Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2023-11-20

Il Post published a "flash" article (in Italian) highlighting American photographer Gage Skidmore, starting from a question made by a Reddit user in the Wikipedia-related thread of the site last October: “Why is everyone's photo on Wikipedia a picture of them at San Diego Comic-Con?” The reason is actually Skidmore’s work: as mentioned by Il Post, since 2009 the Indiana-native photographer has been to each year’s Comic-Con to take pictures of guest actors and actresses (including Tom Holland and Scarlett Johansson, among many others), before publishing them on Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons license.

Throughout the years, the dozens of thousands of pictures taken by Skidmore, who is also well-known for his photos of candidates for the American presidential elections, have been used not only on Wikipedia, but also on many media, such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Associated Press and NPR. Those who want to help out themselves can consult Wikipedia:Uploading images. – O

The music video starts without music. We look down on a yellow wheat field, otherwise only seeing a young man walking away from us. Five seconds in, the view jumps so that the horizon divides the screen in half — the blue sky above, the yellow wheat below — a tableau of the Ukrainian flag. At the same time, the young man screams "I'm Russian", seeming to say that Ukraine (or its flag) is part of Russia. Strangely, that position is Vladimir Putin's justification for the invasion: that Ukraine was, is, and always will be part of Russia. Of course, the pop patriotic anthem genre is not unique to Russia. But some artists handle it very differently.

The singer Yaroslav Dronov, better known as Shaman, first became popular with the song Встанем ("We rise up"), released on February 23, 2022. Befitting any song released on Defenders of the Fatherland Day, it praises Russians who sacrificed themselves to rid the world of fascism, and calls upon today's Russians to be prepared to take up the same cause. The next day, Russia invaded Ukraine, and suddenly the song had a different meaning. Five months later, he had another huge hit in Russia, the pop patriotic anthem discussed above, Я русский ("I'm Russian").

The Moscow Times wrote on November 7 that "critics (are) accusing the singer of acting as part of the Kremlin’s wartime propaganda machine." MT also wrote "According to Dissernet, more than half of Shaman's 2016 thesis, which earned him the equivalent of a Ph.D. in art history at the Gnessin Academy of Music, contained excerpts lifted directly from other sources." Out of 35 total pages in the thesis, 6 were plagiarized from Wikipedia, 13 other pages plagiarized other sources, leaving only 16 pages (including the title page, the table of contents, and some appendices) which did not contain plagiarism. One should note that Dissernet only publishes preliminary reviews, that can be re-evaluated or deleted at any time. The review MT cited was deleted on November 8.

Putin is getting ready to declare his re-election campaign for the Russian presidency in mid–December according to The Bell. Shaman, who "has become the latest symbol of Russian military propaganda", is expected to be part of a small group of influencers acting as key campaigners and supporters for Putin. – S

According to a press release, the Arch Mission Foundation's "second installment of the historic Lunar Library will launch to the Moon's surface later this year aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine Lander." The library's "foundational components" include "the Wikipedia" alongside "collections from Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project and PanLex datasets." Stored in the form of laser-etched analogue images on thin sheets of nickel, the library is assumed to be "capable of lasting for up to billions of years on the Moon." In 2019, transportation of the first installment of the library onboard the Israeli Beresheet mission had ended in a crash landing, but Arch Mission stated at the time that the contents likely survived intact (Signpost coverage: "Vital Articles backed up on the Moon").
The "Lunar Library" project is not to be confused with the "Wikipedia to the Moon" effort championed by Wikimedia Germany, which was envisaged to bring a disc with a community-selected collection of articles to the Moon by 2017 (Signpost coverage in 2016: "Mixed reactions to Wikipedia's lunar time-capsule"). The chapter's partner (now called Planetary Transportation Systems after several renames and a bankruptcy) does not yet appear to have launched or participated in a Moon mission at the time of writing. – H

• Take Notes: The conservative newspaper Washington Examiner invokes O'Sullivan's First Law in "Is it possible to save Wikipedia?", giving a sharp critique of Wikipedia's NPOV while covering politically charged topics. They propose a solution akin to X's Community Notes.
• ChatGPT alarmism : Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales says ChatGPT is "pretty bad" in the Hindustan Times's coverage of Web Summit 2023 in Portugal. Wales compared hype on ChatGPT to other "alarmist" coverage by media. HT links directly to the opening night session where former WMF CEO and current Web Summit CEO Katherine Maher welcomes the audience (18:00–29:30). Jimmy Wales is then interviewed (59:30–1:17:30).
• Ten years behind: Wales was interviewed by CNBC at the summit on many of the same topics "Europe could put itself 10 years behind by regulating AI, Wikipedia founder says" (CNBC, video).

Wales covers a lot of ground. He's looking at AI for Wikipedia to identify errors. AI can help Wikipedia community do a better job. It shouldn't be used in place of human-mediated encyclopedia due to its propensity for errors / confabulation. 200,000 startups can't be effectively regulated, "I don't see a role for regulators that makes any sense". Incredible positive things are coming, but there are real threats. Material on EU regulation starts at 03:45.

• Trolls and lunatics: In another part of the same CNBC interview (but with a different url) Wales discusses Elon Musk, X, and Jimbo's improved Twitter-style site Trust Café.
• Lourdes in Spanish: Un editor de Wikipedia se pasó años simulando ser Russian Red. En realidad era un estafador indio This very detailed account at times follows and even surpasses Annie Rauwerda's story on Depths of Wikipedia.
• Reading Harrison in Spanish: Spanish literary magazine Letras Libres is continuing to work with Slate, New America , and Arizona State University on their Future Tense project in Spanish. The best part of this cooperation for Wikipedians may be that Stephen Harrison's English-language articles on Slate, such as this one about Israel and Gaza, are regularly available in Spanish.
• Gaza edit wars: Haaretz reports on edit wars and notes the discrepancies between language versions in their coverage of the Israel–Palestine conflict.

• Movies ≠ Wiki: Another pair of critical biopic reviews lambasts the screenwriters for seeming a bit too much like Wikipedia. This time it's in The Film Stage reviewing Napoleon, and The New York Times reviewing Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind. Back in January we reported on similar criticism of several others, including a Pelé biography.
• Who do you trust? An opinion piece in The Michigan Daily asks "Should you trust Wikipedia?", contrasting it to the FAANG "digital hegemons". The author covers undisclosed conflict-of-interest editing, bias on Wikipedia, lack of credibility in academia, and other ills, but still finds the devotion of the "group of active global citizens" behind its creation and upkeep "impressive" (we're blushing).
• Mary Beard Wikipedia'd the plot to Medea: New Zealand's The Spinoff gives us a tantalizingly short description of an encounter between Lyndsey Fineran, artistic director of Auckland Writers Festival, and a well-known author. Mary Beard – presumably this Mary Beard – prepped for a debate about Medea – presumably this Medea – by reading the plot in Wikipedia just before going on stage.
• Skeptic applauds fringe decline: In a YouTube video and blog post titled "Study: Why Wikipedia is the Last Good Website", Rebecca Watson aka Skepchick discusses an academic paper that analyzed English Wikipedia's increasingly hardline stance against fringe views and pseudoscience: "Thanks to a recent issue of Wikipedia’s Signpost newsletter, I learned about a really interesting study on Wikipedia itself. [...] it's interesting that while Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook continue to circle the drain on their inevitable descent to the sewer, Wikipedia has only seemed to get better."

The Wikimedia Foundation has released the audit report for the fiscal year 2022–2023, prepared by its auditors, KPMG. You can read the full report here and a summary on Diff. The main takeaways are slowed financial growth in line with targets, and record donations income. Here are some key figures.

• The Foundation took $180 million in total support and revenue (a new record and up $25 million on the previous year) versus total expenses of $169 million (up $23 million).
  • The Foundation missed their target for donations from Wikipedia fundraising banners, but were able to compensate for this with major gifts and other donation channels. Overall, donations revenue increased from $164.8 million in 2021–2022 to $168.9 million in 2022–2023, the Diff post said.
• Among expenses:
  • Salaries and benefits increased from $88 million to $101 million.
  • Awards and grants increased from $19 million to $24 million.
  • Hosting costs went up slightly from $2.7 million to $3.1 million.
• The Foundation's net assets grew by $16 million over the year prior, to $255 million at the end of the year.
  • This total does not include assets held by the Wikimedia Endowment, currently valued at $119 million.

The table below shows the development of Wikimedia Foundation finances over the past ten years, as indicated by its audit reports. Annual support and revenue has more than tripled, expenses have more than quadrupled, and net assets at the end of the financial year (not including the Wikimedia Endowment, which is organizationally separate) have increased more than fivefold.

The Foundation also made a belated correction to the Endowment figures published a few weeks ago (see previous Signpost coverage). The table provided in late September had erroneously indicated financial years ending 30 June; in fact, the Foundation said, the figures provided related to fiscal years ending 31 December, in line with the Tides Foundation's accounting period. – NW1223, AK

A large backlog has developed at WP:Sockpuppet investigations, where there are dozens of cases pending in Category:SPI cases awaiting review and, at one point prior to publication of this issue, over 140 cases awaiting administrative finalization in Category:SPI cases awaiting archive.

Key to keeping this process running are the SPI clerks. Currently, only about a dozen are active. Clerks are an important part of alignment of English Wikipedia with Wikimedia Foundation Access to Nonpublic Personal Data Policy, reviewing cases carefully for evidence and endorsing Checkuser use of tools that can reveal users' IP addresses and other private information. Such review and concurrence prior to use of the tools is important to maintain community trust in pseudonymity and integrity surrounding use of Checkuser tools.

From the SPI Clerks page, this is what the clerks actually do:

Clerks analyze behavior, make findings, and either impose or decline imposing sanctions.

Clerks help to ensure the smooth operation of SPI pages, cases and processes.

• Ensuring SPI cases and processes stay in good order, including obtaining reasonable and productive conduct by participants;
• Endorsing or declining CheckUser requests;
• Ensuring cases have proper evidence (especially for CheckUser requests) and requesting such evidence when not provided; and
• Assisting with housekeeping tasks, including closing, archiving, merging and formatting of cases.

Any user in good standing is considered qualified to apply at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Clerks, and a talkpage discussion there (begun by this Signpost contributor) has indicated interest in new applicants. Applicants go through a semi-formal training process; non-admin trainees usually show good experience and working knowledge of the community's policies and practices at the point they request traineeship, and clerking can be a step on the way to adminship for some. – B

If you want to run for a place on the Arbitration Committee you've got until this Tuesday, at 23:59 UTC, November 21 to self-nominate in this year's election. Eight editors already have (in random order): Cabayi, ToBeFree, Sdrqaz, Z1720, Aoidh, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, and Firefly.

Qualifications include:

• a registered account with at least 500 mainspace edits before 1 November 2023,
• not blocked or banned,
• meets the Wikimedia Foundation's criteria for access to non-public personal data, and willingness to sign the Foundation's non-public information confidentiality agreement, and
• all previous or alternate accounts are disclosed in your election statement, or privately declared to the Arbitration Committee (before the close of nominations).

There is one week after the end of the self-nomination period before voting begins on Tuesday, November 28. Editors may use this period to ask questions of the candidates.

You may vote from Tuesday 00:00, 28 November 2023 (UTC) until Monday 23:59, 11 December 2023 (UTC) if you meet the following qualifications:

• have registered an account before October 1, 2023
• have made at least 150 mainspace edits and 10 live edits (in any namespace) before 1 November 2023 and,
• are not blocked from the English Wikipedia when you vote.

See WP:ACE2023 for further details. – S

Founded in 2009, WMNYC is currently looking to hire its founding Executive Director.

Their duties will include:

• local organizing, as well as coordinating with and sometimes leading wider Wikimedia initiatives on a national and international scale.
• implementing the Strategic Plan of the WMNYC Board of Directors and preparing detailed reports for WMNYC’s primary funder, the Wikimedia Foundation.
• building the chapter's community and coordination of fundraising campaigns.
• managing the operations of the Chapter, and
• a whole bunch of other stuff.

Remote workers are allowed. See Wikimedia New York City/Jobs for further details. – S

Wikiconference North America 2023 was held from November 9 to 12, 2023 at the Toronto Reference Library. The program was interrupted on the morning of Saturday, November 11, when the library received a bomb threat. According to local media, the threat was received at 8:44 A.M. and the building was placed in a hold-and-secure state thereafter while police searched the building. No explosive devices were found, and the hold-and-secure state was lifted by 11:45 A.M., allowing programming to resume following that point.

The bomb threat comes two weeks after the Toronto Public Library system, of which the Toronto Reference Library is part, was hit with a ransomware attack on October 27. The ransomware attack resulted in staff social insurance numbers being compromised, and has caused prolonged outages in many of the library's digital systems.

On another note, many slide decks from conference's various presentations are available on Commons. – R

• Annual reports: Wikimedians of Kerala User Group, Yoruba Wikimedians User Group, Tyap Wikimedians User Group, WikiDonne User Group
• New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this month's newest Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Wikimédiens du Burkina Faso, the Wikimedia Community Zambia and the Wikimedistas de Ecuador.
• Milestones: Wikimedia Commons now contains over 100 million uploaded files (statistics).
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Human-centered design, followed from 27 November by Sports science. Please be bold in helping to improve this article!

• 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.

Sadly for Wikipedians, the author concludes that it is the Machiavellian use of power that holds true on Wikipedia, or in other words, that there is a cabal. One passage that comes across as especially skeptical of this structure is found on p. 17: "an editor compared the Arbitration Committee to 'riot cops' ... [who] can be compared to the 'repressive peacemakers' ... guaranteeing the level of social peace that is necessary for the Wikipedia project to unfold, even to the detriment of fairness." Then the author appears to equate the arbitration process to a trial by ordeal, a feudal concept eschewed by the West in favor of due process based legal proceedings, further saying that

My empirical findings are consistent with the argument that, despite its rhetoric of inclusiveness ("anyone can edit"), Wikipedia is a "unwelcoming and exclusive environment" for newcomers, which tends to reinforce the "hegemony" of a consensus that is mostly shaped and controlled by white Western men.
— p. 19

Summing up on the next page:

[W]hat emerges from the evidence I have collected, and is perhaps more conclusive, is that experienced editors with dense networks are well positioned to avoid the consequences of their own breaches and to use their power to prevail in disputes against weaker parties.
— p. 20

In other words, a system that puts the powerful above the law.

This article is written by Nadzik, on behalf of the Wikimania 2024 Core Organizing Team.

Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2024 are now open!

Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2024 are open until 18 December. The Core Organizing Team is offering full and partial scholarships to attend Wikimania in person in Poland. Wikimania will take place either at the end of July or the beginning of August. The exact dates of the event will be announced soon.

Next year’s Wikimania Spirit will be “Collaboration of the Open” — a celebration of the ways we work together, in the open and for the larger open movement, to bring free knowledge to the world. It will once again be a hybrid event with virtual participation on Eventyay, an open-source event management platform.

More information about scholarships is on the Wikimania Wiki and in the Diff post.