Democracy in action: multiple elections

Single-page Edition

WP:POST/1

16 May 2024

News and notes
Democracy in action: multiple elections

Special report
Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?

Arbitration report
Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24

In the media
Deadnames on the French Wikipedia, and a duel between Russian wikis

Op-Ed
Wikidata to split as sheer volume of information overloads infrastructure

Comix
Generations

Traffic report
Crawl out through the fallout, baby

2024-05-16

Democracy in action: multiple elections

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By Bluerasberry, Bri, Andreas Kolbe, Oltrepier, Smallbones and HaeB

Become a Wikimedia Foundation trustee

Trustees talk about how the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees works.

Do you want to change the world? Do you want to change Wikipedia? You may want to apply to become a candidate for the upcoming WMF Board of Trustees election before 23:59 UTC May 29, 2024.

Four Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will be elected this year.

If there are more than fifteen candidate applications, a shortlisting procedure will call on WMF affiliates to shortlist twelve candidates.

Voting will be held for a two week period starting at the end of August or beginning of September. You should be eligible to vote if you've made over 300 edits before August, but see details here.

Minimum requirements for candidates include fluency in English, experience serving on Boards or committees or other decision-making bodies, and experience in Wikimedia (or equivalent) movement building and organizing. Legal or project requirements include

You must not have been:
- convicted of a serious crime or a crime involving dishonesty or deception;
- removed from a position at a non-profit organization or company because of mismanagement or misconduct;
- currently banned or blocked from any Wikimedia project for a period of 30 days or longer;
You must:
- disclose your real name on your Candidate Application;
- be at least 18 years old and of legal age in your country of permanent residence;
- submit proof of your identity and age to the Wikimedia Foundation;
An editor's first edit must have been before May 8, 2022; and
You'll be required to resign from any other board, governance, or paid positions at the Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups if you are elected and appointed to the board.

See this page for all the details you need to know to apply. Or see this page for more general information on this election. – S

Wikimedia Foundation 2022–2023 reports

Video by Gwinyai Masukume, one of the medical editors featured in the Wikimedia Foundation's 2022–2023 annual report

Two as yet little-advertised – as far as we can tell – reports arrived online recently:

The Wikimedia Foundation 2022–2023 annual report

This is also available in pdf format on wikimediafoundation.org. It is not listed on the Wikimedia Foundation's Financial reports page at the time of writing, and unlike previous years, there does not appear to have been a community notification on the Wikimedia-l mailing list (yet?). Have we missed something?

At any rate, let's look at the pdf document's contents (the web version differs in places). After some introductory comments and figures, the report presents portraits of some editors of medical articles. These are followed by a feature on "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" projects in countries like Bolivia, Nigeria and Yemen. Next are "Champions of Wikimedia's Mission" – a feature on donors, followed by portraits of two WMF staff members.

The Financial Accountability section says that accountability and transparency are two principles that underpin the Wikimedia Foundation's core values. It presents the following expenses breakdown:

43% Investment in technology
13% General and administrative expenses
33% Support for volunteers and readers
11% Allocation to fundraising efforts

These are very nebulous categories; in particular, it is not very clear what the "33% support for volunteers and readers" (listed as just "Support for Volunteers" in the web version) consists of, exactly. Total expenses in 2022–2023 were, after all, around $170 million, as the very next page in the report shows. 33% of that would be well over $55 million.

Just for reference, the web version's dropdown text for "Support for Volunteers 33%" reads:

The global impact of Wikimedia projects is made possible by the dedicated efforts of volunteers from around the world. We provide grants, legal assistance, and other resources for our contributors to build thriving volunteer communities. Additionally, we encourage community engagement through outreach events and advocate for the growth and protection of free knowledge.

Right.

The next report section presents the names of the members of the WMF Board of Trustees and the WMF Executive Team. It is followed by another section on donors and, preceding it, a section on the Endowment and its first grantees – Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions, Kiwix, the Wikimedia machine learning project and Wikidata. This then links to the other report published:

The Wikimedia Endowment 2022–2023 annual report

This report is hosted on the Endowment website. It indicates that the Endowment had grown to about $120 million by June 2023. This represents a growth of about $20 million, courtesy of over $14 million in gifts received and $10.8 million in investment gains (representing a 11.37% return on invested assets, according to the report) versus total expenses of $5.3 million, including over $3 million in grants, $1 million for fundraising and a little under $1 million for general and administrative expenses. The year marked a recovery after some losses due to the global financial situation; after all, the Endowment was first reported to have exceeded $100 million back in 2021. – AK

Foundation raises security concerns about new gadget to integrate external content with Wikipedia pages

After page load, the gadget displays a static image of the OWID graph from Wikimedia Commons, with a play button in the right upper corner.

Clicking the play button causes a pop-up to appear, asking for consent to share the reader's IP address with OWID.

If consent is given, the gadget loads an interactive version of the graph from OWID, with a blue back button that closes the graph and returns to the Wikipedia article.

As reported in the previous issue, last month the Basque Wikipedia added a gadget (enabled by a March 2024 software change) that allows viewing interactive content loaded from Our World In Data from within a Wikipedia article. It requires the reader to provide consent to having their IP address shared with this external website. Still, Andy Cooper, the Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Security, raised concerns:

We’re still looking into the risks that this particular gadget presents, but have identified that it raises larger and more definite concerns around gadgets that use third party websites more broadly, such as in a worst case scenario theft or misuse of user’s personal identity and edit history. This, in turn, raises further questions and how we should govern and manage this type of content as a movement.
As a result, we’re asking volunteers to hold off on enabling the OWID gadget on more wikis and to refrain from deploying more gadgets that use third party content and/or are automatically enabled for all users for certain pages until we have a better review process in place."

A newly created page on Meta-wiki contains further details and invites input on these issues.

The development of the gadget was funded by the Wiki Project Med Foundation. It came on the heels of a wider discussion about interactive content (or its absence) on Wikimedia projects (see March 29 Technology report). – H

A new Community Wishlist survey

Wikimedia Foundation staff genie User:JWheeler-WMF shares opportunities for making and voting on wishes:

The Community Tech team has announced they will release a refreshed Community Wishlist Survey on July 15, 2024. The new Wishlist will introduce a construct of “Focus Areas:” instead of fulfilling one wish, Focus Areas connect the dots between 3+ wishes, helping developers spend the same time addressing 3+ wishes by solving an underlying problem.

With Focus Areas, Communities can signal their biggest, most impactful problems, and work alongside the Community Tech team, WMF, affiliates, or volunteer developers to solve these issues.

What to expect:

The new wishlist will open in July and remain open year-round.
Volunteers can submit a wish in their preferred language, and do not need to know Wikitext.
Volunteers will be able to submit wishes, review wishes, edit existing wishes, and discuss wishes with one another and Foundation staff.
Participants will vote on “Focus Areas” instead of individual wishes.
Wishes can be categorized by project(s) and by “type” (bug, feature request, optimization, other).
We’ll eventually have a dashboard which will allow users to search for wishes and filter by project or wish type.

Wikimedia community members who wish to learn more or comment on the process may do so at the Preview of the New Wishlist on Meta-Wiki. – Jwheeler, BR

Vote for Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

Voting in a 2007 French election.

Voting ended on 9 May to seat the Wikimedia community volunteers who will establish and constitute the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee. There are challenges in predicting the routine activities of a newly-formed, quickly elected, volunteer-run, multicultural and global community organization, but this election is the latest milestone after years of planning with hundreds of Wikimedia volunteers as documented on the Meta-Wiki page for the Universal Code of Conduct. This committee's enforcement of the Code of Conduct will include addressing reports of misconduct with their judgements.

The Signpost has reported on Universal Code of Conduct developments including its January 2023 public election for ratification, March 2023 ratification of enforcement guidelines, and the March 2024 ratification of the overall charter. In February 2021 the Wikimedia Foundation reported the presentation of the Universal Code of Conduct idea. – BR

Brief notes

One of the winners of Wiki Loves Earth Portugal 2023. For more of the same, see the Wikimedia Portugal Annual Report.

Annual reports: WMF and Wikimedia Endowment (see feature above), North Carolina Wikipedians User Group, Wikimedia Portugal, Wikimédiens du Bénin User Group.
Global ban of major contributor: Benoît Prieur, a French Wikipedia former administrator with over 1.5 million edits, has been globally banned by the Wikimedia Foundation, following a community-instituted ban on the French Wikipedia.
New administrators: There have been no new administrators for The Signpost to report since February, the total of successful requests stands at four for the year. The only Request for adminship (RfA) that started since February was terminated after a day or so with a "not now" closure. According to the RfA by month log going back to the beginning of the RfA process two decades ago, only four other years since have had fewer successful nominations than this one in the months of January through April: 2016 and 2018 with three, and 2021 and 2023 with two. To learn about upcoming remedies for this state of affairs, read this month's Special report on RfA reform.
Italian Wikipedia to host first ever ArbCom elections: After a failed attempt back in 2006, the it.wiki community approved the charter and election mechanism for the new Arbitration Committee. The first election session started on 30 April, with users casting their candidatures by 6 May. Once the session is complete, the Italian Wikipedia will be the twelfth project to have an active ArbCom.
New Pages Patrol backlog drive: New Pages Patrol is currently hosting a one-month-long backlog drive to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Sign up here, should you wish to help!
Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Tax return. Please be bold in helping improve this article!

Reader comments

2024-05-16

Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?

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By Oltrepier

Footnotes

^ Only the accounts who have made 30 or more edits in the last two months before Rick Bot's update count towards the criteria
^ This category includes accounts that have existed for at least 30 days and have made at least 500 edits

Reader comments

2024-05-16

Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24

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By JPxG

Each vertical line indicates a single issue, with color showing how much time passed since the last (from short to long)

It has been a while! We have gone a very long time without a proper arbitration report. I would like to wish everyone ("including the haters and losers", as the saying goes) a happy holiday season, new year, and all the other stuff.

So:

At one point, the arbitration report was a regular Signpost feature. In 2005, the paper's inaugural year, 49 out of 51 issues carried a report. There were also 12 Signpost articles covering the process of the second-ever ArbCom election. In 2006, there were 59, with regular reports as well as another series following the election process. The next decade or so had a slow decline: 58 in 2007, 51 in 2008, 2009, 2010, 53 in 2011, 37 in 2012, 29 in 2013, and only 6 in 2014, a year featuring infamously high-profile cases like AP1, GGTF, and the first couple months of the GamerGate case. Since then, there was a bit of a rebound for a couple years: there were 17 in 2015 and 15 in 2016. But we went back to just five in 2017 – a year when there was no Signpost at all between February and June.

After that, The Signpost transitioned to monthly publication; there were eleven arbitration reports in 2018, and nine in 2019 and 2020. But we hit a new nadir in 2021, with just three for the whole year; in 2022 there were four, and last year there were six. This year, you are reading the first one.

In all honesty, though, there is more ground to cover than just 2024: the last report (in November) was about a single incident, and the couple of reports before that one were fairly restrained summaries of a contentious case (which had already been the center of a rather long AN/I thread about its previous Signpost coverage). There was a report in January 2023, but that didn't cover any cases either – it just went over the results of the 2022 election. The most-recent arbitration report that I can genuinely call comprehensive was from August 2022.

What's happened since then? Let's pick up where we left off, in August 2022.

We're going to be moving pretty fast. I am going to be skipping over all the tl;dr stuff like unban appeals, admonishments, reminders, clarifications, internal functionary and clerking business, announcements that the Committee has gotten a new coffee maker, and the like: if you want those, read the arbitration noticeboard archive. I will also be skipping things previously covered in The Signpost (like the controversial suspension of arbitrator Beeblebrox last December, or things that have appeared in previous arbitration reports). Here, my hope is to tell you some things that you might not already know by virtue of having a brain and an Internet connection.

Hopefully, some of these may be things that actually have some effect on your daily life as a Wikipedia editor. Indeed, maybe they can even help you keep abreast of changing social norms, so you do not end up like one of those guys who logs in, straps on his tools just like he always used to, does something you're not supposed to do anymore, and gets immediately frappéd at the nearest noticeboard. Maybe this is just wishful thinking.

It should be said, before we start, that the great majority of these things are sad and tragic: being a Wikipedia editor represents a substantial investment of time and effort, and running in the elite circles of administrators and functionaries even more so. The editors who are summarily cashiered and defrocked during these proceedings are rarely bad people – they are just people for whom circumstances have aligned to become incompatible with a hobby of editing Wikipedia. They are often people for whom the hundreds or thousands of hours they've invested in the project have cashed out to ignominy and shame. And there, but for the grace of God, go you and I.

Anyway:

Deletion business

Case closed on August 2.

A bunch of frequent AfD participants were topic-banned: 7&6=thirteen, Johnpacklambert, TenPoundHammer, and Lugnuts.
The last of those users, Lugnuts, (who had created over 93,000 Wikipedia articles over the years, most of them stubs) went berserk one day before the decision was posted, and dramatically quit the project after delivering a villainous speech:

“

Some early creations from 2007 got tagged as copyvios. A year later, they were still being tagged. I got added to some white-list at the time, and avoided adding OBVIOUS copyvios and further scrutiny, but made no attempt to either stop or remove the ones I added. Guess what - that continued since then. Not just across the 93,000+ articles I created, but across the 1.5 million edits I made too. Tens of thousands (a low-end estimate) now have these issues. Have a look at any film article from before 1930, for example. And that's before I mention the countless deliberate errors on pages that have very few pages views. Was that person born on 21 June, or was it 12 June?

”

The jury is still out on whether this was even true, or if he was just making it up on the spot to fuck with everybody on his way out. Skilled fridge-logic noticers may deduce that, for this to be true, Lugnuts would have had to prophesy his banning some decade in advance – and if you have the capacity to do that, why not just use your huge brain to not do the thing that gets you banned? At any rate, two proposals (WP:LUGSTUBS and WP:LUGSTUBS2) were eventually made to mass-draftify giant swaths of his article creations; both passed.

One of the other remedies in the case was to create a couple of gigantic train-station RfCs: the type of multiple-question ordeals with multiple phases and formal moderation, in the style of RFA2021, Barkeep's bountifully-ballyhooed big beautiful baby boy of a three-phase formal debate on reforms to the adminship process, which seemed to be fairly well-received by the Wikipedian public.

Article creation at scale: Gigantic eighteen-part RfC, with a separate page for an eighteen-part tri-admin closing statement. Of those eighteen proposals, almost all failed or were closed as no consensus. The rest were moved to the second RfC; the only one that passed was number 2 ("Should we require (a) source(s) that plausibly contribute(s) to WP:GNG?").
Article deletion at scale: This one kind of sat around for a while waiting to happen, and then it never did. At the February '23 motion to rescind the remedy for the second RfC, arbitrator Izno said that "we had issues finding both moderators and closers, we didn't get the participation expected in the first one, and it's been 6 months since the motion passed and the community still hasn't had the opportunity to discuss the issues that prompted the remedy". His fellow arb CaptainEeek, contrariwise, said: "Thanks to all who participated and coordinated. In ending this, I want to clarify I don't see this as a failure. In fact I see that this process has been quite successful. Ending it now is a recognition that it has served its usefulness."

Jonathunder desysopped

Case closed on August 28.

Another "hang up the spurs" case – an administrator from the early 2000s (in this case '06) with a downwardly-sloping Xtools graph did some cowboy hip-shot and removed another user's rights without explanation, got ricocheted to ArbCom, saw the notice on his talk page, and never set foot on Wikipedia again. This all happened in February, but the case was formally closed in August. For the sake of avoiding an RSI flareup, I will just say "hung up the spurs" every time this happens in the rest of the report.

2005 was before my time. I wonder what kind of guy Jonathunder was? From his Xtools I can see that he made 129 edits to the article about the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and 104 edits to the largest lake in Minneapolis (whose article he created). It seems very unlikely that he'll ever come back, so I guess I'll never know.

Discretionary Sanctions and Contentious Topics

Review concluded on December 14.

WP:DS are now WP:CT. A bunch of template language was shuffled around. People discussed it at great length in places like this. As far as I can tell, no significant changes were made to the bones of the process.

Athaenara desysopped and indeffed

Motion passed on October 16.

Hung up the spurs, with a twist: rather than a full arbitration case, this was a Level II desysop.
The series of events started with this oppose vote at a request for adminship, that read more like a jisei:

“

I think the domination of Wikipedia's woman niche, for lack of a better term, by males masquerading as females as opposed to welcoming actual, genuine, real women who were born and have always been female, is highly toxic. Go ahead, "cancel" me, I don't care.

”

Huh?

Athaenara hadn't been an active editor in quite some time, and old-timers can be forgiven for being a little out of touch, but this was so outrageous as to utterly beggar belief. The only reasonable explanation was that her account had been broken into by some asshole who was signing her name to stupid letters, so Floquenbeam blocked her account as compromised. She was then unblocked by Lourdes (who is a whole story of her own).

Having been given a perfect ready-made opportunity to save face and blame the whole thing on an anonymous hacker and move on basically scot-free, Athaenara decided to cast it all into the flames. She not only confirmed that that really had been her, but also said a bunch of other stuff that also sucked. Well, thanks for the clarification.

There was a quite long case request, with an eye-watering 95 statements, which was eventually resolved by motion. Athaenara's block log tells the rest of the tale.

TheresNoTime decheckusered and deoversighted

Case closed on November 2.

In the wake of the Athaenara incident, there was an ancillary incident involving CheckUser and administrator TheresNoTime, who had been following along at home during the initial disaster, noticed Lourdes' unblock of Athaenara, and suspected her of being up to no good and collaborating with Athaenara offwiki. So they (TheresNoTime) ran a CheckUser on her (Lourdes). They were actually correct about Lourdes being sus – she was to be unmasked in late 2023 as having been an indefinitely-banned long-term abuse puppetmaster the whole time – but nobody knew this at the time, not even them, so a case request was made on the basis that this had been an improper use of the CheckUser tools. Primarily, due to TheresNoTime having been involved in the incident beforehand (they were the co-nominator of the RfA where the initial comment was made). The whole situation was kind of complicated, and there's a detailed timeline (with timestamps) at the case page. Eventually, TheresNoTime lost the tools but retained their adminship.

A year later, it would turn out that Lourdes had just been a permabanned LTA messing around with everybody to cause drama the whole time. See what I said about "sad and tragic"?

Stephen desysopped and then undesysopped

Desysop done on November 14; case closed on December 7.

Stephen, a quite-active administrator who was heavily involved with the Main Page's In The News section, found himself at the center of a scandal. As the finding of fact from the case says:

During the investigation of an unregistered user harassing another user, a CheckUser determined that the IP address associated with the harassment had previously been used by Stephen, an administrator. Stephen had been in disputes with the harassed editor in the past, and was the only registered account using that IP. According to CheckUser data, the harassing edits were made using a device that Stephen had not previously used. The Arbitration Committee reviewed these findings and determined that they were well founded.

Judging from the talk page section on this noticeboard entry, nobody really expected this, and most commenters were some combination of confused and dismayed to hear the news: "This is just so disappointing. Stephen was one the most dedicated admins working at ITN. I'm really shocked."
Indeed, it was shocking to hear that he did this, because he apparently didn't, per the other finding of fact:

The explanations provided by Stephen are sufficient to indicate that it was not him performing the unregistered editing and harassment. [...] The administrative permissions of Stephen are restored.

Strangely cryptic announcement about Iranian politics disruption

Announcement made on December 19.

Whatever this is:

The Arbitration Committee has been made aware by the Wikimedia Foundation's disinformation team of continued disruption in the Iranian Politics (IRANPOL) topic area, which was subject to an ArbCom case last year. Additional measures to address this disruption may be forthcoming in the year ahead from the Arbitration Committee and/or the Wikimedia Foundation. For now, the Arbitration Committee is informing the community of this disruption in the hopes that more editors and administrators may wish to begin working in the IRANPOL topic area. Uninvolved administrators are also reminded that editor restrictions and page restrictions are available for use in the topic area.

Nobody in the peanut gallery seemed to know what specific thing(s) they were talking about here either. I sure don't. Barkeep bestowed some breadcrumbs upon the beggars, giving a short list of "topics with-in the broader Iranian Politics area which are likely to have ongoing disruption and/or have had disruption in the past and in no particular order", but no further details than that.

Armenia-Azerbaijan 3

Case closed on March 18.

The last case on this conflict (WP:ARBAA2) was from 2007, and this one from January 2023 covered the then-ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between the two nations. It followed a gigantic number of threads at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard and various other locations, all of which failed to resolve the underlying issues.
The findings of fact here should be unsurprising, given that there was a real-life warzone: people were edit-warring on Wikipedia as well. Additionally, the Committee received evidence that substantial off-wiki canvassing had been carried out by editors supporting both countries, on both Reddit and Facebook (although this canvassing didn't seem to really affect the discussions that much).
At any rate, several users were subjected to various sanctions: Abrvagl, Dallavid, Olympian, and ZaniGiovanni were all given one-revert restrictions and topic bans. Golden and Grandmaster were also put on probation, and a two-way interaction ban placed between Abrvagl and ZaniGiovanni.

Dbachmann desysopped

Motion issued on April 5.

Hung up the spurs. A 2004 admin, whose editing had tapered off considerably in the last decade, controversially reversed an administrative action in which a user (AndewNguyen) was blocked as a "single purpose civil POV pusher determined to promote a fringe point of view regarding Race and intelligence that does not align with Wikipedia's long-standing consensus and reliable sources". Dbachmann, who had not used the block tool since 2011, objected to the block on the grounds of due process, undid it, and was taken to task for doing so. He said in his preliminary statement:

“

I have encountered what I judge to be blatant admin overreach, reversed the action without seeking further escalation or consequences, and stated clearly that I was not going to double down and willing to submit to review by a third uninvolved admin. It is entirely opaque to me how there could be any reasonable case for seeking "arbitration" against me in this situation. But if I am mistaken in this judgement too, it would mean that I have completely lost touch with the rules and power dynamics in the project today and it is just as well that I am being arbitrated against.

”

A variety of evidence was presented, some of it ranging back quite far; ultimately, Dbachmann's refusal to engage further with the case request (this was the last edit he ever made on en.wp), and that along with some highly questionable racial comments brought up from years previous moved the Committee to this:

For egregious misuse of an admin tool, for losing the trust or confidence of the community, and for failing to address the concerns of the community within a reasonable time period, while being aware of those concerns, contrary to the expectations of admin conduct and accountability, Dbachmann is desysopped. Dbachmann may regain the administrative tools at any time via a successful request for adminship.

Scottywong desysopped

Case closed on July 10.

This arose from a discussion at ANI, and became a true scorched-earth casepage: both parties are indefinitely blocked, one of them by his own hand.

Scottywong was an active technical editor and administrator (the latter for eleven years), who ran about a dozen Toolforge services. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (transcribed alternately as "Maldanach", "Maldanch", and "Malnadach" on the casepage) was also a technical editor, and bot operator (of the aptly-named MalnadachBot, which carried out high-volume editing to fix lint errors but occasionally introduced them).

If you are a technical editor, you may be able to figure out what the point of contention was: Scotty thought MalnadachBot was a waste of resources that was breaking pages for no reason, and that Malnadach was unnecessarily changing stuff. Malnadach thought that Scotty was unnecessarily raising objections to important technical fixes.

Scotty demanded that Malnadach "stop with the annoying useless edits already". He also made a derogatory reference to Malnadach's username: "Hello, user with non-English characters on the English Wikipedia. I don't even know what to call you. In my head, I just think of you as 'Mr. Squiggles' because your username just looks like a bunch of squiggly lines to me." This last part was a bridge too far for mostly everyone, who universally condemned him for this strange and ostensibly racist comment.

For failure to meet the conduct standards expected of an administrator, Scottywong's administrative user rights are removed. Scottywong may regain them at any time via a successful request for adminship.

Like the TheresNoTime case, this was another stupid tragedy: Malnadach was revealed to have been some permabanned sockmaster troll the entire time, and his account globally locked – during the case, no less. Nonetheless, Scotty's damage had already been done. He was desysopped by the Committee's decision, and as his final admin action he blocked himself with an expiry of forever.

AlisonW

Case closed on July 16.

Hung up the spurs: arbitration case brought on by a AN/I thread brought on by an involved block. This block came from Alison W, a 2004 admin who was an attendee of the first-ever WikiMeetup and involved in the earliest days of the Wikimedia Foundation. Her most recent month with more than a hundred edits was December 2009. Unlike most of these cases, she took an active role in responding to the case, and she's even edited in the months since.

Ultimately, the Committee found that her interpretations of the relevant guidelines no longer comported with what is now expected of administrators. Arbitrator GeneralNotability said: "AlisonW, your years of service are appreciated, but I think the most honorable course of action here is to recognize that you are no longer up on community norms, voluntarily hand in the bit, take the time to familiarize yourself with those new norms, and then re-RfA in the future." Ultimately, she was desysopped.

SmallCats

Case closed on August 25.

This is one of those cases that resist all attempt to make sense of what's going on. Everything feels like a reference to some older, more ancient conflict; it's possible to just directly read what's being said, but this feels like missing the point in some important way.

Ultimately, the outcome of this case was that two editors were banned: one with sixty thousand edits over thirteen years, and the other with three million edits over the course of nearly twenty. Perhaps, given more time, it would be possible to say more about it than that, in a way that gave some genuine understanding of the underlying issues; in a way that explained what was going on here; but today is not that time.

When I mouse over BrownHairedGirl's username, a little box pops up that says "2,942,733 edits since: 2006-01-04". The talk pages and precedents and twenty-year-old diffs being discussed in this case feel like ruined temples with inscriptions I can't read: maybe some day I'll be able to.

Mark Ironie and CorbieVreccan

Motion issued on September 17.

This case request was brought about by this AN/I thread. During the course of the case request, both of them maintained that their situation had been disclosed to the Committee for many years, and was not considered to be a problem. Nonetheless, the main allegation was of potential conflicts of interest, misuse of administrative powers, and patterns of support in discussions; for example, Mark often showed up to agree with Corbie in arguments. It didn't result in the Committee opening a case, but it did result in both users requesting a desysop, and a rather unusual motion being resolved:

Mark Ironie and CorbieVreccan will be considered a single user for Wikipedia's purposes. When editing the same articles, participating in the same community discussion, or supporting each other in any sort of dispute, these editors must disclose their connection and observe relevant policies such as edit warring as if they were a single account.

Subsequent events

This recap brings us up from the middle of '22 up through almost the end of '23. The astute observer will note that it's currently May of '24, meaning that even after a marathon report covering eighteen months (!), we remain a couple months behind. There are some additional cases that I feel deserve more attention than being one brief list item in a report that's already nearing the limits of the human attention span.

Contrary to some claims made in the badsite threads "Is the Signpost ignoring an ArbCom case?" (no) and "Jacob Gotts aka JPxG: liar or braindead?" (no), the absence of an arbitration report covering the Nihonjoe case in the last couple months was not a deliberate act of censorship (there wasn't anything to censor), nor was it a declaration of war against the badsite (about which I remain ambivalent). Rather, it was an issue of insufficient resources to report on the case thoroughly. We will cover that case, and some others, in the next report.

In the meantime, please enjoy the encyclopedia with understanding and compassion in the search for truth, and love your neighbor as you do yourself.

Reader comments

2024-05-16

Deadnames on the French Wikipedia, and a duel between Russian wikis

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By Bluerasberry, Oltrepier, Smallbones, Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist, and JPxG

French Wikipedia grapples with names and pronouns for transgender people

Magazine Friction published an open letter from French LGBTQIA+^{[n 1]} Wikipedia editors, reacting to and protesting the outcome of a heated community survey on the French Wikipedia on whether to include the pre-transition names of transgender people (deadnames) in articles, in what circumstances, and where.

In 2022, an essay was written on the French Wikipedia recommending style conventions for transgender identity; nonetheless, edit wars continued over the precise details, culminating in the poll. For people who had met notability criteria prior to transitioning, the results of that poll were narrowly in favor of including pre-transition names in the lead, and a larger majority agreed they should be mentioned in the body. The discussion was covered, while it was ongoing, in Numerama and France Inter and later by Le Monde.

During the discussion there were charges of canvassing. Sinkra, the president of Les sans pagEs (the French equivalent of Women in Red) was given a three-day block for canvassing/meatpuppetry^{[n 2]} after she posted a notification to a public Mastodon instance asking people to participate. Other editors, who shared the post to ask for specific votes, were more heavily sanctioned. The poll, in its section on canvassing, argued that the notifications swayed the results for amounts ranging 1% to 6% for the different questions. Several comments referenced le wokisme.

The authors of the open letter argued that within the discussion, they were subject to unfair accusations of bias due to their identities. They stated they regretted the results of the poll, as well as another poll from four years ago, which had closed with consensus against the use of the French gender-neutral pronoun iel. They applauded the work being done to improve articles relating to transgender topics, while stating too many editors had left due to the editing environment. Previously, in October 2022 Le Nouvel Obs published an open letter from LGBT public figures denouncing the French Wikipedia for misgendering them, deadnaming them, maintaining pre-transition photos, and attacks on editors who denounced such practices.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees gave comments in their March 2024 public conversation, in response to claims that the French Wikipedia had become "actively hostile and in need of office actions", saying that the Board would have the Trust and Safety department analyze the situation and that it "will commit to supporting T&S findings and any related actionable steps".

Similar discussions have been occurring on the English Wikipedia, with the recent discussions and policy/guideline development around topics like MOS:DEADNAME and MOS:GENDERID (as well as a thematically related essay, No queerphobes, which was in the last couple weeks written, moved to No queerphobia, nominated for deletion, closed as keep, then brought to deletion review but speedily withdrawn). In March, a Request for Comment on the names of deceased trans people, having sought to expand MOS:DEADNAME, was found no consensus (with the closer saying "Our existing policies and guidelines, including WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:BDP continue to determine the standard for inclusion of material in articles").

– BR, YFNS, J

Footnotes

^ While the contributors used LGBTQIA+ to refer to themselves throughout the letter, Friction Magazine used the term "LGBTQUIA+" when introducing them. The "U" stands for undefined.[1]
^ (The fr.wp policy is called pantin, which literally means "puppet", but on the French Wikipedia they say that to mean meatpuppetry — their term for what we call a "sockpuppet" is a faux-nez, or 'false nose').

Russian government cracks down on VPNs, we wonder which wiki will wilt?

In Russia, the unspeakable includes "Nyet voynye!" ("no to war!"). Will the contents of Wikipedia follow?

In the last issue of The Signpost, we reported the political censorship occurring on the Russian Wikipedia's new fork, Ruviki, as first revealed by Novaya Gazeta. In the meantime, the Streisand effect has kicked in as national and international outlets, including 404 Media (who cited our story), PC Gamer, Agi (in Italian) and Sveriges Television (SVT) (in Swedish) all noticed the fork rewriting Russian reality.

SVT also remarked on a worrying sign for the real Russian Wikipedia. On March 1 Roskomnadzor, the censorship agency of the Russian government, announced that they will enforce an order designed to ban all forms of advertising and promotion of circumvention tools such as VPN services. Anton Gorelkin, the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies, and Communications, stated on Telegram that there were allegedly "legal grounds for blocking Wikipedia", since the site hosts an article about VPNs, while adding that legislators would have to "make sure this doesn't cause significant inconvenience for users". As reported by SVT, in April Gorelkin reiterated his hostility towards Wikipedia, stating that "it [was] clear that Wikipedia has become an instrument in the ongoing information war to delete pro-Russian opinions", and that Russian authorities needed to create sources "where citizens can obtain objective and non-propagandist information".

Although the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, Maksut Shadayev, recently excluded the option to block Wikipedia as a whole, at least for now, it's clear that the already turbulent relationship between the platform and the national government is hitting a new low. If we consider that WMF chapter Wikimedia RU was forced to close in December, and that the fork full of censored material is currently on the rise, it's safe to say that the cloud looming over the real Russian Wikipedia is ominous.

Nevertheless, the Russian government cannot force the real Russian Wikipedia to close, since the site's servers are located outside of Russia, as are many of the editors who contribute to it every day. Editors located inside Russia might be forced to stop editing, but those located in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics (e.g. the Baltic republics, Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan) are outside Russia's direct control. What's more, other Russian-speaking editors live in Israel, former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, North America and Australia. Closing off VPNs to Russian residents will only mean that they will have no influence on the real Russian Wikipedia's content. On the other hand, Ruviki doesn't have enough of its own editors to keep up with 1.9 million articles, so its articles on the Russian invasion of Ukraine will likely be originally written by Ukrainians, and then heavily censored by bots, removing any sense of reality from the article in the process. And if the real Russian Wikipedia is forced to close, where will Ruviki copy its articles from to begin with?

– S and O

In brief

Logo of the Unicode Consortium, of which the Wikimedia Foundation is now an associate member

We're now on a (Unicode) mission: On 28 March, the Wikimedia Foundation officially became an associate member of the Unicode Consortium, thus solidifying the already existing ties between the two organizations (for example, through the CLDR project). In virtue of this announcement, the WMF joins a list that already includes the likes of Oracle, SAS and UC Berkeley Linguistics, among others.
Chris comes alive: Also in March, the WMF's Director of Machine Learning, Chris Albon, sat down with Italian portal StartupItalia for a brief interview (in Italian), where he broke down topics such as last year's most popular Wikipedia articles and, even more notably, the Foundation's approach to AI technology. More specifically, Albon talked about tools such as ContentTranslation, as well as the recently tested ChatGPT plugin; he also stated that while AI "represents a huge opportunity to help expand the work of volunteers on Wikipedia and [the other] Wikimedia projects", such technologies "work better as a support and boost to human-made work".
Channeling rage for good: In April, The Georgetown Voice reported that the University's Massive Data Institute, along with 10 other affiliated groups, hosted an edit-a-thon centered around National Women's History Month, which aimed to help close the gender gap between men and women bios on Wikipedia. The event, where Wikimedia DC Institutional Partnerships Manager Ariel Cetrone served as a trainer for students in attendance, reportedly proved successful, with participants adding roughly 3,200 words to the site, and 25 people signing up as Wikipedia editors.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Religion sponsors the 1000 women in religion events

Sister Act... to make more Sisters Act: Society of the Sacred Heart Associate and author Carole Sargent recently wrote a "Wikipedia-style" article for the Global Sisters Report, reflecting on the reasons why she has embarked on a personal mission to create and improve articles about notable Catholic sisters on a platform "where everyone might find them", as part of the Women in Red and Women in Religion WikiProjects. Sargent, who is known by the username Fortunaa on Wikipedia, has published 43 original articles to date, around half of which are bios of Catholic sisters, including a good article on Regina Purtell. In her GSR article, Sargent also made "a call to action for any sister, or [friend] of sisters" who would like to help add information about key members of their congregation to the encyclopedia.
$925,000 mansion for sale complete with own Wiki article: The Des Moines Register reports that a 1931 4-bedroom, 4-bath mansion comes complete with its own sunroom, a "great room" with a great beamed ceiling, a kitchen/dining room to die for (check out the photos), multiple murals, a backyard Venus sculpture, a National Register of Historic Places plaque and the headlined feature, its own article in Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Italy participated in the Turin International Book Fair this week.

Wait, we never endorsed drug dealing in here!: Upon announcing a successful joint operation with the National Police and other international corps, the Spanish Tax Agency said 31 people were arrested due to their involvement in a cocaine trafficking network; the mastermind of the criminal organization, known for conducting various drug trafficking operations online, was confusingly nicknamed "Wikipedia Narco", which sparked a humorous comment from Wikipedia Weekly user Torsten Kleinz.
Trade fair share: From 9 to 13 May, a delegation of Wikimedia Italy took part in the International Book Fair in Turin for the first time in their history, as guests of the Italian Libraries Association [it]'s panel. As reported by online portal TorinOggi, the Wikimedia staff and volunteers hosted a Wikisource marathon centered around the volumes that survived the Nazi book burnings in 1933, while also raising awareness about the association's educational projects available for libraries, archives, museums and schools.

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.

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2024-05-16

Wikidata to split as sheer volume of information overloads infrastructure

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By Bluerasberry

WikiCite is a Wikidata-based metadata curation project and the community of people doing that curation.

The Wikimedia Foundation will soon split parts of the WikiCite dataset off from the main Wikidata dataset. Both data collections will be available through the Wikidata Query Service: although in queries, by default users will get content from the main graph, and can afterwards take extra effort to request WikiCite content. This is the start of query federation for Wikidata content, and is a consequence of Wikidata having so much content that the servers hosting resources of the Wikidata Query Service are under strain.

I support this as a WikiCite editor, because WikiCite is consuming considerable resources, and the split preserves the content by reducing its accessibility. This split could also be the start of dedicated support for Wikimedia citation data products.

I am wary of the split, because it only gives about three more years to look for another solution, and we have already been seeking one since 2018. The complete scholarly citation corpus of ~300 million citations is not a large dataset by contemporary standards, but our Blazegraph backend strains to include 40 million right now. Even after a split, Wikidata will fill with content again. Fear of the split has been slowing and deterring Wikidata content creation for years, and we do not have long-term plans for splitting and federating Wikibase instances repeatedly.

The split will create a WikiCite graph separate from the main Wikidata graph. The main Wikidata graph will retain content of broader interest, including items for authors, journals, publishers, and anything with a page in a Wikimedia project.

This challenge does not have an obvious solution. I have tried to identify experts who could describe the barriers at d:wikidata:WikiProject Limits of Wikidata, but have not been able to do so. I asked if Wikidata could usefully expand its capacity with US$10 million development, and got uncertainty in return. I have no request of the Wikimedia community members who read this, except to remain aware of how technical development decisions determine the content we can host, the partnerships we can make, and the editors we can attract. The Wikimedia Foundation team managing the split have documentation which invites comment. Visit, and ponder the extent to which it is possible to discuss the scope of Wikidata.

That is the summary, and all that casual readers may wish to know. For more details, read on!

I am writing this article as an opinion or personal statement. I am unable to present this as fact-checked investigative journalism, and am presenting this from my own perspective as a long-term WikiCite contributor who has incorporated this project into many sponsored projects in my role as Wikimedian in residence at the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia. I have a professional stake in this content, and wish to be able to anticipate its future level of stability.

Why split WikiCite from Wikidata?

About 1/3 of Wikidata items are WikiCite content

Wikipedia is a prose encyclopedia established in 2001. Over the years, the Wikipedia community deconstructed Wikipedia's parts into Wikimedia sister projects, one of which was Wikidata, established in 2012. Wikidata is designed such that, to the casual observer, it seems to accomplish magic to solve multiple billion-dollar challenges facing humanity. Soon after its establishment, though, its infrastructure hit technical limitations. Those limits prevent current (and especially prospective) projects from importing more content into Wikidata.

The only large Wikidata project to continue limited development was WikiCite, which is an effort to index all scholarly publications. WikiCite grew, and is currently a third of the content on Wikidata. Users access WikiCite content through multiple tools; the tool I watch is Scholia, a scholarly profiling service serving this content 100,000 times a day. The point of Wikimedia projects is to be popular and present content that people want, and there is agreement that WikiCite is a worthwhile project. While Wikidata is overstuffed with content, use of the Wikidata Query Service strains Wikidata's computational resources and causes downtime. Reducing the costs and strain with a WikiCite split is one solution to manage them.

Scholia gets 100,000 views a day. Many outages since 2022 are of the toolforge:Toolviews tool, which is another unrelated outage issue.

The problem is that Wikidata is facing an existential crisis, due to reaching many of the challenges reported in WikiProject Limits of Wikidata. Users must be able to access Wikidata content through database queries, and the amount of content in Wikidata is large enough that more queries are failing, and more frequently. The short term solution which is happening right now is the first Wikidata graph split, which will result in the separation of the WikiCite dataset from the main Wikidata graph. This is not a long term solution, because Wikidata will fill up with data again. If users had their way, Wikidata would expand in resource use to index all public information on people, maps, the Sum of All Paintings, video games, climate, sports, civics, species, and every other concept which is familiar to Wikipedia editors and which could be further described with small – meaning not big data – general reference datasets.

In 1873 optical engineer Ernst Abbe discovered a formula describing the optical limit of microscopes. Limits can be surpassed when understood. Describe Wikidata's limits at d:Wikidata:WikiProject Limits of Wikidata

Here is a timeline of the discussions:

Here are some questions to explore. Ideally, answers to these questions could be comprehensible to Wikimedia community members, technology journalists, and computer scientists. I do not believe that published attempts at answering these questions for those audiences exist.

If we could predict Wikidata's future capacity, then editors could strategically plan to acquire data at the rate of growth. Will Wikidata's capacity in 3 years be more or the same as current capacity?
WikiCite hit many upload limits in 2018. In the 6 years since, we have not identified a solution. What could we have done differently to develop appropriate discussion at the time the problem was identified?
Suppose that the Wikimedia community developed a successful product – like WikiCite and Scholia – which also came with expenses. How can the Wikimedia community assess the value of such things and determine what support is appropriate?

Scholarly profiling

Google Scholar is a popular scholarly profiling service, but it is also non-free, which is why Wikipedia cannot post screenshots of its outputs.

Scholarly profiling is the process of summarizing scholarly metadata from publications, researchers, institutions, research resources including software and datasets, and grants to give the user enough information to gain useful insights and to tell accurate stories about a topic. For example, a scholarly profile of a researcher would identify the topics they research, their social network of co-authors, history of institutional relationships, and the tools they use to do their research. Such data could be rearranged to make any of these elements the subject of a profile, so for example, a profile of a university would identify its researchers and what they study; a profile of software would identify who uses it and for what work; and a profile of a funder would tell what impact their investments make.

The easiest way to understand scholarly profiling is to use and experience popular scholarly profiling services.

Google Scholar is the most popular service and is a free Google product. It presents a search engine results page based on topics and authors. Scopus is the Elsevier product and Web of Science is the Clarivate product. Many universities in Western countries pay for subscriptions to these, with typical subscription costs being US$100,000-200,000 per year.

A search for "influenza" in Internet Archive Scholar suggests papers from 1971, 2007, and 1890. Semantic Scholar claims copyright of the website, and OpenAlex is ambiguous with licensing.

Free and nonprofit comparable products include Semantic Scholar developed by the Allen Institute for AI, OpenAlex developed by OurResearch, and the scrappy Internet Archive Scholar developed by Wikimedia friend Internet Archive.

Other tools with scholarly profiling features include ResearchGate, which is a commercial scientific social networking platform, and ORCID, which compiles bibliographies of researchers.

OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar and Internet Archive Scholar designate the data as openly licensed and allow export, but all of these have ambiguous open licensing terms for elements of their platforms. Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science slurp data that they find and encourage crowdsourced upload of data, but their terms of use do not allow others to export it as open data. It has been a recurring thought that the WikiCite and Scholia could meet institutional needs at a fraction of the Scopus and Web of Science subscription costs. ORCID also encourages data upload and entire universities do this, but only for living people, and the data is only public with consent of the individual profiled.

Statements such as the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information seek to gather a collaboration which could manifest an ideal profiling platform, which would be open data, exportable, allow crowdsourced curation, encourage public community discussion of the many social and ethical issues which arise from presenting a platform like this, and of course be sustainable as a tool which used computing resources. Scholia is these things, except for hitting technical limits.

WikiCite and Scholia

WikiCite is a collection of scholarly metadata in Wikidata, the WikiProject to curate that data, and the name of the Wikimedia community who engage in that curation. Scholia is a tool on Toolforge which generates scholarly profiles by combining WikiCite and general Wikidata content into a reader-friendly format. Scholia is preloaded with about 400 Wikidata queries, so instead of any new user needing to learn queries, they can use the Scholia interface to run queries to answer common questions in academic literature research.

Anyone can use WikiCite content for applications on or off wiki. Histropedia emphasizes timelines, and uses WikiCite content to visualize research development over time.

WikiCite is the single most popular project in Wikidata in terms of amount of content, number of participants, depth of engagement of participants, count of institutional collaborations, and donation of in-kind labor from paid staff subject matter experts contributing to the project. In terms of content, WikiCite is about 40 million of Wikidata's 110 million items. Because it is openly licensed, many other applications ingest this content, including the other scholarly profiling services but also free and open services such as Histropedia. Four WikiCite conferences have each convened 100 participants. WikiCite presentations have been a part of many other Wikimedia conferences for some years. The largest WikiCite project in terms of participants was the WikiProject Program for Cooperative Cataloging, which recruited staff at about 50 schools to make substantial WikiCite contributions about their own research output. In the context of the Wikimedia Foundation investing in outreach, there are projects like this which are outside of that investment, but which attract investors, new editors, and institutional partnerships.

The promise of WikiCite is to collect research metadata, confirm its openness, then enrich it with further metadata including topic tagging and deconstruction of the source material to note use of research resources, such as software, datasets, protocols, or anything else which could be reusable. Scholia presents all this content. Example Scholia applications are shown here, with links to the queries and pages which present such results.

What next?

The Wikidata Query Service is failing more often. 99% of the time it works, but 1% failure of a tool central to accessing Wikidata is an emergency to address immediately. To ensure continued access to Wikidata content, the Foundation has responded with a recently refined plan announced here incorporating everyone's best ideas for what to do.

It is challenging to coordinate the Wikipedia and Wikimedia community. The above mentioned Barcelona Declaration asks organizations to commit to "make openness the default", "enable open research information", "support the sustainability of infrastructures for open research information", and "support collective action to accelerate the transition to openness of research information", which are all aims of WikiCite, Scholia, and Wikimedia more broadly, but in my view Wikimedia projects have been too independent to join such public consortia. If we could reach community consensus to join such programs, then I think experts in that group could advise us on technical needs, and funders would consider sponsoring our proposals to develop our technical infrastructure. If the Wikimedia Movement had money, then based on my incomplete understanding of the limit problems, I recommend investing in Wikidata now so that we can better recruit expert partnerships and contributors. Since we lack money, the best idea that I have is to find the world's best experts considering comparable problems, and explore options for collaboration with them. I wish that "Wikipedia" could sign the Barcelona Declaration or a similar effort, and get more outside support.

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2024-05-16

Generations

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By Generalissima

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2024-05-16

Crawl out through the fallout, baby

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By Igordebraga, Rajan51, CAWylie, Shuipzv3, Vestrian24Bio

This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Rajan51, CAWylie, Shuipzv3, and Vestrian24Bio (with help from Boyinaroom, Gonnym, Rahcmander and Bucket of sulfuric acid).

Maybe this report should instead be named "Cricket. Cricket never changes." But it's not as easy writing a hook for the Indian Premier League, which in normal conditions should not even enter these lists because they break the mobile threshold listed at the bottom of this page – but there is some reasoning for those numbers.

I don't want to set the world on fire (April 14 to 20)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Indian Premier League	4,296,976	Despite not being the article for this year's edition of the league, more people seem to land on this article than #4. Maybe more people are searching for "IPL" instead of "2024 IPL".
2	Fallout (American TV series)	2,046,367	Another post-apocalyptic drama based on a video game franchise (#6), albeit unlike The Last of Us it was a streaming release, namely Prime Video, and had all its episodes coming out at once. Fallout quickly shot up the streamer's viewer charts, receiving attention from video gamers, science fiction lovers, and even regular people who just came across it as well. It has been critically acclaimed, and a second season is confirmed. Walton Goggins (pictured) stars as Cooper Howard, a once famous actor turned ghoul.
3	Scottie Scheffler	1,395,121	This American golfer has been ranked World Number One since May 2023, and he shot eleven-under-par to win the Masters Tournament (his second) from April 11–14.
4	2024 Indian Premier League	1,393,394	Last week kicked off with the league's biggest rivalry and saw four centuries, including one in said match and another in the match that saw the new highest score posted by a team in the league's history. Meanwhile, the 42-year old former India captain MS Dhoni delighted fans with a couple of blitzes, and his arrivals at the crease continue to be met with vocal support from fans, though sometimes they seem to get too loud.
5	The Tortured Poets Department	1,271,383	At the Grammy Awards in February, Taylor Swift announced her 11th studio album would release soon. This set off the largest pre-order in American Target stores' history. Its release on April 19 surpassed Midnights' 2022 debut on Spotify for highest single-day album streams, and it sold 1.4 million copies in the U.S. on the first day. Critical reception has been mostly positive. It was paired as a double album with The Anthology, which was released a few hours later.
6	Fallout (franchise)	1,242,002	As the American web series adaption (#2) was released to generally favorable reviews and has been renewed for a second season, people are giving some attention to the source material, an RPG series set in a world ravaged by a nuclear war, featuring robots, mutants, and a general 1950s aesthetic (including in the soundtrack!).
7	2024 Indian general election	1,224,156	With roughly 970 million eligible voters, the world's biggest election, spread over seven phases and 44 days, commenced in India on Friday. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been in power for the last ten years, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking to return for a third term. Up against them is the creatively named Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance aka INDIA alliance, a coalition of parties that are united (mostly) in their attempt to defeat the BJP.
8	Amar Singh Chamkila	1,213,979	In March 1988, this Indian singer, his wife, and two bandmates were shot and killed by unknown assailants as they were exiting a van. No arrests have been made in the unsolved case. The biopic film, released on Netflix on April 12, was written and directed by Imtiaz Ali (pictured).
9	Civil War (film)	1,052,524	Alex Garland wrote and directed a movie where the United States are instead divided in a conflict, and two journalists played by Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura, plus an aspiring photographer played by Cailee Spaeny, try to reach the White House and interview the President before he's killed by opposing forces. On their journey, many brutal and senseless people show the truth of Axl Rose's quotation of "What's so civil 'bout war anyway?". Critics and audiences alike were impressed by Civil War, which opened atop the box office and should soon recoup its modest $50 million budget.
10	Richard Gadd	1,040,690	The Scottish writer, actor and comedian created and starred in Baby Reindeer, adapted from a one-man show and based on his experiences of being stalked and sexually assaulted.

Maybe you'll sit and sigh (April 21 to 27)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Indian Premier League	3,049,983	The cricket fever in India continued as this week of #10 put intense pressure on players as it plays a key role in the selection for 2024 T20WC – Indian squad which is to be unveiled next week. We can see that it was intense enough to bring the Article to first place in the list for another week.
2	Richard Gadd	1,841,593	The Scottish writer, actor and comedian created and starred in #5, based on his experiences of being stalked and sexually assaulted in his 20s.
3	2024 NFL draft	1,609,861	In a three-day event starting April 25, 32 NFL teams chose their prospective gridiron players (257 in total). From a 2023 trade, the Chicago Bears had the first pick, taking the 2022 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Caleb Williams (pictured), in a QB-heavy first round. Mr. Irrelevant, the final pick in the draft on April 27, was Jaylen Key, chosen by the New York Jets.
4	2024 Indian general election	1,431,879	A series of elections kicked off on April 19 and will conclude on June 1 to elect all 543 members of the Lok Sabha. With 970 million eligible voters, it will be the largest election ever. President Narendra Modi's BJP has a comfortable lead in polls.
5	Baby Reindeer	1,382,236	A black comedy and drama-thriller based on #2's experiences, this miniseries on Netflix received critical acclaim, and topped viewership figures in several countries.
6	Fallout (American TV series)	1,020,486	The famed role-playing video games set in a retrofuturistic world ravaged by nuclear war got a Prime Video adaptation, with the story focusing on a Vault Dweller seeking her kidnapped father, a Brotherhood of Steel squire pretending to be a knight, and a Ghoul bounty hunter. Season 1 got big viewership numbers (it's the streamer's second biggest debut after The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) and critical acclaim, and thus a second one has already been greenlit.
7	Deaths in 2024	953,429	We're all of the stars, we're fading away Just try not to worry, you'll see us some day...
8	Shōgun (2024 miniseries)	900,839	April 23 had the tenth and final chapter of this FX on Hulu adaptation of an eponymous 1975 novel by James Clavell, set in 17th century Japan. Shōgun was widely acclaimed and had big streaming viewership numbers (and relatively good ones on cable, given they're not what they used to).
9	Ryan Garcia	860,783	On April 20, the 2021 WBC super lightweight champion went 12 rounds with Devin Haney, knocking him down three times and winning in a majority decision. Garcia was ineligible to take the title, due to being three pounds heavy at the weigh-in.
10	2024 Indian Premier League	774,928	The cricket fever in India continued as this week of #1 put intense pressure on players as it plays a key role in the selection for 2024 T20WC – Indian squad which is to be unveiled next week.

And my imagination will feed my hungry heart (April 28 to May 4)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Indian Premier League	2,061,790	It was the month that periodical cicadas emerged, but we all know that the bug that gets on this list is cricket, brought to this list by the ongoing season. With the joint-successful team out of the game, the race for the 2024 Playoffs heats up, as none has qualified yet.
2	Richard Gadd	1,475,186	The Netflix miniseries based on a Scottish comedian's real life experiences of being stalked and sexually assaulted was subject to critical acclaim.
3	Baby Reindeer	1,223,517
4	Heeramandi	963,508	In the first half of the 20th century, the Pakistani neighborhood of Heera Mandi was a food grain market, and tawaifs from the royal court were trained in music, dance, and etiquette as entertainers. The British Raj wanted the entertainers to be prostitutes. This period lasted into the 1940s. Now outlawed, the district is trying to restore its former glory. On May 1, an 8-episode TV series, created by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (pictured), was released on Netflix, detailing the tawaif culture at the time.
5	Deaths in 2024	944,765	A man can never dream these kind of things Especially when she came and spread her wings Whispered in my ear the things I'd like Then she flew away into the night
6	Challengers (film)	913,460	A love triangle between tennis players that encompasses 13 years, wrecking friendships and careers, ultimately culminating in a heated game during a Challenger tournament. And given one of the players is Zendaya, filmgoers were interested in getting seats to watch this story (which in spite of critical raves this here writer wasn't as enthralled, particularly for some slow paced parts), and Challengers should soon recoup its $55 million budget.
7	International Workers' Day	906,711	The May 1 commemoration of labor rights took place last Wednesday.
8	2024 Indian general election	884,559	Although the election started several weeks ago on April 19, it still isn't even half over, as it ends on June 1. 970 million people are eligible to vote, making this the largest election in human history.
9	Murder of Asunta Basterra	779,835	On September 22, 2013, Asunta Basterra was found dead in Teo, A Coruña, one week before her 13th birthday. The coroner determined she had been asphyxiated, and 27 lorazepam pills were in her system (nine times higher than an adult should take). Her adoptive parents were found guilty of her murder. Her story was detailed in a Netflix miniseries, The Asunta Case, released on April 26. Spanish actress Candela Peña (pictured) portrays her mother.
10	Fallout (American TV series)	727,255	Prime Video released an adaptation of the post-apocalyptic RPG series, focusing on a woman who leaves her fallout shelter to roam, as Honest Trailers put it, "an endless wasteland full of zombies, mech warriors, and humans with the IQ of a YouTube comments section", along the way suffering much trauma and discovering horrible things about her family. Its continued presence here shows the show won over old fans and newcomers alike, who can't wait for the second season.

If you cannot find the way, just listen for my song (May 5 to 11)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Eurovision Song Contest 2024	1,637,212	Love, love, peace, peace... This year's edition of Eurovision, taking place throughout the week and ending on 11 May, was highly turbulent and divisive amongst viewers, with drama upon drama taking place before the contest: an entire act being disqualified last minute, leaks, voting decisions from certain parts of the audience deemed highly questionable by some, and a lot of general criticism going towards the event organisers for managing these problems poorly. In the end, Nemo from Switzerland came out on top with their song "The Code", garnering over 591 points in the Grand Final and giving Switzerland their first win since 1988. Some viewers have pointed out how, all after all of these divisions and scandals related to the contest, it was perhaps only fitting that the one country known best for its neutrality ended up winning it all...
2	2024 Indian general election	1,413,382	The world's second biggest population went to choose its parliament, and with 970 million eligible to vote, the process lasts 44 days. Expect this article to remain here until June.
3	Drake–Kendrick Lamar feud	1,272,931	"Beef is doing big, big business right now." This rap feud involving #6 and #7 has been going since 2010s, but its been escalating since March 2024, and saw a real feud with back-to-back releases from both rappers in the last few weeks; which includes "Not Like Us" and "The Heart Part 6", "Family Matters" and "Meet the Grahams", "Euphoria" and "6:16 in LA" and more.
4	Heeramandi	1,173,944	Netflix released this Indian period drama about the tawaifs of Heera Mandi during the Indian independence movement, who went from entertainers to prostitutes as the British Raj turned the place into a red-light district.
5	Indian Premier League	1,143,814	In the 2024 edition of the League, with two teams eliminated and one qualified; The race to the Playoffs intensifies, as the remaining 7 teams battle for the 3 spots left.
6	Drake (musician)	1,014,746	These rappers (one from Toronto, the other from Compton) are the main two parties that have been involved in a rap feud (#3) since the early 2010s, which escalated in March 2024. The lyrical content included Drake accusing Kendrick of beating his wife and Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile.
7	Kendrick Lamar	1,007,554
8	Steve Albini	986,335	A musician best known for an extensive producing career that included albums for Nirvana, The Pixies, The Breeders, PJ Harvey, The Jesus Lizard, The Stooges, and Page and Plant, Steve Albini died of a heart attack at the age of 61.
9	Richard Gadd	966,238	Gadd created and starred in Baby Reindeer, based on his experiences of being sexually assaulted and stalked. While Gadd has asked fans to stop speculating the identities of people who inspired the show, a woman has claimed to be the inspiration of the stalker in the show, denied sending Gadd thousands of emails or visiting his home, and has threatened to sue Gadd and Netflix.
10	Deaths in 2024	956,401	From one album #8 helped make: Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld So I can sigh eternally...

Exclusions

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.