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29 October 2014

 

2014-10-29

Go West, young man
(By the way, there is a monster at the end of this article)

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By Adam Cuerden, SchroCat and Hafspajen
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 19 to 25 October.
The wood mouse: his extended family celebrate their gold star this week

Two featured articles were promoted this week.

  • Æthelstan A (nominated by Dudley Miles) A fascinating article about an anonymous scribe in tenth-century England; "Æthelstan A" is the nom de plume given to the scribe by historians. The scribe drafted charters (or land grants) for King Æthelstan of England between 928 and 935, and the unique level of detail "Æthelstan A" included in his work has been important source for historians. His identity is unknown: he was probably English, as he wrote it fluently in the parts of the charters that weren't in Latin; he evidently had some connection with Bishop Ælfwine of Lichfield (in Mercia), as he regularly placed him in the list of witnesses higher than the Bishop's rank warranted, but beyond that, all is speculation. He did stop writing charters after Ælfwine's death, so he may have been Ælfwine, but scholars disagree on that point.
  • Rodent (nominated by LittleJerry, Chiswick Chap and Cwmhiraeth) Yes, the cute and cuddly little creatures have their moment in the spotlight thanks to some sterling work by LittleJerry, Chiswick Chap and Cwmhiraeth. According to the article, rodents are "characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws". About forty percent of all mammal species are rodents and they range in size from the 66 kg (146 lb) capybara to the 3.75 g (0.13 oz) Baluchistan pygmy jerboa.

Three featured lists were promoted this week.

Briarcliff Farm, in Briarcliff Manor, 1886.
  • Alexander Roslin's The Lady with a Veil shows one view of his wife Marie-Suzanne Giroust...
    Alexander Roslin's The Lady with a Veil shows one view of his wife Marie-Suzanne Giroust...
  • But his Self-portrait with his wife, Marie-Suzanne Giroust, painting Henrik Wilhelm Peill shows a very different side of her.
    But his Self-portrait with his wife, Marie-Suzanne Giroust, painting Henrik Wilhelm Peill shows a very different side of her.

Nineteen featured pictures were promoted this week.

The plane Precious Metal at the Reno Air Race 2014
William Holman Hunt's Our English Coasts
Head of the king vulture
Tripedalia cystophora
Portrait of a Man by Jan van Eyck
The Family Computer Disk System.
  • King vulture (created by Olaf Oliviero Riemer, nominated by Nikhil) A stunningly colourful bird, the king vulture portrait is full of colours like a Fauvist artist's palette. The rest of the body, however, is grey and black. His article tells us about him that: The king vulture is a large scavenger vulture found in Central and South America, with a wingspan of 1.2–2 meters (4–6.6 ft). The king vulture soars for hours effortlessly, rarely flapping its wings. King vultures mate for life and generally lay a single unmarked white egg at a time in their nest in a hollow in a tree. Because of its large size and beauty, the king vulture is an attraction at zoos around the world.
  • Aiding a Comrade (created by Frederic Remington, nominated by Adam Cuerden) Frederic Remington (1861 – 1909) is the New Yorker who is a master of telling stories, like this one - two cowboys from the Wild West attempting to lift up their friend who has fallen from his horse, picking up their comrade from the dirt and dust while being pursued by Indians/Native Americans/American Indians. The blonde cowboy reaches for the horse while the dark-haired one stretches his arm towards the fallen one trying to pull him up...
  • Mohiniyattam performer (created and nominated by Augustus Binu) Mohiniyattam is a graceful classical dance from Kerala, India, and is a dance meant to be performed in solo recitals by women. Believed to have originated in 16th century CE, it is one of the eight Indian classical dance forms recognised by the Sangeet Natak Akademi.
  • Airline meal (created by Austrian Airlines, nominated by GamerPro64) This is a beautifully shot photograph of an airline meal, albeit one that is only available at an extra cost, and must be ordered in advance. The menu for this meal is boquerones, olive tapenade, sun-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil in olive oil, jamón, manchego, fuet, chorizo, grilled vegetables, chocolate mousse, fresh strawberries, and a freshly baked bread basket.
  • Self-portrait with his wife, Marie-Suzanne Giroust, painting Henrik Wilhelm Peill (created by Alexander Roslin, nominated by Hafspajen) Selfportrait by the fashionable Parisian artist, Alexandre Roslin with his wife, Marie-Suzanne Giroust, who is painting a portrait of Henrik Wilhelm Peill. Roslin points at a gold box he received from Peill as a present. On the edge of the paintings frame is written Loin et près ("Far away and yet close"), showing that the portrait was a symbol of friendship. This painting was purchased by the Swedish National Museum in 2013, for a shedload of money.... (19.5 million Swedish krona, or 26,030,000 U.S. dollars...)
  • The Lady with the Veil (the Artist's Wife) (created by Alexander Roslin, nominated by Hafspajen) A veiled woman, smiling mysteriously, face half-seen, holding a fan. There's actually a traditional language of the fan (Which we don't have an article on! Shame!), and how she's holding the fan appears to be code for "I want you". The things those artists get up to with their models! And this flirtatious model happens to be the artist Marie-Suzanne Giroust, who happened to be married to Alexander Roslin, the painter of this portrait! Does the scandal have no end?
  • John C. Calhoun (created by George Peter Alexander Healy, nominated by Crisco 1492) An observer commented that Calhoun was "the most elegant speaker that sits in the House... His gestures are easy and graceful, his manner forcible, and language elegant; but above all, he confines himself closely to the subject, which he always understands, and enlightens everyone within hearing; having said all that a statesman should say, he is done." Look at the painting and ask to him speak a few words, isn't it almost like he could talk back?
  • Sir Paul Fildes (created by Luke Fildes, nominated by Adam Cuerden) Paul Fildes, son of the painter Luke Fildes - who painted this artwork - was a fairly notable scientist: he worked at the Royal Hospital Haslar during the First World War, where he helped with the research on sulphonamides, and is perhaps most notable for his work on anthrax at Porton Down during the Second World War, which led to the development of weaponised anthrax. Happily, this part of his work was never applied.
  • William H. Seward (Unknown photographer; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Those who read the Signpost regularly will recognise this image: Started a bit before William H. Seward passed featured article, the amount of spotting and dust and damage meant it took a bit of time to finish cleaning up, but I think the results were worth it, and the featured article now has quite a nice lead image. Seward was Governor of New York, Senator for New York, and the favorite for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. Instead, the convention nominated Abraham Lincoln, and, while devastated at first, he soon teamed up with Lincoln, helped him win the presidency, and was appointed Secretary of State. During the American Civil War, he helped handle the foreign diplomacy that kept other nations from supporting the Confederacy; after the war, during the reign of Andrew Johnson, he handled the Alaska purchase. After the Johnson tenure, he failed to gain an appointment from incoming president Ulysses S. Grant, retired from politics, and died four years later.
  • Tripedalia cystophora (From an article by Jan Bielecki, et al.; nominated by J Milburn) A tiny box jellyfish (about half an inch (1cm) in diameter), Tripedalia cystophora is native to the Caribbean Sea and, apparently, the Central Indo-Pacific, which we don't have a map for, so good luck figuring out what that means. It has been observed living in mangrove swamps, with interesting behavioural patterns therein.
  • Our English Coasts (created by William Holman Hunt, nominated by Hafspajen) This is a gorgeous work, painted in bright, bold, saturated colours, but so well-used that they blend into a very realistic landscape, magnificently portraying a typical seaside coastal cliff, as the mind sees it, as opposed to the less-vivid colours of nature. The sheep are a particularly fine example of the technique: bright reds and vivid yellows are used in their wool perfectly to give a paradoxically very realistic portrayal.
  • Precious Metal (created and nominated by WPPilot) Not gold, silver, platinum, or palladium, but an aeroplane - Precious Metal is a custom built, highly modified North American P-51XR Mustang registered as N6WJ with the American Federal Aviation Administration. The lovely aeroplane's publicity photo features lingerie model Jessica Alicia Bertrand, quite stunning...
  • Telamonia dimidiata (created and nominated by Muhammad Mahdi Karim) This cute, but terrifying jumping spider (was there ever a more ominous gerund to pair with "spider"?) has translucent yellow-orange legs and body, parts covered in thick cream-white hairs, with red hairs marking a pattern on its abdomen. Also called the two-striped jumper (but don't try to wear it: IT'S A SCARY SPIDER!) it's, nonetheless, apparently actually completely harmless to humans, and thus I shall reluctantly have to use the techniques I use with British spiders: Talk to them soothingly and hope they don't move in my direction, while thinking they're kind of sweet creatures, who only want to help out. I have weird issues with spiders.
  • Venetia James (created by Luke Fildes, nominated by Adam Cuerden) Venetia James was the wife of racehorse-breeder Arthur James, godmother to the future Queen Elizabeth II, friend to King Edward VII, notorious miser (inviting Catholics round on Fridays, so she could serve them fish instead of more expensive meat, for instance), and, if the painting is any guide, owner of a very lovely, elegant dog.
  • Pembroke College (created by Godot13, nominated by Armbrust) Founded in 1624, Pembroke College, Oxford is one of the many colleges that make up the University of Oxford. This photograph shows Pembroke College Hall from the manicured grass of the Quad.
  • Family Computer Disk System (created by Evan Amos, nominated by Crisco 1492) An accessory for the Nintendo Famicom (also shown, sitting on top), the Family Computer Disk System improved sound, and allowed the purchase of rewritable games from kiosks, but the development of cartridges with more ROM than a single disk allowed, combined with design flaws, such as an unreliable, non-standard belt meant that production ceased after two years, while the last new Famicoms were sold twenty years after the system's launch.
  • Portrait of a Man (created by Jan van Eyck, nominated by Hafspajen) Portrait of a Man is a portrait of a man wearing a red chaperone painted by Jan van Eyck (1390–1441), a Flemish early Netherlandish Renaissance painter. Van Eyck's portraits are characterized by a meticulous attention to detail and for the naturalness of his depictions long before Michelangelo and Raphael, which made him a huge deal back then; he was highly regarded as a portrait painter at a time when everyday people, not only royalty or aristocracy, had begun to order portraiture.
  • Orion (created by Rogelio Bernal Andreo, nominated by The Herald) A gorgeous photograph of the constellation Orion showing the nebulae usually hidden by their faintness. A whole world of astronomical beauty is revealed.
  • Mõdriku Manor (created by Ivar Leidus, nominated by Yakikaki) Mõdriku manor is a longish pink building, and was the Kaulbars family manor; a family with complicated descent. The Kaulbars were a Baltic German noble family descended from the Swedish aristocratic family von Kaulbars, of Swedish origin, which remained in Estonia after the country was ceded to Russia. The notable general explorer Alexander Kaulbars was born in Mõdriku, present-day Estonia, and grew up in St. Petersburg. Both his father and his brother rose to the rank of general in the Imperial Russian Army. The Mõdriku estate (in German Mödders) was first mentioned in 1470. Over the centuries, it has been the property of various Baltic German families.

One featured topic was promoted this week.

  • Cruisers of Germany (nominated by Parsecboy) A fine featured topic, with five good topics as subtopics - but, let's be honest: This is a Parsecboy project, so they're all going to end up featured. Consisting of six featured articles detailing the range of types of cruisers used by Germany from the first in the mid-1880s, to the end of cruiser production after World War II, it's an impressive work. Have a look!
  • Hi! Happy Hallowe'en! I'm the friendly orange jumping spider at the bottom of this page! I'm called Telamonia dimidiata! Pleased to meet you! ...What are you doing with that newspaper?
    Hi! Happy Hallowe'en! I'm the friendly orange jumping spider at the bottom of this page! I'm called Telamonia dimidiata! Pleased to meet you! ...What are you doing with that newspaper?


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2014-10-29

Wikipedia a trusted source on Ebola; Wikipedia study labeled government waste; football biography goes viral

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By Gamaliel and Peaceray

Wikipedia becomes a "trusted source" for Ebola information

Signs and symptoms of Ebola.
Signs and symptoms of Ebola
James Heilman (User:Doc James)
Wiki Project Med Foundation logo
Wiki Project Med Foundation logo

Noam Cohen reports in The New York Times (October 26) that Wikipedia's "Ebola Virus Disease article has had 17 million page views in the last month," an indication of the public's reliance on the online encyclopedia. The day a second nurse was diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas, the article had 2.5 million views, 60% of the 3.5 million views the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported for their portal on the topic. A Google search for Ebola listed the Wikipedia article first until recent tweaks placed it below the CDC. Cohen's article shows a screen shot from Bing that also places the Ebola Virus Disease article prominently.

In noting that Wikipedia has gone from "the butt of jokes for being the site where visitors could find anything, true or not," to a source of trusted information, Cohen quotes one of the 2004 founders of WikiProject Medicine, Dr. Jacob de Wolff (User:Jfdwolff): "It is because Wikipedia is such a recognized brand — obviously the C.D.C. is still much more authoritative than we will ever be — that people will click on that (Wikipedia) link."

Cohen also quotes Dr. James Heilman (User:Doc James), a Canadian emergency physician and president of the Wiki Project Med Foundation: "Wikipedia is a do-ocracy. Those who do the most, do have a greater influence. A key group of us keep an eye on articles that have become more popular to make sure that Wikipedia’s most-read content is of a reasonably high standard."

Cohen notes that early in Wikipedia's existence, many questioned how much trust could be placed in an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit." However, as it improved over time, Wikipedia has instituted more controls as well. For instance, the Ebola virus disease is semiprotected so that only autoconfirmed users can edit it. Those who are unregistered or non-confirmed users can suggest edits at the "separately maintained page," which is the article's talk page, "where (confirmed) editors ... review them and decide whether to incorporate them." He also notes that editors' scrutiny for the article's sources is more thorough than other articles, and that many "newspaper articles, for example, do not cut it."

A dissenting note came earlier this year from a study in the May issue of the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association which found "many errors" in Wikipedia articles about the ten most costly medical conditions in the US. KAIT reported (October 3) on the study and the comments of Dr. Shane Speights of St. Bernards Medical Center. Speights cited unspecified errors in Wikipedia's Ebola article and objected to the article's use of sources other than "journal articles and studies".

Wikipedia study cited as example of government waste

Senator Tom Coburn

CNN, Bloomberg News, and Buzzfeed are among the media outlets highlighting the appearance of a Wikipedia study on US Senator Tom Coburn's annual "Wastebook". Coburn, a Republican who represents the state of Oklahoma, has been dubbed "Senator No" for his strident opposition to government spending, at times even objecting to otherwise widely popular allocations of government funds, such as relief aid for the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy or funds for the investigation of crimes involving child pornography and civil rights.

Coburn's office annually releases a compilation of government spending on what it dubs "silly, unnecessary, and low priority projects", with attention-grabbing descriptions that often make their way into news headlines. This year's Wastebook, which will be the last due to Coburn's retirement next January, announces on its cover "Monkeys Gambling With Your Money" and "NASA's Out of this World Golf Clubs".

As Roll Call describes it:

Research grants from the National Science Foundation have been a frequent target for Coburn and the Wastebook. The NSF has a $7 billion annual budget, which is about 0.18 percent of US federal government spending. Coburn's Wastebook has described projects and experiments funded by the NSF with colorful phrases like "gambling monkeys" and "mountain lions on a treadmill". Scientists charge that Coburn's descriptions lack "nuance" or are outright misleading, by inadequately describing, omitting, or misrepresenting their scientific value. One scientist targeted by Coburn told Live Science "It is unfortunate and sad that public safety and well-being is being threatened by politicians' hasty efforts to promote their political agendas."

Appearing as number 89 in the 2014 Wastebook are NSF grants totaling $202,000 to sociologists Julia Adams of Yale University and Hannah Brückner of New York University Abu Dhabi for their ongoing study of "systemic gender bias" in Wikipedia (see previous Signpost coverage). Gender bias on Wikipedia has been the subject of much study and conversation on Wikipedia, in the Wikimedia Foundation, and from outside Wikipedia. Of this, the Wastebook cites only Amanda Filipacchi's 2013 New York Times opinion column on Wikipedia's categorization of female novelists (see previous Signpost coverage). The Wastebook counters this with an opinion column from a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research which declares that "the New York Times and feminists should stop hyperventilating about the web site's gender gap."

Biography of teenage footballer becomes viral sensation

Yahoo! Eurosport UK marveled (October 27) at the lengthy Wikipedia article for nineteen year old footballer Fraser Hobday, goalkeeper for Highland Football League team Huntly F.C.. Media outlets noted that the article, at 3271 words, was longer than Wikipedia articles for notable professional players like Joe Hart. The article contained minute details of his football career dating back to primary school and biographical details such as his current job as a trainee chef. Following the story's publication, Hobday's Wikipedia article was heavily edited, repeatedly vandalized, reduced to two sentences, and proposed for deletion. The article also went viral, making Hobday "something of a folk hero on social media" according to the Daily Mirror (October 28). The Mirror noted the many favorable tweets about Hobday's article, including one from BBC journalist Jeremy Vine: "Far and away the best entry on Wikipedia, ever ever". Hobday spoke to the Daily Mail (October 28), saying that the article was written by his older sister Heather because "We knew Wikipedia doesn't allow you to add your own entries so I can't write it." While many journalists thought that some of the details in Hobday's article were presented humorously, Hobday insisted that the article was a serious one: "it's basically an online CV." Despite this, he said it was the subject of teasing from his teammates: "They'd say 'what's Fraser doing tonight?', 'probably updating his Wikipedia page'." The Daily Telegraph (October 29) noted the irony that while Wikipedia's rules prevent self-promotion such as Hobday's, the article has made him famous, at least temporarily.

Editor's note, November 1: Hobday's article has been deleted by an English Wikipedia administrator after a short deletion discussion.

In brief

Sachin Tendulkar

2014-10-29

Find 10,000 digitised maps this weekend

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By Jheald
Rather than the usual WikiProject Report, this week our guest author Jheald is telling us about a campaign to identify thousands of old maps which have been digitised, to make them available for georeferencing and upload -- User:Rcsprinter123

Looking for 10,000 digitised maps in the British Library's online Flickr collection

Thomas Rowlandson's Dr Syntax, losing his way -- one of a million images uploaded by the British Library to Flickr.
The Battle of Cerro de Pasco in the Peruvian War of Independence, 6 December 1820
Map of Preston, as it was in 1774
London's Euston Station as it was in 1888

Just under a year ago, the British Library posted a million images to Flickr Commons from scans of 19th century books. Since that time almost 20,000 have been uploaded to Wiki Commons, often as complete sets from whole books. Progress has been slow because, although for a small number of images it is easy enough to upload, rename, describe and categorise the images to make them properly findable and usable on Commons, to do this for larger numbers of images becomes quite a time-consuming process.

One class of images that would lend themselves very readily to bulk upload would be old maps. About two-thirds of the books that were scanned were 19th century guide books, travel books, ethnography books, geography books and history books about various parts of the world, which contain quite a large number of maps. Maps have the advantage that once their co-ordinates are known, they can be uploaded to Commons in bulk, and automatically be allocated to appropriate categories, to make them usable and discoverable.

About 3,000 maps that have already been found are plotted on this map of the world, the result of the BL's popular (and addictive) Georeferencer crowd activity. Each red dot can be clicked on to reveal a map (or the ground-plan of a building), which can also be laid over a modern map for comparison. (Similar functionality should be available soon for maps already on Commons, through the Commons:Wikimaps project, expected to go fully live next year).

However, before they can be placed on the globe, the key first stage is simply to identify which of the files on Flickr are in fact maps. There are an estimated 10,000 more in the collection, as yet unidentified. The BL is ready to start another round of georeferencing as soon as it has a list of the files that are maps. So that is what the Mechanical Curator project on Commons would like to spearhead this weekend, starting on Friday 31st at 11:00 UTC -- to find all the maps, and tag them all on Flickr.

To approach the task systematically, the campaign will be using a set of geographical index pages on Commons that have been built up for the books that were scanned to make the collection. These pages are linked from a status page showing the project's current progress.

What is needed then should be quite simple. It's for somebody to pick part of the index that interests them, then open the pink  Untagged maps?   templated link for each book entry for that part of the index, to go through to the Flickr page for that book (from which anything already tagged as a map will have been excluded).

Scrolling down the Flickr page, if it has maps, the campaign is asking people to

  • first edit the wiki entry, copying-and-pasting-and-changing the {{UntaggedMaps|sysnum = nnnnnnnnn}} template to add a "Has maps" template {{HasMaps|sysnum = nnnnnnnnn}} before it, which adds a maps link;
Nota bene: in July 2023 this template was deleted.
  • then go through the page on Flickr, opening each map (or ground plan) and tagging it on its Flickr image page with the word 'map'. (Note that you need to be logged with a Flickr account to be able to add tags, which can be found on grey buttons below the image).
  • then, once there are no more maps to tag, edit the wiki entry again to remove the "Untagged maps" template.

Alternatively if there were no maps (which will be the case the majority of the time), simply replace the {{UntaggedMaps}} template with the words no maps.

The British Library has also requested that Flickr tags split, conical and world be added, as well as the tag map, respectively, for images that need to be split because they contain more than one map; for images that contain a map on a conical projection (rather than the usual rectangular projection); and for images containing a single-sheet map of the world; also rotatec and rotatecc for maps that need to be rotated clockwise or anti(or counter)-clockwise.

As the campaign proceeds, the status page will count the proportion of "Untagged maps" templates so far removed, the index pages with the largest numbers still to go, and the total number of new Flickr map tags added.

Browsing through the geographical index is also a great way to find out what other images there are in the collection, that might be useful, and worth uploading.

Events

To launch the campaign, there will be an all-day Digital maps Halloween tagathon on Friday 31st at the British Library in London, between 10:00 am and 4:30 pm. If anyone reads this in time and can make it, please do drop by! (If you read it in time to have registered first, even better!)

The BL Labs group will also be holding its annual symposium on Monday 3rd November. Tickets may now be limited, but it would be a fantastic demonstration of the power of openness, if the whole of the index (or the lion's share of it) could have been worked through by that point. (Also, the sooner all the maps have been found, the sooner the BL can start a new round of georeferencing to make them useful).

There are a little over 13,000 book titles in the index, so if everybody gave an hour, or even half an hour, to take out a block of 15, the whole lot could be done by the end of weekend.


Update (Monday 3 November, 10:00 UTC) The BL Labs symposium had about 200 attendees today, and I was hugely proud to be able to say that as Wikipedians we had added 5,300 map tags since Friday, with 70% of the collection still to go. (As I write the number is 5,800 and continuing to rise steadily). Some large swathes of the globe have been taken out by particularly active contributors -- France, Germany and Australia in particular; and Africa which was tagged hard during the event on Friday. Index pages that remain with large numbers of Flickr book pages still to be examined include in particular those for the United States and U.S. history, and for the various nations and regions of the U.K. -- see the central status page for links for these and other parts of the world, as well as the latest total counts. All help looking through these would be very much appreciated -- as well as the maps (and ground plans) for tagging, you may well also find other interesting or useful non-map views that may be worth considering or uploading for articles on wherever in the world you happen to be most interested in.

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2014-10-29

Ebola, Ultron, and Creepy Articles

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By Milowent

Ebola virus disease leads the Report for the fourth straight week. The rest of the list is primarily a mix of pop culture topics, including movie Avengers: Age of Ultron (#4) whose trailer was leaked early, and the death of Oscar de la Renta (#7). A BuzzFeed article on creepy Wikipedia articles, no doubt well-timed with Halloween (#9) around the corner, was responsible for three articles in the Top 25, including June and Jennifer Gibbons (#10), Taman Shud Case (#17), Joyce Vincent (#25). And the internet-run-amok controversy of Gamergate cracked the Top 25 for the first time at #19.

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

For the week of 19-25 October, 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 Ebola virus disease B-class 1,695,567
Though not as phenomenally popular as last week's 8.2 million views, this article still had more than enough views at almost 1.7 million to be the most viewed article for the fourth straight week. If you want to keep track of recent developments, check out 2014 Ebola virus disease epidemic timeline. Notable recent events included an announcement by the World Health Organization on 20 October that Nigeria has successfully defeated its recent breakout; the first confirmed case in Mali, one of the poorest nations in the world and quite ill-equipped to address health emergencies, occurred on 23 October; and a fourth case in the United States was diagnosed, this time a doctor recently returned to New York City from a trip to Guinea to treat Ebola patients. Through 23 October, WHO has reported 4,922 official Ebola deaths.

Note: includes views from the Ebola redirect page.

2 Diwali B-class 1,325,621
The Hindu festival of light, which draws attention to the inner light beyond the material body, the Atman, occurred this week.
3 Ultron Start-class 1,263,228
Ultron, a comic book villain in the Marvel Comics family, will be the subject of the 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron (#4), and will be played by James Spader (pictured). A week-early leak of the film's trailer propelled both articles into our Top 10. Marvel cheekily blamed Hydra, a fictional terrorist group in the Marvel universe, for the leak. One could question whether the leak was intentional and has already been added to the resume of some marketing guy at Marvel Studios.
4 Avengers: Age of Ultron C-class 741,451
See #3. Scarlett Johansson (pictured) is another of the many stars in the film, which will be released in North America on 1 May 2015.
5 Happy New Year (2014 film) Start-class 733,860
This 2014 Bollywood film starring Shahrukh Khan (pictured) stormed the Indian box office on Diwali weekend. The comedic caper movie tells the story of a motley crew entering a world dance competition to get close to a valuable trove of diamonds.
6 American Horror Story: Freak Show Start-class 636,016
The fourth season of the American Horror Story series debuted on 8 October, and is in the Top 10 for the third straight week.
7 Oscar de la Renta Start-class 632,772
The world-renowned fashion designer died on 20 October at his home in Connecticut. In 2007, subsequent to being diagnosed with cancer, De la Renta remarked "The only realities in life are that you are born, and that you die. We always think we are going to live forever. The dying aspect we will never accept." Most recently, de la Renta designed the wedding dress which Amal Clooney wore.
8 Facebook B-class 617,221
A perennially popular article. On 23 October, Facebook launched a separate new app called "Rooms," which is essentially an anonymous chat room.
9 Halloween B-class 608,007
Unlike most other holidays, Halloween seems to creep into the Top 25 well in advance of its appointed date. It just barely missed making the Top 25 last week (#27).
10 June and Jennifer Gibbons Start-class 605,331
On 22 October, BuzzFeed published the listicle "21 Wikipedia Pages That Will Make It Impossible For You To Sleep" which proved quite popular. June and Jennifer Gibbons was listed at #9 in the article, but directed the most traffic to Wikipedia among the bunch, probably because the list entry was practically clickbait: "The entire backstory and what happens (to the twins) after they decide to go through with the sacrifice (of one of them) is fascinating." This report won't tell you want happened to June and Jennifer Gibbons either, you'll have to read June and Jennifer Gibbons to find out what happened to June and Jennifer Gibbons, but you will be shocked and amazed when you do click on it. But we will tell you that the BuzzFeed article was also successful enough to put Taman Shud Case at #17 and Joyce Vincent at #25 in the Top 25.

Notes: From the raw WP:5000, it took 255,150 views to make the Top 100 raw entries this week (John Wick (film)). Stephen Hawking joined Facebook and hit #114, while Monica Lewinsky joined Twitter and made #118. The 2014 World Series (#466) was the last article to break 100,000 views; the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (#1671) last to break 50,000; and Dark matter (26,824 views) closed out the list at #5000.

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2014-10-29

Informed consent and privacy; newsmaking on Wikipedia; Wikipedia and organizational theories

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By Maximilian Klein, Piotr Konieczny, Kim Osman, Pine and Tilman Bayer

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

Reviewed by Kim Osman

In new research[1] conducted in light of proposed changes to data protection legislation in the European Union (EU), authors Bart Custers, Simone van der Hof, and Bart Schermer conducted a comparative analysis of social media and user-generated content websites’ privacy policies along with a user survey (N=8,621 in 26 countries) and interviews in 13 different EU countries on awareness, values, and attitudes toward privacy online. The authors state consent regarding personal data use is an important concept and observe, “There is mounting evidence that data subjects do not fully contemplate the consequences and risks of personal data processing.”

Custers, van der Hof and Schermer developed a set of criteria for giving informed consent about the use of personal data, including: “Is it clear who is processing the data and who is accountable?” and “Is the information provided understandable?” When existing privacy policies were applied to these criteria, Wikipedia was the worst performing of the sites analyzed and recommends that it makes clear how minors are dealt with and to provide additional clarity around security measures. It also notes that IP addresses may be traced, therefore making “anonymous” Wikipedia users identifiable.

The study did acknowledge issues around self-presentation and identity in different online contexts and the actual need for a site like Wikipedia to have an extensive privacy policy as users afford criteria regarding privacy different value in these different contexts. The authors do note however, “Wikipedia does collect opinions that may be attributable to individuals and that may be considered privacy sensitive.”

This paper is a well-researched summary of the privacy policies of online sites (including major international platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube), and although from a European perspective (where data collection practices are arguably more stringent than in other places in the world), it raises important questions about how Wikipedia approaches its privacy policy in terms of informed user consent, and would be useful reading for anyone with an interest in how online practices are shaping approaches to user privacy.

For researchers requiring more information about ethics in online research visit the Association of Internet Researchers' wiki.


Briefly

  • Holocaust articles compared across languages: We tell ourselves that Wikipedia works well for the most part, but that finding consensus might break down on controversial articles. Of all article topics, perhaps none is potentially more fraught than the Holocaust, and that is precisely what Rudolf Den Hartogh has tackled in his Master's thesis "The future of the Past: A case study on the representation of the Holocaust on Wikipedia".[2] It is an in-depth compare and contrast analysis of the Holocaust topic in the English, German, and Dutch. Several curious facts come out of this. For instance the average vandalism rate on these articles is 4%, compared with 7% globally - as these articles have been locked at some point, although the Dutch version is no longer protected. Other analyses show edit activity over time, since the articles' inception. The German version saw the height of its shaping 2 years after it was started in 2004, whereas the English and Dutch articles saw their main spurts 5 and 3 years later respectively. Moreover the author finds "that there does not exist one representation of the Holocaust, but each language version has its own unique account of events and phenomena." Finally they "found that none of the Holocaust entries under study is rated ‘good quality’," so we still have not definitively addressed the hardest parts of our encyclopedia.
Semantic role label features for all records, colours are based on event tag in the Lensing Wikipedia dataset.
  • Lensing Wikipedia[3] aims to extract date, location, event and role semantic data from historical English Wikipedia articles. Of course making grand sense of that automatic extraction work requires visualization. Such visualization is difficult on high-dimensional data consisting of e.g. a date, location, multiple events and roles - all at the same time. A short proof of concept "Visualizing Wikipedia using t-SNE" by Jasneet Singh Sabharwal [4] has done just this using a Barnes-Hut simulation variation of the T-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding algorithm. This image shows the closeness of the semantic roles of features found in Wikipedia article text, with colors indicating similar events that articles are describing.
  • "Infoboxes and cleanup tags: Artifacts of Wikipedia newsmaking"[5] looks at use and abuse of cleanup tags and infobox elements as conceptual and symbolic tools. Based on ethnographic observations and several interviews, the author provides a lengthy description of the formative first three or so weeks in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution article. It is a valuable study of how articles are developed, and the collaboration and conflicts that are common in high-activity articles. The author provides a valuable observation that "Classification work... is intensely political" and "the editing of Wikipedia articles involves continuous linking and classifying." The choice of words, categories, article titles, but also specific tags or infoboxes (a particular example discussed - whether to use Template:Infobox uprising or not - concerns a now deleted template) can be quite controversial. The author also puts forth an interesting argument that removal of cleanup tags may give false impressions of stability in articles that are not yet stable; and that infoboxes carry significant, perhaps undue weight, compared to other elements of the article.
  • Wikipedia's identity "based on freedom": This paper[6] looks at Wikipedia through a number of organizational theory lenses, in particular theories of organizational identity. Of particular interest to Wikipedians is one of the aspects analyzed by the editors - identify of the project. The authors state that "the organizational identity at Wikipedia is based on freedom". Next, they discuss the utopian ideals of freedom (such as "anyone can edit"), as contrasted with the freedom-reducing tendencies of censorship, administrative control, and bureaucratization. The authors argue that the common solution to criticism of Wikipedia, within the community, is concealment and marginalization of said criticism. The authors point to the practical defanging of the Wikipedia:Ignore all rules policy, which has went through a number of meaning shifts, in which it was redefined to be virtually toothless, even though the name remained the same. Another way that freedom is limited is through end-justifies-the-mean utopian vision of "free access [to Wikipedia] for everyone", replacing the older "anyone can edit" "freedom of editing meaning. Unfortunately, the author's discussion of "the subjugation of contesting voices" is very short on details and specifics; the authors allude to administrator power abuse, but fail to provide any specific discussion of how it occurs; an example they used of "deleted content" can be interpreted as nothing more sinister then admin ability to delete content that does not meet Wikipedia's site policies, including uncontroversial content such as spam.
  • "Copyright or Copyleft? Wikipedia as a Turning Point for Authorship": This paper [7] touches upon a very interesting yet understudied area: what Wikipedia's existence means for copyright law. As the authors note, Wikipedia "appears to challenge some of the notions at the heart of copyright law."
  • Critique of Wikipedia's dispute resolution procedures: This paper[8] claims to presents an ethnographic analysis of and a strong critique of Wikipedia's dispute resolution procedures, and states upfront its goal as "to tease out systemic discrimination or injustice". The strongly worded abstract is attention-drawing, promising that "A number of flaws will be identified including the ability for vocal minorities to dominate the Wikipedia community consensus". Unfortunately, while the paper provides a very detailed description of Wikipedia's dispute resolution scene, it doesn't seem to present any new data; its critique of "vocal minorities", for example, is composed of few sentences, and the entire argument is based on, and essentially a repetition of a similar passage in Reagle's Good Faith Collaboration book. While the paper is well written and presents a number of valid arguments, it does not seem to contribute anything new to our understanding of Wikipedia, being in essence a literature review focused on the topic of dispute resolution on Wikipedia. Which this reviewer finds disappointing, considering that the almost tabloid-style abstract and the introductory section promise ethnographic research, which - like anything else going beyond synthesis of existing, published research - is sadly very much absent from the paper.

Other recent publications

A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.

  • "Insights from the Wikipedia Contest (IEEE Contest for Data Mining 2011)"[9] (earlier coverage: "Predicting editor survival: The winners of the Wikipedia Participation Challenge")
  • "A Piece of My Mind: A Sentiment Analysis Approach for Online Dispute Detection"[10] (constructs a dispute corpus from Wikipedia talk pages)
  • "Extracting Imperatives from Wikipedia Article for Deletion Discussions"[11] (without conclusions or published dataset, apparently)
  • "Use of Wikipedia by Legal Scholars: Implications for Information Literacy"[12]
  • "Guiding Students in Collaborative Writing of Wikipedia Articles – How to Get Beyond the Black Box Practice in Information Literacy Instruction"[13] (received the EdMedia Outstanding Paper Award)
  • "Two Is Bigger (and Better) Than One: the Wikipedia Bitaxonomy Project"[14] (project home page, allowing the live creation of a taxonomy graph for an arbitrary Wikipedia article: http://wibitaxonomy.org )
  • "Analysis of the accuracy and readability of herbal supplement information on Wikipedia"[15]
  • "Maturity Assessment of Wikipedia Medical Articles"[16]
  • "Computer-supported collaborative accounts of major depression: Digital rhetoric on Quora and Wikipedia"[17]

References

  1. ^ Custers, Bart; Simone van der Hof; Bart Schermer (2014-09-01). "Privacy Expectations of Social Media Users: The Role of Informed Consent in Privacy Policies". Policy & Internet. 6 (3): 268–295. doi:10.1002/1944-2866.POI366. ISSN 1944-2866.
  2. ^ Den Hartogh, Rudolf (2014). The future of the Past: A case study on the representation of the Holocaust on Wikipedia (Masters). Erasmus University Rotterdam.
  3. ^ "Lensing Wikipedia". Simon Fraser University Natural Language Laboratory.
  4. ^ Jasneet Singh Sabharwal: Visualizing Wikipedia using t-SNE
  5. ^ Ford, Heather (2014-08-31). "Infoboxes and cleanup tags: Artifacts of Wikipedia newsmaking". Journalism: 1464884914545739. doi:10.1177/1464884914545739. ISSN 1464-8849. Closed access icon
  6. ^ Kozica, Arjan M. F.; Christian Gebhardt; Gordon Müller-Seitz; Stephan Kaiser (2014-10-13). "Organizational Identity and Paradox An Analysis of the 'Stable State of Instability' of Wikipedia's Identity". Journal of Management Inquiry: 1056492614553275. doi:10.1177/1056492614553275. ISSN 1056-4926. Closed access icon
  7. ^ Simone, Daniela (2013-07-01). Copyright or Copyleft? Wikipedia as a Turning Point for Authorship. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. SSRN 2330766.
  8. ^ Ross, Sara (2014-03-01). Your Day in 'Wiki-Court': ADR, Fairness, and Justice in Wikipedia's Global Community. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. SSRN 2495196.
  9. ^ Desai, Kalpit V.; Roopesh Ranjan (2014-01-07). "Insights from the Wikipedia Contest (IEEE Contest for Data Mining 2011)". arXiv:1405.7393.
  10. ^ Lu Wang, Claire Cardie: A Piece of My Mind: A Sentiment Analysis Approach for Online Dispute Detection Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Short Papers), pages 693–699, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, June 23-25 2014
  11. ^ Fiona Mao,Robert E. Mercer, Lu Xiao: Extracting Imperatives from Wikipedia Article for Deletion Discussions Proceedings of the First Workshop on Argumentation Mining, pages 106–107, Baltimore, Maryland USA, June 26, 2014.
  12. ^ Darryl Maher: Use of Wikipedia by Legal Scholars: Implications for Information Literacy. Master's thesis, School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, submitted June 2014
  13. ^ Sormunen, E. & Alamettälä, T. (2014). Guiding Students in Collaborative Writing of Wikipedia Articles – How to Get Beyond the Black Box Practice in Information Literacy Instruction. In: EdMedia 2014 – World Conference on Educational Media and Technology. Tampere, Finland: June 23-26, 2014
  14. ^ Flati, Tiziano; Daniele Vannella; Tommaso Pasini; Roberto Navigli (2014). "Two Is Bigger (and Better) Than One: the Wikipedia Bitaxonomy Project". Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers): 945–955.
  15. ^ Phillips, Jennifer; Connie Lam; Lisa Palmisano (2014-07-01). "Analysis of the accuracy and readability of herbal supplement information on Wikipedia". Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. 54 (4): 406–414. doi:10.1331/JAPhA.2014.13181. ISSN 1544-3191. Closed access icon
  16. ^ Conti, Riccardo; Emanuel Marzini; Angelo Spognardi; Ilaria Matteucci; Paolo Mori; Marinella Petrocchi (2014). "Maturity Assessment of Wikipedia Medical Articles". Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems. CBMS '14. Washington, DC, USA: IEEE Computer Society. pp. 281--286. doi:10.1109/CBMS.2014.69. ISBN 978-1-4799-4435-4. Closed access icon
  17. ^ Rughinis, Cosima; Bogdana Huma; Stefania Matei; Razvan Rughinis (June 2014). Computer-supported collaborative accounts of major depression: Digital rhetoric on Quora and Wikipedia. 2014 9th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI). pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/CISTI.2014.6876968. Closed access icon


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