Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-03-09
Katherine Maher named interim head of WMF; Wales email re-sparks Heilman controversy; draft WMF strategy posted
Maher named interim executive director of the Foundation
Patricio Lorente, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, announced on 10 March that the interim executive director of the WMF will be Katherine Maher. Maher, currently the chief communications officer, will assume the post on March 14—two weeks prior to the anticipated departure of current executive director Lila Tretikov, who resigned last week effective March 31.
The announcement comes after the Board, in a surprise move, deferred the selection process to the C-level-team at the WMF. In his announcement, Lorente wrote:
| “ | In choosing an interim ED, the C-levels started by identifying immediate priorities for the coming months, including building trust, improving communications, and filling key leadership positions. They felt, and we agree, that Katherine is the right person to lead the organization while it addresses these and other important issues. Additionally, this will allow the rest of the executive team to focus on critical organizational functions, including community and engineering management, fundraising, and strengthening our human resources function. | ” |
Lorente's message was followed by a message by Maher, in which she wrote in part:
| “ | As a movement, we've had some challenges lately. We've started on a process of change, but as Lydia Pintscher recently reminded us, "Change happens at the speed of trust." We will need to work together over these coming months to build that trust, and open critical lines of communication and accountability. I get the sense from many people that that's exactly what they'd like to do: absorb the lessons we've learned, re-engage with each other, and get back to advancing our global movement. | ” |
Maher's appointment was greeted with an overwhelmingly positive response from current and former WMF employees and community members, including former Board members Florence Devouard (Anthere) and James Heilman (Doc James).
Maher joined the WMF in April 2014, shortly before Tretikov became executive director. Maher had worked for The World Bank, UNICEF, and Access Now, an advocacy group for open-access information and Internet freedom. While she does not have an engineering background, she is no stranger to some of the technical challenges that may be faced by the Foundation in the future. G
Wales email re-sparks Heilman controversy
Questions still surround the December departure of James Heilman from the WMF Board of Trustees, ousted in December on an 8–2 vote. Pete Forsyth, a former WMF employee who left the Foundation in 2011, re-sparked this controversy by posting to the Wikimedia-l mailing list a February 29 email from Jimmy Wales to Heilman and Forsyth, prompting a debate about the appropriateness of posting private correspondence, and about Wales' comments and role in the Heilman ouster.
In the email, Wales pondered the reasoning behind Heilman's actions:
| “ | One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that – you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true. Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details. |
” |
While Wales characterized his email as an olive branch, a number of commentators were stunned by the email, labeling it emotionally manipulative or even gaslighting. Others thought that revealing private email was a violation of trust and damaged the possibility or reconciliation between the two parties. G
Draft WMF strategy
The draft WMF strategy has been posted on Meta and is open for feedback:
| “ | Over the course of a month-long consultation (Jan 18 – Feb 15, 2016), we received community feedback on 18 pre-defined strategic approaches and received over 300 suggestions for additional approaches. We've evaluated this feedback alongside other relevant factors, such as current Foundation capacity and resources, to identify the three most promising strategic approaches. The three proposed strategies focus on improving our ability to reach new audiences and retain our current readers and contributors. They incorporate testing different approaches, iterating on feedback and results, and scaling successful outcomes. |
” |
The posted strategy statement focuses on three points, corresponding to the three previously defined challenges of "reach", "communities" and "knowledge":
- We will better understand and respond to the needs of our global users so that more people can share in free knowledge.
- Key points: understanding whether users are looking for general or in-depth information, what hardware they are using, improving the user experience, especially in mobile (web and app) contexts, and engaging readers in countries and communities with low Wikimedia awareness.
- We will increase volunteer retention and engagement through improved programs, experiences, and resources.
- Key points: investigating ways to increase volunteer retention and engagement (including mentoring, training, support and outreach programs and identifying ways to recognize volunteer contributions).
- We will increase and diversify knowledge by developing high-priority curation and creation tools for user needs.
- Key points: addressing technical and experiential barriers to contributing such as complex interfaces and workflows, especially on mobile, and facilitating high-volume contributions from GLAM institutional partners.
The page on Meta contains further details and rationales relating to these three generic goals, and explains how priorities identified during the community consultation fed into them.
The draft strategy will be open for community comment and feedback until March 18th. The incorporation of this feedback is scheduled to take place between March 18th and April 1st; any major changes resulting from this feedback will be highlighted in the final draft.
The Wikimedia Foundation will use the month of March to finalize its draft 2016–2017 Annual Plan. The plan will be based on the proposed strategy, incorporating initiatives and work projects believed to have the greatest impact on these strategic approaches. The Wikimedia Foundation's draft annual plan will be submitted for comment by April 1st.
On the topic of mobile accessibility – a key point in the draft strategy – see also the Signpost's report on the new Wikipedia iOS app, in this week's "In the media" section. AK
Brief notes
- Wikipedia.org updated: As announced on the Wikimedia-l mailing list, the WMF's Discovery team has given Wikipedia's global front page a facelift. Using Wikidata entries, they have placed a prominent search box beneath the standard globe; users can select a search language from a drop-down menu. Several concerns have been listed on Wikimedia-l, although at least one (the inclusion of non-free images) is being addressed via Phabricator. T
- Cross-wiki notifications here at last: One long-wished-for editor tool has finally arrived in the form of cross-wiki notifications. Coded by the WMF's Collaboration team, it is available through the beta features tab in each editor's preferences. At least one editor has already discovered years-old notifications from other Wikimedia sites. A help page is available; the mailing list announcement of the feature is here. T
Wikipedian is break-out star of International Women's Day
International Women's Day was celebrated on March 8. Art+Feminism organized a series of 125 worldwide editathons the weekend before to coincide with the event, its third annual commemoration. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on the event in "Why women are missing from history on Wikipedia" (March 6) and discussed gender bias on Wikipedia. The ABC quoted Dr. Lauren Rosewarne of the University of Melbourne, who said "Having men produce the lion's share of content ... perpetuates men's voices dominating the public space and ... continuing to be the authority on issues." The ABC also listed seven Australian women missing from Wikipedia, four of whom now have Wikipedia articles.
Individual editathons received news coverage, including events at Indiana University, the University of Regina, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the University of Colorado Boulder, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, Cornell University, St. Lawrence University, the Interference Archive, and the University of Oregon.
The break-out star of Wikipedia efforts at addressing the gender gap was Emily Temple-Wood (Keilana), who was profiled in a March 8 post on the WMF blog, republished in this week's Signpost Blog feature. Her efforts are unpopular in some quarters, and Temple-Wood, who founded WikiProject Women Scientists in 2012, has vowed to create an article on a female scientist for every harassing email she receives. The blog post went viral, prompting stories in media outlets in multiple languages, including New York magazine, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Bustle, Quartz, The Scientist, Mic, Jezebel, Buzzfeed, and Glamour. G
Dinosaur art
Inverse.com features a profile (March 9) of French-born paleoartist Nobumichi Tamura (NobuTamura), who has created around 1,500 Creative Commons-licensed drawings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, many of them hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
As Tamura, who works at the Berkeley National Laboratory, recounts in the piece, when he first started to explore the topic in Wikipedia about a decade ago, he was struck by the absence of illustrations, and set to work.
It was not always plain sailing, partly due to the fact that paleontology has seen many advances over the past few decades that have fundamentally changed views of what these prehistoric animals looked like in life:
| “ | "The first drawings were not really successful, because I just drew the dinosaurs like I saw them when I was a kid," says Tamura. "They weren't quite accurate." They were imprecise enough that his early drawings were rejected by Wikipedia editors and removed from the site.
Rather than giving up or finding a new hobby, Tamura just worked harder and smarter, soliciting feedback from Wikipedia editors on how he could better render extinct reptiles. He looked up the latest scientific articles describing the species he was working on [and] started sketching. He got better. To date, Tamura has illustrated 1,500 dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. That’s an impressive rate of one drawing almost every other day – he estimates that each one takes three or four hours on average. Most are available on his website, where they are licensed under Creative Commons. |
” |
Due to other work commitments, Nobu Tamura stopped contributing to Wikipedia and Commons about five years ago – a fact that the inverse.com profile curiously omits to mention – but a good number of his illustrations continue to be in use.
A recent interview with Tamura is available on YouTube. AK
The Next Web is among many tech sites to report (March 10) on Wikipedia's new iOS app. Its article, which includes several screenshots and a WMF "Wikipedia Mobile 5.0 for iPhone and iPad" launch video, says the app experience is
| “ | now much easier to use than the mobile browser, featuring snappier navigation and gestures with 3D Touch. It probably wins the award for the most creative 3D "peek" gesture, offering users the ability to select an article completely at random with a simple long press. The app also takes advantage of Spotlight search, so your phone’s native search bar can feel more complete and informative. ...
The new look not only feels closer to the pared-down look the platform is known for, but the content feels like it matches that idea as well. ... For the ability to enhance Spotlight search alone, the redesigned Wikipedia is a helpful tool. But if you’re a trivia nut who loves fact-checking your friends, then the ease of use is really helpful. |
” |
TechCrunch agrees (March 10) with The Next Web on the quality of the app, describing it as "well-designed and highly polished, and worth the download", but is unsure how the update will affect "Wikipedia's traction on iOS", noting that while the app remains top-ranked in the "Reference" category on the App Store, it's dropped out of the top-30 of late and is
| “ | certainly not one of the most popular "Overall" apps on the iPhone, despite its brand-name awareness.
The problem is that many people don't think of Wikipedia as a place they want to explore, but rather a place to look something up. And the fact that its web content has been surfaced through Apple's Spotlight Search since iOS 8 likely satisfies most in need of a quick fact check. Wikipedia is still trying to find the sweet spot in terms of making its iOS app something that would be more regularly launched, but it’s not a certainty that simply rolling out a better "explore" feed will do the trick. |
” |
TechCrunch's comments highlight some of the challenges the Wikimedia Foundation is up against as users move to mobile and Wikimedia content is increasingly incorporated in other brands' products. AK
In brief
- Crowdsourced speech: Phys.org reports (March 10) on a Wikimedia Sweden project aimed at developing "the world's first crowdsourced speech synthesis platform". Engadget also covers the story, although without making clear that this is a Wikimedia Sweden rather than a Wikimedia Foundation project. Both articles only attribute the project to "Wikipedia" in their headlines. AK
- Not dead, Wikipedia, very much alive in fact, thank you: The Times of India and The Hindu are among Indian outlets reporting (March 9) that Indian BJP politician Anju Bala was falsely declared dead by Wikipedia. Bala says she learnt of her premature demise when her secretary received a phone call enquiring whether a broadcast programme in which she had participated – clearly alive – had been held back for some reason. In addition, her Wikipedia biography at one point claimed she had been married twice; Bala considered this more offensive than being declared dead, describing it as "character assassination". AK
- Wikipedia in court: Philippine news website Rappler reports (March 6) that the Court of Appeals of the Philippines has defended its use of Wikipedia and other online sources in its ruling on the Marcopper mining disaster. AK
- Drumpf: Us Weekly comments (March 3) on the creation of the Donald Drumpf article on Wikipedia, which presently, after several debates, redirects to Donald Trump (Last Week Tonight). AK
- Battles: The Telegraph and the BBC report (March 2) on a project by Dutch firm LAB1100, a world map showing the locations of historical battles based on data from Wikidata and DBpedia. Both reports include cautionary notes about the reliability of the underlying data, and the soundness of the algorithm used. AK
- Commercial ecosystem: The Register, in an article titled "Wikidata makes Wikipedia a database. Let the fun begin", imagines (Feb. 25) "an ecology of very lucrative apps built atop Wikidata", noting that machines will for the first time be able to answer questions like "What are the ten largest cities with female mayors?" AK
- Eva Longoria sewing: Boing Boing presented "20 Minutes of Eva Longoria Sewing, While Reading the Entire Wikipedia Entry on Sewing" (Feb. 25). AK
- Tax decisions based on Wikipedia: AccountancyAge questioned (Feb. 19) HM Revenue and Customs' use of Wikipedia as the basis for a decision on the correct tax classification of a type of electromechanical switch. The manufacturer appealed, arguing that "it is very important that someone classifying electronic goods is not just reading some page on the internet but they have at least a minimal understanding of the electronic terms", and moreover pointed out that HMRC "had relied only on certain parts of the definition" provided by Wikipedia. The tribunal upheld the appeal. AK
- Recent events round-up: The Knowledge Engine and Lila Tretikov's resignation from her post as Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director attracted widespread coverage, especially in the period from Feb. 12–15 and Feb. 25–29, much of it citing reports in The Signpost. For a fairly exhaustive listing of press and web reports, see this page on Meta. AK
A modest proposal for Wikimedia’s future
On February 25, Lila Tretikov, the embattled executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), finally tendered her resignation. Though an interim successor would not be named until March 10 (see this week's Signpost news coverage), the Wikimedia movement breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Tretikov’s twenty-two month tenure produced the greatest organizational crisis in Wikimedia’s history. Her leadership will be remembered for poor communication, worse management, rapid and unannounced changes in strategy, and a lack of transparency that produced an atmosphere of mistrust and anxiety, one which finally overwhelmed and brought the Tretikov era to an acrimonious end.
Most of all, Lila Tretikov will be remembered for the precipitous decline in staff morale that sent more than two dozen key employees and executives for the exits. The loss of talent, relationships, and institutional memory is devastating, and it is not something the Wikimedia Foundation will recover from soon.
I suggest maybe the Wikimedia Foundation should not recover and rebuild itself, at least not exactly like it was. Acknowledging this modest proposal stands to be controversial (or, more realistically, ignored), I believe in this tragedy lies an opportunity for WMF to reconstitute itself in a way better suited for the challenges facing the Wikimedia Foundation at this point in its history.
This would be a WMF that recognizes its primary mission is educational, one that is willing to reconsider what responsibilities it keeps for itself vs. what works better distributed among its affiliates. I argue in this post that it should split its executive leadership into two roles and spin off certain core functions into standalone organizations. Doing so would allow for better transparency, create more opportunities for “WMF-Community” cooperation, and perhaps offer a chance for volunteers to seek a career path within the movement.
The Wikimedia Foundation does not need to do big things. It needs to create an environment for big things to happen.
The challenges to come
If the WMF is going to reconsider its organizational structure, this is certainly the time to do it. The forest fire of Tretikov’s tenure creates a unique and unexpected opportunity to plant anew. Other questions are already being explored: what will Wikimedia’s next five-year-plan say? Should Jimmy Wales continue to hold his semi-permanent seat on the Board? Are the processes for selecting and vetting the three groups of Board trustees still adequate, the underlying assumptions still operative? How can the Board be induced to act transparently? The Wikimedia Conference coming up in April should be interesting, if not explosive.
All of these are very difficult and important questions, and yet I strongly suggest opening another conversation about the size and scope of WMF responsibilities going forward. Why should the WMF consider radically re-envisioning its organizational structure? Because the WMF as it exists was created to solve a different problem than the one we have now.
When the WMF was launched in 2003, two years after Wikipedia’s creation, “Wikimedia” was a retconned neologism coined to describe a wide-ranging movement not yet fully baked. The WMF was needed to create a backbone for these efforts and give its global volunteer base a strong sense of direction. Under the direction of Sue Gardner, the WMF was successful in fulfilling this role.
The present WMF has become, in the pithiest description possible, a fundraising organization in support of a nonprofit web development company and a small-grant issuing organization. To a lesser degree, it has also funded community outreach and the development of membership chapters around the world.
Wikipedia, in its many languages and numerous sister projects—the larger Wikimedia movement with which this post is really concerned—has succeeded in becoming the world’s free resource for knowledge, however imperfect it can be. Maintaining this is a different kind of challenge, and it is inherently a defensive one. Indeed, there is much to defend, and the threats are not imagined.
The first challenge is the changing Internet: Wikipedia’s software and culture came from an Internet dominated by desktop computers accessing the World Wide Web. Today, Internet activity has moved to mobile devices, increasingly inside of apps, which are of course closed platforms. Though WMF’s mobile efforts have come a long way, they are fighting upstream against several currents no one imagined in 2001. The idea of collaboration is as strong as ever, but its tools become weaker all the time.
The second challenge is WMF culture. The Tretikov disaster reveals weaknesses in two of the WMF’s most important functions: the raising of money and the allocating of money. In addition, as described in varying degrees of detail by former staffers, under Tretikov the Foundation had become a toxic workplace environment—but the truth is it had structural issues even before that. Finally, the edifice of a nearly 300-person staff created a kind of intrigue—“Montgomerology” (a word coined by Liam Wyatt, referring to the WMF's address on New Montgomery Street) —that plays out daily on Wikimedia-l, a semi-public mailing list populated by Wikimedians, and lately the semi-private Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group, which this blog is frankly obsessed with. Which, I acknowledge, isn’t exactly healthy.
The third challenge, not unrelated, is Wikimedia culture. The English Wikipedia’s volunteer community, the movement’s largest and most influential bloc, is deeply set in its ways. Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s extraordinarily high profile contributes to a reluctance to tinker with, let alone radically rethink, how it conducts its business. And several bold initiatives developed within the WMF—including good ideas like the Visual Editor, debatable ideas like the Media Viewer, and bad ideas like the Knowledge Engine—have been received poorly by the community.
In all three cases, solving these problems are more than any one executive can handle alone.
The next steps
So what should happen? First, an apology from the Board of Trustees is definitely in order. Tretikov’s failure is entirely on them as Wikimedia’s ultimate corporate authority. Second, an audit / accounting of the failures of recent years. Wikimedia UK was required to do one following the Gibraltarpedia controversy; what’s good for the chapter is even better for the Foundation.
Third, the Board of Trustees should split the role of executive director into two positions: a president and provost, like universities do. Being an educational project, WMF should look to similar institutions for guidance. One becomes the “head of state”, handling the public and fundraising efforts, while the other handles administration and operations. Wikipedia’s high profile means that representing its value and values to the outside world is a full-time job. Regardless of whether Jimmy Wales remains a trustee, Wikipedia needs a new mascot, and it should identify a charismatic leader for this role, who may or may not come from the Wikimedia community. The provost position would be focused on grantmaking, community outreach, and long-term strategy. They must be a good manager and internal communicator, but need not be a big personality. And this person absolutely must come from the Wikimedia movement.
Fourth, and the really hard part, would be the voluntary dispossession of core Wikimedia movement functions from the central organization. The WMF should keep only what is mission critical—fundraising, grantmaking, legal, and communications—and spin off the rest. It has done this once before: that’s the origin story of the Wiki Education Foundation. WMF grants should fund these newly independent foundations, encouraging a reinvigorated support for community-driven organizations.
What is the basis for considering smaller organization sizes? From a theoretical perspective, there’s Dunbar’s number. The larger an organization becomes, the harder it is for everyone to know everyone else and understand what they’re doing. In the business world, this has been seen in the arrested development of agglomeration, once large corporations realized they had become slow and bureaucracy-laden. (Anyone else remember The Onion's “Just Six Corporations Remain”?) Critics of corporate consolidation were caught as flat-footed as the conglomerates they disdained when spin-offs became ever more popular. This is also an operating principle at Amazon, where they call it the “two-pizza rule”: “Never have a meeting where two pizzas couldn’t feed the entire group.”
From a practical perspective, the WMF’s behemoth status suits neither its day-to-day operations nor its perceptions by the wider community. As detailed by recently departed veteran staffer Oliver Keyes in The Signpost last month, systemic problems with hiring, promotions, and human resources in general were an issue at the WMF well before Tretikov’s arrival. Meanwhile, the WMF itself seems unapproachable, simply too much for anyone to wrap their heads around. Indeed the WMF itself is a conglomerate, of a kind. Creating more community space around its current departments would make each more accessible, generating more “WMF-Community” interactions. This would help greatly with transparency, and make it far easier to start new initiatives.
It all sounds pretty radical—and I’m not saying it isn’t!—but there are good reasons to think a new organizational structure could work. The argument against ultimately relies on an appeal to familiarity, bolstered by inertia.
The reorganization
With the caveat that I have never worked at the Wikimedia Foundation, nor in non-profit governance even for a minute, I won’t let that stop me from taking a crack at some specifics. What I write below is merely one way to go about it, and I encourage others—especially those with real WMF experience—to offer their view in the comments. Let’s go:
Among the WMF’s first major grants should be to the new Wikimedia Technology Foundation, containing the current Technology and Product teams. There is no critical reason why it needs to live in the same house as fundraising, and it would benefit from a strong leader with community ties—which it has not had for a long time. After all, even as we’re now sure Discovery is working not on a Google-killer but merely improved site search, it still ranks very low compared to other community-enumerated goals. Doing so will make its efforts more useful to everyday editors, and give it the latitude to develop for the next generation of Wikipedia editors. An early initiative of this spinoff should be to think about how to position Wikipedia for the mobile web and even consider partnerships with today’s media orgs—not so much the New York Times and CNN, but Facebook and Snapchat.
More complex would be the evolution of Community Engagement, encompassing grantmaking and outreach. WMF grantmaking has nearly always been hampered by thinking too small and funding projects too dispersed and under-staffed to be effective. Through its chapters, user groups, and various grantmaking committees it funds projects for not quite enough money which are basically nights-and-weekends projects, from which very few can draw compensation, thereby limiting their ambitions and achievements.
So while the core function of grantmaking should stay with under the provost at the slimmed down WMF, the bulk of its activity should happen outside the WMF. And the way this would happen is by the creation of a more ambitious grantmaking operation whose mission is to nurture and develop mini-foundations modeled on GLAM-Wiki US, the Wiki Education Foundation, and WikiProject Med Foundation. Rather than there being one new foundation, this needs to be a core capability of every mini-foundation that receives WMF funding.
Among the key projects necessary to healthy and functioning Wikimedia movement that could benefit from a devolved organization and dedicated funding: The Wikipedia Signpost, which is heroically staffed entirely by volunteers; the Wikimania conference, the locus of numerous organizational failures in recent years; Wikimedia chapter management: the model of volunteer support currently practiced focuses too much on geographic concerns at the expense of thematic topics, with considerable overlap.
Another might be content development: if you look at Wikipedia’s complete list of featured articles, it is arguable the only article categories supported by existing foundations are “art and architecture”, “education” and “health and medicine”, served, respectively, by the three model organizations listed above. Adapting from the list, this leaves dozens of top-level categories unserved by a formal organization, and decreasingly supported as the informal Wikiproject has withered in recent years. Very few Wikiprojects continue to thrive, and the ones that do—Military history and Video games—inadvertently perpetuate Wikipedia’s problems with systemic bias. By creating formal structures with specific outreach to associations and universities along these lines, Wikipedia can create more opportunities for outreach and collaboration.
What’s more, it would create opportunities for Wikimedians, particularly its younger cohort, to choose a career within the movement. Presently, there are too few jobs at libraries and museums to make use of all this talent. While conflict of interest (COI) issues will be justifiably considered, these fears are generally overblown. Nowhere in Wikipedia’s policies or guidelines—and certainly not in the Five Pillars—does it say that Wikipedia must be volunteer-only, and creating staff positions will actually reduce the likelihood editors will “sell out”. Wikimedia has long passed a point of diminishing returns on the volunteer-only model. And you know what? It isn’t entirely that now. We already live in a “mixed economy”, and we owe it to our community members to expand their opportunities. There’s no reason software programmers should be the only ones to earn a living working on Wikimedia projects.
Efficiency, transparency, and opportunity
Can I summarize all this in a paragraph? I think so: a small constellation of well-funded Wikimedia Foundation spinoffs, each with a strong sense of mission, focused narrowly on the movement’s needs stands a better chance of working more efficiently among themselves and offers many more touch points for the community itself to be involved. Through that, transparency can be improved, both at the WMF parent org and within a reinvigorated movement organized around professionally staffed, standalone foundations doing what each does best. In the gaps between them and the WMF, new opportunities for community involvement would arise for the benefit of all.
Wikimedia is vast, with an incredible diversity of talents and resources. It contains multitudes, and its organizational structure should reflect that.
This article was originally posted on the author's blog and is republished with his permission. The views expressed in this article are his alone and do not reflect any official opinions of this publication.
This week's featured content
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Featured articles
Five featured articles were promoted this week.
- Sonam Kapoor (nominated by FrB.TG) (born 1985) is an Indian actress who appears in Bollywood films. Kapoor is one of the highest-paid actresses in the industry, and is ranked as one of the most fashionable celebrities in India. She has been nominated for four Filmfare Awards. Kapoor supports various charities and causes, such as creating awareness on breast cancer. She is known in the media for her outspoken personality, and is a prominent celebrity endorser for brands and products.
- U.S. Route 25 (nominated by Imzadi1979) was a part of the United States Numbered Highway System in the state of Michigan that ran from the Ohio state line near Toledo and ended at the tip of The Thumb in Port Austin. Created with the initial US Highway System in 1926, it replaced several previous state highway designations. It initially was only routed as far north as Port Huron; and the northern extension to Port Austin happened in 1933. Starting in the early 1960s, segments of I-75 and I-94 were built, and US 25 was shifted to follow them south of Detroit to Port Huron. A business loop was created when the main highway bypassed downtown Port Huron, and then in 1973, the entire designation was removed from the state.
- Hex Enduction Hour (nominated by Ceoil) is the fourth studio album by the English post-punk band the Fall. Released in 1982, it builds on the low-fidelity production values and caustic lyrical content of their earlier recordings. Hex Enduction Hour was well received by critics, and sold well relative to its release on a small label, and earned The Fall their first UK Albums Chart placing at No. 71. Today it is considered a hallmark of the post-punk era.
- The Mortara case (nominated by Cliftonian) was an Italian cause célèbre that captured the attention of much of Europe and the United States in the 1850s and 1860s. It concerned the Papal States' seizure from a Jewish family in Bologna of one of their children, six-year-old Edgardo Mortara, on the basis of a one-time servant's testimony that she had administered emergency baptism to the boy when he fell sick as an infant. Mortara grew up as a Catholic under the protection of Pope Pius IX—who refused his parents' desperate pleas for his return—and eventually became a priest. The domestic and international outrage against the pontifical state's actions may have contributed to its downfall amid the unification of Italy.
- The Siege of Sidney Street (nominated by SchroCat) was a gunfight in the East End of London between a combined police and army force and two Latvian revolutionaries. The siege was the culmination of a series of events that began in December 1910, with an attempted jewellery robbery at Houndsditch in the City of London by a gang of immigrant Latvians which resulted in the murder of three policemen, the wounding of two others, and the death of George Gardstein, the leader of the Latvian gang. The siege marked the first time that the police had requested military assistance in London to deal with an armed stand-off. It was also the first siege in Britain to be caught on camera.
Featured lists
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
- The Academy Award for Best Director (nominated by Johanna) is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry. Nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the directors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. Since its inception, the award has been given to 69 directors or directing teams.
- The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by NASA. From 1981 to 2011 a total of 135 missions were flown (nominated by Matthewrbowker), launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During that time the fleet totaled 1,322 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds of flight time. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, conducted science experiments in orbit, and participated in construction and servicing of the International Space Station.
- New Brunswick is the eighth-most populous province in Canada with 751,171 residents as of the 2011 Census. It is the third-smallest in land area at approximately 71,400 km2 (27,600 sq mi). New Brunswick's 107 municipalities (nominated by Mattximus and Hwy43) cover only 8.6% of the province's land mass but are home to 65.3% of its population. Municipalities in New Brunswick may incorporate under the Municipalities Act of 1973 as a city, town, village, regional municipality, or rural community. Municipal governments are led by elected councils and are responsible for the delivery of services such as civic administration, land use planning, emergency measures, policing, road, and garbage collection.
- The 69th Academy Awards (nominated by Birdienest81) ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took place on March 24, 1997, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. During the ceremony, Academy Awards in 24 categories were presented honouring films released in 1996. The English Patient won the most awards of the evening with nine including Best Picture.
Featured topics
One featured topic was promoted this week.
- Katy Perry (nominated by FrB.TG) (born 1984) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. This featured topic contains one featured article and four featured lists.
Featured pictures
Five featured pictures were promoted this week.
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Māori Battalion survivors performing a haka
(created by an unknown author; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
Wikimedia wikis will temporarily go into read-only mode on several occasions in the coming weeks
- Note: these deployments have been delayed to the week of April 18 due to several new obstacles that have surfaced recently. These will require either a significant amount of WMF time to investigate and resolve, or the implementation of several suboptimal workarounds that we'd rather avoid. Because the WMF does not want to compromise on the risks and technical aspects of this project—or put unnecessary strain on the team involved—the WMF has decided it best to postpone this by a few weeks.
Over the next two weeks, the Wikimedia Foundation will be shifting all Wikimedia wikis into read-only mode for three short periods. This will allow us to launch a new data center in Texas, something that will increase the chance that Wikipedia and all of our sites will always be available, even shortly after a disaster.
This will happen once in the coming week, on March 15 at 7:00 UTC, as a five-minute test of the read-only mode. The new data-center launch will happen on Tuesday, March 22, and Thursday, March 24, when the wikis will be read-only for 15–30 minutes each time.[1]
It will not be possible to edit any page on any wiki during these times. If you try to edit or save during this time, then you'll get an error message about the wiki being in read-only mode. If you get that message, just hang on; you should be able to save your edit once everything is back to normal—but it might be just as well to make a copy of it first, just in case.
On behalf of the WMF, we apologize for the disruption—in an ideal world we'd be able make to this switchover without editors noticing, but limitations in MediaWiki prevent that at this time. This is something we're working to change.
The new data center in Texas will be a full and complete copy of our main data center in Virginia, available in case anything takes the latter offline, whether that's weather or a power outage. The two-day test later this month will see the WMF run all of its operations through the new center to ensure that it works, then shift back to Virginia. This is akin to making sure that you can actually restore your computer from a backup drive if you needed to, as opposed to finding out one day that your computer just died and the backup you were counting on is dead.
You can follow our schedule over at Wikitech. If we're forced to postpone the test or migration, it will show there.
We'll be running site notices on all Wikimedia sites and a watchlist notice on at least the English Wikipedia shortly beforehand.
More details will be available in a Wikimedia Blog post early next week; please leave any questions in the comments below.
- ^ We have not yet settled on a specific time, but just like the five-minute test, it will be during a low-traffic time (for example, 7:00 UTC).
- Whatamidoing and Ed Erhart are a community liaison and editorial associate, respectively, with the Wikimedia Foundation. When not on the clock, they edit as WhatamIdoing and The ed17.
First round of the WikiCup finishes
That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed, and we're into round 2. Forty-seven competitors move into this round (a bit shy of the expected 64), roughly broken into eight groups of six. The top two from each group advance to round 3, along with an additional 16 of the remaining top-scorers across all groups advancing as "wildcards".
Cas Liber (submissions) claimed the first Featured Article, Persoonia terminalis of the 2016 Wikicup. In addition, twenty-two Good Articles were submitted, including three by 
Cyclonebiskit (submissions), and two each by 
MPJ-DK (submissions), 
Hurricanehink (submissions), 
User:12george1 (submissons) , and Cas Liber (submissions). Twenty-one Featured Pictures were claimed, including 17 by 
Adam Cuerden (submissions) (the Round 1 high scorer). Thirty-one contestants saw their DYKs appear on the main page, with a commanding lead (28) by 
Cwmhiraeth (submissions). Twenty-nine participants conducted GA reviews with 
J Milburn (submissions) completing nine.
Gallery of content
This gallery focuses on one typical contribution from each user in the top 25 contributors (after which it gets harder to illustrate)
-
First-place
Adam Cuerden (submissions) worked primarily on historical images, such as this restoration of a portrait of Billy Strayhorn. -
Persoonia terminalis was brought to featured article status by the second-place
Cas Liber (submissions). -
Third-place
Cwmhiraeth (submissions) created numerous new articles, primarily on biological species. The Brazilian guitarfish is shown. -
Hurricane Danny was one of three hurricane articles massively expanded and brought to good article status by fourth-place
Cyclonebiskit (submissions) -
Fifth-place
MPJ-DK (submissions) worked mainly on wrestling articles and lists, such as CMLL World Heavyweight Championship. -
Godot13 (submissions) gained sixth place with four featured pictures, including this one of Stanley Police Station in the Falkland Islands. -
User:12george1 (submissons) gained seventh place with two good articles on hurricanes. (Cyclone Peter shown). -
Eighth-place
Worm That Turned (submissions) created a good article on Scottish botanist and natural historian Christian Ramsay, Countess of Dalhousie. -
Two of the three cyclones in this image (Typhoons Chan-hom and Nangka) were raised to good article status by ninth-place
Hurricanehink (submissions). The smallest, Tropical Storm Linfa, is up for good article status right now. -
J Milburn (submissions) placed tenth with his article work, including new articles on Jo-Anne McArthur, a Canadian photojournalist and animal activist, and the documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine, of which McArthur is the primary subject. -
The article on Jochen Rindt, the only driver to win the Formula One World Drivers' Championship posthumously, was brought to good article status by
Zwerg Nase (submissions) -
The Squirrel Conspiracy (submissions) created, amongst other things, a new article on Bridget Tan, a migrant worker's rights advocate from Singapore who founded the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics. -
Human3015 (submissions) created on an article on tourism in South Sudan, amongst other things. Sudd swamp, one of the largest wetlands in the world, is located there. -
The Linguistic Society of America is now the subject of a good article, thanks to
Wugapodes (submissions) -
Princess Charlotte of Prussia is a particularly complete new article by
Ruby2010 (submissions). We will likely see it raise to good article status soon. -
Cricketer Mustafizur Rahman, seen here with his family, now has a good article about him thanks to
Ikhtiar H (submissions). -
The article on the Filipino general Antonio Luna, a significant figure in the Philippine–American War, gained good article status thanks to
Arius1998 (submissions). -
Pierre Guillemin, a French rugby union player, had his article brought to good article status by
FunkyCanute (submissions) -
Ealdgyth (submissions)'s nine new articles on Mediaeval English personages are hard to illustrate (the Domesday Book here stands in for them). -
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee is a new talk show with the former The Daily Show writer... well, you can probably guess her name.
Muboshgu (submissions) created its article as part of their work. -
The Eckwersheim derailment in France is a recent railway disaster on which AHeneen (submissions) did excellent work pulling together the facts and raising the article to good article status. -
Alfonsina Orsini ruled the Republic of Florence during her son's absence - and was a major player in getting him the rulership in the first place - but had only the barest stub of an article before
1bandsaw (submissions) stepped in. -
-
A new article on St. Paul's Church in Rusthall, Kent is one of the new articles created by
The C of E (submissions). -
Captain Assassin! (submissions) created an article on the upcoming film Before I Fall (Director Ry Russo-Young pictured).
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The new alchemy: turning online harassment into Wikipedia articles on women scientists
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By day, Emily Temple-Wood (Keilana) is a biology undergraduate at Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois. She has been accepted to Midwestern University medical school for the fall of 2017.
By night, she smites trolls on the Internet with positive punishment: for each harassing email she receives, one Wikipedia article on a woman in science is created.
Temple-Wood founded WikiProject Women Scientists in 2012 to be a collaborative drive to create and maintain Wikipedia’s biographies of women scientists throughout history—a steep task to accomplish, given that the project home page notes that “part of Wikipedia’s systemic bias is that women in science are woefully underrepresented.” As the blog recounted in our profile of her two years ago, she put the idea into action on one late night: “A substantial number of female fellows belonging to the prestigious Royal Society, a sort of who’s who in the world of science, had no Wikipedia articles written about them. ‘I got [angry] and wrote an article that night … I literally sat in the hallway in the dorm until 2am writing [my] first women in science [Wikipedia] article.’ ”
Only a few years in, things are well on their way: the project has gotten 376 women scientists onto Wikipedia’s front-page “Did you know?” section, and 30 articles through Wikipedia's peer-review process (designated with a “good” or “featured” rating).
Temple-Wood also hosts edit-a-thons at the university she attends and co-facilitated a Women in Red edit-a-thon with editor Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, who told us that Temple-Wood is the “poster child of the efforts to address Wikipedia’s scientific gender gap.”
Siko Bouterse, a former Wikimedia Foundation staff member, told the blog that Temple-Wood’s impact on the gender gap has been “epic”:
| “ | She’s created hundreds of articles about women scientists, including articles that address multiple gaps in Wikipedia—it’s really important that she’s not just writing about white women scientists, she’s also working to address underrepresentation of women of color in Wikipedia and looking at other points of intersectionality as well. And perhaps most importantly, because we’re much stronger collectively than alone, Emily has taught and inspired others to do the same … When I was a kid, I could count the number of women scientists I was aware of on one hand. But I know our daughters are going to have access to so much more free knowledge about scientists who look like them, thanks to Emily’s efforts, and that’s really powerful. | ” |
Unfortunately, Temple-Wood has been targeted by a significant amount of gender-based harassment. Throwaway email addresses frequently send her requests for dates, condescendingly discuss her body, insinuate that she got to where she is through sexual favors, ask her to reserve said favors for themselves, and when she doesn’t reply, they spew profanities.
This is not uncommon for prominent young women on the Internet, but Temple-Wood is fighting back in her own way by using it as motivation to continue her efforts. For every harassing email she receives, Temple-Wood and a growing number of fellow Wikipedians are quietly creating a new biography on a women scientist, such as Liliana Lubinska, Katharine Luomala, or Adelaida Lukanina.
This harassment is something that Bouterse calls “deplorable, unacceptable, and unfortunately all-too emblematic of what women are facing on the internet today.” The emotional labor of weathering this kind of harassment is huge. Notably, rather than deciding this particular public space must not be for her, Emily has instead channeled every instance of harassment into more fuel for her focus, so it’s backfiring against those who hope to silence women online. That takes courage.
Temple-Wood already has a backlog of articles to create; she thanks her harassers for helping to fight against systemic bias on Wikipedia. In a similar vein, Stephenson-Goodknight told the blog that “Someday we’ll be writing a biography about her and her scientific discoveries, mark my word. I wonder what her harassers and detractors will think about that, especially if Emily’s scientific discoveries help heal their mom or sister.”
Ed Erhart is an Editorial Associate at the Wikimedia Foundation.
Revenge of "I can’t believe we didn’t have an article on ..."
 | Warning: This article contains profanity. |
Welcome to the second edition of this column, wherein I am STILL fucking angry about systemic bias and am highlighting kick-ass articles we created and improved this month in our never-ending quest to fix it. While this column is profane and irreverent, the actual articles' language is as formal and professional as you'd want.
Enjoy reading about these women! They’re awesome.
- Deolinda Rodríguez de Almeida was an amazing lady you’ll never read about in your history books. She’s the mother of Angola as a modern nation, basically, and some serious Les Mis shit went down in her life. She fought for the liberation of Angola and was brutally executed at age 28 for being a revolutionary. Six years later, Angola was independent and she is celebrated as a badass revolutionary hero. (Rosiestep)
- Esther Applin was a super-awesome geologist who discovered that microfossils could be used for dating purposes. This COMPLETELY CHANGED the oil industry, and the modern Gulf of Mexico oil industry basically wouldn’t exist without her. (I reserve judgment on whether or not this is a good thing, but hey.) (Kelapstick)
- Rosalie Slaughter Morton was basically a medical superhero, y’all. Raised to be a housewife, she decided that was bullshit and went into medicine – instead of finishing school, she went to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and kicked ass, then ran around Europe for a couple years like a knowledge sponge. Not only did she research endocrinology, gynecology, rheumatology, and infectious diseases, she was a professor and practicing physician who, in her ample amounts of spare time, founded a bunch of hospitals, served as a medic and Red Cross Commissioner in World War I, AND ran a public health commission. I’ll be in the corner feeling inadequate again. (Samwalton9)
- Rosalyn Scott is the first African-American woman to become a thoracic surgeon! Not only is she a freaking FANTASTIC surgeon, she’s also done a whole bunch of research to make medicine less racist. And, in her totally ample spare time, she just, y’know, started two organizations to support other African-American women and surgeons. No biggie.
- Theodosia Bartow Prevost – badass spy for the United States during the American Revolution (while her then-husband was fighting in Jamaica for the United Kingdom, no less), notorious batshit Vice President Aaron Burr’s secret lover, and total fucking genius. She modeled her daughter’s education after OG feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s work and was recognized for her genius by basically everybody. Too bad she lived in the 18th century and was stuck behind the scenes before she died of cancer. Sorry to end this on such a downer. Fuck cancer. (Ironholds)
To alleviate the total downer, here are more awesome women!!! (just go read the articles. It’s worth it.)
- Hadiyah-Nicole Green – scientist fighting cancer with LASERS because she was orphaned by cancer and then ... orphaned again by cancer. So she decided to fuck cancer’s shit up. She’s doing a damn good job.
- Olga Tufnell - kickass archaeologist who found a shit ton of scarabs (though kind of participated in racist western archaeology by stealing artifacts and kind of barging around the Middle East.) She spent two DECADES digging up this old-ass city, Lachish, and in a surprise turn of events, people thought she was awesome and didn’t give her too much sexist bullshit! Yay! (Staceydolxx and Worm That Turned)
- Suzanne Duigan was basically a giant super nerd and an amazing scientist who studied pollen, using it to figure out all kinds of really old shit. Naturally, she also flew planes. NO FEAR!!! (Casliber)
- Jennifer Childs-Roshak runs a Planned Parenthood branch and is also a really cool doctor. Also the first person with a medical degree to be the chief executive of a PP branch! (GorillaWarfare)
A special shoutout to GorillaWarfare: she and I have been working to make sure all of the African-American women profiled in the National Library of Medicine’s Changing the Face of Medicine project have articles. Go check out these amazing physicians, and help contribute to African-American women in medicine!
- Clara Brawner
- U. Diane Buckingham
- Sadye Curry
- Janice Douglas
- Virginia Davis Floyd
- Vanessa Northington Gamble
- Gertrude Hunter
- Renee Jenkins
- Shirley F. Marks
- Janet L. Mitchell
- Elizabeth Ofili
- Lucille Norville Perez
- Joan Reede
- Barbara Ross-Lee
- Omega Silva
- Jeanne Spurlock
If you’ve written something awesome to fight systemic bias recently, tell me about it! I’ll include it in the next edition.
All business like show business
The Oscars always bring high traffic, but this year they coincided with the quadrennial appearance of "Super Tuesday" and "Super Saturday"; two sets of state primaries in the runup to the 2016 US presidential election. With Donald Trump being accused of bringing show business into politics, with his use of tactics from reality TV and pro wrestling, the collision of these two events is less surprising than it might have been.
For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of February 28 to March 5, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Donald Trump 
8,238,809 
With all due respect to Martin Niemöller: first, he said Mexicans were rapists, and they laughed because he was a reality TV star. Then he said Muslims should be marked and tagged, and they laughed because it was obviously a stunt. Then he said America should be closed to Muslims, and they laughed because no one could take him seriously. And then he won nine states in one week, and the laughter ceased, for there was no one left who saw the joke. With the Republican field apparently narrowing to a choice between Trump and Ted Cruz, a choice Republican Senator Lindsey Graham memorably compared to "being shot or poisoned", the low-profile cadre of patricians known as the Republican establishment have apparently realized at last that he has a realistic shot of becoming their party's nominee, whether they like it or not. And they don't. In fact, so little do they like it, they have frantically thrown their weight behind Marco Rubio, who has yet to win a single primary (he has won one caucus) and, despite being described as "moderate", is a card-carrying Tea Partier. 2 Leonardo DiCaprio 
3,029,543 
22 years after earning his first Oscar nomination for his astonishing performance as a mentally-challenged teen opposite Johnny Depp in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (seriously, if you haven't seen it, do it), Leonardo DiCaprio finally won what had to be the least surprising award of Oscar night. And all he had to do was push himself to his absolute physical and mental limit for months in 30-below temperatures. So, Johnny, if you're looking for that elusive Oscar, there's your path to it. Just sayin'. 3 88th Academy Awards 
2,032,515 
This year's Oscars were the third-lowest rated since they were first broadcast on television, though only the second-lowest rated in eight years. And that despite the added attention of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, ably dealt with by host Chris Rock (pictured) who had been selected months before it began. The reason for the decline had nothing to do with a boycott (black audiences, according to Nielsen, were down just 2%) and everything to do with an ever-more online world that views live television as an anachronism—and awards as meaningless bling—when set against the wisdom of digitally aggregated crowds. 4 Spotlight (film) 
1,453,105 
The era of the grand Oscar sweep, when films like Lawrence of Arabia, Dances With Wolves, and, most recently, Slumdog Millionaire could cap a category-spanning flush with a Best Picture win, is well and truly over. These days the Best Picture winner is lucky to walk away with four, three, or, in this case, two wins; the lowest tally for a Best Picture winner since The Greatest Show On Earth in 1953. But while that film was critically reviled, its win widely seen as an insult to the then-frontrunner High Noon, in this case the Academy seem to have aimed above their usual middlebrow consensus and gone for quality. The film, about Boston Globe journalists uncovering evidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, was the most critically praised of all the Best Picture nominees, with a 93 on Metacritic and a 96% RT. In contrast, the presumed frontrunner, The Revenant, was the most critically disliked, with 76% and 82%, respectively. Audiences took notice; the weekend after the Oscars saw this film's Box Office take jump 150%. 5 Room (2015 film)
1,427,944 
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Brie Larson (pictured) took away her Best Actress Oscar for her performance as a captive woman forced to live for years in an isolated room. 6 The Revenant (2015 film) 
1,327,799 Despite losing the Best Picture nod to Spotlight (see #4) Alejandro González Iñárritu's Western survival epic continues to be popular with both audiences and Wikipedia viewers. The film has earned almost $430 million worldwide as of March 6. 7 O. J. Simpson
1,327,799 
The former football player and Leslie Nielsen costar has become a fixture of this list, thanks to the first season of American Crime Story, the true-crime spinoff of American Horror Story, which focuses on his controversial trial in which he was acquitted of murder. 8 Brie Larson
1,090,311 see #5 9 Jodie Sweetin
873,452 
This actress is among the cast members returning for Fuller House 10 Kate Winslet
820,600 
She didn't make good on her seventh (!) Oscar nomination this year, but the fact that she was there with Leo when he finally won only cemented in the minds of the public that the two Titanic stars were destined for one another, and that her previous two decades of marriage and child-rearing were just a trial separation while she worked out her issues. That and some ill-judged, on-camera tummy-rubbing on the part of Cate Blanchett led to (false) speculation that she may again be pregnant.
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