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The Signpost
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WP:POST/1
13 May 2015

 

2015-05-13

WMF Board candidates share their views with the Signpost

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By Tony1
Editor's note: voting is now open. We encourage all Wikimedians who meet the meagre requirements to read the information below, determine what issues matter most to you personally, and use this knowledge to vote for candidates aligned with your views. As we say later, these board members will be making significant decisions in the next two years that will critically affect the future of the Wikimedia movement.
A Board Q and A session in 2014

Three community-elected seats on the Board of Trustees—the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation—will be decided by Wikimedians in the election to be held 17–31 May. Voting will start 00:01 UTC on the Sunday after the publication of this edition, and will end at 23:59 on the Sunday two weeks and a day after. This comes after a two-week period of questions and discussion between candidates and community, 5–16 May.

The three seats are being contested by 21 candidates from around the world, listed below. All eligible Wikimedians are encouraged to vote in this significant event, which comes at a time when major decisions will need to be made concerning the future of the movement.

  1. Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)
  2. Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)
  3. Dariusz Jemielniak (pundit)
  4. Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)
  5. Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)
  6. David Conway (Smerus)
  7. Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)
  8. Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)
  9. Peter Gallert (Pgallert)
  10. María Sefidari (Raystorm)
  11. Phoebe Ayers (phoebe)
  12. Denny Vrandečić (Denny)
  13. Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)
  14. Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)
  15. James Heilman (Doc James)
  16. Tim Davenport (Carrite)
  17. Samuel Klein (Sj)
  18. Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)
  19. Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)
  20. Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)
  21. Pete Forsyth (Peteforsyth) (Editor's note: Pete Forsyth withdrew from the election on 16 May)

Voting process

A ternary voting system will be used, imported in 2013 from the English Wikipedia's ArbCom elections, although there is no mention of this system on the election pages, including the FAQ page. The system gives voters three options for each candidate—support, neutral, or oppose—in which avoiding "neutral" votes strengthens the positions of those whom a voter supports, on simple arithmetic grounds. The formula S/(S+O) will determine the successful candidates, who must then be endorsed by the WMF Board. Vote-checking will be conducted 1–5 June; the election committee's goal for announcing the results is 5 June.

As in the recent FDC elections, the presence of rafts of "translation" links at the top of the election pages—including the candidate statement page—will be met with bemusement by non-English-speakers who click on one: they will typically arrive at the very same English-language page; this is despite the fact that most of the potential electorate of more than 70,000 comprises non-anglophones.

The Signpost will add links to the eligibility tester and voting page when they become available.

The survey

We sent out a three-part survey of attitudes to Board-relevant issues to all 21 candidates, of whom 19 provided responses.[A] The results are set out below in two tables for the numerical responses. In the final part, we invited candidates to write brief comments where they felt they needed to explain a numerical response. Voters may find it useful to peruse the tables in relation to candidates they are considering voting for or against. The data may also interest the movement in terms of the attitudes of this group of Wikimedians who are putting themselves forward for high office, both as a whole and on the basis of the following three demographic groupings that reflect key internal dynamics of the organisation:

  • Global south/north: six candidates are from the global south (Sailesh, Ahmad, Muzammil, Josh, Tonmoy, and Mahomed) and 13 from the global north (Mike, Peter, Tim, David, Cristian, Denny, James, Dariusz, María, Phoebe, Pete, Samuel, and Ed);
  • Native language: eight candidates are native English-speakers (Tim, David, James, Phoebe, Pete, Samuel, Josh, and Ed) and 11 are native speakers of other languages (Mike, Peter, Cristian, Denny, Dariusz, Sailesh, Ahmad, María, Muzammil, Tonmoy, and Mahomed)
  • Gender: two candidates are female and 17 are male, a ratio that itself reflects what is commonly believed to pertain in editorial communities.

The Signpost saw it as important that candidates were put in the position of responding in isolation, without knowing how their colleagues would be reacting. While the whole candidature is large enough to allow for statistical significance, our demographic comparisons involve smaller samples and should be treated with caution in this respect.

Five propositions

The first part of the survey presented each candidate with five propositions and a Likert scale, asking them to assign a numeral to each:

  • 1 = strongly agree
  • 2 = agree
  • 3 = neutral/no response
  • 4 = disagree
  • 5 = strongly disagree

We calculated averages within the four-point space between 1 and 5, and the sum of the positive responses (1s and 2s), negative responses (4s and 5s), and neutral/no response. The first two propositions garnered roughly equal numbers of positives and negatives:

  • (a) "The Board should implement a merger of affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats." Average score 2.9 (stdev 1.1); 7 positive, 8 negative, 4 neutral/no response.
  • (b) "The Board should appoint more technology experts as trustees." Average score 3.0 (stdev 1.1); 6 positive, 7 negative, 6 neutral/no response.

The last three propositions show strong skews towards positive or negative:

  • (c) "Wikimedia’s two big annual conference formats—Wikimania and the Wikimedia conference—should be merged." Average score 3.6 (stdev 0.8, a tight spread); only Mahomed is positive; 13 are negative; and 5 are neutral/no response.
  • (d) "The WMF's current reserves of some US$47 million should be transformed into the seeding for a WMF endowment, thus increasing yearly returns from the endowment." Average score 2.2 (stdev 1.0, a reasonably tight spread); 14 are positive; only Mike and Ahmad are negative; and 3 are neutral/no response.
  • (e) "The WMF's terms of use should forbid paid editing of any type on its sites." Average score a low 3.0 (stdev 1.3); only David and Tonmoy support the proposition; 13 are negative; and 2 are neutral/no response.

For proposition (a), the global north is slightly less supportive than the global south (averages 3.2 vs 2.5, with stdevs 1.0 and 1.2, respectively). For proposition (e) the same is true (4.2 vs 3.3; stdevs 1.1 and 1.5). There is otherwise little difference between the demographic groups in their responses to the five propositions.

Propositions Mike Peter G Tim David Cristian Denny James Dariusz Sailesh Ahmad María Muzammil Phoebe Pete F Samuel Josh Ed Tonmoy Mahomed Av. (StDev) Positive Negative Neutral
Merge affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats 4 4 1 3 4 2 3 2 2 2 4 4 4 3 3 4 4 2 1 2.9 (1.1) 7 8 4
Appoint more tech experts as trustees 4 4 2 4 3 1 4 4 3 4 3 2 1 3 3 3 2 5 2 3.0 (1.1) 6 7 6
Merge Wikimania and Wikimedia conferences 4 3 4 4 4 3 4 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 4 4 4 1 3.6 (0.8) 1 13 5
Use reserves to seed new endowment 4 2 1 3 2 1 2 1 2 5 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2.2 (1.0) 14 2 3
Terms of use should forbid paid editing 4 5 5 1 4 5 3 5 3 5 4 3 4 5 5 3 4 1 5 3.9 (1.3) 2 13 2

Ten priorities

The candidates were asked to number 10 priorities using all numerals from 1 to 10, allocating each number once and only once. Unlike the first part, here there was no opportunity to opt out by choosing the "neutral" number. The thematic order in the list was deliberately scrambled.

Based on the averages of all candidates, the order of perceived importance is set out below. The average placement of the 10 priorities occurs in three clusters: the first two, then a gap between them and the next five, then another gap separating the last three from the rest. [B]

  • Increasing editor retention [1st priority – average placement of 3.6 out of 10 items]
  • Increasing reader and editor participation in the global south [2nd – average 3.7]


  • Reducing the gender gap in the editing communities [3rd – average 5.1]
  • Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience [4th – average 5.2]
  • Investing more in collecting data relevant to our mission [equal-5th – average 5.3]
  • Investing more in mobile [equal-5th – average 5.3]
  • Providing more engineering resources to improve readers' experience [7th – average 5.5]


  • Advocating for freedom of information on the internet [8th – average 6.9]
  • Funding more offline meetups (e.g. conferences, editathons). [9th – average 7.1]
  • Implementing VisualEditor [10th – average 7.3]


Priorities Mike Peter G Tim David Cristian Denny James Dariusz Sailesh Ahmad María Muzammil Phoebe Pete F Samuel Josh Ed Tonmoy Mahomed Av. (StDev)
Increasing global south reader and editor participation 6 3 8 8 2 2 6 7 1 1 2 1 2 2 5 2 10 1 1 3.7 (2.9)
Increasing editor retention 1 1 6 2 4 1 2 6 7 8 6 2 1 1 7 1 4 3 6 3.6 (2.5)
Investing more in mobile 4 8 5 9 5 6 4 3 2 7 3 10 4 6 2 10 3 8 2 5.3 (2.7)
Investing more in collecting data 7 4 1 1 1 8 5 9 4 4 10 4 9 3 1 8 5 9 8 5.3 (3.1)
Funding more offline meetups 5 6 9 6 10 10 10 10 3 2 8 6 10 8 10 4 7 7 3 7.1 (2.7)
Implementing VisualEditor 10 7 4 10 7 7 9 4 10 6 5 5 8 5 8 9 8 10 7 7.3 (2.1)
Reducing the gender gap in editing communities 8 5 7 7 3 3 8 5 5 5 1 3 3 4 6 3 9 2 9 5.1 (2.4)
Advocating for freedom of information on the internet 9 2 10 5 6 9 7 8 6 3 9 9 7 7 9 5 6 5 10 6.9 (2.3)
Providing more engineering resources to improve readers' experience 2 10 3 3 9 5 3 1 8 9 7 7 6 9 3 7 2 6 4 5.5 (2.8)
Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience 3 9 2 4 8 4 1 2 9 10 4 8 5 10 4 6 1 4 5 5.2 (3.0)

Demographic analyses

The three graphs below display the differences among the three demographic groups (global south/north, anglophones/non-anglophones, and females/males). A stark south–north difference is clear in prioritising the need to increase global south reader and editor participation; the priority gains second place overall only because it is placed in top position by five of the six global-south candidates, and second by the other; their average is 1.2, with a tight spread (standard deviation just 0.4). No northerner places this priority first, although five place it second (one, Ed, places it last of the 10), to give an average of 4.8 (with a larger spread, stdev of 2.9).

Surprisingly, what has been widely assumed as a greater reliance on mobile devices in the global south is not reflected in the ratings by each group, with the south's average of 6.5 (stdev 3.7) and the north's of 4.7 (2.0). Funding offline meetups such as conferences and editathons is much more important to the southern candidates—4.2 (1.9) as opposed to a dismissive 8.4 (1.9) among northerners. Southerners place slighly more importance on WMF advocacy for internet freedom, at 6.3 (2.7) versus the north's 7.2 (2.2), and slightly less on collecting mission-relevant data—6.2 (2.4) against northerners' 4.9 (3.4). Northern support for investing in editor retention is slightly greater at 3.2 (2.4) than southern support at 4.5 (2.9). Engineering to improve readers' and editors' experience is significantly more valued by the north, at 4.8 (3.1) and 4.4 (2.9), respectively, than by the south, at more tightly converging scores of 6.8 (1.7) and 7.0 (2.4), respectively.

As might be expected, the anglophone/non-anglophone differences are not unlike the north/south, even though these categories are by no means a one-to-one match. Weaker non-anglophone northern support for investment in the global south and offline meetups is evident; support for mobile investment is almost equal between these two linguistic groups.

Disparities in terms of candidates' gender are interesting, even given the low sample size. Most striking is that the two female candidates placed the need to reduce the gender gap as a high priority on average—2.0 (1.4)—whereas the males gave it 5.4 (2.3). Six of the 17 males rated the gender gap as 7th, 8th or 9th out of 10; only one, Tonmoy, rated it 2nd, and four rated it 3rd. The women rated the global south and mobile investment more highly than the men, and collecting data and offline meetups less highly.

This analysis of a sample of Wikimedians may be of limited demographic generalisability; however, it does suggest that the WMF might consider gathering similar data from larger samples to provide insights relevant to the movement's policy-making.

WMF Board candidates 2015 – global south and north. Created using Excel, for the Signpost's coverage 13 May 2015
Global south and north candidates. The shorter the bar, the greater importance the candidate group gave the priority on average.
WMF Board candidates 2015 – anglophones and non-anglophones. Created using Excel, for the Signpost's coverage 13 May 2015.
Anglophones and non-anglophones. The shorter the bar, the greater importance the candidate group gave the priority on average.
WMF Board candidates 2015 – females and males. Created using Excel, for the Signpost's coverage 13 May 2015
Gender gap among the candidates' thinking? The shorter the bar, the greater importance the candidate group gave the priority on average; the small size of one group makes the differences harder to generalise.

Candidates' comments

We limited candidates to a total of 20 words, given their large number. Most did not write comments, and while we are including a brief list, paraphrased or quoted, those who are not mentioned should not be regarded as having no opinions on the issues.

  • On "Appoint more tech experts as trustees", Mike writes: "Appoint experts as non-voting board members."
  • On the endowment issue, Phoebe writes: "I am strongly in favor of an endowment, but not including 100% of the current reserves." She also writes that "we have many pressing challenges (participation, etc.) that must be worked on in parallel, and engineering investment is one means toward addressing these challenges." Ed: "Perhaps not all of it, but an endowment for core functions seems sensible given our current fundraising situation, which is strong in the short term but may start to wane in the medium term." María: "Agree with endowment, but no so large so fast."
  • On advocating internet freedom, Muzammil writes: "Although I am all for it, I gave it a lower priority because of the political overtone and the fear that pushing it too much may jeopardize core Wikipedia objectives in some geographic locations."
  • On forbidding paid editing, Muzammil writes: "we should stop paid editing for promotion or those edits which forward some agenda – ideological or political." James: "The WMF has forbidden non-disclosed paid editing. It should now help enforce this. Not all types of paid editing should be banned." He also points to the relevance of engineering to improve editor experience to attracting and retaining female editors and those in the global south. Ed: "Forbid, no. Manage, yes."
  • On the relationship between several of the issues, Ed writes: "I see global south gap and gender gap primarily as symptoms of ageing product design."
  • On the merging of Wikimania and Wikimedia conferences, Ed writes: "Their scope isn't tightly defined at the moment, but I feel they don't overlap that much."
  • Saileshpat believes that offline meetups are important to increasing editor numbers, awareness, and educational potential in the global south, where some WMF language sites are inactive or growing only slowly; he also stresses the importance of VisualEditor to making sites more editor-friendly.
  • Dariusz: "There has never been anyone outside of Northern America/Western Europe elected to the Board, maybe it is time to change that. One of the biggest issues as a movement we face is finding balance of power between the WMF, the chapters, and the communities ..."
  • Tim: "Spending money on programs without researching volunteer demographics and needs and reader desires is putting the cart before the horse."

Footnotes:

  1. ^ Despite our invitations and reminders, Francis Kaswahili Kaguna did not communicate, possibly due to internet issues, and Houcemeddine Turki responded just before publication, nearly three days after our requested deadline and after the tables and graphs had been completed.
  2. ^ The spectrum is from 1 to 10, not 0 to 10, so the average of these averages is 5.5 rather than 5.0—they are skewed by half a point towards 10, compared with what might at first be thought of as a gravitational centre.


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2015-05-13

Swedish Wikimedia chapter organizes simultaneous Wikidata contests; FDC election results

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By Resident Mario

This week has been a busy one for the Wikidata project, with nearly simultaneous Wikidata contests, both organized by Wikimedia Sweden, now underway.

The first contest is the Menu Challenge: in a post to the Wikimedia Blog project manager John Andersson recounted that "we are aiming at a list of vegetables, meat, fruits and other ingredients and cooking related terms that 30 restaurants will be serving at a food festival in Stockholm, Sweden in June. Wikimedia Sverige will be there to highlight how open data and crowdsourcing can benefit nearly every aspect of society." The idea is to create and to maintain experimental digital restaurant menus, based on a mock-up prepared by Wikidata user Denny some time ago. The challenge will be based around translations of Wikidata labels and the addition of images and pronunciations for ingredient items, and will take place between May 8 and 27. "Let’s get some #tastydata!"

The second of the two is the Wikidata visualization challenge, a competition meant to "make it easier to understand the value of Wikidata, what is in there, and/or how it is being created ... [by] visualizing interesting representations of the data in the database". As examples of what the competition organizers are looking for and of what the Wikidata dataset makes possible project manager points to the Listen to Wikipedia application, an aural visualization of editing activity throughout the projects; and to the Wikidata tempo-spatial display, a geographic visualization of event histories. More details on the competition, as well as the grand prize, a travel scholarship, are available here.

In related news, an update to the Reasonator tool on Wikimedia Labs this week now allows the tool, a primary visualization tool of the Wikidata project, to be used on mobile. R

Brief notes

Signpost Publications by the Years
  • Graph extension live everywhere: Extension:Graph, a previously experimental MediaWiki extension allowing for the creation of visually appealing on-wiki graphs and graphics, has now been enabled across all wikis. The feature had previously been present only on Meta and MediaWiki. The Signpost is looking to take advantage of the new feature; a quick reproduction of its capacities is shown at right. More demonstrations can be found on the extension's demo page. Even though the graph definition cannot yet be shared between wikis, the data itself can be stored on Commons. The extension implements the Vega visualization grammar on top of the D3 engine. The documentation has many even more technically impressive and complex visualizations available and now build-able on-wiki. A detailed tutorial should help you get started quickly. The new extension's capacity will hopefully help bring Wikipedia more in line with the capacities of the modern web—your correspondent, for one, is extremely excited to test it out. R
  • Community tech: A job posting has been made for experienced developers interested in joining the Wikimedia Foundation as part of an intriguing new forthcoming team, the Community Tech team. Two team member positions have been opened: for Community Tech Developer and for Community Tech Engineering Manager. Both have the following to say about their purpose: R
In his mailing list message, director of analytics Tony Negrin stated: "[we] have identified this gap in our community support and have made resources available to address it." The moves seem well-aligned with the Foundation's recently-evident desire to align more closely with the needs of the editing community, a central theme from this year's State of the WMF report. R

  • Language translations: An engagement experiment in the translation of core MediaWiki messages was completed this week to good results. The steps taken were to take languages with priority interfaces that were 80–99% translated (~60), list active users using those languages (~600), and send them a short talk page message asking for their help with translation tasks (example). In two months of organized work the number of 99–100% systematically translated languages jumped up from 17 to 60, following the creation of a list of 500 most-used MediaWiki messages at the translatewiki. More details on movements in the project-translation effort are available. R
  • Commons batch download tool: In still another piece of tech news this week community developer McZusatz released a new tool called Imker ("beekeeper" in German) that allows for batch downloads of large numbers of files from Wikimedia Commons, either by page or by category, via an easy-to-use cross-platform (written in Java) graphical interface. Extensive toolsets exist for the opposite process—batch uploading to Commons, an important capability for GLAM activities—but this is the first tool to allow for the opposite process to occur. R
  • Metrics and activities: This week saw this month's iteration of the Wikimedia Foundation's monthly metrics and activities meeting, the full video of which has now been made available on Commons. R
  • Wiki Loves Monuments evaluations: A discussion of interest occurred this week on the wikimedia-l mailing list about last month's publication of the Wiki Loves Monuments evaluative report. As the Signpost reported two weeks ago, the report, under "peer review" until May 20, was not uncritical of the program—pointing out, for instance, that its funding cost an average of $25 per participant, yet had only a 0.3% twelve-month editor retention rate. Some initial discussion occurred at the time at the Signpost, and now editors involved in the program have taken their response to the mailing list, with discussion between program coordinators, community mailing-list members, and elements of the Wikimedia Foundation staff. Discussion is now ongoing at the evaluation's talk page. R
  • Wikipedia Library: A number of additional resources came online this week in the Wikipedia Library program. Account spaces have been made available for MIT Press Journals, Loeb Classical Library, RIPM, SAGE_Stats, and HeinOnline. Other journal efforts and account partnerships continue at WP:TWL/Journals. R
  • whoColor and whoVis: A pair of advanced edit review tools came online this week with the publication of the whoColor and whoViz edit review tools. These technically impressive tools are still in alpha and have not yet been fully optimized for routine use, but already provide a wealth of useful visualized information. The latter of the two can be tested out online with no installation required (though it is very slow to load). R
  • Early registration for Wikimania 2015: "Early-bird" registration has been opened for this year's Wikimania, taking place July 14–19 this year in Mexico City. R
  • Wikimedia Germany fundraising report: Wikimedia Germany released their 2014 fundraising report, summarizing key points and take-aways in a post to the Wikimedia Blog. Employing approximately 60 staff the organization is by far the largest of the chapters associated with the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as only one of two (along with Wikimedia Switzerland) that handles part of its fundraising separately from the Wikimedia Foundation. R
  • New administrator: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Ritchie333. R

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2015-05-13

Round Two

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By Serendipodous

Casual viewers may think I've posted the same list twice. But no, readers just happen to be really interested in May 2's Big Fight. In fact, last week was just the weigh-in and the trash talk. This week, the numbers actually increased. Other refugees from last week include Avengers: Age of Ultron, which continues its triumph at the box office, and Vision, arguably the team's most interesting new member. Annual returnees Cinco de Mayo and Mothers Day made their scheduled appearances as expected.

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

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of May 3 to 9, 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Floyd Mayweather, Jr. B-class 3,224,988
Apparently, Wikipedia viewers weren't done with the "fight of the century", as it remained the most viewed topic for the second week running, with its declared victor rising to the top spot. Indeed, his numbers have only increased since last week, indicating we may just be topping the hill.
2 Cinco de Mayo C-class 2,573,768
For the third year running, one of the most self-explanatory article spikes on Wikipedia ever occurred, conveniently, on May 5. This celebration of Mexican-American culture (originally meant to commemorate a Mexican victory over the French) had more than double the views of last year.
3 Manny Pacquiao B-class 2,383,123
Numbers have, however, slightly fallen for the current Filipino Congressman and boxing's only octuple champion, who suffered a fairly noble defeat to Floyd Mayweather, Jr. during the "fight of the century" on May 2. Just goes to show that in sport, winning is everything.
4 Nellie Bly B-Class 2,096,193
The barnstorming journalist, who beat Phileas Fogg by travelling around the world in 72 days and then faked insanity and got herself committed so she could uncover maltreatment of the mentally ill, got a Google Doodle on her 151st birthday on May 5.
5 Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao B-class 2,074,940
Numbers are down but still robust for the "fight of the century" that took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Pay-per-view receipts are currently expected to hit $500 million worldwide.
6 Avengers: Age of Ultron C-Class 1,990,691
The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premièred in Hollywood on April 13, and went on wide release on May 1. By its second weekend, it was down 60% but still massive enough to drain grosses from its competitors. Not that that its only real competition, the abysmally reviewed Hot Pursuit, needed any help to flop.
7 Vision (Marvel Comics) B-class 740,608
Numbers have more than doubled for the sentient AI and foil for the villainous Ultron, who became the breakout star of The Avengers: Age of Ultron and allowed actor Paul Bettany (pictured) to finally step out of the voice-only shadows of his J.A.R.V.I.S. character into full acting.
8 Achim Leistner Start-class 732,005
The Australian/German optician with an almost superhuman touch sense is able to handcraft spheres to a level of perfection beyond those of any machine. This was noted in a Reddit thread this week, though a surprisingly short one, given the views.
9 List of highest-grossing films Featured Article 724,579
With Furious 7 already in the increasingly inclusive $1 billion worldwide club, and Age of Ultron likely to reach it next week, it's not surprising Wikipedia viewers are interested in tracking their progress.
10 Mother's Day C-Class 723,932
The second Sunday in May (that's May 10 to all you ingrates who forgot) is far and away the most popular time of year to celebrate Mother's Day, and, even as the day fell, panicked college students in all participating countries rushed to their computers to see if they'd blown it.


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2015-05-13

Grant Shapps story continues; Wikipedia's "leftist ties"

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By Andreas Kolbe and Gamaliel

Grant Shapps demoted

Grant Shapps

The Grant Shapps story continues to make waves in the British press. Shapps, a politician who was the co-chairman of the UK's Conservative Party until this week, has been accused of maliciously editing his own Wikipedia biography as well as those of rivals within his party (see previous Signpost coverage).

On April 30, the Register wondered whether Shapps had fallen victim to a Lib Dem plot. Shapps himself continued to deny any involvement in the Wikipedia edits in a BBC interview (May 8), calling it a "nonsense story" and adding: "In reality the Wiki founder, Jimmy Wales, phones me up the next day [...] he phoned me the next day, said, Sorry, not Wiki's corporate view, this was one individual, happened to be a Lib Dem activist, he shouldn't have said it, he's been chastised, he's under individual ... he's under investigation within Wiki, it was not true, but yeah, of course these things happen."

Even so, by May 11 the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Independent reported that Shapps had been "sacked" or "demoted" in the post-election cabinet reshuffle, prominently mentioning the Wikipedia story as one of a small number of factors that might have contributed to the decline of Shapps' fortunes.

On May 12, Independent reported that the "Demoted Grant Shapps faced awkward first meeting with his new boss, whose Wikipedia page he was accused of editing".

The proposed decision of the arbitration case examining the Contribsx block and the events leading to the Shapps press story, originally due on May 21, is now expected on May 26, given the recent extension of the evidence submission period to May 18. A.K.

Wikipedia's "leftist ties"

Somewhat Reasonable, a blog of the Heartland Institute, an American conservative and libertarian think tank, complained about "Wikipedia’s Leftist Ties And Its Censorship Of The Facts" (May 12). The alleged "leftist ties" are rather tenuous. The blog post connects Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardner, former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to government transparency. Wales, who is a libertarian, also allegedly has "close personal ties to multiple left-wing bigshots", though the post only specifies Wales' appearance at a birthday party for George Soros, a billionaire supporter of liberal causes who is often the target of American right-wing ire. The post also noted the support of Democratic candidates by two current American members of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which consists of ten members from seven countries. The post concludes "the evidence suggests Wikipedia has been affected by its leftist leaders and many biased editors", but does not specify how these "leftist ties" translate to any changes in encyclopedia content.

The blog cites a 2012 paper by Greenstein and Zhu examining bias in Wikipedia articles through identifying allegedly biased "code words", which indicated that bias in those articles was decreasing over time (see previous Signpost coverage). The blog post mentions only the specific issue of climate change as an example of "obvious" Wikipedia bias and "an effort to censor information", citing the work of Dr. William Connolley (William M. Connolley), an engineer and climate modeller, on Wikipedia. Connolley, a former Wikipedia administrator who is known for his work on climate change topics on the encyclopedia and is frequently the subject of complaints on climate change denial blogs, is labeled a "climate alarmist" in the post. The Heartland Institute receives millions of dollars in funding from oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil and politically conservative organizations which deny climate change. The New York Times wrote that the Heartland Institute is "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism." G

In brief

Magna Carta (An Embroidery)
  • Hand-stitched Magna Carta Wikipedia page: The Guardian reported (May 14) on an art project by Cornelia Parker, "a 13-metre-long embroidery celebrating the Magna Carta by copying its Wikipedia article", that will be on display in the British Library. "Prisoners, writers, politicians, musicians, campaigners – and embroiderers – help[ed] craft a digital-to-analogue work of art examining freedom in the modern age". The unveiling was also covered by the BBC, The Independent, and a second piece in The Guardian; further information, including pictures and a more detailed list of contributors, can also be found in the British Library's press release, and a video in which some of the contributors discuss their contributions. Forthcoming discussion events about the work will be held at the Library on 15 June with Cornelia Parker and Jimmy Wales, and on 13 July with a panel of artists. (See previous Signpost coverage.) A.K.
  • "Phantom" filing changes stock price: The New York Times reported (May 14) that a "phantom" regulatory filing by the possibly nonexistent PTG Capital Partners declared an intention to buy the company Avon by purchasing its stock at $18.75 a share. The filing caused Avon's stock to increase by over a dollar. Portions of the filing were copied from the website of TPG Capital, a real company, and Wikipedia. G
  • The U.S. Navy's Wikipedia: USNI News, the U.S. Naval Institute's online news and analysis portal, published an article titled "Dept. of the Navy developing its Own 'Wikipedia' to track wargames lessons" (May 12). The piece quoted former Marine Col. Scott Creed as saying that the "naval services need an operations Wikipedia – with lessons learned, best practices, current tactics – to keep track of everything they're learning as they conduct a steady stream of experiments and wargames." A.K.
  • Wikipedia facts: Australian lifestyle and tech site Techly noted (May 12) "Wikipedia is so free and open that the entire main page was once deleted by mistake, and other amazing Wikipedia facts". The piece contained a long quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson, who pronounced himself intrigued a few years ago that atheists kept wanting to claim him as one of their own in Wikipedia. (He identifies as an agnostic, and his Wikipedia biography no longer claims he is an atheist.). A.K.
  • "Hacked on Wikipedia, backed by the voters": British Conservative Party politician Michael Fabricant recounted (May 8) in The Independent that at one point in the run-up to the recent election, a journalist had called him, advising him that his "Wikipedia account" had been "hacked" and the journalist thought they knew who had done it. Fabricant says he declined to comment. (I assume the journalist's communication concerned unfavourable edits to Fabricant's Wikipedia biography, rather than what Wikipedians might refer to as the "hacking" of Fabricant's "Wikipedia account".) A.K.
  • "Wikipedia hacker runs for Library Board in New York": The New Rochelle Talk of the Sound similarly seems keen to leave the public thinking that editing Wikipedia involves a form of "hacking", castigating (May 10) a candidate for the New Rochelle Public Library Board for having written a Wikipedia biography of a local politician that "read like a campaign brochure". A.K.



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2015-05-13

What made Wikipedia lose its reputation?

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By TParis
Quora's logo.
Quora's logo.

There is a public misconception of Wikipedia: that any anonymous editor can edit Wikipedia at any time, and the person behind them cannot be tracked or identified. This is essentially a decade-old narrative, yet it is persistent and embedded in the public consciousness.

I most recently came across it in a March 31 Quora answer, published in response to a question about why Wikipedia is not allowed in official research. Many journalists ignorant of the deeper workings of Wikipedia simply read the headline "anyone can edit" and make an assumption that there are no controls in place: see, for example, Finding Dulcinea, the Economist, or the Guardian.

Many old-timers still remember the 2005 Seigenthaler incident: an anonymous editor inserted a hoax about John Seigenthaler, a prominent and then still-living journalist, and made a reference to his suspected involvement in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. The subject of the article read his biography and characterized this insertion as "internet character assassination". The anonymous troll was later unmasked as Brian Chase, an operations manager in Kentucky. The current biographies of living persons policy was implemented in response shortly thereafter, but the damage was done; the Seigenthaler incident spawned widespread criticism of Wikipedia among educators.

Since then, Wikipedia has made tremendous efforts to reach out to academia and build a foundation of trust. Jimmy Wales recently replied to a question on Quora on this very subject, writing that "if the recommendation is to not use Wikipedia at all, I think that's silly and naive advice—all students use Wikipedia a lot! ... If the Professor has a more nuanced view that Wikipedia should not be cited 'as a source' by university students, then I agree completely!" Jimmy Wales explains what many people already know: that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and that it has a systemic bias in favor of white, male, young, and educated individuals.

The Seigenthaler incident happened right as Wikipedia's popularity was beginning to explode. Wikipedia had about 12,000 active editors in October 2005, a number that has climbed to close to 137,000 now. Hundreds of these editors participate in new page patrol and recent changes patrol, the main purpose of which is to review nearly every single edit. They use sophisticated tools like Huggle, page curation, Cluebot, edit-protection, pending changes, and edit filters to watch for and roll back vandalism and dubious editing, or to prevent it from occurring in the first place.

Despite these safeguards, Kent Fung cites the 2014 U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia as one of his prime examples of Wikipedia's unreliability. Yet this episode in Wiki-history sprung the development of tools to catch these kinds of changes. The case he specifically refers to sparked the creation of over a dozen Twitter bots that still catalog edits from the governments of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, The Netherlands, North Carolina, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States.

None of this ensures the trustworthiness of Wikipedia—it simply demonstrates that the environment that allowed "anonymous editors" to create the aforementioned incidents has long since dissipated. Yet that hasn't stopped a Quora "Top Writer '14" from propagating such a viewpoint. There are plenty of reasons not to cite Wikipedia in a college paper, mind you. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written by, for the most part, laypeople. Despite everyone having the title "editor", there is no actual editorial fact-checking process for most articles whose sources are generally filled with journalism, not academia. The most active demographic group is white, young men. Many of its best 'quality' articles face a bias towards recentism or cover topics in pop culture of questionable encyclopedic interest.

Kent, though, mentions none of this. Though he is right in the premise, he is entirely wrong in the details. In my view, Kent overlooks the actual real and pressing problem with Wikipedia: like Quora, Wikipedia suffers from an entrenched elitist attitude which celebrates the ignorant shut-out of ideas that the elites don't like. It's human nature, really. Wikipedia is willing to sacrifice information if it threatens the integrity of a well-known persona. Despite essays like "No Angry Mastodons" and the philosophy that adminship is "No big deal", our administrative noticeboards have an automatic knee-jerk reaction to support a veteran editor over a novice editor. Tools like page histories, a tool that provides indisputable proof of previous edits, are not utilized while investigating concerns. Editors quickly measure their opinion of the two editors and then draw out terms such as "WP:BOOMERANG" that have become Wikipedia buzz words. It's quite easy to predict a boomerang on ANI these days—one must only count the number of the user's edits.

Quora has compounded the elitism issue even further. As a forum similar to Wikipedia's reference desk, Quora is a forum where questioners ask the public about a particular topic and users vote on the best answer, Yahoo! Answers-style. The difference between Yahoo! Answers and Quora is that the latter has a handy threaded reply feature with a block button. The particulars matter: when one editor blocks another it also hides the comments made by the blocked editor, in this case hiding from public view my criticism of Kent's position—as though it never happened. It's an interesting tool that I know hundreds of politicians wish they had.

"Now, what does this have to do with Wikipedia?", you ask.

I believe Quora represents a larger issue: the number of authorities in the general public who are ignorant of the differences between 2005 Wikipedia and 2015 Wikipedia, and whose assumptions are never challenged because the public is unaware. Authorities in a subject are generally regarded by the average Joe to be authorities in all subjects. It becomes a sort of intellectual jack-of-all-trades. Their authority gives the misinformation legitimacy. And while I would never make the argument that Wikipedia is reliable, it is important to know why it isn't. Until you get to the real reason Wikipedia is unreliable, you'll never know what to actually be wary of. And in the end, you'll be unreliable to yourself.

TParis is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. He has edited the site since 2008.
The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the author alone; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments. Editors wishing to submit their own op-ed should use our opinion desk.

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2015-05-13

Four first-time featured article writers lead the way

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By Adam Cuerden, The ed17, and Gamaliel
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 26 April through 2 May. Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Eight featured articles were promoted this week.

Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899)
Maurice Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte, performed by Thérèse Dussaut. Maurice Ravel is a new featured article.
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Stephen I of Hungary defeats Keán, Duke of the Bulgarians and Slavs
  • Maurice Ravel (nominated by Tim riley) This French Impressionist composer and pianist lived in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An "enigmatic figure," according to the nominator, Ravel demonstrated an ability to change with the times by incorporating elements of jazz into his later performances. He was also one of the first to recognize the potential of distributed musical recordings. Ravel's article is the seventh featured article on a French composer.
  • City of Angels (Thirty Seconds to Mars song) (nominated by Earthh) Jared Leto—perhaps these days better known for his acting career, which includes an award-winning portrayal of a transgender woman and will see him play the Joker in 2016—composed this song using experiences with his family in Los Angeles. According to first-time featured article nominator Earthh, it is "one of the most memorable and iconic songs" from Thirty Seconds to Mars. One reviewer wrote that "'City of Angels' is no ordinary music video; it's an eleven-and-a-half minute ode to a city where the line between success and broken dreams is razor thin."
  • Astatine (nominated by R8R) Fellow first-time nominator R8R brings us this article on astatine, a rare and not-so-amazingly long-lasting radioactive element: at most, it has a half-life of just 8.1 hours. Some isotopes can be found in Earth's crust, albeit only in weights of less than a gram, but elemental astatine can only be produced in a lab. One isotope, astatine-211, is used in nuclear medicine.
  • Hurricane Marie (2014) (nominated by Cyclonebiskit) Marie is the sixth-strongest hurricane to occur in the Pacific in measured history (they are only typhoons if they begin in the northwest Pacific). It caused over US$20 million of damage despite never approaching the shore of a continent; half of this came from the destruction of a breakwater in Long Beach, California.
  • St. Elmo (1914 film) (nominated by Squeamish Ossifrage) St. Elmo is a 1914 lovestruck silent film, in which the main character kills his cousin for the love of one woman, only to later find solace with another. It is also a lost film, meaning that it holds many mysteries: it is not clear who directed the film, and despite much research by the nominator, they were only able to write and source just under two hundred words of plot summary.
  • O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad, BWV 165 (nominated by Gerda Arendt) This church cantata composed by Bach was first performed three hundred years ago, which was the reason for this nomination.
  • Stephen I of Hungary (nominated by Borsoka) Borsoka, a long-time editor of articles related to Hungarian royalty, has their first featured article with Stephen I: the last Grand Prince of the Hungarians and, thanks to the acquiescence of western powers and the papacy, the first King of Hungary. He is venerated by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches for his zealous efforts to convert his people to Christianity.
  • James A. Garfield (nominated by Coemgenus and Wehwalt) Another article in Wehwalt's presidential series, although he is joined here by Coemgenus. Garfield came from a poverty-stricken childhood to rise to the presidency after service in the American Civil War. Although he was assassinated only four months into his term, he was able to accomplish much in that short period, including the groundwork for civil service reform and a resurgence in American naval power.

One featured list was promoted this week.

Five featured pictures were promoted this week.

A keeled skimmer, a European dragonfly that likes peat bogs
A chain gang in the southern United States around 1900


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