Another day, another dollar

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  Glacier Point at Sunset, Yosemite National Park, California. Let's start with something beautiful.

Featured articles

Ten featured articles were promoted this week.

• Live and Let Die (novel) (nominated by SchroCat) A "lurid meller" in one critic's estimation, Live and Let Die was Ian Fleming's second James Bond novel. Code number 007 is on the trail of Mr. Big, real name Buonaparte Ignace Gallia, who has been financing Soviet spies by selling 17th-century gold coins from pirate Henry Morgan's buried treasure. The coins are smuggled into the US by placing them in aquariums containing "poisonous tropical fish". In a quiet moment of reflection, "Boney" Gallia confesses to Bond that he is prey to "'accidie' – the deadly lethargy that envelops those who are sated". He has a spherical head, "twice the normal size", and his skin is grey-black in colour. Intellectually brilliant, and with superb organisational skills, Mr. Big represents the "banality of evil", and is eventually defeated by Bond, an "anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department" (Fleming's description of his hero). Bond's last glimpse of Mr. Big is of his left arm rising out of the sea as sharks rip his flesh apart.

• McKinley Birthplace Memorial dollar (nominated by Wehwalt) US President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901. The McKinley Birthplace Memorial dollar was a one dollar gold coin struck in 1916 and 1917 and intended to be sold at a markup to finance the construction of ... er ... the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial in Niles, Ohio. The price to the public was $3; over 30,000 of the coins were minted, of which one-third were actually sold at full price to the public, one-third were sold at an undisclosed discount to a Texas coin dealer, and the rest were melted. The coin has a left-facing profile of McKinley on the obverse and the proposed memorial on the reverse. The failure of the issue to sell has been ascribed to it being "ill-publicized". They're now worth about $500 upwards.

• Susan B. Anthony dollar (nominated by RHM22) The Susan B. Anthony dollar is a US dollar coin which was produced from 1979 to 1981, with an additional run in 1999. Its predecessor, the Eisenhower dollar, was unpopular due to its size and weight. Various shapes, such as twelve-sided, were designed and rejected before it was decided to retain a round shape to avoid costly modification of vending machines across the nation. The design had an inner border of eleven sides to facilitate identification by feel. Anthony was chosen after a number of organisations recommended her depiction in place of a Liberty Head (which was the original design). Chief Engraver of the Mint Frank Gasparro produced depictions which were rejected as being too pretty or too aged, before he drew her at an imagined age 50 (no photos of Anthony at that age were available). It was in her early fifties that Anthony was at the "peak of her influence as a social reformer".

• Mind Meld (nominated by Neelix) Mind Meld: Secrets Behind the Voyage of a Lifetime is a 2001 documentary film in which two unemployed actors with the unlikely names of Shatner and Nimoy, who have a website to promote, talk about the science fiction soap opera they once appeared in. Among topics raised are; the question of the "legitimacy of consistently portraying an extraterrestrial", alcoholism, sex, typecasting, and fine art photography. According to one reviewer, the film was likely to appeal only to extreme fans or people interested in flatulence; he gave the film an 'F' rating.

• The Negro Motorist Green Book (nominated by Prioryman) The Negro Motorist Green Book is a guidebook which was published in the US annually over thirty years from 1936. In a country where the mass production of automobiles gave many opportunities for recreational travel to the "ordinary person", African Americans were faced with many inconveniences and dangers if they tried to travel across the land by car. The guidebook's publishers sought to alleviate worry by providing information as to where black travellers could find lodging and restaurants that were safe for them to enter.

• Radiocarbon dating (nominated by Mike Christie) When cosmic rays enter the Earth's upper atmosphere, they collide with atoms and molecules of atmospheric gases (mostly oxygen and nitrogen) to produce a shower of particles, particularly neutrons. When these neutrons go on to hit nitrogen atoms, the collision knocks off a proton, converting the nitrogen into radioactive carbon-14. The carbon reacts with oxygen to produce radioactive carbon dioxide. All forms of carbon dioxide gas are heavier than oxygen and nitrogen, so the gas flows down to the ground, where it is taken up into plant material by the process of photosynthesis and then into animal material when the plants are eaten. Because this carbon-14 is radioactive, and radioactivity decays, if the radioactivity of the bone your dog dug up in the garden is measured, and you know that the proportion of each isotope of atmospheric carbon has remained constant, and you know the rate of decay, you can work out when the bone was last inside a living animal. Hmm… August 1485. Rover, drop it! The technique was invented by Willard Libby in the late 1940s and has become a standard tool for archaeologists and food safety inspectors.

• Air Mata Iboe (nominated by Crisco 1492) Air Mata Iboe is an Indonesian film from 1941 – a "musical extravaganza" with a tragic storyline. Married to a merchant, the Indonesian woman Soegiati has three sons and a daughter; three of them marry and move away, leaving only Soemadi, who is his mother's favourite. One night the police come to arrest the merchant, Soebagio, who has been moonlighting as a robber. Soemadi makes a false confession to protect his father, and is exiled for his "crimes". Feelings of guilt drive Soebagio to his death, and his widow Soegiati is left in debt. She is soon homeless and penniless. Turning first to her two remaining sons, who are wealthy, Soegiati is refused help because they are scared of their wives. Her daughter and son-in-law offer to take her in, but Soegiati sees their poverty and chooses instead to live on charity. Time passes, Soemadi returns, and after meeting his mother, he seeks revenge on his brothers. Fifi Young took the rôle of Soegiati; she was to reprise it in 1957 in a remake. The original film is probably lost – the film stock was nitrocellulose which is dangerously flammable, and it's possible that copies were deliberately destroyed.

• Texas Revolution (nominated by Maile and Karanacs) Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna's Army of Operations entered the Mexican province of Texas in mid-February 1836 after Texians and volunteers from the US had attacked and defeated a number of Mexican garrisons. General de Urrea and Mexican troops campaigned along the Texas coast, defeating Texian troops and killing many of those who tried to surrender. Santa Anna was captured during a surprise attack by Sam Houston's newly formed Texian army at San Jacinto. In exchange for his life (many of the captured troops were summarily executed), Santa Anna agreed to order the Mexican army to retreat south.

• Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (nominated by Modernist, Ceoil, Kafka Liz, Ewulp) Portrait of Monsieur Bertin is an 1832 oil painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres depicting Louis-François Bertin. The sitter "emanates a restless energy and an imposing bulk". Widely derided and caricatured at the time, the portrait's uncompromising depiction of the sitter's character has been profoundly influential on artists such as Picasso and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, the Hyphenated Parisian.

• Mark Oliphant (nominated by Hawkeye7) Mark Oliphant was a "meddling foreigner" whose actions in 1941 helped to start the development of an atomic bomb. He was sent to the USA to find out why the findings of the British Military Application of Uranium Detonation Committee were being ignored. He found that the head of the Uranium Committee had locked them in his safe. Oliphant went to a meeting of the committee and forcefully demanded that the construction of a bomb be the only priority. He managed to convince the American scientists that the atom bomb was feasible, and that they should take the lead, as Britain lacked the resources to carry through development.

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  Louis Pasteur, as painted by Albert Edelfelt, a new featured picture.
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  Frederic Leighton's Perseus and Andromeda

Featured lists

Nine featured lists were promoted this week.

• List of awards and nominations received by Lana Del Rey (nominated by Littlecarmen) American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey has received a number of awards since her debut album Kill Kill in 2008. She has won 11 awards from 48 nominations, including the 2012 Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song for "Video Games" and a 2014 Satellite Award for Best Original Song for "Young and Beautiful".

• List of five-wicket hauls in Twenty20 International cricket (nominated by Vensatry) Running since February 2005, the Twenty20 International is a shortened game of cricket played between two of the top national teams; each team's batsmen face 20 overs in a single innings. "Taking a wicket" refers to the batsman being got out by the bowler; to get five wickets in a Twenty20 is regarded as a significant achievement.

• List of awards and nominations received by Priyanka Chopra (nominated by NapHit) Priyanka Chopra is an Indian actress and singer who appears in Bollywood films; she has received 85 awards. Chopra is active in promoting girls' education and women's rights, and is particularly vocal about women's issues, including safety, and gender equality.

• 83rd Academy Awards (nominated by Birdienest81) The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony (commonly referred to as the Oscars), organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, honored the best films of 2010 in the United States and took place on February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Inception and The King's Speech won four awards each, with the latter film winning Best Picture.

• List of public art in the City of Westminster (nominated by Ham) There are more than 400 "public artworks" in the City of Westminster, a borough in central London. In fact, there are so many that an area between Whitehall and St James's is a "monument saturation zone", where new installations are discouraged unless they are made of snow. Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square has an empty fourth plinth, on which various works by contemporary artists have been installed since 1999. It is currently home to Gift Horse, a horse skeleton by Hans Haacke, which will be replaced by David Shrigley's Really Good in 2016. The artists are chosen through the "Fourth Plinth Programme", which invites "world class artists to make astonishing new works".

• List of Bermuda T20I cricketers (nominated by Blackhole78) Fourteen players have represented Bermuda in T20I matches, of whom eight have played all three games. Steven Outerbridge has scored more runs than any other Bermudian with 49 runs at an average of 24.50 and has the highest individual score (37 not out). A Twenty20 International (T20I) is an international cricket match between two teams, each having T20I status according to the International Cricket Council (ICC), and is played under the rules of Twenty20 cricket.

• List of awards and nominations received by Laurence Olivier (nominated by SchroCat) Laurence Olivier was a well known English actor who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. In 1947, Olivier was appointed a Knight Bachelor, and in 1970, he was given a life peerage; the Order of Merit was conferred on him in 1981. He also received honors from foreign governments. In 1949, he was made Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog by the Danish government; the French appointed him Officer, Legion of Honour, in 1953; the Italian government created him Grande Ufficiale, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, in 1953; and in 1971, he was granted the Order of Yugoslav Flag with Golden Wreath. From academic and other institutions, Olivier received honorary doctorates from the university of Tufts, Massachusetts (1946), Oxford (1957), and Edinburgh (1964). He also received a few awards for his work on the stage and screen. His list is impressive.

• List of accolades received by Argo (2012 film) (nominated by Captain_Assassin!) Argo is a 2012 political thriller directed by Ben Affleck and produced by Affleck, George Clooney, and Grant Heslov (and did we mention that Ben Affleck is the lead actor as well?). The screenplay, written by Chris Terrio, was adapted from sections of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Tony Mendez's memoir The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA, and the 2007 Wired article "The Great Escape", by Joshuah Bearman, on the Canadian Caper. Argo recieved awards and nominations in a variety of categories, with particular praise for its direction, screenplay, and Alan Arkin's performance. At the 85th Academy Awards, the film received seven nominations, including Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actor for Arkin, and went on to win three awards: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for Terrio, and Best Film Editing for William Goldenberg.

• List of works by H. Rider Haggard (nominated by SchroCat) H. Rider Haggard was a prolific and high-profile English writer, probably best known for his Allan Quatermain series of stories set in Africa. He wrote much more besides: his output included 56 novels, 3 short-story collections, and nearly 100 letters published in The Thunderer. He was an expert on land management and agricultural reform and wrote several non-fiction books on the subject, along with works on southern Africa and the Zulus. In 1895, Rider Haggard served on a government commission to examine Salvation Army labor colonies, and from 1906 to 1911, he served on the Royal Commission on Coastal Erosion, travelling widely round the coast of the British Isles. Haggard states in his memoirs that "I wonder if there is a groin ... that I have not seen and thoughtfully considered". No wonder he was haggard – he should've been looking at groynes.

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  Pancuran Tujuh (Javanese: Pancuran Pitu, both meaning "Seven Springs") is a hot spring that you need to place on your bucket list, as Chris Woodrich proves with this utterly remarkable photo (well, it's really 30 photos). Read about how he "got the shot" below. Pack your bags and book the trip now, we hear it's nice this time of year ....

Featured pictures

Twenty-eight featured pictures were promoted this week.

• Junot Díaz (created by Tsar Fedorsky for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; edited and nominated by Chris Woodrich) Junot Díaz became one of America's most celbrated contemporary authors with his 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. He is a professor of creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisors for Freedom University. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which listed him as one of the 20 top writers for the 21st century. Díaz has received a Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award, the 2003 US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This photo was taken for the 2008 awarding of a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly called the "genius grant".
• The Fighting Temeraire (created by J. M. W. Turner, nominated by Hafspajen) HMS Temeraire was a wooden three-decked ship of the line, armed with 98 cannon. She fought in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, her crew lashing the Temeraire to two French ships and capturing them after a ferocious fight. After being reduced to a training ship in the 1820s, she was sold for scrap in 1838. Turner's painting The Fighting Temeraire depicts her on her last journey to the breaker's yard, being towed by a paddle-wheel steam tug. The silvery wraith of the Temeraire is seen behind a dirty, squat boat belching out red flame and black smoke.
• Pasteur's portrait by Edelfelt (created by Albert Edelfelt, nominated by Hafspajen) This portrait of Louis Pasteur depicts him among laboratory glassware used in his experimental methods. Pasteur is known as the "father of microbiology" for his discoveries in the fields of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and, of course, pasteurization.
• La Schiavona (created by Titian, nominated by SchroCat) La Schiavona (1510–12) by Titian; this is a portrait of an unknown lady, probably from Dalmatia ("La Schiavona" translates as "Dalmatian woman"). The raised relief sculpture was a later addition, and the original drapery he painted is now starting to show through the thinning paint.
• The Elder Sister (created by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, nominated by Chris Woodrich) The Elder Sister is an 1869 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. It shows a girl ("the elder sister") sitting on a rock and holding a sleeping baby ("the younger brother") on her lap, with a quiet rural landscape behind them; the artist's children served as models. "OK kids, don't move for a couple of hours ...."
• A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle (created by Hendrick Avercamp, nominated by SchroCat) Cutting corners the old fashioned way: A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle by Hendrick Avercamp. Avercamp – a deaf mute known as "de Stomme van Kampen" (the mute of Kampen) – was the first of the Dutch painters to specialize in snow scenes. The National Gallery acquired it as a square painting in 1891; during cleaning in 1983, it was discovered that the corners were later additions by another painter. Does that count as a upgrade?
• Ancient Rome & Modern Rome (created by Giovanni Paolo Panini, nominated by SchroCat) Modern Rome and Ancient Rome (1757) by Giovanni Paolo Panini; painted as a pair of pendant paintings for the Count de Stainville. Ancient Rome shows many of the most significant architectural sites and sculptures from the time, while Modern Rome shows the arrangement of paintings originally commissioned by de Stainville, who was the ambassador to Rome between 1753 and 1757.
• Pancuran Tujuh (created and nominated by Chris Woodrich) "A panoramic image consisting of 30 or so frames shot using a Canon EOS 60D, a Canon EF-S 18–55mm lens at 55mm (effective length of 88mm after including the crop factor) and a 'Nodal Ninja' panoramic head, then 'stitched' together in PTGui." According to local legend, a man named Syekh Maulana Maghribi discovered the springs after sailing to Gresik, on Java. There he found seven springs, which he named Pancuran Pitu, and bathed in the waters, treating himself. The waters contain sulfur and other minerals; this might be just the place you're looking for to rejuvenate your body and soul. With a population of 143 million, Java is the home of 57 percent of the Indonesian population, and is the most populous island on Earth. This is one remarkable panoramic photo; well done, Chris!
• Japanese yen (created by Continental Bank Note Company (later the American Bank Note Company), for the Constitutional monarchy of Japan. From the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. nominated by Godot13) One yen (1873) issued by the Japanese constitutional monarchy, the second issue of yen banknotes. Engraved and printed by the Continental Bank Note Company of New York, later part of the American Bank Note Company.
• Anthidium florentinum (created and nominated by Alvesgaspar) Something must be bugging Alvesgaspar this week, or it is just these fine photos of bugs that has us questioning the bugs around us? Anthidium is a genus of bee often called mason or potter bees, who use conifer resin, plant hairs, mud, or a mix of them to build nests. Alvesgaspar's bug collection of featured photos continues to grow, with not one but two featured bugs this week. Get out your featured fly swatter for the next one ....
• Eristalinus taeniops (created and nominated by Alvesgaspar) Eristalinus taeniops is a species of hoverfly, also known as the band-eyed drone fly, that likes to hang out in Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, North Africa, the Canary Islands, the Caucasus, eastern parts of the Afrotropical region down to South Africa, Nepal, Northern Pakistan, Northern India, Iran, and southern California. "Waiter, there seems to be a fly in my soup?" "Don't worry, sir. That spider on your bread will soon get him!"
• Gorakhpur Junction railway station (created and nominated by The Herald) A shot from the foot-over bridge of Gorakhpur Junction railway station located in the city of Gorakhpur in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It serves as the headquarters of the North Eastern Railway. A remodeling of the Gorakhpur railway station was launched in 2009. The remodeling work was completed on war-footing within the scheduled time. With the inauguration of the remodeled yard on 6 October 2013, Gorakhpur has a platform measuring 1,366.33 metres (4,482.7 ft) with ramp, making it the world's longest railway platform."Waiter, do you have frogs' legs?" "No sir, I've always walked."
• An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (created by Joseph Wright of Derby, nominated by Chris Woodrich) An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil painting by Joseph Wright of Derby. It shows a cockatoo in a glass container that is linked to a vacuum pump. Most of the air has already been exhausted from the container, and the bird is gasping and fluttering. The natural philosopher operating the pump looks at the viewer, as if to challenge you to decide whether the bird lives or dies. Onlookers show a variety of emotions, from detached scientific interest in each other to detached scientific interest in the experiment.
• The Adoration of the Kings (created by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, nominated by SchroCat) – The Adoration of the Kings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1564). Many of those surrounding Christ – including the Three Kings – are caricatured slightly or shown as a grotesque, and the Virgin is shown naturally and not idealized. The viewpoint is from a slightly elevated position, which has the effect of focusing attention on the Christ figure in the Virgin's lap, in the exact center of the painting. In this treatment, the painter's first purpose is to record the range and intensity of individual reactions to the sacred event. In the chronological sequence of Bruegel's work, this painting of 1564 marks an important departure as the first to be composed almost exclusively of large figures.
• Larabanga Mosque (created by Sathyan.velumani, nominated by Adam Cuerden) The Larabanga Mosque is a historic mosque, built in the Sudanese architectural style in the village of Larabanga, Ghana. It is the oldest mosque in the country and one of the oldest in West Africa, and has been referred to as the "Mecca of West Africa". The mosque has an old Quran, believed by the locals to have been given as a gift from heaven in 1650 to Yidan Barimah Bramah, the Imam at the time, as a result of his prayers. The mosque, built with mud and reeds, has two tall towers in pyramidal shape, buttressed by twelve bulbous-shaped structures, which are fitted with timber elements.
• Hollister Municipal Airport (created and nominated by WPPilot) Looking for a nice Hundred Dollar Hamburger?. Hollister Municipal Airport is a city-owned public-use airport located three nautical miles (6 km) north of the central business district of Hollister, a city in San Benito County, California, United States, just south of San Jose. It saw its first powered flight departure on April 14, 1912, from what was then a small livestock pasture. In the 1940s, the US Navy took control of the field and commissioned it as a Naval Auxiliary Air Station. Today, Hollister Airport is a popular destination for pilots in search of the famous $100 hamburger. The traditional "$100 hamburger trip" would typically involve: flying a short distance (less than two hours), eating at an airport restaurant, and flying home. That was many years ago; the cost of fuel forced aircraft rental prices to over $150 dollars a hour today, and that same burger is going to run you well over a hundred bucks. It will be the best burger you eat for a while. Hollister Airport does not have a tower. Contact them using UNICOM 123.00, make left traffic on runway 31 (that is the big runway), and have a safe flight.
• Madonna of Loreto (created by Raphael, nominated by Chris Woodrich) The Madonna of Loreto is a painting finished around 1508–1509 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. It is housed in the Musée Condé of Chantilly, France. It has been widely copied throughout the centuries. It shows the Christ Child playing with the Madonna's veil, while a melancholic St. Joseph looks on. For centuries, the painting kept company with the Portrait of Pope Julius II, first at the Santa Maria del Popolo, then in private collections, and for a time, their location was unknown. Their ownership, or provenance, has been difficult to unravel because of the number of copies of both paintings, the unclear ownership chain, misinformation, and delay of publication of vital information. Saint Joseph seemed to be an afterthought: X-rays of the painting show that Saint Joseph was painted over a window that was previously over the Madonna's shoulder. Further, the change in the position of the Child's right foot was revealed via X-ray. These changes align with Raphael's preliminary drawings for the painting.
• Pampus (created and nominated by Johan Bakker) Our second aerial photo to make the list of featured photos this week: Pampus, an artificial island and late 19th-century sea fort, located in the IJmeer near Amsterdam. It now belongs to the municipality of Muiden and is open to visitors. The fort was commissioned in 1895. It was armed with four Krupp 240mm (9.5") L35 (35 calibers long) guns deployed in two hydraulically operated cupolas of two guns each. Electric lifts brought shells and cartridges up from the magazines on the ground floor. These guns fired a shell of 280kg for a range of up to eight km. Each gun had a crew of an NCO and six gunners, who could get off one shot every six minutes. During World War II, the Nazis used the island as a bombing target, filling bomb chambers with smoke to show the pilot where the bomb hit as a training aid.
• Gabrielle Cot (created byWilliam-Adolphe Bouguereau, nominated by Alborzagros) Gabrielle Cot, the subject of this 1890 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, was the daughter of Pierre Auguste Cot. This oil on canvas painting was exhibited at the Cercle de L'union Artistique in Paris during 1891. The painting was gifted to one Madame Duret by Bouguereau on the occasion of Gabrielle's marriage. It remained in the Duret family, passing down via inheritance, until it was sold in New York on 25 May 1983.
• Dutch men-o'-war and other shipping in a calm (created by Willem van de Velde the Younger, nominated by Alborzagros) Dutch men-o'-war and other shipping in a calm, c. 1665 by Willem van de Velde the Younger. Most of Van de Velde's finest works represent views off the coast of Holland and include Dutch shipping. His best productions are delicate, spirited, and finished in handling, and correct in the drawing of the vessels and their rigging. The numerous figures are tellingly introduced, and the artist is successful in his renderings of the sea, whether in calm or storm. The ships are portrayed with almost photographic accuracy, and are the most precise guides available to the appearance of 17th-century ships.
• Yacine Brahimi (created by Clément Bucco-Lechat, nominated by Chris Woodrich) Yacine Brahimi (right) attacking against Taron Voskanyan of Armenia. Brahimi Arabic: ياسين إبراهيمي is an Algerian professional footballer who plays for Portuguese club Porto and the Algeria national team. Brahimi started his career with various clubs in the Île-de-France. On 22 July 2014, FC Porto announced the signing of Brahimi from Granada CF for a fee of €6.5 million. Brahimi was voted the 2014 BBC African Footballer of the Year.
• Battle of Scheveningen (created by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten, nominated by Alborzagros ) Slag bij Ter Heijde, by the Dutch artist Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten, was painted between 1653 and 1666, and depicts the sea battle of Scheveningen. After their victory at the Battle of the Gabbard in June 1653, the English fleet of 120 ships under General at Sea George Monck blockaded the Dutch coast, capturing many merchant vessels. The Dutch economy began to collapse immediately, with mass unemployment and even starvation. On 24 July (3 August Gregorian calendar), Dutch Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp put to sea in the Brederode with a fleet of 100 ships to lift the blockade at the island of Texel, where Vice-Admiral Witte de With's 27 ships were trapped by the English. On 8 August, the English sighted Tromp and pursued to the south, sinking two Dutch ships before dark. However, de With managed to slip out and rendezvous the next day with Tromp off Scheveningen, after Tromp had positioned his ships north of the English fleet. In the morning of 31 July, the Dutch gained an advantage from the weather and attacked. The ensuing battle was ferocious, with the fleets moving through each other four times. Tromp was killed early in the fight by a sharpshooter. His death was kept secret to keep up the morale of the Dutch. There was extensive damage on both sides, and some of the Dutch ships retreated to the north; the English ships were too damaged to maintain the blockade. Both sides claimed victory; the Dutch as the blockade was lifted, the English because the Dutch had fled.
• Perseus and Andromeda (created by Lord Frederic Leighton, nominated by Hafspajen) This work depicts a bonkoid scene from Greek mythology where the hero Perseus rescues Andromeda from the clutches of a sea monster ("Release The Kraken!"). Here, Perseus is astride the winged horse Pegasus, the sun forming a halo around the hero. Lord Leighton being Lord Leighton and not Blair Leighton, the naked Andromeda is front and center, because you always want to wear your costume d'anniversaire when you're about to be devoured by a sea monster. Blair would have put several dismembered bodies in the foreground, because reasons.
• Baturraden (created and nominated by Chris Woodrich) An overview of the Baturraden tourist resort, on the slopes of Mount Slamet in Banyumas Regency. Baturraden is located in Central Java, at about 640 metres (2,100 ft) above sea level. The area is some 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from the volcano's crater; this has led to the number of visitors decreasing when the volcano is active. The name Baturraden is derived from the Javanese words Batur ("manservant") and Raden ("nobleman/noblewoman"). According to local legend, the young daughter of a local king fell in love with a young stablehand. The two furtively had a furtive relationship before ultimately eloping (furtively) without getting their parents' blessings. Shortly after their first child was born, the noblewoman's father marched on their home with his army and demanded that she return home. When she refused, the king had the stableman stabbed with a kris. The noblewoman, in despair, took the kris from her husband's body and killed herself.
• Yosemite National Park (created by David Iliff, nominated by Alborzagros) View from Glacier Point looking towards Half Dome. Left to right: Tenaya Canyon, Half Dome, Liberty Cap, Little Yosemite Valley, Vernal Fall and Nevada Fall. Glacier Point is above Yosemite Valley, in California, USA. It is located on the south wall of Yosemite Valley at an elevation of 7,214 feet (2,199 m), 3,200 feet (980 m) above Curry Village. In springtime, this cliff face is covered with dozens of freshets and tiny waterfalls from the snowmelt, the largest being Staircase Falls.
• Papilio demodocus larva (created by William Warby, nominated by Alborzagros) The Citrus swallowtail caterpillar (Papilio demodocus) is a large swallowtail butterfly common to sub-Saharan Africa; this photo was taken at Stratford Butterfly Farm. This species primarily mates via the lek system, in which there are aggregations of males on small mating territories. When the female reaches the lek, she changes her behavior so that she helps the males to detect her by performing a long and obvious circular flight. "Waiter, waiter, there's a caterpillar on my salad!" "Don't worry, sir, there will be no extra charge."
• The Trinity and Mystic Pietà (created by Hans Baldung, nominated by SchroCat) The painting shows God supporting his son, with the Holy Spirit above them, represented by a dove; the holy trinity are joined by the weeping figures of St. John and the Virgin Mary. While God supporting his crucified son was a relatively popular artistic subject in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, it is fairly rare outside that time, and this is a good example of it; the Holy Spirit, in his traditional guise of a dove, completes the holy trinity of the title. The presence of the grieving Virgin Mary (along with St. John) provides the pietà part of the name.

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  "What's the forecast?" asks Johnny. "Your shipping forecast calls for smooth sailing today", says Willem van de Velde.
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  ...Well, those forecasts are never 100% accurate. Scheveningen happens.
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  WPPilot offers him a lift to Hollister Municipal Airport..
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  ...from where he reaches home by taking the train from the longest railway platform in the world. (Which is strange, given it's on another continent to the airport. But don't question us.)

Good articles

Apart from these featured contents, thirty-one good articles were promoted this week.

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2015 Malaysian Grand Prix Abby Martin Abu'l-Aswar Shavur ibn Fadl Acton Town tube station Albany Highway Banjo-Tooie The Boat Race 1829 The Boat Races 2015 Cross Road Blues Damselfly Dunster Butter Cross English language Extinction (Star Trek: Enterprise) Govindudu Andarivadele Guatemalan Revolution Hrabri-class submarine Jama Masjid, Delhi The Last of Us M-10 (Michigan highway) Nirmala (novel) Nuremberg Laws Paul and Virginia (1910 film) Russian cruiser Bayan (1900) Sad Wings of Destiny Saido Berahino Sleight of hand Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Surb Karapet Monastery Taunton by-election, 1754 Temple of Garni Vera Katz (sculpture)

2015-04-29

Bruce, Nessie, and genocide

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By Milowent

Though the continued predominance of movies, TV, and sports noted in last week's report largely continues, three additional topics joined the Top 10 this week. Bruce Jenner's long-awaited personal announcement that he considers himself a trans woman was made in a highly publicized American television interview on April 24, and easily made his article #2 on this week's report. The Loch Ness Monster was the subject of a Google Doodle celebrating the 81st anniversary of the iconic hoaxed photograph of the legendary beast, putting Nessie on this Report for the first time. And much more sobering, but also in the Report for the first time, is the Armenian Genocide (#10), which commenced 100 years ago this week. Farther down the list on the Top 25, it is worth noting that Adolf Hitler (#23), who famously asked who remembered the Armenian Genocide, also appears in the Top 25 for the first time. While World War II related topics often make the charts, for some reason Hitler himself has not since the Top 25's debut in January 2013.

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

For the week of April 19 to 25, 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Avengers: Age of Ultron		1,725,099		Up from #16 and 541,147 views last week, the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premiered in Hollywood on April 13. In any other year, the sequel to the billion-grossing Avengers would be the film to beat at the box office, but with the success of Furious 7, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ahead, no one is taking bets on who will come out on top. The film opens in wide release on May 1.
2	Bruce Jenner		1,606,878		The former track and field Olympian and current honorary Kardashian got into the news this week. Jenner previously appeared on the Top 25 for two weeks in February, but his article would not include what the tabloids were reporting until Jenner said it himself, which he did in an April 24 interview on American television with Diane Saywer – that he is a trans woman. His gender transition will be the subject of an eight-part documentary series starting July 2015.
3	420 (cannabis culture)		1,240,611		This curious "holiday", which falls on April 20 (for obvious reasons), refers to the mysterious number 420 and its long link to marijuana usage. While it may not quite be to cannabis what Oktoberfest is to beer, it no doubt aspires to be. And this year it placed at #3 for the week, up from #5 last year. And, for the very obvious joke, we note the article is far too laid back to seek to improve any further from Start Class.
4	Furious 7		966,738		Down from #2 last week and 1.36 million views, but still going strong. "Fast and furious" pretty much sums up the seventh installment of this long-running series. Its worldwide gross as of April 26 is now $1.322 billion. It has also become the third film in history to earn over $1 billion in "overseas" sales, after Avatar and Titanic.
5	Daredevil (TV series)		774,553		The first of four projects started as part of a deal between Marvel Studios and Netflix, this TV series was released in its entirety on the service on April 10. It's impossible to gauge the public response to this ("ratings" don't really have meaning when applied to Netflix shows) but the critical response has been ecstatic (Rotten Tomatoes currently rates it at 97%) and if its Wikipedia position is anything to go by, the public appear to have taken to it too. Down from #1 and 1.49 million views last week.
6	Loch Ness Monster		764,390		A Google Doodle on April 21 celebrated the 81st anniversary of the 1934 hoaxed "Surgeon's Photograph" of the legendary Scottish lake monster. Google has also helpfully put Loch Ness on Street View so you can search for her yourself. A review of the past three weeks of the WP:5000 data shows that Nessie is normally submerged below our Top 5000 weekly articles. This is her debut in the Top 25.
7	Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao		745,655		This long-anticipated (the article was created in July 2013!) boxing match between Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (pictured) and Manny Pacquiao, the latest fight to be dubbed the Fight of the Century, will be held on May 2 in Las Vegas.
8	Paul Walker		692,364		Furious 7 will be the last, and definitely biggest, film of Paul Walker's career, and was completed despite his tragic death midway through production. How much of the film's current record grosses was in memoriam to a fallen star is impossible to say.
9	Manny Pacquiao		637,686		See #7. And Mr. Mayweather is #11.
10	Armenian Genocide		631,960		The 100th anniversary of the start of the systematic killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman government probably generated more concentrated press coverage of this tragic event than ever seen before. Much of the current political debate focuses on the refusal of Turkey, and others, to recognize the term "genocide" as an accurate description for the event.

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2015-04-29

Military history, cricket, and Australia targeted in Wikipedia articles' popularity vs. quality; how copyright damages economy

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By Niklas Laxström, Federico Leva, Masssly, Gamaliel and Piotr Konieczny

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

Popularity does not breed quality (and vice versa)

This paper^[1] provides evidence that quality of an article is not a simple function of its popularity, or, in the words of the authors, that there is "extensive misalignment between production and consumption" in peer communities such as Wikipedia. As the author notes, reader demand for some topics (e.g. LGBT topics or pages about countries) is poorly satisfied, whereas there is over-abundance of quality on topics of comparatively little interest, such as military history.

Rank	Popular and underdeveloped topics	High-quality, not popular topics
1	Countries	Cricket
2	Pop music	Tropical cyclones
3	Internet	Middle Ages
4	Comedy	Politics
5	Technology	Fungi
6	Religion	Birds
7	Science fiction	Military history
8	Rock music	Ships
9	Psychology	England
10	LGBT studies	Australia

The authors arrived at this conclusion by comparing data on page views to articles on English, French, Russian, and Portuguese Wikipedias to their respective Wikipedia:Assessment (and like) quality ratings. The authors note that at most 10% of Wikipedia articles are well correlated with regards to their quality and popularity; in turn over 50% of high quality articles concern topics of relatively little demand (as measured by their page views). The authors estimate that about half of the page views on Wikipedia – billions each month – are directed towards articles that should be of better quality, if it was just their popularity that would translate directly into quality. The authors identify 4,135 articles that are of high interest but poor quality, and suggest that the Wikipedia community may want to focus on improving such topics. Among specific examples of extremes are articles with poor quality (start class) and high number of views such as wedding (1k views each day) or cisgender (2.5k views each day). For examples of topics of high quality and little impact, well, one just needs to glance at a random topic in the Wikipedia:Featured articles – the authors use the example of 10 Featured Articles about the members of the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (itself a Good Article; 30 views per day). Interestingly, based on their study of WikiProjects, popularity and quality, the authors find that contrary to some popular claims, pop culture topics are also among those that are underdeveloped. The authors also note that even within WikiProjects, the labor is not efficiently organized: for example, within the topic of military history, there are numerous featured articles about individual naval ships, but the topics of broader and more popular interests, such as about NATO, are less well attended to. In conclusion, the authors encourage the Wikipedia community to focus on such topics, and to recruit participants for improvement drives using tools such as User:SuggestBot.

Excessive copyright terms proven to be a cost for society, via English Wikipedia images

Paul J. Heald and his coauthors at the University of Glasgow continued their extremely valuable studies of the public domain, publishing "The Valuation of Unprotected Works".^[2] The study finds that "massive social harm was done by the most recent copyright term extension that has prevented millions of works from falling into the public domain since 1998" which "provides strong justification for the enactment of orphan works legislation."

Context

In recent years, authorities have started acknowledging possible errors in copyright legislation of the past, which would have been prevented by an evidence-based approach. Heald mentions the Hargreaves Report (2011), endorsed by the UK's IP office, but other examples can be found in World Intellectual Property Organization reports. This awakening corresponds to the work by researchers and think tanks to prove the importance of public domain and certain damages of copyright.^{[supp 1]}

The importance of evidence-based legislation can't be overstated, especially in the current process of EU copyright revision.

As Heald notes, past copyright policy has relied on a number of incorrect assumptions, in short:

• that private value equates with social welfare; that is, any payment associated to copyright makes society richer;
• that only private value is generated by sales under copyright monopoly;
• that absence of copyright reduces both distribution and associated payments.

Recent studies, some of which are mentioned in this paper (Pollock, Waldfogel, Heald), have instead found strong indicators that:

• consumer surplus (i.e. amounts saved by consumers) can be higher and hence contribute more to social welfare;
• absence of copyright may produce higher private value as well;
• works under traditional copyright, especially given the phenomenon of orphan works, don't manage to cover the entire market, resulting in a loss of knowledge distribution as well as of potential sales.

In short, it seems that "the public is better off when a work becomes freely available", insofar as copyright has been "robust enough to stimulate the creation of the work in the first place" and that a work "must remain available to the public after it falls into the public domain".

Findings

However, it is impossible to measure the value of knowledge acquired by society and, even considering the mere monetary value, it is impossible to measure transactions which did not happen. The English Wikipedia is used by the authors as dataset because its history is open to inspection and its content is unencumbered by copyright payments, so every "transaction" is public.

In particular, the study measures what would be the cost of gratis images not being available for use on English Wikipedia articles, as a proxy of (i) the consumer surplus generated by those images, (ii) their private value, and (iii) their contribution to social welfare. If a positive value is found, it is proved that a more restrictive copyright would be harmful, and we can reasonably infer that reducing copyright restrictions would make society richer.

The calculation is done in three passages.

1. 362 authors of New York Times bestsellers of 1895–1969 are considered. Their English Wikipedia articles are checked for inclusion of portraits and copyright status thereof; the increase in page views caused by the presence of the image is calculated. To depurate other factors, authors are compared in "matched pairs" of similar popularity as suggested by Amazon review or pageviews in mid 2009. Only the lowest scoring months are considered, the general increase in pageviews is discounted, etc.
   • The first proxy considered is how much it would cost to buy the images from traditional image sellers, in the hypothetical (and absurd) case that article authors were allowed to. Such an image typically costs around US$100 even if it is in the public domain or identical to the one used by our articles.
   • The second proxy is how much the added pageviews are worth in terms of potential advertising revenue ($0.53 cents/view, according to [1]).
2. The values are then validated on a different dataset, some hundreds composers and lyricists.
3. The amounts are then expanded proportionally to all English Wikipedia articles by considering images and pageviews of a sample of 300 articles.

Clearly, the number of inferences is great, but the authors believe the findings to be robust. The pageview increase, depending on the method, was 6%, 17% or 19%, and at any rate positive. Authors with most images were those died before 1880, an outcome which has no possible technological reason nor any welfare justification: it's clearly a distortion produced by copyright.

For those fond of price tags, the English Wikipedia images were esteemed to be worth about $30,000/year for those 362 writers, or about $30m in hypothetical advertising revenue for English Wikipedia, or $200m–230m in hypothetical costs of image purchase.

At any rate, this reviewer thinks that the positive impact of the lack of copyright royalties is proven and confirms the authors' thesis. It is quite challenging to extend the finding to the whole English Wikipedia, all Wikimedia projects, the entire free knowledge landscape and finally the overall cultural works market; and even more fragile to put a price tag on it. However, this kind of one-number communication device is widely used to explain the impact of legislation and numbers traditionally used by legislators are way more fragile than this. Moreover, the study makes it possible to prove a positive impact on important literature authors and their life, i.e. their reputation, which is supposed to be the aim of copyright laws, while financial transactions are only means.

Methodological nitpicks

There are several possible observations to be made about details of the study.

• Only few hundreds articles were considered, and only on the English Wikipedia. Measuring pageviews is not explained in detail, but it clearly relied on stats.grok.se, on whose limitations see the stats.grok.se FAQ and m:Research:Page view.
• Special:Random is not able to produce a representative set of the English Wikipedia, let alone of the whole Wikipedia. In fact, it relies on a pseudo-random method which is not very random. (A more random method, based on ElasticSearch, was briefly enabled but then disabled for performance reasons.)
• The author uses an artificial definition of "public domain" to match the cases which the study was able to measure, i.e. gratis images. Only 67% of the images were in the public domain while 13% were in fair use and 19% released in some way by the author. As for the releases by the authors, all cases are confusingly conflated: in particular "a Creative Commons" and "unprotected" are two incorrect terms used, which fail to recognise that CC images are copyrighted works and that not all CC images are free cultural works. This mix makes it hard to extend the results to the public domain proper, i.e. the works without any copyright protection, as well as to Wikimedia projects other than the English Wikipedia where fair use is less common. This may not affect the result on the welfare impact for the English Wikipedia but has a higher impact on the dates: namely, the fact that people who died before 2000 have less images may just mean that the English Wikipedia rules allowed fair use more for them because Wikipedia photographers would not be able to shoot photos themselves.
• Again on terminology, it is disappointing that Wikipedia's article authors are called "page builders", as if they were mechanical workers (with all due respect for mechanical workers). There is no reason to reserve the term "authors" to the professional writers who are the subjects of those articles. An artificial restriction of the pool of people who can assert to be "authors" is one of the main propaganda tools of the "pro-copyright" lobby.

Briefly

• "Automatic text summarization of Wikipedia articles":^[3] The authors built neural networks using different features to pick sentences to summarize (English?) Wikipedia articles. They compared their results to Microsoft Word 2007 and found out results are very different.

• Relationship between Google searches and Wikipedia edits:^[4] A student course paper developed a model to find a correlation between the number of searches on Google resulting from an increased public interest in a subject, and the number of edits made to that subject’s corresponding Wikipedia page. Google Trends data from 2012 for “Barack Obama”, “Google“ and “Mathematics” was compared with Wikipedia page revisions of the corresponding articles within the same period. Instead of the actual data, which was unavailable, the paper applied approximation techniques to estimate the number of Google searches and the number of Wikipedia edits during a given period. Except for a few instances of spikes matching up, no clear correlation between Google searches and Wikipedia edits was found. Similar results were observed when more graphs were generated for different topics. The model made no provision for disproving the existence of a correlation. These limitations render the results of the study still inconclusive.
• How much of the Amazon rainforest would it take to print out Wikipedia?:^[5] Two students at the University of Leicester have produced a thought-provoking mathematical illustration of the scope of the Internet by calculating how much of the Amazon rainforest would be consumed if the entire Internet were printed on standard A4-size sheets of paper. Their conclusion is about 2% for the entire Internet, and 2.1 × 10⁻⁶% for the English Wikipedia, the size of which they used to extrapolate the size of the rest of the Internet. Their calculations are based on a random sample of only ten pages, the average size of which they multiplied by the number of Wikipedia articles, which at the time was 4.7 million. Given the wealth of quantitative data available about Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia articles vastly range in size from a sentence or two up to the 784K byte article List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States, perhaps more accurate estimates could have been made.
• Perceptions of bot services: This study^[6] looked at how Wikipedians perceive bots, to enhance our understanding of the relationship between human and bot editors. The authors find that the bots are perceived as either "servants" or "policemen". Overall, the bots are well accepted by the community, a factor the authors attribute to the fact that most bots are clearly labelled as and seen as extensions of human actors (tools used by advanced Wikipedians). The authors nonetheless observe that where bots make large number of minor edits, they are most likely to attract criticism. Still, the necessity for such labor, maintaining categories, templates and such, is, according to actors, a widely recognized and accepted element of Wikipedia's life.

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.

• "P2Pedia: a peer-to-peer wiki for decentralized collaboration"^[7] (screencast demo; see also User:HaeB/Timeline_of_distributed_Wikipedia_proposals)
• '"Distributed wikis: a survey"^[8] From the abstract: "We identify three classes of distributed wiki systems, each using a different collaboration model and distribution scheme for its pages: highly available wikis, decentralized social wikis and federated wikis."
• "Detection speculations using active learning" ("Deteccion de Especulaciones utilizando Active Learning")^[9](student thesis in Spanish, about the detection of weasel words on the English Wikipedia)

References

1. ^ Morten Warncke-Wang; Vivek Ranjan; Loren Terveen & Brent Hecht (2015). "Misalignment Between Supply and Demand of Quality Content in Peer Production Communities" (PDF). Pre-print PDF, to appear in the Proceedings of the The 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM).
2. ^ Heald, Paul J. and Erickson, Kris and Kretschmer, Martin, "The Valuation of Unprotected Works: A Case Study of Public Domain Photographs on Wikipedia" (February 4, 2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2560572 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2560572
3. ^ Hingu, Dharmendra; Shah, Deep; Udmale, Sandeep S. (January 2015). "Automatic text summarization of Wikipedia articles". 2015 International Conference on Communication, Information Computing Technology (ICCICT). 2015 International Conference on Communication, Information Computing Technology (ICCICT). doi:10.1109/ICCICT.2015.7045732.
4. ^ Claire, Charron (2014). "Analysing Trends Between US Google Searches and English Wikipedia Page Edits" (PDF). Retrieved 26 April 2015. ((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
5. ^ Harwood, George; Walker, Evangeline (2015). "How Much of the Amazon Would it Take to Print the Internet?". Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics. Centre for Interdisciplinary Science, University of Leicester. 4.
6. ^ Clément, Maxime; Guitton, Matthieu J. (September 2015). "Interacting with bots online: Users' reactions to actions of automated programs in Wikipedia". Computers in Human Behavior. 50: 66–75. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.03.078. ISSN 0747-5632.
7. ^ Davoust, Alan; Alexander Craig; Babak Esfandiari; Vincent Kazmierski (2014-10-01). "P2Pedia: a peer-to-peer wiki for decentralized collaboration". Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. 27 (11): 2778–2795. doi:10.1002/cpe.3420. ISSN 1532-0634. S2CID 35114840.
8. ^ Davoust, Alan; Hala Skaf-Molli; Pascal Molli; Babak Esfandiari; Khaled Aslan (2014-11-01). "Distributed wikis: a survey" (PDF). Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. 27 (11): –. doi:10.1002/cpe.3439. ISSN 1532-0634. S2CID 45142475.
9. ^ Benjamín Machíın Serna: "Deteccion de Especulaciones utilizando Active Learning". Student thesis, Universidad de la República – Uruguay, 2013 PDF)

Supplementary references and notes:

1. ^ The most important of these initiatives is probably the 2009 Public Domain Manifesto. Some examples in the context of orphan works: m:Italian cultural heritage on the Wikimedia projects#Advocating for the public domain bibliography commented in an Italian paper by this reviewer. http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.6675

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2015-04-29

VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates

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By Tech Ambassadors

The following content has been republished as-is from the Tech News weekly report.

April 27, 2015

Recent changes

All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [2] [3]

You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [4]

There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [5]

You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [6]

April 20, 2015

Recent changes

There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [7]

VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [8]

You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [9]

If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [10]

Problems

There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [11]

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).

Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [12] [13] [14]

If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [15]

You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [16]

Meetings

You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [17] [18]

April 13, 2015

Recent changes

You can read the latest news about VisualEditor.

You can now use the new translation tool on 22 Wikipedias. You now see the tool the first time you create a new page. [19]

The list of bad user names on your wiki no longer works. The global list replaces it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [20] [21]

Problems

Some wikis had issues on Wednesday. [22] [23]

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).

Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [24] [25]

All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [26]

Meetings

You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

April 6, 2015

Recent changes

You can join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [27]

You can read the last monthly report. In the future you can read team reports every three months. You can see current work on the roadmap. [28] [29]

The number of articles in Special:Statistics is now updated once a month. [30]

You can use a new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. Using the app, you can now share a fact with your friends. [31]

Problems

The import tool was broken for a few days. Imports didn't add log entries. You can delete and import pages again if necessary. [32]

Labs was broken several times this week. [33] [34] [35] [36]

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).

You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [37]

Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [38] [39]

You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [40]

Meetings

You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [41]

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