Dear readers,
We received a large amount of feedback in our survey indicating that our readers found the idea of contributing to the Signpost difficult due to our opaque internal structure. If you happen to have any of the Signpost subpages watchlisted, you may have noticed Resident Mario's great amount of work in revamping our internal structure and, particularly, how we handle outside submissions. Concurrently, the Signpost editorial board is pleased to welcome Resident Mario aboard as an associate editor, focusing on design, templates, and administration, and our regular writer for "News and Notes." The board wishes to express its gratitude to Resident Mario both for the past, present, and future of his sterling contributions, and we hope you will join us in welcoming him.
As part of these changes, our new content guidelines outline for our readers the specific formats and particularities of our various regular and special sections, and they also formalize the three different ways in which you, too, can get involved:
As the third point in our statement of purpose outlines, the Signpost actively solicits and encourages the publication of works written by members of the community at large. We've constructed new and improved submission processes for all four of our irregular publications— special reports and op-eds, and our much rarer book reviews and dispatches—which seek to make it as easy as possible for you, our readers, to propose, debate, write, comment on, and ultimately publish your own writings, reflections, and research in the Wikimedia movement. All content in the Signpost is subject to approval by the editors-in-chief, but we are very interested in hearing your pitches and are open to all types of content. If you are willing to write about a topic that would interest the Wikimedia community at large, chances are that we are willing to publish it.
Have an opinion on something you'd like to argue, share, and put up for debate? Our opinion desk can help you find a community audience. Got an inside scoop on Foundation activities or project going-ons that you'd like to share? We've got the place for you—our special reports are likely the most widely read long-form journalism in the community. Perhaps you want to write about the featured content processes on the various projects, or perhaps review a recently published book related to the project? We'd like to reopen the featured content dispatch workshop and review desk for you.
We cannot emphasize enough that these changes were spearheaded by reader feedback—several comments in our recent survey made us realize that some readers were being actively discouraged from contributing to the Signpost by our admittedly confusing project structure. To those people, we thank you. We encourage further feedback from our readers, either via our talk page, our email, or via our IRC channel (#wikisignpost connect). Simplifying the Signpost's submission process is important to us, and we look forward to seeing more community-sourced features in the future.
The Wikimedia Foundation released its Quarterly Report last week covering the three months from October to December of 2014. The Foundation has been releasing and making publicly available internal operational reports—originally presented directly to the Board of Trustees—since January 2008. What makes the publication of this particular report notable from an organizational perspective is that it is the first report published since the Foundation's decision to move to a quarterly instead of monthly structure late last fall. A key reason for the decision was to better align reporting with the Foundation's generally quarterly planning and goal-setting processes. Due to the larger time spans, the new quarterly reports attempt to highlight key priorities more so than to present detailed quarterly activities documentation. Highlights from Foundation goings-on continue to be posted as blog-aggregated Wikimedia Highlights; more detailed information is presented in team-separated WMF quarterly reviews.
Making good on the new format, the Foundation has presented a much more visually oriented and succinct report than it has in the past this reporting round. Readers interested in the Foundation's initiatives may find it a good resource to review. Some highlights:
In related news, last week the Foundation kicked off strategic planning consultation with the Wikimedia community. This will be the second of the Foundation's five-year plans: the first such plan, begun in 2009 and published in 2011 (Signpost coverage here, here, and elsewhere), proved at best flat-footed. It contained wildly optimistic editor growth projections—a particularly notable projection failure, as editor numbers have actually decreased since the report's publication. The Foundation released a supplement, "Narrowing Focus", in 2012, and is now proceeding with a 2015 iteration of the report in changed organizational format:
“ | Rather than trying to draft a five-year document for the entire movement, we are kicking-off what will become a discipline of ongoing strategic inquiry, assessment, and alignment. This more agile, adaptable process will directly inform and update our priorities and goals and help us maintain a strategic direction that is consistent with the Wikimedia vision, supports the Wikimedia projects, and is sensitive to the changing global environment.
The "Strategic Visioning" Community Consultation is the first step in our new strategic process. It is an opportunity for us to explore together what the future holds for the Wikimedia Movement and projects. We will learn from your ideas and use them to inform and refine our strategic thinking. From that, we will define the WMF Strategic Direction, which we will share with you in 2015. This Strategic Direction will guide us in our community support, engineering, grant-making, and fundraising and will be updated annually. |
” |
To participate in the consultation, follow the instructions; at the time of writing, the consultation had already drawn more than 200 responses.
The Wikimedia OTRS team has released its annual report for the year 2014. The OTRS team handles the Wikimedia movement's instance of the Open-source Ticket Request System, and is generally responsible for all queries, complaints, and comments from the public directed at the movement via email since September 2004. The report, both visually striking and very informative, presents a detailed report on the activities and actions of the OTRS team over the past year. Some highlights:
To better reflect the status of the project's backlogs, the OTRS team will be moving to a monthly instead of quarterly report structure this year. The OTRS team is currently exploring applying for grants from the Foundation to hire external developers to improve the movement's OTRS software, and efforts are underway to expand project documentation. Editors are invited to post their responses to the report on the report talk page.
This week saw the 2015 iteration of the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program's train the trainer community workshop (in shorthand, the CIS-ATK TTT). The event, first held in 2013, is a four-day intensive training workshop and program for a select group of Indic-language editors. As the title of the workshop implies, the event attempts to expose its attendees to and give them experience with the tools and skills they need to communicate with and encourage participation from prospective Wikimedian editors in their respective languages. After the event, participants are expected to begin implementing the "plans of action" they develop at the workshop, with support from the CIS-A2K team. Travel expenses to and from the event are covered by organizational stipends. There were 30 attendees overall this year, up from 17 in 2013.
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a Bangalore-based Indian NGO concerned with technological advocacy and multidisciplinary research in Internet and society. It is integrally involved in the Wikimedia India movement via the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program, a long-standing project ongoing since 2011 organized and funded in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation (coincidentally, the quarterly report this week). This event, one of the most visible results of these efforts, included seminars on public presentation, copyright law, Internet research techniques, digitization techniques, media strategies, and community-building, as well as multiple panel and group discussions, a GLAM activity session at Janapada Loka, and capstone individual outreach planning presentations.
An Indiegogo campaign to fund a macro lens and other equipment purchases for Wikipedian Jeevan Jose launched last week. Jee's wildlife photographs illustrate over 500 Wikipedia articles, including nearly 300 on English Wikipedia alone. The campaign, coordinated on Commons, launched on 22 February; the modest initial target—funding the purchase of a new macro lens—has already been exceeded. Fund-raising for additional small-wildlife photography equipment—such as a macro flash, camera bag, a travel tripod, and improved digital darkroom (computer & software)—continues. The campaign runs until 24 March.
“ | He always attributed his renewed energy and life's aspirations to the Wikimedia mission, for having returned to a meaningful life after a 20-year long and frustrating solitude while constrained to an immobile chair. Ever since 2008, he stood up and started walking and moving around. His was an extreme example for us in Malayalam [Wikipedia] to showcase how Wikipedia can change lives. ... For us in [the] Malayalam Wikipedia, today is a black day, for having lost a great beacon on our voyage to ultimate openness and freedom in knowledge and wisdom. Yet we feel [that] BabuG has made his life stamped immortal for ever and has shown us the pathway we should follow in continuing our humble contributions to the ultimate cause of mankind. | ” |
Last week, my colleagues on the Signpost produced a news report covering a minor controversy about a report commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation. Written by the staff of The Lafayette Practice, a French research firm, it proclaimed the WMF as a leader in the practice of participatory grantmaking. In response to an apparently self-promotional WMF blog post heralding the report, an Examiner.com article by Gregory Kohs, longtime Wikipedia critic and founder of MyWikiBiz, alleged that the report, the blog post, and the Wikipedia article on participatory grantmaking—created by WMF staffer Asaf Bartov and since deleted—were a WMF promotional effort that constituted a violation of the conflict of interest guideline.
“ | My goal was not to promote WMF's practice, or even the general practice, but to document it, in a fair and NPOV way. I still think I achieved that. Indeed, I would welcome concrete criticism of the article text I composed. | ” |
— Asaf Bartov on the now-deleted Wikipedia article on participatory grantmaking |
After a week of reading about article timestamps and speculation about whether Bartov had time to write the text on his lunch break or during work hours, I realized that everyone was making the mistake of taking this matter far too seriously, at least in the aspects they put under the microscope. This is a conspiracy theory, where minor facts are connected to point to a preordained conclusion, where coincidence is evidence of collusion, and where human motives are not fully understood and are only interpreted in the most nefarious way possible. And, as with all conspiracy theories, the time and effort of reasonable people are wasted having to investigate or disprove speculative and fanciful notions. It is not surprising that such a theory emerged from Wikipediocracy, where users spend years nursing and reinforcing each other's contradictory grudges against Wikipedia.
Is it really so unbelievable that Asaf Bartov, a Wikipedia editor since 2003, created a Wikipedia article on this topic of his own volition after hearing about the topic at a conference? That's what Wikipedians do: they create articles on new topics they hear about that aren't yet in the encyclopedia. If this was a conspiracy born out of some half-baked WMF promotional scheme, Bartov and his alleged conspirators could have easily covered their tracks using dummy Wikipedia accounts.
Kohs certainly knows about generating new Wikipedia accounts, as he uses them frequently to comment on Jimmy Wales' talk page and elsewhere – not to mention his use of them to vandalize the encyclopedia. Last year, Kohs bragged on Wikipediocracy about vandalizing Wikipedia articles during a talk at an unspecified college, as if, over a decade after the founding of the encyclopedia, we still needed to remind audiences that people can edit Wikipedia maliciously. After a quick Google search of his speaking engagements, within minutes I was able to find the offending edit; Kohs had made up a fake radio station for Rollins College. This was particularly irritating for me, as Rollins already has a radio station, WPRK, and I have fond memories of listening to it back when I was dating a woman who lived near Rollins. Later in that Wikipediocracy thread, he bragged again about more instances of this kind of vandalism, at other talks at Rollins and elsewhere. This is certainly more damaging to the encyclopedia than anything Bartov is alleged to have done.
Too much time has been wasted on empty speculation about the article on participatory grantmaking, or indeed the concept itself. I doubt any of those people speculating about the legitimacy of the phrase, including myself, are in any way qualified to make a judgment on the matter. The real issue is the report itself. How much was paid for the slim 37-page report? What value does this report provide? Couldn't this report have been assembled by paid WMF staffers or even interns?
There does not seem to be much heft to this report beyond being a colorful brochure for the Foundation. The report claims to be "new research" (p. 2) and "the first full survey of grantmaking at the Foundation" (p. 27), with lots of text and graphs about their fundraising, mostly without a clear rationale for inclusion. There are grand statements such as that participatory grantmaking is "a powerful movement building strategy", that the WMF is "innovative and groundbreaking" in its application of participatory grantmaking, and that this is on by far "the largest scale we have seen" among similar organizations (p. 2). Nowhere in the report is the term clearly defined; the closest it comes is by making frequent references to a previous Lafayette report which was not about the WMF. This is a crucial omission given the comparative claims made in relation to other agencies, some of which do offer direct assistance to grant applicants on a large scale.
According to the report, the volunteer grantmaking committees are designed to be gender-diverse (p. 3), yet at the time of the report's preparation, the Individual Engagement Grants Committee and Grant Advisory Committee had only two and one female members, respectively, out of a total of over 40 members. The report was silent on how active those committees are in their review processes and the extent to which the grant recipients demonstrate how their grants affect WMF projects and how much value they provide in proportion to the size of each grant. No reference was made to the work of the WMF's evaluation team, which last year made a preliminary finding that there is generally an inverse relationship between the size of grants and their impact. It also offered no proper analysis of how effective the IdeaLab forum is in helping applicants to develop their proposals.
There is no doubt that there are many examples of consultants like the ones commissioned to complete this report who provide important services and insights, but there are also many who are grifters in fancy suits who produce little to nothing of value. In many organizations, needed materials are purchased from the lowest bidder, staff salaries are cut, and positions go unfilled while consultants enrich themselves. Instead of answering questions about timestamps and conspiracy theories, the Foundation should tell the community what value this particular report provides for the money spent upon it. We should be less concerned about who wrote a borderline Wikipedia article which a little over a thousand people have read and be more concerned about how the WMF is using its funds, so the community can ensure that the encyclopedia has not been improperly monetized by grifters. Perhaps it is not surprising that Kohs has chosen not to complain about this potential monetization of Wikipedia, as Kohs has engaged in eight years of criticism of Wikipedia because he was unable to monetize the encyclopedia in the fashion of his choosing.
The Report this week is dominated by the Academy Awards, taking the top 4 spots and 13 of the Top 25 (if you count another big jump in views for Stephen Hawking at #4). In the aggregate this is not too much different than the past two years, where the top American movie award show took 12 slots in 2014 and 14 in 2013. The 87th Academy Awards article led at #1 with an impressive 6.2 million views, though a rather low mobile view count of 12.17% suggests those numbers might be somewhat inflated; Best Picture Birdman had 2.2 million views with 50% mobile views.
Also of note this week was the death of actor Leonard Nimoy (#5). Nimoy's article was also one of the most edited recently, and is currently topping the automated Top 20 most edited articles report as of March 1, showing that 193 editors have hit "edit" 524 times. As a recent creation, you probably didn't know this report existed—you should take a look.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
For the week of February 22 to 28, 2015, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 87th Academy Awards | 6,123,378 | Just as this year's awards held on February 22 were a bit predictable (Really? Birdman won? I'd never have guessed!), it was just as predictable that this entry would top the chart this week. | ||
2 | Academy Awards | 3,924,466 | See #1 | ||
3 | Birdman (film) | 2,198,754 | Received nine Oscar nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director for Alejandro González Iñárritu, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Birdman has only appeared in the Top 25 twice previously, for two weeks in January 2015 when it peaked at #10. | ||
4 | Stephen Hawking | 1,888,402 | The former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his 17th straight appearance in the Top 25 this week. And at the Oscars, Eddie Redmayne (#8) won Best Actor for portraying him in The Theory of Everything (#20). | ||
5 | Leonard Nimoy | 1,859,929 | The death of this beloved actor on February 27, best known for playing the role of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise, led to widespread tributes. Spock's Vulcan salute bade us to "live long and prosper," as Nimoy did himself. | ||
6 | Chris Kyle | 1,333,736 | America loves a good, old fashioned culture war, and while Clint Eastwood's American Sniper may not have wowed critics nor drawn great overseas crowds, it has played spectacularly well in America's conservative heartland. After dropping to #8 and 850,000 views last week, news that Eddie Ray Routh was found guilty of the deaths of Kyle and Chad Littlefield on February 25, after three hours of jury deliberations, raised the profile of this article once again. | ||
7 | Whiplash (2014 film) | 1,007,753 | A new entry to this chart, Whiplash won the Oscars for Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Supporting Actor for J. K. Simmons (pictured). It had also been nominated for Best Picture. Whiplash was written and directed by Damien Chazelle based on his experiences in the Princeton High School Studio Band, and stars Miles Teller as a student jazz drummer who seeks the respect of an abusive teacher played by Simmons. Though critically acclaimed, you may not have been aware of the film, which had only grossed about $12 million worldwide (on a $3.3 million budget) prior to its Academy Award wins. | ||
8 | Eddie Redmayne | 953,953 | See #4, Redmayne won Best Actor at the Oscars for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (#20). | ||
9 | Fifty Shades of Grey | 902,584 | The release of the film adaptation (#11) of this onetime Twilight fanfic continues to draw fans, though it is very unlikely to be drawing Oscars this time next year. | ||
10 | Dakota Johnson | 848,159 | The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson plays the lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey (film) (see #11). Griffith and her daughter were at the Oscars (of course), where some inane kerfuffle on the red carpet occurred over the fact that Griffith hadn't chosen to watch her daughter's film. We know our parents and children have sex (God willing), but we don't need to watch it. |
In the first of what the author hopes will become a regular feature of the Arbitration report, the Signpost speaks to veteran arbitrator Newyorkbrad, who recently retired from the committee after almost seven years of arbitrating. The Signpost was keen to hear his thoughts on his time on the committee and on the past, present, and future of ArbCom.
Harry Mitchell: What motivated you to stand for election back in 2008? And to twice seek re-election?
HJM: What do you think ArbCom does well? What does it do less well? Is there anything it does at present that you feel it shouldn't do at all?
HJM: How effective do you think ArbCom is at resolving the wiki's most interminable conflicts?
HJM: How has the committee changed over your seven-year tenure?
HJM: How much time in an average week did you find yourself devoting to ArbCom business? Do you think the current workloads are too great?
HJM: Did you implement or contribute to any reforms during your tenure?
HJM: There has been significant discussion over the years about the possibility of arbitrators who have not previously been elected administrators. How would you feel about non-admin arbitrators?
HJM: Is there anything you regret about your time on the committee? Any reform left undone, a decision that had unexpected repercussions? Anything you would do differently with the benefit of hindsight?
HJM: What qualities do you think a prospective candidate in this year's elections should have?
HJM: What advice would you offer the remaining arbitrators, especially those who are just embarking on their first term?
HJM: If you could change one thing about ArbCom, what would it be?
HJM: Where do you see ArbCom in five years' time? Ten years?
HJM: Would you stand for election again in the future or do you see your priorities changing?
HJM: Is there anything you'd like to add?
Things appear to be settling down now that the new committee is in place and the traditional rush of cases at the start of the year is slowing. Only one case remains open at the time of writing; another was closed in the fortnight since the last report.
After a stall during the proposed decision phase, this review of 2013's Infoboxes case—opened as a result of multiple clarification requests—finally concluded on 4 March. The purpose of the review was to assess the fitness for purpose of a remedy from the 2013 case, which prohibited Pigsonthewing from adding or removing infoboxes and from discussing their addition or removal. The review, and the enforcement and clarification requests which preceded it, focused largely on whether Pigsonthewing's participation at Templates for Discussion (where he regularly nominates infobox templates for deletion or merging) was in keeping with that remedy.
The arbitrators were satisfied that Pigsonthewing's conduct had improved since the disputes which precipitated the 2013 case— Courcelles (one of the drafting arbitrators) observed "I remember the 2013 case, and I honestly believe [Pigsonthewing]'s conduct is better [now] than it was back then"—but remained concerned that his conduct was still wanting. Arbitrator Yunshui, for example, saw "at least some comparatively recent instances of inflammatory behaviour [by Pigsonthewing], whether provoked or not". Remedies proposed included banning Pigsonthewing from any involvement with infoboxes anywhere on Wikipedia (opposed by all but the proposer on the grounds of Pigsonthewing's progress since 2013), discretionary sanctions on infoboxes (rejected because it was possibly out of scope for the review, and several arbitrators expressed concerns about its workability), and several more complicated restrictions on Pigsonthewing (rejected because of their complexity and concerns about workability). The final result was that all previous remedies against Pigsonthewing were vacated, and in their place Pigsonthewing:
The proposed decision in this case was published on 2 March, four days ahead of the target date. The drafting arbitrators propose to sanction four editors for their part in the dispute, which has included edit-warring, failure to adhere to a neutral point of view, personal attacks, and possible sock-puppetry. At the time of writing, arbitrators are voting unanimously to site-ban two editors, while a package of restrictions for another editor are passing (after modifications) by eight votes to one and the committee is currently divided on whether the fourth editor should be admonished or subject to a similar set of restrictions. Arbitrators have begun voting on a motion to close, and the case is likely to be complete within a day or two of the publication of this week's Signpost.
Before being indefinitely blocked, FergusM1970 made more than 4600 edits on the English Wikipedia, spread over eight years. In the last two years, he was paid to edit several articles for clients that included the Venezuelan energy company Derwick Associates; Fergus maintains that this was his only step into paid advocacy, rather than paid editing, a distinction that the Signpost has drawn attention to previously. Fergus was banned in December 2014 amid allegations of advocating for pay on behalf of e-cigarettes. We spoke with him about his experiences.
The ed17: How long did you edit for pay on Wikimedia sites?
Ed: Is FergusM1970 your first account? If not, how have you evaded scrutiny by the English Wikipedia's checkuser tool?
Ed: Do you only operate on the English Wikipedia, and how many articles have you been compensated for editing?
Ed: To broach a potentially taboo topic area, how much do you charge clients for creating or maintaining articles?
Ed: Have you consistently disclosed when you were editing for pay?
Ed: If a client's preferred topic is not notable under Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, how do you proceed?
Ed: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has endorsed a so-called "bright line", which "is simply that if you are a paid advocate, you should disclose your conflict of interest and never edit article space directly. You are free to enter into a dialogue with the community on talk pages, and to suggest edits or even complete new articles or versions of articles by posting them in your user space." Is this a viable option for paid advocates?
Ed: In your opinion, how should the Wikimedia sites deal with paid editing and advocacy? Where should the proverbial line in the sand be drawn?
Two featured articles were promoted this week.
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
Thirty-eight featured pictures were promoted this week.
Confiteantur tibi, Domine, omnia opera tua,
:et sancti tui benedicant te.
:Agimus tibi gratias, omnipotens Deus,
:pro universis beneficiis tuis,
:qui vivis et regnas Deus per omnia saecula saeculorum.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
Software changes this week
Meetings
Future changes
Black History Month is celebrated annually in the United States in February, to commemorate the history of the African diaspora. For this occasion, Wikipedians worked together to honor black history and to address Wikipedia's multicultural gaps in the encyclopedia, hosting Wikipedia edit-a-thons throughout the United States, from February 1 to 28, 2015.
Black WikiHistory Month Edit-a-thons include:
Maira Liriano, one of the key institutional organizers of the #BlackLives Matter Edit-a-thon in New York, summarized the goals of this project to to reporters at Innovation Trail: "There is a bias and a lack of people of color involved in creating Wikipedia and many subjects are also missing from Wikipedia. So events like today are in part to make people aware of that and then to empower them and give them the information they need to correct that bias."
To kick off this project, the New York #BlackLivesMatter Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held on Saturday February 7th at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York. This event took place in the Aaron Douglas Reading Room of the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division of the library. Satellite #BlackLivesMatter Edit-a-thons were held on February 7th at the SUNY Purchase College Library and the Nashville Public Library, and the AfroCROWD initiative kickoff event was held on February 7th and 8th at the Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch. Wikimedia D.C. also co-organized three events including: the First STEM Heroes Edit-a-thon at the White House and the NPR Black History Month Edit-a-thon on February 24th, as well as the Black History Month Edit-a-thon at Howard University on February 19th.
Libraries proved to be ideal places for these edit-a-thons. At the Aaron Douglas Reading Room, librarians located reference texts and provided suggestions for further research. A list of Wikipedia articles to edit and create was prepared for the Schomburg Center Edit-a-thon and used by many of the satellite events.
These events received wide press coverage from diverse news sources, including:
The #BlackLivesMatter Edit-a-thon at the Schomburg Center was organized in collaboration with NYPL, the Metropolitan New York Library Council, Wikimedia NYC, Wireless Harlem, and the West Harlem Art Fund for the Black WikiHistory Month outreach campaign.
Over 50 experienced and beginning Wikipedians attended throughout the day, and almost every seat was filled.
The New York Edit-a-thon was an overwhelming success, which led to the creation of 19 new Wikipedia articles, including:
On February 7th and 8th in Brooklyn, kickoff events took place for a new initiative, the Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCROWD), which seeks to increase the number of people of African descent who actively partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software movements. The workshops were open to all Afrodescendants, including but not limited to individuals who self-identify as African, African-American, Afro-Latino, Biracial, Black, Black-American, Caribbean, Garifuna, Haitian or West Indian.
Events were held at the Brooklyn Public Library. Wikipedia trainings and overviews were given in some of the many languages spoken by our target population: French, Garifuna, Haitian Kreyòl, Igbo, Yoruba, Spanish and Twi. Affiliate project pages such as WikiProject Haiti were also introduced -- and organizers announced the new Garifuna language Wikipedia incubator, the fruit of a collaboration between AfroCROWD and Wikimedia NYC.
Afrocrowd's next 3 events will be HaitiCROWD on 3/14, AfricaCROWD on 4/4 and AfrolatinoCROWD on 4/12. HaitiCROWD will focus on resources in the Haitian Kreyòl, French and English Wikipedias, as well as growing the Haitian Wikipedia, which is now available free of charge to many Haitians in Haiti through the Digicel/Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia Zero initiative. The workshop series will culminate in an edit-a-thon on June 20th at the Brooklyn Public Library.
Here is a visual recap of the AfroCROWD kickoff event.
Three Black History Month events were held in Washington D.C.; one at Howard University on February 19th, as well as the STEM Heroes Edit-a-thon at the White House ( learn more) and another one at the National Public Radio (NPR) headquarters on Tuesday, February 24th.
The Howard University event led to the following additions to Wikipedia:
A #BlackLivesMatter Edit-a-thon was also held at SUNY Purchase, Westchester County, NY on Saturday February 7th.
We wish to thank all participants who made these edit-a-thons possible! It's really exciting to see so many new editors join forces to help fill the multicultural gaps in Wikipedia -- and honor black history together.
Reader comments
Dear readers,
We received a large amount of feedback in our survey indicating that our readers found the idea of contributing to the Signpost difficult due to our opaque internal structure. If you happen to have any of the Signpost subpages watchlisted, you may have noticed Resident Mario's great amount of work in revamping our internal structure and, particularly, how we handle outside submissions. Concurrently, the Signpost editorial board is pleased to welcome Resident Mario aboard as an associate editor, focusing on design, templates, and administration, and our regular writer for "News and Notes." The board wishes to express its gratitude to Resident Mario both for the past, present, and future of his sterling contributions, and we hope you will join us in welcoming him.
As part of these changes, our new content guidelines outline for our readers the specific formats and particularities of our various regular and special sections, and they also formalize the three different ways in which you, too, can get involved:
As the third point in our statement of purpose outlines, the Signpost actively solicits and encourages the publication of works written by members of the community at large. We've constructed new and improved submission processes for all four of our irregular publications— special reports and op-eds, and our much rarer book reviews and dispatches—which seek to make it as easy as possible for you, our readers, to propose, debate, write, comment on, and ultimately publish your own writings, reflections, and research in the Wikimedia movement. All content in the Signpost is subject to approval by the editors-in-chief, but we are very interested in hearing your pitches and are open to all types of content. If you are willing to write about a topic that would interest the Wikimedia community at large, chances are that we are willing to publish it.
Have an opinion on something you'd like to argue, share, and put up for debate? Our opinion desk can help you find a community audience. Got an inside scoop on Foundation activities or project going-ons that you'd like to share? We've got the place for you—our special reports are likely the most widely read long-form journalism in the community. Perhaps you want to write about the featured content processes on the various projects, or perhaps review a recently published book related to the project? We'd like to reopen the featured content dispatch workshop and review desk for you.
We cannot emphasize enough that these changes were spearheaded by reader feedback—several comments in our recent survey made us realize that some readers were being actively discouraged from contributing to the Signpost by our admittedly confusing project structure. To those people, we thank you. We encourage further feedback from our readers, either via our talk page, our email, or via our IRC channel (#wikisignpost connect). Simplifying the Signpost's submission process is important to us, and we look forward to seeing more community-sourced features in the future.
The Wikimedia Foundation released its Quarterly Report last week covering the three months from October to December of 2014. The Foundation has been releasing and making publicly available internal operational reports—originally presented directly to the Board of Trustees—since January 2008. What makes the publication of this particular report notable from an organizational perspective is that it is the first report published since the Foundation's decision to move to a quarterly instead of monthly structure late last fall. A key reason for the decision was to better align reporting with the Foundation's generally quarterly planning and goal-setting processes. Due to the larger time spans, the new quarterly reports attempt to highlight key priorities more so than to present detailed quarterly activities documentation. Highlights from Foundation goings-on continue to be posted as blog-aggregated Wikimedia Highlights; more detailed information is presented in team-separated WMF quarterly reviews.
Making good on the new format, the Foundation has presented a much more visually oriented and succinct report than it has in the past this reporting round. Readers interested in the Foundation's initiatives may find it a good resource to review. Some highlights:
In related news, last week the Foundation kicked off strategic planning consultation with the Wikimedia community. This will be the second of the Foundation's five-year plans: the first such plan, begun in 2009 and published in 2011 (Signpost coverage here, here, and elsewhere), proved at best flat-footed. It contained wildly optimistic editor growth projections—a particularly notable projection failure, as editor numbers have actually decreased since the report's publication. The Foundation released a supplement, "Narrowing Focus", in 2012, and is now proceeding with a 2015 iteration of the report in changed organizational format:
“ | Rather than trying to draft a five-year document for the entire movement, we are kicking-off what will become a discipline of ongoing strategic inquiry, assessment, and alignment. This more agile, adaptable process will directly inform and update our priorities and goals and help us maintain a strategic direction that is consistent with the Wikimedia vision, supports the Wikimedia projects, and is sensitive to the changing global environment.
The "Strategic Visioning" Community Consultation is the first step in our new strategic process. It is an opportunity for us to explore together what the future holds for the Wikimedia Movement and projects. We will learn from your ideas and use them to inform and refine our strategic thinking. From that, we will define the WMF Strategic Direction, which we will share with you in 2015. This Strategic Direction will guide us in our community support, engineering, grant-making, and fundraising and will be updated annually. |
” |
To participate in the consultation, follow the instructions; at the time of writing, the consultation had already drawn more than 200 responses.
The Wikimedia OTRS team has released its annual report for the year 2014. The OTRS team handles the Wikimedia movement's instance of the Open-source Ticket Request System, and is generally responsible for all queries, complaints, and comments from the public directed at the movement via email since September 2004. The report, both visually striking and very informative, presents a detailed report on the activities and actions of the OTRS team over the past year. Some highlights:
To better reflect the status of the project's backlogs, the OTRS team will be moving to a monthly instead of quarterly report structure this year. The OTRS team is currently exploring applying for grants from the Foundation to hire external developers to improve the movement's OTRS software, and efforts are underway to expand project documentation. Editors are invited to post their responses to the report on the report talk page.
This week saw the 2015 iteration of the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program's train the trainer community workshop (in shorthand, the CIS-ATK TTT). The event, first held in 2013, is a four-day intensive training workshop and program for a select group of Indic-language editors. As the title of the workshop implies, the event attempts to expose its attendees to and give them experience with the tools and skills they need to communicate with and encourage participation from prospective Wikimedian editors in their respective languages. After the event, participants are expected to begin implementing the "plans of action" they develop at the workshop, with support from the CIS-A2K team. Travel expenses to and from the event are covered by organizational stipends. There were 30 attendees overall this year, up from 17 in 2013.
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a Bangalore-based Indian NGO concerned with technological advocacy and multidisciplinary research in Internet and society. It is integrally involved in the Wikimedia India movement via the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program, a long-standing project ongoing since 2011 organized and funded in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation (coincidentally, the quarterly report this week). This event, one of the most visible results of these efforts, included seminars on public presentation, copyright law, Internet research techniques, digitization techniques, media strategies, and community-building, as well as multiple panel and group discussions, a GLAM activity session at Janapada Loka, and capstone individual outreach planning presentations.
An Indiegogo campaign to fund a macro lens and other equipment purchases for Wikipedian Jeevan Jose launched last week. Jee's wildlife photographs illustrate over 500 Wikipedia articles, including nearly 300 on English Wikipedia alone. The campaign, coordinated on Commons, launched on 22 February; the modest initial target—funding the purchase of a new macro lens—has already been exceeded. Fund-raising for additional small-wildlife photography equipment—such as a macro flash, camera bag, a travel tripod, and improved digital darkroom (computer & software)—continues. The campaign runs until 24 March.
“ | He always attributed his renewed energy and life's aspirations to the Wikimedia mission, for having returned to a meaningful life after a 20-year long and frustrating solitude while constrained to an immobile chair. Ever since 2008, he stood up and started walking and moving around. His was an extreme example for us in Malayalam [Wikipedia] to showcase how Wikipedia can change lives. ... For us in [the] Malayalam Wikipedia, today is a black day, for having lost a great beacon on our voyage to ultimate openness and freedom in knowledge and wisdom. Yet we feel [that] BabuG has made his life stamped immortal for ever and has shown us the pathway we should follow in continuing our humble contributions to the ultimate cause of mankind. | ” |
Last week, my colleagues on the Signpost produced a news report covering a minor controversy about a report commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation. Written by the staff of The Lafayette Practice, a French research firm, it proclaimed the WMF as a leader in the practice of participatory grantmaking. In response to an apparently self-promotional WMF blog post heralding the report, an Examiner.com article by Gregory Kohs, longtime Wikipedia critic and founder of MyWikiBiz, alleged that the report, the blog post, and the Wikipedia article on participatory grantmaking—created by WMF staffer Asaf Bartov and since deleted—were a WMF promotional effort that constituted a violation of the conflict of interest guideline.
“ | My goal was not to promote WMF's practice, or even the general practice, but to document it, in a fair and NPOV way. I still think I achieved that. Indeed, I would welcome concrete criticism of the article text I composed. | ” |
— Asaf Bartov on the now-deleted Wikipedia article on participatory grantmaking |
After a week of reading about article timestamps and speculation about whether Bartov had time to write the text on his lunch break or during work hours, I realized that everyone was making the mistake of taking this matter far too seriously, at least in the aspects they put under the microscope. This is a conspiracy theory, where minor facts are connected to point to a preordained conclusion, where coincidence is evidence of collusion, and where human motives are not fully understood and are only interpreted in the most nefarious way possible. And, as with all conspiracy theories, the time and effort of reasonable people are wasted having to investigate or disprove speculative and fanciful notions. It is not surprising that such a theory emerged from Wikipediocracy, where users spend years nursing and reinforcing each other's contradictory grudges against Wikipedia.
Is it really so unbelievable that Asaf Bartov, a Wikipedia editor since 2003, created a Wikipedia article on this topic of his own volition after hearing about the topic at a conference? That's what Wikipedians do: they create articles on new topics they hear about that aren't yet in the encyclopedia. If this was a conspiracy born out of some half-baked WMF promotional scheme, Bartov and his alleged conspirators could have easily covered their tracks using dummy Wikipedia accounts.
Kohs certainly knows about generating new Wikipedia accounts, as he uses them frequently to comment on Jimmy Wales' talk page and elsewhere – not to mention his use of them to vandalize the encyclopedia. Last year, Kohs bragged on Wikipediocracy about vandalizing Wikipedia articles during a talk at an unspecified college, as if, over a decade after the founding of the encyclopedia, we still needed to remind audiences that people can edit Wikipedia maliciously. After a quick Google search of his speaking engagements, within minutes I was able to find the offending edit; Kohs had made up a fake radio station for Rollins College. This was particularly irritating for me, as Rollins already has a radio station, WPRK, and I have fond memories of listening to it back when I was dating a woman who lived near Rollins. Later in that Wikipediocracy thread, he bragged again about more instances of this kind of vandalism, at other talks at Rollins and elsewhere. This is certainly more damaging to the encyclopedia than anything Bartov is alleged to have done.
Too much time has been wasted on empty speculation about the article on participatory grantmaking, or indeed the concept itself. I doubt any of those people speculating about the legitimacy of the phrase, including myself, are in any way qualified to make a judgment on the matter. The real issue is the report itself. How much was paid for the slim 37-page report? What value does this report provide? Couldn't this report have been assembled by paid WMF staffers or even interns?
There does not seem to be much heft to this report beyond being a colorful brochure for the Foundation. The report claims to be "new research" (p. 2) and "the first full survey of grantmaking at the Foundation" (p. 27), with lots of text and graphs about their fundraising, mostly without a clear rationale for inclusion. There are grand statements such as that participatory grantmaking is "a powerful movement building strategy", that the WMF is "innovative and groundbreaking" in its application of participatory grantmaking, and that this is on by far "the largest scale we have seen" among similar organizations (p. 2). Nowhere in the report is the term clearly defined; the closest it comes is by making frequent references to a previous Lafayette report which was not about the WMF. This is a crucial omission given the comparative claims made in relation to other agencies, some of which do offer direct assistance to grant applicants on a large scale.
According to the report, the volunteer grantmaking committees are designed to be gender-diverse (p. 3), yet at the time of the report's preparation, the Individual Engagement Grants Committee and Grant Advisory Committee had only two and one female members, respectively, out of a total of over 40 members. The report was silent on how active those committees are in their review processes and the extent to which the grant recipients demonstrate how their grants affect WMF projects and how much value they provide in proportion to the size of each grant. No reference was made to the work of the WMF's evaluation team, which last year made a preliminary finding that there is generally an inverse relationship between the size of grants and their impact. It also offered no proper analysis of how effective the IdeaLab forum is in helping applicants to develop their proposals.
There is no doubt that there are many examples of consultants like the ones commissioned to complete this report who provide important services and insights, but there are also many who are grifters in fancy suits who produce little to nothing of value. In many organizations, needed materials are purchased from the lowest bidder, staff salaries are cut, and positions go unfilled while consultants enrich themselves. Instead of answering questions about timestamps and conspiracy theories, the Foundation should tell the community what value this particular report provides for the money spent upon it. We should be less concerned about who wrote a borderline Wikipedia article which a little over a thousand people have read and be more concerned about how the WMF is using its funds, so the community can ensure that the encyclopedia has not been improperly monetized by grifters. Perhaps it is not surprising that Kohs has chosen not to complain about this potential monetization of Wikipedia, as Kohs has engaged in eight years of criticism of Wikipedia because he was unable to monetize the encyclopedia in the fashion of his choosing.
The Report this week is dominated by the Academy Awards, taking the top 4 spots and 13 of the Top 25 (if you count another big jump in views for Stephen Hawking at #4). In the aggregate this is not too much different than the past two years, where the top American movie award show took 12 slots in 2014 and 14 in 2013. The 87th Academy Awards article led at #1 with an impressive 6.2 million views, though a rather low mobile view count of 12.17% suggests those numbers might be somewhat inflated; Best Picture Birdman had 2.2 million views with 50% mobile views.
Also of note this week was the death of actor Leonard Nimoy (#5). Nimoy's article was also one of the most edited recently, and is currently topping the automated Top 20 most edited articles report as of March 1, showing that 193 editors have hit "edit" 524 times. As a recent creation, you probably didn't know this report existed—you should take a look.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
For the week of February 22 to 28, 2015, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 87th Academy Awards | 6,123,378 | Just as this year's awards held on February 22 were a bit predictable (Really? Birdman won? I'd never have guessed!), it was just as predictable that this entry would top the chart this week. | ||
2 | Academy Awards | 3,924,466 | See #1 | ||
3 | Birdman (film) | 2,198,754 | Received nine Oscar nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director for Alejandro González Iñárritu, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Birdman has only appeared in the Top 25 twice previously, for two weeks in January 2015 when it peaked at #10. | ||
4 | Stephen Hawking | 1,888,402 | The former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his 17th straight appearance in the Top 25 this week. And at the Oscars, Eddie Redmayne (#8) won Best Actor for portraying him in The Theory of Everything (#20). | ||
5 | Leonard Nimoy | 1,859,929 | The death of this beloved actor on February 27, best known for playing the role of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise, led to widespread tributes. Spock's Vulcan salute bade us to "live long and prosper," as Nimoy did himself. | ||
6 | Chris Kyle | 1,333,736 | America loves a good, old fashioned culture war, and while Clint Eastwood's American Sniper may not have wowed critics nor drawn great overseas crowds, it has played spectacularly well in America's conservative heartland. After dropping to #8 and 850,000 views last week, news that Eddie Ray Routh was found guilty of the deaths of Kyle and Chad Littlefield on February 25, after three hours of jury deliberations, raised the profile of this article once again. | ||
7 | Whiplash (2014 film) | 1,007,753 | A new entry to this chart, Whiplash won the Oscars for Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Supporting Actor for J. K. Simmons (pictured). It had also been nominated for Best Picture. Whiplash was written and directed by Damien Chazelle based on his experiences in the Princeton High School Studio Band, and stars Miles Teller as a student jazz drummer who seeks the respect of an abusive teacher played by Simmons. Though critically acclaimed, you may not have been aware of the film, which had only grossed about $12 million worldwide (on a $3.3 million budget) prior to its Academy Award wins. | ||
8 | Eddie Redmayne | 953,953 | See #4, Redmayne won Best Actor at the Oscars for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (#20). | ||
9 | Fifty Shades of Grey | 902,584 | The release of the film adaptation (#11) of this onetime Twilight fanfic continues to draw fans, though it is very unlikely to be drawing Oscars this time next year. | ||
10 | Dakota Johnson | 848,159 | The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson plays the lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey (film) (see #11). Griffith and her daughter were at the Oscars (of course), where some inane kerfuffle on the red carpet occurred over the fact that Griffith hadn't chosen to watch her daughter's film. We know our parents and children have sex (God willing), but we don't need to watch it. |
In the first of what the author hopes will become a regular feature of the Arbitration report, the Signpost speaks to veteran arbitrator Newyorkbrad, who recently retired from the committee after almost seven years of arbitrating. The Signpost was keen to hear his thoughts on his time on the committee and on the past, present, and future of ArbCom.
Harry Mitchell: What motivated you to stand for election back in 2008? And to twice seek re-election?
HJM: What do you think ArbCom does well? What does it do less well? Is there anything it does at present that you feel it shouldn't do at all?
HJM: How effective do you think ArbCom is at resolving the wiki's most interminable conflicts?
HJM: How has the committee changed over your seven-year tenure?
HJM: How much time in an average week did you find yourself devoting to ArbCom business? Do you think the current workloads are too great?
HJM: Did you implement or contribute to any reforms during your tenure?
HJM: There has been significant discussion over the years about the possibility of arbitrators who have not previously been elected administrators. How would you feel about non-admin arbitrators?
HJM: Is there anything you regret about your time on the committee? Any reform left undone, a decision that had unexpected repercussions? Anything you would do differently with the benefit of hindsight?
HJM: What qualities do you think a prospective candidate in this year's elections should have?
HJM: What advice would you offer the remaining arbitrators, especially those who are just embarking on their first term?
HJM: If you could change one thing about ArbCom, what would it be?
HJM: Where do you see ArbCom in five years' time? Ten years?
HJM: Would you stand for election again in the future or do you see your priorities changing?
HJM: Is there anything you'd like to add?
Things appear to be settling down now that the new committee is in place and the traditional rush of cases at the start of the year is slowing. Only one case remains open at the time of writing; another was closed in the fortnight since the last report.
After a stall during the proposed decision phase, this review of 2013's Infoboxes case—opened as a result of multiple clarification requests—finally concluded on 4 March. The purpose of the review was to assess the fitness for purpose of a remedy from the 2013 case, which prohibited Pigsonthewing from adding or removing infoboxes and from discussing their addition or removal. The review, and the enforcement and clarification requests which preceded it, focused largely on whether Pigsonthewing's participation at Templates for Discussion (where he regularly nominates infobox templates for deletion or merging) was in keeping with that remedy.
The arbitrators were satisfied that Pigsonthewing's conduct had improved since the disputes which precipitated the 2013 case— Courcelles (one of the drafting arbitrators) observed "I remember the 2013 case, and I honestly believe [Pigsonthewing]'s conduct is better [now] than it was back then"—but remained concerned that his conduct was still wanting. Arbitrator Yunshui, for example, saw "at least some comparatively recent instances of inflammatory behaviour [by Pigsonthewing], whether provoked or not". Remedies proposed included banning Pigsonthewing from any involvement with infoboxes anywhere on Wikipedia (opposed by all but the proposer on the grounds of Pigsonthewing's progress since 2013), discretionary sanctions on infoboxes (rejected because it was possibly out of scope for the review, and several arbitrators expressed concerns about its workability), and several more complicated restrictions on Pigsonthewing (rejected because of their complexity and concerns about workability). The final result was that all previous remedies against Pigsonthewing were vacated, and in their place Pigsonthewing:
The proposed decision in this case was published on 2 March, four days ahead of the target date. The drafting arbitrators propose to sanction four editors for their part in the dispute, which has included edit-warring, failure to adhere to a neutral point of view, personal attacks, and possible sock-puppetry. At the time of writing, arbitrators are voting unanimously to site-ban two editors, while a package of restrictions for another editor are passing (after modifications) by eight votes to one and the committee is currently divided on whether the fourth editor should be admonished or subject to a similar set of restrictions. Arbitrators have begun voting on a motion to close, and the case is likely to be complete within a day or two of the publication of this week's Signpost.
Before being indefinitely blocked, FergusM1970 made more than 4600 edits on the English Wikipedia, spread over eight years. In the last two years, he was paid to edit several articles for clients that included the Venezuelan energy company Derwick Associates; Fergus maintains that this was his only step into paid advocacy, rather than paid editing, a distinction that the Signpost has drawn attention to previously. Fergus was banned in December 2014 amid allegations of advocating for pay on behalf of e-cigarettes. We spoke with him about his experiences.
The ed17: How long did you edit for pay on Wikimedia sites?
Ed: Is FergusM1970 your first account? If not, how have you evaded scrutiny by the English Wikipedia's checkuser tool?
Ed: Do you only operate on the English Wikipedia, and how many articles have you been compensated for editing?
Ed: To broach a potentially taboo topic area, how much do you charge clients for creating or maintaining articles?
Ed: Have you consistently disclosed when you were editing for pay?
Ed: If a client's preferred topic is not notable under Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, how do you proceed?
Ed: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has endorsed a so-called "bright line", which "is simply that if you are a paid advocate, you should disclose your conflict of interest and never edit article space directly. You are free to enter into a dialogue with the community on talk pages, and to suggest edits or even complete new articles or versions of articles by posting them in your user space." Is this a viable option for paid advocates?
Ed: In your opinion, how should the Wikimedia sites deal with paid editing and advocacy? Where should the proverbial line in the sand be drawn?
Two featured articles were promoted this week.
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
Thirty-eight featured pictures were promoted this week.
Confiteantur tibi, Domine, omnia opera tua,
:et sancti tui benedicant te.
:Agimus tibi gratias, omnipotens Deus,
:pro universis beneficiis tuis,
:qui vivis et regnas Deus per omnia saecula saeculorum.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
Software changes this week
Meetings
Future changes
Black History Month is celebrated annually in the United States in February, to commemorate the history of the African diaspora. For this occasion, Wikipedians worked together to honor black history and to address Wikipedia's multicultural gaps in the encyclopedia, hosting Wikipedia edit-a-thons throughout the United States, from February 1 to 28, 2015.
Black WikiHistory Month Edit-a-thons include:
Maira Liriano, one of the key institutional organizers of the #BlackLives Matter Edit-a-thon in New York, summarized the goals of this project to to reporters at Innovation Trail: "There is a bias and a lack of people of color involved in creating Wikipedia and many subjects are also missing from Wikipedia. So events like today are in part to make people aware of that and then to empower them and give them the information they need to correct that bias."
To kick off this project, the New York #BlackLivesMatter Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held on Saturday February 7th at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York. This event took place in the Aaron Douglas Reading Room of the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division of the library. Satellite #BlackLivesMatter Edit-a-thons were held on February 7th at the SUNY Purchase College Library and the Nashville Public Library, and the AfroCROWD initiative kickoff event was held on February 7th and 8th at the Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch. Wikimedia D.C. also co-organized three events including: the First STEM Heroes Edit-a-thon at the White House and the NPR Black History Month Edit-a-thon on February 24th, as well as the Black History Month Edit-a-thon at Howard University on February 19th.
Libraries proved to be ideal places for these edit-a-thons. At the Aaron Douglas Reading Room, librarians located reference texts and provided suggestions for further research. A list of Wikipedia articles to edit and create was prepared for the Schomburg Center Edit-a-thon and used by many of the satellite events.
These events received wide press coverage from diverse news sources, including:
The #BlackLivesMatter Edit-a-thon at the Schomburg Center was organized in collaboration with NYPL, the Metropolitan New York Library Council, Wikimedia NYC, Wireless Harlem, and the West Harlem Art Fund for the Black WikiHistory Month outreach campaign.
Over 50 experienced and beginning Wikipedians attended throughout the day, and almost every seat was filled.
The New York Edit-a-thon was an overwhelming success, which led to the creation of 19 new Wikipedia articles, including:
On February 7th and 8th in Brooklyn, kickoff events took place for a new initiative, the Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCROWD), which seeks to increase the number of people of African descent who actively partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software movements. The workshops were open to all Afrodescendants, including but not limited to individuals who self-identify as African, African-American, Afro-Latino, Biracial, Black, Black-American, Caribbean, Garifuna, Haitian or West Indian.
Events were held at the Brooklyn Public Library. Wikipedia trainings and overviews were given in some of the many languages spoken by our target population: French, Garifuna, Haitian Kreyòl, Igbo, Yoruba, Spanish and Twi. Affiliate project pages such as WikiProject Haiti were also introduced -- and organizers announced the new Garifuna language Wikipedia incubator, the fruit of a collaboration between AfroCROWD and Wikimedia NYC.
Afrocrowd's next 3 events will be HaitiCROWD on 3/14, AfricaCROWD on 4/4 and AfrolatinoCROWD on 4/12. HaitiCROWD will focus on resources in the Haitian Kreyòl, French and English Wikipedias, as well as growing the Haitian Wikipedia, which is now available free of charge to many Haitians in Haiti through the Digicel/Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia Zero initiative. The workshop series will culminate in an edit-a-thon on June 20th at the Brooklyn Public Library.
Here is a visual recap of the AfroCROWD kickoff event.
Three Black History Month events were held in Washington D.C.; one at Howard University on February 19th, as well as the STEM Heroes Edit-a-thon at the White House ( learn more) and another one at the National Public Radio (NPR) headquarters on Tuesday, February 24th.
The Howard University event led to the following additions to Wikipedia:
A #BlackLivesMatter Edit-a-thon was also held at SUNY Purchase, Westchester County, NY on Saturday February 7th.
We wish to thank all participants who made these edit-a-thons possible! It's really exciting to see so many new editors join forces to help fill the multicultural gaps in Wikipedia -- and honor black history together.
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