Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-12-01/News and notes
Reviewer of the year, WikiCup winner, and the 2019 Wikimedia Summit
Wikimedia Summit 2019
The Wikimedia Summit 2019 will be in Berlin during 29–31 March 2019 and is accepting registration from Friday, 2 November 2018 to Monday, 17 December at midnight CET (UTC+1). While this is an exclusive conference which typically limits invitations to one person per Wikimedia movement affiliate, the conference broadly affects group Wikimedia engagement everywhere as this global conference seeks to include representation from most or all Wikimedia community organizations. This gathering, previously known as the Wikimedia Conference, and before that the Chapter's Conference, focuses on discussion of global Wikimedia strategy through near future planning at meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20 and longer term ambition of what Wikimedia should be in 2030. Anyone who is part of a Wikimedia community organization should choose and register your representative. Anyone not part of an organization can join one or start one. Anyone who does not want to be in an organization, but who wants to be part of strategic planning, can join a working group and participate online. Anyone else who does not want to join any group can say whatever they want on the talk pages of any of these projects and plans.
Amazing performance by the top-10 New Page Reviewers
This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past 12 months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.
- Top 10 from the last 365 days:
Rank Username Reviews 1 Onel5969 26,554 2 JTtheOG 15,059 3 Boleyn 12,760 4 Cwmhiraeth 9,001 5 Semmendinger 8,440 6 PRehse 8,092 7 Arthistorian1977 5,306 8 Abishe 4,153 9 Barkeep49 4,016 10 Elmidae 3,615
- Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years. See also the list of Top 100 reviewers. The 2017 award was received by PRehse. (Data provided by Insertcleverphrasehere)
WikiCup 2018
This was the twelfth edition of the WikiCup, an editing competition which has been held annually since 2007. In its first year it had twelve competitors, the only entrant from that contest who still participates regularly at Wikipedia being The Rambling Man, who came third in the Cup's inaugural year. Two years later there were 60 entrants, and in the ensuing years, contestant numbers peaked at around 150 and stayed steady for several years, although there has been some tailing off of entrant numbers recently. Originally, points were awarded for the number of mainspace edits done as well as for working on articles that were promoted to GA and FA status during the competition. The former criterion has been dropped, and now points are awarded for creating or expanding articles and improving the quality of articles; featured articles, featured lists, featured topics, and featured pictures, good articles and good topics, in the news items, did you knows and good article reviews all qualify, and bonus points are awarded for articles on important topics.
This year's contest was won by 
Courcelles (submissions), largely on the back of good articles on nations competing in the Olympic Games. Second was 
Kosack (submissions), who focused on footballers particularly from Cardiff City. Third-placed 
Kees08 (submissions) mainly scored by improving content on astronauts and the space programme. In fourth place was 
SounderBruce (submissions), who concentrated on articles relating to the state of Washington, and fifth-placed 
Cas Liber (submissions) created a range of featured content encompassing astronomy, fungi, plants, and birds.
Altogether, during the course of the ten-month competition, contestants achieved 28 FAs, 18 FLs, 463 GAs, 72 GTs, 210 DYKs, 46 ITN items and 644 GA reviews. Participants who improved featured content helped by reviewing the nominations of others, and the number of good article reviews done greatly exceeded the number of good articles for which points were claimed, and this will have contributed towards reducing the backlog of articles awaiting GA review. The number of DYKs averaged fewer than one a day, so it did not clog up the DYK process as has sometimes been claimed. The next WikiCup will start on January 1st 2019, and anyone who wishes to join in can sign up here.
Brief notes
- The Mediation Committee was closed down on 13 November and marked as historical. Following a debate at the Village Pump proposed by Beeblebrox, the 'ayes' have it at 38 to 13, leaving some tweaks to snippets of text here and there to be updated to reflect the consensus. See also this issue's Discussion Report.
- New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this week's newest Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network, AfroCROWD User Group, and Muj(lh)eres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia
- Special user group notice The Affiliations Committee is accepting applications for new members. Members of this organization determine which community groups should get Wikimedia affiliate status and the benefits that come with that. See details and apply at meta:Affiliations Committee/Candidates/December 2018.
- Worst year ever for new administrators: In this last issue of The Signpost for 2018, we note that there have been fewer than ever successful RfAs, only 9 this year versus an all-time low of 16 the year before last. We won't beat the drum on this any further, but you can read various op-eds on the subject in our archives including a January 2017 News and notes report in which Kudpung prophesied last year's bump to be a "flash in the pan due to the hard work of those who scour the land for possible candidates".
- Three administrators were desysopped on 1 November in accordance with the admin inactivity policy.
- One administrator resigned their tools due to heavy commitments in real life.
Passings
Dr. Raymond Ward Arritt, who we knew as Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (formerly Raymond arritt), a valued member of the community since 2006, died suddenly on November 14; his last edit was shortly before. Just a sampling of the comments left on his talkpage in the wake of his passing include:
- "We lost a friend ... in a rough situation, he was the one to bring me back to serenity." – Gerda Arendt
- "His wit is scattered on the pages of WP. Together with his article contributions, they make for a cool monument to him." – Simon Adler
- "Ray was one of the best people here. Whenever I saw he'd posted somewhere, I knew it was going to be insightful, or funny, or both." – Floquenbeam
- "Absolutely one of the best people here. And people aren't just saying that now. We knew it the whole time." – Swarm
- "His guidance in improving and motivating my writing and teaching will forever be appreciated. And his sense of humor, as displayed on this site, shone through in person as well." – Jason Patton
- "One of the kindest yet straightest-shooters among us." – Jytdog
- "One of my favorite people, which is an odd thing to say about someone whom I never met in person and only interacted with in the context of this website. He was smart, insightful, humane, and funny, and most of all I valued his sense of perspective" – MastCell
- "Raymond has made a substantial contribution [to Wikipedia] and to the world at large, for which we can all be grateful and from which we can take inspiration." – EdChem
Since his death, volunteer Wikipedians have created a new article, Raymond Arritt, where readers can find out more about him, including his involvement in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
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