Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2020-05-31

The Washington Post characterizes this last month as "Meltdown May", and we should all admit it's been a pretty rough month for many of us. The COVID-19 pandemic continued and last week the US recorded COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic of over 100,000 and worldwide 365,000 people have died in the same period.[1]

An African-American man was allegedly murdered by a policeman in Minneapolis just a few days ago and now cities burn across the country. But strangely the WaPo article was about pop culture and celebrities. Maybe even the rich and famous are having a hard time now. But perhaps WaPo is just taking its usual dig at everything conceivably related to Donald Trump. Atsme explores similar ideas in this month's Op-ed.

But hasn't Wikipedia had a turbulent May? Well, yes and no. Sadly, at least one Wikipedian has died from complications related to COVID-19, see Obituaries for the details.

Trump issued an executive order with the point of gaining more control over social media which threatens to reduce the legal protections Wikipedia enjoys under Section 230. The order definitely applies to Wikipedia. But it may well be the case that the order may have no effect on us and no legal effect on any social media sites. Larry Sanger published in his blog that Wikipedia has no real neutrality policy and has a strong leftist bias. But it is just a blog after all. To see more about the strange news this month, the good as well as the bad, see "In the media".

News & notes also explores the news of course, including breaking news on a French paid editing scandal. Is another paid editing scandal good news or bad? For the present, of course it is bad. But if it inspires us and the WMF to finally deal with the persistent problem of paid editing, it may well be good.

There is another persistent problem on Wikipedia and on many sites owned by the WMF: harassment. It is time that we take a hard-nosed practical view of how to deal with it. That is what the Board of Trustees has effectively said in its announcement on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). See News from the WMF.

I'm afraid that this call for a UCoC may cause another "Meltdown June", similar to what happened last year in the Fram case. It should be noted that the WMF announcement calls for collaboration with and input from the community and we should try to come up with solutions that do not hurt the self-governance of the community.

There are two steps in the process. By August 30 the UCoC itself is to be submitted to the Board for approval. I don't see this as the major problem. We all know the type of editor behavior we want to stop and a clear workable definition of harassment would benefit everybody.

The second step, defining the enforcement procedures, will be the sticking point. These procedures must be submitted by the end of the year. The WMF says that they want to support community enforcement rather than replace it, but we all know that the community has had difficulties in enforcing our anti-harassment rules. Under an effective policy, there will be times, however rare, when the WMF will take steps that the community can not agree on.

Let's try something different this year: assume good faith. Let's get together and come up with enforcement procedures that will have the support of the community, that will be administered in large part by the community.

The WMF has not yet defined a page where we can have this needed discussion. The Comments section below is as good a place as any. Let's start the enforcement discussion now. Please assume good faith and keep it civil and practical.

Commons announced the results of the 2019 Picture of the Year contest. Congratulations to all winners and thanks to everyone who participated by submitting images to Wikimedia Commons, by evaluating Featured Picture Candidates throughout the year, and by voting in the selection process.

French Wikipedians announced on May 27 that they had shut down more than 200 accounts that had conducted undisclosed paid editing. Eighty of these accounts are believed to belong to several French language PR firms who specialize in Wikipedia editing. Most of these firms have also been blocked on the English-language Wikipedia. The remaining 120 accounts are likely single-purpose accounts working at company PR departments, which only wish to edit the articles about their own firm.

They were caught after two French admins posed as customers and asked for examples of past work. In an interview with The Signpost admin Jules* said "We have uncovered dozens of undeclared paid accounts, abuse of sockpuppets, patent lies, promotional additions (often relatively subtle), ballot box stuffing in Pages to delete, etc." They had collectively made around 19,000 edits.

Jules* did not believe that contacting the firms directly without fully disclosing their intentions was an issue since they did not impersonate anybody and the firms they were investigating purposely broke Wikipedia's rules by sockpuppeting and refusing to declare their paid status on-Wiki.

The French investigation was first reported on the English Wikipedia on the COI noticeboard by Bri based on a tip to The Signpost and was soon acted upon by MER-C, an administrator with a long-term interest in combatting undeclared paid editing. He soon blocked 85 accounts on the English Wikipedia, 41 of which had made an edit here. Many of the edits were to pages for French companies, such as Air Liquide and Ardian.

In 2018 French Wikipedians started a semi-annual event called "Mois anti-pub" (Anti-advertising month) to neutralize promotional pages. The same year they started the Wikiproject Antipub to fight the use of Wikipedia as an advertising tool.

They have since found undeclared paid edits (UPEs) on French Wikipedia (see Par le passé), "but this month was the first time we found paid edits on this scale. It's a bit like our own Wiki-PR scandal" according to Jules*.

In early April this year the two French admins, Jules* and 0x010C, decided to contact "e-reputation agencies" posing as potential customers interested in creating a Wikipedia page for a real company where one of the admins worked. When they asked for a price estimate, they also asked for examples of the paid-editing firm's previous work.

Jules* stated that "Using those examples, I started researching the page histories of the clients reported by the agencies. I spent dozens of hours and found many accounts, used by several agencies, including agencies we had contacted and agencies we had not contacted. Almost all of these accounts had not disclosed their paid editing and many of them also used several sockpuppets."

He said that the paid-editing firms know Wikipedia's rules in detail, as well as ways to avoid following the rules without attracting attention. "For example, one agency said to us it was not possible to remove well-sourced negative content because 'moderators' would just revert the removal. Instead they proposed 'hiding' the negative content inside newly added positive content." Some paid editing companies, though, did try to remove well-sourced content.

Jules* and 0x010C published their work on May 27th at the French sysop noticeboard, with detailed results in the subpage. The subpage shows that the same editors edited English Wikipedia as well, as seen in the "crosswiki" column. The French community is now reviewing the paid content here.

The French newspaper of record Le Monde covered the scandal, and spoke with François Jeanne-Beylot, founder of the PR companies Inmediatic and Troover, who had his accounts blocked following the investigation. He offered (in French) a strained defense of his work, arguing that his firm was only training companies to contribute, and that the contributions were therefore not paid.

"I find it brutal to suspend accounts without trying to understand our approach", he said in French. "It is difficult to convince Wikipedia administrators that companies also have their place".

MER-C, for his part, was not surprised by the announcement. This "may jolt the French, but we've seen a lot worse" at English Wikipedia, he said. He is waiting for more developments from the French Wikipedia, though he hasn't as yet had contact with French admins. He wants to establish "a cross-wiki version of COIN as a paid-editing noticeboard. Cross-wiki UPE is becoming increasingly problematic and the approach taken to counter it is very piecemeal."

The May GOCE copy editing drive ended today, marking ten years of GOCE drives. Their backlog reached zero – the previous drive reduced the backlog by 75%, with this one reducing it a further 209 articles to end at 156 articles, all of which were tagged during May. To learn more about the GOCE's work, you can read last month's Wikiproject Report.

While this drive has not been particularly different from most others in terms of copyedited articles, it has seen many new members helping out – this month saw an large influx of new members and new users participating. The result of of this was double-sided – on the one hand, many new editors are learning the ropes of copyediting, which in the long run will lead to better progress and performance, but in the short run leads to more experienced copyeditors checking the newer work instead of copyediting articles themselves. The Guild is conducting their twice yearly coordinator elections this June – all editors in good standing are welcome to participate, voting starts mid-month. Another Guild event beginning mid-June is a week-long copyediting blitz, focused mainly on reducing the increasingly large number of articles on the Requests page. -- P²

• RfA dry spell ends: CaptainEek's hat thrown into the Requests for Adminship (RfA) ring marked the end of a 60-day absence of new candidates since March 5. According to research by The Signpost staff, only three months in the last decade had zero requests for adminship: March 2019, May 2019, and April 2020 – a reflection of the overall decline in RfA candidacies (see previous Signpost coverage). – B
• New administrators: Following CaptainEek's candidacy for administrator status, two other Wikipedia editors stood for consideration and passed. The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators,
  • CaptainEek, passed May 12
  • Cwmhiraeth, passed May 15
  • Creffett, passed May 17
• New user experience for newcomers being designed: The WMF Growth Team, which seeks to boost editor retention, has been piloting several features aimed at making it easier for newcomers to contribute on increasingly large Wikipedias in different languages. They are now seeking feedback on a prototype from English Wikipedia. The features include a newcomer homepage with links to resources, tasks, and positive reinforcement, as well as structured tasks, an algorithmically-generated feed of suggested newcomer-friendly edits. -Sdkb
• Wiki Education Foundation appoints new board members Wiki Education Foundation, best known for Wikipedia outreach to universities and their outreach management tool the Program & Events Dashboard, has appointed two new board members.
• New Wikimedia Sister Project proposal: While proposals for new projects come with regularity, it is unusual for one to get the discussion which Wikilambda is getting. Wikilambda promises a series of miracles including global templates which would work across Wikimedia projects. Support, oppose, or question this and other submissions in meta:Category:Open new project proposals. – B
• Introducing the Sports Wiki Visibility Project: A new organization has been created to promote the creation of content related to Ultimate Frisbee with special attention given to countering systemic bias. The tagline on the official website describes the project as "An effort to raise the visibility of folks from historically marginalized groups in ultimate and other sports, through Wikipedia pages." – Ib
• Letter to media platforms, Wikimedia Foundation cc'd: A group of journalism and research organizations led by Center for Democracy and Technology have sent an open letter to the representatives of various media platforms to preserve all instances of misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic that may have been otherwise deleted and archive it for future research. The Wikimedia Foundation is one recipient.
• Wikipedia editing levels back at 2010 levels. According to one simplistic, but correspondingly robust measure, Wikipedia editing is back at levels not normally seen since 2010. Wikipedia:Time Between Edits measures the time taken for each ten million edits, and the ten million done between April 9th and May 31st took just 52 days. Since 2010 there has only been one ten million interval faster than that, and that was during the move of intra wiki links to Wikidata – a process that involved millions of bot edits. Recent years seem to have stabilised at a million edits every six to six and a half days, so the lockdown period with its editing levels of a million edits every five days is a significant increase. 2020 isn't truly comparable to 2010, we have more edit filters since then to reject vandalism without logging an edit, the interwiki links and consequent (mostly) bot edits have moved to Wikidata, and some of the infobox edits have also gone to Wikidata; but The Signpost welcomes the new and returning editors involved in this increased activity. -WSC

• CBS broadcast a remarkable story on Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19. It was not just a repeat of the laudatory coverage Wikipedia received from other news outlets in the early months of the pandemic. Trustee James Heilman, aka Doc James, stated that the only proven way to control COVID-19 was through social distancing. He added "I do not recommend people trust Wikipedia blindly ... doing so would be silly. Yet, you know, people shouldn't trust other sources of information blindly, either." Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight said the Wikipedia editors were "like a learning machine," and explained the importance of references. Foundation CEO and Executive Director Katherine Maher outlined why people want to influence Wikipedia. "Knowledge is power. And that means that it is fundamentally disruptive, often to those in power. If you think about the history of what Wikipedia is, it's actually pretty radical... I mean, that it is an inversion of power structures, this idea that information can and should be available to all."

• Future Historians Will Rely on Wikipedia’s COVID-19 Coverage in Slate by Stephen Harrison, shows how Facebook and other social media platforms erase, rather than just remove, debunked propaganda and entries from conspiracy theorists. The back and forth struggle involved with editing difficult articles on Wikipedia, however, is preserved, leading Harrison to conclude that Wikipedia will be a popular source for future historians to study how the pandemic was reported.

• Wikipedia sets new rule to combat “toxic behaviour” on the BBC, following a WMF press release, outlines how harassment and other abuse will be combated, especially as it affects women and LGBTQ editors. New policies will be finalized by the end of the year. The editing community quickly reacted with a discussion on the Village pump.
• The Verge gives more details of the board resolution, including that the new Universal Code of Conduct will be drawn up with extensive input from editors.

Despite promising to be "finished with Wikipedia criticism" in 2013 Larry Sanger's blog post of May 14 titled Wikipedia Is Badly Biased claims that "Wikipedia's NPOV is dead". "The notion that we should avoid 'false balance' is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy. As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science."

Fox News reported that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says online encyclopedia scrapped neutrality, favors lefty politics on May 22, giving an accurate summary of Sanger's blog post.

Gerard Baker, former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal wrote in The Times "Big tech is blatantly biased against Trump" (paywall), lumping in Wikipedia with all the big tech social media platforms, based on Sanger's blog.

A plague of faux nez (aka false noses or sockpuppets) has been reported by Le Monde in France as hundreds of accounts have been blocked by French Wikipedia admins for undeclared paid editing. Other coverage of the story is reported in Numerama, FranceInter, and La Reclame aka The Advertisement – all in French. The Signpost covers the story (in English) at News & notes.

Online magazine ZME Science highlighted the 5 most prolific contributors on enWiki as ranked on WP:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. ZME relied on information from user pages and other Wikipedia pages as well as on previously published interviews from other publications. The Signpost asked these editors for their reaction to the article and a few related questions. The prolific five are:

• Ser Amantio di Nicolao (3,538,835 edits as of May 26)

was widely covered in the press in 2018-2019 and feels that ZME got his story mostly right. But he no longer has the sideburns that show in the photo and he has changed his place of employment to another government agency. The quantity and quality of edits are both important in his opinion, but quantity is not the most important aspect of editing. Quantity of edits might be a good starting point in discussing what editors do, but "hopefully that can lead to a broader, richer, and deeper discussion of the Wikipedia experience." His favorite article contributions are Pohick Church, which recently was rated a Good Article, and Fanny Eckerlin, an Italian opera singer.

• Koavf (2,081,346 edits)

has also been widely covered in the press, starting in 2012 when he made his one-millionth edit. The information ZME presented was correct. "I really like the fact that they framed my contributions to the site in terms of something that anyone can do, which is what I believe. There are some things I have done that not everyone can do but nothing that only I could do and everyone can do something (including many things that I can't)." He and the other four editors at the top of the list have all had some contact, but nothing out of the ordinary. "All five of us are fairly different human beings who have at least one common interest." His favorite contributions were to the article George Orwell bibliography.

• BrownHairedGirl (1,860,409 edits)

was "saddened by the poor quality" of the article. The author "paid no attention to the caveat lector section of that page, which explains the multiple ways in which a high edit count is a poor indication of the value of an editor's contribution." She believes that all five editors' high edit counts are "due to a focus on repetitive maintenance work," but that writing articles and lists such as her creations James Balfour (died 1845), William Grant, Lord Grant, and List of women cabinet ministers of the Republic of Ireland add more to the encyclopedia than a similar number of maintenance edits.

• Rich Farmbrough (1,698,486 edits)

has had good interactions with all four of the other editors mentioned in the article. He considers quantity vs. quality to be a false dichotomy. Rather "many small pieces of quality versus fewer large pieces is a better question. And the truth is that it is easier to deliver some types of quality in small increments." His favorite contributions include Whittington's Longhouse and the Industrial Christian Home for Polygamous Wives.

• BD2412 (1,556,366 edits)

says that ZME accurately summed up his user page and that Wikipedia's "goal is quality, but in quantity". The five prolific editors are similar because "you have to be in a certain socioeconomic and educational space to be someone who has the time, the resources, and the motivation to rack up that number of edits, so we are all that." His favorite contribution by far is Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States. Other favorites include Scholar, Hesitation and Please.

• Wikipedia for personal insight: BBC shares a personal story in which a native Yiddish speaker in the United States learns about LGBT culture through a Hebrew-language Internet search which led to Wikipedia.
• Was the COVID-19 pandemic planned in January 2017 or 1917? FactCheck.org debunks the nut-case conspiracy theory that used screenshots from Wikipedia to a suggest a piece of legislation dealing with the response to the virus had been proposed well in advance of the pandemic. FactCheck states "All they show is a typo on Wikipedia and a misrepresentation of the bill’s legislative history."
• No personal attacks may be our policy, but that didn't stop a Chilliwack (Canada) school district trustee, Barry Neufeld, from citing "suspicions on Wikipedia" to deride a health official's gender as reported in Global News. He apparently referenced vandalism at Theresa Tam. Neufeld later apologized and there is now a Wikipedia article on him.
• Yes Deputy Chief Minister: The Pioneer reports that Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, suggests that everyone go read about Happiness Curriculum on Wikipedia. If you're happy and you know it, you get an A.
• Can a Virtual Edit-a-Thon make Wikipedia More Inclusive? asks Houstonia Magazine. Jaison Oliver organized an edit-a-thon via Zoom because of the pandemic. The brief answer is "yes."
• Representing the pretty criminals: The Cambrian News reports on our Wikimedian-in-residence at the National Library of Wales taking advantage of his spare time during the pandemic lockdown to upload the institution's archive of criminal mugshots to Commons.
• False alarm: In an analysis of fake news' effects on publicity in Africa, Andrew Christian of WeeTracker reviews how a misreported death on Rema (musician), despite being fixed in minutes, quickly spread across Nigerian social media. The Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that the incorrect edit was vandalism.
• Section 230: Slate carries Mike Godwin's op-ed The Trump–Twitter war shows that section 230 can work beautifully (May 29, 2020). Godwin is former Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and was counsel of record in the United States Supreme Court case Reno v. ACLU.

• Kremlin drops plans for state-approved Wikipedia: The Times (paywall) reports that the Russian government has scrapped plans to build an online encyclopedia based on the Great Russian Encyclopedia to replace Wikipedia in Russia. While no reason was given for the shutdown, The Times speculates that the collapse of oil prices and the Russian economic crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic have made the project too expensive. Earlier coverage this month (not paywalled) stated that the working group charged with creating the Russian online encyclopedia was disbanded but that project would continue. Boris Chernyshov, Chairman of the Duma Committee for education and science, called the idea of such an online encyclopedia impractical.
• "Worth Every Goddamn Second": The satirical newspaper The Onion gives a nice send-up to our article on Steven Seagal.
• "And this is where they saying it started?!": Hip-hop outlet SOHH discusses how rapper Cam'ron takes umbrage with the way our article on the phrase "No homo" credits him with popularizing its usage.

Village Pump discussion concerning "WMF Board Authorises Universal Code of Conduct and non-local sanctions of those who breach them"

• Taiwan – a long RfC on the official name
• UTRS – on the future and use of the Unblock Ticket Request System

• The left sidebar update RfC is in the process of being closed as of press time.
• The April Fools' RfC has had a few more proposals closed, with the proposal to "restrict all April Fools activities apart from WP:AFMP to subpages of Wikipedia:April Fools" was unsuccessful, and the proposal to require the April Fools' Main Page to be tagged with a {{humor}}-like template closed as no consensus. The proposals to ban joke XfDs and edit warring on the prank log page are still open.
• There was no consensus on WT:NFC on whether fair-use SVGs should be banned, and the policy regarding non-free SVGs was left unchanged.
• MOS:ACCESSIBILITY now has a recommendation that tables have captions, following a successful RfC on this question.
• Consensus was reached to remove the {{current event}} template from coronavirus-related pages.
• The proposal to create a "main page editor" group failed, with opposers citing security risks as well as the fact that editors would be granted access to the protect and editprotected rights while not being permitted by policy to fully use them.
• The bureaucrat activity RfC produced a result of no consensus. The community was closely divided on the issue, with 45 supports and 40 opposes.

Marc Miquel, Ph.D. is a user researcher and lecturer who focuses on diversity in Wikipedia, engagement in games and user experience in general. The article was originally published by Wikipedia@20 and is licensed CC BY 4.0 -S

No matter whether a language is a real entire worldview or not, a collaborative encyclopaedia like Wikipedia provides the best chance to allow any language speakers to immortalize it.-Editors of Wikipedia@20

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.
— Ezra Pound^[1]

Though I had used Wikipedia for years, it was only ten years ago when I discovered how each language edition community can freely organize its content—as there is no central editorial board. The Catalan version of the encyclopedia, in my native tongue, can have pages dedicated to its culture without impediment. Some might take this for granted, but I cherished this principle because of my memories of my grandfather, who was forbidden to speak his language in public during the forty years of Franco's dictatorship, and of my mother, who did not have the chance to be educated in her mother tongue. I did not immediately become a contributor, but I wanted to learn more and, hopefully, one day give back. Today, I am doing so as a researcher with the Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory (WCDO). Though the English Wikipedia has brought much attention to the larger Wikimedia project, that project's future and potential growth lie in many smaller languages and cultures, which are often overlooked—and under threat, as many human languages are likely to disappear by the end of the century.

The poet Ezra Pound said that "the sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension."^[1] Obviously, the same is true of Wikipedia. At the observatory, we work to discover the knowledge that is local to each language, the cultural pearls from every place in the world, and we promote its exchange. I believe this can be advanced using a model assessing project cultural diversity. Such a model will then allow us to better encourage Wikipedia language communities to raise awareness, organize events, adopt tools, and incorporate cultural diversity as part of our strategic plans.

Although cultural diversity appears now to be a crystal-clear priority for the movement, it was not that obvious in 2011, when I attended my first Wikimania. In the most popular and crowded Wikipedia conference, the multitude of nationalities reminded me of the encyclopedists' version of the United Nations. Our apparent differences were in clothing, colors, gestures and many other details. Before the conference, a friend of mine asked me a key question: if English Wikipedia has most of the articles, why should there be hundreds of other language editions? I hesitated a bit, and my answer was that for the different language editions to exist, they had to be different.

Finding these differences became my main interest in Wikipedia. Even though I was initially more focused on the Catalan Wikipedia, I found an exciting quest in using algorithms to compare the contents from any language edition. I could see the extent and particularities of the coverage of each topic in each language as if they were patterns revealed in an aerial view, unperceivable to the eyes of other editors. Analyzing the editors' behavior and the extent of topics in articles became the object of my Master's thesis and later of my Ph.D. thesis. By understanding how this editing process unravels in the data and other researchers' work, I found many reasons to justify the need for multiple language editions. I will try to summarize them into three.

The first aspect I saw during my research was that the articles of every language edition are limited to specific groups of points of view or have a "linguistic point of view." This was something intuitive to any Wikipedia user. Some topics are dealt very differently in the Catalan and Spanish Wikipedia – especially those concerning politics and culture. Brent Hecht and Darren Gergle showed us that these variations in points of view between the language versions of the same article could be measured by taking into account the outgoing links in the text they have in common.^[2] Even in general topics, like ‘Psychology', one can find differences of 20% in the links pointing at different articles. Massa and Scrinzi pointed out that topics that elicit controversy, for instance, articles about the terrorist "Osama Bin Laden" or the international struggle "Israeli-Palestinian conflict," showed the fewest number of links in common.^[3]

This led me to think that even though Wikipedia asks for a neutral point of view (NPOV) (i.e. a fair representation of the different available points of view on a topic), we know this is an ideal. Since a language edition is a community phenomenon, group interests and power dynamics tend to reinforce or undermine certain points of view. Some perspectives are unknown or simply ignored, and very few are novel or exclusive to that particular group of speakers. This latter category is very valuable. Such novelty and uniqueness is, in fact, a valuable contribution, and should be seen as a complement to other language editions.

Linguists sometimes defend a linguistic perspective by saying that every language is a specific worldview, or at least, one of a particular context. Each language you speak gives you concepts to map things and situations, and classify them according to the experience of generations. Any language accumulates knowledge in the vocabulary used to label the species of plants, the nouns to describe climatological changes in the natural environment, and the idioms and adjectives that have originated to understand human character and history in a specific way. Being able to compare linguistic differences and observe from multiple perspectives allows you to contrast and understand reality better.

The eminent linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf went a bit further with this perspective and reinforced the idea that we need more than one language to gain depth in thinking. He claimed that all knowledge is provisional, and therefore, multilingual competencies allow you to advance faster in its development. "Western culture has made, through language, a provisional analysis of reality and, without correctives, holds resolutely to that analysis as final. The only correctives lie in all those other tongues which by aeons of independent evolution have arrived at different, but equally logical, provisional analyses."^[4] This quote inevitably reminded me of how Wikipedia allows us to compare the different points of view, jumping through the parallel versions of an article that exists in several language editions.

The second aspect I saw during my research was that the language editions are influenced by the territories where the language is spoken and they are the most complete at creating content about them. Hecht and Gergle measured in several language editions the number of links directed to articles geolocated on the territories where the language is spoken.^[5] With such a simple metric they could determine that each Wikipedia tends to be self-focused, as results indicated that these articles received many more links than other geolocated articles, i.e., they were more prominent in the linked graph structure.

Even though geolocated articles show relevant language differences, one could argue that this is only a small portion of each Wikipedia. The articles about many other topics such as traditions, history, organizations, politics, and so on can explain the idiosyncrasies of any culture and the territories where the language is spoken. This way, by collecting all the articles about these topics, I thought we could get a better idea of what is genuine in the cultural and geographical contexts of every language edition.

I hence proposed an algorithm to collect such articles and I entitled the selection of articles "Cultural Context Content" (or CCC). My first questions were (1) how many articles would each Wikipedia dedicate to their cultural contexts, and more importantly, (2) what would be the extent of this group of articles.

A supposition concerning the Catalan Wikipedia was that it would overcompensate for the linguistic and cultural genocide suffered during the past century and that it would also be influenced by the current political self-determination struggle. This might result in an exaggerated number and proportion of articles set in this cultural context, which would be centered around Catalonia, Valencia, Balearic Islands, Andorra and a few scattered territories in the south of France and in the Aragonese autonomous community. Surprisingly, the proportion was only 20% and since the first measurement, it has decreased to the current 17.09%.^[6] Taking into account the top forty language editions, the average proportion of content dedicated to their cultural context is a quarter of each Wikipedia.^[7] Some like the English and the Japanese presented more than half of them. Others like the German, French, and Italian had lower proportions (33.7%, 26.9%, and 18.8% respectively).

It is difficult to answer why some Wikipedia language editions dedicate more articles to their context than others, as it may depend on many factors. The proportion of articles dedicated to CCC is not related to the density of the population, nor the number of editors, nor the territorial area. But it is surely an indicator of appreciation towards their culture and places. The fact that the proportion of articles dedicated to CCC remains stable over time in every Wikipedia language edition, implies that editors are motivated to continuously create and represent the most significant places around them. This came as a surprise to me, as I expected it would decrease with the growth of each Wikipedia language edition. Why would editors continue to create articles about their culture after the main cities, political figures and historical events have already been documented?

In the beginning, I was not sure whether to consider the large extent of CCC as an undesired bias. But my interpretation of the presence of these "local encyclopedias" drifted from acceptance to encouragement, especially when I realized that the proportion of pageviews was even higher than the proportion of articles itself.^[8] Then I assumed that each Wikipedia could have a fundamental role in illuminating the context of each language to readers, and this is probably a key ingredient to explain the overall success and popularity of Wikipedia. One could say that the differences that every language edition present are even more valuable to readers than editors, which totally justifies the effort.

Even though I have not yet verified whether this higher reader interest in CCC articles applies to all language editions, the hypothesis "context-encyclopedia-key-ingredient-to-success" is very plausible. In smaller Wikipedias with little traffic, we see the inverse trend. For instance, in some African vernacular languages, the proportion of articles dedicated to their context is very low. Considering 39 Wikipedia language editions in Africa, the average proportion of articles dedicated to each cultural context is 11.1% (median 13.8%). Why is that so? Because these languages are often relegated to a private use while English or French is used for education and official matters. Only Afrikaans—a language with a social situation similar to European languages—has 23.9% of content dedicated to its context. Hence, we can say that cultural context content creation and consumption is a good indicator of a healthy Wikipedia in a society.

The third and probably the most relevant aspect I saw during my research was that Wikipedia language editions do not cover one another's cultural context content, i.e. they do not have sufficient cultural diversity in their content. In 2012, Bao, Hecht, Carton, Quaderi, and Horn found out there is a language gap between Wikipedia language editions, that is, every language edition has many articles with no equivalent version in other languages.^[9] Also, contrary to what my Wikimania friend thought (that English Wikipedia would be the only necessary language edition, a sort of "catch-all encyclopedia"), bigger language editions do not cover the articles from smaller ones. Considering this, I wondered whether this language gap could be due to the cultural context. The results showed that, on average, 60% of the articles that are not translated in any language edition are related to the language cultural context.^[10]

When CCC articles were shared across languages, it tended to be with those geographically closer or with those language editions which had the largest number of articles (especially English, German and French Wikipedias). It surprised me that sometimes articles related to the context of small Wikipedias were not covered at all, even though one might think it would be an easier effort to the community of editors. Some Wikipedians told me that multilingualism dynamics tend to be translating from bigger language editions into smaller ones. Besides one must also consider the difficulties in accessing the content from an unknown language about unknown territories. As a result, big Wikipedia language editions do not cover the diversity of knowledge available in smaller languages either.

The excess content about the Western world is part of this so-called systemic bias. To me, it seems the large amount of content Wikipedias devote to their context-based institutions, entertainment and sports is not the problem – as it is popular and read. Instead, it is the lack of reciprocal content about their cultural contexts that impedes reaching a minimum of content about the world's cultural diversity. Perhaps even more important is the struggle of these small encyclopedias to represent their cultural context. We have to work in both cases.

The first article in a non-English Wikipedia was in the Catalan Wikipedia. It was about Àbac (Abacus), an ancient calculating tool, and it was written by an editor from Andorra named Cdani, who requested Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, to create a Catalan Wikipedia where Catalan editors could write in their native language, and so as "to not inflict his terrible English" on the English Wikipedia which had been created two months earlier.^[11] In fact, Wikipedia has always been global and the need for growth is still very present. In the recent Wikimania 2018 held in South Africa, Jimmy Wales reminded the community about the "desire to be in every language and every culture, on every continent and in every place" and celebrated the first thousand articles in the Zulu Wikipedia.^[12]

With the recognition of milestones being reached by small languages, the Wikimedia movement acknowledges that information and knowledge are determinants of wealth creation and social development for any society in general. For several years this has been one of the main directives of UNESCO, which claims that the inclusion of languages in the digital world is urgent, as the digital divide will only increase their marginalization.^[13] In this sense, Wikipedia has set a long-term strategic direction aimed at knowledge equity by 2030. This is understood as putting "the focus of our efforts on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege," by breaking down "the social, political and technical barriers preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge."^[14]

Barriers such as the digital divide—lack of Internet—prevent millions of people from using Wikipedia. At the same time, the inclusion of new languages in the Wikipedia project is not as easy as encouraging their speakers to become editors, as they come across other obstacles as well. Van Dijk states that the lack of language standardization including common grammar, the degree of editor literacy, and the language status or the attitude of speakers towards their language, are all factors that have a major impact.^[15] This latter factor is especially delicate as speakers should have the conviction that their language is worthy of such endeavor. But when the speakers internalize marginalization and a subsidiary position, it becomes very difficult to envisage that history could have been different, and revitalize the language and grow a Wikipedia.

I believe that the problem of little content in Wikipedias of less-resourced languages should not only be seen as a language problem but also as a local knowledge problem considering that language and knowledge are inextricable. I am certain that a way to help speakers of endangered languages to enter or expand Wikipedia is to send them the clear message that their knowledge matters, and that it is what we need to reach the best depiction of human cultural diversity. Conceivably, the language problem cannot be tackled without tackling the recognition of their speakers' knowledge, encouraging its representation, or at least the representation of its most relevant concepts (i.e. geographical places, traditions, and leaders) from the speakers' points of view – as we suggest in the Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory.

During the first ten years, Wikipedia grew to include more than 260–270 active language editions, and since then it has remained stable at around 300. This represents an incredibly low number as compared to the approximately 7,000 languages that reportedly exist on the planet.^[16] Many linguists like Andrew Dalby foresee massive language death in the next decades.^[17] András Kornai presents evidence of a massive die-off caused by the digital divide and estimates that only 5% of all languages can obtain an online presence (i.e. around 350 languages).^[18] How they can defy this fate and survive remains an open question. But it seems obvious to me that Wikipedia is the best available strategy for these endangered languages, independently of whether they are fully revitalized or not.

When we fear language loss, we may precisely fear the disappearance of that aforementioned worldview, one that required some time to get established and refined. No matter whether it is a real entire worldview or not, a collaborative encyclopedia provides the best chance to allow any language's speakers to immortalize it. The use of Wikipedia and this local knowledge in education may be crucial in order to have a chance to pass it on to further generations, and in any case, Wikipedia's characteristics such as its wide variety of topics, linked nature, and extensive use of images constitute a corpus of knowledge essential to revitalize the language or to study its nuances at any future point. The difficulty lies in breaking all the barriers and encourage speakers to edit articles.

I do not doubt that given that Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites on the Internet, its communities and strategic direction will react and be a clear example in leadership assuming the necessary efforts to take up the cultural diversity challenge. Throughout the commitment to knowledge equity, Wikipedia is in a position to make one step forward towards cultural diversity. It would be easy to subscribe and commit to the UNESCO declaration on Cultural Diversity from 2001, which defines cultural diversity "as a source of exchange, innovation and creativity" […] "as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature."^[19] This means that defending cultural diversity is not only a matter of respect for the heritage but a pragmatic decision towards humanity's progress. The UNESCO declaration adds that "[cultural diversity is] the common heritage of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations." Making a public commitment to this declaration accompanied by several measures such as revising content policies would most surely bring positive results.

Once we have agreed that Wikipedia must take an active role in preserving cultural diversity, we might ask ourselves what we can do now with the current communities. How could we align all the movement members towards improving cultural diversity in their content? One way we find particularly useful is to evaluate the maturity of each language community in terms of cultural diversity. A maturity model allows us to understand the situation and barriers an organization comes across when incorporating certain elements in view of succeeding at a particular aspect.^[20] For cultural diversity in Wikipedia we propose each language community to work on the a) discourse, b) organization (through events and tools), c) degree of awareness of the gaps (through metrics and visualizations), and d) strategy (by setting goals and priorities).

Figure 2 below shows a preliminary version of the maturity model. The different sorts of barriers and levels are based on discussions I held with the communities during international Wikipedia conferences, while the different incorporated elements in the pursuit of cultural diversity are my suggestions. I named the levels: (1) Unintentional, (2) Spontaneous, (3) Organized, (4) Controlled and (5) Distributed.

The more a community moves towards the later levels, the more it is able to create a culturally diverse array of content (or closer to the sum of human knowledge in terms of cultural diversity) in its language and even contribute to the content of other languages. Having a mature understanding of cultural diversity implies that, first, you represent your cultural context (e.g. cities, monuments, leaders, etc.) and, second, you share this content by exporting it across the other language editions, as well as covering their cultural context content.

At the first level, Unintentional, cultural diversity is not yet a goal and not even a topic of discussion. The few editors working on the language edition try to cover the very basic encyclopedic knowledge usually based on a Western perspective. Cultural diversity is scarce considering the superficial knowledge a basic encyclopedia provides: world capitals, most spoken languages, among others. Editors usually come across barriers such as lack of Internet, lack of translation tools or lack of self-recognition of the value of their language and culture.

At the second level, Spontaneous, the community exists and in terms of cultural diversity, editors start creating content about nearby places and people, as they consider it valuable to readers. Even though there is no strategy, they recognize the value of representing their cultural context and of translating articles from other language editions – they incorporate certain elements of discourse. However, there are no community conversations on how editors should organize themselves to create content more efficiently (i.e. using lists or contests) and all contributions are spontaneous. They lack editors and an offline team to move further.

At the third level, Organized, a few people emerge within the community with an organizational mindset that allows them to propose topic-dedicated events. In terms of cultural diversity, some events are dedicated to visually representing their heritage (e.g. Wiki Loves Monuments),^[21] to spread it across other languages (e.g. Catalan Culture Challenge),^[22] and to cover the cultural context of other languages (e.g. Asian Month).^[23] Members of communities that reached this level sometimes have a big picture and are partially aware of the contents that are missing, but they lack measurements and tools to better organize themselves and prioritize their top value actions.

At the fourth level, Controlled, there are different new roles: event organizers, content experts, and international relations. They are able to consider the big challenge to cover the cultural context content of other language editions, and they engage in all sorts of events to do it. An example could be the regional Wikimedia CEE Spring contest organized by Central and Eastern European languages. At this level, the use of metrics and data visualizations in order to be aware of the content coverage is incipient, but it would be very useful to know the cultural context content of every language edition (% of articles) and the knowledge gaps. However, few editors access the metrics. With no regular measurement and no constant communication, the figures on cultural diversity and gaps might not trigger any further action.

At the fifth level, Distributed, cultural diversity is seen as a top priority. Communities count on different area experts (in the field of events, metrics, communication, etc.) and know how to establish reasonable goals and organize themselves to accomplish them. The degree of coverage of other cultural and geographical contexts is common knowledge across the community and editors are aware of the main knowledge gaps. Cultural diversity has its dedicated events and contests and it is also a recurring requirement for other contests based on general topics (e.g. Women, Art, Books, et cetera.). At this level, discourse, organization, indicators, and strategy are at an advanced stage for the community to represent the existing world cultural diversity. The community has a strong culture in addressing knowledge gaps and every member is able to find the necessary events and resources to do it. The metrics assessing the extent of the gaps are constantly visible in the different types of community communications (e.g. newsletter, mailing list, etc.) that reach the entire group, and the use of tools to browse valuable articles is common in events.

According to the model above, maturity in communities progresses one level at a time. If, for instance, a community is at level 2 (i.e. Spontaneous), it will not be able to fast forward to level 4 (i.e. Controlled) without first passing through level 3 (Organized), gaining the necessary community capacity. Each level requires revising the current processes with more skills and knowledge. While I am writing this, no community has reached the fifth level (and only a few are located on the fourth), because metrics and data visualizations are also being developed and are to be implemented by the end of 2019. I believe that the more awareness is raised on content cultural diversity and the more usable the tools become, the easier it will be for communities to embrace these values and practices. In the end, cultural diversity is a core value of the global movement and the different elements of the model are aimed at improving current activities.

Without metrics and tools, it is hard for communities to work on topics they may not be able to identify in a foreign language. Metrics may be useful to provide editors with specific points to address the cultural diversity or culture gap problem and have more impact on their contributions. In the near future, I hope to obtain feedback from the communities and understand more thoroughly the barriers that separate one level from another. For instance, the use of a survey would be helpful to obtain data and refine the model, while at the same time disseminating it. The maturity model for cultural diversity is a working vision to help language communities make progress through specific and attainable steps.

Thirty years before the commercialization of the Internet and forty years before the birth of Wikipedia, media theorist Marshall McLuhan anticipated that the world would become a global village. Each place would be connected through technology, and information would continuously flow without entailing cultural uniformity.^[24] The Internet may not have yet lived up to such humanist ideals, but I truly believe Wikipedia has managed to create a fascinating space, where speakers of any language can present information from different points of view, and search for consensus through a shared representation of provisional knowledge.

As I am writing these lines, I believe cultural diversity remains an unopened box to most of the movement. The sum of human knowledge cannot be contained in one language edition. The sum of human knowledge depends on representing and sharing the content of every language with other languages; in other words, it depends on the content exchange between languages. Current research shows that large language editions like English, French or German cover a considerable amount of content relative to the cultural context of other languages, but this is not usually the general case nor is it sufficient. We cannot be content when African languages do not reach even a minimal representation of their related cultural context, hence failing to provide a perspective on their leaders, places, food, and traditions, among other things.

All in all, I am confident that cultural diversity will become one of the main objectives in the future. Whenever I attend a Wikipedia meeting or event, I realize that we enjoy being part of a global community. Editors feel this sense of unity in diversity, and the very fact of recognizing the value of cultural diversity and fostering content exchange will strengthen the movement in many senses. I am not sure I can promise my grandfather or mother a specific extent to which Catalan will be used in the next century, the number of new Wikipedias in the next ten years, or the state of coverage of all cultural contexts by minor language editions. But I am positive that Wikipedia is the best possible way to spread human knowledge as there is nothing more Wikipedian than being culturally diverse.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to the valuable suggestions on improving the article to Robin Taylor, Laura Vincze, Joseph Reagle, David Laniado, Denny Vrandečić, Stephane Coillet-Matillon, and Jake Orlowitz.

Twenty-nine featured articles were promoted this month.

• The Battle of the Aegates (nominated by Gog the Mild) was a naval battle fought on 10 March 241 BC between the fleets of Carthage and Rome during the First Punic War. It took place among the Aegates Islands, off the western coast of the island of Sicily. The Carthaginians were commanded by Hanno, and the Romans were under the overall authority of Gaius Lutatius Catulus, but Quintus Valerius Falto commanded during the battle. It was the final and deciding battle of the 23-year-long First Punic War, and ended in a decisive Roman victory. The First Punic War was shortly ended with the signing of the Treaty of Lutatius.
• The bombing of Obersalzberg (nominated by Nick-D) was an air raid carried out by the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command on 25 April 1945 during the last days of World War II in Europe. The operation targeted Obersalzberg, a complex of residences and bunkers in Bavaria which had been built for Adolf Hitler and other key members of Germany's leadership. Many buildings in the complex were destroyed, though Hitler's residence and the bunker network were only slightly damaged. Two Allied bombers were shot down with the loss of four airmen, and 31 Germans were killed.
• Coropuna (nominated by Jo-Jo Eumerus) is a dormant compound volcano located in the Andes mountains of southeast-central Peru. The upper reaches of Coropuna consist of several perennially snowbound conical summits, lending it the name Nevado Coropuna in Spanish. The complex extends over an area of 240 square kilometres (93 square miles) and its highest summit reaches an altitude of 6,377 metres (20,922 feet) above sea level. This makes the Coropuna complex the third-highest of Peru. Its thick ice cap is the most extensive in Earth's tropical zone, with several outlet glaciers stretching out to lower altitudes. Below an elevation of 5,000 metres (16,000 feet), there are various vegetation belts which include trees, peat bogs, and grasses; and agricultural areas and pastures.
• The football match (nominated by Harrias and The Rambling Man) between Manchester United and Ipswich Town played at Old Trafford, Manchester, on 4 March 1995 as part of the 1994–95 FA Premier League finished in a 9–0 victory for Manchester United. The result stands alone as the record home win in the competition's history and the joint biggest win either home or away. The two teams went into the match at opposite ends of the table; Manchester United were second, while Ipswich Town were second-last. Manchester United won in front of the highest attendance in the league to that point in the season.
• SMS Niobe (nominated by Parsecboy and Peacemaker67) was the second member of the ten-ship Gazelle class of light cruisers that were built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The Gazelle class was the culmination of earlier unprotected cruiser and aviso designs, combining the best aspects of both types in what became the progenitor of all future light cruisers of the Imperial fleet. Built to be able to serve with the main German fleet and as a colonial cruiser, she was armed with a battery of ten 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and a top speed of 21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph). The ship had a long career, serving in all three German navies, along with the Yugoslav and Italian fleets over the span of more than forty years.
• The Third Silesian War (nominated by Bryanrutherford0) was a conflict between Prussia and Austria (together with its allies) that lasted from 1756 to 1763 and confirmed Prussia's control of the region of Silesia (now in south-western Poland). The war was fought mainly in Silesia, Bohemia and Upper Saxony and formed one theatre of the Seven Years' War. It was the last of three Silesian Wars fought between Frederick the Great's Prussia and Maria Theresa's Austria in the mid-18th century, all three of which ended in Prussian control of Silesia.
• Hurricane Humberto (nominated by TropicalAnalystwx13 and Juliancolton) was a large and powerful tropical cyclone that caused extensive wind damage in the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda during September 2019. It was the eighth named storm, third hurricane, and second major hurricane – Category 3 or higher on the Saffir–Simpson scale – of the 2019 Atlantic season. Humberto formed on September 13, became a hurricane on the 16 and reached peak intensity as a Category 3 hurricane on September 18. The system transitioned to a potent extratropical cyclone early on September 20. Humberto caused two fatalities and a total of over $25 million in damages.
• John W. Beschter (nominated by Ergo Sum) was a Catholic priest and Jesuit from the Duchy of Luxembourg in the Austrian Netherlands. He emigrated to the United States as a missionary in 1807, where he ministered in rural Pennsylvania and Maryland. Beschter was the last Jesuit pastor of St. Mary's Church in Lancaster, as well as the pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Baltimore, Maryland. He was also a priest at several other German-speaking churches in Pennsylvania. He also briefly served as the 14th President of Georgetown College
• The MAX Red Line (nominated by Truflip99) is a light rail service in Portland, Oregon, United States, operated by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system. It serves 26 stations between Beaverton and Portland, running predominantly east–west. It is the second-busiest service in the MAX system, carrying an average of 22,530 passengers per weekday in September 2019.
• The Mercenary War (nominated by Gog the Mild) was a mutiny by troops employed by Carthage at the end of the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC), backed by an uprising of African settlements revolting against Carthaginian control. It lasted from 241 to late 238 or early 237 BC and ended with Carthage suppressing both the mutiny and the revolt.
• The Midland Railway War Memorial (nominated by HJ Mitchell) is a First World War memorial in Derby in the East Midlands of England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1921. The memorial commemorates employees of the Midland Railway who died while serving in the armed forces during the First World War. Around a third of the company's workforce, some 23,000 men, left to fight, of whom 2,833 were killed. The memorial was unveiled on 15 December 1921. Today, the memorial stands in a conservation area and is a grade II* listed building. It was repaired in 2010 after several of the bronze plaques were stolen and later recovered.
• Racer's hurricane (nominated by Juliancolton) was a destructive tropical cyclone that had severe effects in northeastern Mexico, the Republic of Texas, and the Gulf Coast of the United States in early October 1837. Termed "one of the most famous and destructive hurricanes of the century" by meteorology historian David Ludlum, the storm caused widespread damage and an estimated 105 fatalities.
• Tropical Storm Zelda (nominated by Nova Crystallis) was the last tropical cyclone of the 1991 Pacific typhoon season and caused damage in the Marshall Islands on November 28. It strengthened into a tropical depression on November 27 and reached peak intensity on November 29 , weakening into a tropical storm on December 2 before dissipating on the 7. Zelda caused significant damage in the Marshall Islands, and operations at Kwajalein Missile Range were disrupted severely. No deaths or injuries were reported. About 60 percent of homes were destroyed in Ebeye Island, leaving 6,000 people without residence. Nearly all crops on the islands were destroyed, and food and other supplies were contaminated by salt.
• During the 1980–81 English football season, Ipswich Town F.C. competed in the Football League First Division. During the season, (nominated by The Rambling Man) the club had one of their most successful performances in its history. They finished as runners-up in the league championship, were semi-finalists in the FA Cup and won the UEFA Cup. In all, Ipswich played a total of 66 competitive games during the season, winning 37, drawing 13 and losing 16.
• Lythronax (nominated by FunkMonk, Lythronaxargestes, and IJReid) is a genus of tyrannosaurid dinosaur that lived in North America around 80.6–79.9 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period. The only known specimen was discovered in Utah in the Wahweap Formation of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument in 2009, and consists of a partial skull and skeleton. Size estimates for Lythronax have ranged between 5 and 8 m (16 and 26 ft) in length, and between 0.5 and 2.5 t (1,100 and 5,500 lb) in weight. It was a heavily built tyrannosaurid; as a member of that group, it would have had small, two-fingered forelimbs, strong hindlimbs, and a very robust skull.
• Mary van Kleeck (nominated by Ganesha811) was an American social scientist and social feminist of the 20th century. She was a notable figure in the American labor movement as well as a proponent of scientific management and a planned economy.
• Operation Rösselsprung (nominated by Peacemaker67) ) was a combined airborne and ground assault by the German XV Mountain Corps and collaborationist forces on the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Partisans located in the Bosnian town of Drvar in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. The operation was launched on 25 May 1944, and was aimed at capturing or killing the Partisan leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito and destroying the headquarters, support facilities and co-located Allied military missions. It was a German failure.
• Spacewar! (nominated by PresN) is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. Spacewar! is one of the most important and influential games in the early history of video games. It was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and the public domain code was widely ported and recreated at other computer systems at the time, especially after computer systems with monitors became more widespread towards the end of the decade. It has also been recreated in more modern programming languages for PDP-1 emulators. It directly inspired many other electronic games, such as the first commercial arcade video games, Galaxy Game and Computer Space (1971), and later games such as Asteroids (1979). In 2007, Spacewar! was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress.
• Ice dance (nominated by Figureskatingfan) is a discipline of figure skating that historically draws from ballroom dancing. It joined the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952, and became a Winter Olympic Games medal sport in 1976. According to the International Skating Union (ISU), the governing body of figure skating, an ice dance team consists of one woman and one man.
• Sega (nominated by Red Phoenix) is a Japanese multinational video game developer and publisher headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Sega produces multi-million-selling game franchises including Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, and Yakuza, and is the world's most prolific arcade game producer. It also operates amusement arcades and produces other entertainment products, including Sega Toys. Sega is recognized for its time supporting its own video game consoles, its creativity, and its innovations. In more recent years, it has been criticized for its business decisions and the quality of its creative output.
• Minerva's Den (nominated by David Fuchs) is a single-player downloadable content (DLC) campaign for the 2010 first-person shooter game BioShock 2, developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. The player assumes the role of Subject Sigma, an armored human or "Big Daddy"; Sigma must travel through Minerva's Den, the technological hub of the underwater city of Rapture, to download a schematic of the city's supercomputer. Gameplay is similar to that of BioShock 2, with new enemies and weapons.
• Charles Duke (nominated by Hawkeye7) is an American former astronaut, U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer and test pilot. As lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972, he became the tenth (and as of 2020 remains) and youngest person to walk on the Moon.
• French battleship Bouvet (nominated by Parsecboy) was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy that was built in the 1890s. She was a member of a group of five broadly similar battleships, along with Charles Martel, Jauréguiberry, Carnot, and Masséna, which were ordered in response to the British Royal Sovereign class. Bouvet was the last vessel of the group to be built, and her design was based on that of Charles Martel. Like her half-sisters, she was armed with a main battery of two 305 mm (12 in) guns and two 274 mm (10.8 in) guns in individual turrets. She had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph), which made her one of the fastest battleships in the world at the time. Bouvet proved to be the most successful design of the five, and she was used as the basis for the subsequent Charlemagne class. Nevertheless, she suffered from design flaws that reduced her stability and contributed to her loss in 1915.
• Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville (nominated by Ruby2010) was a British society hostess and writer. The younger daughter of the 5th Duke of Devonshire, she was a member of the wealthy Cavendish and Spencer families and spent her childhood under the care of a governess with her two siblings.
• Hurricane Lane (2018) (nominated by Hurricane Noah and Cyclonebiskit) was a strong tropical cyclone that brought torrential rainfall and strong winds to Hawaii during late August 2018. The storm was the wettest on record in Hawaii, with peak rainfall accumulations of 58 in (1,473 mm) along the eastern slopes of Mauna Loa. Lane was the twelfth named storm, sixth hurricane, fourth major hurricane, and the first of three Category 5 hurricanes of the record-breaking 2018 Pacific hurricane season.
• Ichthyovenator (nominated by PaleoGeekSquared) is a genus of spinosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now Laos, sometime between 125 to 113 million years ago during the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous period.
• Knap Hill (nominated by Mike Christie) lies on the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey, in northern Wiltshire, England, about a mile (1.6 km) north of the village of Alton Priors. At the top of the hill is a causewayed enclosure, a form of Neolithic earthwork which began to appear in England from about 3700 BC onwards, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. It is not known what they were used for; they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites of some kind. The site has been scheduled as an ancient monument.

Twenty featured lists were promoted this month.

• Billy Wilder (1906–2002) was an Austrian-born American filmmaker, who has an extensive filmography (nominated by Cowlibob) Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, he left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He moved to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay for the romantic comedy Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo. Wilder established his directorial reputation with an adaption of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir. Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with crime novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story, The Lost Weekend (1945), about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard, as well as Stalag 17 in 1953. From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), and satires such as The Apartment (1960). He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder was recognized with the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. As of 2019, 10 of his films are in the National Film Registry.
• Alain Prost is a French former racing driver who won four Formula One World Championships. Over a racing career spanning from 1980 to 1993, Prost won 51 Grands Prix at 24 different circuits (nominated by Harrias) . He was most successful at Silverstone and Jacarepaguá, winning five times at both. The majority of his wins (31) were for McLaren; he also won 9 races with Renault, 7 for Williams and 5 with Ferrari. His most successful races were the Brazilian and French Grands Prix, each of which he won six times.
• Hot Country Songs is a chart that ranks the top-performing country music songs in the United States, published by Billboard magazine. The chart was topped by 23 different singles in 1969 (nominated by ChrisTheDude), 31 in 1977 (nominated by ChrisTheDude), 31 in 1978 (nominated by ChrisTheDude), and 33 in 1979 (nominated by ChrisTheDude), which was at the time published under the title Hot Country Singles, based on playlists submitted by country music radio stations and sales reports submitted by stores.
• The Rugby League World Cup is an international rugby league tournament which has been played at various intervals since 1954. Hat-tricks have been achieved 61 times at the tournament (nominated by WDM10), 60 times with tries and just once with field goals.
• The Tour de France is an annual men's multiple stage bicycle race primarily held in France, generally considered the most famous bicycle race in the world. The tours founder, Henri Desgrange, was passionate about taking the Tour up to the highest reachable points of elevation in the Alps and Pyrenees using the most difficult routes. The Tour has since reached many high points (nominated by BaldBoris) with the highest ever during the 1962 race of 2,802 m (9,193 ft) at the Cime de la Bonette in the Alps.
• Mustelidae is a family of mammals in the order Carnivora, which includes weasels, badgers, otters, ferrets, martens, minks, and wolverines, and many other extant and extinct genera. The 23 genera and 59 species (nominated by PresN) of Mustelidae are split into 8 subfamilies. Around 200 further extinct species have been found.
• The Mexican National Tag Team Championship (nominated by MPJ-DK) is a national Mexican professional wrestling championship controlled by the Comisión de Box y Lucha Libre Mexico D.F. (Mexico City Boxing and Wrestling Commission) and competed for by two-man tag teams. The championship was created in 1957, promoted regularly until 2003, and intermittently until 2011 when the last known defense took place. The championship was reintroduced in 2020.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a 2011 anime series created by Magica Quartet (consisting of Akiyuki Shinbo, Atsuhiro Iwakami, Gen Urobuchi, and Ume Aoki), produced by Shaft, and distributed by Aniplex. It follows the story of 14-year-old Japanese middle school student Madoka Kaname, who is offered the chance to have any wish granted on the condition that she become a magical girl and fight against evil witches. There were 12 episodes and 4 drama CDs (nominated by I'm Aya Syameimaru!).
• Scarlett Johansson is an American actress who has appeared in films, television series, video games and stage plays (nominated by Cowlibob).
• Ayushmann Khurrana is an Indian actor, singer, and television host, who has performed numerous times (nominated by CAPTAIN MEDUSA)
• Bandai Namco Holdings is a Japanese holdings company, based in Tokyo, that specializes in video games, anime, toys, arcades and amusement parks. Since its foundation in September 2005, the company has maintained numerous video game franchises (nominated by Namcokid47), notably Pac-Man is its highest-grossing franchise with over US$12.8 billion by 2016 and Tekken is its best-selling franchise with over 49 million copies across multiple platforms. By the late 2010s, Bandai Namco was the largest toy company by revenue and the eighth-largest video game company.
• The Archbishop of Vancouver (nominated by Bloom6132) is the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver who is responsible for looking after its "spiritual and administrative needs". As the archdiocese is the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province encompassing nearly all of British Columbia, the Archbishop of Vancouver also administers the bishops who head the suffragan dioceses of Kamloops, Nelson, Prince George, and Victoria. The current archbishop is J. Michael Miller. Nine men have been Archbishop of Vancouver; another two were heads of its antecedent jurisdictions.
• In cricket, a player is said to have completed a century when they score 100 or more runs in a single innings. The Under-19 Cricket World Cup is the international championship of under-19 One Day International cricket, and is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was first held in 1988, and then 1998, since when it has been contested every two years. As of the 2020 edition, a total of 130 centuries (nominated by Bharatiya29) have been scored by 115 players from 18 different teams.
• Washington College is a private liberal arts college in Chestertown, Maryland, which is on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. There are many notable Washington College alumni (nominated by Guerillero), including state governors, United States senators, Major League Baseball players, businessmen, authors, and academics.
• French electronic music duo Daft Punk have a varied discography (nominated by Philroc) consisting of four studio albums, two live albums, one compilation album, one soundtrack album, three remix albums, two video albums, twenty-two singles and nineteen music videos.
• Formula One, abbreviated to F1, is the highest class of open-wheeled auto racing defined by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motorsport's world governing body.The polesitter is the driver that has qualified for a Grand Prix in pole position, at the front of the starting grid. There have been several polesitters (nominated by NapHit)
• The New York City Marathon, one of the six World Marathon Majors, is a 26.2-mile (42.2 km) race which has been held in New York City since 1970. It is the largest marathon in the world; since 2013, every race except one has had over 50,000 finishers.There have been many winners of the marathon (nominated by Harrias). In total, 35 men and 30 women have won the open division of the New York City Marathon, while 9 men and 7 women have won the wheelchair division. The winners have represented 22 different countries: Americans have won the marathon the most, doing so on 32 occasions; Kenyans have won 26 times; and Norwegians 10 times.

Carmaker1 case was requested 17 April 2020; declined on 2 May.

Medicine case

• Workshop closed 12 May 2020
• Proposed decision posted 26 May 2020

Last month, The Signpost stated "many of the workshop proposals appear to favor letting the editors solve the content dispute on their own." An unprecedented "topic moratorium" was proposed by active Arbcom member David Fuchs.

One quarter of the twelve active arbitrators recused themselves: Casliber, DGG, and Newyorkbrad. Recusal is usually done when an arbitrator considers him- or herself unable to make an impartial decision, often due to closeness to the subject in either a positive or negative way, but there is no requirement to give a reason for recusal. The Signpost notes without comment that one of the involved parties, Doc James, was appointed as a community-selected Wikimedia Foundation trustee in August 2017.^[1]

Remedies proposed as of publication deadline include (reminders/admonishments have been omitted; a Y means the remedy has passed as of publication deadline):

• New discretionary sanctions topic: pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing broadly construed Y
• Topic moratorium (applied to community): to include prices only after development of local consensus
• Editing restriction (applied to Doc James): to not include prices in articles Y
• Topic ban (applied to QuackGuru): to not edit medicine articles Y

Jytdog case

• Closed 13 April 2020

Jytdog is indefinitely banned from the English Wikipedia. 11 yea, 0 nay (DGG recused). Issues identified in the findings include Jytdog's history of oversight blocks, Jytdog's other sanctions (two voluntary interaction restrictions/bans with another, and an indefinite topic ban), a history of edit warring and incivility, and uninvited off-wiki contact with another editor.

Due to the inclusion of the Op-Ed "Where Is Political Bias Taking Us?" by Atsme, we are taking the unusual step of reviewing an amendment request from several months ago. American politics 2 (AP2) discretionary sanctions were taken up by Arbitration Committee in a December 2019 amendment request. It was the twelfth request for amendment or clarification and perhaps is of special importance during this U.S. election year. In the December request, Atsme objected to unilateral actions based on [a specific administrator's] customized DS which has lead to POV creep and specific DS for specific editors as he sees fit. He is micromanaging AP2 and controlling the narrative.

Atsme said this month (May) to the administrator who had applied the discretionary sanctions to her under the aegis of AP2 (which were lifted in March), your response is why I have made it my mission to draw attention to the problems you and a few other admins have created with DS and AE, specifically unilateral actions, and the POV creep associated with sole discretion. Your response solidifies my position, and I will use it in my arguments until the community is aware of why this is an extremely important issue to the future of the project as it relates to maintaining NPOV, and the ability for editors to engage in discussions where the exchange of free thought and ideas is paramount. Other respondents at the December amendment request made observations about the expansion of DS to become "boutique" or "tailored" sanctions at the unreviewed discretion of a single administrator. Comments by two arbitrators either noted their own concerns or the concerns of others: DGG said Delegating [DS] to whatever one of the several hundred individual admins may choose to exercise their imagination is another matter entirely ... no one admin should repeatedly engage in arb enforcement on the same individual or take a disproportionate share for any large area, and GorillaWarfare said [T]his does not seem to be a great place to also address whether admins should be creating their own sets of custom sanctions for use in areas where discretionary sanctions have been authorized. However it does seem like it would be worth visiting that issue somewhere, since there seem to be many people who share concerns about them.

Correction: The original headline made it appear that the Medicine case decision was closed. Currently the votes for an editing restriction on Doc James stand at 7-0, with 5 votes needed to pass, and the votes for closing the case at 2-0, with a net +4 needed to close. We regret the error.

Some of the most controversial topics to edit in Wikipedia are in the political arena. Just the thought of editing even one political article can have a chilling effect. With temperature in mind, I'll add that the heat generated on talk pages by some of the political discussions makes temperature predictions for global warming pale in comparison. I know several admins who would go out of their way to avoid the area altogether – like purposely crossing a busy street in the style of Pamela Karlan ^[1] – you'd have to hog-tie 'em and drag 'em into that arena but not without a fight.

The biggest issue confronting us with our political articles is political bias, which is second only to Wikipedia's own systemic gender bias. The number of active male editors in the political arena dwarfs the number of active females, and the same applies to real-world career politicians. Such an imbalance may contribute to the aggressiveness and bullying we occasionally encounter in our bold-revert-discuss collaborations on article talk pages but then, if the balance ever shifted, the discussions might feel more like marathons. It is natural for people to rally around their home team, be it football, baseball, or a political election, and we already know there will always be a few in the group who will take things too far; Wikipedia is not immune, and I doubt we'll see a vaccine for it anytime soon.

Much of our political bias stems from media bias which drives our narrative and inevitably results in biased content in some of our political biographies. The issues are likely to remain for some time before copyeditors move in to make repairs and updates with less chance of being reverted, and often citing better sources that are authored by academics and historians with a retrospective advantage. Another contributing factor to disruption is the rush to publish, which leaves us vulnerable to the same mistakes that are in our cited sources. When there's big news breaking, editors tend to ignore our policies and guidelines on recentism, not news, and news organizations, the latter involving media conglomerates and their echo chambers which threaten free thought and diversity. ^[2] Such disregard makes it difficult to achieve neutrality, especially during a presidential election year.

My 30 plus year career as a media professional has sensitized me to political bias, propaganda, sensationalism, spin, etc. Spotting it is second nature to me. It wasn't that long ago when such tactics were considered unethical by TV news anchors and bureau chiefs. U.S. public television had to walk an even straighter, more neutral line when it came to politics. ^[3] They were governed more closely by FCC regulations in relation to each station's source of funding; ^[4] they did not want to risk losing their broadcast license. ^[5] When public broadcasters made controversial decisions regarding programming of a political nature, they were careful to not do anything that might exacerbate concerns about the use of taxpayer dollars in media. ^[6] Both commercial and public stations broadcast over public airwaves whereas networks, cable and satellite transmissions operate under different FCC regulations; none are immune to political pressure and again, there is no vaccine for it. ^[5][7] If you wanted to keep your job, you learned to leave your biases at the door or be shown the door. Our scripts, productions, and editing were pragmatic and neutral...until they weren't anymore.

I first noticed the paradigm shift from print to digital and analog to digital around 1994. I was producing a one-hour special about sturgeon for PBS broadcast, and never would have guessed that politics would be involved, aside from the subject being so fishy. During production, I had Bobby Kennedy Jr. lined up to do the narration but when I submitted the first draft to my entry station, they rejected Kennedy because of his family's political ties, despite his being a law professor at Pace University and not a politician. That incident demonstrated to me how closely public airwaves were being monitored by the FCC, so I hired James Drury instead, and by 1996, the program was airing on PBS affiliates without incident.^[8][9][10] The stations also used the program during local fund-raising drives, which was probably their primary reason for rejecting Kennedy; i.e., to keep it neutral, get a cowboy.

On March 7, 2019, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted an event they described as "troubling trends for press freedom and democracy itself" titled "The War on the Press: A Conversation with Marvin Kalb and Ted Koppel". Koppel's words align with some of the points I've made here, as well as those I made in several article talk page discussions that were not well received and led to my indefinite topic ban from American politics a few years ago. The topic ban was successfully appealed.

I'm terribly concerned that when you talk about the New York Times these days, when you talk about the Washington Post these days, we're not talking about the New York Times of fifty years ago, and we are not talking about the Washington Post of fifty years ago; we're talking about organizations that I believe have in fact decided, as an organization, that Donald J. Trump is bad for the United States. We have things appearing on the front page of the New York Times right now that never would have appeared fifty years ago. Analysis, commentary, on the front page.
— Ted Koppel ^[11][12]

Somewhere around mid to late 1990s, I was doing a bit of field production for CNN Headline News, and I remember one assignment in particular in mid-January 1999 that involved an interview with an associate of George D. Lundberg and it coincided with the Clinton impeachment trial. I became a little suspicious while taping the interview because the news anchor's line of questioning steered the response. When I watched the edited segment on the news, it was easy to spot the political spin. In contrast, the Washington Post, which did not align so closely with CNN back then as they do now, published a factually accurate article, same time frame, same subject. Their article stated: George D. Lundberg, for 17 years the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was summarily fired yesterday morning because of the upcoming publication of an article his boss believes is appearing largely "to exact political leverage" for the president in his current impeachment travail. ^[13] That particular shoot marked a milestone in my career because it motivated me to focus entirely on nature programming. Nature doesn't play around with politics; in fact, she doesn't play around at all.

Not all admins who have taken on the task of arbitration enforcement choose to act unilaterally. The majority are lenient, understanding, even-tempered, proven problem solvers, prefer a consensus approach, and have done an excellent job at leaving their biases at login. We tend to see them as superheroes because they handle the tedious jobs and assume tasks that few are willing to execute. As a result, they have earned the community's trust and are not at issue here; however, political bias can materialize unnoticed.

When enforcing discretionary sanctions, admins are authorized by Arbcom to take unilateral action using their sole discretion against a disruptive editor. I seriously doubt WP has an excess of administrators who are completely void of political bias, but I believe most admins are good-intentioned and will try to do the right thing. Anonymity does tend to make people bolder. It is also easy to get the wrong impression and harbor preconceived notions about an anonymous contributor based on a simple misunderstanding of intent or misinterpretation of something they innocently said or did. It is not always easy to WP:AGF, especially when editing in controversial topic areas. It is also quite conceivable to think real life may be a priority for some admins, who find themselves pressed for the time to properly review a case, and read all the diffs in context in order to avoid rash judgments; that's one rash calamine lotion doesn't help. We are all capable of being overly emotional, getting frustrated and impatient, or saying and doing things we may regret later but admins rarely falter. We are all volunteers, each with our own personal reason for wanting to help build the encyclopedia, while collaborating productively and doing our best to avoid disruption...except when we're not, and then it becomes a war of the worlds.

One of the consequences of Arbcom's decision to delegate such unleashed power to individual admins in the name of AE was a shift in balance that did not actually resolve the problems that crop up at controversial articles; rather, it simply took things in a different direction and opened the door to POV creep; i.e., bias and prejudice, unknowing or otherwise. Today's clickbait media and biased news sources are what I consider interest compounded daily except it's not in the form of money in our pockets, rather it's trouble on our plates. People are naturally drawn to sources that agree with their political POV as evidenced by a January 2020 analysis conducted by Pew Research.^[14] To that, add today's journalistic opinion and conglomerates pushing a political agenda in an echo chamber, and we have the perfect storm.

Admins are elected by the community, in part, to take quick action against vandals and stop disruption, not silence political opposition in an effort to prevent disruption. Disruption is subjective and falls under multiple definitions, which increases the potential for POV creep. Do the math: sole discretion + unilateral action + a relatively high level of protection against reversal = Fort Knox. But articles get even more protection via DS because the common remedies used are restraint and restrictions. Restraint comes in the form of indef t-bans, article bans, blocks, iBans, etc. Restrictions come in the form of BRD, 1RR consensus required, semi- or full-page protection, and on and on...all via DS, be it whole or in part, or what one editor referred to as do-it-yourself ruminations that look more like the Mad Hatter at play on the internet than anything Arbcom or the more thoughtful volunteers at AE would consider useful. Whatever we call it, it inhibits the free exchange of thoughts and ideas that WP was founded on. And what exactly do restraints and restrictions accomplish? Discretionary sanctions open the door to gaming and inevitably, to tendentious editing which is what Arbcom's remedy was supposed to prevent.

Few editors have dared to speak up about the issues because of the chilling effects of having admins with unbridled power targeting specific editors and creating designer sanctions customized for that editor only. Any admin who believes they know an editor well enough to predict their responses and actions is involved in the sense that preconceived notions take the form of prejudice and are a valid reason for Arbcom to consider some form of admin rotation in controversial topic areas.

I'm not sure how we went from a panel of arbitrators imposing binding solutions to individual administrators imposing binding solutions, with the exception that admins can use sole discretion with unbridled power that individual arbitrators don't even possess; Arbcom must act as a panel. With reference to the amendment portion of my ARCA case last year, the relative responses to my DS/AE questions by three arbitrators were encouraging. Hopefully, the committee will see the need to rein in the unbridled power they've delegated now that some of the unforeseen consequences have come to light, including micromanagement of an entire topic area, POV creep and neutrality questions, prejudice, an unhealthy degree of INVOLVED and overreach that goes beyond the scope of regular administrative duties. Such absolute power doesn't just create a chilling effect, it creates glaciers, and Arbcom has full control of the thermostat. The question is, will they take the necessary actions?

This month Charles Sharp published the first issue of his magazine A Sharp Eye on Wildlife Photography which is available gratis online. Sharp is well-known on Wikimedia Commons for his many featured pictures and the magazine has tips on how you can improve your photography. He says that "its prime objective is to encourage more photographers worldwide to contribute to Wikipedia and Commons." But some of us just like to look at the photos, so a selection of them from the magazine is included below. A short section of the magazine shows the work of Frank Schulenburg. Three of his photos are included below as well.

• 
  Cuban black hawk (Buteogallus gundlachii)
• 
  Red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata)
• 
  Red-billed oxpecker (Buphagus erythrorhynchus) on an impala (Aepyceros melampus)
• 
  Asian pied starlings (Gracupica contra)

• 
  Blue-tailed damselfies (Ischnura elegans)
• 
  Large white (Pieris brassicae)
• 
  Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
• 
  African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana)
• 
  Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus) male
• 
  Variegated golden frog (Mantella baroni)

• 
  Ground agama (Agama aculeata)

• 
  Sonoma chipmunk (Tamias sonomae)
• 
  Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata)

• 
  American bison (Bison bison)

This announcement originally appeared at the Wikimedia Foundation News

On May 22 the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted to ratify new trust and safety standards for Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects. The standards, as outlined in a new Community Culture Statement, provide direction and priority to address harassment and incivility within the Wikimedia movement and create welcoming, inclusive, harassment-free spaces in which people can contribute productively and debate constructively.

Specifically, the Board has tasked the Foundation with:

• Developing and introducing, in close consultation with volunteer contributor communities, a universal code of conduct that will be a binding minimum set of standards across all Wikimedia projects;
• Taking actions to ban, sanction, or otherwise limit the access of Wikimedia movement participants who do not comply with these policies and the Terms of Use;
• Working with community functionaries to create and refine a retroactive review process for cases brought by involved parties, excluding those cases which pose legal or other severe risks; and
• Significantly increasing support for and collaboration with community functionaries primarily enforcing such compliance in a way that prioritizes the personal safety of these functionaries.

The Board’s statement formalizes years’ of longstanding efforts by individual volunteers, Wikimedia affiliates, Foundation staff, and others to stop harassment and promote inclusivity on Wikimedia projects.

Please see the Board’s Community Culture Statement below and on Meta-Wiki.

Harassment, toxic behavior, and incivility in the Wikimedia movement are contrary to our shared values and detrimental to our vision and mission. They negatively impact our ability to collect, share, and disseminate free knowledge, harm the immediate well-being of individual Wikimedians, and threaten the long-term health and success of the Wikimedia projects. The Board does not believe we have made enough progress toward creating welcoming, inclusive, harassment-free spaces in which people can contribute productively and debate constructively.

In recognition of the urgency of these issues, the Board is directing the Wikimedia Foundation to directly improve the situation in collaboration with our communities. This should include developing sustainable practices and tools that eliminate harassment, toxicity, and incivility, promote inclusivity, cultivate respectful discourse, reduce harms to participants, protect the projects from disinformation and bad actors, and promote trust in our projects.

Specifically, the Foundation shall:

• Develop and introduce a universal code of conduct (UCoC) that will be a binding minimum set of standards across all Wikimedia projects.
  • The first phase, covering policies for in-person and virtual events, technical spaces, and all Wikimedia projects and wikis, and developed in collaboration with the international Wikimedia communities, will be presented to the Board for ratification by August 30, 2020.
  • The second phase, outlining clear enforcement pathways, and refined with broad input from the Wikimedia communities, will be presented to the Board for ratification by the end of 2020;
• Take actions to ban, sanction, or otherwise limit the access of Wikimedia movement participants who do not comply with these policies and the Terms of Use;
• Work with community functionaries to create and refine a retroactive review process for cases brought by involved parties, excluding those cases which pose legal or other severe risks; and
• Significantly increase support for and collaboration with community functionaries primarily enforcing such compliance in a way that prioritizes the personal safety of these functionaries.

Until such directives are implemented, the Board instructs the Foundation to adopt and implement policies for reducing harassment and toxicity on our projects and minimizing legal risks for the movement, in collaboration with communities whenever practicable. Until these two phases of the UCoC are complete and operational an interim review process involving community functionaries will be in effect. In this interim period, the Product Committee of the Board of Trustees will also advise the Trust & Safety team.

To that end, the Board further directs the Foundation, in collaboration with the communities, to make additional investments in Trust & Safety capacity, including but not limited to: development of tools needed to assist our volunteers and staff, research to support data-informed decisions, development of clear metrics to measure success, development of training tools and materials (including building communities’ capacities around harassment awareness and conflict resolution), and consultations with international experts on harassment, community health and children’s rights, as well as additional hiring.

The above efforts will be undertaken in coordination and collaboration with appropriate partners from across the movement, seek to increase effective community governance of conduct and behavioral standards, and reduce the long-term need of the Foundation to act. It is the shared goal of the Board and Foundation that these efforts advance a sustainable Wikimedia movement and support, rather than substitute, effective models of community governance.

We urge every member of the Wikimedia communities to collaborate in a way that models the Wikimedia values of openness and inclusivity, step forward to do their part to create a safe and welcoming culture for all, stop hostile and toxic behavior, support people who have been targeted by such behavior, assist good-faith people learning to contribute, and help set clear expectations for all contributors.

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

In a paper^[1] published in the proceedings of last month's (virtual) The Web Conference, four researchers from Boise State University (collaborating with an English Wikipedia administrator) present a machine learning framework for "automatically detecting Wikipedia undisclosed paid contributions, so that they can be quickly identified and flagged for removal."

Their approach is based on constructing two datasets, of articles and editors, each consisting of undisclosed paid editing (UPE; as previously confirmed by Wikipedia administrators) and a control group of articles/users assumed to be "benign" (i.e., not the result of, or engaged in, UPE). In more detail, the authors started from a previously published dataset that had collected the results of 23 past sockpuppet investigations,^[2] yielding 1,006 known UPE accounts, and added 98 manually determined UPE accounts. A sample of articles newly created in March 2019 (limited to those created by users with less than 200 edits who were manually assessed to not being engaged in paid editing) was used to come with the benign parts of the two datasets.

For both articles and editors, the authors tested three different classification algorithms (logistic regression, support vector machine, and random forest) on a relatively simple set of features (e.g., for articles, the number of categories, or for editors, the average time between two consecutive edits made by the user). Still, the resulting method appears quite effective for detecting undisclosed paid articles:

"when we combine both article and user-based features, we improve our classification results upon each group of features individually: AUROC of 0.983 and average precision of 0.913. This means that both article content and information about the account that created the article are important for detecting undisclosed paid articles."

Among the most effective features was "the percentage of edits made by a user that are less than 10 bytes. Undisclosed paid editors try to become autoconfirmed users; thus they typically make around 10 minor edits before creating a promotional article."

Overall, the results appear to hold high promise for a practical application that could be of significant assistance to the editing community in combating the abuse of Wikipedia for promotional purposes, which is an ongoing and pervasive problem (compare e.g. this month's Signpost coverage of a recent investigation on the French Wikipedia). Obviously, any output of such an algorithm would be needed to be vetted manually, considering the relatively small but (in absolute terms) still considerable number of false positives. The paper contains little discussion of possible limitations of the sockpuppet investigations dataset used (e.g., how representative it might be of UPE efforts overall, as opposed to focused on the activities of some specific PR agencies), leaving open the possibility of overfitting.

The paper also includes an analysis of the network of the articles in the dataset, with two articles connected by an edge if the same user had edited both (see figure). But its results do not appear to have been used in the detection method. Among the findings: "there is less user collaboration among positive articles [as measured by local clustering coefficient and PageRank]. UPEs only work on a limited number of Wikipedia titles that they are interested in promoting, whereas genuine users edit more pages related to their field of expertise."

The authors highlight the importance of sockpuppets, observing that "undisclosed paid editors typically act as a group of sockpuppet accounts" and basing most of their ground truth dataset on sockpuppet cases. A brief literature review covers previous research on the automatic detection of sockpuppets on Wikipedia, including a paper from the 2016 Web Conference^[3] presenting a method able "to detect 99% of fake accounts," and an earlier stylometric method (cf. our 2013 coverage: " Sockpuppet evidence from automated writing style analysis" / "New sockpuppet corpus"). An ongoing research project by the Wikimedia Foundation (presented at last year's Wikimania) concerns the practical implementation of such a tool.

As part of The Web Conference, the annual Wiki Workshop "[brought] together researchers exploring all aspects of Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other Wikimedia projects", this year held as an one-day Zoom meeting with over 100 participants. Among the papers (see also proceedings):

From the abstract:^[4]

"We find that Wikipedia links are extremely common in important search contexts, appearing in 67–84% of all SERPs [search engine results pages] for common and trending queries, but less often for medical queries. Furthermore, we observe that Wikipedia links often appear in 'Knowledge Panel' SERP elements and are in positions visible to users without scrolling, although Wikipedia appears less in prominent positions on mobile devices. Our findings reinforce the complementary notions that (1) Wikipedia content and research has major impact outside of the Wikipedia domain and (2) powerful technologies like search engines are highly reliant on free content created by volunteers."

See also slides

From the abstract:^[5]

"we describe an embedding-based entity recommendation framework for Wikipedia that organizes Wikipedia into a collection of graphs layered on top of each others, learns complementary entity representations from their topology and content, and combines them with a lightweight learning-to-rank approach to recommend related entities on Wikipedia. [...]. Balancing simplicity and quality, this framework provides default entity recommendations for English and other languages in the Yahoo! Knowledge Graph, which Wikipedia is a core subset of."

See also slides

From the abstract:^[6]

"researchers who intend to analyze Wikipedia as seen by its readers should work with HTML, rather than wikitext. Since Wikipedia’s revision history is publicly available exclusively in wikitext format, researchers have had to produce HTML themselves, typically by using Wikipedia’s REST API for ad-hoc wikitext-to-HTML parsing. This approach, however, (1) does not scale to very large amounts of data and (2) does not correctly expand macros in historical article revisions. We solve these problems by developing a parallelized architecture for parsing massive amounts of wikitext using local instances of MediaWiki, enhanced with the capacity of correct historical macro expansion. By deploying our system, we produce and release WikiHist.html, English Wikipedia’s full revision history in HTML format. We highlight the advantages of WikiHist.html over raw wikitext in an empirical analysis of Wikipedia’s hyperlinks, showing that over half of the wiki links present in HTML are missing from raw wikitext, and that the missing links are important for user navigation."

See also slides and the underlying 7 terabyte dataset with code

From the abstract:^[7]

"In the current proposed study, I aim to understand this new model of content generation process through the lens of gatekeepers in social media platforms such as Wikipedia. Specifically, I aim to discover ways to identify gatekeepers and assess their impact on information quality and content polarization."

See also slides

From the abstract:^[8]

"to extract some properties of a given scholar, structured data, like infobox in Wikipedia, are often used as training datasets. But it may lead to serious mis-labeling problems, such as institutions and alma maters, and a Fine-Grained Entity Typing method is expected. Thus, a novel Relation Embedding method based on local context is proposed to enhance the typing performance. Also, to highlight critical concepts in selective bibliographies of scholars, a novel Keyword Extraction method based on Learning to Rank is proposed to bridge the gap that conventional supervised methods fail to provide junior scholars with relative importance of keywords."

See also slides

From the abstract:^[9]

"we propose a way to match red links in one Wikipedia edition to existent pages in another edition. We define the task as a Named Entity Linking problem because red link titles are mostly named entities. We solve it in a context of Ukrainian red links and English existing pages. We created a dataset of 3171 most frequent Ukrainian red links and a dataset of almost 3 million pairs of red links and the most probable candidates for the correspondent pages in English Wikipedia."

See also slides

From the abstract:^[10]

"we propose the reconstruction and analysis of the collaboration networks of performing artists registered in Wikidata. Our results suggest that different performing arts share similar collaboration patterns, as well as a mechanism of community formation that is consistent with observed social behaviors."

See also slides

From the abstract:^[11]

"We leverage a large scale natural experiment to study how exogenous content contributions to Wikipedia articles affect the attention they attract and how that attention spills over to other articles in the network. Results reveal that exogenously added content leads to significant, substantial and long-term increases in both content consumption and subsequent contributions. Furthermore, we find significant attention spillover to downstream hyperlinked articles."

See also slides

From the abstract:^[12]

"This article proposes that an appropriate assessment of the geographical bias in multilingual Wikipedia's content should consider not only the number of articles linked to places, but also their internal positioning –i.e. their location in different languages and their centrality in the network of references between articles. This idea is studied empirically, systematically evaluating the geographic concentration in the biographical coverage of globally recognized individuals (those whose biographies are found in more than 25 language versions of Wikipedia). Considering the internal positioning levels of these biographies, only 5 countries account for more than 62% of Wikipedia's biographical coverage. In turn, the inequality in coverage between countries reaches very high levels, estimated with a Gini coefficient of .84 and a Palma ratio of 207."

From the abstract:^[13]

"We present Citation Detective, a system designed to periodically run Citation Need models on a large number of articles in English Wikipedia, and release public, usable, monthly data dumps exposing sentences classified as missing citations. [...] We provide an example of a research direction enabled by Citation Detective, by conducting a large-scale analysis of citation quality in Wikipedia, showing that article citation quality is positively correlated with article quality, and that articles in Medicine and Biology are the most well sourced in English Wikipedia."

See also code and blog post.

For coverage of some other papers from Wiki Workshop 2020, see last month's issue ("What is trending on (which) Wikipedia?"), and upcoming issues. This blog post about the event covers several non-paper aspects of the schedule, including the keynote by Jess Wade.

• See the page of the monthly Wikimedia Research Showcase for videos and slides of past presentations.
• Submission deadlines for the call for papers for OpenSym 2020 (to be held online from 25-27 August 2020) have been extended to June 15.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, I've been looking for ways to occupy once-precious time. I'm living in Columbus, Ohio, a city largely unknown even to Americans. My latest project is improving content on the transit system here: the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA). I'll take you through how I figured out how to list its bus services, and obtain interactive maps of each of the routes.

The agency is peculiar: it's a very advanced network, and it keeps supporting rail transport, though the car-oriented public and state government largely disagree. Columbus is now the largest city in America without any form of rail transit, yet its bus system is extensive, modern, well-organized, and reliable. Perhaps it's because it's single-mindedly focused on bus transit, or because its system is manageably small relative to top U.S. cities, it has one of the highest riderships and most extensive networks for a standalone bus service.^{[N 1]}

I decided a list of routes was important, it's something all similarly-sized transit agencies have. I didn't scan over that many similar articles, but stumbled across good color coding and formats in List of bus routes in Lahore. I decided to adopt parts, using colors to distinguish between COTA's standard, frequent, and express lines. I like how Lahore's list includes compass directions, something I later found most route lists lack. I developed COTA's list to replicate the agency's own standards; for instance, route 10 is titled 'E Broad/W Broad', with front and side rollsigns displaying 'eastbound' or 'westbound', cycling to its destination, either 'Westwoods Park & Ride' or 'Limited Brands'. The 'frequent' route operates every 15 minutes, every day of the week.

• 
  "102 via N High"
• 
  "102 to downtown"
• 
  "Rear door only"

I also love maps; I'm a visual learner, and taking COTA, I want to know where it can take me. Google Maps is great at showing rail lines, but never shows bus lines unless you're on its mobile app clicking on individual stops. Even then, it shows every line serving that stop, with nothing to clearly distinguish between individual routes. I was glad to find OpenStreetMap (OSM) has all the routes already in its system, but I had no idea how to make that into maps. I was already very familiar with using {{maplink}} to show interactive maps of where buildings are, but needed to know how to make route maps, and use OSM data in making them.

So after much trial and error, and vainly searching for a tutorial to follow, I managed to make it work. There's a network for OSM editors hosted by Slack, which helped for working out the many kinks for someone who had never dealt with Json or Commons data files before. We developed the method, and then a tutorial: Wikipedia:Creating route maps from OpenStreetMap data. Thanks Minh Nguyễn and Richard Welty!

If you're interested in doing similar mapping, consider registering as part of OpenStreetMap. They make it easy – on their website, hit 'sign up', and it even lets you use Wikimedia's OAuth as an authorization tool. Once signed up, it will immediately guide you through a walkthrough of how to navigate and edit OpenStreetMap. Luckily, the basics are mostly intuitive enough, with many functions similar to Google Maps. To many Wikipedians just starting to use OSM and wanting to perform simple tasks, the tutorial may not even be necessary.

So take a look at List of COTA bus routes. I think all bus and train line articles should include these maps. Especially for systems like COTA, where the routes are very stable, having only changed once in its 50-year history. It's also helped me learn enough to utilize City of Columbus data in making maps for parks, neighborhoods, libraries, National Register-listed sites, and more. I recently created the first up-to-date list of mapping tools too, so you can create your own maps on Wikipedia, and can choose any one of many ways to do it.

In a show of resiliency and innovation, the global COVID-19 pandemic has spurred the Wikimedia community to employ new technologies for remote virtual collaboration. The efforts have ranged from the former Wikipedia Weekly podcast being re-energized as a video-oriented show and re-launched as a network of shows with multiple languages and participants, and a broad diversity of content, sending out live streams to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter/Periscope, special programming such as the Wikimedia New York City's COVID-19 Symposium from the chapter representing the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, to setting up a new videoconferencing system on Wikimedia servers (Wikimedia Meet) to running the first Wikimedia Remote Hackathon with an international volunteer group. The community has also utilized multiple videoconferencing platforms to hold virtual edit-a-thons, meetups and events, and a new Telegram discussion group with more than 120 participants (CROW, see below) has been established to exchange experiences and ideas.

The Francophone Wikimedia community, and other community members, have also been prolific users of the Twitch video network (fr:Wikipédia:Twitch) to demonstrate Wikipedia and Wikidata editing to a wider audience that might be more familiar with gaming and entertainment. Efforts like #1lib1ref, Wiki Loves Earth and Women in Red have all taken to the virtual and video spaces to engage new audiences.

While live video participation in events was possible in the past, it was often de-prioritized for major in-real-life gatherings such as Wikimania or Wikimedia Hackathon. COVID-19 has created an opportunity to include audiences and community who had been previously excluded because of time and distance. The format of these early experiments is the video talk, with live streaming and automatic archiving, simultaneously broadcast to non-wiki social media with the possibility of archiving on Commons.

While commercial platforms have offered live streaming options for some time, the Wikipedia community has some special needs including values to promote free and open content, manage moderation, and maximize accessibility. Sorting best practices for how to run an online event requires Wikimedia community feedback.

For years, Wikipedia Weekly had focused on a maintaining a robust and active Facebook group of 1,800 members instead of podcasting, With the impact of COVID-19, the podcast was revived with a special video episode on March 18, 2020 about an "Information crisis" around the pandemic in Wikipedia. Since then, the show has had a regular series of guests, editing sessions and tutorials both in English and Swedish, and welcomes more participants with programming ideas. Contact Andrew Lih, Richard Knipel or Jan Ainali for more information.

The Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19 was a Saturday May 9 2020 event in which Wikimedia New York City arranged for presenters to speak on Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19. Wikipedia beat reporter Stephen Harrison reported on 27 May in Slate that a recurring theme of the symposium was the depth of Wikipedia's content on COVID-19, and that the extensive nature of Wikipedia makes it ideal for documenting human thought and public sentiment on a range of topics at various times. Over 300 watched it live, and several times that have watched it since.

The symposium itself was a pre-scheduled live broadcast presenting four speakers with moderator user:Rhododendrites, a member of the New York City Wikimedia chapter and also one of the event organizers. Behind the scenes three other Wikimedia NYC volunteers were managing the event with responsibilities including wrangling speakers when they were due to go live, fielding and queuing comments for live speaker response, wielding the ban hammer in case of uncivil commentators sending in live comments from the wilds of Facebook and YouTube live broadcast, and of course keeping time as any moderators would do in any conventional conference presentation. When asked to estimate how many labor hours the organization and presentation of the symposium took just from Wikimedia NYC volunteers, Rhododendrites said about 60 hours, "more time than I initially thought, but a bit less time than it takes to organize an in-person symposium".

The Wikipedia Weekly podcast provided some early inspiration for this event by hosting more casual conversation with Wikipedians Emily Temple-Wood and an earlier one with Netha Hussein.

• Emily Temple-Wood and COVID-19
• Interview with Netha Hussain

Our highlight video for conferences is an introductory session to the Remote Hackathon, originally planned for Tirana, Albania. This effort is part of a larger movement toward Conference Remote Options for Wikimedians, supported by a popular Telegram channel.

Our highlight video for environmental topics is a launch day interview for Wiki Loves Earth 2020, a global project originally started by Wikimedia Ukraine.

Supplementary videos on this topic cover Earth Day itself and the iNaturalist tool, the latter as part of the Remote Hackathon.

• Earth Day
• iNaturalist

Our highlight video for institutional engagement covers conflict of interest and best practices for GLAMs.

A supplementary videos on this topic a session with the Wikimedians in Residence Network.

• WREN

Our highlight video for countering systemic bias covers the geographical underrepresentation of heritage sites in North Africa through the WikiKsour project, started by Wikimedia Morocco User Group.

Supplementary videos on this topic include sessions covering gender diversity in biographies with Women in Red and lingustic diversity with the Celtic Knot Conference.

• Women in Red
• Rebecca O'Neill of Wikimedia Community Ireland

Anyone with complements and support for this format can convey those to the video creators and event hosts, and anyone with criticism or feature requests can direct all of that to the Wikimedia Foundation.

On 29 March 2020, the number of unreviewed good article nominations reached 715, an all time high. This number was sufficiently high that the page listing good article nominations reached its maximum size, and could not transclude any more reviews, resulting in some nominations failing to be listed on the page. BlueMoonset started a discussion on the GAN talk page, and as a result a backlog drive was begun that has brought the number of unreviewed nominations down to 232, as of publication.

As long as there have been good article nominations, reviewing backlogs have been a concern. In 2007, the Signpost noted rather drearily that "backlogs continue to grow", and by May a relatively informal backlog drive was in progress. The drive ended in June and another was quickly begun in July. That drive alone claimed to have resulted in 406 good article reviews, driving the backlog down to 82 outstanding and 54 unreviewed nominations. A third drive that year, planned for September, was cancelled after it was determined "more time was needed to avoid reviewers suffering from burn out". Ten subsequent drives from October 2008 to August 2016 saw varying amounts of success.

After a three year break, another drive was organized in September 2019, with Barkeep49 and Lee Vilenski acting as coordinators. On 1 September the backlog hit 626 nominations and 533 unreviewed. By 1 October, the totals were down to 463 and 337, respectively. As with all drives, after its success, the backlog again began to climb. By 1 February 2020 it had reached 629, surpassing the total before the drive. Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

As the number of outstanding nominations peaked at 715 on 29 March, a backlog drive set for April and May was organized by Harrias. Harrias and Lee Vilenski agreed to serve as coordinators.

After beginning on 1 April, the number of outstanding nominations was already down to 693. The number of unreviewed nominations dropped from 605 to 519, or a 14.9% change in only two days. In the first six days, the number of unreviewed nominations dropped by more than twenty per day, peaking at 50 on 3 April. It was then above ten every day until 16 April. Throughout April the drive saw general success – as of 22 April, there were only 426 outstanding nominations and 243 unreviewed, a drop of 362 articles, or 59.8%.

As of 27 May, 1079 good article reviews had been conducted by 147 users, bringing the backlog of unreviewed nominations down to 215 (a drop of 64.5%) and the number of outstanding nominations to 340.

A staggering nineteen users have completed at least 15 reviews, fourteen at least 20, eight at least 40, and five over 50. The Rambling Man, who alone conducted over 100 reviews, considers that "the drive has taken advantage of the pandemic, many of us have more time on our hands to get cracking with reviews and that it coincides with a massive backlog at GAN was somewhat fortuitous."

Lee Vilenski and Harrias spoke to the Signpost about the success of the drive:

I think any area that promotes a standard for how articles should be written, and rewards articles that are well put together should be lauded. Reviewing said articles, however, is often seen as a form of QPQ or as time that could else be used to work on other articles. This backlog drive's success is due to a community spirit ethic to shorten the queue, and also a competitive attitude to do as many within the two months as possible. So far, there have been users who have completed more reviews in a month, than I have in two and a half years! A quasi-competitive and team dynamic to reduce the backlog has all contributed to the current success.
— Lee Vilenski

Honestly, the main answer to this is "Covid-19". But even accounting for that, there has been a massive buy-in: people could just as easily be using this time to write or expand articles, but we've had a brilliant level of participation. I think the high level of the backlog will have been a factor for some: it got so big that the transclusions were actually exceeding the maximum limit, so some nominations weren't even appearing on the GAN page. Most volunteers (and we're all volunteers on Wikipedia, after all) tend to want to help make things better, so when people see a problem, they want to help solve it.
— Harrias

The good article project no-longer seems to have formal leadership to ensure quality. The associated WikiProject has been tagged as inactive, meaning that the very project that "is designed to maintain the Good articles list and oversee all other GA related tasks" is not carrying out its function. There is no way of ensuring uniform quality reviews other then editors checking each other's work. Though GA sweeps were conducted in 2010, 31% of all good articles currently have a cleanup tag.

What solutions will work to keep the backlog manageable in the future is "The million dollar question!" Harrias wrote:

To me, the ideal is better WikiProject buy-in: you and I are both active in the MilHist community, and that tends to have a relatively low backlog. But that ship seems to have sailed; for the most part, the WikiProjects are all but dead. In the medium-term, I would like to have quarterly backlog drives: a one month drive, followed by a two month break. But that remains a tactic that does like more than paper over the cracks. A long-term solution? I really don't have a clue.
— Harrias

Though backlog drives serve well to keep the number of nominations manageable, the general trend is that the number of nominations goes up quickly after a drive is concluded.

The main problem with GAN is that reviewing is highly concentrated among a small number of users, while nominating is much more broad-based. (If you look at WP:GAN, you can see that the vast majority of reviewers have done more reviews than the nominator.) Many nominators are new to the process and others are prolific nominators uninterested in reviewing. Requiring a quid pro quo, as was instituted at DYK, would help expand the base of reviewers, but the cost would be more pro forma reviews and pushing away would-be nominators who write quality articles. (Restricting the number of nominations wouldn't help much. Even looking pre-backlog, only a small fraction of nominations are above the suggested threshhold of five nominations per user. Perhaps this is because nominators with a track record are more appealing to reviewers, leading to shorter waits for them.) The backlog drive seems mostly to encourage increased participation in GA reviewing by people who were already prolific reviewers, and it's equally concentrated; the top five reviewers or so have done a majority of backlog reviews to date. On the other hand, the drive has significantly increased overall reviewing and shrunk the backlog
— Buidhe

The only thing that has become abundantly clear is that something needs to change to allow the GA project to function efficiently and effectively. Steps to take may include:

1. Reactivation of the associated WikiProject, which was marked as inactive on 21 February. Many users are already active in GA-space, and will serve as a starting point for larger change.
2. Conduction of broad GA sweeps. While there's not enough energy to review every single good article, reviewers should check articles with long standing, major cleanup tags, put them up for a brief review, and have authority to demote them.
3. Appointment/elections of co-ordinators for the project. While several users function unofficially in this capacity, it will be useful to have several users who have the responsibility for following up on stale reviews, making sure every question gets a prompt answer, guiding editors, spot-checking new reviews, and spearheading change. This doesn't have to be a terribly time consuming role, especially if the responsibility is spread out among several users.
4. A new bot. Legobot has not been edited for a long time, and a new bot could incorporate new features. Lee Vilenski spoke further on the topic: "Legobot has done a fantastic role for us for many years, but the lack of changes that can be made have made the need for a new bot a necessity. This would allow us to further split down our nominations into subtopics stating where our backlog is, and put additional work into. I'd also suggest ratio of nominations/reviews shown against any new nomination rather than just reviews as is done currently."
5. A newsletter to keep interested users up to date on potential drives and the state of GA.

But above all, we should gain an atmosphere where doing reviews is highly positive. There are many users who find the review process to be daunting or overly critical; whereas they could be the next serial reviewer. Having a positive place to quality assess reviews and offer constructive help is the way forward, rather than chastise a review for being of poor quality. The quality of Good Articles has never been so high, so I'd like to congratulate everyone on such hard work!
— Lee Vilenski

• 
  A view from Cairo Tower in 2007
• 
  The City of Damanhur at night
• 
  The Rosetta Stone
• 
  An aerial view of the Giza pyramid complex

This month there is less content in "On the bright side" due to Pine's time constraints and Clovermoss being away. However, there is good news happening in the Wikiverse, and one piece of good news is that Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia reached the 500,000 article milestone. For this issue of "On the bright side", Pine interviewed Ghaly, who has made almost 30,000 contributions to the project and is an administrator.

Congratulations for reaching 500,000 articles on Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia. Which was the milestone article, and who created it?

ميك رينزى created by Al-Dandoon on 11 May 2020.

(Interviewer's note: the Al-Dandoon account was later globally locked; see meta:Special:Contributions/Al-Dandoon.)

I think that many people around the world know of the Arabic language, but may not know of Egyptian Arabic. Would you briefly describe Egyptian Arabic?

Egyptian Arabic (Masri) is the mother tongue of millions of Egyptians. It developed as a later stage of the Egyptian language. Its grammar is based on its Egyptian origin, and it is written mainly in Arabic letters. Masri is used in literature, television, films, theatre, and day-to-day activities.

If you can, please describe the early history of Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia. When did it start, who started it, and how were its first few years of history?

I submitted the proposal to the Language committee on 30 March 2008, then started Wikipedia Masri as a developing project on 2 April 2008 in the incubator. The approval was officially announced at the Wikimania conference in Alexandria in July 2008. By the time Wikipedia Masri URL started in November 2008, there were many articles in the incubator. All of them were transferred to the new URL.

A community continued to develop, and active users were encouraged to contribute in their preferred field. The number of articles continued to grow, especially by contributions from Mahmudmasri, Samsam22 and Ramsis II. Many of the debates were about writing in Masri and keeping the articles neutral. These were mostly addressed amicably within the community. Contributions from Raafat, Meno25, M777, حمدى10 and El Gaafary helped to further develop Wikipedia Masri. Relatively, the development of Wikipedia Masri was gathering pace from the start, helped by the amicable interaction between the active users. Recently HitomiAkane and Al-Dandoon have added many more articles to Wikipedia Masri, which enabled reaching the half million milestone.

How significant are the contributions of Wikipedia Education Program students to Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia?

I am not aware of contributions made by Wikipedia Education Program students to Egyptian Arabic (Masri) Wikipedia. I will be happy to discuss this further if you can point them out.

How would you describe the people who currently contribute to Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia?

From my point of view, I have always enjoyed being a member of this community and still do. The users are all volunteers who give their time, effort, and knowledge to develop a Masri encyclopaedia. Their aim is to provide information in a language that is used in day-to-day life, to make this information understood by many more people. Their efforts, enthusiasm and dedication never fail to amaze me. Their polite manner in addressing each other always humbles me. I am immensely proud to be part of this community.

Are there any significant challenges or goals that the community of contributors has in the next few years?

Continuing to develop Wikipedia Masri is a never-ending work. The active users are aiming to increase quality and numbers of articles. Reaching another milestone will be the millionth article. The community is hoping to reach many more users and encourage them to contribute.

There are people from many nations who contribute to diverse language editions of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, and who will read this interview. Is there any message that you would like to share with them?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please consider adding your knowledge to Wikipedia. It is beyond words to describe the sense of achievement and pride when I see my contributions included in articles in my mother tongue. Choose the topic that interests you and contribute in your own pace.

For what are you grateful this month? You are welcome to write a comment on the talk page of this Signpost piece.

Dmitrismirnov may have been the first Wikipedian struck down by COVID-19. The deaths of several other well-known Wikipedians were reported this month. These obituaries are taken from Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2020 written by multiple editors and edited by Signpost staff. For the next few months The Signpost may continue to report the passing of any Wikipedian where the details have been published.

A Soviet and British composer and an administrator of the Russian and English Wikisource projects, Dmitri passed away on April 9 from complications caused by COVID-19.

He was born in 1948 in Minsk to a family of opera singers. In 1972 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where his teachers included Edison Denisov, Yuri Kholopov, and Philip Gershkovich.

In 1989, his operas were staged on subjects from William Blake: Tiriel in Freiburg, Germany and Tel in London. That same year, his First Seasons Symphony was performed at the Tanglewood Festival in the US. In 1991, Smirnov emigrated to the UK where he taught at several well-known universities.

Smirnov made significant contributions to Russian and English Wikisource projects, Wikimedia Commons, Russian and English Wikipedias, and Wikidata.

He is survived by his wife, composer Elena Firsova, and by two children Philip Firsov and Alissa Firsova.-RW,-S

The Dutch community sadly informed English Wikipedia of the passing of one of their admins: Kattenkruid. Kattenkruid ("catnip") was active on Wikipedia since 2004 and wrote articles on the topics of politics, animals and Poland. He was active in other language editions and on Wikidata as well, mainly with manual edits. He became an administrator on the Dutch Wikipedia in 2009 and was active until his passing on March 19, 2020.

On April 11, 2020, Muid Latif, a former project lead of Creative Commons in Malaysia who had been promoting the free-culture movement and open collaboration, passed away as announced by his brother at Latif's official Facebook page.

Ron Jones, a retired physical chemist from England, died on April 7, 2019, the day he made his last edit, in a tragic house fire that also claimed the life of his wife Sue and their beloved pets. On Wikipedia he was an administrator who helped out with WikiProject Chemistry, did anti-vandalism work, and also ran RonBot, which among other things performed maintenance on non-free images. He had been a contributor for over 11 years, making over 400,000 edits. He was a prolific editor, as well as an administrator on Wikimedia Commons since 2013 where he made over 100,000 edits.^[1] Furthermore, he was part of the Wikimedia OTRS Team. He was a member of the Inland Waterways Association, whose London branch published an obituary of him in their January–July 2019 newsletter. He published scientific papers as Ronald H. Jones. Details of some of them may be found on Scholia.

On January 21, 2020, Boris Semyonovich Tsirelson, a mathematician and professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University, Israel, as well as a Wikipedian, passed away due to being voluntarily euthanized following a terminal battle with cancer. (Mourning page at Tel Aviv University, 25 January 2020) (Talkpage declaration of his voluntary assisted death) He was 69. During his lifetime, he made notable contributions to probability theory and functional analysis, such as Tsirelson's bound and Tsirelson space. On Wikipedia, he made 8,857 edits, including the creation of pages such as Conditioning (probability) and Standard probability space, among others. His legacy will not be forgotten.