Lunar project; steering group formed to search for next executive director
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Mixed reactions to Wikipedia's lunar time-capsule
It looks like a joke; it smells like a joke; but it's not a joke. Since late on Thursday 21 April, editors have been confronted with a large banner at the top of Wikipedia pages: "Let's take Wikipedia to the Moon!". Click and you arrive on a page at Meta that explains how a team called Part-Time Scientists in Berlin plans to send a custom-built rover nearly 400,000 kilometres to the Moon next year, where it will crawl at least 500 metres across the lunar landscape and transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth. The rover is being developed jointly by Part-Time Scientists and the German auto manufacturer Audi, with a verified launch contract required by the end of this year and the mission planned for the last quarter of 2017. Under an arrangement with the German Wikimedia chapter, the rover will carry a 20-gigabyte disk of information from Wikipedia—an other-worldly time-capsule, as it were, planted by a simian species about 4.5 billion years after its planet formed.
It's all part of the Google Lunar X Prize challenge, organised by the non-profit X Prize Foundation, which designs and manages public competitions to encourage technological developments for the public good. The Lunar X Prize is open to any private team in the world, with a first prize of US$20M, second prize of $5M, and a further $5M in other prizes. The English Wikipedia's article on the Prize lists 28 teams whose craft status is under development, of which two, from the US and Israel, already have their launch under contract. However, only five teams are now eligible to compete in the competition, including the Part-Time Scientists–Audi bid, which has already been awarded smaller prizes for mobility and imaging.
The X Prize official website links to a mini-documentary about the participation of the Part-Time Scientists (6 min, 34 s). Shortly after the documentary begins, team leader Robert Böhme announces: "I'm totally unqualified for doing any kind of Moon missions, but you know, that doesn't keep me from doing it." The team comprises a game developer, an electronics specialist / space geek, a maker of dentistry tools, and Arnon, "the brain of our team". One of their scientific objectives is to visit a location on the Moon in which materials have been discarded from earlier visits up to 40 years ago and since exposed to extreme conditions. What lasts, what works, and what doesn't?
The team was able to benefit from downloading the huge amount of scientific data that NASA has made available on its website. This resonates with the driving force behind the project, which Böhme says is "the free exchange of information, the willingness to share", which rests on the ability of a group of disparate engineers and scientists to come together and collaborate across disciplinary boundaries to solve problems. "Part-Time Scientists would not exist without open source", he says.
A technical and logistical issue is that the 20-gigabyte limit gives barely enough space to store one language Wikipedia among the almost 300 Wikipedias. Wikimedia Germany has approached this by throwing open the issue for community discussion as to how to ration the information. There are many possible scenarios, some of them outlined on a dedicated and rather complicated page that will itself present challenges in extracting a cohesive whole.
Thus far, input on the general talkpage has been mixed. Occasional comments show enthusiasm; a few editors have pointed to a public-relations value that could attract more participants in WMF projects; and there has been some debate about the type of disk and its capacity, and the reliability of storage. However, there are numerous negative comments, from the sarcastic to the vitriolic, such as:
- "I don't care how smart [the aliens who find it] are; I just want to tell them about Homestuck."
- "Who on the moon needs a copy of the Wikipedia? Invest your time & energy better in quality assurance of the existing articles."
- "Let's concentrate to work on earth and for the people living here! Stop this madness as fast as possible."
- "... this is a bad idea. It's a publicity stunt, one that makes no sense ..."
- "Don't we litter enough on our own planet?"
- "Perhaps I should start a campaign to send Jimbo Wales into space"
- "Waste of time and waste of money"
- "it is just nonsense"
- "'Let's take Wikipedia to the moon' should not be on every fucking page at Wikipedia ..."
- "put a Wikipedia-dump on a SD-card and throw it into your garden. It [is] more likely to be found"
- "Idea: Send to the moon articles about ... garage bands, bus stops in the Czech republic, asteroids orbiting Pluto and a few other 'select' articles. And leave them there."
- "... this is one of the [most] ridiculous ideas I have ever heard of. Why waste so much of time and effort?"
- "It's so annoying every time I open WP to have to look at this stupid publicity stunt."
- "Why are we doing this?!!!!"
- "It is a ridiculous, stupid, stupid, idea."
- "This is dumb. ... sending a copy of Wikipedia to the moon, where it will be quickly forgotten and lie undisturbed until the sun becomes a red giant, is dumb. Having a politically correct argument about which languages to include is even dumber. Get a life."
Martin Rulsch (DerHexer) is project manager for digital volunteering at Wikimedia Germany. The Signpost asked him to respond to some of these comments. "There's a huge interest in the project. I've never seen a front page translated so quickly into 50 languages like this one, and on the Phase 1 page there are already many suggestions as to how to select the information." The endeavour has symbolic power on an international scale, he said, and represents a major opportunity to promoting participation in Wikipedia, especially when community-driven selection of information to upload has been finalised; and when the mission is launched we expect attention from the mainstream media. "It's the kind of event that can capture the imagination of anyone from professors to schoolkids who might be potential editors." (Already the announcement has prompted many posts to Hacker News.) According to Rulsch, there will also be significant outreach to potential new editors when it comes to improving related articles on the Wikipedias.
On the objections to the banners, he said that they are visible only to Wikipedians, only for just over two more days, and are easy to click off; without banners, it would be difficult to garner community input to important projects. "The project is quite unlike any other ever undertaken by the Wikimedia community, and deciding on the selection is contrary to the usual wiki way and challenging for all of us; that's why we need the global community involved."
The discussion phase will finish on 3 June, followed by a community vote from 10 June on what should be included, a working phase from 1 July, and a wrap-up phase from 31 October. The chapter expects to hand over the product on 5 December, International Volunteers' Day. Editors from all language groups are encouraged to participate in the process.
WMF forms steering group for new ED
Back on Earth, trustee Alice Wiegand announced on the Wikimedia mailing list the first official move towards filling the permanent position of executive director that was recently vacated when Lila Tretikov resigned (with Katherine Maher subsequently taking up the interim ED position):
the Board has created a steering group tasked with crafting the actual job description, planning and conducting the search, and finding ways to include community perspectives. This steering group will be regularly consulting with the Board throughout the search process.
Please see the ED transition team page on Meta to find more information about the steering group, and get the latest updates. We have also included three questions on the participation page to help us start forming a better understanding of the community’s various opinions and expectations.
The voting members of the group are:
- Alice Wiegand (Board’s vice chair, head of ED search steering group)
- Kelly Battles (Board member, audit committee chair)
- Guy Kawasaki (Board member, human resources committee chair)
- Dariusz Jemielniak (Board member, Board governance committee chair)
- Katie Horn (staff member, selected by staff)
- Lisa Gruwell (staff member, leadership team, selected by the Board)
Among the group's tasks will be to identify, evaluate, and select candidates for approval by the Board; engage consultants or a search firm to support the search; consult with the community and collect their input; determine the job description after consultation with the Board; and to recruit additional non-voting members as appropriate.
The group is posing three questions for community input:
- What are the three most important competencies and skills required to lead the Foundation?
- Will the right candidate come from a tech company, a media company, an NGO, open source, GLAM, research, or educational institution?
- What are three pitfalls we should avoid?
Editor input is welcome on that page.
Knowledge Engine and the Wales–Heilman emails
The Wikimedia Foundation board's communications in the wake of the removal of the community-selected trustee James Heilman have consisted mainly of silence. Jimmy Wales has been the most notable exception, having made strongly worded statements along with promises to provide further information – promises that have remained unfulfilled.
The "gaslighting" email
In recent weeks, onwiki debates on the Knowledge Engine and Heilman's dismissal have largely died down. The most recent substantial discussion took place three weeks ago on Wales' talk page, when Wales set out to explain certain comments he had made in a February 29 email sent to Heilman and Pete Forsyth, shortly after the resignation of executive director Lila Tretikov.
As Signpost readers will recall, Forsyth took the controversial decision to forward Wales' mail to the Wikimedia-l mailing list. Forsyth felt it could provide "important insight into the dynamics surrounding Heilman's dismissal". In the ensuing debate, a number of people pronounced themselves horrified by the tone and content of Wales' email, likening it to "gaslighting" (a form of mental abuse). Others criticised Forsyth for his decision to publish it.
WMF strategy consultant brings background in crisis reputation management; Team behind popular WMF software put "on pause"
6 February 2017
Knowledge Engine and the Wales–Heilman emails
24 April 2016
[UPDATED] WMF in limbo as decision on Tretikov nears
24 February 2016
Search and destroy: the Knowledge Engine and the undoing of Lila Tretikov
17 February 2016
New internal documents raise questions about the origins of the Knowledge Engine
10 February 2016
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An in-depth look at the newly revealed documents |
In his email, Wales cast a string of aspersions on Heilman's character before taking particular issue with a February 24 post by Heilman in a Wikipedia Weekly Facebook discussion of the Knowledge Engine project.
The Facebook discussion
Heilman's Facebook comment had a context. In the discussion (accessible only to logged-in Facebook users), Liam Wyatt said he was unsure that Wales could be characterised "as having been 'kept in the dark'" about the Knowledge Engine project. "James has said that the board as a whole was presented with these plans – that it was described as 'a moonshot' and that they were presented with cost estimates in the tens-of-millions," Wyatt added, pinging Heilman in his post. Heilman then replied minutes later that he had indeed asked Board members in October whether they understood "that we were building a 'search engine' as before Oct I did not realize we were. JW said that he understood this all along and it was something we needed to do."
The post appears to have angered Wales. In his email, he wrote to Heilman:
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just no way to get that from what I said – Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
Attentive readers will note that the phrase "Google-competing search engine" appears nowhere in Heilman's post.[1] Heilman was responding to a post that said there was a search engine project that the board was told would cost tens of millions of dollars.
Selective quoting
When Peter Damian challenged Wales to dig up the exact quote, Wales produced it, and to back up his point published excerpts from the October email conversation, with selected quotes from Heilman and himself.
Heilman asserted that Wales' summary of the exchange was "far from complete", and "not an accurate representation of the overall discussion". He asked Wales whether he would have any objection to the complete exchange being posted, so the parts Wales had quoted could be seen in context.
Wales raised no such objection, and the full exchange, as made available to the Signpost by Heilman, is published below. It shows that the accusations Wales levelled at Heilman for his Facebook post were groundless and contrived. In the actual conversation, Wales said to Heilman that –
- the ambitious vision of a search engine project as presented to the Knight Foundation, offering "a unique search experience that will go beyond what Google and Bing are already providing their users", corresponds exactly to what was approved by the board;
- he is "broadly supportive" of that strategic vision;
- the scope of the project goes well beyond a Wikimedia-internal search function;
- it includes building a natural-language question answering system akin to Google's Knowledge Graph and answer boxes;
- the project is motivated by a desire to compete with Google: "users don't come to us", Wales said, because "Google just tells the answers";
- the project is a very major financial investment for the Foundation (Wales later confirmed onwiki that it was in the ballpark of $35 million, spread out over several years).
At the same time, Wales omitted to mention in his summary the concerns put forward by Heilman about the cost and scope of this long-term project, and the WMF's qualifications for undertaking it.
One way to look at this situation is that Wales has essentially been launching vigorous attacks on a strawman – the idea that the Foundation might be intending to build a search engine that does all the things Google does: crawling and indexing everything from books, journals and newspapers to social media sites, online shops and cinema schedules. But his apparent single-mindedness in pursuing this strawman cannot make up for the fact that this is not something Heilman has ever claimed. What Heilman did claim was that the Foundation was planning to build a search engine that would cost tens of millions of dollars. In that, he was undoubtedly correct.
The complete October email exchange
The passages Wales quoted on his talkpage are in green. Salient parts Wales omitted from his summary are in bold red.
James Heilman, Oct. 5
Hey Jimmy
Did you realize that we have been developing a search engine for about a year in an effort to compete with Google? Best
Jimmy Wales, Oct 6
I wouldn't have described it in that way, nor do I think the Foundation would, but yes, I'm aware of work in the area of improving search and discovery across all our properties.
James Heilman, Oct. 6
This document from Aug 5, 2015 states:
- "The foundation and its staff have a track record of success and a strong vision of what a search engine can do when it has the right principles, and the right people, firmly behind it."
- "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia will be the Internet's first transparent search engine, and the first one originated by the Wikimedia Foundation."
The Sept 18, 2015 grant agreement states "the Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia, a system for discovery of reliable and trustworthy public information on the Internet" as the purpose.
The June 24th 2015 document show images of a Google like setup. While the June 30th document states "how is WMF going to build a unique search experience that will go beyond what Google and Bing are already providing their users?"
The plan appears to be for this search engine to go at www.wikipedia.org What else would you call what is being described? This is not a search tool for Wikimedia properties. It also appears to include Watson / Google graph type functionality
Jimmy Wales, Oct. 7
Yes, that sounds exactly like what Lila presented to the board for approval, and what was approved by the board.
This statement alone, omitted by Wales in his summary, seems ample justification for what Heilman wrote on Facebook. The exchange continued:
James Heilman, Oct. 10
Okay. I must say I am confused than, because Lila now denies that we are building a "search engine".
Yet from your perspective we were told that we were building the "Internet's first transparent search engine" and we approved that?
Jimmy Wales, Oct. 10
I'm not really sure what is causing your confusion here. Perhaps it is just the term "search engine" which in some contexts may mean "a website that one goes to as a destination in order to find things on the web, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo" and in other contexts can mean "software for searching through a set of documents and resources".
But I'm not really sure what your concern is...
Right now the page at www.wikipedia.org is pretty useless. There's no question it could be improved. Is your concern that if we improve it and it starts to look like a "search engine" in the first definition this could cause us problems?
Are you concerned that in due course we might expand beyond just internal search (across all our properties)?
Right now when I type "Queen Elizabeth II" I am taken to the article about her. I'm not told about any other resources we may have about her.
If I type a search term for which there is no Wikipedia entry, I'm taken to our wikipedia search results page – which is pretty bad.
Here's an example: search for 'how old is tom cruise?'
It returns 10 different articles, none of which are Tom Cruise!
When I search in Google – I'm just told the answer to the question. Google got this answer from us, I'm quite sure.
So, yes, this would include Google graph type of functionality. Why is that alarming to you?
James Heilman, Oct. 10
Yes so I think an open source knowledge engine like IBM's Watson and an open source search engine are cool ideas but:
1) These things cost many hundreds of millions to build
2) We have no specific expertise in building them
3) This shift in strategy was done with little / no community consultation
4) What we as a board were told differs from what we are telling potential funders
So I do not believe we can accomplish what we are promising. And a massive effort on this will leave other more important projects uncompleted.
Additionally I believe the lack of transparency around its development is places the WMF/community relationship at serious risk.
Jimmy Wales, Oct. 10
Ok – this sounds like a set of issues you should raise with the board.
Here is how I would personally answer these questions, but I'm just another board member, albeit broadly supportive of Lila's strategic vision.
First, it is true that one might spend hundreds of millions or billions on something like this, but it is not true that there can be no positive results for a reasonable amount of spending. I believe we can materially improve the search/discovery process amongst all our properties for a price that we can afford – and I believe that early work (financed by this grant) should be focused on scoping out an achievable set of things that can be done for various levels of spending – $10 million is well within what we can afford to do.
Second, we have no specific expertise in building them – that's not much of an objection, as we can hire people who do.
Third, I am always in favor of more community consultation. But I've been fighting very hard for a long time against the absurd notion that the community should vote on software. Voters in the community will not all be well-informed and a populist campaign can easily come to the wrong answer on technical matters. So this consultation needs to happen in a much more hands-on way – and it isn't cheap to do.
So, I agree that this is a serious question. For me, it's more of a question of what kind of consultation should happen and when. A commitment to explore a concept through an external grant doesn't strike me as the right point necessarily to engage in a full-scale consultation.
Fourth, I don't agree that there's a serious gulf between what we have been told and what funders are being told.
And then for your 'additionally' – I think this is a serious point , as with your 3rd point.
James Heilman, Oct. 10
Yes and I will be raising these concerns soon. Want to hear Lila's comments on Thursday first. In reply to some of your comments:
1) With respect to improving search, we have already done this per "zero results rate cut in half, from approximately 25% to approximately 12.5%." [1] Stating that zero results are at 33% as of 4 days ago is not correct. If improving internal search was *all* that is planned / promised there would not be an issue and we would be nearly done.
3) These are Wikimedia Movement resources and the WMF is simply a steward of the resources. It is disclosure in normal English of our strategy / goals that I am currently requesting rather than full scale consultation. Also typically those most involved in a conversation are also some of the most informed (half of our medical editors are health care providers for example).
With respect to software the community should definitely not have it forced upon them. In fact software development should be directed in large part by the users. Us not doing this has resulted in some of our largest problems and is currently why the relationship between the WMF / community is what it is.
Jimmy Wales, Oct. 11
Oh, I don't agree at all. "zero results rate" is a pretty rock bottom metric. Our (internal) search engine is awful, is contrary to user experience everywhere else on the web, and fails to take advantage of changing user expectations of what computers can do.
Imagine if we could return results from Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons / Wiktionary / Wikibooks / Wikivoyage in a beautiful presentation.
Imagine if we could handle a wide range of questions that are easy enough to do by using wikidata / data embedded in templates / textual analysis.
"How old is Tom Cruise?"
"Is Tom Cruise married?"
"How many children does Tom Cruise have?"
The reason this is relevant is that we are falling behind what users expect. 5 years ago, questions like that simple returned Wikipedia as the first result at Google. Now, Google just tells the answer and the users don't come to us.
--Jimbo
"Our entire fundraising future is at stake"
A comment Wales made in November 2015 in a three-way email discussion between Wales, Heilman and a WMF staffer sheds further light on his thinking. Wales responded as follows to the assertion that there clearly had been an attempt to fund a massive project to build a search engine that was then "scoped down to a $250k exploration for a fully developed plan":
In my opinion: There was and there is and there will be. I strongly support the effort, and I'm writing up a public blog post on that topic today. Our entire fundraising future is at stake.
No such blog post was ever published by Wales, to the Signpost's knowledge. But the Knowledge Engine grant agreement – originally withheld by the board, ostensibly because of "donor privacy" issues, and only released after the Signpost confirmed with the Knight Foundation that there were no privacy issues on the donor's side – is more suggestive of the notion that there was indeed a plan, one on which the Wikimedia Foundation's "entire fundraising future" hinged, according to Wales.
This is hard to reconcile with what Wales told the community in February:
There is no overarching master plan. There is a $250,000 grant to begin to explore ideas, with a very limited set of deliverables for phase one.
We see that when Heilman said in the above email conversation that this was "not a search tool for Wikimedia properties", Wales readily agreed, stressing the importance of answer engine functions in attracting users that today find their answers on Google. But to the community, Wales has been keen to convey the opposite impression, narrowly focusing on the project's first phase only:
- "The project presented to the board at the Wikimania board meeting in Mexico was about improving internal search and discovery, with some very reasonable and modest first steps outlined."
- "I don't think of improving internal search and discovery to be primarily about revenue and page views."
- "Perhaps you have a typo, or perhaps just a continued misunderstanding. It was clear to everyone (on the board) involved with the grant that this (the work to be funded by the grant) was just an internal search tool. No code, no architecture, no nothing other than a vague idea that maybe someday Wikipedia could also include other "non-commercial" results someday."
Wales specifically objected to the portrayal of the Knowledge Engine as something that would compete with Google. But in the exchange above, he himself twice emphasises that Wikipedia is failing to offer users the answers that Google is providing to them:
When I search in Google – I'm just told the answer to the question. Google got this answer from us, I'm quite sure. So, yes, this would include Google graph type of functionality. ...
Google just tells the answer and the users don't come to us.
Referring to the Knowledge Engine grant agreement, Wales says, "I don't agree that there's a serious gulf between what we have been told and what funders are being told." Yet what funders were told was that "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia will be the Internet's first transparent search engine, and the first one originated by the Wikimedia Foundation ... a system for discovery of reliable and trustworthy public information on the Internet ... a unique search experience that will go beyond what Google and Bing are already providing their users".
In the above email exchange, Wales also alludes to the possibility that "in due course", the Knowledge Engine project "might expand beyond just internal search (across all our properties)". In recent months, he has multiple times referred to the possibility that "non-WMF resources might be included in a revamped discovery experience" or that "some important scholarly/academic and open access resources could be crawled and indexed in some useful way relating to Wikipedia entries" while insisting that any suggestions "that this is some kind of broad Google competitor remain completely and utterly false."
In the "gaslighting" email, Wales also objects to the fact that Heilman included Wikia Search in a timeline published in the February 3 Signpost issue. But a key element of Wikia Search was "public curation of relevance" – volunteers determining how high up in Wikia's search results Internet pages should be ranked (a process that at times led to hilarious results). And public curation of relevance is also a key element of the latter stages of the Knowledge Engine project, as outlined to the Knight Foundation and described in the official project documentation.
To be sure, the Knowledge Engine is not conceived as a full-fledged Google competitor, complete with shopping results, opening hours of shops and restaurants, cinema times, search results from Twitter and Facebook, and so forth (and Heilman never claimed it was).
But judging from the documentation available, it was – or is – conceived at the very least as a niche competitor to Google, crawling and indexing both Wikimedia properties and selected other Internet content and replicating Google's answer engine and Knowledge Graph functionality. When Jimmy Wales says that the Wikimedia Foundation's entire fundraising future depends on the idea, the hope surely is to draw a significant number of eyeballs to Wikipedia.org by providing answers to natural-language questions, following the lead of other AI assistants, and providing search result listings that take users to relevant pages anywhere in the Wikimedia universe, complemented by a broad range of open access and/or academic sources.
It is an ambitious idea, but not in any way objectionable in itself. What is clear however is that building such a search engine will cost tens of millions of dollars. Heilman's concern was that
- this was a major decision about the Wikimedia Foundation's long-term strategic direction that the community should be involved in,
- this was something that should be openly disclosed rather than kept secret,
- the financial investment required to undertake this ambitious project would lead to other projects being underfunded,
- if the project should fail to gain traction with users, this could result in tens of millions of donor dollars being wasted.
These were not idle concerns. And the fact that Heilman expressed them in no way justifies the repeated vilifications he has had to endure.
- ^ The complete post read: "Yes I asked individuals on the board in Oct if they understand that we were building a "search engine" as before Oct I did not realize we were. JW said that he understood this all along and it was something we needed to do.."
Update on EranBot, our new copyright violation detection bot
EranBot is highly useful, as people are being notified immediately or within a few days that their edit is an unacceptable copyright violation. For repeat / egregious violators, I follow up by monitoring the user's edits, and block if necessary. My hope is that early detection and warning will prevent the introduction of additional serial copyright violators like we have seen in the past and curtail the need to open further cases at the ridiculously backlogged WP:CCI (which has a five-year backlog of 155 cases, 76,218+ articles as of 7 April 2016).
Copying within Wikipedia requires attribution
One thing I've noticed while reviewing the bot reports is that many established editors don't realise that attribution is required within Wikipedia under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Some of you may have already received a notice from me letting you know about this requirement!
When copying within Wikipedia, at a minimum, what you need to do is mention in your edit summary that the content has been copied from another article. Here’s a sample edit summary: "Attribution: this material was copied from Example on April 1, 2016. Please see the history of that page for attribution." That's the ideal version, but even a simple edit summary such as "copied from Example" is better than nothing! If you're copying material you wrote yourself, attribution is technically not required, but it would help simplify checking the bot reports—and it would save you from receiving irrelevant notices from me or potential future helpers.
It's good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to also place a ((copied)) template on the talk pages of the source and destination. In cases where you add public domain material from US government websites or other PD sources, you should place the template ((PD-notice)) immediately after your citation, and for material under a compatible Creative Commons license, you should use ((CC-notice)). There's also a whole host of other useful attribution templates available at Category:Attribution templates.
Helpers needed
As the bot gets more reliable and begins to run 24 hours a day, there’s going to be more work to do than can be managed by one person alone. It would be great if interested people had a look at User:EranBot/Copyright/rc or the archived batches, with a view to helping out by assessing diffs, removing violations from article space, and issuing warnings to the editors involved. If you have any questions about how to perform this task, please let me know on my talk page, or post a message at User talk:EranBot/Copyright/rc.
The WMF Community Tech team has been working with Eran to further improve the bot, based on user feedback. The hope is that usability and reliability will improve over time. Further details are here.
Two for the price of one
As the WP:TOP25 has been grinding ahead at a pace slightly faster than the number of Signpost issues, we have two charts in this Report, for the weeks of April 3–9 and April 10–16. Setting aside the now-permanent presence of Donald Trump, sports and movies have been a central theme. Wrestlemania's annual event topped the chart for the week of April 3–9, though the release of the Panama Papers (#2) was the hard news story of the week. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was knocked out of the top spot into #3, where it parked for both weekly charts. For April 10–16, Kobe Bryant's retirement led the news, and English golfer Danny Willett's Master's win hit #4, but films were responsible for filling up six of the top 10 slots.
For the full top-25 lists (and our 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 here.
April 3–9, 2016
For the week of April 3–9, 2016, 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 WrestleMania 32 
1,895,563 
Up from #7 last week. WWE's annual pay-per-view pantomime took place on April 3, 2016 (the first day of this week's chart), at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, featuring Roman Reigns (pictured), who defeated Triple H. Charlotte won the Women's Championship. 2 Panama Papers 
1,644,672 
The Panama Papers are a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents that provide detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, including the identities of shareholders and directors of the companies. The first news reports based on the papers went public on April 3. The Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (pictured), was among those exposed in the papers and announced his resignation on April 5. 3 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
1,387,901 
The number of views are halved from last week, but still another strong showing after two weeks at #1. Warner Bros might have cause to breathe again for the first time in three years, as their tent-pole gamble and hopes for an entire franchise have, it seems, paid off. Maybe. With $783M earned worldwide up to April 10, the official founding stone for DC's cinematic universe has gone down a storm, with the studio's highest-ever domestic opening weekend. Having cost an estimated $400M to produce and market, this movie will have to make $800M worldwide just to break even, which it appears it will do. 4 Donald Trump 
1,021,206 
You'll have to applaud Donald Trump, because I really can't recall the last time he wasn't on this chart. His article was the 17th-most-viewed in 2015, with over 14M views, and he has already more than doubled that in 2016. 5 Merle Haggard
991,468 
The American outlaw country singer and songwriter died on his 79th birthday on April 6 at his ranch in Northern California. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, he had 38 number one hits on the US country charts and was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement in 2010. 5 Rogue One
979,685 
This Star Wars-universe movie, not part of the main series, will be released on December 16, 2016. The release of a teaser trailer on April 7 successfully propelled this article into the chart for the first time. (It almost made the Top 25 in December 2015 during the peak of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens (#21) frenzy.) Felicity Jones (pictured) will star in the film. 7 List of people named in the Panama Papers 
926,251 
See #2. Wikipedia can be very good at preparing detailed articles like this, attempting to usefully organize massive amounts of worldwide press reporting. Argentine President Mauricio Macri (pictured) is the first headshot of many in this article at the moment. 8 Ravi Shankar 
751,268 
The famous Indian musician died in December 2012, but a partial-world reach Google Doodle celebrated his 96th birthday on April 7. 9 1896 Summer Olympics 
722,779 
After a hiatus of fifteen-hundred years, the Olympics were restarted in 1896; the games began on April 6, 1896, 120 years ago. A wide-reach Google Doodle was there to remind us of this. 10 Deaths in 2016
648,626 
The annual list of deaths has always been a fairly consistent visitor to this list, and often in the Top 10, averaging about 600,000 views a week at this point.
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April 10–16, 2016
For the week of April 10–16, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from WMF's TopViews, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Kobe Bryant
1,393,551 
Well he said he would do it, and now he's done it. The career-long LA Laker and 18-time NBA All-Star played his last professional game on April 13, outscoring the entire opposing team in the fourth quarter. And that despite a long series of injuries that led him to make the call to finally retire. Despite being best-known outside the sport for a damaging sexual assault allegation in 2003, he appears to have gone out on a high with fans, with viewer numbers double those of his last appearance on this list, when he made his announcement in November. 2 The Jungle Book (2016 film)
1,036,211 
This American film based on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, previously adapted to screen in a 1967 animated film, had its world premiere on April 4. It was released in 15 countries on April 8, and debuted in the US on April 15 to a stellar $103M weekend and rapturous reviews (the film currently has a 94% RT rating). Despite being described as a "live-action reboot", the film is really more of a CGI cartoon, with nearly everything onscreen composed of computer graphics, except for the lead child actor Neel Sethi. 3 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
890,582 By any measure, except perhaps, its own, Warner Bros's attempt to counter the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a success. It has crossed the $800M mark worldwide, which means that, even given its gargantuan production and marketing budget, it is now in profit, and is likely to generate a tidy sum once the ancillaries are counted. And yet, the mood over at DC/Warner is tense; with its rapidly declining earnings, it is unlikely to enter the "$1 billion club" currently occupied by Marvel's two Avengers films, and has already been outgrossed by Zootopia, released just three weeks earlier. How this will portend for the planned DC Cinematic Universe is uncertain. All eyes are now on Suicide Squad. 4 Danny Willett
811,305 
The little-known English golfer came out of nowhere to unseat the favourite, Jordan Spieth, at the 2016 Masters Tournament. After his first majors win, you can safely assume that his article won't be marked "Low importance" for much longer. 5 Doctor Strange
991,468 
Marvel's next big introduction is the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth-616, charged with defending our reality from mystic threats. Yes, I just wrote that. The illusive if less-than-illustrative trailer for the new film, due this fall, premièred this week, and has already garnered a combined ~20M Youtube views. You might think this marks a jarring shift in tone from Iron Man and Captain America, but hey, compared to working in Thor, this should be easy. The suitably intense Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured, on set) will be assuming the cape. 6 Donald Trump
762,586 With no Republican primaries this week and little in the way of public awkwardness to push his numbers, Trump seems to be in the list on the strength of his pure, unadulterated Trumpness. Expect him to shoot up again next week after his stomping victory in his home state of New York. 7 Fan (film)
725,098 
This Bollywood hybrid of The Fan and Single White Female, in which a Bollywood star and an obsessed lookalike (both played by Shah Rukh Khan (pictured)) gradually become entangled in a game of revenge, was made on a relatively hefty budget of ₹850 million ($13 million) but has already earned more than ₹1.31 billion ($19M) in just five days. 8 Deaths in 2016
668,908 The annual list of deaths has always been a fairly consistent visitor to this list, and often in the Top 10, averaging about 650,000 views a week at this point. 9 Captain America: Civil War
646,147 
With the relative disappointment of Dawn of Justice, all eyes are turning to the next big comic blockbuster released this year which, despite the Captain America headline, is being marketed as another Avengers movie (with Spiderman!). Whether this will see it over the $1 billion hurdle remains to be seen, but the omens are good. 10 Suicide Squad (film)
562,067 
DC Comics' ramshackle crew of pressganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, have garnered far more buzz in the build-up to their August release than Batman v Superman ever managed, thanks to some decently snarky trailers, the latest of which was released this week, and the first live-action appearance of DC fan favourite Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie.
The double-sized edition
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Featured articles
Ten featured articles were promoted these weeks.
- Operation Ironside (nominated by ErrantX) was a World War II military deception undertaken by the Allies in 1944. It formed part of Operation Bodyguard, a broad strategic deception plan instigated by the Allies throughout the year to help cover the June 1944 invasion of Normandy. Ironside supported the overall deception by suggesting to the Germans that the Allies would subsequently land along the Bay of Biscay, and complemented efforts to deceive the Germans into believing that the Allies would also land in southern France at this time (Operation Vendetta).
- Hartebeest (nominated by Sainsf) is an Africa antelope, first described by the German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas in 1766. It has a particularly elongated forehead and oddly shaped horns, short neck, and pointed ears. Its legs, which often have black markings, are unusually long. The coat is generally short and shiny. Both sexes have horns, which reach lengths of 45–70 cm (18–28 in).
- Isopogon anethifolius (nominated by Casliber and Melburnian) is a shrub in the family Proteaceae. The species is found only in coastal areas close to Sydney, and to the immediate west. It occurs naturally in woodland, open forest and heathland on sandstone soils. An upright shrub, it can reach to 3 m (10 ft) in height, with terete leaves that are divided and narrow. The yellow flowers appear from September to December and are prominently displayed. They are followed by round grey cones, which give the plant its common name of drumsticks.
- No. 90 Wing (nominated by Ian Rose) was a Royal Australian Air Force wing that operated during the early years of the Malayan Emergency. Its purpose was to serve as an umbrella organisation for the RAAF units deployed in the conflict. The wing was established in July 1950, and disbanded in December 1952. The wing headquartered at the Changi Air Base, on the east coast of Singapore.
- George Bernard Shaw (nominated by Tim riley and Brianboulton) (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright, critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman, Pygmalion and Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Spotted green pigeon (nominated by FunkMonk) is a species of pigeon of unknown provenance, which is most likely extinct. It was first mentioned and described in 1783 by John Latham, who claimed to have seen two specimens and a drawing depicting the bird. The taxonomic relationships of the bird were long obscure, and early writers suggested many different possibilities, though the idea that it was related to the Nicobar pigeon prevailed, and it was therefore placed in the same genus, Caloenas. Today, the species is only known from a specimen kept in World Museum, Liverpool.
- The Senghenydd colliery disaster (nominated by SchroCat) occurred at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, Wales, in October 1913. The explosion, which killed 439 miners and a rescuer, is still the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom. The cause of the explosion is unknown, but the subsequent inquiry thought the most likely cause was a spark from underground signalling equipment that could have ignited any firedamp present. The miners in the east side of the workings were evacuated, but the men in the western section bore the brunt of the explosion, fire and afterdamp.
- The 2007 Coca-Cola 600 (nominated by Z105space) was the twelfth stock car race of the 2007 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series and the forty-eighth iteration of the event. The 400-lap race was won by Casey Mears of the Hendrick Motorsports team, who started from sixteenth position. After the race, Jeff Gordon's lead in the Drivers' Championship was reduced, because he crashed in the early part of the race. Chevrolet increased its points advantage in the Manufacturers' Championship, placing it forty-one points ahead of Ford.
- The Huguenot-Walloon half dollar (nominated by Wehwalt) is a commemorative coin issued by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1924. It marks the 300th anniversary of the voyage of the Nieuw Nederland, which landed in the New York area in 1624. Many of the passengers were Huguenots. The coin was controversial for its sponsorship by a committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. Of the 300,000 coins authorized by Congress, fewer than half were actually struck, and of these, 55,000 were returned to the Mint and released into circulation. The coins are currently valued in the hundreds of dollars, depending on condition.
- Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin (nominated by Ceoil, Victoriaearle and Outriggr) is a large 15th-century oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435 and 1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden. The painting shows Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, sketching the Virgin Mary as she nurses the Child Jesus. The painting's historical significance rests both on the skill behind the design and its merging of earthly and divine realms. By positioning himself in the same space as the Madonna, and showing a painter in the act of portrayal, Van der Weyden brings to the fore the role of artistic creativity in 15th century society.
Featured lists
Six featured lists were promoted these weeks.
- Raveena Tandon is an Indian actress known for her work in Bollywood films. During her career (nominated by Krish!) she appeared in 82 film, with Shab currently being in post-production. She also appeared in the television series Sahib Biwi Gulam, hosted two talk shows and was the judge in four reality shows.
- Jessica Chastain (born 1977) is an American actress who has appeared on film, television, and stage (nominated by Krimuk90). She appeared in 25 feature films, with two (The Zookeeper's Wife and Miss Sloane) currently being in post-production. Chastain acted in eleven television episodes, and the television film Blackbeard. She also has a stage career, and was part of six productions between 1998 and 2012.
- Arsenal F.C., an association football club based in Holloway, London, was founded in 1886 as Dial Square. Since Arsenal's first competitive match, more than 500 players have failed to reach 25 appearances for the club (nominated by Lemonade51). Many of these players have spent only a short period of their career at Arsenal before seeking opportunities in other teams; some players had their careers cut short by injury, while others left for other reasons. Several of these players spent only brief periods with Arsenal on loan from other clubs.
- The Padma Vibhushan is the second highest civilian award of India. Instituted in 1954, the award is given for the "exceptional and distinguished service", without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex. The recipients are announced every year on Republic Day and are registered in The Gazette of India. As of 2016, 294 people received the award (nominated by Vivvt). The recipients receive a certificate signed by the President and a medal with no monetary grant associated.
- Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship (nominated by MPJ-DK) is a national Mexican singles professional wrestling championship sanctioned by the Comisión de Box y Lucha Libre Mexico D.F.. Since its creation in 1942, the championship been promoted by many promotions, but since December 2007 Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre has had the exclusive rights to the title. The official definition of the Light Heavyweight weight class in Mexico is between 92 kg (203 lb) and 97 kg (214 lb), but the weight limits for the different classes are not always strictly enforced. Since its inception in 1942, 47 wrestlers have held the title.
- The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction published in English during the previous calendar year. The World Fantasy Convention Award (nominated by PresN) is a special award given in some years for "peerless contributions to the fantasy genre". These have included authors, editors, and publishers. It was first presented in 1978; it was awarded annually through 1987 and again in 1997. Though it has not been awarded since, it is still listed as an official category.
Featured pictures
Eleven featured pictures were promoted these weeks.
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Magazine advertisement for Poesaka Terpendam
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Amendments made to the Race and intelligence case
In 2010, the Race and intelligence case opened, lasting from 7 June to 24 August. Now, for the second time in six years, the Committee has amended the case. In an 11–0 vote with one abstention, the amendment rescinded a previous amendment made in 2013, which was to have Mathsci indefinitely banned from the English Wikipedia. As explained in the motion: "the unban has been granted on the condition that Mathsci continue to refrain from making any edit about, and from editing any page relating to the race and intelligence topic area, broadly construed. This is to be enforced as a standard topic ban."
Along with the editing restrictions, the two-way interaction bans with The Devil's Advocate, Cla68, and Ferahgo the Assassin are in force indefinitely. (The Committee banned The Devil's Advocate and Cla68 from Wikipedia earlier this year in relation to separate incidents.)
A case involving inter alia one of the Signpost's two editors-in-chief, Gamaliel, was accepted last week; the evidence phase has now begun, and a proposed decision will be posted 16 May. The case concerns various matters related to BLP and the Gamergate controversy.
- In brief
- Motions regarding extended confirmed protection and arbitration enforcement – "The Arbitration Committee is considering a series of motions regarding the 'extendedconfirmed' usergroup and associated protection levels seeking to determine logistical and administrative issues arising from the implementation of the new usergroup."
- As of now, the Extended confirmed usergroup is used for the GamerGate controversy article and its talk page, the Brianna Wu article, selected articles pertaining to Indian castes and their talk pages, and any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab–Israeli conflict.
- Kharkiv07 appointed to full clerk: On 14 April, the committee announced that Kharkiv07 had been appointed as a full clerk. They are one of nine currently active editors who are arbitration clerks.