During some months it seems like all the media love Wikipedia. Some months, it seems like everybody is a critic. This month tended toward the latter, though you can still find some positive views, some interesting news, and even an odd bit or two.

On June 18, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported that Wikipedia editors had reached consensus over recognizing the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a "generally unreliable" media source for information regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. While Wikipedia editors routinely discuss the reliability of sources every time concerns are raised at the Noticeboard, the multi-part RfC about the ADL attracted way more editor comments than such discussions usually get.

As summarized in the JTA article (which was also published by Haaretz):

Editors supporting the ban focused on the ADL's conduct following Oct. 7, Israel's subsequent war with Hamas and the wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. Many editors said the organization had undermined its credibility by altering how it categorizes antisemitic incidents. Its new methodology included many pro-Palestinian protests in its annual audit of antisemitism, which reported a large spike over the previous year.

However, according to the subsequent closure statement on another part of the RfC, the ADL still "can roughly be taken as reliable on the topic of antisemitism when Israel and Zionism are not concerned". (Also, the statement clarifies that RfC did not seek to overturn the previous "consensus that the ADL is generally reliable as a source" entirely; it remains in place for topics "excluding the Israel/Palestine conflict and antisemitism".)

Both the JTA and — in a separate article — CNN quoted James Loeffler (a professor for Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University) on the matter. He stated e.g. that "this is going to be a difficult blow to the credibility [of] the ADL in its role on this issue. The staff there will continue to do rigorous work, but this will provide an opportunity for self-reflection." Similarly, an opinion article by Rob Eshman in The Forward was titled "Wikipedia called the ADL ‘unreliable.’ It’s a wake-up call the civil rights organization badly needs."

On June 20, the ADL reacted to the decision by asking its social media followers to "urge Wikipedia's board [sic] to take action on this unfair and dangerous situation". At the time of writing, 8400 supporters had signed this call (out of a goal of 10,000).

The following day, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt was invited on MSNBC news talk show Morning Joe to share his views on the subject. While professing that "Wikipedia [...] is an organization that we deeply respect", Greenblatt stated that Wikipedia's processes lacked full access and transparency – even deeming them as "a bit of a black box" – in comparison to the ADL's supposedly more transparent approach, which he described as "absolutely rigorous" and "done very above the board". He also appeared to tie his criticism to existing concerns that Wikipedia may be silencing the voices of other marginalized groups, arguing – to the immediate agreement of fellow panelist Eugene Robinson, an African American journalist who is an associate editor of the Washington Post:

I think we should listen to Black people when they tell us about what racism is. I think we should listen to LGBTQ groups themselves about [what] homophobia or transphobia is. And I think we need to listen to Jewish groups to explain what antisemitism is.

According to the JTA, a "series of controversial statements" by Greenblatt, together with media reports about an ensuing staff revolt at the ADL, had played a role in the Wikipedia RfC's outcome, alongside debates about "a controversial definition of antisemitism that the ADL embraces".

On 25 June, as reported by the Jewish News Syndicate, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, among other media, 43 leading Jewish organizations co-signed an open letter to the WMF's Board of Trustees in protest to the discussion's verdict, calling on the board to overturn the decision. In response to a JTA inquiry, the Vice-President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, Maggie Dennis, said that the letter represented "a misunderstanding of the situation and how Wikipedia works", noting how neither the BoT, nor the WMF had direct control on the content uploaded and edited by Wikipedia volunteers; the Foundation's representatives also stated that they were still considering how to reply to the letter, hoping to "learn more about [the organizations'] needs", while "[raising] more understanding" about the platform's rules. A day later, the Foundation released a fuller "statement on volunteer processes on reliable sources" on its website. Apart from general explanations of these processes, it also decried inaccurate media coverage that had "incorrectly implied that the ADL is no longer considered a reliable source on Wikipedia", stressing that it "remains a generally reliable source on Wikipedia, outside of the topic of the Israel/Palestine conflict."

This recent review of the ADL's reliability as a source follows a March 2021 discussion about the extent to which the organization was complying with Wikipedia's rules for conflict of interest, as it encouraged its staff to edit Wikipedia articles. At the time, The Forward reported that the ADL suspended their staff editing project as a result of the challenges with compliance.

The actual closing statement, written by a triparty of The Wordsmith, theleekycauldron and Tamzin (and which can be viewed in full at this link), says:

It is not disputed here that the ADL is an activist source and a biased source. "Biased" in this context is not an insult: Wikipedia policy understands that all sources have some degree of bias, and even significant bias is not necessarily disqualifying. What matters is the degree to which a source can be relied upon for statements of fact. Statements of opinion are another matter, which complicates this RfC: Many statements that the ADL makes are inherently opinion, and are thus subject to different rules as to when and how they should be cited.

In the first part of this RfC, there is a clear consensus that the ADL is generally unreliable regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [See previous partial close.] The second part extends this consensus to the intersection of antisemitism and the conflict, such as labeling pro-Palestinian activists as antisemitic. While the second part in theory encompassed all ADL coverage of antisemitism, much of the discussion focused, explicitly or implicitly, on that intersection. There was insufficient argumentation against the ADL's reliability regarding antisemitism in other contexts; much of the opposition in that regard focused on subjective disagreements as to how far the taint of the Israel-related general unreliability should spread. The ADL can roughly be taken as reliable on the topic of antisemitism when Israel and Zionism are not concerned. We remind editors that source reliability is always a case-by-case matter. RSN's purpose is to answer the general case. The reliability of a given statement by a source, for a given statement in a Wikipedia article, must always be decided by that article's editors.

The third part of the discussion, about the ADL's hate symbol database, was largely unrelated to the first two. Editors' concerns were mostly not about Israel–Palestine issues, but about poor editorial oversight of the database. We are aware that the ADL has taken note of this discussion, which affords a rare opportunity to directly address a source that editors have identified quality-control issues with: If the ADL invests more effort in editorial review of its hate symbol database entries, including bylines and other means of establishing expertise, that would address most of the concerns expressed by the community. Until then, however, the rough consensus here is that the database is reliable for the existence of a symbol and for straightforward facts about it, but not reliable for more complex details, such as symbols' history. In-text attribution to the ADL may be advisable when it is cited in such cases.

The normal approach for reliability applies to statements of fact. Citing the ADL hate symbol database as an opinion is not a question of reliability, but rather one of due weight. Editors should look at usage by other sources in the context of both the database as a whole and the individual statement. In this regard, there is no consensus against representing the ADL's opinions, and perhaps a weak consensus in favor; as always, case-by-case judgment is critical. We note also that, when editors cite secondary sources that in turn reference the database, it is the secondary sources' reliability that is relevant, not the database's. Statements of opinion should be attributed in-text.

—BR, H, O

The Brussels Times recently explained "how Wikipedia fights against fake news", basing their article on statements by Rebecca MacKinnon, who currently heads the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Advocacy team, having previously worked in journalism and digital rights. Besides summarizing various longstanding features (such as page protection, watchlists, or the ArbCom) that help Wikipedia's volunteers "vigilantly defend against information that does not meet the site's policies for what constitutes reliably sourced, encyclopaedic information," the article highlights a more recent innovation:

Ahead of major elections in 2024, a new Disinformation Response Taskforce (DRT) has formed to partner with trusted Wikimedia volunteers and Wikimedia affiliates to identify potential information attacks on Wikipedia.
And it seems to be working. Wikimedia has not uncovered any specific disinformation campaigns, either private or foreign state-driven campaigns in the run-up to the elections.
"As far as we are aware, Wikipedia's content moderation processes and systems are working well and as normal. We have not been alerted to any unusual activity on EU elections-related pages," MacKinnon said.

Perhaps due to the apparently highly-sensitive nature of its work, no documentation of this taskforce could be found on-wiki on the English Wikipedia at the time of writing. Elsewhere on the Internet, the only information about the DRT shared by the Foundation seems to be a couple of short paragraphs in an October 2023 Diff post, where the DRT was (somewhat confusingly) first described as a single entity being run by the WMF's Trust and Safety Disinformation team. Right afterwards, the same team is reported as "preparing for several Disinformation Response Taskforces (DRTs), designed to support Wikimedia communities to maintain knowledge integrity during high-risk events."

Further information was revealed in emails sent last month by a WMF "Disinformation Specialist", and forwarded to a public mailing list by a Dutch Wikipedian. These listed the purposes of such taskforces, described them as "a project that we are doing related to the upcoming EU parliamentary elections, taking place from the 6th [to the] 9th of June, 2024", and appeared to invite the Dutch Wikipedia's ArbCom members to an "initial meeting to discuss disinformation challenges with folks from across various European-language communities" on May 21.

The EU's recently implemented Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes various obligations on "Very Large Online Platforms" (VLOPs) such as Wikipedia. In late March, the EU Commission finalized its "Guidelines for providers of Very Large Online Platforms ... on the mitigation of systemic risks for electoral processes pursuant to the Digital Services Act", with specific mention of the European Parliament elections in June. As explained some weeks ago by MacKinnon's colleague, Dimitar Dimitrov from Wikimedia Europe (long known to Wikimedians as "our man in Brussels"), the Commission's document applies to Wikipedia too. He said that "to be honest, it feels simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming. A ton of well-meant recommendations (as guidelines are non-binding), but it also says that VLOPs are free to come up with other measures to mitigate risks." As summarized by Dimitrov, the Commission's exhortations come in several categories, e.g. "specific recommendations for during the election period (put in place an internal incident response mechanism)". —H

Writing for Spokane-based newspaper Inlander, freelance journalist and photographer Will Maupin recently stated his personal mission "to visually document our region for Wikipedia". Maupin has edited Wikipedia since 2005 as SpokaneWilly, and regularly takes photos of sites on the National Register of Historic Places and other local sites from the Inland Northwest region. You can check out more of his photos in this issue's Gallery, or at this link on Wikimedia Commons.

—S, O

Sam Kriss, in a fairly-good (but paywalled) column largely focused on other issues, takes a brief aside to note:

In her essay on Goodreads, Oyler offers a brief account of the history behind rating books out of five stars, all of which is—you guessed it—available on the Wikipedia page for ‘Star (classification),’ which comes up when you Google ‘history behind rating books out of five stars.’ First, Oyler discusses Regency Englishwoman Mariana Starke’s exclamation-point-filled guidebook to the Continent (and a quote from The Charterhouse of Parma mocking it, conveniently referenced on Ms. Starke’s Wikipedia page). Then, she makes a brief foray into the Michelin star (apparently less ‘whimsical’ than exclamation points). And finally, she visits the Best American Short Stories series and its editor Edward O’Brien’s asterisks indicating ‘permanence.’ Oyler includes extensive quotes from totally forgotten American satirist Oliver Herford’s nearly unreadable review trashing O’Brien’s selections for the 1921 BASS (a review conveniently referenced on the ‘Star (classification)’ Wikipedia page).

But the grubby secret of intellectual production is that everyone does this. When I wrote about baetyls this spring, I discovered that a bunch of writers—including Shaykh Afifi al-Akiti, Fellow in Islamic Studies at Oxford—had repeated an absolutely false claim about the Kaaba in Mecca that appears to have popped into existence from nowhere on its Wikipedia page. But I do it too. This piece is basically just a bunch of ludicrous takes and off-the-cuff impressions, but writing it still involved reflexively clicking around the Wikipedia pages for ‘Inca Empire,’ ‘Blastocyst,’ ‘Vladimir Lenin,’ ‘Physalis,’ and ‘Anamnesis (philosophy).’ Every trendy young writer is really just stamping their brand on the labour of the solemn, dedicated, anonymous dickless weirdos who actually write the articles on Wikipedia. The proletarians of thought. You don’t know their names, and you’d probably flinch if you saw them in real life, but you’ve decided to let these people replace a significant chunk of your brain. (Actually, the trendy young writers do all contribute to exactly one Wikipedia article: their own.) In a sense, everyone knows everything; we’re all plugged in to the same external memory. In another sense, nobody except the wikimonks has any knowledge of anything at all. At least when all our information came from books, everyone had a slightly different library of things they’d forgotten; now, we’ve all forgotten the same great universal sludge of facts.

This post was fact-checked by real Wikipedian patriots — "Mostly True". It's rare for a month to go by without at least a couple stories where some politician or pundit is made to eat crow after cribbing a speech or a quip from a Wikipedia article... and that's just the ones where it's politically dramatic to write about it. Nonpartisan instances of this are too numerous to count (CNN once asked some "internet culture analyst" what a simp was, and the guy copypastaed them the lead I wrote at Simp — there was once a fire in the California Delta and the anchor stood in front of a camera to read verbatim the lead I wrote at Bradford Island — we all have stories like this).

While "proletarians of thought" and "wikimonks" are quite dignified appellations, surely he could have found a nicer way to refer to the female contingent of the editoriat (clearly his epithet does not refer to its entirety, as a quick visit to the Commons category "human penis" can confirm). One suspects that a little more time with us could well have helped Sam avoid having to make up the philosopher Apethitikes in an earlier post,^[1] but we appreciate what moments we've been able to spend together nonetheless, and I can personally say I have the utmost faith that we can overcome the issue of flinching in awe upon cognizance of the average Wikipedian's (or at least my) impressive fashion sense, bench press, hairline, et cetera. —JPxG

• The end of the world as chronicled on a Wikipedia talk page: A short story published in Nature Futures, the science fiction offshoot of scientific journal Nature, takes the form of a Wikipedia talk page (albeit without mentioning Wikipedia) for a fictitious article. It starts with the header

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the End of Plastic (2029) article, about the Tremella purgare fungus, released into the Gulf of Mexico after the TransAm War Oil Spill, and the knock-on impact of the attempted bioremediation.
This page has been listed as a level-3 vital article in Earth. If you can improve it, please do.

The talk page progressively takes a dark turn, going from a request to disambiguate a "deadly fungi" link over frantic attempts to keep the article updated with the UN's rapidly rising death numbers, to mentions of Internet access becoming spotty and editors retreating into their family bunkers.

See also previous Signpost coverage of other dystopian science fiction stories in Wikipedia style.

• Edit wars over real-life war in Gaza (again): As reported by Al Jazeera, fierce edit wars have been taking place over Wikipedia articles about the recent deadly events at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, which reportedly left at least 300 people killed and 700 injured following an IDF raid to free four Israeli hostages of Hamas. The matter has been so divisive that, at the time of writing, there are two separate articles covering it, with the former – the subject of the Al Jazeera report – describing the event as a "rescue operation", and the latter naming it a "massacre". For now, both pages have been extended-protected, as part of the site's policy on contentious topics. Back in January of this year, the Signpost interviewed some users involved in the WikiProjects WP:Israel and WP:Palestine to get their views on how to preserve neutrality and civil discussion while editing pages related to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• 90% of Israelis use Wikipedia: A survey conducted by Wikimedia Israel, and presented at a June 9 event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia, found that "Wikipedia remains the primary source of information for about 90% of Israelis", with "no significant gaps" between Jewish and Arab Israelis. Overall, though, Israeli Internet users face high rates of fake or biased content, or at least according to a Ynet article reporting on the study.
• Thought Contagion (?): American newspaper National Review argued that "Wikipedia Is Biased against Conservatives — and the Slant Is Infecting AI Models", prominently citing a recent report by conservative think-tank Manhattan Institute centered around the platform to strengthen their thesis. See this issue's Recent Research for more information. The research was also cited by Deseret News contributor Bethany Mandel (see next bullet) writing an op-ed for another publication.
• Hit piece: "Being a conservative with a Wikipedia entry means that everyone who meets you has already read a hit piece about you" claims Bethany Mandel in a New York Post opinion article.
• More education under our belts: Canadian magazine Chatelaine announced that they would support non-profit organization VentureKids, led by technology journalist and Wikipedian Takara Small, for the third edition of their yearly edit-a-thon, aimed to participants aged from 13 to 18 and focused on creating pages for Canadian women prominently involved in any of the STEAM fields. The event will be held in Toronto and San Diego, with participants being allowed to join either in person or remotely.
• Let's get Medieval!: In their latest installment of their monthly series about open-access studies about the Middle Ages and its historical representation, Canadian portal Medievalists.net included an article aiming to elaborate on "Wikipedia's impact on public understanding of the past, particularly our medieval pasts". The three researchers focused on the articles about the Black Death, the Viking Age and Old English literature for their examinations.

• Giving us the bird: Jack E. Davis, distinguished professor of history at the University of Florida, writes You probably think this is our national bird. Think again. in The Washington Post. Of course nearly everybody "knows" that the bald eagle is the U.S. national bird. Davis cites The Washington Post and Wikipedia as sources that make this mistake. The bald eagle has appeared on the Seal of the United States since 1782, as has a pyramid (on the reverse), but neither congress, nor the president, has officially declared them national symbols. Members of congress from Minnesota have recently introduced a bill to make the eagle's status as national bird official, supported by the Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes. There is no need for a national edifice, so they left out the pyramid. Congress can't seem to agree on anything these days, but they should be able to pass this unanimously the next time they meet. Just do it! – S

• Miki buses join the Wiki Wiki buses: The Wiki Wiki Shuttle at the Honolulu airport has a special place in Wikipedia lore. When Ward Cunningham wrote the first Wiki software he named it after the shuttle whose name means "quick" in Hawaiian. The airport has just added an AI powered self-driving electric sibling, "The new fleet, named "Miki", the Hawaiian word for agile, will augment the existing Wiki Wiki shuttle bus service and provide travelers with another transportation option between gates and terminals." Perhaps there is an AI powered self-writing Mikipedia in our future? I hope not. – S
• Wiki in the scrum and on the links: The New Zealand Herald reported about Dallas Wiki, a 24-year-old New Zealand rugby player, who is also a golfer. I wonder if he has any relatives named Miki? – S

Desmond Amofah, better known as Etika, is the first YouTuber to ever have his Wikipedia article reach the coveted status of Featured.^[a] This undertaking was over a year in the making, meant to coincide with the five-year anniversary of his tragic passing. As a Nintendo gamer, Etika garnered a massive cult following due to his reaction videos to Nintendo Direct presentations along with his general videos centered around gaming and pop culture. His personality exuded a bright energy matched by very few online, let alone in real life — and it was this enthusiasm that attracted so many to him like a positive magnet near such a negative world. But over the last ten months of his life, he showed sides of himself that no one expected to see from him, as a consequence of his inner conflict with his mental health. Despite his fans and the Internet's best efforts, his story came to a tragic end in June 2019, when he was found deceased after taking his own life. Many who follow the YouTube community know his story all too well. Yet, for some Wikipedia readers — especially those unfamiliar with YouTube and Internet culture as a whole — there may be confusion over his appeal, and why someone like him is remembered so fondly to this day.

I hope I can help explain Etika in a way his own article can't, and also address this divide between traditional and Internet culture.

Celebrity worship is fascinating. It seems like ever since the 20th century, with the rise of mass media and the birth of the modern cult of personality, society crafts these massive pedestals for the celebrities we revere, and attaches a piece of themselves to those that stand in glory. But when a figure falls, it's as if the earth itself freezes, with not a single fire to thaw out the world from its dazed grief. All we have in the frost is a frozen snapshot of that now empty pedestal as we're left wondering where we go from here. As time gradually defrosts the world back to normal, we find comfort in our memories of the figure as we learn to accept that they will never be with us again. We see this cycle play out infinitely — from John Lennon to Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson to Prince, Mother Teresa to Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela to Maya Angelou — all prominent cultural figures that the world mourned for what seemed like ages. And yet, most people who mourned at the deaths of those icons have (presumably) only heard of Etika in passing, if at all. Granted, this may be because Etika was fairly niche. Although he rapidly grew in popularity before his first breakdown,^[b] Etika only reached 800,000 subscribers at his peak (larger than most stadiums, but smaller than the ten largest cities in the US). But it also illustrates a rift between Internet and traditional fame in how a figure is remembered in death.

As big as Internet culture has grown within the past few decades, it still feels like online personalities have yet to reach that pedestal of fame as traditional celebrities. There have been plenty of attempts to bridge the gaps in the past. But more often than not, those bridges burn, either through the actions of one side, or certain words from the other. And even then, the general perception is that YouTube culture, and arguably Internet culture as a whole, is incomparable to the more dominant cultural mediums — movies, TV shows, music, literature, and especially high art. All forms of media that have been around for centuries, if not millennia. That's long enough to be ingrained into the public consciousness, something Internet culture's roughly 30 years just doesn't match. Time always makes a difference when it comes to culture; like a fine wine, it's time that refines it to quality. For how much spectacular, boundary-pushing content we've gotten over the years, Internet culture simply hasn't reached that same length of evolution. People still feel that it's second rate.

It's as if pop culture is a colosseum where people try their hardest to win reverence. The traditional celebs, artists and icons fight as gladiators in the middle of the stadium, while YouTubers and the general public serve as spectators or at best commentators. Passive participants in close proximity to greatness who most could only hope to reach the same esteem.

However, Etika was the exception.

He was the rare example of both — a commentator and a gladiator. Just as much as he reacted to pop culture, he carved his own marks on it all by himself. He could spend one moment discussing those melees all alone, then suddenly stand right in the center of the brawling arena, ultimately absorbing all the attention from every spectator at once. It was this cycle of action and reaction he mastered perfectly, through sheer charisma, passion and heart.

His infamous Super Smash Bros. 4 video, where he reacted to Pokémon character Mewtwo being included in the game, demonstrates his mastery at this power. It may be inconceivable how anyone could display such happiness at seeing a digital avatar inside a virtual world. But like an athlete dunking a ball inside a hoop, or a familiar face on camera saying words someone else wrote, seeing a character that resonated with many since their childhood evokes a euphoria beyond what our minds can understand. Etika captures this essence through his leaping out of the chair and yelling profanities that would get any child grounded from using the Internet. He never stopped exercising his talents. Even when the Switch captured every gamer's gaze in its 2016 unveiling, Etika managed to overshadow its popularity just a few weeks later, through his infamous "JoyCon Boyz" livestream. It's rare for celebrities to coin a phrase that penetrates the zeitgeist, let alone YouTubers. However, Etika all but managed to do so with the help of alcohol and a 3D-printed knockoff. Moments like these propelled him to the forefront of the Nintendo community, at a time when the company had transitioned from its struggling period with the Wii U to the Switch's success. His reactions soon diverged from gaming to anything he got his hands on — YouTube drama, the deep web, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure episodes, and whatever new meme dropped. And his audience grew from Nintendo fans to the general Internet realm.

It would be a disservice to merely label him as that hi-top rocking dude who screamed at his computer over pixelated characters. If you gazed beyond the surface, you'd find a man who could grow a garden from concrete with his seeds of wisdom. For example, take his advice about relationships, where he explains the idea of attraction and repulsion, and how the secret of maintaining a relationship is through keeping this balance. Building healthy relationships is a struggle for many in this age of loneliness — and celebrities (especially YouTubers) don't fare any better with their occupations. Yet Etika teaches this concept as if he knew it his whole life.

He could also be vulnerable. In a livestream where he talks about his fears, he reveals that it's those inexplicable moments that terrify him, like coming home to see your bedroom door ajar when you remember closing it. Uncertainties can unsettle us at times, but Etika seemed both frightened and attuned to them. Even in the early stages of his final chapter, he alluded to these ideas of things in the universe beyond our understanding. He wasn't the type to accept that there are coincidences in life. Rather, he looked for a purpose in everything, no matter how small. Like the Travis Scott song, Etika embodied the art of stargazing: a dreamer who wanted more from the world than he received, an idealist whose dreams were too big to be confined to such a small world. In some ways, this turmoil fueled his struggles with mental health, which was what made his situation all the more saddening. He may have fought well in the arena, but he sadly couldn't win the battle inside him.

Etika was the first celebrity I genuinely cried for when he died. Before this, I was admittedly never too immersed in celebrities. Sure, like everyone, I have my favorites — Kurt Cobain, Kendrick Lamar, and so on. But I could never get invested in their lives the same way I could for e-celebs. For the most part, every time a celebrity's passing made headlines, I was quick to keep my composure and offer my condolences when I got the chance.

However, my relationship with the Internet is a different story. I have loved YouTube since my childhood; the site's DIY approach made each video feel like peering through billions of windows to see pure human creativity. It was there that I discovered Etika in 2014, shortly before his viral Mewtwo reaction, and from there I followed his story until the final chapter. The day his death was announced coincided with the ten-year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. For my young self, who still struggled with understanding death at that time, MJ marked the moment I realized that no one — not even celebrities — was immune to it. The morning of June 25, when I saw the tweet announcing it, it broke me. For the first time, I felt the same way that others felt when someone like Jackson had died in 2009. Cobain in 1994. Lennon in 1980.

Like the earth froze.

Even five years after his end, it's still hard for me to accept that he will no longer roam that colosseum, let alone stand on that pedestal anymore. It feels odd to harbor this much feeling towards a person who I'd only seen through a 20-inch monitor, as if he were family. Maybe because just like anyone else, I attached a piece of myself to him.

As a fan of his, the thing that saddens me the most about Etika's story is the idea that people may recognize him more for the last ten months of his life than the over ten years of his work as a YouTuber… or his 29 years as a human being. Those distant from the web may still not find his appeal interesting enough to talk about. When he does appear in discourse, there are some that use his name as an example of mental illness like he was just a statistic, or worse, a weapon to incite drama. Those moments have become lesser now that the dust has settled, replaced with the good memories of him while it lasted. However, I hope that in the next five years people will continue to remember those ten years of great moments just as much as his final months. More than that, I hope that someday, society as a whole will truly take Internet culture as seriously as traditional culture.

Regardless of whether you follow traditional culture or Internet culture, at the end of the day we're all people. People that get hyped, people that scream, that love, that fear, that fight, that struggle... that feel. As people, I feel we'd all do well to follow what Etika always said in his videos:

"Take care of yourself. Have yourself a damn good one!"^[3]

The 2024 Wikimedia Foundation board elections, designed to replace four "Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees" whose terms will end this year, have now entered the pre-onboarding and campaign period (June 25, 2024 – August 26, 2024). The list of candidates judged eligible according to the candidate criteria is as follows:

• Bobby Shabangu
• Deon Steyn
• Erik Hanberg
• Farah Jack Mustaklem
• Christel Steigenberger
• Lane Rasberry
• Lorenzo Losa
• Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz
• Mohammed Awal Alhassan
• Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
• Tesleemah Abdulkareem
• Victoria Doronina

Three candidates were judged ineligible:

• Bavly Magdy
• Jaseem Ali
• Tobechukwu Precious Friday

A newly introduced candidates shortlisting process (which would be based on input from affiliate organizations) was not yet used this year, as the number of eligible candidates did not exceed 15.

The eligible candidates have completed their answers to the following community questions on Meta-Wiki:

1. UCoC: The creation and implementation of a Universal Code of Conduct has been a Board priority since 2020. The original timeline for the implementation of the UCoC was wildly unrealistic, the UCoC was implemented by the Board without community ratification, and the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee was recently elected without a sufficient number of members to form a quorum. What lessons should the Board take from the UCoC process, especially about how the Board interacts with volunteers?
2. Movement Charter: There has been some trend towards devolving or sharing the governance of the Wikimedia movement, including having a separate board for the Wikimedia Endowment and the proposed Global Council in the Movement Charter. What do you see as the positives and negatives of these trends, and what is your overall assessment of the work so far?
3. AI and CC-by-SA: In the 2024-25 draft Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, there is a statement that Wikimedia content is becoming less visible as part of the Internet's essential infrastructure, because an increasingly closed and artificial intelligence-mediated internet doesn't attribute the source of the facts, or even link back to the Wikimedia projects. What responsibility does the Board and the Wikimedia Foundation have in enforcing the CC-by-SA licensing of the content from all projects by AI or other digital media information formats that do not respect the copyright law?
4. Negative trends: Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan recognizes multiple trends negative to the Wikimedia movement: decreasing visibility, audiences moving to a novel competition such as artificial intelligence solutions and Internet influencers, increasing information warfare and erosion of trust, necessary technical investments while the revenue growth was flattening. At the same time, the movement's products and processes change very, very slowly. Which bold steps would you recommend to the Wikimedia Foundation?
5. Systemic bias: What are your thoughts about systemic bias on Wikimedia projects, both in their content and their demographics, and including identity-based, language-based, economic/resource-based, ideological/worldview-based, and other forms of system bias? What measures or initiatives do you think the Board can appropriately take to address systemic bias?

Follow the links to see the candidates' answers. Voting will begin on September 3, 2024. For a complete timeline of the election, see Meta-Wiki. – AK, H

The Wikimedia Foundation's Julia Brungs has informed The Signpost that a new community collaboration page has been set up for the 2024 English fundraising banner campaign:

Dear all,

We would like to share with you the community collaboration page around the English fundraising banner campaign 2024. This page is for volunteers to learn about fundraising and share ideas for how we can improve the 2024 English fundraising campaign together. On this page you'll have messaging examples and spaces for collaboration, where you can share your ideas for how we can improve the next campaign together.

The fundraising banner pre-tests phase on English Wikipedia starts in mid-July with a few technical tests, using messaging that was created with the community during the last campaign. We will regularly update the collaboration page with new messaging ideas and updates on testing and campaign plans as we prepare for the main campaign that will launch at the end of November.

Generally, during the pre-tests and the campaign, you can contact us:

• On the community collaboration page
• At an in-person event (see more details on the collaboration page)
• On the talk page of the fundraising team
• If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket
• If you see a donor on a talk page, VRT or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donatewikimedia.org

Best wishes, Julia JBrungs (WMF)

A community collaboration process has been used since 2022 to address community concerns over banner wordings used in the more distant past. For the history, see previous Signpost coverage –

• Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after "somewhat-viral" tweet (October 2022)
• English Wikipedia editors: "We don't need no stinking banners" (November 2022)

– as well as the related article by Stephen Harrison in Slate. – AK

The Wiki Education Foundation, which runs the Wiki Education Program designed to promote the integration of Wikipedia into coursework by educators in Canada and the United States, announced its inaugural Humanities and Social Justice Advisory Committee earlier this year. The seven-member committee will support the Wikipedia Student Program's Knowledge Equity initiative in partnership with the Mellon Foundation. Its members are:

• David-James Gonzales: Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University where he teaches and researches on race, migration, and Latino (a/x/e) politics in the US. He has been teaching with Wikipedia since 2018.
• Shira Klein: Associate Professor and Chair of History at Chapman University. Her two primary areas of expertise are Italian Jewish history and knowledge production on Wikipedia.
• Alexandria Lockett: A former professor of Writing and Rhetoric who has been editing Wikipedia for 20+ years to improve its content about marginalized persons, cultures, communities, languages, professions, texts, and disciplines.
• Tracy Perkins: Associate Professor in the School of Social Transformation Arizona State University who specializes in social inequality, social movements, and the environment.
• David Sartorius: Historian of Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of Maryland and author of a book on the racial politics of colonial rule.
• Heather J. Sharkey: Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in the history of the modern Middle East and North Africa.
• Delia Steverson: Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama, where she specializes in 19th and 20th Century African American Literature, Critical Disability Studies, and Southern Literature.

Shira Klein's membership was announced on June 14, 2024 in a Chapman University press release. Klein will be known to regular readers of The Signpost as the co-author of an academic paper on Wikipedia's coverage of the Holocaust in Poland that led to a 2023 Wikipedia arbitration case (see previous Signpost coverage: 1, 2).

For further details on the committee and its members see the Wiki Education press release:

• Humanities & Social Justice Advisory Committee members announced

– AK

Repeating the refrain reported here in recent issues, despite three gains in June (see below), the number of active administrators hasn't been above 440 since May 18, and hit new record lows: 433 on June 13, 432 on June 22, and finally 431 on June 27 right before our publication deadline. – B

• Annual reports: Wiki World Heritage, Wikimedians of Lagos, Wikimedia Italy (finances), Igbo Wikimedians User Group, Wikimedians of Los Angeles, Wikimedia Indonesia.
• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators, Elli, HouseBlaster, and Pickersgill-Cunliffe, all promoted in June.

  Elli has been active since 2020 and edited widely in various areas. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elli was closed June 7 with 207 supports, 6 opposes, and 3 neutrals, ending a three-month new-admin drought and becoming the first RfA to succeed under the trial discussion-only period. Opposition concerns about her anodyne, infrequent activity on Wikipediocracy failed to gain meaningful traction. – Sdkb

  Pickersgill-Cunliffe started editing in 2021, with a handful of edits prior to that, and has been active at WikiProject Military history. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Pickersgill-Cunliffe was closed June 15 with 201 yea !votes, zero nay and zero neutral, putting it in the top 10 unopposed RfAs.

  Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/HouseBlaster RfA closed 153:27:8 on 23 June.

• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Mechanism (engineering), followed next week by Applied science. Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
• New Wikipedia language version: The Wikipedia community welcomes its newest project, the Mandailing Wikipedia. Request on Meta-Wiki (approved 20 June), homepage.
• Community User Group Senegal: Community User Group Sénégal was recognized as an affiliate on June 3.

Before most Signposters depart for the beach, barbecue, and/or fireworks, we would like to wish all those who celebrate a holiday or have some other special day in July happy (holi)day. And to everybody else, have an even better day!

Signpost staff found this joke in two parts, amongst the discussion pages for the 2024 Requests for adminship (RfA) reform (see related Signpost coverage here). The image was added for this article.

An admin, an IP, and a sockpuppet walk into a bar.

The bartender says, "what're you having?"

The admin says, "I'll have a glass of your finest champagne."

The IP says, "Give me your cheapest draft beer."

The sockpuppet says, "Just water for me; I can't afford a third drink."