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16 July 2014

 

2014-07-16

$10 million lawsuit against Wikipedia editors withdrawn, but plaintiff intends to refile

Yank Barry, pictured here, has launched a lawsuit against over 50 Wikipedia editors.

On the same day the Wikimedia Foundation announced it would offer assistance to English Wikipedia editors embroiled in a legal dispute with Yank Barry, the lawsuit has been dismissed without prejudice at the request of Barry's legal team—but only as a "strategic" move so that they can refile the lawsuit with a "new, more comprehensive complaint."

Barry, who was a musician in the 1960s and 70s before becoming an entrepreneur and philanthropist, launched the action against five editors who he alleges participated in a "conspiracy" to "engage in the wrongful acts of defamation and invasion of privacy" against him and his charity, the Global Village Champions Foundation, which is also a named plaintiff.

The defendants—who are identified by pseudonyms (Richard Fife, Nate Gertler, Ethan Urbanik, John Nagle, and "Does 1–50", a total of 54 editors) because Barry's legal team does not currently know their real names—are being targeted based on their edits to the discussion page related to his Wikipedia article.

Barry claims that their comments cost him (at minimum) $10 million dollars: "My page was so ridiculously false and made me sound like a terrible person and people believed it causing deals to fall through ... I finally had enough." The offensive posts are quoted on pages 6–8 of the court filing.

However, his legal team moved to dismiss their own lawsuit because they feared that the defense was about to launch a SLAPP motion. While SLAPP is normally used by plaintiffs, California has a unique version of the law that "provides for a special motion that a defendant can file at the outset of a lawsuit to strike a complaint when it arises from conduct that falls within the rights of petition or free speech." Part of this motion freezes all discovery and would have stopped Barry's legal team from amending their lawsuit.

According to Philip Dapeer, an attorney for Barry, "We were receiving no cooperation from the defense, we made no secret of the fact we were planning to amend the complaint and we sensed their lawyers were stalling for a reason. ... Withdrawing the complaint was a tactical move on our part and should not, in any way, be construed as retreat."

This defense team included attorneys paid for by the Wikimedia Foundation through its Defense of Contributors program. Of the four named editors, three will be represented by Cooley LLC, the same law firm engaged by the WMF in successfully defending Wikivoyage editors against Internet Brands in 2013, while the fourth has gone their own way and engaged the California Anti-SLAPP Project.

Both are coordinating closely with each other and the WMF, which has strongly condemned the legal action. "In our opinion, this lawsuit is an effort to try and chill free speech on the Wikimedia projects", wrote WMF legal counsel Michelle Paulson. "[T]his lawsuit is rooted in a deep misinterpretation of the free-form truth-seeking conversations and analysis that is part of the editorial review process".

The WMF has previously demonstrated vociferous support for Wikimedia contributors being legally targeted for their editing. Just four months ago, the Foundation announced its support for a Greek Wikipedia administrator who was being sued on the basis of a single sentence added in one of Liourdis' 22 edits to the article, which reported that Greek politician Theodore Katsanevas was castigated as a "disgrace" in the will of Andreas Papandreou. At the time of his death in 1996, Papandreou was Katsanevas' father-in-law.

As mentioned above, the WMF also supported two editors who were sued in 2012 for their role in moving Wikivoyage into the Wikimedia movement. While the case was dismissed, a counter-suit led to the WMF declaring "victory" in February 2013. Ryan Holliday, one of the two defendants, commented then that "[t]hroughout the ordeal I was amazingly impressed by the professionalism, hard work, and dedication of both WMF and Cooley".

The Signpost is a volunteer news outlet dedicated to providing fair and balanced reportage to the Wikimedia communities. It is independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, its board of trustees, and the various chapters. The content here does not represent the views of any particular editor or group on any website, Wikimedia-affiliated or otherwise.

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2014-07-16

World Cup dominates for another week

This week it's still more and more World Cup, with five entries out of the top ten (and 14 out of the Top 25). While tennis and pop culture make a few cameo appearances, the Indonesian presidential election is the only hard news subject to draw sufficient attention to make the list. Since this week's data goes through 13 July, the date of the World Cup final, next week should see a great shift to other topics of interest.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.

For the week of 7 to 13 July 2014, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Amazon.com B-class 1,234,236
The Amazon.com article suddenly reappeared in the top 25 a few months ago after a long absence; then it was No. 5 two weeks ago (466,100 views), and dropped out again last week (247,821). It had a big jump again this past week, all the way up to No. 1. It's always difficult to determine the reasons for the popularity of website articles (how many are simply misaimed clicks on the Google search list?), but another round of stories about Amazon and drones, as well as a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit complaining that Amazon is promoting in-app purchases by children may have contributed to this article's extreme popularity this week.
2 2014 FIFA World Cup C-class 1,179,986
Down from 1,604,100 views last week, the tournament came to a close on 13 July with Germany defeating Argentina in the final match.
3 FIFA World Cup Featured Article 1,049,265
The broader article on the history of the World Cup competition may have been accessed by people looking for the long view, but in truth it was probably more to do with people looking for the more specific article above. Up from 758,356 views last week.
4 Indonesian presidential election, 2014 C-Class 653,933
The presidential election in Indonesia was held on 9 July, though results are not due until July 20. The race pits Prabowo Subianto and Hatta Rajasa against Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla.
5 Laverne Cox Start-Class 552,258
The American transgender actress became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy award in an acting category; she was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black.
6 Lionel Messi Good Article 470,138
The Argentine forward and captain of the national team is a contender for the title of "best footballer on the planet", though he was unable to lead his team to victory in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final on July 13.
7 Neymar C-Class 465,282
Brazil's star footballer retained great readership interest despite being knocked out by an injury in their July 4 match against Colombia. His absence led to Brazil's crushing loss in its next match against Germany; Neymar reportedly turned off his television to play poker after Germany scored its seventh (and final) goal.
8 Brazil national football team C-Class 451,828
Despite the heartbreaking loss to Germany, Brazil's fans can take solace in the fact that they have won five World Cup championships, more than any other country (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, and 2002).
9 Novak Djokovic B-class 445,169
Djokovic won the men's singles title at the 2014 Wimbledon Championships on July 6, which day saw the bulk of the week's views for this entry.
10 Transformers: Age of Extinction C-Class 444,905
This action film, the fourth in the live-action Transformer film series, is down from #2 last week.


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2014-07-16

Serbia takes the stage with Filip Maljković

Introduction

The Wikimedia Education Program currently spans 60 programs around the world. Students and instructors participate at almost every level of education. Subjects covered include law, medicine, arts, literature, information science, biology, history, psychology, and many others. The Wikimedia in Education Signpost series presents a snapshot of the Wikimedia Global Education Program as it exists in 2014. We interviewed participants and facilitators from the United States and Canada, Serbia, Israel, the Arab World, and Mexico, in addition to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Education presentation by Dr. Martin Poulter of Wikimedia UK. The quote originated from Jimmy Wales.

Interview

Based on an email interview with Filip Maljković, President of Wikimedia Serbia

Can you describe how the Education Program started in Serbia?

”Presentation of Wikimedia Serbia at Ivanjica Youth Office”, 2014
It all started in late 2005, when we first held lectures about Wikipedia in two educational institutions (universities). In 2006 we had the first official cooperation with a faculty, where students had assignments (writing articles on Wikipedia), and that gave us a boost to start cooperations with several other faculties.

How many instructors and students currently participate in the program?

There are about 5 people on our side that participate in the program, but there are only a few instructors. There are about 300-400 students currently participating in the program.

Which areas of the country currently participate?

”WMRS Educational program, Info room of Belgrade Youth Office, 2013”
It's mostly Belgrade, but we are trying to include some other parts of Serbia. Beside Belgrade, we have cooperation with educational institutions from Niš and Vranje (southeast Serbia), as well as Ivanjica (southwest Serbia).

What grade levels are the students who participate?

Mostly, it's college-level students (1st-3rd year mostly), as well as some secondary schools (high schools, aka Gymnasiums).

What languages do students use when editing? Is there any translation work between wikis?

They edit almost exclusively in Serbian. In some institutions, students do translation work from mostly English Wikipedia, but in the majority of them, students write their own articles. Some Spanish language students did some work on English Wikipedia as well.

As you probably know, Wikipedia editors are predominantly male in most languages. Approximately what percentage of the students who participate in the Serbia education program are female?

”Wikimedia Serbia workshop and lecture within Wiki student project at the Faculty of Mining and Geology, Belgrade”, 2014
In many institutions, the number of male and female participants is balanced, but in the past year, we've had a slight majority of female participants, mostly due to the inclusion of Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade.

How are instructors and students trained to use Wikipedia?

”Student workshop of Wikimedia Serbia and Faculty of Mining and Geology, Belgrade”, 2014
We hold lectures about Wikimedia and Wikipedia (regarding both policies and editing). Usually, a set of workshops is held so that students can have hands-on experience, in order to be better prepared for their assignments.

Do students and instructors usually use VisualEditor?

It's been used to some extent only in one institution, mostly because it's been turned on later than for most wikis, and because some tech-related problems still need to be addressed, because of the conversion between Latin and Cyrillic scripts that is used throughout MediaWiki.

What kinds of assignments do students receive when using Wikipedia in the classroom? For example, are they translating, editing existing articles, or creating new articles? Which languages do they use?

During classes, students participate in workshops, where they are given a set of tasks to complete (usually on their user pages). The assignments that involve main namespace are usually set as homework or project, and are done at home. Those assignments can include translating, editing existing articles and/or creating new articles, depending on the agreement with the professors and specific circumstances at the institution at hand.

Has the program received any endorsements from government agencies? If so, who in the government endorsed the program, and how did the government decide to support the program?

The program isn't systematically endorsed by the government, but we have been recently accredited by a government body for holding seminars for teachers and professors, as a part of their continued professional improvement, so in a way they are supporting us.

Outside of Serbia, how widely used is the Serbian Wikipedia?

Map showing where Serbian is recognized as an official language (dark blue) or minority language (light blue)
It is mostly used in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in Republic of Srpska (its constituent state), as many Serbian-speaking people live there, as well as in Montenegro (since there's still no Montenegrin Wikipedia). Serbia has a large diaspora, so there are visits to srwiki from several countries (such as Austria, Germany, Canada, Australia, Sweden, the US etc).

How do you expect the program to develop in the next few years?

We would like to have someone employed full time to address these projects and help make the program more sustainable and broaden it to include various institutions. We expect to have cooperation with many schools, with teachers and professors having enough knowledge to hold lectures to their students about Wikipedia.

Is there anything else you would like Signpost readers to know about the education program in Serbia?

In March this year, we held an educational conference, which was the first of its sort in this part of the world. Its full effects yet remain to be seen, but we deem it a successful event that gathered several people from abroad and interested local audience that had a chance to learn something about Wikimedia educational programs and the ways they can be included.


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2014-07-16

The Island with the Golden Gun

A new featured picture of Tapu Island, in front of the Khao Phing Kan islands; the island served as the base of assassin Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun. This is but the latest in a long series of FPs by Diego Delso.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 6 through 12 July. Anything in quotation marks is taken from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Eight featured articles were promoted this week.

The cover of the November 1949 issue, by Virgil Finlay
Advertisement for Harta Berdarah

Three featured lists were promoted this week.

John Barrymore, as drawn by John Singer Sargent in 1923

28 featured pictures were promoted this week.

Three Beauties of the Present Day (Kitagawa Utamaro, c. 1793)
City of Workers (Hans Baluschek, 1920)
A first-issue rupiah banknote, scanned from the National Numismatic Collection by Godot13.
Together with four more beautiful church interiors, David Iliff presents us with this impressive time-lapse video of one rotation of the Falkirk Wheel; although each rotation takes around ten minutes, the video lasts ten seconds.


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2014-07-16

Bot-created Wikipedia articles covered in the Wall Street Journal, push Cebuano over one million articles

The Philippines has over 120 languages

The Swedish Wikipedia's prolific Lsjbot, which has created a significant proportion of the site's 1.7 million articles and has nearly single-handedly pushed it to being the fourth-largest Wikipedia, was covered in the Wall Street Journal this week.

In its front page article, the US newspaper reported that the bot has created 2.7 million articles, which is apparently a reference to the Waray-Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias (where Lsjbot is also active), and that "on a good day", it creates 10,000 articles.

The Wall Street Journal's article comes as the Cebuano Wikipedia is now the twelfth Wikipedia to cross the million article mark, almost entirely from the boost of these formulaic articles. Of these, over 40% (Swedish, Waray-Waray, Cebuano, Vietnamese, and Dutch) have received significant help from automated article creation scripts. The highest depth of these five is Vietnamese, with 18; Swedish follows with 11, and the others are all under ten. By comparison, the German Wikipedia has a depth of 90.

The process of bot-created articles has proved controversial among Wikimedians; by way of commenting, German Wikipedian Achim Raschka pointed the Signpost to an entry Denis Diderot wrote for the Encyclopédie, titled "Aguaxima". Diderot lamented that all they knew about the Aguaxima was that it was a plant in Brazil, yet he still had to describe it: "If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all."

Disagreement with these edits even led to a proposal last year that would have banned the overuse of bot-created articles on Wikimedia projects.

Still, they are not the first Wikipedias to utilize bots to augment human article creators: in 2007, Volapük and Lombard were expanded by over 100,000 bot articles each; Tagalog saw a similar rise. Lombard editors later placed a moratorium on new automated articles and deleted most of them; the Lombard Wikipedia currently has around 31,000 articles. Volapük is hovering around 120,000, and the Tagalog Wikipedia has close to 63,000.

Waray-Waray, Cebuano, and Tagalog are three of the largest languages of the Philippines. Volapük is a 19th-century constructed language from Germany, and Lombard is a Romance language from northern Italy. Vietnamese is primarily limited to Vietnam, while Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname.

In brief

  • Haifa students edit for credit: University students in Haifa, Israel, are writing Wikipedia articles for class credit, reports This Month in Education. The project stems from shortly after Wikimania 2011, when Wikimedia Israel and the University of Haifa launched a humanities project that would engage with Wikipedia. Since that time, 167 new articles have been added to the Hebrew Wikipedia, coming from students in classes on world history, archaeology, Hebrew literature, Middle Eastern history, Israeli history, and Jewish history.
  • Printed books to disappear: PediaPress, who published book versions of Wikipedia articles for a fee, has informed the WMF that they will no longer offer this service. According to the WMF's deputy director Erik Möller, "[t]hey've sold about 15K books over that time period, not enough to break even, and the support/maintenance burden for the service is no longer worth it for them." The ability to download Wikipedia articles in PDF form will remain.
  • New England Wikimedians: The relatively new usergroup has launched a new website.
  • Wiki Loves Earth—Brazil: The conclusion of the Brazilian Wiki Loves Earth has seen nearly 7000 eligible images uploaded. More surprisingly, the contest, which cost the movement R$23,000, induced 895 individuals to create an account. The winners will be exhibited in Rio de Janeiro at an international photography event, Paraty em Foco, and published in Fotografe Melhor, which event organizer Rodrigo Padula says is a photo magazine that has the highest circulation in its genre in Brazil.
  • Live tweeting politician's edits: There are two new Twitter accounts that automatically tweet the anonymous edits made from US Congressional and UK Parliamentary IP addresses: @congressedits and @parliamentedits. According to ArsTechnica, @congressedits has not caught any "scandalous" edits yet, but it did catch a staffer editing the Wikipedia page on horse head masks to include Barack Obama's handshake on 8 July.

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