External videos
A change is gonna come, Sam Cooke, 3:10
Centerfield, John Fogerty, 3:51
Blue Funk, Cannonball Adderley, 5:30

Thirteen months ago, 18 days after the World Health Organization had declared COVID-19 a pandemic The Signpost reported that 683,000 people had been infected and 32,100 people had died from the disease worldwide. Today the totals are 146,479,113 infected and 3,099,838 dead.

It is difficult to see that we have made much progress. We are still in the middle of a pandemic. It is difficult to see how the pandemic will end, with new COVID variants and a catastrophic second wave in India.

And yet it is springtime in the northern hemisphere and hope springs eternal. Baseball season has started. Vaccination campaigns are taking hold, at least in the US, UK, and several other developed countries. But we can’t be sure the pandemic will end until all countries have effective vaccination campaigns and we know if the vaccines can help stop new variants of the virus. Perhaps we can hope to know by September.

Thirteen months ago in this column I wrote about The Signpost staff "we're in this for the duration". I am sorry that I can not keep that promise. This month I learned how the pandemic affects brain fog and recognized myself as an example. Don't worry, my blue funk will eventually go away. Thank goodness that my family and I are still healthy, but the lockdown has reduced the time I can spend on The Signpost. My family needs more time now. I am looking forward to spending almost all my weekends with them this summer. And I am just bone-tired; I need a break from the editor-in-chief position. There are three possible solutions:

• The Signpost can miss a couple of issues this summer.
• We have some guest editors-in-chief
• A new editor-in-chief takes over.

The job of the editor-in-chief is primarily organizing – something I'm not very good at. He or she needs to

• Solicit articles for the next issue
• Anticipate topics that are likely to come up – I always forget Mother's Day
• Evaluating and editing submissions
• Have backup plans if an article falls through
• Organizing and helping with the copy editing
• Making sure that everything that needs to be done before publication is actually done, and
• Certifying that no Wikipedia rules are broken in any article.

None of these tasks are difficult in themselves, but organizing them can be,

If you'd like to be a guest EIC or just replace me please email me and we'll see what we can arrange.

In truth, I’d prefer to step down permanently by July, and spend the time I have for The Signpost as a reporter. I love reporting for The Signpost, so don't worry, I'm not going away anytime soon.

I’d like to help renew The Signpost by recruiting a few more writers and editors.

Why write for The Signpost?

The Signpost is the best place on Wikipedia to write about Wikipedia for Wikipedians. Our readers include thousands of Wikipedia editors every month. Although we have to follow the basic rules that any talk page or project page must follow, we are independent of the Wikimedia Foundation and of any other Wiki-institution that we report on. Our loyalty goes solely to the Wikipedia community. We have three purposes:

• To fairly and accurately report the news about Wikipedia and the broader Wikipedia movement.
• To entertain our readers. A little fun and humor can go a long way toward helping us all understand each other better.
• To publish the opinions, research, projects, and other ideas of Wikipedians and to help them best present these ideas to our readers.

We could use more reporters for pure news reporting. These beats include:

• Arbitration report
• Discussion report
• News and notes
• Technology report
• WikiProject report

A few features are close to my heart and always need help.

• In the media
• Humour
• Gallery or other photo projects

We could use editors to help write or curate articles on any topic that a large group of Wikipedians are passionate about. While we may not need an article each month on the topic, The Signpost should cover them on an ongoing basis.

• GLAM and similar projects
• Women's issues
• Non-English language wikis
• Wikimedia Commons and other non-Wikipedia projects
• The LGBTQ+ community
• Wikidata

Writing and research should be fun and fulfilling, whether your target audience is the whole world – as on Wikipedia, or just the community of Wikipedia editors. Drop us a note at the newsroom talk page if you're interested.

If you believe the mainstream press, former US President Donald J. Trump has spread misinformation across the internet and in news outlets on a massive scale. According to The Washington Post he has "accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day." He has been banned from social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Has Trump also spread misinformation or disinformation on Wikipedia? We don’t think that the former president himself has edited Wikipedia since it is much more difficult to edit Wikipedia than it is to tweet. This Signpost article examines whether Trump’s business empire, the Trump Organization, has employed paid editors to edit Wikipedia.

They apparently have. Editor Mmartinnyc disclosed his identity twice in 2011 on-Wiki, as Michael Martin, the Trump Organization’s Director of Digital Marketing.

According to his obituary published in December 2020, Martin started working at the Trump Organization in 1987 and later became Director of Digital Marketing, serving in that position until 2014 when he left the company. ^[1]

The Signpost notes that evidence of paid editing using only Wikipedia edit histories can not actually “prove” an editor’s identity, even in cases where they disclose many personal details. Sometimes editors have tried to embarrass a targeted individual or company, a tactic known as a Joe jobbing. This caveat applies even when an editor directly declares that they are paid.

Mmartinnyc’s editing

Martin only made 45 edits to Wikipedia articles: 23 to Ivanka Trump, 11 to Donald Trump Jr., 10 to Eric Trump, and 1 to Donald Trump. [3]

An examination of the edits to Ivanka Trump shows that on December 7, 2011, his first day of editing the article, Martin removed some unflattering content and added promotional content such as "In addition to her work at The Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump is a principal of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, which launched to great success in 2007 with a store on Mercer Street in New York City." [4] These edits were reverted by an experienced Wikipedian within the hour, while labeling them "heavily copy-pasted POV copy[right]vio[lations]." [5] in the edit summary.

The following day Martin tried and failed to reinstate many of his edits by edit-warring with three experienced editors. [6]. Only then did Martin declare that he was a paid editor.

A week later he made his only edit to the Donald Trump article, replacing the name of the notorious Trump University with “Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.” His remaining 16 edits were less adventurous, 14 of them being marked as “minor”.

Conclusions

Mmartinnyc’s declaration that he is Michael Martin, at that time the digital marketing manager of the Trump Organization is quite convincing. If the declaration was part of a Joe job, it's one that didn't embarrass anybody for ten years, even though the head of the Trump Organization was the president of the United States for four of those years.

References

OK Google, what is a Fernando Machado burger?

Fernando Machado, Chief Marketing Officer of Burger King and Restaurant Brands International is leaving his job according to PRWeek (free registration), which reports his 3 biggest "hits" and 3 biggest "misses" in advertising campaigns. Marketing miss #1 was a 15 second advert from 2017 ending in the phrase "OK Google, what is a Whopper burger?" The ad was supposed to activate a Google Home smart speaker to recite a marketing spiel with the list of Whopper ingredients that User:Fermachado123 had inserted as the introduction of the Wikipedia article Whopper. By the time the TV advert ran, its text had been changed – some claimed it had been vandalized – and it's unclear whether any potential customers ever heard the advert at all. Fernando, you still owe Wikipedians an apology.

Cracking Wikipedia's governance problems

4 Wikipedia Editing Scandals That Slipped Under Readers' Radars in Cracked.com, an apparently humorous website. Three of the four editing scandals focus on admin behavior and might be viewed as anything but humorous. They are:

• Admin Neelix and his odd predilection for creating imaginative redirects to articles about breasts. He resigned his adminship in November 2015 after a lengthy discussion at WP:ANI (see prior Signpost coverage)
• Scots language Wikipedia (see prior Signpost coverage)
• Warsaw concentration camp hoax (see prior Signpost coverage)
• Qworty in 2013 (see prior Signpost coverage)

Women play rugby

Nevertheless, only 3% of Wikipedia's biographies of rugby players are about women, according to brewer Guinness as reported in Sport Industry Group last week. Only 30% of the players in the 2021 Women's Six Nations Championship, which ended yesterday, had an article on Wikipedia. Only 14% of those articles had more than a basic bio and a photo. Articles on the squads representing England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales, had only 10% of the words (900 to 9,000) of the same nations men's squads.

Wikimedia UK and Guinness teamed up with the goal of having an article for each player in the tournament from the four "home nations". The players from France and Italy were left out of this goal. The sponsors invited Wikipedia editors, fans, writers, and journalists to help out by creating or adding to articles about all notable women rugby players, which seems to have changed some of the numbers reported above. England beat France to win the championship.

In brief

• QAnon + ADL = COI?: The Anti-Defamation League may have violated Wikipedia rules — editing its own entries, says The Forward recounting a March–April discussion at the conflict-of-interest noticeboard.
• World's youngest billionaire, 26-year-old owes it all to Wikipedia & YouTube (India Times) Austin Russell (businessperson), founder of Luminar Technologies – odd it is still a redlink.
• Using Wikipedia for Content Marketing, SEO on PracticalEcommerce demonstrates once again that there is an entire industry based on breaking Wikipedia's rules. (no, we won't link to them)

External videos
Billy Joel - New York State of Mind

• The Most Wikipedia Searched Name from Your Hudson Valley Town from "The Home of Rock'n'Roll", radio station WPDH which dug up the US map which replaced the name of a town with the name of the resident whose biography received the most page views. Hint: use your mouse to drag the map to the Hudson River Valley, well north of the big city of Donald Trump, and then zoom in to just south of Benedict Arnold. The only problem is that the map is two years out-of-date. No matter, it gives us an excuse to link to a Billy Joel song. No, not Summer, Highland Falls about the village where Joel spent one summer, but an equally relevant song from the same album.

Videos and podcasts

• Ziko van Dijk: wrote the ultimate 341-page wiki book in German (free pdf, CC BY-SA) but introduces it on the video "My new book about wikis: a short presentation in English".
• Jimmy Wales: on a one-hour nine minute podcast (skip the first four minutes) at The Political Party with Matt Forde. Forde, a comedian, does a good imitation of a blustering bandersnatch, so much of the podcast goes through the basics. Jimmy explains why he'd never edit an article involving Donald Trump - he'd get too emotional. He then compares himself to the Queen, twice. Brags about his cooking. All the usual stuff.

This essay is adapted from "The Code of Conduct" by Jesse Noller under the Creative Commons By-SA 4.0 license. Originally written in 2012 regarding the Python Software Foundation, it has been edited to reflect the Universal Code of Conduct debate within the Wikimedia movement.

Preface

By now, editors are likely aware of the Wikimedia Foundation's efforts to draft and implement a Universal Code of Conduct (UCC) for Wikimedia spaces. The first phase of the process was recently completed, with the board of trustees ratifying an initial policy on 2 February 2021. The second phase involves consultations across projects on how the UCC would apply to individual communities with the goal of developing appropriate mechanisms for enforcing the code globally. As part of this second phase, the English Wikipedia is holding a local consultation to provide feedback on how the code of conduct would fit into this project's community.

While a universal code of conduct is new territory for the Wikimedia Foundation, the debate is not. Arguments around codes of conduct have been active in the free and open source community for years. In 2014 Coraline Ada Ehmke released the Contributor Covenant which has served as the model code of conduct for many free software projects such as the Linux Kernel, Mozilla Webmaker, and Node.js as well as open source branches of major corporations like Facebook and Google. While projects were adopting codes of conduct, organizations were likewise incentivizing more projects to adopt them. For example, in 2012 the Python Software Foundation required that any conference it sponsors will be required to publish a code of conduct for the event. This was, partly, in response to questions the foundation had received from potential sponsors who were starting to require that their sponsored partners publish codes of conduct.

The following essay makes the case for a Universal Code of Conduct in the Wikimedia movement based on similar arguments from the Python community in 2012. Like the Python community then, the Wikimedia community is vibrant, diverse, and growing. Originally written by Jesse Noller to explain the Python Software Foundation's resolution requiring a code of conduct, the piece has been edited to reflect the parallels between the concerns then and those of the Wikimedia community now.

Community

Community is a broad term. In the case in which I refer to it—I refer to is as the constantly growing and evolving and diversification of the global Wikimedia community. The community is growing at an astounding pace. The number of Wikimedia related conferences and events is also growing at a pace which frankly floors me. We have edit-a-thons popping up all over the world almost monthly. Wikimedians who are speakers of the Dagbani language this year had their m:Wikimedia user group recognized by the affiliations committee for the first time.

Most, if not all of these events are put together by small teams of dedicated, passionate and kind teams of largely unpaid volunteers. This is both amazing, and heartwarming. The level of love and passion shown by so many in this community amazes me on a daily basis.

This passion I have, this love for the community, its ever-growing diversity and what it has done for me is exactly why the Wikimedia Foundation should establish a Universal Code of Conduct. It's not because the global community is broken. It's not because we've had a "trigger event", although administrative abuses stick in my mind like a road flare when thinking about this.

So no: I don't think our community is "broken" or has performed ill—but nor has it been perfect, nor shall it ever be. I am proud of it, I spend countless hours working on behalf of it, and I would not trade it for the world. It has made me feel welcome, it has supported me in my times of need. It has allowed and empowered me to do amazing things.

Oh yeah, and I'm totally in love with the encyclopedia, even if I cheat on it sometimes.

But, like with code—there's a smell in the community—but it's the larger Programming community and its conferences and events as a whole.

D stands for Diversity

We've seen enormous growth in the diversification and inclusion of the vast non-majority within our communities thanks to the hard work of many—this includes the Art+Feminism movement, Women in Red WikiProject, m:Wiki Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Monuments contests, m:Wikipedia Asian Month, and many, many others.

What we are seeing is a fundamental shift in the awareness that we need to be more welcoming, more open to those who do not make the majority of our community. We need to have workshops, we need to be more inviting. We need to lower the barrier of entry of contribution. We need to make safe havens for those who want to contribute but who are scared and intimidated by the status quo. This includes men, women—everyone.

Part of this effort is the social realization of one of the Zen of Python rules:

What I mean is this: no more unwritten rules or expectations. No more assumptions that we're living in a utopian meritocracy. We don't. Sure, the free and open source software movement has been defined as "they with the best code and who does the work, wins"—but that ignores the frequent corollary of "those with the thickest hide, and ability to fight win". Look at any mailing list—look at the discussions on the relative merit of a given feature, bug fix, etc. You will see things that would make your hair turn grey. You will see people shouted down for naivety, you will see that even the most meritorious idea may not win against the establishment.

This happens everywhere. This is why I say "explicit is better than implicit" when it comes to social norms and expectations.

The idea that there's some unwritten guide on how to behave in society, at a conference, at a meetup, or anywhere is fundamentally absurd. Look around you for examples.

But what does this mean in the Wikimedia Community? It means we can do better! We already are on so many fronts—but just because we're seeing positive changes doesn't mean we should stop the movement.

Back to Code of Conduct

That simple, right? Well, yes, actually. When it comes to a code of conduct for a mailing list or group or for a community such as Ubuntu and Fedora or for a conference it all boils down to the same thing. A set of rules that don't dictate what you can do, or who you must be, but what is not acceptable.

It's sort of like laws. Laws don't generally dictate your personal freedoms—what they do normally do is dictate where, given unlimited freedom, your "right to do whatever you want" ends. Laws are there not to stop crime. They are there to set rational expectations for rational people—they tell the rational actors in our story what they can count on. They set in place the rules of societal engagement and put in place punishments for when those rules are broken.

A code of conduct is no different—it is an explicit set of rules on what isn't acceptable! It's not there to take away your rights—unless you feel your rights include sexual harassment, putting pornography in talk slides, or making sexist or racist jokes in a large group of people. It's there to show everyone what is not acceptable behavior, and to show what repercussions there are if anyone violates this behavior.

Quoting Jacob Kaplan-Moss on this (re: Code of Conducts/anti-harassment policies):

Just like laws; a code of conduct or anti-harassment policy is not going to stop bad actors. It won't. It can't. It might convince a person who acts in bad faith, or intends to do so to not attend the event—it is, after all, a signal they are not welcome, and there are consequences. Really though—again just like laws—it won't stop a determined bad actor. If I, a Wikipedia administrator choose to slip a bit of porn onto the Main Page, I can. No one is going to know until they see it ala Fight Club.

However, should I choose to do so, instead of unspoken, unwritten rules about what's acceptable, or what consequences there would be (social shame, etc), we have a lovely document that outlines precisely what will happen to me.

I will, simply put, be kicked out. As an administrator, I will be asked to leave the encyclopedia, I will not be given a refund. I will, in addition to this, probably be publicly shamed by all of those people who I knowingly and willingly abused, I will lose my administrator bit, etc. I would, in fact, support being asked not to return to the project, or other projects for a period of no less than 1-2 years.

If you read our policies, you'll note something interesting: there are protections in there for victims, and protections for alleged harassers/Code of Conduct violators. This is meant to protect everyone involved in the situation from false allegations, or knee jerk reactions.

This Code, this Guide, provides the explicit declaration of what is expected so that when violations occur we will know when and how to react.

But Everyone is nice, we've always been cool

I know. Honestly, I do. Except for minor incidents that I recall, the English Wikipedia has largely been free of issues. Every meetup, conference, etc I have been to has been filled with nice, kind people and largely jerk-free. This is a testament to the community as a whole.

So, you ask: if we're all chill cool people, and nothing bad has happened, why have one?

Because it won't always be that way.

If we continue to expand and grow (and we will), and if we continue to grow even more diverse - in sex, race, creed and geography - the chances of "an incident" will grow. In fact, I know incidents have happened and been dealt with.

So no, the unspoken rule of "don't be a jerk" doesn't scale very well. And that's what we're talking about—a scalability problem. The social norms and rules of a group of five people, or one hundred people may float. What about 200? 500? 800? How about 40 thousand people (the average number of active editors on the English Wikipedia each month)? No. "Don't be a Jerk" may be our unspoken, unwritten community motto; but its not enough for those on the outside looking in.

Those outside of these circles want clear lines on behavioral expectations. They want to know that not only are there unwritten rules about not being a jerk—they want to know what will happen if a Jerk Occurs. A Universal Code of Conduct sets their expectations, and it gives them comfort. It makes them feel more welcome, more safe. Especially when they're part of a group who has been put under constant objectification and harassment for decades in our industry.

The Social Signal Flare

A Code of Conduct is, in fact a social signal flare to "others"—it's a message to them on what to expect, that they can feel welcome and safe and most of all that someone cares. I have the emails and phone calls thanking me and the PyCon team for the Code of Conduct to show it. They all carry the common theme: "Thank you. Thank you for showing me you care, and that you are thinking of me."

What has the Python software Foundation's adoption of a Code of Conduct triggered? Combined with this guide, and outreach, we have drastically increased the number of (for example) female speakers at our event. We have more female and varied attendees. We have people bringing their families with them. Not just because of a single document. But because they know that because of that document and the history and people within the Python community they can feel safe, and welcome.

This social signal flare; this written set of guidelines matters to them. And the Python community is not the only one realizing this. OSCON, Ruby Conferences, JS Conferences and other events—all of them are realizing that having rules and expectations set out for all to see makes it better for everyone.

So why the Foundation?

Now we get to the beginning: why an "edict" from the Foundation board that states this is a must for any project they are hosting. Well, if you read this far, hopefully you're convinced of the basic case of having a document such as this in place.

Let's look at it from a brand perspective.

For PyCon 2013 I was asked by no less than four different sponsors if I had a Code of Conduct / Anti-harassment guide in place. If I did not, they would not become sponsors. Conference attendees are demanding conferences have one, or they will not attend, or speak.

For example, I applaud Caktus Consulting Group for taking a hardline, zero tolerance stand:

Let us assume that the Wikimedia foundation is no different than a sponsor (it is, sorta): we provide you money, we give you our name and logo, and provide servers and a tech team to handle the back end. We are, by our participation and funding, implicitly and explicitly endorsing your project.

This means that should something happen, the "Wikimedia brand"—which to many, is synonymous with "Wikipedia" (duh)—would be tarnished. We would be seen as endorsing a community project which did not deal with a situation or incident. We would be lobbied to pull our funding/sponsorship (and I would vote for it). We would probably, via social pressure, be required to distance ourselves from the project and the organizers and probably even issue an apology of our own.

So. Starting for the idea that these documents, these guidelines benefit us as a community, and help us grow more diverse and inclusive, that they help in some way to make events more safe and welcoming—we end up in a place where from a pure business perspective it is in our best interest to put these guidelines in place.

These guidelines provide social good; they are also smart business. Yes—it is a sign that we are growing up, but that's a good thing.

Finally

In closing, all I can say is this—no one is trying to be a fascist, or a nanny state. No one is trying to say you can't cuss like a sailor (I do, but mostly behind closed doors). No one is trying to censor you, or tell you you are not welcome.

Quite the opposite. We, the global Wikimedia Community, are trying to tell people who are scared, or who feel alienated that they are in fact welcome. That they belong. That the community, the foundation and everyone cares about them. That we want to provide a safe place for collaboration and the free exchange of ideas.

We want to show everyone what they hopefully already know by now—that the Wikipedia community, despite its quirks, is welcoming, supportive and open to all.

Wikipedia is a place for learning. As an encyclopedia, we owe our readers accuracy, verifiability, and reliability. We pride ourselves on the fact that when people come here for knowledge, they usually come away with error-free, well-summarized, usable information. But we have forgotten one key element that makes Wikipedia successful – joy. It's not that our editors lack joy – like most of you, I'm here because I love doing this. There's true pleasure in making things a little bit better one edit at a time. But as soon as a smidgen of joy makes its way out from behind the curtain and into the gaze of our readers, it is expunged. We are not, collectively speaking, any fun at all.

I'll cite four examples, but there are others you may remember. For years, a number of editors have waged a battle to keep this simple joke off of Wikipedia – specifically, off of Guy Standing's page. Elsewhere, a dedicated corps of Wikipedians have diligently ensured that Will Smith's introductory biographical paragraph bears absolutely no resemblance to the lyrics of the Fresh Prince theme ("In West Philadelphia born and raised..."), even though he was, in fact, in West Philadelphia born and raised. A slow-moving fourteen-year-long skirmish on whether to put a hatnote linking to self-referential humor on the self-referential humor page has resulted in an unsatisfying compromise, relegating the hatnote to a subsection. And finally, ever since this tweet drew attention to the issue, the 'perfect Wikipedia caption' on Scottish National Antarctic Expedition has been guarded jealously against levity.

Why? In every case, the same reasons are given. Wikipedia is not here for humor. Allowing tidbits like this would lead to wave of vandalism and jokey edits. It would hurt our reputation as a serious place of knowledge. These are reasonable arguments. But they ignore history, and the nature of learning. Samuel Johnson famously included the following definition of 'dull' in his seminal dictionary: "Not exhilarating... not delightful: as in, to make dictionaries is dull work". We Wikipedians are "a committee armed with computers", as Geoffrey Wolff described the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1974. And we are becoming dull. We want to convert readers into learners and learners into editors. A sprinkle of eccentricity, the slightest element of surprise – these can make all the difference. It has been years since people treated Wikipedia as a punchline. Maybe we can now safely afford to make a joke or two ourselves – just a few, here and there, for the sake of learning.

It isn't easy to predict accurately how content inserted into Wikipedia is going to be used. Over here at Signpost I have read articles about how Oxford found Wikipedia content good enough to claim as its own. But while these are examples I understood, they were third party and distant; the experience of actually being part of the process was still alien. Then this happened...

I consciously licensed an image (Image 1) I had taken into the public domain (officially CCO here). I placed this image in a timely manner into the infobox of the concerned article. Within a few weeks the image had been used by news magazines, think-tanks, university blogs and a number of other websites. Was I surprised? Yes.

Usage of Image 1: The Yale Globalist, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mashable India, Outlook India (& Outlook Hindi), Observer Research Foundation, National Herald, Times Now online, Medium, OpIndia, News Nation, NewsX, Deccan Chronicle, Punjab Kesari, The Quint, Global Voices, Bhaskar, Qaumi Awaz, And more. Columbia University Library (CUL) blogs, borgenproject.org, thepolisproject.com, clarionindia.net, citizenmatters.in, Sanatan Prabhat, The Kochi Post, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), The Logical Indian, TFI Post...

When I realized what happened with Image 1, I went to another image (Image 2) I had placed in the infobox of a related article. This had also been used to an extent which surprised me. Other images from these two articles had also been used, but to a much lesser extent.

Usage of Image 2 and others: Columbia Political Review, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, National University of Singapore ISAS, University of Oslo, The Muslim News, Penn Libraries News, New Humanist, Economic and Political Weekly, The Siasat Daily, Youth Ki Awaaz, News18, CounterPunch, Daily Excelsior, Businessworld, The Hans India, Eurasian Times, Sciencenorway.no, Newsclick...

Image 2 was licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and most of the websites did not follow the license requirements in relation to attribution, but that is not the point I want to raise. Going by the above two examples, this should mean that the infobox images of protest articles are hotspots, at least potential hotspots for further usage. Currently the 2021 Myanmar protests are going on. A quick google image search for the infobox images shows the same usage by websites around the world.

Generalizing this even more, infobox images for most articles are potential hotspots, provided that the article itself is viewed often enough. Take for example usage of the infobox image of Berlin Wall. This process can be likened to retweet and share buttons on social media.

The best infobox/lede image ever?

While there are fantastic featured images, there are images which aren't featured but are still amazing. One of the best placed intro images is the one on unrequited love. When I told the uploader My Name is Madness about this she replied, "Thank you! I knew when I first stumbled onto it it was perfect for... something... took a moment to figure out what."

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

How aquatic scientists improve Wikipedia

An article in Limnology and Oceanography Letters reports on the activities of WikiProject Limnology and Oceanography (WP L&O), founded in 2018 by "a group of early career aquatic scientists" concerned about "inadequate representation of aquatic information on Wikipedia":^[1]

"Unfortunately, limnology‐ and oceanography‐related Wikipedia articles are in poor condition. For example, as of 05 May 2020, the English Wikipedia article for Hypolimnion was only six sentences long and contained no references yet had been viewed over 11,000 times per year on average since 2015. [...] Through recruiting new editors and hosting five “edit‐a‐thons” (focused editing time), WP L&O has added over 50,000 words to limnology‐ and oceanography‐related Wikipedia articles; however, more than 60% of the articles assessed for the project remain in poor condition and lack references, have poor structure, or are missing crucial information."

The open access paper contains the following helpful overview of "ways to promote more equitable dissemination of aquatic scientific information through Wikipedia":

See also an earlier paper involving some of the same authors: "Ripples on the web: Spreading lake information via Wikipedia"

Other recent publications

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.

"The Quality and Readability of English Wikipedia Anatomy Articles"

From the abstract:^[2]

"Forty anatomy articles were sampled from English Wikipedia and assessed quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitatively, each article's edit history was analyzed by Wikipedia X-tools, references and media were counted manually, and two readability indices were used to evaluate article readability. This analysis revealed that each article was updated 8.3 ± 6.8 times per month, and referenced with 33.5 ± 24.3 sources, such as journal articles and textbooks. Each article contained on average 14.0 ± 7.6 media items. [...] the articles had low readability and were more appropriate for college students and above. Qualitatively, the sampled articles were evaluated by experts using a modified DISCERN survey. According to the modified DISCERN, 13 articles (32.5%), 24 articles (60%), 3 articles (7.5%), were rated as "good," "moderate," and "poor," respectively. There were positive correlations between the DISCERN score and the number of edits (r = 0.537), number of editors (r = 0.560), and article length (r = 0.536). Strengths reported by the panel included completeness and coverage in 11 articles (27.5%), anatomical details in 10 articles (25%), and clinical details in 5 articles (12.5%). The panel also noted areas which could be improved, such as providing missing information in 28 articles (70%), inaccuracies in 10 articles (25%), and lack or poor use of images in 17 articles (42.5%)."

"Wikipedia Edit-a-thons as Sites of Public Pedagogy"

From the abstract:^[3]

"Through the analysis of interviews with 13 edit-a-thon facilitators [...] we find motivations for running edit-a-thons extend far beyond adding content and editors. In this paper, we uncover how a range of personal and institutional values inspire these event facilitators toward fulfilling broader goals including fostering information literacy and establishing community relationships outside of Wikipedia. Along with reporting motivations, values, and goals, we also describe strategies facilitators adopt in their practice. Next, we discuss challenges faced by facilitators as they organize edit-a-thons. [...] Finally, we suggest new ways in which edit-a-thons, as well as similar peer production events and communities, can be understood, studied, and evaluated."

(The paper also cites two earlier reports by the Wikimedia Foundation related to the topic [7] [8].)

"How trust in Wikipedia evolves: a survey of students aged 11 to 25"

From the abstract:^[4]

"we analyse the answers given by 841 young people [in France], aged eleven to twenty-five, to a questionnaire. To our knowledge, this is the largest study ever published on the topic. It focuses on (1) the perception young people have of Wikipedia; (2) the influence teachers and peers have on the young person’s own opinions; and (3) the variation of trends according to the education level. [...] Results. Trust in Wikipedia depends on the type of information seeking tasks and on the education level. There are contrasting social judgments of Wikipedia. Students build a representation of a teacher’s expectations on the nature of the sources that they can use and hence the documentary acceptability of Wikipedia. The average trust attributed to Wikipedia for academic tasks could be induced by the tension between the negative academic reputation of the encyclopedia and the mostly positive experience of its credibility."

From the "Results and findings" section:

"When young people consider their past experience on Wikipedia use, they mostly provide positive judgments about the quality of information available on Wikipedia, whatever their education level. The major point of view is that most often the collaborative encyclopaedia enables them to access information they qualify as useful (93%), understandable (92%), and accurate (92.7%). Indeed, in open questions about the perception of Wikipedia, only one of the 841 respondents reported that he found mistakes in Wikipedia. [...] the higher the education level, the more participants attribute to their teachers a negative image of the collaborative encyclopaedia [...]. While only 31.7% of collège pupils feel that their teachers’ opinion about Wikipedia is low (or very bad), 67.2% of lycée pupils, 68.2% of bachelor’s students and 76.7% of master’s students answer this way."

See also our review of a related earlier paper involving one of the authors: "Wikipedia: An opportunity to rethink the links between sources’ credibility, trust, and authority"

"How do academic topics shift across altmetric sources? A case study of the research area of Big Data"

From the paper (preprint version):^[5]

"Taking the research area of Big Data as a case study, we propose an approach for exploring how academic topics shift through the interactions among audiences across different altmetric sources. [...] we attempt to investigate the semantic similarity between topics from publications [about Big Data] and those from the discussions of audiences mentioning and disseminating [these] publications across different altmetric sources, including Blogs, News, Policy documents, Wikipedia and Twitter. [... To obtain topics, considering] the short titles of Wikipedia articles, we choose to use the first sentence in the summary which is a condensed explanation of an event, and is equivalent to the titles of blogs, news and policy documents in part. [...] By comparison [with blog and news publications], policy documents and Wikipedia entries have a more limited focus on Big Data publications with fewer publications mentioned. Specifically, the high-frequency terms in these two groups suggest a quite a different concern of topics on these platforms. Wikipedia entries are more oriented towards the research and application of technologies on internet and web, while policy documents have an obvious orientation to more general issues related to social progress like “EU law” and “Climate change”. [... Based on a cluster analysis of all terms,] publications from Wikipedia are more oriented towards academic, technical and more theoretical topics (e.g., “university”, “cloud computing”, or “theory”)."

IMGpedia: Enriching Wikimedia Commons images with metadata from DBpedia and Wikidata

The IMGpedia dataset "brings together descriptors of the visual content of 15 million images [from Wikimedia Commons], 450 million visual-similarity relations between those images, links to image metadata from DBpedia Commons, and links to the DBpedia resources associated with individual images [as well as links to Wikidata, in a later version]. It allows people to perform visuo-semantic queries over the images." It is the topic of several academic publications:

A 2017 conference paper^[6] and thesis,^[7] which - as summarized in the abstract

"defines the process of analysis of 15 million images from Wikimedia Commons in order to build the knowledgebase. First, the visual descriptors must be calculated; later, we propose an efficient strategy to compute similarity links between them; afterwards, we define a method for obtaining relations between the images and DBpedia resources of the Wikipedia articles that use them; and finally, the data is published as an RDF graph ready to be queried through the SPARQL endpoint service mounted for IMGpedia."

A 2018 conference paper titled "Querying Wikimedia Images Using Wikidata Facts"^[8] reports on enhancements:

"IMGpedia [...] is a knowledge-base that incorporates similarity relations between the images based on visual descriptors, as well as links to the resources of Wikidata and DBpedia that relate to the image. Using the IMGpedia SPARQL endpoint, it is then possible to perform visuo-semantic queries, combining the semantic facts extracted from the external resources and the similarity relations of the images. This paper presents a new web interface to browse and explore the dataset of IMGpedia in a more friendly manner, as well as new visuo-semantic queries that can be answered using 6 million recently added links from IMGpedia to Wikidata ..."

The IMGpedia dataset has also been published,^[9] but appears to have been removed since.

See also the "Structured data on Commons" project, a separate effort

"Inauthentic Editing: Changing Wikipedia to Win Elections and Influence People"

This is the topic of two blog posts published by the Stanford Internet Observatory earlier this year (on occasion of Wikipedia's 20th birthday)^[10][11]:

"Building on the work of Wikipedia editors catching politically motivated editing [citing a recent Signpost report by User:Smallbones], we investigate one case of 'inauthentic editing'—where individuals targeted the Wikipedia pages of two contending politicians during the 2020 British Columbia (BC) general provincial election. Through this deep-dive case study, we also show a process for investigating Wikipedia, and identify Wikipedia’s strengths and weaknesses in dealing with inauthentic edits."

The studied example involved conflict-of-interest editing in the article about Canadian politician John Horgan.

In the second post, the student authors provide a detailed overview of how to investigate such cases based on Wikipedia's publicly available data and tools. As summarized by one of the authors:

"we explore the key markers of suspicious pages—such as a high edit-to-pageview ratio, or a high number of edits over time from a single otherwise-inactive user. We also include a free program that anyone can use to assess hundreds of pages at a time [called "Wikipedia Scanner" and published in form of a Jupyter notebook for use on Google's Colaboratory platform]."

References

Supplementary references and notes:

• 1. https://wikiedu.org/ .
• 2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start.
• 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WikiProject_L%26O_Quick_Start_Guide_v1.pdf .
• 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction .
• 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Limnology_and_Oceanography .
• 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation .
• 7. https://www.translatorswithoutborders.org/blog/the‐wikipedia‐project‐update/ .
• 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_run_an_edit‐a‐thon .
• 9. https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews .
• 10. https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec .
• 11. https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/ .
• 12. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Science .
• 13. http://topicpageswiki.plos.org/wiki/Main_Page .
• 14. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/04/06/tenure‐awarded‐based‐in‐part‐on‐wikipedia‐contributions/ .
• 15. https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ .
• 16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Barnstars .
• 17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:The_Limnology_and_Oceanography_Barnstar .
• 18. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:How_to_take_pictures_for_Wikimedia_Commons .
• 19. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES/FAQ .
• 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Peer_review/guidelines .
• 21. https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikipedia‐readability/ .
• 22. http://dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/view/Altviewer .
• 23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_coordination .
• 24. https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000941 .
• 25. http://wikiambassador.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2014/03/28/publishing‐scholarly‐wikipedia/ .
• 26. https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003242 .
• 27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_Biology/Computational_Biology/ISCB_competition_announcement_2013 .
• 28. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility .
• 29. https://wikiedu.org/blog/category/wikipedia‐professional‐development/wiki‐scientists/ .
• 30. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202005/wikipedia.cfm .
• 31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Limnology_and_Oceanography/Workshops#Resources_for_incorpora

Oh no, there goes Tokyo, go go Godzilla (March 28 to April 3)

X Gon' Give It to Ya (April 4 to 10)

The love that makes undaunted, the final sacrifice (April 11 to 17)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh		2,703,385		While sometimes an insensitive figure (John Oliver joked Philip's death was "a tragedy if you don’t know a single thing about him", and had more words across the week), the Royal consort continues to get views following his death, specially as his military funeral was only held Saturday. And without a person who was already losing his life hanging around and getting more views (#5), this time Philip has the top spot.
2	Helen McCrory		2,566,138		One more British death, a Shakespearean actress who probably earned most mainstream recognition as Draco Malfoy's mother in Harry Potter (but also appeared in films such as Skyfall and Hugo, plus television work like Peaky Blinders), McCrory pulled a Chadwick, keeping her cancer diagnosis a secret to all but few and leaving her husband (#7) to reveal it after her death this week at the age of 52.
3	Elizabeth II		2,257,107		Her Majesty, widow of #1 and who always seems to find a way to return to this Report. In life, Philip was always two steps behind her, while now she fits in two places behind him.
4	WrestleMania 37		1,705,807		Professional wrestling's biggest event happened on 10-11 April in Tampa, this time even with an audience again as 25,675 attended each night at the Raymond James Stadium.
5	DMX (rapper)		1,465,080		The other famous person who died the same day of #1, a rapper who even inspired tributes from the film industry given DMX acted in a few action movies opposite Jet Li and Steven Seagal.
6	Vivek (actor)		1,189,676		Kollywood lost a very prolific actor/comedian, who upon his death at the age of 59 had worked in over 220 movies.
7	Damian Lewis		1,189,217		The husband of #2 and father of her two children, a fellow actor better known for starring in TV shows such as Band of Brothers, Homeland, and Billions.
8	Brenda Song		1,132,820		One of the many actresses who rose to fame through the Disney Channel announced the birth of her son, whose father is a former child star himself - Macaulay Culkin, whose late sister Dakota was homaged in the child's name. Her placement on the list suggests her fame isn't waning, despite the fact nobody knew she was pregnant.
9	Charles Sobhraj		1,124,116		Two people with the same first name, but very different backgrounds and reputations: one is an Asian serial killer who Netflix viewers are knowing through The Serpent (pictured is his portrayer there), and the other is a European aristocrat who is #1's oldest son (and thus the first in the line to succeed #3).
10	Charles, Prince of Wales		1,105,231

Guilty verdict (April 18 to 24)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	Derek Chauvin		2,226,944		This disgraced policeman denied the charges of murder and manslaughter that resulted from him kneeling on George Floyd's neck until he asphyxiated. Everyone involved in his trial thought otherwise, and Chauvin was found guilty, with perhaps 40 years in prison up ahead for him.
2	Mortal Kombat (2021 film)		1,971,882		The ultraviolent fighting game series again is adapted for the big screen (though in the US, HBO Max subscribers can also watch it), and while getting mixed reviews is deemed Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger than the previous attempt.
3	Elizabeth II		1.517.803		"Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl But she changes from day to day..."
4	European Super League		1,382,232		12 of the biggest football teams from England, Spain and Italy tried to form a league of their own. Backlash quickly ensued from fans and organizing bodies who deemed it a "power grab" for more money and control over the sport, and the idea was cancelled after just three days. JP Morgan even had to apologise for funding it.
5	The Falcon and the Winter Soldier		1,144,490		Sam Wilson has finally evolved from Falcon to Captain America (also known as "Flaptain", given "Captain Falcon" brings up fiery punches to mind), while one returning character seems to show her actress can't let go of some other role she played.
6	Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh		1,064,047		Presumably, Buckingham Palace spent the last days of the Royal consort in a reenactment of Good Bye, Lenin!, afraid that Phillip would die from shock if he heard about the Meghan Markle interview.
7	Deaths in 2021		991,488		It's a Dead Man's Party Who could ask for more? Everybody's coming Leave your body at the door!
8	Helen McCrory		789,343		Narcissa Malfoy won ten awards in her career, and was nominated a further 23 times across stage and screen and a 29-year career. People continue to visit her article a week after her death from cancer, aged just 52.
9	George Floyd		788,420		#1's victim. The protests have re-ignited with the trial, of course.
10	Charles Sobhraj		773,715		Sobhraj continues to rank highly after a BBC One TV series dramatising his crimes and capture, The Serpent, started streaming on Netflix. The show's name is based on one of his nicknames, a wise decision by the BBC not to name it after another nickname. "The Bikini Killer"? Not quite the same effect.

Exclusions

• These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

This article was originally published at WikiEdu.org on April 21, 2021. Evan Monk is an intern at Wiki Education. CC BY-SA. For a similar article about psychologist Benjamin Karney, please see Informing the public about psychological science: Ben Karney

Dr. Bill Phillips is a physicist with an extensive background in the field that spans decades. As a 1997 Nobel prize winner, Phillips has been at the helm of groundbreaking scientific discoveries. His affiliations with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as well as the American Physical Society, reflect his continued dedication to both the discovery and dissemination of physics knowledge.

Phillips participated in one of Wiki Education’s Wiki Scientists courses sponsored by the American Physical Society. Encouraged by colleagues at APS, and intrigued by the scope of Wikipedia, Phillips decided to enroll in the course to learn more about the platform.

"When you make a proposal to the National Science Foundation to study something, there’s generally requirements that you do some outreach – that you have broader impacts in the scientific or more general community," Phillips says. "I thought that learning something about writing, or editing quantum articles for Wikipedia would be one way of reaching the public."

Phillips considered several aspects of the Wiki Scientists course to be useful, first noting the foundational skills he learned about how to effectively navigate Wikipedia.

"The course gave me the toolbox or at the very least, the references to the toolbox. It’s not like I’m going to remember everything I learned, but now I know where to go to look certain things up – I know that this knowledge exists, and I know where to find it," Phillips says.

Phillips also spoke about the ways in which the course informed his understanding of referencing on Wikipedia. He considered this to be an aspect of "Wikipedia Culture," one in which he had not understood prior to taking the course.

Phillips tied his knowledge about referencing to the issue of representation on Wikipedia, noting that Donna Strickland, a 2018 recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics, did not have a Wikipedia article until winning the prize. This issue, Phillips discovered, came down to referencing.

"Understanding the difference between original research as opposed to properly referenced articles is one of the things that I learned that I would classify as being part of Wikipedia culture." Phillips says.

Phillips also spoke candidly about bias and conflict-of-interest on Wikipedia, as someone with a personal Wikipedia page.

"Another thing that’s part of Wikipedia culture, I would say would be the kinds of articles that you yourself, should or should not edit,” Phillips says. "You have to ask yourself: am I in a position to edit an article in a way that is free of bias? And obviously, editing an article about yourself is not the right thing to do under those circumstances, and so one should ask yourself equivalent questions about other kinds of articles."

Adding his expertise onto the platform in a way that was accessible was a significant component of Phillips’s Wikipedia experience.

"I’m an expert on some rather small areas of physics. But for those areas of physics, I can bring clarity and in some cases, either correct mistakes or bring a more complete discussion to a subject," Phillips says.

Furthermore, Phillips encourages other professional physicists to contribute to Wikipedia in a similar way.

"On Wikipedia you have the opportunity to bring an expert’s perspective to something that might not have been treated expertly. Everyone who finds Wikipedia to be a good resource ought to contribute in one way or another, to the ongoing value of Wikipedia. One way of doing that, of course, is to act as an editor," Phillips says.

The work of professionals like Dr. Phillips reinforce Wiki Education’s core values, establishing a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge.

To take a course like the one Bill took, visit learn.wikiedu.org.