors".
  • c. "the effort of complying with Wikipedia’s rules and policies, in particular, neutrality-enforcing policies. This effort is intended to regulate only the self-interest activities (i.e., attempting to 'own' article portions) and thus is more applicable to competitive contributors." It is modeled as being proportional to the number of "owned" sentences, multiplied by the editor's competitiveness factor and a variable representing the community's overall "level of neutrality enforcement".

The game theoretic model consists of two levels:

"[...] the first level models the interactions between individual contributors who seek both cooperative and competitive goals and the second level models governance of co-production as a Stackelberg (leader-follower) game between contributors and the communal neutrality-enforcing mechanisms."

A calculation of the model's Nash equilibrium (basically, a state where no individual "player" can improve their utility by making a unilateral change to their strategy) yields several rather complicated formulae (Theorems 1-4), from which the authors derive various overall conclusions, e.g. that

"[...] the contributor’s characteristics, or more specifically, the ratio between the contributor’s position on the creator-curator continuum and the contributor’s cooperative/competitive orientation is the factor that determines who ends up owning content. When this ratio is smaller than the group’s average, the contributor maintains ownership over portions of the article. Namely, under the governance mechanisms, the fractional content that is eventually owned by a contributor is higher for curators (i.e., with a typical small-size edit per sentence) with a competitive orientation (i.e., peripheral community members). In essence, creators with a cooperative orientation lose ownership of the article. This result was corroborated through [the] empirical analysis.

The authors explain that this means that

"[...]only those with a competitive orientation who choose to act as curators making small edits end up owning significant portion of the content. One might expect that the creators who contribute more content (and in the process exert more effort) would end up owning much of an article’s contents. In contrast, the results of our game-theoretic analysis implies that when competing over content ownership in the presence of Wikipedia’s governance to ensure neutrality, and when controlling for one’s cooperative/competitive-orientation, the creators of content who make on average large contributions would eventually not own any content."

The second "key result" from the game-theoretic analysis is that

"[...] excessive governance should be curtailed, by identifying and maintaining a permissible upper limit, beyond which it discourages contributors from making contributions to an article, bringing the co-production process to a halt. Furthermore, our empirical analysis suggests that a low level of governance is optimal for ensuring neutrality while maintaining articles’ comprehensiveness.

Based on this, the authors recommend that

[T]he community’s efforts to govern content creation and ensure neutrality, although essential for maintaining a balanced position, should be carefully monitored and kept limited. The reason is that when the 'tax' imposed on contributors in terms of complying with NPOV norms, policies and procedures is too high, it outweighs the benefits associated with content ownership, such that contributors stop competing for ownership (and in effect, co-production is stalled)."

See also previous coverage of related research by one of the authors (Ofer Arazy from the University of Haifa)

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]

"This article sets out to explore the different categories of source that Wikipedia could be defined as (primary, secondary or tertiary) alongside the varied ways in which Wikipedia is used, which defy easy categorization, exemplified by a broad-ranging literature review and focusing on the English language Wikipedia. It concludes that Wikipedia cannot easily be categorized in any information category but is defined instead by the ways it is used and interpreted by its users."

(We note with delight the mention of the Twitter feed associated with this research newsletter: "Serendipitous discoveries of relevant research were also made via the WikiResearch Twitter account @WikiResearch, the 'Wiki-research-l' mailing list and the Wikimedia Research biannual reports.")

From the paper:^[3]

"We study gatekeeping on Wikipedia by analyzing networks of deletions among editors. Factors considered to explain the emergence of these networks are editors’ information production capability, their range of activity, their communicative ties, their geographical location, and their past interactions. [...]

Highlights: [...]

• Editors’ past interactions affect gatekeeping conflicts on Wikipedia.
• Disputes among Wikipedians reflect the lines of historical conflicts to some extent.
• In- and Outgroups based on editors’ real-world attributes influence gatekeeping."

[...]

We drew our sample of articles from the French and Spanish language versions of Wikipedia, respectively. These are the most likely versions where editors from France or Spain and editors from Algeria or former Gran Colombia engage with one another, since the former colonizer’s language is either an official language or widely spoken in the successor states [...] and editors are drawn toward larger versions of Wikipedia. [...] we identified 111 unique relevant articles for both Algeria and the four successor states of Gran Colombia. We retrieved the complete revision history of these articles up until January 1st, 2019, [... and] were able to attribute each character of an article’s text to its author throughout the entire revision history. With this information we could identify who deleted the contributions of whom.

From the abstract:^[4]

"This research aims at understanding the open collaboration involved in producing Wikipedia Good Articles (GA). [...] We propose an approach that first employs factor analysis to identify editing abilities [of contributors] and then uses these editing abilities scores to distinguish editors. Then, we generate sequence of editors participating in the work process to analyse the patterns of collaboration. Without loss of generality, we use GA of three Wikipedia categories covering two general topics and a science topic to demonstrate our approach. The result shows that we can successfully generate editor abilities and identify different types of editors. Then we observe the sequence of different editor involved in the creation process. For the three GA categories examined, we found that [...] highly scored content-shaping ability editors [tend to be] involved in the later stage of the collaboration process."

From the abstract:^[5]

"The authors posed the question whether and to what extent the differences in the cultural dimension of the power distance [an anthropological concept theorized by Geert Hofstede] are reflected in the functioning of the Wikipedia community. How the hierarchization of the organizational structure may influence the organization of knowledge sharing processes is also studied. The authors selected for the research the Wikipedia language versions which were mostly edited by the communities from homogeneous national cultures. The method used was quantitative analysis of the activity of Wikipedia users intended for establishing the general rules of cooperation, as well as an analysis of the distribution of user rights in the context of the social structure of individual versions. Research has shown that with the rise of the power distance, the power structure is becoming more hierarchical. However, the users with administrative rights and users without administrative rights are equally committed to joint rule-making. At the same time, it was found that in some cultures with a low power distance, the users do not show much attachment to the acquired rights. The opposite dependency was observed in countries with Orthodox and Islamic civilizations. [...]"

From the abstract:^[6]

"The aim of the presented research was to identify the differentiation of the selected language versions of Wikipedia in the cultural dimension of femininity and masculinity. We answer the questions whether these differences are reflected in the functioning of the Wikipedia environment and how this fact may improve organizing cooperation in virtual organizations to enhance knowledge sharing. The method of content analysis and analysis of the register of user activity in several fields of activity were adopted. For quantitative analysis, xTools and PetScan tools for generating statistical data were used. For qualitative analysis, chosen user pages and other public spaces were investigated. The results of the conducted research showed that in feminine cultures the relational dimension of activity in Wikipedia space was more important. Behavioural traits specific to task orientation were more pronounced in masculine cultures. In many language versions of feminine cultures, gender divisions were neither distinguished, nor exposed, thus making them more problematic to identify. [...]"

From the abstract:^[7]

"The aim of the research presented in this paper was to identify the differentiation of language versions in the cultural dimension of individualism and collectivism. The research was both quantitative and qualitative. The authors selected Wikipedia language versions which were edited mainly by communities from homogeneous national cultures and with a minimum of 200 active users per month. The method used was the content analysis and the analysis of registers of user activity. The authors answer the question of whether these differences are reflected in the functioning of the Wikipedia environment. To answer the raised research question, three hypotheses were formulated. The relationship between the individualism index (IDV) of national cultures from which Wikipedians are recruited and the indicators of activity, while also the degree of regulation of activities in the project were examined. Research has shown that IDV is positively correlated with 1) the number of editions made per page which may be indicative of the greater courage to edit somebody else's text and 2) the ratio of the number of active users to the number of principles and recommendations, which means that actions on Wikipedia are relatively less frequently regulated in individualistic cultures. [...]"

From the "Conclusions" section:

"The results of the conducted research indicate that, with the adopted indicators, it is impossible to unequivocally state the influence of national culture on Wikipedia's organizational culture in terms of the degree of individualism. Of the three assumed hypotheses, two were positively verified and one was rejected. A small number of rules in relation to users and a large number of editions per page positively correlate with the level of the IDV. On the other hand the ratio of anonymous users to registered users is not related to the level of individualism."

Chilean cruiser Esmeralda (1883), nominated by The_ed17 (a.k.a. Ed)

The first "protected cruiser", with an archéd armoured deck,

It's innovative in some ways, but its design is kind of dreck. —AC

1981 World Snooker Championship, nominated by BennyOnTheLoose

Snooker is the sport, you see;

Steve Davis won the whole tourney;

The Crucible Theatre hosted again;

See you at the next event, my friend! —QJR

"Telephone" (song), nominated by FrB.TG

Hello, hello, Lady Gaga?

I listened to your song

I liked the music video

At the prison, yeah, yeah

Wha-wha-what did you say?

Oh, you're breaking up with me

By killing me with Beyoncé?

...I'm kinda busy. —AC

1894–95 New Brompton F.C. season, nominated by ChrisTheDude

New Brompton made their league debut,

They started out in Division Two,

They won a match against Swindon Town in the end,

And got moved up a league, where we saw them again.—QJR

Panagiotis Kavvadias, nominated by UndercoverClassicist

He helped excavate artifacts in Greece,

And would not let smugglers steal in peace.—QJR

William D. Leahy, nominated by Hawkeye7

This man served in World War II;

Did it as a senior, too;

Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief;

I'd like to say more, but let's keep this brief. —QJR

"Hey Stephen", nominated by Ippantekina

Mmm mmm mmm mmm-mmm mmm-mmm,

Mmm mmm mmm mmmmm-mmm,

Mmm mmm mmm mmm-mmm mmm-mmm mmm,

Mmm mmm mmm, yeah.

Hey Stephen, that's a lot of hummy breathin'

But Taylor's wrote it into you.

But with that start to this part

Now I didn't say half the things I wanted to. —AC

Guitar Songs, nominated by Your Power (a.k.a. Elias)

Billie Eilish softly sang while a guitar gently played,

Telling of her friend's near-death and her grief o'er Roe v. Wade. —AC

Hurricane Ophelia (2005), nominated by Cyclonebiskit

The name is apt: Ophelia drowned

As did many an N. C. town. —AC

Shooting of Stephen Waldorf, nominated by HJ Mitchell (a.k.a. Harry Mitchell)

The London Metropolitan Police

In incompetence never cease.

They shot an innocent man, and then

Thought he was the one shooting, and shot him again.

When he collapsed when they were done

A third cop thought he was reaching for a gun.

I think the conclusion has by now come forth:

Every cop wants to shoot at poor Waldorf. —AC

"Me Too" (Meghan Trainor song), nominated by MaranoFan (a.k.a. NØ)

A song 'bout loving yourself, Megan Trainor sang,

She is quite happy with her body.

The music video got pulled: Why did she object?

Changed her waist! Show her some respect, yo! —AC

Al-Musta'li, nominated by Cplakidas (a.k.a. Constantine)

Al-Musta'li rose up to caliph, we fear,

Through the machinations cunning of a vizier.

While, within a story, such tropes might be ripe,

'Tis rare to see a real vizier stereotype. —AC

Five featured lists were promoted this period.

List of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball head coaches, nominated by Newtothisedit

Twenty-two coached the Wildcats in basketball,

Adolph Rupp won the most of them all.—QJR

List of Top Selling Rhythm & Blues Singles number ones of 1965, nominated by ChrisTheDude

Billboard stopped ranking these, but no more;

Rhythm and blues are what's in store.—QJR

List of basal superasterid families, nominated by Dank

There are many of these plants with flowers,

Including beets and flytraps, and big cactus towers.—QJR

List of birds of Wallis and Futuna, nominated by AryKun

Three islands in Polynesia, a French collectivity,

Wallis and Futuna for birds have proclivity. —AC

List of Hot R&B Singles number ones of 1962, nominated by ChrisTheDude

All the way back in 1962;

Billboard ranked rhythm and blues;

For ten weeks, Ray Charles stood on top;

Dance crazes were around, and would not stop!—QJR

For the April 8 – May 8 period, per this this database report.

• 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.

Wikipedia is a heavily relied-upon source for LGBT+ information on the Internet. Wikipedia articles provide millions of people with information about LGBT+ topics across culture, history, health, law and justice, biographies, and more. Behind these articles are Wikimedians, who edit to maintain the integrity of Wikimedia platforms and information on LGBT+ topics and advance representation across many languages.

Documenting queer topics on Wikimedia projects is a challenging task. For example, the question of how to write biographies of LGBT+ people from the past is a very significant one. Usage differs across languages and evolves; people may not have expressed themselves in the terms used today. Such complex issues were at the core of Queering Wikipedia's May 2023 programs.

On May 12, 14, and 17, 2023 Queering Wikipedia 2023 was hosted by Wikimedia LGBT+, Queering Wikipedia Organizers, and partners. Queering Wikipedia was an online conference with 12 distributed trans-local, in-person meetup Nodes in 5 continents. Queering Wikipedia provides opportunities for LGBT+ Wikimedians, allies and guests to celebrate the vibrant community working to advance representation on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, and to organize conversations to further develop this work.

Presentations, panels, and workshops during the QW2023 online conference program included conversations about developing best practices; safety and wellbeing; gender and Wikidata; community engagement and strategy; ethics and AI; and the nuances of translating terms important to identity. Presentations and discussions provided insight into LGBT+ rights in many regions, including: Ecuador, Indonesia, Nigeria, Poland, Rwanda, Singapore, South Africa, and Bahrain. WMF staff also presented on these issues; the WMF Human Rights Team presented on "Human Rights Amid Rising Anti-LGBTQ Efforts", followed by a live Q&A with Maggie Dennis, Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability.

Queering Wikipedia 2023 celebrated the launch of Wikipedia and the Biographies of LGBTQ+ People – a translation and localisation of the Spanish-language guide produced by Wikimedia Argentina last year. As well as translating their original text Wikimedia Argentina worked with Art+Feminism and Wikimedia LGBT+ to add new essays from Argentinian travesti activist An Millet and British trans writer and heritage practitioner Kit Heyam.

Art+Feminism researchers presented on the report Unreliable Guidelines: Reliable Sources and Marginalized Communities in French, English and Spanish Wikipedias for the project "Reading Together: Reliability and Multilingual Global Communities", Amber Berson, Monika Sengul-Jones and Melissa Tamani, released June 2021.

Participants had the opportunity to propose and engage in brainstorming sessions, while the Creative Program included queer poetry performances and art uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Keynotes were delivered by Dr Nishant Shah, Professor of Global Media and Director of the Digital Narratives Studio at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's School of Communication and Journalism, and Esra'a Al Shafei, founder and Executive Director of Majal and WMF Board trustee since 2017, and were complemented by a panel discussion organized by Jenni Olson, Senior Director of Social Media Safety at GLAAD.

Another main attraction of the conference was its multilingual nature. There were translators between Spanish and English for many conference sessions, with some sessions also having interpreters for Turkish and Portuguese. Conference organizers focused on translation as part of a larger effort to de-center English and the English Wikipedia in LGBT+ Wikipedia efforts. Through coordinating discussions across languages, Wikipedians can explore shared goals, and the unique differences across Wikipedia language versions.

The full list of QW2023 events is available in the online conference program.

Autonomous Nodes also organized Queering Wikipedia events internationally. Nodes events were developed by local organizers and included panels and discussions, editathons, and "watch parties" of online QW2023 conversations and workshops.

• "Activismos y visibilidad Trans en internet", Online discussion panel on 12 May, and Encuentro LGBTQI+ para sumar juntxs on 17 May, in Bogotá, Colombia, hosted by Wikimedia Colombia.
• "Construcción de memoria LGBTT+ y Wikipedia", Panel in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 13 May, 2023, hosted by Wikimedia Argentina
• "Aproximaciones colectivas a la marcha del orgullo desde la experiencia universitaria", Meetup in Pucallpa, Perú, 12 May 2023, hosted by Wikimedistas de Perú
• Editatón Queering Wikipedia, Panel and Edit-a-thon in Mexico City, 13 May 2023, hosted by Wikimedia México
• Meetups in Lagos and Akwa-Ibom, Nigeria, 17 May 2023
• Meetup in Accra, Ghana, 12 May 2023
• Meetup in Vadodara, India, 14 May 2023
• Meetup in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 17 May 2023, hosted at TechInc
• "Despite everything(?) – On the visibility of queer history on the internet", Panel in Berlin, Germany, 16 May 2023, hosted by Wikimedia Deutschland, in collaboration with
• Meetup in Zagreb, Croatia, 12–14 May 2023, hosted by Croatian GLAM and HrW initiative, with support of Multimedia Institute
• Meetup in New York City, US, 17 May 2023
• "Memorias LGBT y pasado reciente en Uruguay", Online panel in Montevideo, Uruguay, which will take place on 26 May 2023, hosted by Wikimedistas de Uruguay

Organizers hope to continue to the momentum developed during the conference through ongoing conversations and partnerships with LGBT+ Wikimedians and allies, and those interested in maintaining quality information about LGBT+ topics on Wikimedia platforms.

Wikimedia LGBT+ and Les sans pagEs invite participation in Wiki Loves Pride, an annual, global campaign to expand and improve LGBT+ content across Wikimedia projects. See: Wiki Loves Pride/2023.

Queering Wikipedia is an initiative of Wikimedia LGBT+, a Movement Affiliate, with funding from the Wikimedia Foundation. The mission of Wikimedia LGBT+ is to encourage LGBT+ cultural organizations to use Wikimedia projects and to adopt the values of free culture and open access; to promote Wikimedia projects as a tool for strengthening LGBT+ communities; and to create and expand the overall quality of content of interest to LGBT+ communities on Wikimedia projects in all languages.

Disclaimer: OwenBlacker was heavily involved in organising Queering Wikipedia and Hexatekin has provided administrative assistance with the conference. Jsamwrites is involved in related WikiProjects Wiki Loves Pride and Wikimedia LGBT+ but was not involved in organising Queering Wikipedia.

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Series/WikiProject reports