Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-10-14
Challenges for WMF fundraising; Indian flora windfall for Commons
Sagging pageviews and shift to mobile challenge future of WMF fundraising
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The most recent Wikimedia Foundation Metrics and Activities Meeting, held in San Francisco on 30 September (full video here) included talks by fundraising staffers on the newly published 2015–16 Fundraising Report. The report comes at a time of uncertainty for the WMF's fundraising efficiency, given the much lower yield from visitors who access the Wikipedias from mobile devices, and the continued strong move from desktop to mobile readership around the world: since 2013, desktop pageviews are down 18%, mobile pageviews (web plus apps) are up 25%, and overall pageviews are down by 3%; last December saw mobile overtake desktop for the first time. These statements in the report encapsulate the impending challenge to the fundraising:
| “ | The rise of mobile traffic does not offset the decline of desktop traffic, and overall traffic has declined slightly in recent years. This poses a challenge to our ability to raise the budget every year, because our fundraising model depends on a substantial reader base. ... Mobile fundraising is uniquely challenging compared to our established donor flow on desktop. | ” |
The Foundation's director of online fundraising, Megan Hernandez, presented the introduction (5:16–10:50). The good news is that compared with the 2014–15 fiscal year, total donations, rising from US$75.5m to $77.2m, did exceed the general rate of inflation. In 2015–16 there were 5.4m donations, yielding $28.8m from desktop, $6.3m from mobile/iPad, and $16.9m from the new approach of directly emailing previous donors (a doubling from the previous year). Average donations from mobile devices are much lower than from desktop. One issue not mentioned is that because devices are counted in the WMF’s traffic statistics, the same person can be tallied as multiple potential unique readers/donors; the extent to which this is influencing the interpretation of fundraising statistics and the size of the potential donor base is uncertain.
Hernandez was followed by the Foundation's senior fundraising email manager, Caitlin Codgill (10:55–17:15). The new strategy of forging direct online contact with previous donors, she pointed out, is now more important given the prospects of falling revenue from traditional approaches. The number of emails sent in 2015–16 grew by 40% to 14.5m; 8.7% of emails generate a donation, which is very large by industry standards (this amounted to nearly a million donations, averaging $17.60 each). The fundraising team is testing many variables to refine its use of emails in fundraising; already, the "open rate" is 2.4 times non-profit industry averages, the "click rate" 14.1 times, and the "conversion rate" to actual donating 30.9 times. Despite this promising level of engagement, the team is aware of the dangers of oversaturating potential donors, and have a policy of limiting contact to two emails per year per person.
Cogdill spoke at some length about the new attempt to engage more broadly with donors by sending out a newsletter at targeted times before donation campaigns. Newsletter reach is now being expanded to about 2m donors, and the Foundation is testing various kinds of content, including video emails, blog highlights, and "fun facts" from Wikipedia. They have found that donors who received two newsletters before the donation campaign are 14% more likely to give again. The newsletters, which presumably are sent under a free license, do not appear to be publicly archived. While the newsletters have not yet contained a direct solicitation for donations, Cogdill indicated that they likely will in the future.
Sam Patton, the WMF's campaign manager for banners, spoke about the extensive testing that has been conducted on the many variables involved in this traditional linchpin of fundraising (17:25–24:05). Among these variables has been the adoption of localised text by country, and the addition of what has turned out to be a very successful "Remind me later" option that readers can click on to have a reminder about donating emailed to them. This is a welcome development, since after 10 years of optimising desktop banners, "you reach practical limits of creativity", as Patton said. In explaining the future plans for banner development, he said: "It's all mobile for us ... as we see traffic moving there." Improvements in payment systems through finding "payment processors we could actually work with" has led to a significant rise in revenue from within the US, which invites the question of why this has taken so long.
Caitlin Virtue, development outreach manager, then spoke about major gifts (24:20–26:00). More than 1400 people and institutions contributed $1,000 or more during the fiscal year, totalling $9.5m, a drop from the $10.7m raised in the previous year. Major gifts include general operating grants and restricted donations that support specific Foundation-run programs. David Strine, product manager for fundraising tech, spoke of advances made during the year, in particular technical optimisation for specific countries (26:10–28:30).
The document shows how complex and technical the path ahead is for WMF fundraising. Coincidentally, it was published in the same week as the announcement of the Nobel economics prize by Harvard's Oliver Hart and MIT's Bengt Holmström for their work on the theory of contracts. Their contribution is in part to see contracts as part of a web of interpersonal economic and social relationships of obligation, expanding their scope beyond the conventional legalistic frame. What, then, of the implicit contracts between donors and the major stakeholders, including the readers, the WMF, the editorial communities, and the affiliates? Does the reliance on small-scale giving produce a lack of accountability, and what are the movement's potential obligations towards major donors? T
Indian flora windfall for Commons
Thousands of new images are now available on Wikimedia Commons thanks to recent work from numerous Indian field biologists. What began as the pet project of V.R. Vinayaraj, who took pictures of Indian flora on the weekends and used Facebook groups to help identify the plants, has exploded into a wave of uploads from citizen scientists, photographers, and botanists throughout the subcontinent.
The Signpost spoke to two Wikimedians who have uploaded images: David Raju and Jeevan Jose.
Raju, a self-taught naturalist who has co-written a book on dragonflies, is motivated to contribute his work so that others may see what he has learned and he can contribute to global knowledge.
| “ | I love to share whatever I have. I believe the only way we can gain more knowledge is to share our knowledge. | ” |
Raju hopes to upload images of a thousand different species of dragonflies, and he happily reports that he is well on his way.
Jose became involved in uploading images to Wikimedia Commons in 2010 after friends invited him to share his freely licensed images from Flickr more broadly. He takes great joy in learning more about insects and herbs, his two primary categories of uploads, and views Wikimedia Commons as an outlet to do just that. He shares that he has connected with prominent scientists to help identify species in photos he has taken ... in one case, a photo Jose captured could not be identified and may be a new species of crane fly.
For Jose, the motivation is intrinsic: "Every time when I photograph and share a work, I'm learning something new from the experts who commented on it. It can be a new record from my place or an interesting behavior documentation of an existing one", he says. "My experience is the more I'm willing to disseminate my works, the more my opportunity to get such friends and learn from them."
In the future, Jose hopes to establish a fund to help procure equipment for aspiring photographers to contribute images to Wikimedia Commons. His equipment came from a Wikimedia India grant. Jose also would like to see a partnership between Wikimedia and India's forestry agency to facilitate collaboration in identifying and documenting native species.
To get involved or see more work from the collaboration, check out the WikiProject that has formed on Commons. GP
Brief notes
- WMF to directly fund Wikidata: The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) have reached an agreement by which the WMF will support the basic expenses of Wikidata directly, removing the need to move funds through Annual Plan grants to WMDE. The arrangement accords with the recommendation of the Funds Dissemination Committee in the past two funding cycles. Going forward, funds allocated to software development for Wikidata will be determined in the WMF's annual budgeting process. P
- Community input sought for proposed upgrading to Creative Commons 4: The WMF invites Wikimedians to comment on its proposal to upgrade the default license for text on its projects to Creative Commons Atribution-ShareAlike 4.0 from the current version 3.0. The new version has the same general-terms requirements, with two important changes to its legal code: it includes a common-sense explanation of attribution and other license conditions; and it has official translations beyond English, improving international accessibility. The WMF's terms of use would be altered thus. Comments are welcome beneath the FAQ. At this stage opposes are outnumbered by supports, but comments raise issues that appear to require clarification by the Foundation. There seems to be no institutional effort to organise translations of several foreign-language comments, and most of the links to translations of the background information lead to disappointment. T
- Hosts enthusiastic about WikiConference North America 2016: The San Diego Public Library, which hosted this annual event last weekend, posted their thanks for "a wonderful weekend of learning and discovery". A group picture of participants appears below. T
- Importance to electoral process: The Foundation's blog has reported on the translation by Wikipedians into 30 languages of the Estonian Wikipedia article on the newly elected president of that country.
- Shortlisting: The English Wikipedia's User:Rosiestep has been shortlisted for the 2016 ITU/UN Women GEM-TECH award in the category of "Apply Technology for Women's Empowerment and Digital Inclusion." T
- Kiwix's 10th anniversary: video has been produced and disseminated to celebrate ten years of Kiwix, an app that compresses pre-downloaded wiki content for use where connectivity is poor or unavailable, or where internet censorship is a problem. Kiwis receives support from the Swiss chapter. T
- Annual plan grants open for comment. The twice-yearly round of proposals to the Funds Dissemination Committee by eligible Wikimedia affiliates for funding for programs, operating expenses, and employees and contractors has closed. Questions and comments by the community are open, through the links on this page. First-time annual plan grants can now be for multiple years of funding. T
- Swedish chapter wins social media award: A Swedish bank has awarded the chapter 100,000 Swedish kronor (~US$11,000) for "innovations in the collection and presentation of user-generated knowledge in the digital landscape." The chapter is seeking ideas from the community on how best to spend the funds, in the comments section of its announcement (Google translation). T
- WMF funds six community-led grant initiatives: This blog post outlines the six projects, spanning software development, outreach, and research. The six were selected from 13 applications.
- Central and Eastern Europe to hold conference in Warsaw: The location for the 2017 conference was announced.
Disclaimer: Rosiestep, who serves on the Signpost's editorial board, was uninvolved in the writing of "News and notes" for this edition.
The complex phenomenon of leadership in the wiki world
- Update: The consultation has been extended, and will now run through October 23, 2016.
All big projects face this question from time to time: things need to change. Things might be humming along, but if danger is on the horizon, coordinated effort might be needed. For a traditional organization, a number of well-known practices can be employed to bring about change. The field of organization development has emerged to compare and refine what does and doesn’t work to bring about change. But when an organization like the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) seeks to stimulate its volunteer communities’ efforts to bring about meaningful change, as it does in its present community consultation about leadership, it faces significant challenges.
Focused change can be more challenging for projects (like those built on wikis) that are decentralized and explicitly non-hierarchical projects. Chloe Waretini spent six months in 2015 focusing on the evolving needs of Enspiral, a non-hierarchical network of consultants looking to increase their social impact. As she said in her 2015 essay Enspiral Catalyst: A 6-month crash course in 21st Century leadership:
| “ | Leadership positions come with no authority attached. No one in the network has a right to tell anyone else what to do, so making any organisational developments requires a lot of social manoeuvring — building credibility and collective motivation behind your initiatives. | ” |
Waretini's position allowed her to see that the organic rate of change in the network was faster than members less centrally involved might perceive, and that many changes were never documented. She observed:
| “ | Making sense of it all enough to direct our efforts intelligently takes up a lot of cognitive real estate. | ” |
Researcher Haiyi Zhu has observed in a 2011 paper that, in online peer production communities, leadership often comes through group identification, goal setting and implicit social modeling; she argues that the methods employed in traditional organizations can be ineffective, or even counterproductive, in online communities.
If this sounds familiar, you might just be a Wikimedian. For years, broad issues have called out for our collective attention: Will we allow advertising? Is our coverage biased toward certain topic areas, or in the way topics are presented? Are the demographics of our editor base skewed? How can the subjects of articles best lodge complaints or make suggestions?
When these topics come up, individuals—whether volunteers or staff of various organizations—can be a key component in advancing solutions. They might do so by quietly nudging discussions forward and observing patterns; by generating and executing new ideas; by creating scripts, bots, and other technical tools; or by building relationships with valuable potential partners in Wikimedia's broad vision. We might call such efforts "leadership", noting Waretini's caveat about the lack of authority.
Researchers Benjamin Collier and Robert Kraut found in 2012 that leaders in the Wikipedia community evolve gradually into their roles, first deepening their understanding of the community, and then forming important connections to other influential individuals. Past leadership development efforts in education and GLAM outreach have taken on the kind of learning and networking considered in the study. Now, a new effort of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Learning & Evaluation (L&E) team takes aim at that dynamic, exploring ways to bring leaders and potential leaders together. The team has launched a consultation (which runs through October 16). The announcement and the consultation page might suggest that the effort is limited to volunteers who launch new projects, or that in-person training sessions will be the core of WMF’s efforts; but in an interview with the Signpost, the L&E team reveals more ambitious goals.
The consultation pages set out a goal of creating a "peer academy", and invite input on "in-person trainings organized by the WMF." But Jaime Anstee, senior manager of L&E, describes the peer academy as a "shared space to coordinate and support leadership development across the movement." It would consist of more than a series of regular events: "other training initiatives, toolkits, and guides, as well as other resource support" would also be part of the academy, said Anstee. She emphasized the benefits her team has seen from its efforts to date: Wikimedians have come to more consistently plan for and document their programmatic activities, she reports. Anstee and her team see these practices as part of an approach that could lead to "better practices for listening across our communities", which may, in time, reduce controversy.
The L&E team’s initial announcement cited two successful instances of leadership: Liam Wyatt’s pioneering Wikipedian in residence (WiR) role at the British Museum, and Vassia Atanassova’s more recent #100wikidays challenge. The Signpost reached out to the two volunteers for comment.
Atanassova stressed that #100wikidays, a commitment to write an article every day for 100 sequential days, started off as a personal challenge—not as something she intended to impose on others. But she feels that she stumbled on an important leadership recipe: "step out of your comfort zone, commit to something worth doing but obviously difficult, practice what you preach, and set an example for others to follow." She also found value in self-deprecating humor: "have fun, make fun of yourself and let others do so. We call each other 'victims' or 'patients'." Atanassova has participated in several of WMF’s Learning Days, and credited them with helping to build awareness of the challenge among Wikimedians, in a variety of language communities.
Wyatt, who currently serves on the WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee, took a broad view of the peer academy concept, placing it in the context of the WMF's long-term strategic efforts and of a general challenge it faces. He praised the "peer academy" and its ambition to connect people around leadership activities.
Wyatt also noted the WMF's own approach to leadership -- perhaps ironically, a commitment to not lead—as a crucial ingredient in the WiR model’s success: "By specifically absenting themselves from the field on the topic of GLAM [and WiR] it allowed a space for the Chapters to exist uncontested, and to justify their existence." Unlike other areas, the WMF was explicit and consistent, in its strategic plan and in other communications, in declining to take a leadership role in developing Wikipedian in residence programs. This clarity, according to Wyatt, permitted affiliate organizations and individuals to move into leadership roles, confident they would not need to compete with a better-funded, more official organization.
But Wyatt also emphasized a concern—something he feels applies to a variety of WMF efforts—that the WMF’s role "ought to be to facilitate and assist others to do great stuff, not to try to do it directly themselves". So the peer academy "cannot be a centralised program or process if it is to be able to work at a global scale—this is as true for building human skills as it is for fundraising or for working with schools or museums." He notes that although affiliate organizations' role in training and leadership development is acknowledged in the community consultation, affiliates "are not identified as partners."
The Signpost also reached out to M. O. Stevens (known to Wikipedians as Aboutmovies), who initiated WikiProject Oregon's Collaboration of the Week (COTW) program in 2007. (Past Signpost coverage here and here.) Haiyi Zhu's 2011 study found that the group identification, goal setting and implicit social modeling inherent in that program had a positive impact on volunteer retention and productivity. Stevens cited his personal experience on Wikipedia as the inspiration for the program: he had found it difficult to generate interest in the fledgling WikiProject to move the Oregon State Capitol article through the featured article process. With COTW, he hoped not only to get help improving the articles that interested him, but to encourage fellow volunteers to step up with their own projects and ideas. Like Atanassova, he cites goofy humor as an important ingredient in getting people involved. Over the years, the COTW has achieved a number of content improvements, and is still going (if not on a weekly basis) in 2016.
Stevens raised a point echoed by several people: some Wikipedians might look on events like Learning Days as a reward. Without an accountability structure, he wonders whether in-person training will produce tangible results, or whether they will instead become sought-after social events inaccessible to most Wikipedians. Stevens sees tangible benefits—payment, or rewards like gift cards—as a more accountability-driven way to motivate Wikipedians.
Our discussions revealed that the topic of leadership cultivation opens a number of questions, some of which are central to what Wikimedia and the Wikimedia Foundation aim to become. The kind of "shared vision for leadership development" imagined by the L&E team might, ideally, be tied to a broader strategic plan; but the Wikimedia strategic plan developed in 2010 expired in 2015, and plans to develop another have not yet produced a result. Do we have a strong shared understanding of where we want to go? In the absence of a plan, that is unclear. When ideas of leadership extend into areas beyond uncontroversial success, the absence of a shared strategic vision may come to the fore.
Thus far, the discussion on Meta Wiki points to many details, but does not appear to address the broader questions around designing a system to cultivate and support leadership activities in depth. One related grant proposal, however, has emerged.
Eugene Eric Kim, who guided the WMF's 2010 effort, is a wholehearted proponent of efforts to cultivate leadership—an idea he considered for the strategic plan, but which that didn’t gain traction at the time.
| “ | I think most people take leadership for granted and view it mostly as something you find rather than develop", says Kim. "I deeply believe that one of the most impactful roles that the Wikimedia Foundation and other chapters (or anyone really who cares) could play in the movement would be both to nurture, model, and shine a spotlight on great community leadership. | ” |
When asked about the challenges surrounding the WMF's software launches, Erik Möller, the WMF's deputy director from 2007 to 2015, said: "What I'd like to see going forward is better mechanisms for volunteers and WMF to work in concert with each other."
Perhaps a peer academy can provide a forum for developing such mechanisms; or perhaps its formation will be impeded by their absence. And trying to build the peer academy may be the only way to find out.
- Join the discussion on Meta Wiki, active until October 16.
- Update: The consultation has been extended, and will now run through October 23, 2016.
Alright Wikipedia, I'm ready for my closeup
Weingarten says he made numerous attempts to get rid of the offending photo by himself - removing it from the article seven times, but was rebuffed. A review of the article history suggests he or someone else actually attempted to remove it 10 times since August 2014. The photo itself was first uploaded and inserted by GRuban in mid-August 2014. An IP editor first removed it a few weeks later, but that only lasted for four minutes. The next IP attempt a few days later lasted for five days before reversion. A third attempt also failed. A fourth attempt in October 2014 did meet some success, however, lasting for almost sixteen months before being caught and restored once again.
At this point, attempts five, six, seven, eight, and nine in February and March 2016 were all swiftly reverted. Some discussion with Weingarten also occurred, who revealed himself as the IP editor, and it was suggested that he could upload an alternate picture since no other photo could be found. Weingarten had suggested that many other public domain photos were out there, but that was not actually true.
On July 16, the photo was removed for the tenth time with the comment "this was a picture maliciously placed here. editor, please replace with any one other than this one. or leave it photoless." After 40 days of bliss for Gene, it reappeared on August 23 with the comment "Restore image; it's the only one we have, and fairly depicts the subject." It was again suggested that Weingarten provide another photo if he wished, but it appears the latest restoration cut Gene "don't call me Khalid" Weingarten to the bone, as the next thing he did was write his column, which appeared on September 29.
After Weingarten's plea went out, editors quickly found a new photo already existing on flickr, though it first got put up for deletion until the photographer agreed to amend the license to allow its use on Wikipedia.
Weingarten is a long time fan of Wikipedia. We even used the offending photo earlier this year on the Signpost when mentioning Weingarten's column about using the "random article" feature. We promise this is the last time we will use the photo, Gene. Though this episode could all be blamed as bad karma for his 2007 self-vandalism of his article, it is a reminder that despite the great need and desire for photographs on BLPs, the use of discretion in deciding whether to use a photograph--and not just because it exists--would be wise. Certainly there are formal channels that Weingarten did not pursue to try to solve the problem, but the average reader and subject rarely understands those processes, and should also be able to rely on editors to avoid bad photos.
Despite Weingarten's distress over the photo, however, it may be conceded that perhaps few editors thought it was that bad a photo. The original uploader GRuban agreed, noting for the Signpost that he wouldn't have uploaded it in the first place if he thought it was an "attack picture". GRuban is glad to see the issue has been resolved: "I hope he likes (the new photo) better, we're not here to make people sad, as someone once said." And Gene also likes the new photo too, calling it "me at my HOTTEST". And its not even a selfie!
Reached for comment via Twitter by the Signpost, Weingarten noted: "What I hope is apparent is that I am completely technically incompetent. Anything I did that was violating the norms and protocols and etiquette of Wiki wasn't done maliciously, it was done ignorantly." This is no doubt the case for much of our readership, and should be kept in mind. But he is thankful it has finally been resolved. "I am really impressed and grateful that Wiki Nation jumped on this. If 'Wiki Nation' is not a term already, it should be."
In brief
- Creative Commons newsletter: In our last edition, we missed the latest Keeping Up with the Commons newsletter, which covers open educational efforts around the world; a reflection on the value of non-commercial licenses by Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley; digital skills for researchers; European Union copyright law; and much more. (September 16)
- Work on indigenous peoples coverage: An Indigenous Peoples’ Day edit-a-thon scheduled for WikiConference North America was highlighted by Smithsonian magazine. (September 30)
- Article tags' deeper meaning: OZY Media highlighted the "Wikipedia Dispute Index" recently created by a group of researchers at the University of Heidelberg. The index is fairly straightforward and derived from determining how many articles linked to from a country's page have been tagged for a neutrality dispute. Thus, for example, the ranking for Georgia rose in 2008 during its conflict with Russia. See more at disputeindex.org. (Sept. 30)
- Indian edit war: An edit war over a death claim on the page of Jayalalithaa, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu state in India, broke out on September 30 as reported in The News Minute. Jayalalithaa apparently remains in uncertain health, but the edit war was quashed when semi-protection was applied to the article, though nothing about her current health seems to be addressed at all. (October 1)
- The BBC Does Hoaxes The BBC ran one of those regularly seen "top Wikipedia hoaxes" articles; this one, however, is fairly well written and its British focus brings up some less well-known yet still intriguing ones, such as statements in the article of composer Maurice Jarre that made it into obituaries after his death in 2009. (October 3) (See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-05-11/In the news)
- But can you trust newspapers?: The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review answers the reader question "Can you trust in Wikipedia?", as the reader's daughter has been instructed to use it for a school project. The paper concedes Wikipedia has value but directs the reader to tell his daughter's teacher to use the peer-reviewed Scholarpedia. I see that site's main page has only been edited twice in the past four years, and doesn't even have a page on Donald Trump (which may or may not be a bad thing). Maybe they will by 2050. We'll see what grade the daughter gets. (October 8).
- Where's the "future history" tab?: The Huffington Post imagined what Donald Trump's Wikipedia article will look like in 2050, documenting a crushing loss in the presidential election fueled in part by the release of the 2005 audio tapes that are now in the news. No doubt this trope has been used before, but it also assumes that Wikipedia will be around in 2050, which is nice. I can't imagine what it will look like if editors in 2050 cite internal disputes from the 2010s and Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia includes 30 year old hoaxes that some teenager is only creating as I type this. (October 10).
- Another Wikipedia alternative: Breitbart News reports on the founding of "Infogalactic", "branding itself as a censorship free alternative to Wikipedia without 'bias or thought police' ". Instead of Wikipedia's "five pillars" it has "seven canons", which include "no griefing". The site went live in early October, but unlike Scholarpedia it already has an entry on Milo Yiannopoulos. Members of the Wikimedia-L email list critiqued the launch; one list participant, Coren / Marc, mused: "Why is it people unfailingly mistake 'no bias' with 'biases that match mine'?" (October 10)
- Pakistan loves monuments: Pakistani newsites noted Pakistan's contributions to this year's Wiki Loves Monuments competition. (October 10–11)
- Poynter on Wikipedia and fact-checking: The Poynter Institute covered collaborative efforts between journalists and Wikipedians. (October 12)
- Edit-a-thons hosted by the U.S. National Archives: The Weekly Standard covers a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Bill of Rights. (October 13)
Upcoming tech projects for 2017
New editor for 2017
A new "2017 wikitext editor" is under development. This will be similar to the Visual Editor, in terms of interface style and available tools, such as the Citoid referencing feature. There will also be improved switching between visual editing and wikitext editing. Other features that could be developed, depending on expense and performance impact, include the ability to:
- automatically save local drafts during editing, to prevent loss of work when power is lost or a tab is closed;
- syntax highlighting and folding blocks of wikitext, such as long infobox templates; and
- add edit summaries with one click, based on recent activity.
The new editing system will be designed with ease of customisation as a goal; however, existing scripts and gadgets will not work unless they are adapted. The current (and previous) wikitext editors will continue to be available, and it will still be possible to edit without Javascript – there are no plans to remove these features.
An early, "very alpha" version of the 2017 wikitext editor is available for testing on the Beta Cluster test site. A separate account is required; once created, the new wikitext editor can be opted into via Special:Preferences § Beta features. To test it, start editing with the visual editor and then switch to wikitext. Feedback can be given at WP:VEF; there was also discussion at the thread on the technical village pump before it was archived.
New parsing algorithm, server switches
Tidy will be replaced as part of an effort to make pages' underlying HTML more compliant. Tidy cleans up mistakes editors make, such as improper table syntax and invalid HTML included in wikitext. More specifically, Tidy parses the MediaWiki output and cleans it up to ensure that valid HTML is rendered. For example, <br>, </br>, <br/>, <br.> will all render as <br />.
Tidy is based on the old HTML4 semantics. The new HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be more consistent with Parsoid, which is used in features such as VisualEditor and Flow. One feature enabled by the replacement will be visual diffs. The replacement will not occur until 2017, because it would otherwise cause problems on a number of wikis. Pages with broken wikitext or bad HTML will need to be fixed first, otherwise they will appear broken. To find out how to help on the English Wikipedia, see WikiProject Check Wikipedia, or ask on the project talkpage.
The WMF tested a new backup data center in Dallas, Texas in April 2016. The servers were switched from Virginia to Texas for a few days to test the reliability of such a switch, which might be needed to keep Wikimedia sites online after a natural disaster or other emergency. The test resulted in wikis being read-only for brief periods on two days, and in delays to edits appearing in the recent changes log. Though originally scheduled for late 2016, the next round of testing has been delayed until February 2017 at the earliest.
Changes to new page workflow
In response to community requests, several improvements have been made to the workflow for the creation and review of new articles:
- New (non-auto-confirmed) users will see a customized edit notice when attempting to create a new article. This edit notice includes buttons for switching to the user's sandbox (if they want to experiment) or going through the Article Wizard. Users will still be free to create an article the normal way if they choose. Auto-confirmed users will still see the original edit notice when creating new articles.
- All newly created articles will be marked noindex until they are reviewed or patrolled, or the article is no longer eligible to be patrolled (that is, it is older than 30 days).(further info) This is to prevent spam and attack pages from being indexed by search engines such as Google before admins delete them. To bridge the period between when a problematic article is reviewed and when it is deleted, pages tagged with speedy deletion templates can also automatically be noindexed. These changes were originally requested in an RFC in 2012.
- The maintenance tags available in the page curation toolbar now match those available in Twinkle. This can be configured by admins, by editing this JavaScript page: MediaWiki:PageTriageExternalTagsOptions.js.
In addition to these changes, the community recently approved an RFC to create a new page-patrolling user group and to remove the right to patrol from all other user groups except admins and higher. This RFC will be presented to the WMF once a related RfC, concerning qualifications for the new right, concludes.
In brief
New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience
- Wikiplus[1] (source available on GitHub) by User:镜音铃 (zh) – Edit sources in a popup window.
- Watchlist-hideAWB[2] (source) by User:Evad37 – hide/show option for edits made using WP:AWB. Options appear in the "More" dropdown (Vector skin) or on a tab next to "Special page" (Monobook skin).
Newly approved bot tasks
- DatBot (approval) – Converts {{WikiProject Belgrade}} banner to WikiProject Serbia/Belgrade task force
- DatBot (task 2) – Adds Tour de France task force to {{WikiProject Cycling}} banners
- KMLbot (approval) – Adds {{Attached KML}} to articles which have KML files available through Wikidata
Template error reports
- The monthly reports generated by the Template Parameters tool (see previous Signpost coverage) are now linked from template documentation pages using the {{TemplateData header}} template. The reports can also be linked using {{Template error report}}, but still require TemplateData to have been added to the template.
- Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
- Recent changes
- If a Wikimedia wiki wants numerical sorting in categories you can request it after a community decision. See how to request it. Numerical sorting is already active on English Wikipedia (see previous Signpost coverage). (email list discussion)
- When you edit existing text to add a link to a user page, and add your signature in the same edit, that user will receive a mention notification. Previously, such notifications only occurred under stricter conditions which required the edit to be an addition of new text. phabricator:T138938
- Users are notified if they are mentioned in a section where you add your own signature even if you edit more than one section. Previously, users were not notified if you edited more than one section in one edit. phabricator:T141863
- The notification badge is coloured if you have notifications. When you check the notification the badge will now turn grey on all wikis instead of just the local one. phabricator:T134855
- You can show Special:RecentChanges on a page by using
{{Special:RecentChanges}}. You can now use tag filters by using{{Special:RecentChanges/tagfilter=tagname}}. phabricator:T142878 - Colours used in the Wikimedia wikis' main interface changed slightly. This is to make them easier to see for readers and editors with reduced eyesight. phabricator:T109915
- Changes this week
- Hidden HTML comments will be more visible in editing mode when using VisualEditor.
<!-- You write hidden HTML comments like this. -->phabricator:T147089
- Hidden HTML comments will be more visible in editing mode when using VisualEditor.
- Future changes
Abandoned tools on Tool Labs could be taken over by other developers. There was a discussion on Meta, which formally ended 12 October 2016. phabricator:T87730<slippymap>will not work on Wikivoyage after 24 October. You should use<mapframe>instead. If you need help to fix this before 24 October you should ask for it as soon as possible. phabricator:T136768- Language converter syntax will soon no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like
http://-{zh-cn:foo.com; zh-hk:bar.com; zh-tw:baz.com}-must be replaced. You will have to write-{zh-cn: http://foo.com ; zh-hk: http://bar.com ; zh-tw:http://baz.com }-instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. (diff)
Installation code
- ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
mw.loader.load('https://wikiplus-app.smartgslb.com/Main.js'); // Backlink: [[User:镜音铃/Wikiplus]] - ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
importScript( 'User:Evad37/Watchlist-hideAWB.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:Evad37/Watchlist-hideAWB.js]]
Variety is the spice of life
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Featured articles
Twelve featured articles were promoted these weeks.
- Josephine Butler (nominated by SchroCat) (1828–1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.
- The history of Liverpool F.C. from 1985 to the present day (nominated by NapHit) covers the appointment of Kenny Dalglish as manager, the Hillsborough disaster, and the club's return to European competition in 1991. Throughout this period, the club played in the top tier of English football, which in 1992 became the Premier League.
- Vladimir Lenin (nominated by Midnightblueowl) (1870–1924) was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and of the Soviet Union. Under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party communist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism.
- Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (nominated by Famous Hobo) is an adventure video game developed by Chunsoft. Released in 2012 for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, it is the second installment in the Zero Escape series, and the sequel to the 2009 game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. The story follows the player character Sigma, a man who is abducted and forced along with eight other individuals to play the Nonary Game, which puts its participants in a life-or-death situation. As the story progresses, the characters begin to unravel the secrets behind the Nonary Game, as well as its true purpose. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised the story and characters, but were divided in their opinions of the Escape sections.
- Bud Dunn (nominated by White Arabian Filly) (1918–2001) was a Tennessee Walking Horse trainer from Kentucky who spent most of his career in northern Alabama. He trained horses for over forty years and won his first Tennessee Walking Horse World Grand Championship at age 74 with Dark Spirit's Rebel; at the time, he was the oldest rider to win the honor. He was inducted into the Tennessee Walking Horse Hall of Fame in 1987 and named trainer of the year in 1980 and 1991. In 1999 at age 81, Dunn surpassed his own record for the oldest winning rider by winning his second World Grand Championship, riding RPM.
- The Burke and Hare murders (nominated by SchroCat and Cassianto) were a series of 16 murders committed over a period of about ten months in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The killings were undertaken by William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses to Doctor Robert Knox for dissection at his anatomy lectures. The murders raised public awareness of the need for bodies for medical research and contributed to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832. The events have made appearances in literature, and been portrayed on screen, either in heavily fictionalised accounts or as the inspiration for fictional works.
- Stegoceras (nominated by FunkMonk and LittleJerry) is a genus of dome-headed dinosaur that lived in what is now North America during the Late Cretaceous period, about 77.5 to 74 million years ago. The first specimens from Alberta, Canada, were described in 1902, and the type species was based on these remains. The generic name means "horn roof", and the specific name means "strong". Several other species have been placed in the genus over the years, but these have since been moved to other genera or deemed junior synonyms. Currently only S. validum and S. novomexicanum remain, but the validity of the latter species has also been questioned.
- Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé (nominated by Brianboulton) music was originally written to accompany a film of the same name, produced by the Belgoskino film studios in Leningrad in 1933–34 and released in 1934. It was Prokofiev's first attempt at film music, and his first commission from within the Soviet Union. After the film's release, Prokofiev adapted the music into what became a popular orchestral suite, his Op. 60. It has remained one of the composer's best-known and most frequently recorded works. Elements of the suite's score have been used in several later films, and in two popular songs of the Cold War era.
- Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (nominated by Cplakidas) (c.1320/40 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek monk and impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul also claimed a—somewhat dubious—connection with the Palaiologos dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire at the time. He fled his marriage as a teenager and became a monk, but soon his fraudulent practices embroiled him in scandal. During his long and tumultuous career, Paul was appointed an Orthodox bishop, sold ordinations to ecclesiastical offices, pretended to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, switched from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and back again, supported both the See of Rome and the Avignon anti-popes in the Western Schism, and managed to be named Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. In the end, his deceptions unmasked, he returned to Constantinople, where he repented and confessed his sins before a synod in 1394.
- The European hare (nominated by LittleJerry, Chiswick Chap and Cwmhiraeth) is a species of hare native to Europe and parts of Asia. It is among the largest hare species and is adapted to temperate, open country. Hares are herbivorous and feed mainly on grasses and herbs, supplementing these with twigs, buds, bark and field crops, particularly in winter. Their natural predators include large birds of prey, canids and felids. They rely on high-speed endurance running to escape from their enemies; having long, powerful limbs and large nostrils.
- Gomphus clavatus (nominated by Sasata and Casliber) is an edible species of fungus in the genus Gomphus. The fruit body is vase- or fan-shaped with wavy edges to its rim, and grows up to 15 cm (5.9 in) wide and 17 cm (6.7 in) tall. The upper surface is orangish-brown to lilac, while the lower spore-bearing surface is covered in wrinkles and ridges, and is a distinctive purple color. The species, commonly known as pig's ears or the violet chanterelle, was first described by Jacob Christian Schäffer in 1774.
- Pallas's leaf warbler (nominated by Jimfbleak) is a leaf warbler that breeds in mountain forests from southern Siberia east to northern Mongolia and northeastern China. It is named for German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas, who first formally described it. It is strongly migratory, wintering mainly in southern China and adjacent areas of southeast Asia, although in recent decades increasing numbers have been found in Europe in autumn.
Featured lists
Twelve featured lists were promoted these weeks.
- Evanescence is an American rock band, that was formed in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1995 by Amy Lee and Ben Moody. They have released (nominated by DannyMusicEditor) three studio albums, one live album, three EPs, eleven singles and eleven music videos. To date, the band has sold nearly 25 million albums worldwide.
- The J. C. Daniel Award (nominated by Charles Turing) is Kerala's highest award in Malayalam cinema. It is presented annually by the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, a non-profit institution under the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Government of Kerala. Instituted in 1992, the award is given to honour the recipients for their "outstanding contributions to Malayalam cinema". Recipients are selected by an independent jury established by the Academy and the Department of Cultural Affairs. As of 2016, the honourees receive a statuette, a citation, and a cash prize of ₹100,000 (US$1,200). They are honoured at the Kerala State Film Awards ceremony.
- The 14th Parliament of Pakistan is the legislature of Pakistan following the 2013 general election of members of parliament to the National Assembly of Pakistan, the lower house of the bicameral Majlis-e-Shura. The National Assembly is a democratically elected body consisting of a total of 342 members (nominated by Saqib), who are referred to as Members of the National Assembly, of which 272 are directly elected members; 70 reserved seats for women and religious minorities are allocated to the political parties according to their proportion of the total vote.
- The 2016 Tour de France was the 103rd edition of the race, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The 21-stage race started in Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy and finished on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Twenty-two teams and 198 cyclists (nominated by Yellow Dingo) competed in the race. All eighteen UCI WorldTeams were automatically invited, and four UCI Professional Continental teams were given wildcard places into the race by the organiser. As each team was entitled to enter nine riders, the peloton on the first stage consisted of 198 riders from 35 countries.
- Josephine Butler (1828–1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. Her bibliography (nominated by SchroCat) consists of sixteen books, seventy-six pamphlets, five newspaper articles and the introduction to Women's Work and Women's Culture. She also wrote for the The Dawn (1888–1896) and The Storm-Bell (1898–1900).
- The 88th Academy Awards (nominated by Nauriya and Birdienest81) ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, honored the best films of 2015 and took place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the ceremony, Academy Awards in 24 categories were presented. Mad Max: Fury Road won six awards, the most for the evening.
- Herd Management Areas (nominated by Montanabw) are lands managed by the United States Bureau of Land Management for the primary, but not exclusive, benefit of free-roaming "wild" horses and burros. Today there are approximately 270 Herd Management Areas across 10 states, comprising 31,600,000 acres (12,800,000 ha).
- Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. The series is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire novels by author George R. R. Martin. The series takes place on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos and chronicles the power struggles among noble families as they fight for control of the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. As of 2016 sixty episodes have aired (nominated by AffeL), concluding the sixth season. The show's episodes have won a number of awards, including two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series.
- Taylor Swift (born 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. She has released (nominated by FrB.TG) four video albums and has appeared in thirty-eight music videos, five films and three television shows.
- Gillingham F.C. is an English professional association football club based in Gillingham, Kent, playing in Football League One, the third level of the English football league system. The club's first team have competed in numerous nationally and regionally organised competitions, and 219 players have played between 25 and 49 such matches (nominated by ChrisTheDude), either as a member of the starting eleven or as a substitute.
- The Keith 'Bluey' Truscott Medal (nominated by Flickerd) is an Australian rules football award presented annually to the player(s) adjudged the best and fairest at the Melbourne Football Club throughout the Australian Football League season. The award was known as the Melbourne best and fairest until it was renamed in 1943 in honour of Keith 'Bluey' Truscott, a former dual premiership player and World War II fighter ace killed in service.
- Arsenal F.C. is an English professional association football club based in Holloway, London. In their first seven seasons (nominated by Lemonade51), the club wasn't part of any leagues, but they successfully competed in local cup competitions. They became the first southern member admitted into the Football League in 1893. Arsenal played in the Second Division for eleven seasons, while also participating in regional competitions. The club was promoted to the First Division in 1904, but were relegated back to the Second Division in 1913. In spite of finishing fifth in the Second Division in 1915, Arsenal rejoined the First Division when football resumed after the First World War. Since that time, they have not fallen below the first tier of the English football league system and hold the record for the longest uninterrupted time in the top flight.
Featured pictures
Twenty-one featured pictures were promoted these weeks.
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Frontispiece of The Pinafore Picture Book
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Debates and escapes
Your traffic reports for the weeks of September 25 – October 1, and October 2–9.
September 25 – October 1
If not for the death of American baseball player José Fernández (#1), Donald Trump (#2) would have been the most viewed article of the week, no doubt due to the attention-grabbing spectacle of the first U.S. presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton (#5). The only other debate-related subject to make the WP:TOP25 was Alicia Machado (#13), a topic which Clinton brought up to illustrate Trump's history of derogatory remarks about women, and which caused Trump to keep defending his comments for most of the week. Aside from that, the chart this week is a mix of pop culture topics with a number of Reddit "Today I Learned" threads elevating random articles into the lower rungs of the Top 25.
For the full top-25 lists (and archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED.
For the week of September 25 to October 1, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 José Fernández (pitcher) 
1,762,983 
The Cuban-born American baseball player for the Miami Marlins died in a boating accident on September 25 at the age of 24. Though a popular player, it is hard to pinpoint exactly why his death generated so many views, except in part because he died on the first day of this chart's data, so the chart captures the full run of attention caused in the week after his death. 2 Donald Trump
1,201,566 
455,000 of these views came on September 27, which for United States timezones catches the first presidential debate which occurred on the evening of September 26 and its news-dominating aftermath. Trump consistently places higher in this chart than Hillary Clinton, usually because he is doing or saying eye-opening things. 3 Arnold Palmer 
915,706 
The American golf great died on September 25 at age 87. He was generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the sport's history. Dating back to 1955, he won numerous events on both the PGA Tour and the circuit now known as PGA Tour Champions. 4 Pablo Escobar
813,231 
Narcos is back on your television screens, meaning Don Pablo is back on the list for another week. 5 Hillary Clinton 
753,800 
311K views on September 27. With the presidential debates underway and the American election finally getting close, Clinton and Trump may remain high in the charts for the next few weeks. 6 Luke Cage
710,850 
The debut of the Luke Cage (#10) TV series on Netflix teaches me about yet another superhero character I've never heard about before. 7 László Bíró
710,850 
A Google Doodle for the inventor of the ballpoint pen. 8 Deaths in 2016 
646,900 
The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day to day basis. It is consistently higher in the first half of 2016 with a string of highly notable deaths, but things seem to be calming down a bit. Where the article appears in this chart is entirely dependent on how many subjects in a week happened to exceed this bellwether in views. 9 Toys in the Attic (album)
547,193 
A Reddit thread caused a burst of popularity about this 1975 album by Aerosmith on September 26. 10 Luke Cage (TV series)
710,850 See #6. Mike Colter (pictured) plays the lead role.
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October 2–9
The main theme this week, as it is for many weeks, is real life drama clashing with unabashed escapism. The mayhem of Hurricane Matthew, Donald Trump's outrageous behaviour, and the caterwaul that was the vice-Presidential debate came up against the premiere of Luke Cage, Netflix's latest Marvel property, the release of the film adaptation of The Girl on the Train, and Westworld, the first of what will likely be many attempts by HBO to find a successor to Game of Thrones. TV also appeared in the guise of Pablo Escobar, the "star" of the docudrama Narcos, and Amanda Knox, the acquitted murder suspect and subject of an eponymous documentary, also on Netflix. One television property notable in its absence however, is Stranger Things, which finally left the Top 25 after eleven straight weeks.
For the week of October 2 to 9, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Luke Cage
1,486,560 Marvel's Blaxploitation-themed superhero (a.k.a. Power Man) has been a cult favourite for decades (Nicolas Cage named himself after him), but has never seen mainstream success, until now; as played by Mike Colter, pictured, he stars as the hero of his own eponymous series on Netflix. 2 Westworld (TV series)
1,050,532 
To be clear: this is not based on a novel by Michael Crichton: Crichton was a filmmaker as well as a novelist, and Westworld was a film he both wrote and directed back in the 1970s. But whereas that was a straightforward "monsters on the loose" movie, about a Western-themed amusement park staffed by hyperrealistic robots who go insane and start murdering the guests (sound familiar?), this series looks like it will be taking a more thoughtful, hard scifi approach, with the robots' gradual evolution from programming to quasi-consciousness forming the main plot thread. With a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and ratings of just under 2 million (roughly what Game of Thrones received when it began), it's off to a solid start, though whether it will be the show to carry HBO past Game of Thrones's end remains to be seen. 3 Luke Cage (TV series)
1,018,198 The latest in Marvel Studios' Netflix stable premiered in its entirety on September 30. It was reportedly so popular that it overloaded Netflix's servers and shut it down. 4 Donald Trump
972,408 My biweekly game of "What Did Donald Do?" is unfailingly joyless and often fruitless, but I occasionally strike gold: in this case, a decade-old tape in which he not only admits to repeated sexual assault but leeringly ogles a soap opera star. Numbers shot up after the revelation, but went up even further on the 10th, after the second Presidential debate, so expect him to be higher next week. 5 M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story 
818,538 
Numbers have doubled for this Indian biographical sports film about cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, which debuted on September 30. The lead role is played by Sushant Singh Rajput (pictured). 6 Sushant Singh Rajput
782,830 The star of M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story (see above) 7 Hurricane Matthew
721,520 
When Wikipedia describes a hurricane as the worst since 2005 (aka the year that God idly pondered redoing that whole Flood thing) that sets you back in your chair, and to know that most of the more than 1000 deaths have been in Haiti, a country that by now must feel God has forsaken it, deepens the sense of loss and hopelessness. Noam Chomsky once predicted that Haiti may soon become uninhabitable. We can only do our best to ensure that does not happen. 8 Never Gonna Give You Up
682,050 
Maybe if Reddit didn't have such a useless search engine I wouldn't hate it so much. I need to come up with a new word for that feeling when you know an entry on this list has to be from Reddit but the entire Internet is just shrugging its shoulders at you and going "Idno". I admit, that would not be a widely applicable word, but still, I would use it. And I did find the entry in the end. Rick Astley did a Reddit AMA this week; "AMA" stands for "ask me anything", but apparently what they wanted to know about was that godawful song that spawned a universe of unfunny Internet memes. You know, I never cared about that song one way or the other when it came out. Now I hate it. Such is the power of the Internet. 9 Amanda Knox
674,318 Another case of the media constructing a story it had no cause to, in this case the conviction (and later acquittal) of this American student of the murder of her British roommate while in Italy. The British tabloids being what they are, I refused to go within a mile of its toxicity, particularly when they started calling her "Foxy Knoxy" and painting her as a femme fatale. So far had I put this from my mind that I was surprised to learn she had been acquitted. Her trial and tribulations have become the subject of a Netflix documentary, called, oddly enough, Amanda Knox, which was released this week. 10 Westworld 
671,142 It's possible I suppose that our readers are genuinely interested in the original 1973 cult classic starring Yul Brynner, but most likely it's just people looking for the TV series (see #2)
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Wikipedia Dispute Index a mixed bag; how motivations differ among contributor roles
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
"Wikipedia Dispute Index" detects high-conflict countries
The 2011 study Content Disputes in Wikipedia Reflect Geopolitical Instability[1] was referenced in a recent article on Ozy. The study (not previously covered in the Signpost) considers whether Wikipedia's metadata may be used to glean insights into global phenomena. (Various online predictors have been associated with events. For instance, Google searches can be used to monitor the spread of infectious diseases.) The authors attempted to test whether Wikipedia content disputes can be used to understand real-life conflicts. They analyzed all pages linking to articles about a given country that had the "NPOV dispute" tag, though they note that only about a quarter (138 of 497) countries had a sufficient number of conflicts to allow further analysis. (This reviewer wonders why the authors chose the "what links here" tool rather than the more precise category of WikiProject template groups of articles; a cursory look at the 100 articles linked to Poland, for example, suggests that only ~20% are clearly related to that country.)
They then created a "Wikipedia Dispute Index" (downloadable image of the index heat map), which measures whether a country has more or fewer than average disputes linking to it. The authors note that their index roughly matches the "1996–2008 World Bank Policy Research Aggregate Governance Indicators" and the "Economist Intelligence Unit 2009 Political Instability Index" (downloadable image of the correlation plots between those indexes – not bad, given the underlying problem of using "what links here" as a dataset). The results indicate that "the most disputed are parts of the middle east followed by other regions such as Kosovo, Bosnia & Herzegovina and North Korea ..., countries in North America and Western Europe are the least disputed, with most other countries occupying a middle range." With regards to the type of conflicts, they observe that "the biggest contributors to the indicator tend to be disputes over current or historical events or individuals that vary according to different political views."
Though the authors present no convincing arguments about why exactly their index would be more or less useful then the existing ones, they write that it can be seen as a supplementary tool validating other indexes, and conclude that Wikipedia's data and metadata can be used to generate other useful indexes and metrics – something that this reviewer certainly agrees with.
Wikipedians may find the following page created for this project useful (for the next few years until it inevitably goes down as it stops being maintained – perhaps someone could contact the authors about moving it to the Toolserver/Labs?: http://www.disputeindex.org/ which displays the (gray and white) heatmap and lists Wikipedia articles that are being analyzed – a nice visual gadget for our internal cleanup purposes) PK
Emergent Role Behaviours in Wikipedia – The "How" and "Why"
The roles that contributors play in Wikipedia (e.g. "copyeditor" or "vandal fighter") are informal and fluent, in contrast to other areas where roles are assigned and static. These types of roles are referred to as “emergent roles” in the literature, and a paper titled "On the "How" and "Why" of Emergent Role Behaviors in Wikipedia"[2] at the 2017 CSCW conference looks at the extent to which contributors move between roles, and if so, why they do it.
This paper builds upon work by some of the same authors at the 2015 CSCW conference,[supp 1] in which they studied functional roles, which are defined by access levels in the system. In the upcoming paper, they use a similar approach and dataset in order to quantify roles and whether contributors take on multiple roles. Using a perspective of roles and articles, the authors identify four classes of contributors:
- Role-Article samplers: contributors who enact a particular role in a single article
- Role embracers: contributors who enact a particular role but across multiple articles
- Article embracers: contributors who enact multiple roles in a single article
- Role-Article polymaths: contributors who enact multiple roles across multiple articles
When it comes to longevity, the Role-Article polymaths (7.4% of the contributor pool) are those who continue to stay active in the system for the longest time, with 4% of them being active for at least seven years. Role embracers also sustain participation over multiple years, and will often be focused on the second article they encounter.
To learn more about how contributor motivation affects role behaviour, a survey of a stratified sample of contributors was performed, with 175 valid responses. These surveys aimed at understanding contributor motivations across four dimensions: fun, forming friendships, gaining reputation, and peer approval. The results reveal striking differences in motivation between the classes, for instance Role-Article samplers are low across all four dimensions, while Article Embracers are the opposite, high across all four dimensions. Using Role-Article samplers as a baseline, transitioning to other classes are motivated as follows:
- Role embracers: friendship
- Article embracers: reputation, peer approval
- Role-Article polymaths: fun and reputation
The paper then discusses these findings, proposing that each of the four behaviours plays a distinct role in how content is created in Wikipedia. For instance, the fact that some motivations are associated with role-transitioning behaviour while other motivations lead to transitioning between articles, means the other contributors can respond differently to those who display this type of behaviour in order to foster continued participation. MWW
Briefly
Conferences and events
See the research events page on Meta-wiki for upcoming conferences and events, including submission deadlines.
Other recent publications
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue—contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
- "The Impact and Evolution of Group Diversity in Online Open Collaboration"[3] From the abstract: "we examine 648 WikiProjects to understand (1) how tenure disparity and interest variety affect group productivity and member withdrawal and (2) how the two types of diversity evolve over time. Our results show a curvilinear effect of tenure disparity, which increases productivity and decreases member withdrawal, up to a point. Beyond that point, productivity slightly decreases, and members are more likely to withdraw."
- "Helping Wikipedia versus Helping a WikiProject: Subgroup Dynamics, Member Contribution and Turnover in Online Production Communities"'[4] From the abstract: "we analyze data from 648 WikiProjects and the archived behaviors of 14,464 member editors ... Our results reveal two critical trade-offs in managing online production communities. First, a number of factors that increase member contribution such as tenure dissimilarity and past contribution also increase one’s likelihood of leaving the community, perhaps due to conflict or feelings of “mission accomplished” or “burnout”. Second, individual membership in multiple projects has mixed and largely negative effects. It decreases the amount of work editors contribute to both the individual projects and Wikipedia as a whole. It reduces one’s likelihood of leaving individual project yet increases the likelihood of leaving Wikipedia as a whole."
- "Transforming Wikipedia into an Ontology-based Information Retrieval Search Engine for Local Experts using a Third-Party Taxonomy"[5] From the abstract: "Using a third-party taxonomy, independent from Wikipedia's category hierarchy, we index information connected to our local experts, present in their activity reports, and we re-index Wikipedia content using the same taxonomy. ... A Wikipedia gadget (or plugin) activated by the interested user, accesses the endpoint as each Wikipedia page is accessed. An additional tab on the Wikipedia page [developed using ResourceLoader] allows the user to open up a list of teams of local experts associated with the subject matter in the Wikipedia page. "
- "'An Encyclopedia, Not an Experiment in Democracy': Wikipedia Biographies, Authorship, and the Wikipedia Subject"[6] Abstract: "Wikipedia biography is a culturally significant, yet overlooked form of digital life narrative. Through an examination of Wikipedia’s policies and discussion forums, and a number of its most popular and controversial biographies, this essay explores the politics of biographical practice and representation on the site."
- "Networked knowledge : approaches to analyzing dynamic networks of knowledge in wikis for mass collaboration"[7] From the abstract: "[This] work builds on a theoretical consideration of collaborative learning and knowledge building stemming from the interdisciplinary learning sciences and research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in particular. ... A complex systems perspective is used to explain knowledge as an emergent phenomenon ... Based on these conceptualizations, the present dissertation empirically examines large real-life data sets from the online communities Wikipedia and Wikiversity. Knowledge is captured as a network of interconnected articles in different knowledge domains."
- "Wikipedia and conceptions of knowledge in encyclopaedism"[8] From the "Methodology" section: "Wikipedia [is] broken down genealogically, historically and structurally. [Then,] we study more specific epistemological aspects and problems within Wikipedia. The workings of Wikipedia will be confronted with different epistemological and hermeneutic interpretations of what knowledge is, how it works and how it is organised. ... Before concluding, the previous findings will be used to judge the effect of Wikipedia upon its cultural surroundings."
References
- ^ Apic, Gordana; Betts, Matthew J.; Russell, Robert B. (2011-06-22). "Content Disputes in Wikipedia Reflect Geopolitical Instability". PLOS ONE. 6 (6): e20902. Bibcode:2011PLoSO...620902A. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020902. ISSN 1932-6203. PMID 21731630.
- ^ Arazy, Ofer; Lifshitz-Assaf, Hila; Nov, Oded; Daxenberger, Johannes; Balestra, Martina; Cheshire, Coye. "On the "How" and "Why" of Emergent Role Behaviors in Wikipedia" (PDF). Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. CSCW '17. New York, NY, USA: ACM.
- ^ Ren, Yuqing; Chen, Jilin; Riedl, John (2015-08-28). "The Impact and Evolution of Group Diversity in Online Open Collaboration". Management Science. 62 (6): 1668–1686. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2015.2178. ISSN 0025-1909. S2CID 13413529.1668-1686&rft.date=2015-08-28&rft_id=https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:13413529#id-name=S2CID&rft.issn=0025-1909&rft_id=info:doi/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2178&rft.aulast=Ren&rft.aufirst=Yuqing&rft.au=Chen, Jilin&rft.au=Riedl, John&rft_id=http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2178&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-10-14" class="Z3988">
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{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) (dissertation at the University of Tübingen) - ^ Hastings Ruiz, David Robert (2015). "Wikipedia and conceptions of knowledge in encyclopaedism". doi:10.35376/10324/16184.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) (dissertation)
- Supplementary references and notes:
- ^ Arazy, Ofer; Ortega, Felipe; Nov, Oded; Yeo, Lisa; Balila, Adam (2015). "Functional Roles and Career Paths in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. CSCW '15. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 1092–1105. doi:10.1145/2675133.2675257. ISBN 978-1-4503-2922-4.1092-1105&rft.pub=ACM&rft.date=2015&rft_id=info:doi/10.1145/2675133.2675257&rft.isbn=978-1-4503-2922-4&rft.aulast=Arazy&rft.aufirst=Ofer&rft.au=Ortega, Felipe&rft.au=Nov, Oded&rft.au=Yeo, Lisa&rft.au=Balila, Adam&rft_id=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2675133.2675257&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-10-14" class="Z3988"> / author copy 1, author copy 2