Dear readers,
A few weeks ago, long-time Signpost editor-in-chief The ed17 announced his intention to step down due to time constraints. Aware of the heavy workload of his role, he sought two editors to replace him. As the members of the newly formed Signpost editorial board, we're pleased to announce our vision for the future of the Signpost and to explain our new roles.
A wise individual once said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The new Signpost editorial board subscribes to this philosophy in relation to the weekly newspaper. Although we certainly do have some goals—reviving "News and notes" on a weekly basis, for one—we see no particular reason at the present time for making substantial changes to the Signpost's format. We will strive to maintain our voice and standing as an independent entity, separate from the WMF, Wikimedia chapters, WikiEd, or other entities. We hope to expand our coverage by including high-quality content and interesting opinion pieces from community members, including opposing viewpoints in some editions, like this week.
We'd like to take one more opportunity to thank Ed for his years of service as editor-in-chief, during which he told us he contributed up to 20 hours per week—never eager to step into the limelight but always willing to help behind the scenes. Please join us in thanking him for his dedication to this community newspaper. In this time of transition, we ask for your patience, confident that we will make mistakes, perhaps even large ones. Please bear with us as we learn our respective roles.
—
Go Phightins! and
Gamaliel, Signpost editors-in-chief
Reader comments
The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee has closed the colossal GamerGate arbitration case, whose size—involving 27 named parties—recalls large and complex cases of the past such as Scientology, Palestine-Israel, and Climate change.
One editor has been site-banned, while another twelve are subject to remedies ranging from admonishments to broad topic bans and suspended sitebans. In addition, the committee has authorised broad discretionary sanctions, which give administrators wide latitude to block, topic-ban, or otherwise restrict editors who behave disruptively. The breadth of the topic bans and the discretionary sanctions was the subject of much discussion between arbitrators. Arbitrators were in agreement as to the need to prevent the dispute being exported to related articles—GamerGate is part of a much larger series of controversies about gender identity and sexuality (see, for example, coverage of the Christianity and sexuality case in last week’s Arbitration report)—but concerns were raised about the sheer scope of some of the proposals. After Roger Davies consolidated the options into proposals for a "standard topic ban", the committee reached agreement to define the scope as "(a) GamerGate, (b) any gender-related dispute or controversy, [or] (c) people associated with (a) or (b), all broadly construed".
When ArbCom grudgingly accepted a GamerGate case in November (the third such request in quick succession), Newyorkbrad urged the committee to handle the case "in a highly expedited manner to avoid its becoming a complete circus," while Beeblebrox decried the "'keep asking till you get [what] you want' feeling" he got from repeated case requests—he conceded that the situation was "spiraling out of control," thus necessitating a case. Despite hopes for an expedited case, it lasted for two months.
The case stems from the "GamerGate" hashtag, which was started in response to concerns about the proximity of relationships between some video game developers and the journalists reviewing their games. Those using it, however, have been severely criticised for the harassment and misogyny that has become associated with it. The related Wikipedia article, GamerGate controversy ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), promptly became another front in the battle, with editors on both sides ranging from throwaway single-purpose accounts to long-established editors—several of whom had lengthy track records of edit-warring or misconduct in controversial topic areas.
Arbitrator Roger Davies told the Signpost that the case was complicated by its size and complexity. With 27 named parties and 41 editors presenting roughly 34,000 words worth of on-wiki evidence, a total that does not include email correspondence, the case was of a sort rarely seen in the committee's current era. Still, Davies observed that the case was concluded within two months, compared to the much longer durations of previous complex cases, such as Climate change (which took five months to resolve) and Scientology (nearly six). Of the various remedies, Davies said that no "silver bullet" would have resolved the issues raised in the case, but he suggested that the combination of "several related fixes, including existing and new sanctions" available to administrators would help. In the light of criticism that the decision had little immediate effect, Davies told the Signpost he expected it would "probably take a week or two to work through" for the effects to be fully felt.
Editor | Sanction | Duration | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
NorthBySouthBaranof | Topic ban | Indefinite | Passed in favor of a topic ban 9/3/2; for treating Wikipedia as a battleground |
Ryulong | Topic ban | Indefinite | |
Site ban | Indefinite | ||
TaraInDC | Admonishment | N/A | |
Tarc | Topic ban | Indefinite | Passed in lieu of a site ban, promulgated by two arbitrators, one of whom noted previous ArbCom findings against Tarc; standard topic ban for this case imposed |
Warning | Indefinite | In wake of previous issues, ArbCom issued a blanket warning against future disruption, the consequence of which could be a site ban | |
The Devil's Advocate | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom unanimously imposed the standard topic ban for this case |
1RR restriction | 12 months | Passed unanimously as part of a package of four remedies imposed against The Devil's Advocate | |
Restriction | 12 months | Editor is restricted from editing any administrative noticeboards; passed as third restriction component to avoid site ban | |
Warning | Indefinite | Similar to other editors, ArbCom issued a blanket warning against future disruption, including encouragement to avoid editing in contentious areas, the consequence of which (future disruption) could be a site ban | |
TheRedPenOfDoom | Admonishment | Indefinite | Passed 10/4; arbitrator GorillaWarfare, a dissenter, commented, "Though there was poor behavior here, I don't think a formal admonishment is needed." |
Tutelary | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
ArmyLine | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
DungeonSiegeAddict510 | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
Xander756 | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
Titanium Dragon | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban from editing under BLP enforcement, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
Loganmac | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom unanimously imposed standard topic ban for this case |
Willhesucceed | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom unanimously imposed standard topic ban for this case |
This case has even attracted media attention, including from The Guardian, which mistakenly proclaimed that Wikipedia "has banned five editors from making corrections to articles about feminism." It extensively quoted Mark Bernstein, who wrote a series of blog posts commenting on the Arbitration Committee's pending decision. (Editor's note: Mark Bernstein was topic banned by Gamaliel and later blocked by HJ Mitchell.) His three-part series, "Infamous", "Thoughtless", and "Careless", received wide-spread attention on social media, including through the blogs of actor Wil Wheaton, Tumblr, and biologist PZ Myers. Bernstein noted that five Wikipedia editors, NorthBySouthBaranof, Ryulong, TaraInDC, Tarc, and TheRedPenOfDoom, were targeted by supporters of GamerGate, who dubbed them the " Five Horsemen". According to Bernstein, these editors were "active in preserving objectivity and in keeping scurrilous sexual innuendo out of the encyclopedia". He went on to call them feminists, complaining:
“ | By my informal count, every feminist active in the area is to be sanctioned. This takes care of social justice warriors with a vengeance — not only do the GamerGaters get to rewrite their own page (and [GamerGate targets] Zoe Quinn’s, Brianna Wu’s, Anita Sarkeesian’s, etc.); feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia. | ” |
He also erroneously claimed that aside from a few new single-purpose accounts, no GamerGate supporters were sanctioned, leaving them free to write their own page as ArbCom ostensibly ostracizes "liberals."
The Committee passed a site ban against one of the "Five Horsemen" at the last minute, in view of his behaviour while the case was ongoing and taking into account his long history of misconduct; topic banned two more; and admonished the remaining two. The Committee has also passed topic bans against seven editors who are widely seen as GamerGate supporters, four of whom were already topic-banned from the (narrower) GamerGate topic area through community general sanctions.
The Guardian also quoted Wikipedian Abigail Brady ( Morwen), who said that contentious editing disputes on Wikipedia have become a "game of provocation chicken", asserting that internal politics of Wikipedia "are poisonous," as each side tries to "work as close to the ill-defined edge of acceptable behaviour to provoke the other into crossing it." The article concluded:
“ | The byzantine internal processes of Wikipedia are incomprehensible for many, but they serve to shape the content on the site, the seventh biggest on the internet. Its reportedly unpleasant internal culture and unwelcoming atmosphere for new editors has long been blamed for an overwhelmingly masculine make-up – just one in ten editors are thought to be female – which in turn contributes to which topics get featured on the site. | ” |
The issue was also reported on by a number of other publications, most citing The Guardian's article, including Gawker, PandoDaily, De Volkskrant, Der Standard, Jezebel, Raw Story, ThinkProgress, The Verge, and The Mary Sue. Their headlines largely reflected the perception that Wikipedia was banning feminist editors, echoing the complaints following the Manning arbitration case that the Committee was sanctioning both editors who had made transphobic comments and those who opposed transphobia.
A number of Wikipedia editors decried the inaccuracies in the Guardian's reporting, with one party to the case calling it "completely ridden with factual errors" and another calling it "clearly biased". A Quest For Knowledge wrote that the Guardian misunderstood the purpose of the Committee: "editors are sanctioned for conduct, not their POV. This is absolutely critical to understand. There's no way the press can write a decent article about an ArbCom case without understanding this key distinction." Others echoed the central complaints of Bernstein and the Guardian. Jayen466 wrote "Yes, the Guardian article and its spin-offs contain inaccuracies, but there is still enough truth in the story for this to become quite as big a controversy as Categorygate did in 2013." The Guardian has since published a correction, stating that "An earlier version gave the impression that the bans had been finalised, and a quotation suggested that no pro-gamergate editors had been banned from the site."
Likely in response to that media attention, the committee released a lengthy statement intended for the press on its decision making process, vaguely and indirectly addressing some of the coverage on the case. "There have been a number of articles about this case in the press of late, some of which mischaracterize the Committee, its process, and outcomes of this case," the Committee wrote. "We would like to clarify the Committee’s purpose, process, and preliminary findings." The community widely criticized the statement for its length, minutia, and unintended obfuscation. Georgewilliamherbert, for example, wrote that "If you are going to comment at all, and you just did, you need to address the actual criticisms", while Jehochman stated that "The obvious mistake here is that the statement is wordy and lacks sound bites." Others approved of the statement but questioned a perceived lack of involvement from WMF, including Shii, who wrote, "This is a good statement, but where is the Wikimedia Foundation? They are the people who receive the fundraiser money—shouldn't they be involved in supporting the community, especially when some of English Wikipedia's most dedicated editors come under attack from unfair reporting?"
Philippe Beaudette of the Wikimedia Foundation wrote a blog post echoing the statement by the Committee, reading in part that "The Committee's mandate is to uphold a civil, constructive atmosphere that furthers Wikipedia’s mission. At the Wikimedia Foundation, we support that objective and are taking active steps to create and maintain a civil atmosphere for editors of all backgrounds. We ask all our editors to do the same."
Tech entrepreneur Minh D. Nguyen was charged with first degree murder in connection with the January 15th shooting death of the husband of Nguyen's ex-wife in Loudoun County, Virginia. The case made headlines because numerous news outlets—including the Washington Post, People, CNN, the Daily Mail, The Independent, Valleywag, and TechCrunch—identified Nguyen as a co-founder of Plaxo based on his Wikipedia article. Plaxo is an online address book and social networking service founded in 2002 by three individuals, one being Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook who was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the movie The Social Network. The connection to Parker proved irresistible to the media.
Nguyen, however, never was a co-founder of the company, which was actually founded by Parker, Todd Masonis, and Cameron Ring. Most publications reporting on the murder charge have corrected their mistakes regarding Plaxo or written follow-up stories. On his blog (January 21), John McCrea, Plaxo's former head of marketing, wrote that Plaxo's employees largely have no idea who Nguyen is:
“ | Well, since Minh never set foot inside the doors of Plaxo, nor did a single day of work there, most of them, somewhat surprisingly, have actually never met him. To them, he’s just "that guy who keeps editing the Wikipedia page for Plaxo," listing himself as co-founder, despite it not being true. Every attempt to set the record straight over the years has been met with a rapid re-edit by Minh. | ” |
McCrea discussed the problem (January 22) with People. He said, "It sort of became a wrestling match. As soon as we'd edit the page [and remove Minh's name], he'd go back and put his name back in. It happened dozens of times over multiple years. Eventually, we gave up out of frustration." The claim that Nguyen was a co-founder of Plaxo was first added to the Wikipedia article for the company in June 2006 by User:Minhn21, who added it again in 2008 and 2010. It was also added by IP editors. It is not known if Plaxo sought assistance on Wikipedia or from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding this matter.
Why would Nguyen repeatedly make such a claim? Masonis told People that Nguyen was a childhood friend of Parker. DCInno spoke with (January 21) several former Plaxo executives who all said that Nguyen was present at several social gatherings at Parker's home near Stanford University around 2001, but that he played no role in the founding of the company. McCrea told DCInno:
“ | Minh never, ever worked at Plaxo. The company was created in Silicon Valley while he was living on the East Coast. He never set foot in the building, and he had no role in the founding of the company. His claim of co-foundership is false by every possible definition of the term. | ” |
McCrea speculated on his blog that "The best I've been able to piece together is that he and Sean may have talked about the idea of a smarter address book, and somehow in Minh's mind that made him a co-founder."
At the time of the murder, the claim was again in the Wikipedia article, cited to a 2008 TechCrunch article. While many publications may have just glanced at Wikipedia, fact-checkers would have found that the information was supported by other sources, like the TechCrunch article, Nguyen's profile on LinkedIn, and the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Sean Parker.
Newsweek reported on comments made by Alexander Biserov to ITAR-TASS on January 22. Biserov is deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, or Roskomnadzor, the agency charged with media and communications in Russia. Biserov told ITAR-TASS that Wikipedia was full of "a colossal number of mistakes" and said "My opinion on this, and I have said it many times, is I would ban Wikipedia, simply put it under censorship". The Russian government quickly backpedaled in a statement issued hours later via RusNovosti radio, which said "All this was said in jest, with irony and it should not prompt any kind of public reaction." Biserov's statement is the latest in a series of Russian government complaints about Wikipedia. In November 2014, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library announced it planned to create its own alternative to Wikipedia (See previous Signpost coverage).
Jerusalem Online reports (January 25) that Mashregh News, a news website affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has published an article detailing a presumably hypothetical assassination plan targeting the two adult sons of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the sons of former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Mashregh published a photograph of the Netanyahu family with crosshairs superimposed over the two sons, as well as detailed information about their recent activities and travels. According to Jerusalem Online, most of this information appeared to have been taken from Wikipedia. According to the International Business Times, high-ranking Revolutionary Guard member Hussein Salami called for (January 25) the assassination in retaliation for the death of Iranian General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi, who was killed in Syria in an airstrike earlier this month, an act that Iran has attributed to Israel.
Gamergate has drawn a lot of people and organizations into the controversy, and Wikipedia has been one of the more visible. The Gamergate supporters have identified that the English language Wikipedia article is one of the first results when one searches for "Gamergate", and desire to see that the article expresses their side of the issue properly. This has resulted in many of these supporters working with the open wiki nature of Wikipedia to try to discuss changes and introduce their side into the article. Some of these have been reasonable, starting civil discussions on the content.
However, the majority of these interested editors have been those that have not taken the time to learn about Wikipedia's policies on content, sourcing, and living persons. Several have tried to introduce some of the tenacious Gamergate theories into the article without proper sourcing, including egregious claims against living persons, particularly women. Some evidence of potential outside coordination to influence the Wikipedia article exists. How to handle the single purpose and sleeper accounts and anonymous edits of this nature has been a struggle. To stem the influence of these types of editors, the community decided on instituting general sanctions on the Gamergate topic space, which has been generally sufficient to quickly quell external pushes to affect the article.
At the same time, there has been a large disconnect between groups of established editors in how they approach the article. The Gamergate topic is clearly emotionally-driven, as the harassment of anyone (women or otherwise) via pseudo-anonymous groups already has a toxic connotation, and it is very difficult to find any sourcing from the media that doesn't paint the Gamergate supporters in a negative light. This has created a divide between these editors on how our sourcing and neutrality policies need to apply. Issues have arisen around how to present the media's highly negative take on the Gamergate situation within the neutrality policy, while the " verifiability, not truth" paradox of reliable sourcing has made the task of presenting objective material about Gamergate supporters from quality sources nearly impossible. There are plenty of pages of heated discussion of these matters, which can be expected from a situation like this.
What is core to the Gamergate Arbitration Committee case is that a subset of these established editors have seen themselves as a type of " white knight". They have expressed an overly strong concern about maintaining the page free of BLP violations and keeping the predominant view of the press as demanded by our neutrality policy to the point of edit warring. They have failed to accept new editors in good faith and have presumed bad faith about existing editors who did not follow their view. They have attempted page ownership, even when a draft version of the page was set up to prevent edit warring on the main space. As more attention was drawn to the Wikipedia article within Gamergate circles, many of these editors themselves became targets from offsite groups due to their opposition towards Gamergate, which appeared to drive them further into their activities of preventing Gamergate supporters from changing the nature of the Wikipedia article, while forgoing what would be expected behaviour of all Wikipedia editors.
The case was presented as a clash of the behaviour and attitudes of these experienced editors against an ongoing tide of single purpose accounts that, intentionally or not, wanted to push the Gamergate supporter side of the controversy onto Wikipedia and correct the lack of coverage the press has given their side.
While this is difficult situation for any editor to deal with, ArbCom's decision correctly focused solely on behaviour, only issuing findings of fact and no decisions or remedies on content policies, supporting the uninvolved admins who have tried to maintain order in this mess, and urging the community to review Gamergate and related articles within the context of policies.
The decision continues to uphold how we should handle new and single purpose accounts that are only here to try to influence the context of one topic, and re-emphasizes the community-based general sanctions within the context of the decision. At the same time, the rulings, particularly towards editors who are being topic-banned or admonished, affirm that decorum and civility is expected of editors even when dealing violations of BLP or neutrality. Actions like edit warring and battleground mentalities, regardless of how "right" that position might be, is not appropriate within the consensus-driven editing process.
The ArbCom decision does not have the bias that some blogs and news sources are reporting, but instead is applying an equivalent standard to every editor, new or experienced, who comes to edit in a given topic area with a mission: editors are still expected to follow civility, standards of decorum, and encyclopedia policy that an open wiki built on consensus requires to maintain stability, no matter how much one might feel their mission is for the right cause. The decision enforces the tenet that Wikipedia is meant to be neutral on any topic it covers and should not be used as a battleground to push agendas from any direction, regardless of the cause.
The Arbitration Committee just announced their decision in the Gamergate case. The case, from the "infamous blunder" [1] of the proposed decision to the bizarre press release (an ArbCom first, perhaps?), has been an utter, avoidable failure that shakes any confidence I have the Committee will be effective in the future. [note 1]
The Gamergate controversy erupted when game developer Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend accused her of sleeping around [2] and metastasized into harassment and death threats against anyone (usually female) who criticized either the pretext of the controversy - "actually...it's about ethics in game journalism" - or gaming culture itself. Normally, these situations die out as forum trolls get bored. [note 2] Gamergaters did not get bored.
Threads on KotakuInAction (KiA), a popular [note 3] Gamergate forum, or subreddit, on the website Reddit, brought a heavily active community interested in seeing their version of events displayed here. Rather than just coordinating to tag-team articles, they also focused on editors. Five Wikipedia editors, dubbed the "Five Horsemen", [5] [6] were identified as "biased" against Gamergate: Ryulong, [7] Tarc, [8], TaraInDC, TheRedPenOfDoom and NorthBySouthBaranof. [9]
As a result of the attention (and, admittedly, the intransigence of some long term editors), in the span of three months the article has been protected nine times [10] and the talk page has accumulated millions of bytes of discussion. Three arbitration requests were made in 30 days, all lodged by editors pushing a pro-Gamergate POV [note 4] [11] [12] [13] and all aimed at editors defending the article against the same.
Arbitrators recognized early on that off-wiki "co-ordination" [14] and "controversy" [15] were central to the case. Editors with experience in similar enforcement areas warned against potential problems. Hasteur left an prescient note, reminding the Committee that "[c]learing the decks of all the editors who have already contributed to the Gamergate colleciton [ sic] of articles is only going to provide more incentive for...[single purpose accounts]." [16] with, as Future Perfect at Sunrise put it, "all the makings for another procedural disaster like the infamous " Macedonia 2", where hordes of people motivated by external political agendas were given free rein to drown the procedure in their drivel for weeks, until clerks and arbs started randomly and erraticly [ sic] hitting out with blocks against established participants who had cracked under the constant provocation and lost their temper." [17]
Recognizing these exigencies, WormTT recommended "an expedited case, and firmly holding to deadlines and word limits." [18], with Newyorkbrad hoping to "[handle the case] in a highly expedited manner to avoid its becoming a complete circus". [19] Beeblebrox suggested temporary injunctions may be needed to ensure an orderly case. [20]
On the 25th of November, the Committee accepted the case.
The Committee let two deadlines slip after 11th hour pleas for more space and time from parties to the case, some of whom had been warned about misuse of the evidence page or accusations made with irrelevant or insufficient evidence. [note 5] No temporary injunctions were proposed or enacted. No sanctions were made during the case, although enforcing the third deadline required fully protecting the evidence page. [22]
The initial proposed decision was released, after two delays, on the 19th of January. [23] Every member of Gamergate's "five horsemen" faced sanctions. Only one editor supporting Gamergate who was not already banned or topic banned faced sanctions. [note 6] Proposed decisions change over time, of course; new remedies were added by other arbitrators and some of the original remedies did not gain consensus, but remarkably little has changed in the overall scope. Ryulong, Tarc, and NorthBySouthBaranof were topic banned; TaraInDC and TheRedPenofDoom will just be "admonished". Despite finding unanimously that "off-wiki feuds" and accusations of "off-wiki canvassing" were central to the dispute, [24] none of the proposed remedies addressed off-wiki actions. [note 7]
DD2K summed up the problem directly: "by sanctioning long-time editors who have had to deal with deplorable, egregious off-site (and many times on-site) harassment, while letting one of the main coordinators of that harassment go unmentioned, tells regular editors(volunteers themselves) and admins that protecting the project from BLP violations coordinated from off-site will not only get you sanctioned, but the perpetrators will be rewarded with no sanction." [26] Resolute added, "in trying to appear fair, you've really only given the outside harassers exactly what they want. I sincerely hope your "robust protections" are as advertised, because from where I sit, I see no incentive at all to try and enforce Wikipedia's policies on this set of articles. Looks like all you will get for your trouble is harassed, attacked, doxxed and threatened from the outside, and then topic or site banned from the inside." [27]
Lest we imagine this uncertainty is only hypothetical, Risker, a former arbitrator, wrote that she "took action [in the topic area] using advanced tools the other night only after I had the personal commitment of two of your colleagues to 'have my back' if I did so, because this decision is so broad that even acting entirely within policy I see a realistic risk of being sanctioned for taking entirely policy-accepted actions." [28] Remember the case was kicked off by a complaint about administrative malfeasance, precisely the kind of situation an administrator wading into Gamergate six months from now might face. [note 8]
That an arbitration decision divides the community and foments uncertainty is not news, [note 9] nor is it a sign by itself that the Committee cannot tackle vexed problems. What truly staggers here is the extent to which active arbitrators saw the major issues in the case coming and then did literally nothing about them. They recognized that behavior during the dispute would be a problem, then took no action as the evidence page ballooned. [note 10] They recognized the importance of off-wiki coordination [note 11] and then refused to take action on that very subject. They were repeatedly warned about misinterpreting this dispute as garden-variety Wikipedia factionalism and went on to "[clear]the decks of all the editors" [32] anyway.
Gamergate is not special. It is not a 100 year flood. It is the future of online resentment and so long as Wikipedia is both editable and authoritative we will face the same sort of problems. I had a hope, when this case was first taken, that Wikipedia would do the right thing in the end. That this community, which I am so passionate about and have been lucky enough to be a (very marginal) part of would land on the right solution after having tried all the bad ones. We're still looking, and the Arbitration Committee appears to be badly lost.
It is pretty clear what the theme is this week: people. With the media on hiatus during the January dead zone (except for the astonishing performance of American Sniper) Wikipedia readers turned to their other main focus of interest: celebrity. More specifically, dead celebrity. Two of the Traffic Report's subjects died this week (a third, Coronation Street's Anne Kirkbride, just missed the top 10) while two more either died fairly recently ( Chris Kyle) or had their lives commemorated ( Martin Luther King Jr.). Wikipedia readers' tendency to reduce Super Bowls to duels between rival quarterbacks meant not only that Tom Brady appeared in the Top 10, but that Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson appeared in the Top 25. Altogether, seven of the top 10 slots went to people, and two more went to articles related to them.
For the full top 25 list, see
WP:TOP25. See
this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Chris Kyle | 5,275,697 | America needs heroes it seems, because when Clint Eastwood gave her one, she embraced him for all she was worth. Viewing numbers for this murdered US soldier have pretty much doubled each of the last three weeks. It's hard to imagine a more perfectly formed hero; a man of superhuman ability (the most successful sniper in military history) and fatal compassion (his murderer was a PTSD-affected veteran whose pain he was hoping to ease on a shooting range) who now, in death, can never be corrupted or betray his own ideals. It is not surprising that America found her hero in a movie; after all, if the US Congress were a movie, it would have the second-lowest score on IMDb, only beating Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas. | ||
2 | American Sniper (film) | 1,511,250 | Clint Eastwood has always had astute commercial instincts as a filmmaker, instincts that appear only to have sharpened with age. But even he must have been flabbergasted at the commercial reception given to his latest film, American Sniper. The biography of sniper Chris Kyle has earned over $200 million in just 11 days of wide release, and that in January, usually considered Hollywood's financial graveyard. There hasn't been a phenomenon like this since Frozen. Adjusted for inflation, the film has already eclipsed Unforgiven as Eastwood's highest grossing film as a director in the US, and shows no signs of slowing down. | ||
3 | Martin Luther King, Jr. | 1,088,233 | It is Martin Luther King Day this week, and, with public awareness of police killings of black men spiking, and claims that blacks are being blocked from voting by new voter fraud laws, it's fair to say the civil rights pioneer's life has more resonance than ever. On top of that, a mild controversy has also emerged concerning the exclusion of his biopic Selma from most major Oscar categories. You'd think that would be enough for him to top the list, but apparently not. | ||
4 | List of Super Bowl champions | 799,871 | This list invariably pops up once a year, as Americans scramble for facts to determine which team will win the Super Bowl; the foremost of all football fiestas (at least in the US- most of the rest of the world has never heard of it). | ||
5 | Tom Brady | 727,008 | The New England Patriots quarterback with the all-American name has led his team to the Super Bowl six times in the last thirteen years, and won thrice. His position on the list implies readers expect him to do so again. | ||
6 | Abdullah of Saudi Arabia | 726,736 | Thanks to the "pass the parcel" mode of succession practised in Saudi, which hands the crown not down the generations but between the sons of the country's first monarch, Ibn Saud, its now-late ruler was 81 when he assumed the throne, and held it for less than a decade before his death this week handed it to his brother Salman, who, at 79, is the youngest surviving son of Ibn Saud. After him, the grandchildren will finally be let in. Such a system ensures that Saudi Arabia will be a gerontocracy for the foreseeable future. | ||
7 | I (film) | 726,736 | The Phantom of the Opera-esque Bollywood film starring Vikram (left) opened this week to reasonable reviews and fairly spectacular box office, netting ₹1.84 billion ($30 million) worldwide in its first 12 days. | ||
8 | Greg Plitt | 713,992 | The fitness model and actor died this week after running between the rails of the Metrolink Antelope Valley Line in Burbank, California. His death was recorded on video and, while it hasn't been released, it apparently suggests he was trying to outrun a train. | ||
9 | Lil Wayne | 692,652 | A suspiciously high mobile count (93%) implies that this week's release of Sorry 4 the Wait 2, the latest mixtape from Lil Wayne, composer of such masterpieces as " B***s Love Me", might not be generating solely human interest, and that his views may be being artificially inflated. I'll leave it to you as to whether we should drop him. | ||
10 | Amber Rose | 668,488 | The hip-hop singer and former stripper caused a minor Internet storm this week when she released some revealing images of herself online, to much attention and a decent amount of criticism. |
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
A paper [1] presented at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition last year ( earlier poster) presents an automated method to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theatre plays ("only about 10% of the plays in our dataset have corresponding Wikipedia pages"). It searches for playscripts and related documents on the web, extracts key information from them (including the play's main characters, relevant sentences from online synopses of the play, and mentions in Google Books and the Google News archive in an attempt to ensure that the play satisfies Wikipedia's notability criteria). It then compiles this information into an automatically generated Wikipedia article. Two of the 15 articles submitted as result of this method were accepted by Wikipedia editors. For the first, Chitra by Rabindranath Tagore, the initial bot-created submission underwent significant changes by other editors ("the final page reflects some of the improvements we can incorporate in our bot"). The second one, Fourteen by Alice Gerstenberg, "was moved into Wikipedia mainspace with minimal changes. All the references, quotes and paragraphs were retained".
A study of the German Wikipedia [2], about the diversity of editor contributions among the 8 "main categories", shows a relationship between editor diversity and quality. The authors start by defining an "interest profile" of an editor – the proportion of bytes contributed across all categories. Then an entropy measure is proposed which rewards an interest profile for being more distributed across more categories – having a polymath style.
There is a correlation shown between the average diversity of contributors and what types of article quality they've contributed to. Article quality is determined based on whether the article is a " Good Article", " Featured Article", or neither. It is also shown that total productivity, measured by bytes contributed, is linked to diversity, only marginally insignificantly. Finally, a logistic regression shows that diversity more than productivity significantly determines article quality.
Despite too many simplifications (e.g. single language, naive article quality ratings, too broad categories), the methods used by the researchers are well-defined, clear, and convincing in a limited scope, and place a finger on the notion that our most lauded editors tend to run all over Wikipedia.
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
Since I began this project two years ago, I have often compared it to navigating by lamplight through a dense, opaque fog. All we receive to craft this report is a sequence of raw data, with no indication as to its origin or validity. From it, we must discern the genuine human views from those of spammers, DDOS attackers, botnets, or lunatic pranksters. Initially, we relied on simple hard graft; checking viewing stats, news sites, Reddit threads or Google Doodles, ruling out possibility after possibility, and basing our conclusions on a combination of common sense, intuition, and trial and error. However, over time, our tools increased (in particular with the addition of mobile views), and now searches that used to take hours can be done in minutes. Unfortunately, because these tools came to us only towards the end of the year, they have proven rather useless in compiling the annual report, which has left me with that same feeling of helpless panic that I remember from our earliest days. And it wasn't like 2014 was in a mood to help; indeed it was apparently the year that the Internet decided to gang up on Wikipedia. The year-end pileup of every oddball entry for the last twelve months meant that, for the first time ever, I have had to exclude more entries than I included, which raises some serious questions, not least by myself, as to whether this list could ever be accurate. All I can tell you is to take the conclusions below with a grain of salt, and if you are concerned, check out the raw data for yourself.
This is only my second annual Traffic report, so it's too early to discern longterm trends, but one thing stands out like a panzer in a pizzeria: this year's 25 most viewed articles together comprised 289 million views; last year's total was 350 million. That's a decrease of 18 percent. The natural question is why, and it is an excellent one. It's not like people aren't turning to Wikipedia for information; this year's list contained four articles related to current events (five if you count the centenary of World War I), compared with one last year. And it isn't surprising; I was not the only one left stranded in the fog by 2014. With the tragic and seemingly inexplicable death of Robin Williams, the nebulous and inconclusive war against ISIL, and the overstated alien horror of Ebola, people turned to Wikipedia to make sense of a world that seemed beyond their control. This arguably led to a decrease in the quality of the articles from last year's list: articles on current events remain in a constant state of flux, and seldom settle down long enough to be improved.
That said, in other respects, this list is reassuringly familiar: the same dominance of pop culture (TV, movies, websites, celebrities); the same egocentric interest in one's country of residence (yes, the countries, even those further down the list, are still in order of English-speaking population); the same obsession with death ( Deaths in 2014 eclipsed Facebook this year to top the list, while, again, the most viewed celebrity was one who died), and the same sober desire to commemorate past events (this year, the centenary of World War I; last year, the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's delivery of the Gettysburg Address).
One major difference stands out, however: film has a much stronger presence on this list than last year. On noting 2013's relative lack of film entries, I speculated that movies' relatively short lifespans in theatres mean they don't sustain the public interest to the level that television can. That may still be true, for most films, but this year saw films of such mind-bending popularity they essentially became institutions overnight. My only question is why Frozen isn't higher on this list. It debuted in November last year, but toy tie-ins for the movie were still the must-have presents for this Christmas. Who's betting that years from now mothers the world over will still be plugging their ears to their daughters' billionth play of "Let It Go"? As for Guardians of the Galaxy? Well, only a studio as confident as Marvel would have dared to release it to begin with, let alone hire a former Troma director and cast Vin Diesel as a walking tree or Bradley Cooper as a raccoon. But the concept was so crazy it worked; audiences fell in love with it, and then, when it was released on video, fell in love with it again.
Conversely, TV had a reduced presence from last year. With Breaking Bad and How I Met Your Mother now concluded, Game of Thrones has assumed the pole position by virtue of its numbers seeing negligible change. Once again, Wikipedia viewers, for obvious reasons, favoured the "watercooler shows" that require a large amount of background knowledge to stay current, like The Walking Dead or True Detective, or geek-friendly fare, such as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
As with last year, music stars were the majority of celebrities on the list, as their frequent concerts and media appearances keep their flames alight longer than others of their stripe. In the regretted and possibly surprising absence of Jennifer Lawrence, former Nickelodeon poplet Ariana Grande claimed the position of Wikipedia's most popular woman by default. Less explicable is the enduring interest in Jordan Belfort, a hedonist who financed his playboy lifestyle by scamming investors out of millions, who now hosts motivational seminars on how to get rich quick. True, he was the subject of a moderately popular film in 2013, but that still doesn't explain his appearance on this year's list.
Rank | Article | Class | Views |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Deaths in 2014 | 20,967,890 | |
2 | 20,281,198 | ||
3 | Ebola virus disease | 18,585,050 | |
4 | 2014 FIFA World Cup | 15,659,069 | |
5 | Game of Thrones | 14,473,769 | |
6 | Robin Williams | 12,883,344 | |
7 | United States | 12,797,361 | |
8 | Wikipedia | 12,423,091 | |
9 | List of Bollywood films of 2014 | 12,221,398 | |
10 | 11,764,884 | ||
11 | 2014 in film | 11,067,892 | |
12 | YouTube | 11,008,475 | |
13 | The Walking Dead (TV series) | 10,083,875 | |
14 | Frozen (2013 film) | 9,783,251 | |
15 | Ariana Grande | 9,451,283 | |
16 | India | 9,134,409 | |
17 | Guardians of the Galaxy (film) | 9,008,117 | |
18 | True Detective (TV series) | 8,828,585 | |
19 | Iggy Azalea | 8,500,361 | |
20 | FIFA World Cup | 8,449,861 | |
21 | World War I | 8,402,341 | |
22 | Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant | 8,321,501 | |
23 | Jordan Belfort | 8,311,525 | |
24 | List of Game of Thrones episodes | 8,274,910 | |
25 | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. | 7,920,343 |
Key |
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Website |
Person |
TV show |
Film |
Country |
2014 event |
Historical event |
Ten featured articles were promoted this week.
Three featured lists were promoted this week.
Twenty-two featured pictures were promoted this week.
Dear readers,
A few weeks ago, long-time Signpost editor-in-chief The ed17 announced his intention to step down due to time constraints. Aware of the heavy workload of his role, he sought two editors to replace him. As the members of the newly formed Signpost editorial board, we're pleased to announce our vision for the future of the Signpost and to explain our new roles.
A wise individual once said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The new Signpost editorial board subscribes to this philosophy in relation to the weekly newspaper. Although we certainly do have some goals—reviving "News and notes" on a weekly basis, for one—we see no particular reason at the present time for making substantial changes to the Signpost's format. We will strive to maintain our voice and standing as an independent entity, separate from the WMF, Wikimedia chapters, WikiEd, or other entities. We hope to expand our coverage by including high-quality content and interesting opinion pieces from community members, including opposing viewpoints in some editions, like this week.
We'd like to take one more opportunity to thank Ed for his years of service as editor-in-chief, during which he told us he contributed up to 20 hours per week—never eager to step into the limelight but always willing to help behind the scenes. Please join us in thanking him for his dedication to this community newspaper. In this time of transition, we ask for your patience, confident that we will make mistakes, perhaps even large ones. Please bear with us as we learn our respective roles.
—
Go Phightins! and
Gamaliel, Signpost editors-in-chief
Reader comments
The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee has closed the colossal GamerGate arbitration case, whose size—involving 27 named parties—recalls large and complex cases of the past such as Scientology, Palestine-Israel, and Climate change.
One editor has been site-banned, while another twelve are subject to remedies ranging from admonishments to broad topic bans and suspended sitebans. In addition, the committee has authorised broad discretionary sanctions, which give administrators wide latitude to block, topic-ban, or otherwise restrict editors who behave disruptively. The breadth of the topic bans and the discretionary sanctions was the subject of much discussion between arbitrators. Arbitrators were in agreement as to the need to prevent the dispute being exported to related articles—GamerGate is part of a much larger series of controversies about gender identity and sexuality (see, for example, coverage of the Christianity and sexuality case in last week’s Arbitration report)—but concerns were raised about the sheer scope of some of the proposals. After Roger Davies consolidated the options into proposals for a "standard topic ban", the committee reached agreement to define the scope as "(a) GamerGate, (b) any gender-related dispute or controversy, [or] (c) people associated with (a) or (b), all broadly construed".
When ArbCom grudgingly accepted a GamerGate case in November (the third such request in quick succession), Newyorkbrad urged the committee to handle the case "in a highly expedited manner to avoid its becoming a complete circus," while Beeblebrox decried the "'keep asking till you get [what] you want' feeling" he got from repeated case requests—he conceded that the situation was "spiraling out of control," thus necessitating a case. Despite hopes for an expedited case, it lasted for two months.
The case stems from the "GamerGate" hashtag, which was started in response to concerns about the proximity of relationships between some video game developers and the journalists reviewing their games. Those using it, however, have been severely criticised for the harassment and misogyny that has become associated with it. The related Wikipedia article, GamerGate controversy ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), promptly became another front in the battle, with editors on both sides ranging from throwaway single-purpose accounts to long-established editors—several of whom had lengthy track records of edit-warring or misconduct in controversial topic areas.
Arbitrator Roger Davies told the Signpost that the case was complicated by its size and complexity. With 27 named parties and 41 editors presenting roughly 34,000 words worth of on-wiki evidence, a total that does not include email correspondence, the case was of a sort rarely seen in the committee's current era. Still, Davies observed that the case was concluded within two months, compared to the much longer durations of previous complex cases, such as Climate change (which took five months to resolve) and Scientology (nearly six). Of the various remedies, Davies said that no "silver bullet" would have resolved the issues raised in the case, but he suggested that the combination of "several related fixes, including existing and new sanctions" available to administrators would help. In the light of criticism that the decision had little immediate effect, Davies told the Signpost he expected it would "probably take a week or two to work through" for the effects to be fully felt.
Editor | Sanction | Duration | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
NorthBySouthBaranof | Topic ban | Indefinite | Passed in favor of a topic ban 9/3/2; for treating Wikipedia as a battleground |
Ryulong | Topic ban | Indefinite | |
Site ban | Indefinite | ||
TaraInDC | Admonishment | N/A | |
Tarc | Topic ban | Indefinite | Passed in lieu of a site ban, promulgated by two arbitrators, one of whom noted previous ArbCom findings against Tarc; standard topic ban for this case imposed |
Warning | Indefinite | In wake of previous issues, ArbCom issued a blanket warning against future disruption, the consequence of which could be a site ban | |
The Devil's Advocate | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom unanimously imposed the standard topic ban for this case |
1RR restriction | 12 months | Passed unanimously as part of a package of four remedies imposed against The Devil's Advocate | |
Restriction | 12 months | Editor is restricted from editing any administrative noticeboards; passed as third restriction component to avoid site ban | |
Warning | Indefinite | Similar to other editors, ArbCom issued a blanket warning against future disruption, including encouragement to avoid editing in contentious areas, the consequence of which (future disruption) could be a site ban | |
TheRedPenOfDoom | Admonishment | Indefinite | Passed 10/4; arbitrator GorillaWarfare, a dissenter, commented, "Though there was poor behavior here, I don't think a formal admonishment is needed." |
Tutelary | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
ArmyLine | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
DungeonSiegeAddict510 | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
Xander756 | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
Titanium Dragon | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom endorsed community-imposed ban from editing under BLP enforcement, and converted it to standard topic ban for this case |
Loganmac | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom unanimously imposed standard topic ban for this case |
Willhesucceed | Topic ban | Indefinite | ArbCom unanimously imposed standard topic ban for this case |
This case has even attracted media attention, including from The Guardian, which mistakenly proclaimed that Wikipedia "has banned five editors from making corrections to articles about feminism." It extensively quoted Mark Bernstein, who wrote a series of blog posts commenting on the Arbitration Committee's pending decision. (Editor's note: Mark Bernstein was topic banned by Gamaliel and later blocked by HJ Mitchell.) His three-part series, "Infamous", "Thoughtless", and "Careless", received wide-spread attention on social media, including through the blogs of actor Wil Wheaton, Tumblr, and biologist PZ Myers. Bernstein noted that five Wikipedia editors, NorthBySouthBaranof, Ryulong, TaraInDC, Tarc, and TheRedPenOfDoom, were targeted by supporters of GamerGate, who dubbed them the " Five Horsemen". According to Bernstein, these editors were "active in preserving objectivity and in keeping scurrilous sexual innuendo out of the encyclopedia". He went on to call them feminists, complaining:
“ | By my informal count, every feminist active in the area is to be sanctioned. This takes care of social justice warriors with a vengeance — not only do the GamerGaters get to rewrite their own page (and [GamerGate targets] Zoe Quinn’s, Brianna Wu’s, Anita Sarkeesian’s, etc.); feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia. | ” |
He also erroneously claimed that aside from a few new single-purpose accounts, no GamerGate supporters were sanctioned, leaving them free to write their own page as ArbCom ostensibly ostracizes "liberals."
The Committee passed a site ban against one of the "Five Horsemen" at the last minute, in view of his behaviour while the case was ongoing and taking into account his long history of misconduct; topic banned two more; and admonished the remaining two. The Committee has also passed topic bans against seven editors who are widely seen as GamerGate supporters, four of whom were already topic-banned from the (narrower) GamerGate topic area through community general sanctions.
The Guardian also quoted Wikipedian Abigail Brady ( Morwen), who said that contentious editing disputes on Wikipedia have become a "game of provocation chicken", asserting that internal politics of Wikipedia "are poisonous," as each side tries to "work as close to the ill-defined edge of acceptable behaviour to provoke the other into crossing it." The article concluded:
“ | The byzantine internal processes of Wikipedia are incomprehensible for many, but they serve to shape the content on the site, the seventh biggest on the internet. Its reportedly unpleasant internal culture and unwelcoming atmosphere for new editors has long been blamed for an overwhelmingly masculine make-up – just one in ten editors are thought to be female – which in turn contributes to which topics get featured on the site. | ” |
The issue was also reported on by a number of other publications, most citing The Guardian's article, including Gawker, PandoDaily, De Volkskrant, Der Standard, Jezebel, Raw Story, ThinkProgress, The Verge, and The Mary Sue. Their headlines largely reflected the perception that Wikipedia was banning feminist editors, echoing the complaints following the Manning arbitration case that the Committee was sanctioning both editors who had made transphobic comments and those who opposed transphobia.
A number of Wikipedia editors decried the inaccuracies in the Guardian's reporting, with one party to the case calling it "completely ridden with factual errors" and another calling it "clearly biased". A Quest For Knowledge wrote that the Guardian misunderstood the purpose of the Committee: "editors are sanctioned for conduct, not their POV. This is absolutely critical to understand. There's no way the press can write a decent article about an ArbCom case without understanding this key distinction." Others echoed the central complaints of Bernstein and the Guardian. Jayen466 wrote "Yes, the Guardian article and its spin-offs contain inaccuracies, but there is still enough truth in the story for this to become quite as big a controversy as Categorygate did in 2013." The Guardian has since published a correction, stating that "An earlier version gave the impression that the bans had been finalised, and a quotation suggested that no pro-gamergate editors had been banned from the site."
Likely in response to that media attention, the committee released a lengthy statement intended for the press on its decision making process, vaguely and indirectly addressing some of the coverage on the case. "There have been a number of articles about this case in the press of late, some of which mischaracterize the Committee, its process, and outcomes of this case," the Committee wrote. "We would like to clarify the Committee’s purpose, process, and preliminary findings." The community widely criticized the statement for its length, minutia, and unintended obfuscation. Georgewilliamherbert, for example, wrote that "If you are going to comment at all, and you just did, you need to address the actual criticisms", while Jehochman stated that "The obvious mistake here is that the statement is wordy and lacks sound bites." Others approved of the statement but questioned a perceived lack of involvement from WMF, including Shii, who wrote, "This is a good statement, but where is the Wikimedia Foundation? They are the people who receive the fundraiser money—shouldn't they be involved in supporting the community, especially when some of English Wikipedia's most dedicated editors come under attack from unfair reporting?"
Philippe Beaudette of the Wikimedia Foundation wrote a blog post echoing the statement by the Committee, reading in part that "The Committee's mandate is to uphold a civil, constructive atmosphere that furthers Wikipedia’s mission. At the Wikimedia Foundation, we support that objective and are taking active steps to create and maintain a civil atmosphere for editors of all backgrounds. We ask all our editors to do the same."
Tech entrepreneur Minh D. Nguyen was charged with first degree murder in connection with the January 15th shooting death of the husband of Nguyen's ex-wife in Loudoun County, Virginia. The case made headlines because numerous news outlets—including the Washington Post, People, CNN, the Daily Mail, The Independent, Valleywag, and TechCrunch—identified Nguyen as a co-founder of Plaxo based on his Wikipedia article. Plaxo is an online address book and social networking service founded in 2002 by three individuals, one being Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook who was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the movie The Social Network. The connection to Parker proved irresistible to the media.
Nguyen, however, never was a co-founder of the company, which was actually founded by Parker, Todd Masonis, and Cameron Ring. Most publications reporting on the murder charge have corrected their mistakes regarding Plaxo or written follow-up stories. On his blog (January 21), John McCrea, Plaxo's former head of marketing, wrote that Plaxo's employees largely have no idea who Nguyen is:
“ | Well, since Minh never set foot inside the doors of Plaxo, nor did a single day of work there, most of them, somewhat surprisingly, have actually never met him. To them, he’s just "that guy who keeps editing the Wikipedia page for Plaxo," listing himself as co-founder, despite it not being true. Every attempt to set the record straight over the years has been met with a rapid re-edit by Minh. | ” |
McCrea discussed the problem (January 22) with People. He said, "It sort of became a wrestling match. As soon as we'd edit the page [and remove Minh's name], he'd go back and put his name back in. It happened dozens of times over multiple years. Eventually, we gave up out of frustration." The claim that Nguyen was a co-founder of Plaxo was first added to the Wikipedia article for the company in June 2006 by User:Minhn21, who added it again in 2008 and 2010. It was also added by IP editors. It is not known if Plaxo sought assistance on Wikipedia or from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding this matter.
Why would Nguyen repeatedly make such a claim? Masonis told People that Nguyen was a childhood friend of Parker. DCInno spoke with (January 21) several former Plaxo executives who all said that Nguyen was present at several social gatherings at Parker's home near Stanford University around 2001, but that he played no role in the founding of the company. McCrea told DCInno:
“ | Minh never, ever worked at Plaxo. The company was created in Silicon Valley while he was living on the East Coast. He never set foot in the building, and he had no role in the founding of the company. His claim of co-foundership is false by every possible definition of the term. | ” |
McCrea speculated on his blog that "The best I've been able to piece together is that he and Sean may have talked about the idea of a smarter address book, and somehow in Minh's mind that made him a co-founder."
At the time of the murder, the claim was again in the Wikipedia article, cited to a 2008 TechCrunch article. While many publications may have just glanced at Wikipedia, fact-checkers would have found that the information was supported by other sources, like the TechCrunch article, Nguyen's profile on LinkedIn, and the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Sean Parker.
Newsweek reported on comments made by Alexander Biserov to ITAR-TASS on January 22. Biserov is deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, or Roskomnadzor, the agency charged with media and communications in Russia. Biserov told ITAR-TASS that Wikipedia was full of "a colossal number of mistakes" and said "My opinion on this, and I have said it many times, is I would ban Wikipedia, simply put it under censorship". The Russian government quickly backpedaled in a statement issued hours later via RusNovosti radio, which said "All this was said in jest, with irony and it should not prompt any kind of public reaction." Biserov's statement is the latest in a series of Russian government complaints about Wikipedia. In November 2014, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library announced it planned to create its own alternative to Wikipedia (See previous Signpost coverage).
Jerusalem Online reports (January 25) that Mashregh News, a news website affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has published an article detailing a presumably hypothetical assassination plan targeting the two adult sons of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the sons of former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Mashregh published a photograph of the Netanyahu family with crosshairs superimposed over the two sons, as well as detailed information about their recent activities and travels. According to Jerusalem Online, most of this information appeared to have been taken from Wikipedia. According to the International Business Times, high-ranking Revolutionary Guard member Hussein Salami called for (January 25) the assassination in retaliation for the death of Iranian General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi, who was killed in Syria in an airstrike earlier this month, an act that Iran has attributed to Israel.
Gamergate has drawn a lot of people and organizations into the controversy, and Wikipedia has been one of the more visible. The Gamergate supporters have identified that the English language Wikipedia article is one of the first results when one searches for "Gamergate", and desire to see that the article expresses their side of the issue properly. This has resulted in many of these supporters working with the open wiki nature of Wikipedia to try to discuss changes and introduce their side into the article. Some of these have been reasonable, starting civil discussions on the content.
However, the majority of these interested editors have been those that have not taken the time to learn about Wikipedia's policies on content, sourcing, and living persons. Several have tried to introduce some of the tenacious Gamergate theories into the article without proper sourcing, including egregious claims against living persons, particularly women. Some evidence of potential outside coordination to influence the Wikipedia article exists. How to handle the single purpose and sleeper accounts and anonymous edits of this nature has been a struggle. To stem the influence of these types of editors, the community decided on instituting general sanctions on the Gamergate topic space, which has been generally sufficient to quickly quell external pushes to affect the article.
At the same time, there has been a large disconnect between groups of established editors in how they approach the article. The Gamergate topic is clearly emotionally-driven, as the harassment of anyone (women or otherwise) via pseudo-anonymous groups already has a toxic connotation, and it is very difficult to find any sourcing from the media that doesn't paint the Gamergate supporters in a negative light. This has created a divide between these editors on how our sourcing and neutrality policies need to apply. Issues have arisen around how to present the media's highly negative take on the Gamergate situation within the neutrality policy, while the " verifiability, not truth" paradox of reliable sourcing has made the task of presenting objective material about Gamergate supporters from quality sources nearly impossible. There are plenty of pages of heated discussion of these matters, which can be expected from a situation like this.
What is core to the Gamergate Arbitration Committee case is that a subset of these established editors have seen themselves as a type of " white knight". They have expressed an overly strong concern about maintaining the page free of BLP violations and keeping the predominant view of the press as demanded by our neutrality policy to the point of edit warring. They have failed to accept new editors in good faith and have presumed bad faith about existing editors who did not follow their view. They have attempted page ownership, even when a draft version of the page was set up to prevent edit warring on the main space. As more attention was drawn to the Wikipedia article within Gamergate circles, many of these editors themselves became targets from offsite groups due to their opposition towards Gamergate, which appeared to drive them further into their activities of preventing Gamergate supporters from changing the nature of the Wikipedia article, while forgoing what would be expected behaviour of all Wikipedia editors.
The case was presented as a clash of the behaviour and attitudes of these experienced editors against an ongoing tide of single purpose accounts that, intentionally or not, wanted to push the Gamergate supporter side of the controversy onto Wikipedia and correct the lack of coverage the press has given their side.
While this is difficult situation for any editor to deal with, ArbCom's decision correctly focused solely on behaviour, only issuing findings of fact and no decisions or remedies on content policies, supporting the uninvolved admins who have tried to maintain order in this mess, and urging the community to review Gamergate and related articles within the context of policies.
The decision continues to uphold how we should handle new and single purpose accounts that are only here to try to influence the context of one topic, and re-emphasizes the community-based general sanctions within the context of the decision. At the same time, the rulings, particularly towards editors who are being topic-banned or admonished, affirm that decorum and civility is expected of editors even when dealing violations of BLP or neutrality. Actions like edit warring and battleground mentalities, regardless of how "right" that position might be, is not appropriate within the consensus-driven editing process.
The ArbCom decision does not have the bias that some blogs and news sources are reporting, but instead is applying an equivalent standard to every editor, new or experienced, who comes to edit in a given topic area with a mission: editors are still expected to follow civility, standards of decorum, and encyclopedia policy that an open wiki built on consensus requires to maintain stability, no matter how much one might feel their mission is for the right cause. The decision enforces the tenet that Wikipedia is meant to be neutral on any topic it covers and should not be used as a battleground to push agendas from any direction, regardless of the cause.
The Arbitration Committee just announced their decision in the Gamergate case. The case, from the "infamous blunder" [1] of the proposed decision to the bizarre press release (an ArbCom first, perhaps?), has been an utter, avoidable failure that shakes any confidence I have the Committee will be effective in the future. [note 1]
The Gamergate controversy erupted when game developer Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend accused her of sleeping around [2] and metastasized into harassment and death threats against anyone (usually female) who criticized either the pretext of the controversy - "actually...it's about ethics in game journalism" - or gaming culture itself. Normally, these situations die out as forum trolls get bored. [note 2] Gamergaters did not get bored.
Threads on KotakuInAction (KiA), a popular [note 3] Gamergate forum, or subreddit, on the website Reddit, brought a heavily active community interested in seeing their version of events displayed here. Rather than just coordinating to tag-team articles, they also focused on editors. Five Wikipedia editors, dubbed the "Five Horsemen", [5] [6] were identified as "biased" against Gamergate: Ryulong, [7] Tarc, [8], TaraInDC, TheRedPenOfDoom and NorthBySouthBaranof. [9]
As a result of the attention (and, admittedly, the intransigence of some long term editors), in the span of three months the article has been protected nine times [10] and the talk page has accumulated millions of bytes of discussion. Three arbitration requests were made in 30 days, all lodged by editors pushing a pro-Gamergate POV [note 4] [11] [12] [13] and all aimed at editors defending the article against the same.
Arbitrators recognized early on that off-wiki "co-ordination" [14] and "controversy" [15] were central to the case. Editors with experience in similar enforcement areas warned against potential problems. Hasteur left an prescient note, reminding the Committee that "[c]learing the decks of all the editors who have already contributed to the Gamergate colleciton [ sic] of articles is only going to provide more incentive for...[single purpose accounts]." [16] with, as Future Perfect at Sunrise put it, "all the makings for another procedural disaster like the infamous " Macedonia 2", where hordes of people motivated by external political agendas were given free rein to drown the procedure in their drivel for weeks, until clerks and arbs started randomly and erraticly [ sic] hitting out with blocks against established participants who had cracked under the constant provocation and lost their temper." [17]
Recognizing these exigencies, WormTT recommended "an expedited case, and firmly holding to deadlines and word limits." [18], with Newyorkbrad hoping to "[handle the case] in a highly expedited manner to avoid its becoming a complete circus". [19] Beeblebrox suggested temporary injunctions may be needed to ensure an orderly case. [20]
On the 25th of November, the Committee accepted the case.
The Committee let two deadlines slip after 11th hour pleas for more space and time from parties to the case, some of whom had been warned about misuse of the evidence page or accusations made with irrelevant or insufficient evidence. [note 5] No temporary injunctions were proposed or enacted. No sanctions were made during the case, although enforcing the third deadline required fully protecting the evidence page. [22]
The initial proposed decision was released, after two delays, on the 19th of January. [23] Every member of Gamergate's "five horsemen" faced sanctions. Only one editor supporting Gamergate who was not already banned or topic banned faced sanctions. [note 6] Proposed decisions change over time, of course; new remedies were added by other arbitrators and some of the original remedies did not gain consensus, but remarkably little has changed in the overall scope. Ryulong, Tarc, and NorthBySouthBaranof were topic banned; TaraInDC and TheRedPenofDoom will just be "admonished". Despite finding unanimously that "off-wiki feuds" and accusations of "off-wiki canvassing" were central to the dispute, [24] none of the proposed remedies addressed off-wiki actions. [note 7]
DD2K summed up the problem directly: "by sanctioning long-time editors who have had to deal with deplorable, egregious off-site (and many times on-site) harassment, while letting one of the main coordinators of that harassment go unmentioned, tells regular editors(volunteers themselves) and admins that protecting the project from BLP violations coordinated from off-site will not only get you sanctioned, but the perpetrators will be rewarded with no sanction." [26] Resolute added, "in trying to appear fair, you've really only given the outside harassers exactly what they want. I sincerely hope your "robust protections" are as advertised, because from where I sit, I see no incentive at all to try and enforce Wikipedia's policies on this set of articles. Looks like all you will get for your trouble is harassed, attacked, doxxed and threatened from the outside, and then topic or site banned from the inside." [27]
Lest we imagine this uncertainty is only hypothetical, Risker, a former arbitrator, wrote that she "took action [in the topic area] using advanced tools the other night only after I had the personal commitment of two of your colleagues to 'have my back' if I did so, because this decision is so broad that even acting entirely within policy I see a realistic risk of being sanctioned for taking entirely policy-accepted actions." [28] Remember the case was kicked off by a complaint about administrative malfeasance, precisely the kind of situation an administrator wading into Gamergate six months from now might face. [note 8]
That an arbitration decision divides the community and foments uncertainty is not news, [note 9] nor is it a sign by itself that the Committee cannot tackle vexed problems. What truly staggers here is the extent to which active arbitrators saw the major issues in the case coming and then did literally nothing about them. They recognized that behavior during the dispute would be a problem, then took no action as the evidence page ballooned. [note 10] They recognized the importance of off-wiki coordination [note 11] and then refused to take action on that very subject. They were repeatedly warned about misinterpreting this dispute as garden-variety Wikipedia factionalism and went on to "[clear]the decks of all the editors" [32] anyway.
Gamergate is not special. It is not a 100 year flood. It is the future of online resentment and so long as Wikipedia is both editable and authoritative we will face the same sort of problems. I had a hope, when this case was first taken, that Wikipedia would do the right thing in the end. That this community, which I am so passionate about and have been lucky enough to be a (very marginal) part of would land on the right solution after having tried all the bad ones. We're still looking, and the Arbitration Committee appears to be badly lost.
It is pretty clear what the theme is this week: people. With the media on hiatus during the January dead zone (except for the astonishing performance of American Sniper) Wikipedia readers turned to their other main focus of interest: celebrity. More specifically, dead celebrity. Two of the Traffic Report's subjects died this week (a third, Coronation Street's Anne Kirkbride, just missed the top 10) while two more either died fairly recently ( Chris Kyle) or had their lives commemorated ( Martin Luther King Jr.). Wikipedia readers' tendency to reduce Super Bowls to duels between rival quarterbacks meant not only that Tom Brady appeared in the Top 10, but that Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson appeared in the Top 25. Altogether, seven of the top 10 slots went to people, and two more went to articles related to them.
For the full top 25 list, see
WP:TOP25. See
this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Chris Kyle | 5,275,697 | America needs heroes it seems, because when Clint Eastwood gave her one, she embraced him for all she was worth. Viewing numbers for this murdered US soldier have pretty much doubled each of the last three weeks. It's hard to imagine a more perfectly formed hero; a man of superhuman ability (the most successful sniper in military history) and fatal compassion (his murderer was a PTSD-affected veteran whose pain he was hoping to ease on a shooting range) who now, in death, can never be corrupted or betray his own ideals. It is not surprising that America found her hero in a movie; after all, if the US Congress were a movie, it would have the second-lowest score on IMDb, only beating Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas. | ||
2 | American Sniper (film) | 1,511,250 | Clint Eastwood has always had astute commercial instincts as a filmmaker, instincts that appear only to have sharpened with age. But even he must have been flabbergasted at the commercial reception given to his latest film, American Sniper. The biography of sniper Chris Kyle has earned over $200 million in just 11 days of wide release, and that in January, usually considered Hollywood's financial graveyard. There hasn't been a phenomenon like this since Frozen. Adjusted for inflation, the film has already eclipsed Unforgiven as Eastwood's highest grossing film as a director in the US, and shows no signs of slowing down. | ||
3 | Martin Luther King, Jr. | 1,088,233 | It is Martin Luther King Day this week, and, with public awareness of police killings of black men spiking, and claims that blacks are being blocked from voting by new voter fraud laws, it's fair to say the civil rights pioneer's life has more resonance than ever. On top of that, a mild controversy has also emerged concerning the exclusion of his biopic Selma from most major Oscar categories. You'd think that would be enough for him to top the list, but apparently not. | ||
4 | List of Super Bowl champions | 799,871 | This list invariably pops up once a year, as Americans scramble for facts to determine which team will win the Super Bowl; the foremost of all football fiestas (at least in the US- most of the rest of the world has never heard of it). | ||
5 | Tom Brady | 727,008 | The New England Patriots quarterback with the all-American name has led his team to the Super Bowl six times in the last thirteen years, and won thrice. His position on the list implies readers expect him to do so again. | ||
6 | Abdullah of Saudi Arabia | 726,736 | Thanks to the "pass the parcel" mode of succession practised in Saudi, which hands the crown not down the generations but between the sons of the country's first monarch, Ibn Saud, its now-late ruler was 81 when he assumed the throne, and held it for less than a decade before his death this week handed it to his brother Salman, who, at 79, is the youngest surviving son of Ibn Saud. After him, the grandchildren will finally be let in. Such a system ensures that Saudi Arabia will be a gerontocracy for the foreseeable future. | ||
7 | I (film) | 726,736 | The Phantom of the Opera-esque Bollywood film starring Vikram (left) opened this week to reasonable reviews and fairly spectacular box office, netting ₹1.84 billion ($30 million) worldwide in its first 12 days. | ||
8 | Greg Plitt | 713,992 | The fitness model and actor died this week after running between the rails of the Metrolink Antelope Valley Line in Burbank, California. His death was recorded on video and, while it hasn't been released, it apparently suggests he was trying to outrun a train. | ||
9 | Lil Wayne | 692,652 | A suspiciously high mobile count (93%) implies that this week's release of Sorry 4 the Wait 2, the latest mixtape from Lil Wayne, composer of such masterpieces as " B***s Love Me", might not be generating solely human interest, and that his views may be being artificially inflated. I'll leave it to you as to whether we should drop him. | ||
10 | Amber Rose | 668,488 | The hip-hop singer and former stripper caused a minor Internet storm this week when she released some revealing images of herself online, to much attention and a decent amount of criticism. |
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
A paper [1] presented at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition last year ( earlier poster) presents an automated method to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theatre plays ("only about 10% of the plays in our dataset have corresponding Wikipedia pages"). It searches for playscripts and related documents on the web, extracts key information from them (including the play's main characters, relevant sentences from online synopses of the play, and mentions in Google Books and the Google News archive in an attempt to ensure that the play satisfies Wikipedia's notability criteria). It then compiles this information into an automatically generated Wikipedia article. Two of the 15 articles submitted as result of this method were accepted by Wikipedia editors. For the first, Chitra by Rabindranath Tagore, the initial bot-created submission underwent significant changes by other editors ("the final page reflects some of the improvements we can incorporate in our bot"). The second one, Fourteen by Alice Gerstenberg, "was moved into Wikipedia mainspace with minimal changes. All the references, quotes and paragraphs were retained".
A study of the German Wikipedia [2], about the diversity of editor contributions among the 8 "main categories", shows a relationship between editor diversity and quality. The authors start by defining an "interest profile" of an editor – the proportion of bytes contributed across all categories. Then an entropy measure is proposed which rewards an interest profile for being more distributed across more categories – having a polymath style.
There is a correlation shown between the average diversity of contributors and what types of article quality they've contributed to. Article quality is determined based on whether the article is a " Good Article", " Featured Article", or neither. It is also shown that total productivity, measured by bytes contributed, is linked to diversity, only marginally insignificantly. Finally, a logistic regression shows that diversity more than productivity significantly determines article quality.
Despite too many simplifications (e.g. single language, naive article quality ratings, too broad categories), the methods used by the researchers are well-defined, clear, and convincing in a limited scope, and place a finger on the notion that our most lauded editors tend to run all over Wikipedia.
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
Since I began this project two years ago, I have often compared it to navigating by lamplight through a dense, opaque fog. All we receive to craft this report is a sequence of raw data, with no indication as to its origin or validity. From it, we must discern the genuine human views from those of spammers, DDOS attackers, botnets, or lunatic pranksters. Initially, we relied on simple hard graft; checking viewing stats, news sites, Reddit threads or Google Doodles, ruling out possibility after possibility, and basing our conclusions on a combination of common sense, intuition, and trial and error. However, over time, our tools increased (in particular with the addition of mobile views), and now searches that used to take hours can be done in minutes. Unfortunately, because these tools came to us only towards the end of the year, they have proven rather useless in compiling the annual report, which has left me with that same feeling of helpless panic that I remember from our earliest days. And it wasn't like 2014 was in a mood to help; indeed it was apparently the year that the Internet decided to gang up on Wikipedia. The year-end pileup of every oddball entry for the last twelve months meant that, for the first time ever, I have had to exclude more entries than I included, which raises some serious questions, not least by myself, as to whether this list could ever be accurate. All I can tell you is to take the conclusions below with a grain of salt, and if you are concerned, check out the raw data for yourself.
This is only my second annual Traffic report, so it's too early to discern longterm trends, but one thing stands out like a panzer in a pizzeria: this year's 25 most viewed articles together comprised 289 million views; last year's total was 350 million. That's a decrease of 18 percent. The natural question is why, and it is an excellent one. It's not like people aren't turning to Wikipedia for information; this year's list contained four articles related to current events (five if you count the centenary of World War I), compared with one last year. And it isn't surprising; I was not the only one left stranded in the fog by 2014. With the tragic and seemingly inexplicable death of Robin Williams, the nebulous and inconclusive war against ISIL, and the overstated alien horror of Ebola, people turned to Wikipedia to make sense of a world that seemed beyond their control. This arguably led to a decrease in the quality of the articles from last year's list: articles on current events remain in a constant state of flux, and seldom settle down long enough to be improved.
That said, in other respects, this list is reassuringly familiar: the same dominance of pop culture (TV, movies, websites, celebrities); the same egocentric interest in one's country of residence (yes, the countries, even those further down the list, are still in order of English-speaking population); the same obsession with death ( Deaths in 2014 eclipsed Facebook this year to top the list, while, again, the most viewed celebrity was one who died), and the same sober desire to commemorate past events (this year, the centenary of World War I; last year, the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's delivery of the Gettysburg Address).
One major difference stands out, however: film has a much stronger presence on this list than last year. On noting 2013's relative lack of film entries, I speculated that movies' relatively short lifespans in theatres mean they don't sustain the public interest to the level that television can. That may still be true, for most films, but this year saw films of such mind-bending popularity they essentially became institutions overnight. My only question is why Frozen isn't higher on this list. It debuted in November last year, but toy tie-ins for the movie were still the must-have presents for this Christmas. Who's betting that years from now mothers the world over will still be plugging their ears to their daughters' billionth play of "Let It Go"? As for Guardians of the Galaxy? Well, only a studio as confident as Marvel would have dared to release it to begin with, let alone hire a former Troma director and cast Vin Diesel as a walking tree or Bradley Cooper as a raccoon. But the concept was so crazy it worked; audiences fell in love with it, and then, when it was released on video, fell in love with it again.
Conversely, TV had a reduced presence from last year. With Breaking Bad and How I Met Your Mother now concluded, Game of Thrones has assumed the pole position by virtue of its numbers seeing negligible change. Once again, Wikipedia viewers, for obvious reasons, favoured the "watercooler shows" that require a large amount of background knowledge to stay current, like The Walking Dead or True Detective, or geek-friendly fare, such as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
As with last year, music stars were the majority of celebrities on the list, as their frequent concerts and media appearances keep their flames alight longer than others of their stripe. In the regretted and possibly surprising absence of Jennifer Lawrence, former Nickelodeon poplet Ariana Grande claimed the position of Wikipedia's most popular woman by default. Less explicable is the enduring interest in Jordan Belfort, a hedonist who financed his playboy lifestyle by scamming investors out of millions, who now hosts motivational seminars on how to get rich quick. True, he was the subject of a moderately popular film in 2013, but that still doesn't explain his appearance on this year's list.
Rank | Article | Class | Views |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Deaths in 2014 | 20,967,890 | |
2 | 20,281,198 | ||
3 | Ebola virus disease | 18,585,050 | |
4 | 2014 FIFA World Cup | 15,659,069 | |
5 | Game of Thrones | 14,473,769 | |
6 | Robin Williams | 12,883,344 | |
7 | United States | 12,797,361 | |
8 | Wikipedia | 12,423,091 | |
9 | List of Bollywood films of 2014 | 12,221,398 | |
10 | 11,764,884 | ||
11 | 2014 in film | 11,067,892 | |
12 | YouTube | 11,008,475 | |
13 | The Walking Dead (TV series) | 10,083,875 | |
14 | Frozen (2013 film) | 9,783,251 | |
15 | Ariana Grande | 9,451,283 | |
16 | India | 9,134,409 | |
17 | Guardians of the Galaxy (film) | 9,008,117 | |
18 | True Detective (TV series) | 8,828,585 | |
19 | Iggy Azalea | 8,500,361 | |
20 | FIFA World Cup | 8,449,861 | |
21 | World War I | 8,402,341 | |
22 | Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant | 8,321,501 | |
23 | Jordan Belfort | 8,311,525 | |
24 | List of Game of Thrones episodes | 8,274,910 | |
25 | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. | 7,920,343 |
Key |
---|
Website |
Person |
TV show |
Film |
Country |
2014 event |
Historical event |
Ten featured articles were promoted this week.
Three featured lists were promoted this week.
Twenty-two featured pictures were promoted this week.