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18 August 2016

 

2016-08-18

Focus on India—WikiConference produces new apps; state government adopts free licenses

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By Pete Forsyth and Tony1
WMF executive director Katherine Maher (center, in black) was greeted at WikiConference India 2016 by students from the Chandigarh Group of Colleges. Many of the students volunteered for the event, edited Wikimedia projects, and attended sessions to learn about Wikimedia.

WikiConference India and its productive hackathon

The second WikiConference India, held August 5–7 in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, drew hundreds of new and experienced members from 20 language communities of various Wikimedia projects from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. This event was more thematic than the first WikiConference India (held in 2011), with numerous presentations, panel discussions and workshops on the gender gap, Wikipedia in education, Mediawiki, and state of the movement in India. The event was organized by the Community of Wikimedians in India, supported by Wikimedia India and the Centre for Internet and Society, and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation. The newly formed user group Punjabi Wikimedians hosted the event. WikiConference India's main goal was to build community and increase participation among Wikimedians in India. Interest in the event was strong: 452 Wikimedians from more than six countries applied for ~100 scholarships. Wikipedia's well known gender gap was evident: only 55 scholarship applicants were women, but a strong focus on diversity resulted in ~25% of scholarship recipients going to women, and the inclusion of speakers of ~20 languages. In all, about 250 people attended the conference. Several Foundation staff spoke at the event, including executive director Katherine Maher, Asaf Bartov, and Tighe Flanagan.

A highlight of the conference was the hackathon track, which spanned all three days of the conference. It proved highly productive, yielding seven apps that are expected to help Wikimedians in a variety of ways. I spoke with Santosh Shingare (Cherishsantosh), the Bangalore-based Wikimedian who organized the hackathon. Santosh had previously served as an organizer of the 2011 WikiConference, and has run hackathons annually since then. Santosh's primary motivation for holding such events is learning; he spoke of limited opportunities to learn about new areas of technology beyond his core skills in WebRTC and Android. He enjoys collaborating with other Wikimedians and sharing technical skills. This event was his first with an international draw, and he looks forward to opportunities to collaborate beyond India's borders in the future.

As Santosh outlined in a message to the Wikimania email list, the hackathon's 35 participants made substantial progress with the following projects:

  1. WikiSpeak with native language (web and Android): Speaking the text of Wikipedia articles
  2. Edit Tamil Wiktionary (Android)
  3. Audio file upload to Wikidata (Android): Assists users in uploading small files that demonstrate the pronunciation of lexical items
  4. A layer that shows local Wikipedia articles on a Google Map
  5. Optical character recognition for Hindi and Malayalam
  6. Communication platform [WebRTC] (Web Application): Santosh wrote this app himself; hackathon participants used it to communicate
  7. Notifications: browser notifications for Wikipedia functions such as recent changes

Santosh highlights that the projects grew out of advance communication. To identify problems and generate ideas, the hackathon organizing team posted a survey ahead of the event. Requests from various language communities, including Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, and Malayalam, drove several of the projects. The software is all freely licensed, and there are no plans to generate revenue.

Santosh is not a prolific Wikipedia writer or editor, but rather sees value in his ability to communicate among Wikimedians who seek features from various language communities, including his native Marathi and other Indic languages in which he has varying degrees of fluency.

He plans to update the Wikimedia community shortly with further details on each of the seven projects. He is already planning the next of India's annual hackathons. Hackathon organizers worldwide might be interested in learning more about Indian Wikimedians' efforts, and Wikimedians around the world can expect to benefit from their projects.

The conference generated a number of media reports. PF

Indian state of Tamil Nadu adopts Creative Commons license

The state of Tamil Nadu on the subcontinent

Last week brought a rare piece of good news in the world's uncertain progress towards the widespread free licensing of information on the Internet. Ravidreams announced on the Wikimedia India mailing list that the government of one of India's largest and most populous states—Tamil Nadu—has issued an instruction to Tamil University and "all other government departments and institutions to release all their publications, archives and collections under Creative Commons by Share-Alike license".

The move comes one year after the collaboration between the Global Tamil Wikimedia Community and the Tamil Virtual Academy, an independent institution set up by the state government in 2001 to provide online resources for Tamil-language communities around the world. TVA and the Tamil-language Wikimedia community collaborated to persuade the government to make the order. Wikimedia India (one of three Creative Commons affiliates in the country) served as an institutional partner, signing the initial agreement on behalf of the Indian Wikimedia community, and funding a Wikimedian in Residence at TVA.

Ravi, who also serves on the TVA committee for outreach, told the Signpost that the TVA is very keen to share its collection of encyclopedic resources with Tamil Wikimedia projects. The community contributed strategic knowledge of free-content licensing, providing precedents for free content release by other governments in India and other countries, and helped in the drafting of the actual order. "But it takes a lot of time, effort, high-profile connections to change how government institutions work", he said.

An example of the distinctive Tamil script

Tamil-language Wikipedian Thamizhpparithi Maari serves as Assistant Director, TVA and state coordinator of its computing outreach unit, which the government is funding to encourage students in the state to use open-source media and software; this program includes the development of mobile apps and the running of contests to enhance students' computing skills. He described to the Signpost the elaborate process of finally gaining legal and administrative approval for the CC-by-SA release order. Thamizhpparithi has already started a process of digitising books from the universities to share with the Tamil wiki community, involving between 400,000 and 500,000 pages in some 200 books, using Google optical character recognition (OCR).

"This is just the beginning; we expect millions of pages to be uploaded to Tamil Wikisource", Ravi said. Most of the content that will become available for uploading is in Tamil, although some will be in English and other Indian languages; this will present significant opportunities for the Tamil Wikimedia community.

A rare Tamil-language book in an archival exhibition

There are about 70 million native speakers of Tamil, and another eight million second-language speakers. It is an official language in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka (with which the state shares a maritime border), and Singapore, and is also used in Malaysia and the African island of Mauritius. The language, written in a distinctive curvilinear script, has a rich literature of poetry reaching back thousands of years, and of novels over the past few centuries; this is attested by a related category on the English Wikipedia that is already of impressive size.

The Open Policy Network, a project of Creative Commons, published an overview of the value of this kind of work in 2014; the Network advocates for governments around the world to adopt free content licenses. T

In brief

  • Mobile app provides offline access to 8,000 medical articles in Arabic, Chinese, Persian, and Spanish: The apps, which supplement a popular English language app, were announced by the WikiProject Med Foundation and Wikimedia Switzerland. More language editions are planned.
  • Wikimedia Foundation appoints five volunteers to its Board Governance Committee: Newly appointed trustee Nataliia Tymkiv announced the selection of the advisory group. Board governance issues have been the subject of much discussion since the tumultuous events at the WMF over the last year. The four members of the BGC are Tymkiv (chair), Kelly Battles, Christophe Henner, and Dariusz Jemielniak.
  • WikiConference North America will take place October 7–10, 2016 in San Diego. Scholarship applications are open until August 23; conference submissions until August 31.
  • WikiConvention Francophone will take place in Paris August 19–21.
  • New help page takes aim at common newbie obstacle: Many articles carry banners, to flag problems with the articles. New contributors often lack an understanding of how to go about removing the banners, if they address the underlying issues. In recent months, Fuhghettaboutit created a help page to explain the process, and advocated for linking to the page from the templates. The help page now gets several thousand views per day, suggesting that it is filling a significant gap.
  • Machine-assisted translation of Wikipedia articles, which has increased with the introduction of the Wikimedia Foundation's Content Translation Tool (covered by the Signpost in a June 2015 op-ed, in June 2016, and in various other pieces), has sparked a controversy in recent weeks. See here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT.
  • Wikidata RfC on defining data quality underway: Alessandro Piscopo, a guest of Wikimedia Germany, asserts that: "to achieve high quality, it is important to define first what data quality is on this knowledge base." Join the discussion: Wikidata:Requests for comment/Data quality framework for Wikidata. PF



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2016-08-18

Engaging diverse communities to profile women of Antarctica

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By T. Shafee

Hatching the plan

In June 2016 Jan Strugnell approached me with a proposal and a problem. The proposal: Jan had convinced the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) to hold a 'Wikibomb' event for women Antarctic scientists at their upcoming international conference, in which participants would update a large set of relevant articles. The problem: Jan had never edited Wikipedia before. She just knew that improving the representation of notable women on the world’s largest encyclopaedia was important.

She’d heard about my workshops on “Wikipedia Editing for Scientists” and together we composed a plan:

  1. To engage the Antarctic research community and make the most of their knowledge by getting SCAR members to nominate notable women scientists and provide information and references
  2. To recruit volunteer writers from the early career researcher community
  3. To ensure as much as possible that articles met Wikipedia’s quality standards for notability and sourcing before submission to the Articles for Creation editors.

We therefore decided to hold a 3-month-long virtual editathon followed by a final in-person celebration, presentation and recruitment event being held on the 28th of August.

Some background

As with Wikipedia as a whole, there has been systemic under-representation of notable women Antarctic scientists. Compounding this is Antarctic science's unique history of exclusion of women. There was a gap of over 100 years between the first man to set foot on the Antarctic mainland (John Davis) and the first woman to do so (Ingrid Christensen). Most science programmes explicitly prohibited women from working in Antarctica until at least the late 1950s (Maria Klenova), more than half a century after the first male scientists. Women scientists have now risen to prominent positions, including directorships of the British Antarctic Survey (Jane Francis) and Alfred Wegener Institute (Karin Lochte). Nevertheless, women remain under-represented in official recognition (e.g, Polar Medals), and public awareness (e.g., Wikipedia biographies). With 60% of polar early career researchers now women, better representation was needed.

Our process

We gathered 170 nominations from the Antarctic community over the course of a month via an online form, requesting information and sources, promoted via social media, mailing lists and the official SCAR website.(archive link) We classified the initial nomination forms on a 4-point scale from "no references provided," to "clearly notable with all the necessary supporting references."

At the same time, we were recruiting volunteers to help turn nominations into biographies over the next three months. The Women in Polar Science, Association of Polar Early Career Scientists, and Equal Opportunity Science networks were helpful for recruiting keen volunteers, who then worked to move drafts through the pipeline towards being upload-ready. Our initial enquiries indicated that most of our volunteers were initially intimidated by the idea of editing Wikipedia. We therefore developed a pipeline that allowed volunteers to draft off-wiki if they preferred, and work on-wiki once they felt comfortable, organised in a Google Sheets spreadsheet.

First, we wrote biography drafts and stored them in a shared Dropbox folder, starting with the information provided in the nomination form and researching additional references where necessary. We then swapped the drafts around to edit and proofread each other’s writing. Finally, those comfortable with Wikipedia editing were trained by Skype to use the preloaddraft system on the meetup page to upload the drafts.

We decided that our volunteers only really needed to know about Notability (specifically WP:PROF) and Reliable Sources. We guided the content, length and formatting through the use of MS Word templates to draft articles off-wiki and preloaddraft to then upload them. We used the feedback from Women in Red and Articles for creation editors to bring drafts up to standard before they were published. Our final step was to email the article subjects themselves to request images — one element of a biography where freely licensed material is needed, and where conflict of interest doesn't matter.

Outcomes so far

We've found that drawing in diverse expertise into a pipeline allowed us to write a large number of decent-quality pages, with some being ranked "B-class" straight away (e.g. Ingrid Christensen). We were also conscious of minimising the common bias towards English-speaking countries - currently, 53% of our biographies. Although the main focus was on scientists, we also profiled politicians, explorers, civil servants, educators and administrators.

As is always the case, not all pages passed Articles for Creation review (AfC), but we found that the volunteers involved understood that this is all part of the robust calibration that the Wikipedia community has to continuously consider for who is notable. We have been particularly proud of how many images we have added. Requesting photos from article subjects directly yielded a >50% success rate over three weeks.

The people who made this possible

These efforts are being promoted at the SCAR2016 conference and used to recruit further interested editors. We’re hosting a two-hour set of presentations and panel discussions about the new articles and about women in research, followed by drop-in Wikipedia training over the following days of the conference.

Overall, the success of this editathon was based on effectively engaging multiple communities – SCAR members, early career researchers, experienced Wikipedians, and finally the subjects themselves; and on putting people to work in advance of the edit-a-thon itself.

Consequently we would like to thank the Women in Red for their fantastic help, support and advice and the AfC editors whose feedback helped improve the standard of our submitted articles. The SCAR community really got behind the project, nominating a great range of high-flyers. We were fortunate to have a great committee to organise everything consisting of Jan Strugnell, Thomas Shafee, Jenny Baeseman, Nerida Wilson, Craig Stevens, and Justine Shaw. Lastly, of course, the dozens of volunteers who helped on-wiki and off-wiki made this process possible!

Other media relating to this event

  1. Strugnell, Jan (July 2016). "An Antarctic Women Wikibomb: raising the profile of female scientists" (PDF) (3). Women in Polar Science: 6. Retrieved 9 August 2016. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. Strugnell, J; Shafee, T; Wilson, N; Downey, R; Stevens, C; Shaw, J; Baeseman, J (2016-08-10). "Profiles: Kudos for female Antarctic researchers". Nature. 536: 148–148. doi:10.1038/536148b.
  3. "New Wikipedia project champions women scientists in the Antarctic". Mashable. 2016-08-11.
  4. "Antarctic scientists overlooked on Wikipedia for years because of their sex". Sputnik. 2016-08-11.
  5. "Radical action for gender equality in Antarctic science". Voxy. 2016-08-11.
  6. "Women in Antarctica making up for lost time". radio.abc.net.au. ABC Radio National Science Show. 2016-08-12. Retrieved 2016-08-13.
  7. "Wikibomb celebrates women in Antarctic science". Australian Antarctic Division. 2016-08-18.

For more information

See the event page Wikipedia:Meetup/SCAR_2016



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2016-08-18

The ugly, the bad, the playful, and the promising

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By Pete Forsyth and Andreas Kolbe

Well-being of Wikipedians explored in an in-depth piece

Backchannel recounts the challenges of the Wikipedia editor who created Wikipedia's iconic "citation needed" template

Backchannel takes on the issue of mental and emotional well-being among Wikipedians, noting that during a seven-year span, Wikimedia Foundation staff "responded to almost 500 threats of suicide and other imminent harm to people and property." The piece explores the general issue through the story of one Wikipedian's troubling experiences, and delves into the efforts of the WMF's Support and Safety team. (Aug. 16)

Journalist describes efforts to remove a hit piece

Journalist Tom Mendelsohn of Ars Technica recounts how his "joy turned to disappointment" after learning that a brief biography of him had been published on Wikipedia, and then realizing that it had been written "to attack [him] as an unhinged left-wing agitator." He describes his successful, if frustrating, efforts to get the article removed. (Aug. 15)


In brief

Cracked takes a playful jab at a 10-year-old comment from an exasperated Wikipedian, but then concedes that his point had some merit.



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit our next edition in the newsroom or contact Pete or Andreas.



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2016-08-18

Simply the best ... from the past two weeks

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By Armbrust
Cast of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., one of the television series placed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 30 July to 13 August.
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Portrait of Peter Martyr Vermigli by Hans Asper
The Dawn of Love, an 1828 oil painting by William Etty, was very poorly received when first exhibited
Arsenal celebrate with the trophy after winning the latest edition of the Emirates Cup.
Lake Calhoun is the largest and deepest lake in Minneapolis.
Miroslav Klose scored his last international goal at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Eight featured articles were promoted these weeks.

  • Peter Martyr Vermigli (nominated by Jfhutson) (1499–1562) was an Italian-born Reformed theologian. His early work as a reformer in Catholic Italy and decision to flee for Protestant northern Europe influenced many other Italians to convert and flee as well. In England, he influenced the Edwardian Reformation, including the Eucharistic service of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. He was considered an authority on the Eucharist among the Reformed churches, and engaged in controversies on the subject by writing treatises. Vermigli's Loci Communes, a compilation of excerpts from his biblical commentaries organized by the topics of systematic theology, became a standard Reformed theological textbook.
  • Interstate 275 in the US state of Michigan (nominated by Imzadi1979) is an Interstate Highway that functions as a western bypass of the Detroit metropolitan area. The Michigan Department of Transportation maintains it as a component of the larger state trunkline highway system. The freeway runs through the western suburbs near Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, and crosses several rivers and rail lines in the area.
  • An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory (nominated by J Milburn) is a 2010 textbook by the British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane. It is the first book in Palgrave Macmillan's Animal Ethics Series. Cochrane's book examines five schools of political theory and their respective relationships with questions concerning animal rights and the political status of (non-human) animals. Cochrane concludes that each tradition has something to offer to these issues, but ultimately presents his own account of interest-based animal rights as preferable to any. The book was reviewed positively in several academic publications.
  • The Dawn of Love (nominated by Iridescent) is an oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth. Loosely based on a passage from John Milton's 1634 masque Comus, it shows a nude Venus leaning across to wake the sleeping Love by stroking his wings. While Etty often included nude figures in his work he rarely depicted physical intimacy, and owing to this The Dawn of Love is one of his more unusual paintings. The open sensuality of the work was intended to present a challenge to the viewer mirroring the plot of Comus, in which the heroine is tempted by desire but remains rational and detached.
  • Mr. Dooley (nominated by Wehwalt) is a fictional Irish immigrant bartender created by American journalist Finley Peter Dunne. Dooley was the subject of many Dunne columns between 1893 and 1915, and again in 1924 and 1926. Dunne's essays, which contain the bartender's commentary on various topics, became extremely popular during the 1898 Spanish–American War, and remained so afterwards. The essays are in the form of conversations in Irish dialect between Mr. Dooley, who in the columns owns a tavern in the Bridgeport area of Chicago, and one of the fictional bar's patrons with most of the column a monologue by Dooley. The pieces are not widely remembered, but originated lasting sayings such as "the Supreme Court follows the election returns".
  • "Slug" (nominated by Dream out loud) is a song by Passengers, a side project of rock band U2 and musician Brian Eno. It is the second track on Passengers' only release, the 1995 album Original Soundtracks 1. The track was originally titled "Seibu" and was almost left off the album before it was rediscovered later during the recording sessions. Though Eno made most of the creative decisions during the recording sessions, "Slug" was one of the few tracks that the members from U2 tried to craft themselves. It was praised as one of the best songs on the album by critics from various publications.
  • Heffernan v. City of Paterson (nominated by Wugapodes) was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees. By a 6–2 margin, the Court held that a public employee's constitutional rights might be violated when an employer disciplines them for the belief that the employee was engaging in protected speech, even if the employee never actually exercised their constitutional rights.
  • Millipedes (nominated by Cwmhiraeth) are a group of arthropods that are characterised by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; they are known scientifically as the class Diplopoda, the name being derived from this feature. Each double-legged segment is a result of two single segments fused together. Most millipedes have very elongated cylindrical or flattened bodies with more than 20 segments. Although the name "millipede" derives from the Latin for "thousand feet", no known species has 1,000; the record of 750 legs belongs to Illacme plenipes. There are approximately 12,000 named species classified into 16 orders and around 140 families, making Diplopoda the largest class of myriapods.

Eleven featured lists were promoted these weeks.

  • Selena Gomez (born 1992) is an American actress and singer. Her discography (nominated by SennKev) consists of two studio albums, one compilation album, one EP, ten singles, six promotional singles and eight music videos.
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe television series (nominated by Favre1fan93 and Adamstom.97) are American superhero television shows based on characters that appear in publications by Marvel Comics. The shows have been in production since 2013, and in that time Marvel Television and ABC Studios, along with its production division ABC Signature Studios, have premiered four series, with nine more in various stages of development, across broadcast, streaming, and cable television. The broadcast series that air on ABC have averaged around 7–8 million viewers a season, with all MCU series receiving strong critical responses.
  • The Emirates Cup (nominated by Lemonade51) is a pre-season association football invitational competition hosted by English club Arsenal at their home ground in Holloway, London. The two-day competition was inaugurated in 2007, and is named after Arsenal's main sponsor Emirates. It has been held every summer except 2012 due to the London Olympics, and 2016 because of pitch renovation work.
  • There are sixteen Local Nature Reserves in Buckinghamshire (nominated by Dudley Miles). Four are in Aylesbury Vale, one each in Chiltern and Milton Keynes, three in South Bucks and seven in Wycombe. Two sites are also Sites of Special Scientific Interest and four are in the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Local Nature Reserves are designated by local authorities under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. The local authority must have a legal control over the site, by owning or leasing it or having an agreement with the owner. They can apply local bye-laws to manage and protect these areas.
  • There are 13 lakes within the borders of Minneapolis (nominated by Bobamnertiopsis). Certain other bodies of water are counted on some lists of Minneapolitan lakes, though they may fall outside the city limits or cover fewer than five acres. Many of Minneapolis's lakes formed in the depressions left by large blocks of ice after the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet at the end of the last glacial period.
  • Inside Out is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film, co-written and directed by Pete Docter. The film is set in the mind of a young girl named Riley Andersen, where five personified emotions try to lead her through life as she moves to a new city and has to adjust to her new life. After premiering it at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released the film theatrically in the United States. Made on a production budget of $175 million, it grossed a worldwide total of $857 million. The film has received 52 awards from 114 nominations (nominated by FrB.TG); its direction, screenplay, and Amy Poehler's voice performance have received the most recognition from award groups. Inside Out won Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 88th Academy Awards.
  • Fifty-four bowlers have taken a wicket with the very first ball they bowled in one of the three formats of international cricket (nominated by The Rambling Man and Lugnuts). Twenty bowlers have performed this feat in Test cricket, twenty-two in One Day International matches and twelve bowlers in Twenty20 International cricket.
  • Miroslav Klose (born 1978) is a German professional footballer. He is the all-time top scorer for the Germany national football team, with 71 goals in 137 games (nominated by The Almightey Drill) between 2001 and 2014. He is also the top scorer in the history of the FIFA World Cup, with 16 goals in 24 appearances across four editions from 2002 to 2014. In the 13 years Klose played for the national team, Germany never lost a game in which he scored.
  • Uncharted is an adventure media franchise (nominated by PresN) developed by Naughty Dog, composed of video games and associated media. The core of the franchise is an eponymous series of action-adventure third-person shooter games, which follow Nathan Drake, along with Victor Sullivan and Elena Fisher, as he journeys around the world searching for historical treasures and attempting to prevent villains from harnessing the supernatural powers of various relics. In addition to the four games of the main series, the video game series includes a browser game, two handheld games, and a mobile game. The franchise also contains a novel, a behind-the-scenes book, two concept art books, a comic book, a board game, two motion comics, a forthcoming film, and six soundtrack albums or singles.
  • Alexandra Stan (born 1989) is a Romanian singer and songwriter. Her discography (nominated by Cartoon network freak) consists of three studio albums, a reissue album, two video albums and 16 singles.
  • Jennifer Lawrence (born 1990) is an American actress. She has received various awards and nominations (nominated by Krish!), including one Academy Award, one BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, four Critics' Choice Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, seven MTV Movie Awards, five People's Choice Awards, and five Teen Choice Awards.

One featured topic was promoted these weeks.

  • Lady Gaga (nominated by FrB.TG) (born 1986) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. This featured topic consists of one good article and five featured lists.

Five featured pictures were promoted these weeks.



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2016-08-18

Olympic views

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By Milowent and Serendipodous

Your traffic reports for the weeks July 31 – August 6, and August 7–13, 2016

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see top 25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see most edited. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see popular low quality.

July 31 – August 6, 2016

Since the Olympic Opening Ceremony was on August 5 and this chart runs through August 6, the 2016 Summer Olympics only hit #2. It is very likely to top the chart next week. Olympic-related articles make up eight of the top 25. In the meantime, pop culture dominated the top of the chart, with the film Suicide Squad hitting #1, the new Harry Potter play at #3, and Netflix hit Stranger Things at #4.

In other, more technical news, the data in this week's report comes solely from TopViews. The data feed used to generate the WP:5000 since its creation has been deprecated by the WMF. For the time being, it will be slightly more cumbersome to make this chart, as we no longer have an easy source listing the rating class of each article and the mobile-desktop view percentages, though this information is still available to us.

For the week July 31 – August 6, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from Topviews Analysis were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Suicide Squad (film) C-class 2,889,015
DC Comics' ramshackle crew of press-ganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, are the stars of one of the most anticipated films in the nascent DC Cinematic Universe, which was released on August 5 to generally negative reviews. Nonetheless, it grossed $267 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Star Margot Robbie also landed the #7 spot this week, and two characters in the film, Robbie's Harley Quinn and Enchanttress, also make the Top 25.
2 2016 Summer Olympics C-class 1,421,144
Up from #15 last week as the games finally got underway. Opening rounds in some events began on August 3, and the opening ceremony (#22) was held on August 5. This Olympics will have over 11,000 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees (which includes all 193 members of the United Nations and additional special entities), competing in 28 sports. Two new sports this time include rugby sevens and golf. Golf is actually a returning sport, last featured at the 1904 games. Sadly, my favorite sport from the 1904, the plunge for distance, will not be returning. Michael Phelps (#9) is not quite that old, but he's back too.
3 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Start class 1,381,205
It seems like ever since J.K. Rowling published the last Harry Potter book in 2007 and vowed that the series was over, magical forces have eaten away at that pledge. And the biggest step away from that promise, if not a complete retreat, is the mounting of a London play which sets Harry twenty years in the future. The play script was released in book form on July 31, and bookstores tried to recreate the fervor of the prior book releases. And no doubt it will sell a ton of copies, but based on reviews, it does tarnish the legend a bit.
4 Stranger Things (TV series) C-class 1,200,720
90,000 views more than last week. This Netflix science-fiction series is basically an 8-hour homage to early 80s kid-centric flicks like E.T., The Goonies and Explorers, though aimed mostly at adults. I binge-watched the whole thing in a few days and found it very enjoyable. But its appeal to millions who were not alive in the early 1980s is fascinating. The movies which inspired the series have lived on to a much greater extent than movies even ten years older. A parent can show a kid E.T. in 1996, 2006, or 2016, and the kid is still going to laugh and cry at the same parts. So Stranger Things taps into a nostalgia that is not limited to 1983, but one that is part of a common experience of youth, at least in America. Also, since I'm already pontificating, let me note that setting the series in 1983 is very helpful in dealing with the troublesome issue of cellphones. It has been noted that mobile phones "must be one of the worst things ever to happen to horror movies", but in 1983, when a kid left the house, no one knew where the hell they were. No one can pull up Google Maps or post Instagram photos of monsters. Today, if the Yeti isn't on twitter, he does not exist.
5 Donald Trump B-Class 806,195
Donald Trump likely said something controversial during the week, just guessing.
6 Harry Potter Good Article 785,355
See #3. Interestingly, a Harry Potter product has never appeared on the Top 25 until this week. The last film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, was released in July 2011, 18 months before the report began. Reviewing stats.grok.se data, for the week of July 17–23, 2011, that film had 891,856 views (non-mobile only), which was likely enough to be #1 for the week at that time, or close to it.
7 Margot Robbie B-Class 636,032
Starring in #1.
8 List of Steven Universe episodes List 610,304 Up from #19 and 480K views last week. It's not often that kids' cartoons get on this list; My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic hasn't managed it in 5 years. But then, Steven Universe isn't exactly a kids' cartoon. In fact I'm not entirely sure I can explain what it is, but if you can imagine a magical girl anime remade in English with a gender-swapped lead, you can get some idea. The show has in the past been notorious for its patchy release schedule, and, as if in contrition, Cartoon Network are releasing new episodes of the show every day during the so-called "Summer of Steven". This has necessitated much checking of release times, hence the list's appearance here.
9 Michael Phelps Good Article 608,707
The most decorated Olympian of all time has returned for the 2016 Summer Olympics (#2). If you are in America, there is no way the television coverage misses a moment of anything Michael Phelps does. In fact, I understand that there are sports where America does not predominate in the Olympics, but that rarely makes it to American television. I went and looked at the medal table, and see, for example, that Kazakhstan has won 7 medals so far. This includes three in judo and three in weightlifting, which might have been covered somewhere on American television on an obscure cable network, but certainly nothing they've promoted. I bet weightlifting and judo are all over television in Kazakhstan.
10 Deaths in 2016 List 604,639
The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day-to-day basis. It was consistently higher in the first half of 2016 with a string of highly notable deaths, but things seem to be calming down a bit.

August 7–13, 2016

This week marked Wikipedia's hosting of the 2016 Summer Olympics; the first since this list was begun. With only Super Bowls and Oscar nights to compare it to, we didn't have much in the way of precedent. And, while not exactly staggering, the numbers are fairly eye-opening. Fully 17 slots in the top 25 were devoted to the Olympics, probably a list record for a single event, and the entry point was the highest since last December, which featured the return of another beloved cultural institution, Star Wars. The groundswell was so big it not only knocked Donald Trump off the list for the first time in months, but almost knocked the death list off, a virtually unprecedented occurrence. Personally, I know nothing about sports, and have no ties to any sports stars, so I have to say I'm a bit bemused by the tribalism this list reveals. en.wikipedia likes to think of itself as the English language Wikipedia, not the American Wikipedia, but there's no denying which country was the main focus of people's attention. Don't get me wrong; I don't blame Americans for this- I live in London and you can bet the popular press there are fawning over British winners exclusively. But I have to ask, whatever happened to "Well played!"?

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week August 7–13, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from Topviews Analysis were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Michael Phelps Good Article 5,428,201
Numbers have increased ninefold for the most decorated Olympian of all time, who came out of retirement for the 2016 Summer Olympics and swept the pool, as it were, with five gold medals and one silver, before finally calling it quits for good. In a world currently short of sporting heroes, Phelps has proven an inspiration; after each of his prior Olympic meets, pool attendance in the United States increased by more than 10%, and the press have made much of a photo of him standing next to an awestruck then-9-year-old Katie Ledecky (#6), who dominated the women's pool.
2 2016 Summer Olympics C-class 2,281,692
As I said, I know next to nothing about sports, but I do know about Rio, the city where I lived for a time and for whom I have the kind of guarded love one reserves for that wayward family member who has never lived up to your expectations. When it won the right to host the games seven years ago, I was ecstatic. Finally, it seemed Brazil was ready to ditch its old habits and assert itself as a global power. How different things are now, or rather, how like they were. The news that everything had gone, well, Rio-y in the lead up to the games left me feeling deflated. The almost comical string of disasters that had thrown the world for such a loop were old hat to anyone who had sat through the city's numerous other attempts to host major world events. And yet ... I'm relieved. Relieved, because so far the only major scandal has been a discoloured diving pool. If that's all the press is concerned with, maybe this won't be a disaster after all.
3 Suicide Squad (film) C-class 2,150,660
DC Comics' ramshackle crew of press-ganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, are the stars of one of the most anticipated films in the nascent DC Cinematic Universe, which was released on August 5 to generally negative reviews. Nonetheless, it grossed $267 worldwide in its opening weekend. Despite the overwhelming presence of the Olympics this week, star Margot Robbie also landed the #18 spot, just above her character, Harley Quinn.
4 Simone Biles C-class 1,832,829
The 19-year-old Olympic first-timer secured two gold medals in artistic gymnastics this week.
5 Aly Raisman B-Class 1,400,901
It's hard to know what has placed the two-time captain of the US artistic gymnastics team farther up this list, her gold and silver medal wins, or the viral video of her mother's increasingly frantic head motions. It says something about the stresses of Olympic life that her performance is considered a comeback after "only" winning a gold and a bronze in London.
6 Katie Ledecky C-class 1,022,491
The only person Katie Ledecky ever races against is herself. No one races her. The 19-year-old swimmer secured four golds this week, breaking two world records in the process, both her own, in the 400 m and 800 m freestyle. In the 800m, she not only broke her own world record by nearly 2 seconds, but finished nearly 12 seconds ahead of the silver medallist, Britain's Jazz Carlin. 12 seconds. That's enough time to update her Wikipedia article on your cellphone.
7 Nicole Johnson (Miss California USA) Stub Class 912,940
Surprisingly, her appearance on this list has nothing to do with Donald Trump, who owned the Miss USA pageant until last September, but simply that she happens to be the wife of Michael Phelps (see #1).
8 Stranger Things (TV series) C-class 855,038
This Netflix science-fiction series is basically an 8-hour homage to early 80s kid-centric flicks like E.T., The Goonies and Explorers, though aimed mostly at adults. It has been a smash hit for Netflix, out-rating even its other big fantasy shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones, both of which have topped this list in the past.
9 No Man's Sky C-class 819,437
Let's be honest here; this game was never going to live up to the hype. Made by a small indie developer under intense time and budget constraints, No Man's Sky has had players slavering for over four years with its promise of 18 quintillion procedurally generated planets crammed with procedurally generated alien life that you could travel to and from seamlessly in your procedurally generated starship. The question of what you would be expected to do with all that freedom to explore has always been at the front of players' minds, and something the developers have been remarkably coy about. Now that the game has finally been released, it turns out it's basically a cross between Elite Dangerous and Minecraft. To some, that's fine; to most, it's a disappointment.
10 Olympic Games Featured Article 892,180
People are probably looking for this Olympic Games, rather than seeking knowledge of the event's venerable history, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong.



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2016-08-18

User script report (January–July 2016, part 2)

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By Evad37
This "User scripts" report (along with part 1) covers scripts newly listed at Wikipedia:User scripts, January 1 – July 31, 2016.
Text may be adapted from the respective listings there; see the page's history for attribution.

As mentioned in the previous Signpost "Technology report", registered users can install user scripts to significantly customise their Wikipedia experience, beyond the options already provided at Special:Preferences. This report concludes the prior report's list of scripts published in 2016, through the end of July. See Wikipedia:User scripts for more scripts and further information, including instructions. In the Installation code section below, you will find the code needed to install each script.

Reading

"FloatingTOC" places a duplicate Table of Contents in the bottom corner of the screen

Editing

"CopySectionLink" makes it easy to grab a link to a page section

Others

You wont be accidentally logged out if you use "Confirm Logout"

Installation code

Further information: Wikipedia:User scripts § How to install user scripts
  1. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Thespaceface/MetricFirst.js}}
  2. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Fred_Gandt/subdueLinks.js}}
  3. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:P999/Toggle VF.js}}
  4. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Ugog Nizdast/FloatingTOC.js}}
  5. ^ Create your custom GeoHack page here; then copy the following code, click here, and paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Evad37/Custom GeoHack replacement.js}}
  6. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Ugog Nizdast/displayNumberOfTags.js}}
  7. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Bility/copySectionLink.js}}
  8. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste: mw.loader.load('//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Perhelion/signing.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
  9. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:APerson/sync-template-sandbox.js}}
  10. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Music1201/MyCSD.js}}
  11. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Evad37/WikidataWatchlistLabels.js}}
  12. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Evad37/ToDoLister.js}}
  13. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    {{subst:iusc|1=User:Fred_Gandt/confirmLogout.js}}

In brief

New gadgets

  • Scripts which have been widely tested may be made into gadgets, which registered users can easily enable or disable through Special:Preferences § Gadgets. Two new gadgets have recently been added to English Wikipedia: "Display links to disambiguation pages in orange" (DisambiguationLinks) and "Strike out usernames that have been blocked" (markblocked).

Newly approved bot tasks

  • Josvebot (task 13) – Fixes some of the WP:CHECKWIKI-errors automatically
  • BU RoBOT (task 25) – Categorizes stub articles in more detailed stub categories based on existing categorization
  • Yobot (task 26) – Fixes section header naming for References, External links, and See also

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

  • Problems
    • Last week Tech News announced you will get a notification when you mention yourself the same way as if someone else had mentioned you. This change caused some problems, and has been reverted; it will be implemented at a later date. [1]
    • Creating and editing links to sections on other pages on the wiki now works again in the VisualEditor. [2]
    • For some users, cross-wiki notifications haven't been working properly. The count has been wrong when only cross-wiki notifications were present. The cross-wiki bundle has been showing only the names of wikis and not the actual notifications. This will be fixed soon.[3][4]
  • Changes this week
    • The login session when you choose "Keep me logged in" will now last a year. Previously it was 30 days. This will happen on August 16. [5]
    • Some abuse filters will have to be updated during the week, as part of a bug fix. [6]
    • In compact language links, two new kinds of languages will be shown in the shorter language list: Languages that are used in the article's text, and languages where the article has a badge like "featured article" or "good article". [7][8]
    • The visual editor will be available by default for logged-out editors on Wikipedias that use the Arabic script. It is already default for logged-in editors. [9]
    • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 17. It will be on all wikis from August 18 (calendar).
  • Future changes
    • Starting the week of August 22 the number of daily software development windows will be increased to three. They will be at 13:00, 18:00, and 23:00 UTC. This is to have more times when software of the wikis can be updated and make it easier for developers in different parts of the world. [10]



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2016-08-18

The Michael Hardy case

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By GamerPro64 and Pete Forsyth

In this issue of the Arbitration report: A new case has been opened, and the arbitration committee has issued a reminder to administrators not to issue blocks based on private information.

Unhealthy tension around ancestral health

Michael Hardy, a longtime administrator, started an article on ancestral health on 4 August. Its publication was met with some resistance from MjolnirPants, who twice moved for its deletion, by PROD and Speedy Deletion. Debate ensued, rapidly leading to the filing of an ArbCom case.

As of this writing, nine of the 14 arbitrators – a clear majority – have moved to accept the case. While only two have opposed taking on the case, one has strongly urged declining the case: "This request has moved faster than anything else we've done all year," observes Opabinia regalis. "There's no doubt there are some issues here, but they are not that urgent and it is not clear that a full case would be the best way to resolve them." Opabinia goes on to explore the merits of taking the case in some detail, and to reconsider their own position in light of nine colleagues' disagreement; but ultimately stands by the preference to handle the conflict through less formal channels. Accepting the case, though, does not imply a specific outcome; as arbitrator GorillaWarfare says, "... acceptance of a case is not an assertion that some wrongdoing has taken place."

The case is currently in its Evidence stage. The ancestral health article meanwhile has currently been merged into the Paleolithic lifestyle article.

In brief
  • The Committee reminds administrators about blocks: On 21 July, Opabinia regalia wrote for the committee to remind administrators of provisions on blocking policies involving private information:

If a user needs to be blocked based on information that will not be made available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee or a Checkuser or oversighter for action. These editors are qualified to handle non-public evidence, and they operate under strict controls. The community has rejected the idea of individual administrators acting on evidence that cannot be peer-reviewed.



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