Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2021-08-29

You've got two more days – until 23:59 UTC August 31 – to cast your vote for the new community-elected Board of Trustee members. The start of the election period was delayed due to technical reasons for 14 days to August 18.

To vote, follow the link on meta:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Voting. In the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system you need to rank the candidates. Rank your favorite candidate 1, your 2nd favorite 2, and so forth, up to your 19th favourite (as there are 20 candidates). You only have to rank as many candidates as you want; the rest are treated as being equally unpreferred by you. You can't rank a candidate more than once, and you can't skip a ranking – for instance, you can't specify a 2nd-preferred candidate and a 4th-preferred candidate, leaving your third preference blank.

You'll likely want to rank at least four candidates, since that's the number of open seats on the board. The STV method being used for this election is designed to consider your preferences in order from most-preferred to least. If your favourite candidate isn't seated, your vote is transferred to your next favourite. In addition, once a candidate you voted for has enough votes to guarantee finishing in the top four (that is, has reached quota), a percentage of your vote is transferred to your next preferred choice. (See Meek STV Explained for more details.) -S, I

Last October Portuguese-language Wikipedians voted to require that editors register before editing. "IP editing" was effectively banned with the goal of reducing vandalism and improving the editing experience. The Wikimedia Foundation has been following the impact of the ban closely and issued its report last month. They "found no significant negative impact" on the health of the community and several positive impacts.[1] [2]

New user account registrations and the number of active editors on ptWiki have increased. Vandalism is down as indicated by a decline in the number of reverts. Also administrator actions for page protections and blocks are down over 70%. User retention shows no trend.

The impact on the number of edits is unclear. The total number of edits has decreased but the decline is at least partially explained by decreases in reverts and bot edits. Without these edits being included in the data, year-on-year edits declined during the first six months of the study period, but increased during the final three months.

Editor comments were requested and indicated that 14 editors supported the ban, four opposed it, and one was neutral. The report recommends that ptWiki be allowed to continue the IP editing ban for now, along with continued data collection and study. Two more Wikipedia projects might be allowed to conduct "similar experiments" but "the experience of a single wiki should not be used as decisive evidence." -S

Editors are invited to nominate themselves until September 14th for a spot on a drafting committee. As noted on the meta page, "the Movement Charter defines the roles and responsibilities for all in the Wikimedia Movement. It will be a shared framework for working together toward the Strategic Direction." In other words, if you want to shape Wikipedia's Future by using lots of Nouns that are capitalized in the Middle of Sentences, this is your chance! Polish up your word choice skills in a way that really matters, rather than wasting your inner bureaucrat on your actual job. Only a few more days to get your name in there, in all seriousness, so take a look and see if you can volunteer your time to help out the movement. – G

A discussion was held at User talk:Jimbo Wales concerning the resolution to a back-end performance issue and its impact on Russian Wikinews (which is also available in the English language). According to WMF staff, dynamic page lists (DPL) had to be disabled to preserve several S3-hosted wikis. The related Phabricator ticket shows a list of hosts that does not include English Wikipedia but does include a number of related projects including English Wikinews, Wiktionary, and Wikibooks.

More technical details are available at wikitech:Incident documentation/2021-07-26 ruwikinews DynamicPageList. – B

Is the English Wikipedia's paid-editing disclosure policy fully signed off by the community? One commenter at the talkpage (linked from WP:Village Pump (policy)) doesn't think so: I don't think the way forward is a Schrödinger's cat-like state where the page is a policy in minds of some, not in the minds of others, and enforced as a "Wikipedia policy with legal considerations" regardless due to the banner at the top. It's either a policy or it isn't. The Signpost notes that an RfC on new disclosure requirements for freelance paid editors was closed on November 19 as having resulted in consensus to add language about mandatory disclosure of paid editing accounts in advertising and in communications directly to clients. – B

The backlog at WP:Articles for creation went down from 4,156 to 0 during the July drive. – S

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

Graph from WP:AfC

• A distinct lack of RfAs: Thus far this year there have been only eight requests for adminship, and only six have succeeded! At this rate, 2021 will certainly become the year with the fewest new admins and fewest candidacies, beating 2018 (10 for 18). Why? It's hard to say, but it may be that the RfA process has become known as a bit of a minefield. Still, with over 1000 admins and 471 active, we're not in danger of running out of sysops yet. Barkeep49 has initiated a review of the RfA process, with the first phase seeking views on what the broad issues with the process are.

We hope Father Will forgives us, but we just couldn't keep this column concise this month. Even the stories in the "in brief" section are not brief. Despite all the horrific general news stories lately, stories related to Wikipedia have mostly been interesting and different. No, we couldn't totally ignore some of the usual, more somber, stories. So pick and choose your stories and enjoy the difference!

Jimmy Wales in Al Jazeera reminds us how the internet used to be. According to Jimmy there was little or no disinformation in healthcare or elections, and people could generally agree on the facts. Despite this double dose of nostalgia, Jimmy has a point and a program to make things better. The disinformation situation has gotten much worse. The program looks like Wikipedia, "the cornerstone of the free web.... It is the blueprint for restoring public trust in the web again."

Wales draws three conclusions from the success of Wikipedia:

• We must all take responsibility for the truth of information on the web. "As we discover more about how influential a dozen people can be in spreading disinformation far and wide, Wikipedia highlights the role we each can play in providing good information."
• "purveyors of news and information, including large technology companies, must create a common agreement about the need for information to be factual, reliable, and up to date." And
• "Transparency in online spaces will empower internet users to have open, civil debates where we can embrace our differences and be clear about our own personal biases. This creates more productive conversations and will build communities instead of promoting conflict."

Sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? We've got one request however. Jimmy, next time, please let corporations and their paid editors know that we don't want their disinformation, AKA hidden advertisements in our encyclopedia. And please let them know that our minimum requirement is that they must declare each paid edit, along with the names of the client, employer, and other affiliated parties. If we can't see these hidden adverts, we can't correct them. If you or the Wikimedia Foundation won't let people know about these requirements, who will? – S

How to Use Wikipedia When You're Watching the Olympics, Stephen Harrison of Slate set the stage for the Olympics by describing how to use Wikipedia as your second screen while watching the Tokyo games. The most popular athletes score high on Wikipedia pageviews, Google Knowledge panels and Alexa report the information from Wikipedia. You can even read about the oddities that only Wikipedia ever covers such as List of Olympic medalists in art competitions.

Editors at WikiProject Olympics report that good photos of the Olympians are hard to get because broadcasters and national sports federations control the copyrights. Are the articles biased? Inclusion of articles about athletes should not be biased against women because of easy notability requirements for all Olympic athletes, but the article coverage may be less for athletes from some countries. A gymnastics writer says that there are no obvious misstatements in Wikipedia articles about the gymnasts she covers, but that controversies are sometimes avoided.

Why Basketball 3×3 Star Stefanie Dolson, Others Fact Check Their Wiki Pages NBC Channel 4 New York asked five USA Olympians to review the Wikipedia articles about themselves on video and suggest any needed corrections. Four of the five loved the articles.

• Stefanie Dolson – Despite a few quibbles – like not including a "Q" on "LGBT" – she concludes "I'm impressed Wikipedia. You got basically all the information correct. More information than I would have even known about myself. Very well done." The U.S. women's 3-on-3 basketball team took home gold medals, another job well done.
• Carlin Isles – Taking his assignment very seriously, Isles finds several mistakes, e.g. he says he was born in Akron, Ohio rather than in nearby Massillon. But he concludes "Hey Wik, I must say, you wasn't too shabby. You didn't leave out a lot of details. I'm very proud [of Wikipedia's performance]." The United States men's rugby sevens placed sixth – not too shabby for American rugby.
• Mattie Rogers – a woman weightlifter, starts out with "whoever did this was very professional" and barely quibbles the rest of the way through the article. She finished sixth in the 87 kg weight class.
• Ginny Fuchs – a woman flyweight boxer. She notes two important missing facts:
  • Wikipedia missed that she qualified for the Tokyo Olympics (whoops!).
  • She is a spokesperson for mental health, due to her struggles with OCD, and has spoken on the topic on the Oprah Winfrey Show (double whoops!!). Sorry about that!

In the round of 16 she lost to Stoyka Krasteva, who later won the gold metal.

• Kyle Snyder – Snyder is a long time fan of Wikipedia. "Wikipedia, you guys are doing a good job." He won the 97 kg freestyle 2016 Olympic gold. He defeated Abdulrashid Sadulaev in 2017 to win the 97 kg freestyle world championship, one of only two losses in Sadulaev's career. This year Snyder suffered his third career loss to Sadulaev in the 97 kg final, taking the silver medal.

There are 11,656 athletes at the Olympics. Guy Fraser wanted them all on Wikipedia: The Guardian covers the work of one dedicated Wikipedian, who has been filling in the blank spaces in our coverage of the 2020 games. See Community view for further coverage. – S

Père Guillaume Conquer ran what must be the most unusual version of Wikimania this year, perhaps ever, in the Coconut Club in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as he documented in a local paper. With 15 participants, including a dozen Cambodians, young and old, a Korean businessman, and an Australian cultural-events organizer, the event was almost as large as the congregation of Conquer's church in the tiny village of Chom Lak. Father Will, as he's usually called, has been a Roman Catholic missionary in Cambodia for two years for the Missions Etrangères de Paris. It's his first assignment since being ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Monaco. He told AsiaNews "Wikipedia is not the right tool for proselytising. Its success lies in its neutral point of view. It's a space for knowledge, not preaching."

Father Will bought the first drink for Wikipedia editors registered before the event. He's been a Wikipedian since 2008 making 3,432 edits across all projects. His goal for the Khmer Wikipedia is to double its 8,000 articles over the next year. Thanks for all you do, Father. And keep the faith. – S

Wikipedia Has a Language Problem. Here’s How To Fix It by Yumiko Sato in Undark Magazine (reprinted in Fast Company). Following an earlier article in Slate where she explains in detail how the Japanese Wikipedia has whitewashed much of Japan's World War II history, Sato notes that the Croatian Wikipedia has had similar problems for almost a decade. (See prior coverage in The Signpost Disinformation report (2021) and Opinion (2019).) Al Jazeera piles on the Croatian editors with Are Croat nationalists pushing a political agenda on Wikipedia? on how Croat nationalists affected the Croatian Wikipedia, but concentrates on how they affect the Bosnian Wikipedia.

Wikipedia certainly has had language versions that produce seriously biased articles resulting from poor governance. While Sato recognizes that there will be technical difficulties, she proposes that there be a single language version of Wikipedia (presumably English) so that poor governance on a smaller version doesn't affect article quality. Political problems would prevent the implementation of this solution, even more so than technical problems. Different cultures want to be able to determine their own "truths" in their own languages.

But could a single "All-Wikipedia" article even be possible for even one of the most controversial articles? Likely, that would involve a set of about five translations from a single main article. Edits to the translations would have to be translated to the other versions. Debate on talk pages might need several translations as well. The thought of a multi-language edit war boggles the mind. It's an interesting idea, but it's unlikely to be implemented any time soon. – S

Francesca Tripodi's recent paper, Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia continues to make news this month. Dr. Tripodi, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, reports that biographies of women are more likely to be nominated for deletion than similar male biographies.

• Utah Public Radio's UnDisciplined podcast interviews Tripodi in the episode. Women And Wikipedia.
• Marketplace Tech: Why it’s so hard for biographies about women to stay on Wikipedia quotes Tropdi saying, "The default to erase notable women rather than simply fix their page is the broader problem that we’re trying to look at here."
• Tripodi appeared on CBC Radio (Canada's national broadcaster) in a piece titled Canadian Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias, study finds. The case mentioned in the radio show but not spoken by name was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elicia Maine, the AfD for a woman who holds a named chair at a well-known Canadian university. See previous Signpost coverage of gender issues at Recent research.

– B

• 7 Notable African Women Activists Who Deserve Wikipedia Pages are named by Global Citizen, who also provide a couple of paragraphs of good information about each woman. Ok, they could have provided links to other reliable sources, but sometimes these things all work out in the end. The women are Madame Cissé Hadja Mariama Sow, Nebila Abdulmelik, Jeannine Mukanirwa, Mercy Akuot, Kagendo Murungi, Bibata Ouédraogo, and Beatrice Mukansinga. All news sources are encouraged to publish similarly informative articles on African women – and please tell us about it on the Suggestions page. Thanks to Abishe, Victuallers and Indy beetle for creating the Wikipedia articles!
• A deep dive under the bonnet: Feast examines the engine behind Wikipedia articles on the top-ten UK automobile brands in BMW becomes Wikipedia’s most edited car brand page. Do you want to know which brands have the most total article edits – linking to graphs breaking it down by month? You'll find it right before the most prolific editors for each article. Pageviews and the pageviews-to-edits ratio are also mentioned. Most of the stats are readily available: the innovation in this article is collecting them all in a single place for one important market. Vertu Motors, the UK's fifth largest automobile dealership published the original report, which is no longer available online.
• The creator of Lsjbot is arguably the most prolific author in the world according to The Guardian. The creator, Sverker Johansson, is a Wikipedian who began his career as a particle physicist, and now writes books about the origins of language for his day job. The bot has created at least 80 percent of the Cebuano Wikipedia.
• Kansas City Public Library Hires A Dedicated 'Wikipedian-In-Residence': NPR member KCUR interviews Miranda Pratt. The Kansas City Public Library states that Miranda is "the first Wikipedian-In-Residence appointed by a public library in the United States."
• Input and CNET's stories both covered a classic example of vandalism. A vandal waited to become autoconfirmed, and then defaced a widely-used template with a Nazi flag, affecting more than 50,000 pages. While reverted in just a few minutes, the high-profile pages affected (such as Joe Biden) meant that the press took notice.
• Decentralized blockchain project launches contest to build next Wikipedia – once more, a Wikipedia-killer is about to be proposed. This one, sponsored by a cryptocurrency organization, doesn't have a product yet – just a contest to produce ideas for one. Their more detailed objectives, suggest that their beef with Wikipedia is that we limit their free advertising for cryptocurrency. "One example are blockchain/cryptocurrency-related topics on English Wikipedia, strictly controlled by Wikipedia old-timers and cryptocurrency haters like David Gerard. Such people have large support groups that allow them to push their agenda using particular pages." Gerard tells The Signpost that proposed cybercurrency-controlled encyclopedias, such as Lunyr and Everipedia, are nothing new. He says "I refer the honourable gentlemen to my previous written response."

At Wikimania 2021 seven editors were presented with Wikimedian of the year awards by Jimmy Wales. While there have been multiple winners before, this is the first year more than three awards were presented. As originally presented on a 24 minute video, Wales surprises the award-winners on ZOOM calls to tell them the news. We include the edited individual videos below. They may be less fun but are easier to follow.

Alaa Najjar is active on the Arabic Wikipedia and in many other wiki projects, having made over 473,000 edits total. He works as a general practitioner and contributes to WikiProject Medicine, especially to the COVID-19 project on the Arabic encyclopedia, providing access to life-saving information. He works to combat medical misinformation. On Arabic Wikipedia he is a steward, bureaucrat, sysop, checkuser and interface-admin. On Wikidata he's a sysop and checkuser. He is also a sysop on 5 other projects and a VRT volunteer. Shortly after receiving the award, an article about him was created. Don't worry, though, the AfD was quickly closed as "KEEP".^[1]

One of the founders of Wiki Loves Monuments, Lodewijk Gelauff helped lead the WLM International Organizing Committee over the next 10 years. Over that time 1.7 million photos of 1.5 million cultural monuments and landmarks have been uploaded from over 70 countries as part of the world's largest photo contest. Many new editors have joined Wikipedia as a result, and many chapters have organized to join WLM. A truly remarkable achievement. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Management Science and Engineering in the U.S.^[1]

Netha Hussain is a physician and researcher who earned a PhD in clinical neuroscience from the University of Gothenburg. She has worked extensively on COVID-19 related articles on Wikipedia and worked against pandemic-related misinformation. In eleven years on Wikipedia she's made 183,500 edits total on over ten projects.^[1][2]

Carmen Alcázar has been a member of the Board of Wikimedia Mexico since 2012 and president of that organization 2018-2020. She helped organize Wikimania in Mexico City in 2015. She's a political scientist and Feminism activist. One of her priorities has been to close the gender gap in articles. She's helped close this gender gap on Spanish Wikipedia by over seven percent in five years.^[1]

Jay Prakash, the founder of Indic-TechCom, was named Wikimedian of the Year Tech Innovator. He "is known for providing technical support to Indic communities, fixing bugs, building new tools, and spearheading technical outreach."^[2][1]

Anaya Mondal founded the Wiki Loves Butterfly project in 2016 and has run the campaign four times resulting in 2,600 images being uploaded to Commons. She started the project after seeing there was no article on butterfly on her native Bengali Wikipedia.^[1][2]

Carma Citrawati is a university lecturer, author and literary activist in Bali who began editing in 2019. She digitizes and translates ancient texts contained on palm-leaf manuscripts.^[1]

This article was originally published at WikiEdu.org on August 10, 2021 as Changing the face of Wikipedia. LiAnna Davis is the Chief Programs Officer and Deputy Director of Wiki Education. CC BY-SA.

The vision of the Wikimedia movement is to collect and freely share the sum of all human knowledge. All human knowledge, however, requires representation from a wide cross section of all humans, and in this area, we in the Wikimedia movement have work to do. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other projects, releases periodic Community Insights Reports, which include demographic data on Wikipedia’s editing community.

You’ve probably heard of the Wikipedia gender gap — that far more people who identify as men edit Wikipedia than those who identify as women or other gender identities. The 2021 Community Insights Report, released recently, shows the progress that’s been made on that front recently: Globally, women made up 15% of contributors, but in Northern America, where Wiki Education’s programs operate, that number is 22%. In contrast, self-reported survey data from our program participants shows:

• 67% identify as women
• 30% identify as men
• 3% identify as non-binary or other

Wiki Education’s programs are clearly making a difference in diversifying the gender identity of contributors. The gender identity of our program participants has remained fairly steady throughout the 11-year history of our program; we know we’re helping tackle Wikipedia’s gender gap, and — with nearly 15,000 new contributors every year, representing 19% of all new active editors to English Wikipedia — we’re doing it at scale.

What’s new this year is data on race and ethnicity, which the Community Insights survey asked about for contributors from the United States for the first time. The report concludes that "in the United States, both Black and Hispanic or Latino/a/x people were severely underrepresented in our communities, while white and Asian American editors were overrepresented.” While we always expected our student population was more diverse than the general editing population, we now have data to back up our belief. Note that the Wikimedia Foundation survey allowed respondents to select multiple racial or ethnic categories, while Wiki Education’s survey instead included a more general “biracial/multiracial/other” category, so the numbers don’t perfectly align. Nevertheless, they give us a good idea of the differences.

• 89% of U.S. Wikipedia editors identify as white, while only 55% of our program participants do (compared to a U.S. population percentage of 72%).
• 8.8% of U.S. Wikipedia editors identify as Asian or Asian American, while 18% of our program participants do (compared to a U.S. population percentage of 5.7%).
• 5.2% of U.S. Wikipedia editors identify as Hispanic or Latino/a/x, while 12% of our program participants do (compared to a U.S. population percentage of 18%).
• 0.5% of U.S. Wikipedia editors identify as Black or African American, while 8% of our program participants do (compared to a U.S. population percentage of 13%).
• 0.1% of U.S. Wikipedia editors identify as Native American, while 1% of our program participants do (compared to a U.S. population percentage of 0.9%).
• An additional 6% of our program participants identify as biracial, multiracial, or another self-reported category we didn’t offer as an option.

While we have room to improve to reach parity with the U.S. population demographics, our program is clearly helping address the underrepresentation issue identified by the Wikimedia Foundation’s survey. With 8% of our participants identifying as Black or African American and 12% identifying as Hispanic or Latino/a/x, we’re bringing significantly more diverse contributors to Wikipedia than the existing editing population.

Diverse contributors are important because we need to share diverse knowledge on Wikipedia. When the people writing the content don’t accurately reflect the population at large, topics, perspectives, and sources are missing. Programs like Wiki Education’s, and those of colleagues in our movement actively working to bring more diverse contributors to the English Wikipedia, especially in the United States, are a key part of enacting knowledge equity. Freely sharing in the sum of all human knowledge, after all, requires involvement from all humans.

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

Wikipedia is unusual among user-generated content websites in that it allows contributions – even changes to widely read existing content – without creating an account, in exchange to contributors agreeing to have their IP address published alongside their edit. This has been a core feature since the project's beginnings, but has come to be questioned from several angles in recent years. In "The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Peer Production"^[1], well-known Wikipedia researchers Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw provide some insights on what might happen if IP editing were to be disabled on Wikimedia wikis. As they summarize in the abstract:

"We conduct an empirical test using longitudinal data from 136 natural experiments where would-be contributors to wikis were suddenly required to log in to contribute. Requiring accounts leads to a small increase in account creation, but reduces both high- and low-quality contributions from registered and unregistered participants. Although the change deters a large portion of low-quality participation, the vast majority of deterred contributions are of higher quality."

These 136 wikis are drawn from a larger dataset from Wikia (today known as Fandom, a commercial wiki hoster co-founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales), consisting of wikis where local administrators had requested for IP editing to be disabled.

According to the paper's literature review (of general research on peer production),

"One body of prior studies argue that stable identifiers work as catalysts of cooperation by facilitating accountability, group identification, boundaries, and commitment that lead to higher quality participation. Others contend that requiring accounts imposes costly obstacles that deter participation. A related set of studies suggests that unregistered contributions may introduce diverse perspectives and stimulate activity among experienced community members ..."

Based on this, the authors come up with four hypotheses for the effects of requiring account registration:

• "an increase in the number of newly registered accounts (H1)"
• "a reduction in the number of subsequently removed contributions (H2)" (operationalized as reverted edits)
• "a reduction in high quality contributions (H3)" (operationalized via non-reverted edits and via content persistence)
• "a reduction in contributions from participants who contributed with accounts prior to the requirement (H4)"

In their analysis, the authors find "substantial discontinuous shifts in each of our dependent variables when wikis began requiring accounts", supporting all four hypotheses.

The authors first presented such results at Wikimania 2015 and published them in peer-reviewed form last year. Just a few months afterwards, a large Wikimedia wiki enacted such a change for the first time (see e.g. the Signpost's coverage: Portuguese Wikipedia bans IP editing). A recent evaluation of its impact by the Wikimedia Foundation does not quite match the results from the Wikia wikis, finding "no significant negative impact in the analysis conducted thus far" (see also the more detailed summary in this issue's "News and notes" section: "Portuguese IP ban on track"). The statistical techniques used in that analysis appear to be somewhat simpler (e.g. only considering year-over-year changes in monthly counts of active editors, in contrast to Hill's and Shaw's analysis of weekly data using a regression discontinuity design in the paper). On the other hand, the WMF analysis also considered additional metrics designed to measure "Impacts on administration", namely the number of user blocks, page protections, and Checkuser checks, finding (somewhat unsurprisingly) "a significant reduction in administration actions".

There are other reasons to question how much the Wikia results would generalize to Wikipedias or other Wikimedia wikis. For example, in recent years the Wikimedia Foundation has invested significantly in technical measures to improve the experience of newcomers. But IP editors do not benefit from such improvements ("newcomers" meaning newly created accounts), so requiring them to register might have the added benefit that every contributor to a wiki will have been reached by such newbie-supporting measures as they start to edit.

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.

From the abstract:^[2]

"Since early in the development of the project, Wikipedia editors have been concerned with overcoming “systemic biases” in coverage of the world’s knowledge, especially those rooted in forms of social marginalization. [...] However, many Wikipedia editors and observers have argued that the systemic biases of Wikipedia are inherent to current global distribution of knowledge production, and can only be overcome by changing the encyclopedia’s standards of inclusion. This article reframes this debate by comparing the project of “countering systemic bias” on Wikipedia with the effort within Western/Northern academia to decolonize and diversify scholarship. Since this project began at least fifty years ago, it has led to abundant peer-reviewed scholarship, all of which qualifies as “reliable sources” for Wikipedia articles. [...] The article proposes that critical scholarship, historical maps, and maps in contemporary scholarship can all contribute to addressing Wikipedia’s systemic biases."

From the abstract:^[3]

"... Focussing on a social psychological concept of “empathy plasticity”, the critical developmental window in which humans begin to formulate attitudes and dispositions on phenomena around them, this commentary explores how a re-organization of online spaces, such as Wikipedia and social media, can be used to more holistically present knowledge on topics in the realm of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Such a technocratic shift is one means of content democratization and dialectical gatekeeping to ensure our contemporary epistemology acquires and maintains methodological, ideological and ethical merit."

From the paper:^[4]

"Wikiproject Tropical Cyclones delivers the highest quality content of all Wikiprojects on English Wikipedia. We also find that both readership and editing of the articles on tropical cyclones are highly correlated with cyclones’ occurrences, which indicates that Wikipedia is a go-to source for many people [...] For the purpose of identifying the most successful Wikiprojects, we have ranked all projects based on the total number of FA and GA articles that are within their scope [...] Since projects vary in size, and the sheer number of articles can impact the relative number of quality articles, we normalized the totals by the square root of the number of articles that a project curates."

From the abstract:^[5]

"... we investigate the patterns of production, consumption, and spatial and temporal distributions of Wikipedia pages for World Heritage cultural sites. We find that Wikipedia provides a distinctive context for investigating how people experience and relate to the past in the present. The agency of participants is highly constrained, but distinctive, behind-the-scenes expressions of cultural heritage activism are evident. Concerns about state-like actors, violence and destruction, deal-making, etc. in the World Heritage inscription process are present, but rare on Wikipedia’s World Heritage pages. Instead, hyper-local and process issues dominate controversies on Wikipedia."

Hello again! From the sowing and reaping of crops, to planning birthdays, anniversaries and other events, the days of the year are an essential part of all our lives. Here we interview a dedicated group of Wikipedia editors, chronologists and augurs at WikiProject Days of the Year.

1. What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Days of the Year?
   • Willbb234: I first encountered the project when incorrectly adding entries to Days of the Year (DOY/DOTY) articles, around two years ago. Each new entry should be accompanied with a source, which almost all DOTY articles lack. After discovering this, I felt motivated to help out in the effort to improve DOTY articles. I enjoyed my work on January 3, and felt particular pride in seeing an article fill up with citations.
   • Toddst1: I was probably following some goofball that was adding things like "2019: Brenda & Eddie's first date" to pages. After looking at a few DOY pages, I quickly discovered that they had been filled with a fair amount of garbage, incorrect info and sometimes Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (BLP) issues. Somehow the project had convinced themselves that these pages were literally exempt from WP:V. That's what got me to dig in. I started this discussion and after some significant initial objections, we fixed that and the project has really embraced cleaning up these articles, preventing new misinformation and raising the bar on quality.
   • Suonii180: The WikiProject was brought to my attention by another member after I edited some of the days of the year articles.
2. Why have a WikiProject on days of the year? What do you see as the main benefits and uses of the WikiProject?
   • Willbb234: DOTY articles are some of the most visited on Wikipedia. When each new day starts, the corresponding article will see an influx of readers and editors alike. It's therefore important to keep these articles in shape, especially when so many new editors often add unsourced entries which require a dedicated team of editors to address. The main role of the project is to add citations to the tens of thousands of entries, and I believe this can assist editors in adding citations to dates on articles, and readers on being able to verify when something occurred.
   • Toddst1: I think folks find them entertaining, being able to quickly find what else happened on their kid's birthday or whatever.
   • Suonii180: The main page has links to days of the year articles so the WikiProject is useful in making sure that all of the information on each article is accurate and sourced as there can be a high number of people viewing and editing the pages.
3. By nature, your WikiProject has a very well defined scope, which means multiple editors are often working with each other in close proximity. How does your project manage differences of opinion and conflict?
   • Willbb234: The project is blessed to have a relatively small number of articles, and quite clear guidelines on the layout of said articles. I have found conflict rare, but it will usually be sorted out as the guidelines can easily be applied to different articles. In other WikiProjects, where guidelines don't apply to all of the articles in that scope, it is often harder to clearly understand the rules and different interpretations often occur, leading to differences in opinions.
   • Toddst1: There are tons of folks who happen by and add an item or two, adding a lot of value. We've developed very clear guidelines – at least they are to most folks – and project members politely making editors aware of them makes a big difference. Our shared purpose, small scope and guidelines really prevent a lot of conflict. There's still a lot of work to do cleaning these up and from what I've seen, we've been able to move beyond most petty squabbles. Oddly enough, some of the biggest conflicts that pop up these days are with folks who have been editing for years, many of whom have advanced privileges, that pop by for an edit or two and discover that their edit doesn't conform to the guidelines.
   • Suonii180: Luckily due to the narrow scope of the project, not many problems have occurred and due to all of the articles having the same layouts, it's easier to decide guidelines and resolve issues for them.
4. Have you encountered any particular pages, events or other things that really stick in your mind or have surprised, educated or entertained you whilst editing pages related to days of the year?
   • Willbb234: I always find it interesting when I come across a date of birth or death of a person who I previously knew about, or someone who seems interesting. I often end up reading their biographies when I should be helping DOTY articles. Another interesting detail is reading sources and finding the surprising ways in which historians have been able to determine the date of a particular event when the date is not explicitly stated. I would note that events and dates of birth and death are added by a wide range of editors, meaning the pages are often very diverse in the different subjects included. This means I often come across articles which I never knew about. You could think of it as opening a random page of an encyclopaedia.
   • Toddst1: Pretty much every wikilink on these pages leads to something interesting I didn't know about.
   • Suonii180: I've always loved history so the most interesting part for me is finding out about historical events and people from different time periods and cultures that I previously hadn't heard of or knew very little about. The most surprising thing I've found is the difficulty in finding reliable sources for some of the more well known people or events listed on the pages.
5. I'm sure we all have an idea what days are most well fleshed out; are there any days of the year that you feel are particularly neglected?
   • Willbb234: A list of complete articles can be found at WP:DAYS. As you'll notice, it's a very small number, which shows that there are hundreds which still need work. Mistakes always creep into articles, but in general, DOTY articles are kept in decent shape even if they lack citations. I have worked on January 3 and plan on working on another DOTY article at some other time. I feel as if we can one day 'complete' this project, but until that point there will always be articles that are neglected. Due to the small number of editors participating in the project, I find it hard to believe that we can achieve something as large as this soon, but it is my belief that we have and continue to make a great impact in this small corner of Wikipedia.
   • Toddst1: Like Willbb234 said, the articles that are not on this list could use help.
   • Suonii180: As mentioned above, there is still a significant amount of articles that still need to be brought up to citation standard. While progression has been slow, the articles are continuing to improve steadily.
6. How can an editor contribute to your WikiProject?
   • Willbb234: Contributing is as simple as adding a citation, or adding a new event, along with a supporting citation, to any article that takes an editor's fancy (see List of days of the year). We have created all the articles we need to, it's just a question of improving the existing article. The editors at WP:DAYS are happy to help.
   • Toddst1: Adopt a date (your birthday?) and ensure each entry has a direct, reliable source supporting it. It's easier than you think:
     Just open the entry's wikilink in a new browser tab. If there isn't a reliable source to support that entry in the linked article or the source doesn't support the info, remove it from the DOY article and add a {{CN}} tag to the info in the linked article (or remove it if it's a WP:BLP or date-of-birth (WP:DOB) issue). If not, copy the citation and add it to the DOY article.
     If you're looking for a quick impact, start with the more recent birthdates of actors or musicians on a DOY page. Most folks are surprised how many of those linked articles don't have reliable sources for birth dates.
   • Suonii180: The project encourages people to focus on a significant day to them such as their birthday and try to bring it up to citation standard. However small edits like adding a reference or removing incorrect information are helpful and much appreciated.
7. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
   • Willbb234: Thanks for the interview!
   • Toddst1: I've been truly impressed with the dedication and veracity of the project members . It's a pleasure to work with them.
   • Suonii180: It's been great working with the WikiProject and thank you for organising this interview.

That's it for this month; please feel free to suggest a WikiProject for an interview (or interview a WikiProject yourself!) here.

• These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

Not everybody gets to participate in the Olympic games. Not every inexperienced Wikipedia editor is interviewed by The Guardian for an article with a title like "There are 11,656 athletes at the Olympics. Guy Fraser wanted them all on Wikipedia." – S

Everything I said in The Guardian article was true from my perspective. They might have exaggerated some things – but the quoted stuff was true and from my heart. I do absolutely adore the Wikipedia project and spreading accessible information to everyone is such a fantastic thing to be part of. I'm glad, as well, that there's people smarter than me taking care of the serious stuff so I can waste my time in sports because that has always been my passion right from when I could first talk.

Researching the athletes was a genuine pleasure. It started by accident when I innocently looked up the just-announced IOC Refugee team to find out their experiences and saw a couple of names were in red. I haven't counted how many we've done or still need to do; the figures in the article were new to me.

It's been fun! The experience enhanced my viewing of the games. Both in honouring the fantastic athletes who are the pinnacle of human physical achievement, providing a marker of a moment in time: right here right now, these were the people who did this; and also personally knowing some of the back stories of those competing in more detail than I would normally has been superb in providing extra context and interest. I can thoroughly recommend editing the articles for the Paralympics and Paris 2024.

I'm still really new to it all in many ways – someone sent me a barnstar this week and I had to google what it was. I would be delighted to give three out though, now that I think I know what they are. I guess it would only be fair to give them to the names I feel like I saw the most cleaning up my work, for which I offer thanks and apologies. This isn't scientific at all but the first three that came to mind were Seacactus 13, John B123, and JTtheOG. Something I didn't say in The Guardian article is that I do not have all my sight so there are aspects of the process that I will always inherently struggle with until I can find work-arounds. Whilst I believe it's far more frustrating for me than it is for others, no one can underestimate the job that was on the hands of those who checked my work!

I enjoy most parts of Wikipedia and I welcome the quirks. I find it amusing to see someone change references to the "Tokyo Olympics" and change them to the "2020 summer games" only to spot someone else a few hours later change it to "Tokyo games". That is just very funny to me, and human.

There were very few negatives. I'm fairly long in the tooth, I think I have decent perspective, and collating information from the Internet isn't the most important thing I do in the day. But if those things weren't in place I would most probably have been put off and discouraged by a very small minority of users/admins who lean towards being rude, impatient and dismissive of new users. I would encourage the view that everyone can bring value and we should imagine speaking to someone online the same way as if we were speaking to them in real life, as if we had just knocked at their door. It is fine to have strong feelings about your passions but it is also okay to take a break until you can represent your best self again.

People have sent lovely emails and messages wanting to help and I've just found out about the Paralympic project so will direct people towards that. There's been contact from some UK radio stations which I'm not confident about doing, but if I get persuaded I'll do my best to promote Wikipedia and all the fine users and editors that make it. Thanks to everyone.