Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2015-04-15
Erik Möller leaving Foundation; annual plan grants under community review
Management changes continue: Erik Möller to leave Foundation
Möller joined WMF as a staff member in 2008 after spending time as a MediaWiki developer and WMF trustee. In his departing comments on the mailing list, he recalled the "many hats" he has worn while a WMF staffer, and listed his work with universities, the building of VisualEditor, and the fact that "we don't shy away from complex issues" such as diversity, community health, SOPA, and the NSA lawsuit as cherished achievements."
| “ | But it's time. As the leadership team begins to coalesce under Lila, I want to open up space for the organization to learn and explore anew—and I’d like to rediscover for myself what it means to tackle challenges outside of my areas of comfort and familiarity. | ” |
Möller's departure comes amid several changes in the WMF's leadership structure, including the promotion of Luis Villa to senior director of community engagement, and the arrivals of Terry Gilbey as chief operating officer and Kourosh Karimkhany as VP of strategic partnerships.
Möller told the Signpost that as Wikimedia moves in new directions, he hopes the dynamics of how it works will continue: "Site experience changes have always been the most contentious, going back to when I was a volunteer [developer]; I know I've been a persistent troublemaker in that regard, ... We can ease the tensions by improving process, delivery and engagement—and I'm confident the team under Lila will do that. But there will always be areas and moments of conflict, and I personally think that's okay. It's one of the ways we all figure stuff out."
Möller said his best memories are of Wikimanias: "it's been amazing to have this opportunity to be in touch with the community once a year. At Wikimania 2006 in Boston, it was a privilege to introduce the Definition of Free Cultural Works together with Mako Hill, which we later adopted to underpin our Licensing Policy. It was great fun to stay at Mako's place, and there I got to spend some time with Aaron Swartz, who I had met on IRC years before, and was just as brilliant as everyone says."
"Wikimania 2007 in Taiwan to me is still the best Wikimania ever. ... So much space for conversation with delightful people, such a dedicated volunteer team, and what an amazing country to visit. It was also Sue Gardner's introduction to the community, which was lovely to be part of."
Möller is still to make a final decision on whether to take a gap year: "it's an important new point in my own life". He looks back fondly at his WMF work: "It was never easy, not for a moment—you always feel the weight of what you're responsible for, the intense scrutiny that you're going to get, the ways people will judge you personally or professionally. When things get heated, sometimes you need to be able to just detach. It can be all-consuming—it's not been rare for me to be at the office till midnight wrapping up on some issue or other."
"We've had many debates over the years over things big and small. I worked pretty closely with Mike Godwin and lots of other people on the migration from GFDL to CC-BY-SA, for example, and the amount of discussion on mailing lists and wikis about that alone fills volumes (or feels that way). Again, it was tough—but also rewarding." GP, T
Annual plan grants bids up for community review
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Applications in the latest round of biannual annual plan grants (APG) process are now up for community review. APGs are allocated to support the overall annual plans of eligible Wikimedia affiliates to achieve mission objectives; the APG scheme takes up the largest proportion of grantmaking resources. There are six applications:
CIS-A2K: The Centre for Internet and Society is a Bangalore-based Indian NGO concerned with technological advocacy and multidisciplinary research in Internet and society. It is involved with Wikimedia India via the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program, a long-standing project ongoing since 2011, organized and funded in collaboration with the Foundation. They are asking for just over US$200,000 to fund the continuation of "qualitative and quantitative growth of 12 Wikimedia projects across 9 Indian languages and associated communities, in addition to providing need based support to other Indic communities".
Wikimedia Armenia: The chapter's proposal asks for slightly more than $120,000, a total that, compared to last year's disbursement of just under $100,000, is just in range of the Funds Dissemination Committee's recommended 20% maximum year-on-year bump. The budget covers two part-time staff hires (0.5 full-time equivalent each) and will cover several educational programs, a Wiki Loves Monuments initiative, and a yearly Wikicamp that last year led to the creation of 6,000 Wikipedia articles, the proofreading of 2,000 Wikisource pages, 6,600 entries in Wiktionary, and 500 files on Commons. 300 articles were also created in Western Armenian: "One of the goals of WMAM this year is the establishment and development of the Western Armenian Wikipedians' community, [to improve] article quality in Western Armenian, as well as find possible ways to open [a] Western Armenian Wikipedia."
Wikimedia France: As one of the largest affiliates, WMFR has set out a proposal for just over $670,000 in funding. The organization outlined their plan in terms of "six axes": training sessions, especially an iteration of the increasingly popular (in chapters) "training the trainers" program to facilitate community-to-community outreach; regional development through the financing of local projects and partnerships with "local authorities", for instance by creating more contributor spaces across France and facilitating photographic work; general public engagement through engagement with local and national fairs and competitions and work to be done on developing the organization's media coverage; international practical action to support the production of content related to the global south; and work on the organization's "quality policy" and communication with donors and the public.
Wikimedia Italy: The bid is for $166,680. The theme is structural: the organization aims to recruit "new volunteers and a re-organization of volunteers' activities on a geographical basis through the introduction of national and local coordinators for the main programs." A reorganization of the staff is forthcoming, with attention to Wikimedia Italy's brand awareness and "diversification of funding" (not unlike the recently begun efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation itself). An educational project is to be launched nationally, a partnership with the OpenStreetMap Foundation is being organized, and more "structured" cooperation with Wikidata are planned. Metrics of note for the organization are: "a more efficient structure, an increased users' involvement, a greater visibility of WMIT's activities among general public and cultural institutions, the systematic introduction of need assessments and indicators." The organization has published a lengthy 102-page annual plan.
Wikimedia Norway: The application is for some $260,000, presenting a threefold plan. First there is the organization's GLAM program, which aims to increase institutional sharing of cultural data to Wikipedia and to Commons. Particular efforts on this front will go towards interactions between institutions and volunteers and staff, the establishment of a Wikipedia Library, a Wikipedian-in-residence, and making inroads outside the capital, Oslo. Second is a Gender Gap Project, recently launched in collaboration with several university libraries and made possible in part by external funding from partnering non-profit institutions. And there is an Academic Wikipedia Program to cooperate with academic institutions to attract new editors among their students and enhance familiarity with Wikipedia in the Norwegian academic and research communities. Three Norwegian university institutions are experimenting with Wikipedia editing at the moment, and the chapter is seeking co-operation with the Norwegian Research Council.
Wikimedia South Africa: Asking for just under $100,000, WMZA is an APG newcomer. The chapter's focus is linguistic, aiming "to support a vibrant multilingual and multicultural content community that generates and disseminates content that is used, and [undertaken] by the local and global community. With 11 official languages, South Africans are well-placed to contribute not only to the English and Afrikaans Wikipedias, but to smaller Wikipedias." Programs are split into three categories. The first is community outreach, focusing on the language projects and outreach efforts like the JoburgpediA project. The second is institutional outreach going out to a variety of South African non-governmental organizations, as well as an intent to "engage" "government entities" in Kiwix, an open-source offline resource project (for more on Kiwix see recent blog posts). The last category is "international collaboration", covering platform support for editors and "awareness of [the] Wikimedia movement", a topic of common interest both to chapter organizations and the Wikimedia Foundation as of late.
Editors are encouraged to peruse the applications and offer critical comment on the talkpages. R
Brief notes
- WMF office move: A discussion occurred on the WM mailing list on the topic of the Foundation's current home city, San Francisco, and the prospects of a potential move. The WMF moved there from St. Petersburg, Florida in 2007, and its current location is cited by many as being an important element of the Foundation's talent attraction and retention abilities—yet San Francisco is also often cited as the most expensive US city. To mitigate this cost burden both on the Foundation itself and on the public non-profit salaried staff, the WMF solicits and encourages a remote workforce: on this topic Steven Walling said that "I wouldn't be surprised if close to half of staff are based remotely." Garfield Byrd, chief of finance and administration, wrote that "at this point, WMF is not planning on moving out of the San Francisco market area ... the advantages of having good access to [the] talented people and organizations WMF interacts with far outweigh any advantages to moving to a lower cost location outside of the San Francisco market area." Executive director Lila Tretikov stated that: R
| “ | As a matter of strategy we should be leveraging our open-source roots more as we grow. This means distributed, loosely-coupled teams ... we are working on some structures that will allow teams to either be entirely distributed or mostly co-located, consistent with what we know about best outcomes. ... before we worry about growth and costs we need to worry about effectiveness, but we are thinking about this. | ” |
- RfC on steward rights renewal: A request for comment was made on the meta-wiki proposing a clarification in the annual re-confirmation of stewards after their initial election. Stewards have the highest level of user-rights in the movement—full access to all user-rights and user-right assignment privileges on all wikis—and are the core of the projects' emergency response and small-wiki response teams. As of publication time the proposal looked unlikely to pass. R
- Arizona rocks: One of the mentions made in the Wiki Education Foundation's monthly report for February was a meeting with members of the University of Arizona "Geo Club", a graduate school group for students studying the geological sciences. Students and the administrator of the widely cited American Mineralogist Crystal Structure Database created and improved several articles on topics in mineralogy, such as kovdorskite and lanthanite. In a Wiki-Edu blog post, outreach manager Samantha Erickson asked that students be bolder: "The GeoClub is one of the first student groups to participate in the high-achieving student clubs program, and they’ve been an enthusiastic group interested in seeing the impact they are making on Wikipedia ... we still have slots available for the spring term and would love to hear from you!" R
- Wikipedia iOS app updated: The official Wikipedia iOS app just received a major update. A feature of interest is the ability to create "fact cards", a feature that was also (first) recently rolled out in the Android Wikipedia application. R
- VisualEditor newsletter: The VisualEditor team have released their April 2015 newsletter. Highlights include a ~40% network speed boost and the introduction of the citoid service, as well as intermittent bug-fixes and improvements. R
- GLAM newsletter: The GLAM initiative has released its newsletter for March. The three-day GLAM-WIKI 2015 conference, hosted at The Hague by Wikimedia Netherlands, concluded on April 12. R
- Chapter reports: Wikimedia Österreich and the Amical Wikimedia published chapter reports. R
- New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of a Wikimedia user group, the Wikimedia Brazilian Education and Research Group. R
- 5,000th featured pictures: The English Wikipedia passed the 5,000 Featured pictures milestone this week; the 5,000th FP was File:John Everett Millais - Mariana - Google Art Project.jpg, nominated by Hafspajen. R
Reader comments
Saving Wikipedia; Internet regulation; Thoreau quote hoax
"Saving Wikipedia"
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Time profiles (April 14) Lila Tretikov, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. Time paints a grim picture of the challenges faced by Tretikov and the encyclopedia, many of which were discussed in a recent Signpost's special report: a "meager annual budget", the gender gap, "critical gaps in coverage" (such as the Global South), the shrinking ranks of active editors, and the lack of contributions from those who access Wikipedia content through mobile devices, search engines, and personal digital assistants. Time speculates that Wikipedia could contract suddenly, with something similar to the almost 25% dropoff in active editors on the Italian Wikipedia in 2013, or dwindle gradually, a possibility that Andrew Lih (Fuzheado) compared to "the boiling frogs scenario". William Beutler (WWB), author of the blog The Wikipedian, told Time "I do not envy Lila Tretikov’s position."
Time outlined efforts by Tretikov and the WMF to address these issues, such as the Inspire Campaign and Wikipedia Zero. Time wrote that "Tretikov is focusing the Foundation’s limited resources on how readers and editors use the site," including gathering data about user preferences, increasing the number of WMF engineers, and improving and creating editing software like mobile apps.
Time notes that some of these efforts have brought the WMF into conflict with the editing community, especially the controversy involving Media Viewer (see previous Signpost coverage). Time highlighted a comment on the German Wikipedia from the controversy: “I want victory over the WMF. I want the WMF to shudder when they remember this case.”
Tretikov said to Time that “It’s not realistic to have everybody always in the boat with you,” which may sound ominous to those who wish the WMF to be more responsive to active editors, who Time writes "seem to have divergent views about almost everything." Beutler summed up his view of the problem for Time:
| “ | The Wikipedia community is full of old timers who are used to getting their way and don’t like things changing, and I think it’s important that the community always be forced to rethink, is Wikipedia everything that it can be right now? | ” |
Wikipedians offer libertarian perspectives on Internet regulation
In The Huffington Post UK, Jimmy Wales writes "To Protect the Most Fundamental Rights of Internet Users, We Must Always Be Skeptical of Any Call for Regulation" (April 13). Wales credited "The 'anarchical' character of the Internet" for allowing people to contribute and share knowledge and placed Wikipedia in this tradition. Wikipedia "is based on this simple, yet revolutionary, concept of allowing free and unlimited access to the sum of all human knowledge."
Wales echos libertarian thought when warning of the harmful effect of "even seemingly minor regulation," citing regulations that allow Internet censorship in China and the global surveillance disclosures of Edward Snowden. He writes "even milder regulations by progressive democratic governments must be observed skeptically."
Wales concludes:
| “ | In order to protect the most fundamental rights of Internet users, we must always be skeptical of any call for regulation. Current regulation must also be carefully and durably observed for any unnoticed expansion of its implementation. The Big Brother will always want to collect more information about us in order to gain power and control. We should not make it easy on him. | ” |
In the libertarian magazine Reason, where he is a contributing editor, Mike Godwin writes "What the 'Zero Rating' Debate Reveals About Net Neutrality (April 8). Godwin is former general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation and is general counsel and director of innovation policy at The R Street Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Godwin opposes "net-neutrality absolutists" who are concerned that "zero-rated services", such as Wikipedia Zero, which are free of mobile usage charges, have troubling implications for net neutrality. He argues that "In the long run, increased demand and increased capacity, together with the free informational resources that Wikipedia and its sibling projects provide, will promote increased Internet access in the developing world."
Fake Thoreau quote uncovered on Wikipedia
At Medium's The Message, librarian Jessamyn West tracks the history (April 13) of a fake quotation about American author Henry David Thoreau, attributed to another famous American author, Louisa May Alcott. The original edit, from December 2007, read:
| “ | Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted many women found attractive. However, Louisa May Alcott reportedly mentioned to Emerson that Thoreau's facial hair "will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity." Thoreau did in fact die a virgin. | ” |
Within hours, the edit was removed by an editor asking for a reference. The same day, a reference was duly supplied, to the entirety of the sixteen volume collection The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another editor removed the final sentence about Thoreau's virginity, thanked the hoaxer for the reference, and asked for "a proper volume/page reference". The hoaxer did not respond and no further action was taken. When the hoaxer attempted to remove their own hoax in April 2008, they were reverted by another editor, who wrote "the information is referenced; if you say it's wrong, prove it." Protected by the faux reference, the hoax remained in the article until it was removed by Mr. Granger in March 2014. During the six years it was on Wikipedia, the fake quote made its way into articles, blogs, speeches, and even quizbowl questions.
West attempted to decisively "prove it" a hoax. Unsatisfied with simply not locating the quotation in Emerson's journals in Google Books, she contacted John Overholt, Curator of Early Modern Books & Manuscripts at Harvard University's Houghton Library. (Overholt also created the Tumblr blog First Drafts of History, featuring first edits of Wikipedia articles.) Overholt told West
| “ | There are five “perpetuity”s in the 15 volumes, and definitely none of them are that quote. There are no instances in which “Thoreau” and “beard” appear together, nor any variation of neckbeard. There are only a handful of references to Louisa May Alcott in the set, and none of them are that anecdote. So I think you can consider it conclusively debunked. | ” |
West concluded "I hope we’ve all learned something about the nature of online citation and that if you really need to know something for certain, ask a librarian."
Wikipedia and online reputation management
British journalist Jon Ronson's March 2015 book So You've Been Publicly Shamed contains a discussion of the online reputation management services provided to one public shaming victim, Lindsey Stone, by Reputation.com. Stone had no Wikipedia presence, but Ronson discussed the work of the company Metal Rabbit with Graeme Wood, who alleged that the Wikipedia article of an unnamed United Nations peacekeeper was edited by the company. Wood wrote a 2013 article on online reputation management for New York which discusses a Metal Rabbit client called "Chad" (not his real name), who is likely the UN peacekeeper. A 2011 profile in the New York Times of Metal Rabbit and its founder, Bryce Tom, noted that "'On a recent Wednesday afternoon, [Tom] was preparing a briefing for a new client, describing how he would 'fix' Wikipedia and the top search results on various search engines. On the walls of his office were framed copies of Google search results and Wikipedia entries of clients: a reality television star, a movie actress and a chief executive officer. Mr. Tom calls it his “wall of fame.'"
In brief
- In The Daily Telegraph, University Challenge winner Ted Loveday credits Wikipedia (April 15) with his success.
- Alabama Media Group columnist John Archibald suggests (April 12) that UA alum Jimmy Wales serve on the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama.
- At swissinfo.ch, on the occasion of the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland reaching the final letter of the alphabet, Professor François Valloton of the University of Lausanne ponders the future (April 11) of such reference works in the age of Wikipedia.
- At University Affairs, Professor Christian Vandendorpe, honorary Wikipedian in residence at the University of Victoria, calls Wikipedia "A gift to the world" (April 8) and writes that "Scholars need to embrace it and do all they can to support it."
Reader comments
Single-User Login provides access to all wikis
- Keegan Peterzell is Community Liaison, Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation.
Later this month, everyone will be able to use the same user name on every wiki, thanks to Single-User Login. As a result, cross-wiki collaboration and communication is expected to improve. Collaboration logo by Berdea, freely licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Single-User Login provides access to all wikis
15 April 2015
SUL finalization imminent; executive office shake-ups at the Foundation
18 March 2015
WMF–community ruckus on Wikimedia mailing list
13 May 2013
Candidates nominating for Foundation elections; Looking ahead to Wikimania 2014
6 May 2013
1.19 deployment stress, Meta debates whether to enforce SUL
27 February 2012
Single User Login opt-in for all users
26 May 2008
Global login, blocking features developed
21 April 2008
Single User Login enabled for administrators
24 March 2008
Single-user login, stable versioning planned soon
7 August 2006
News and notes: Blocking changes, single login
17 July 2006
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Single-User Login provides access to all wikis |
On March 16, 2001, two months after Wikipedia’s creation, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced and launched the first Wikipedia projects to be written in languages other than English, starting with the German and Catalan Wikipedias. The Wikimedia Foundation now hosts over 900 wikis in hundreds of languages, covering ten subject areas; this includes Meta-Wiki, the global community site, and MediaWiki.org, the website for development and documentation of the software that runs the Wikimedia wikis.
Problem
The rapid growth of the projects presented a problem early on — one that is finally being solved this month with Single-User Login: accounts created on one wiki used to only work on that wiki. If you wanted to edit a different wiki, you had to register a new account. Sometimes, and with growing frequency over the years, your account name was already registered by someone else on that different wiki. Lack of single-user login required you to register a different account name, splitting your identity across the wikis. This caused problems in software development, making it hard to develop global notifications or global watchlists, for example. The lack of persistent identity across the wikis also caused problems with users being mistaken for other users: users blocked on one wiki were sometimes assumed to be the same person on another, for instance. As of last month, there were 2.8 million accounts with conflicting, identical usernames, out of over 90 million local accounts.
History
As early as May 2004, while proposing Wikimedia Commons as a free media repository, Erik Möller (Eloquence) put forward the idea of using Commons as a place to unify all usernames. In June of 2005 the first specifics were proposed to establish and use “global accounts.” The Wikimedia Foundation committed software architect and engineer Brion Vibber (Brion VIBBER) to work on that project. Due to various complications, the resulting global log-in system, CentralAuth, was not ready for general use until 2008 — and only in 2009 were new account name requests checked against those that registered their global name. Following a community request in 2012 to complete single-user login and make all accounts global, the Wikimedia Foundation provided more resources for that task. In the spring of 2013, James Forrester (Jdforrester (WMF)) was tasked with unifying and globalizing all accounts, and early planning began. Dan Garry (Deskana (WMF)) took over the project at the end of 2013, and throughout the summer of 2014 he led the engineering work to complete the task. I, Keegan Peterzell, took over the project once most engineering challenges had been met, at the end of October 2014.
Implementation
The move to all-global accounts has been taking place in stages over the past eight months. In August 2014, we started migrating all local accounts that did not conflict with another local account or a global account, making them global across all wikis. In September 2014, the ability to rename accounts moved from local requests to a global group, to prevent local renames that would separate an account from its global owner. In November and December 2014, we tested new global rename processing tools. In January 2015, GlobalRenameRequest was deployed on all wikis, with the special queue where requests are sent for processing. This special page allows users to request a new name from the wiki on which they are logged in, using localized, translated text. The form is short and allows global renamers to smoothly process requests from all wikis. In February 2015, we focused on preventing the ability to create an account that conflicted with a global account by anyone, as well as contacting over 80,000 accounts with unconfirmed email addresses to request confirmation. In March 2015, a script was run over all the remaining clashing accounts, based on a rename selection scheme to determine the final global accounts and which other accounts needed to be renamed.
Final stages
On March 17, 2015, we started contacting the 2.8 million accounts being renamed. Since being contacted, over 1.34 million accounts have been connected to their global accounts and will no longer need to be renamed; and over 10,000 accounts have been renamed to a new global account name of their choosing. This week, we will begin the process of renaming the remaining 1.46 million accounts – those which have not responded to all attempts at outreach. That process is expected to take approximately one to two weeks. Once renamed, account owners will still be able to log in using their old credentials and will be shown information about the renaming. At any point after being renamed, all affected accounts are free to request a new name of their choice, using GlobalRenameRequest. To learn more, visit this help page.
Once finalization is complete, every account on Wikimedia projects will be unique in all projects. Any confusion about user identities will be addressed by setting up a global user page for your account in the unified world; and software developers will be able to start projects that had been put on hold for over a decade due to this ongoing issue.
As a result of Single-User Login, cross-wiki collaboration and communication should improve, which should help the health of the overall Wikimedia movement. I look forward to sharing this new, unified wiki experience with the rest of you. The wait and the work should all be well worth it.
Reader comments
Furious domination
If it wasn't for Easter, Fast and Furious related articles would have taken the top four spots this week. The latest installment of the movie franchise, Furious 7, tops the chart for the second straight week. And for real Furious aficionados, be sure to scroll down to see our Furious only chart, which reveals that all seven movies were ranked among the 200 most popular articles this week.
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.
For the week of April 5 to 11, 2015, the most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Furious 7 
2,617,928 
A second week at #1, and up from 1.8 million views last week. The seventh installment of this long-running series, whose grip on sanity has decreased as its profitability has increased, opened on April 3. In keeping with tradition, this movie is so insane it shook off the death of its lead actor, Paul Walker, midway through and kept on trucking. And, again in keeping with tradition, it has outgrossed its predecessors, taking $67 million on its first day – more than The Fast and the Furious 3 earned in its entire run. 2 Paul Walker
2,236,641 
Up from #5 and 875K views last week. See #1. 3 The Fast and the Furious
1,317,476 Up from #6 and 748K views last week. See #1. 4 Easter 
993,500 
Up from #7 and 718K views last week. It's hard to remember these days, under the onslaught of bunnies, chocolate eggs, and marshmallow peeps, that Easter, not Christmas, is the most sacred date of the Christian calendar. 5 Vin Diesel
769,895 
Up from #22 and 456K views last week. Vin Diesel, a.k.a Mark Vincent a.k.a Melkor (his D&D name, and before you say that's irrelevant, he had it fake-tattooed on his stomach while filming XXX) is the nominal star of Furious 7, though Paul Walker (#2) has been in most people's thoughts. He also recently became a father for the third time, so between that and Furious 7's grosses, he has a lot to smile about, even if he will doubtless be remembering his departed friend. By the way, his new daughter's name is Pauline, after Walker. 6 Game of Thrones (season 5) 
738,303 
Up from #19 and 476K views last week. And it's baa-aack. I am not the world's greatest fan of Game of Thrones, but I swear, even if you thought it was televisual swill, after curating this list for three years solid you'd have the dadadadaDUM! dadadadaDUM! dadadadaDUM! crashing around your skull too. 7 Daredevil (TV series)
714,339 
The first season of this new Netflix series created by Drew Goddard (pictured) and based on the comic book character debuted on April 10. Critical reaction has been generally favorable. 8 Better Call Saul
593,396 
Up from #23 and 456K views last week. The season finale of this television show spinoff of Breaking Bad (a former chart favourite on Wikipedia) starring Bob Odenkirk (pictured), debuted on AMC on April 6. 9 Zlatan Ibrahimović
570,145 
After a recent loss, this Swedish footballer with Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG) ranted that "In 15 years I’ve never seen a [good] referee in this shit country ... [they] don’t even deserve PSG". (I've seen the video and he said it in French, but I guess that is what he was saying.) He later apologized, but was criticized by French politicians, and Ligue 1 imposed a four-match ban. 10 Interstellar (film)
564,409 
The science fiction blockbuster holds steady at #10 for a second week, down slightly from 586K views last week.
- Just missing the Top 25: Alan Turing (#26); List of Arrow episodes (#27); Lykan HyperSport (#28), a car used in Furious 7; Rand Paul (#29), American politician who declared his candidacy for president on April 7, getting much less attention in terms of Wikipedia views than Ted Cruz did last month; and List of Bollywood films of 2015 (#30)
- The Furious-Only Chart By Movie:
- 1. Furious 7 (2,617,928 views) (#1 in Top 25)
- 2. Fast & Furious 6 (340,185) (#50 in Raw Top 5000)
- 3. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (the 3rd movie) (262,808) (#79)
- 4. The Fast and the Furious (2001 film) (the 1st movie) (230,526) (#103)
- 5. Fast Five (223,715) (#108)
- 6. Fast & Furious (2009 film) (the 4th movie) (222,391) (#109)
- 7. 2 Fast 2 Furious (the 2nd movie) (173,827) (#165)
Reader comments
Au-delà des Alpes, le chien lit de Saint-Bernard. Sous les pavés, les trimes d'argent ! Mes enfants, suivez-moi !
Featured articles
Six featured articles were promoted this week.
- Paul Kruger (nominated by Cliftonian) Paul Kruger was a prominent Boer leader, and President of the South African Republic (or Transvaal) from 1883 to 1900. Kruger was born in 1825 to a long-established Boer family in the British Cape Colony. His family took part in the Great Trek of 1836, moving northeast away from British rule to the Transvaal. In accordance with Boer custom, Kruger became an enfranchised burgher and farmer at age 16; over the next decade, he was mentored by the Boer trekker leader Andries Pretorius, who was fighting British expansion into the Orange River area. The fractious nature of Boer politics began to evolve into a unified national consciousness after Britain's annexation of the South African Republic in 1877. The First Boer War of 1880–1881 ended in a peace treaty which restored the Transvaal's independence, with Kruger as elected President from 1883. With the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1886 came a massive influx of "uitlanders" (out-landers), mostly British; the income of the republic was derived mainly from taxing these immigrants, but they were given only limited civic representation. The lack of a franchise for British immigrants was one of the factors leading to the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. As the war turned against the Boers in 1900, Kruger was despatched to Europe to prevent his capture; after his death in Switzerland four years later, the victorious British authorities allowed his body's repatriation and accorded him a state funeral. His statue has stood in the centre of Pretoria since 1954.
- The Sirens and Ulysses (nominated by Iridescent) The Sirens and Ulysses is a painting by English artist William Etty "completed and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1837". It depicts the Sirens as nude women squatting next to piled male corpses in various stages of dissolution. They beckon to a passing brass boat, on which a massive Ulysses struggles against his bonds; the Sirens would lure him to his death if he were not leashed. Etty based the corpses on studies that he made in a mortuary; the lividity and bruising in the face of the right-hand stiff is rather curious. The artist used glue-size to bind the pigments; by Etty's own account, he used too much, and the paint hardened into an inflexible layer which cracked and flaked off. The problem was made worse by the painting being almost the size of two snooker tables; the painting flexed when moved. The Sirens and Ulysses failed to sell at the Royal Academy—it was then purchased, sight unseen, by a Manchester cotton merchant who quickly offloaded it on his brother, who then gave it to the Royal Manchester Institution. Etty, who considered it his masterpiece, pressured the Institute to loan it for an exhibition in 1849, against their objections over possible damage. It was exhibited again in 1857, but afterwards, its poor condition meant that it was kept in storage. After over a century of unsuccessful attempts to repair the painting, it was restored by Manchester Art Gallery from 2003 to 2010 and is now again on public display.
- Three-cent silver (nominated by Wehwalt) Brother, can you spare a trime? This US three cent coin was issued for circulation between 1851 and 1872; from 1848, so much gold flooded the eastern US economy that its price relative to silver dropped to the point where it was profitable to export silver coins as bullion, get paid in gold, and then send the gold to the Mint to be made into gold coins, which were then used to buy more silver coins. The US economy soon ran out of small change, so the decision was taken to introduce a coin with a reduced amount of silver in the metal (three parts silver to one of copper). The new coin was the first to have a face value greater than its intrisic value; it was set at 3 cents because the reduction of postage rates from 5 cents to 3, and the valuation of Spanish reals at 12 cents made it desirable to have such a coin. The trime went into circulation in 1851 and it stayed there until the economic chaos of the Civil War caused coin hoarding. The three-cent silver was last minted in 1873, and the nickel version in 1889.
- Hermeneutic style (nominated by Dudley Miles) The hermeneutic style is Latin written using recherché and plutinobibulous words. It was used by writers of the late Roman and early medieval periods—the second-century scrivener Apuleius is the first known to have used the style in his asininious metamorphics. Almost all writers in late tenth-century England wrote in this style, being profoundly influenced by an education which emphasised the study of difficult Latin texts.
- Ulysses S. Grant (nominated by Coemgenus) Hiram Ulysses Grant was the Commanding General of the Union Army during the American Civil War. He went on to be elected the 18th President in 1868 and served two terms. Hiram became "US Grant" when he was nominated by Congressman Hamer for West Point— Hamer wrote "Ulysses S. Grant" by mistake! Faced with accusations of drunkenness, he resigned from the Army in 1854. After struggling in civilian life, the Civil War gave Grant the opportunity to return to the military. Quickly he distinguished himself both through battlefield victories and a staggering number of casualties at the Battle of Shiloh; President Abraham Lincoln famously said of him "I can't spare this man; he fights." Victorious in war, he was later elected President under the slogan "Let us have peace". His Presidency was dogged by scandal and historians have largely labeled it a failure, though more recent historians have reassessed it more favorably. During his life, Grant wrote a well-received memoir that is still well-regarded by critics. It helped rehabilitate his reputation and at his death a mausoleum was constructed for him, leading Groucho Marx to wonder who was buried there.
- Edward II of England (nominated by Hchc2009) Edward II was King of England from 1307 to 1327. Born in 1284, he was the fourth son of Edward I; two of Edward II's brothers died before he was born, and the third died when Edward was about three months old. Piers Gaveston became a member of Edward's household in 1300. The two soon developed a close relationship – even to the extent that Marlowe depicted them as lovers – the nature of which is still obscure; after Edward became king it was complained that there "were two kings in one kingdom". Forced into exile twice by Edward's barons, Gaveston was eventually captured and executed in 1312. Military defeats, famine, and civil war followed. By 1326, Edward's Queen, Isabella, was shacked up in France with her lover, Roger Mortimer, and her son, Prince Edward. Isabella and Mortimer invaded England in September of that year. Edward was captured in November, and in January 1327, he abdicated in favour of Prince Edward, who became Edward III. Edward II was moved to Berkeley Castle, where he met his end, or, alternatively, where his end met a poker.
- Of Human Feelings (nominated by Dan56) A 1979 album by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, Of Human Feelings wasn't released until 1982, after a deal with a Japanese record company fell through. The album's jazz-funk numbers were recorded in one take, with no mixing or overdubbing, and represent a development of Coleman's harmolodics, in which all of the musicians play "individual melodies in any key, and still sound coherent as a group". It received considerable critical praise and is still regarded as a canonical jazz album.
Featured lists
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
- Timeline of the 2013 Pacific hurricane season (nominated by TropicalAnalystwx13) 15 May 2013: Dear Diary, today the 2013 Eastern Pacific hurricane season officially started. We're expecting twenty storms, starting with Alvin and ending with Sonia. Raymond's going to be a real blowhard, but Erick's intending to degenerate into a remnant low-pressure area. (Loser.) People are really looking forward to 30 November, when it all officially stops.
- List of awards and nominations received by Ariana Grande (nominated by FrankBoy) Ariana Grande is an American singer and actress. She started her acting career with the Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater in the lead role in the musical Annie, and then went on to perform with several symphony orchestras. Grande then co-founded the singing group Kids Who Care, which performed charity concerts in South Florida. By the age of 13 Grande had decided to pursue a musical career, although she didn't turn her back on theatrical work. Grande got a role in the musical 13 on Broadway, and also sang jazz at Birdland. She told her Los Angeles-based managers that she wanted to record an R&B album when she turned 14—it wasn't till August 2013, when she was 20, that her first album was released. The awards listed are from 2013 onwards, after Yours Truly sold 138,000 copies in its first week of release.
- List of Dharma Productions films (nominated by Krimuk90) A list of the thirty Bollywood films produced by Dharma Productions from 1980 up to today. The list includes two films yet to be released, and their plots aren't included; you might have some fun trying to guess what they'll be from reading the broad range of themes covered by the company over the last 35 years.
- List of accolades received by Star Trek (film) (nominated by Miyagawa) Star Trek is a 2009 American science fiction action film. It is the eleventh film in the Star Trek film franchise. While to most Trekkies, this data has already been committed to memory, for the rest of us, we have a list of every award and nomination from this episode of the movie series. From the Academy Awards to Writers Guild of America Awards, this film was nominated for just about every award the entertainment industry has to offer. "Beam me up, Scotty!'"
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman before restoration -
After restoration (and cropping out that grey border); this version became a featured picture.
Featured pictures
Fourteen featured pictures were promoted this week.
- [[:|Terrance Hayes]] (created by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, nominated by Crisco 1492) A great poet, and now we all know it. Terrance Hayes was a Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University until 2013, at which time he joined the faculty of the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2014, he was made a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. "First you'll marvel at his skill, his near-perfect pitch, his disarming humor, his brilliant turns of phrase. Then you'll notice the grace, the tenderness, the unblinking truth-telling just beneath his lines, the open and generous way he takes in our world", Cornelius Eady once stated with regard to the quality of Terrance Hayes's poetry.
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman (created by C.F. Lummis, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American author and feminist, best known for her 1890 short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", about a woman shut up for three months in a room by her doctor husband. The theme of the story is women's lack of autonomy, which is detrimental to their well-being. The story was inspired by Gilman's own experiences with postpartum psychosis and the rest cure prescribed by her doctor. She wrote that "the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways". Mitchell had instructed Gilman to "live as domestic a life as far as possible, to have but two hours' intellectual life a day, and never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again as long as you live." Gilman followed the doctor's directions until determining that they would destroy her. This was in 1887. Sounds depressing ....
- Portrait of a Man (created by Hans Baldung, nominated by SchroCat) Portrait of a Man (1514) by Hans Baldung; this is an unknown sitter, but a wealthy man, possibly a Swabian of noble origins. Hans Baldung Grien or Grün (c. 1484 – September 1545) was a German artist in painting and printmaking who was considered the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer. Throughout his lifetime, Baldung developed a distinctive style, full of color, expression, and imagination. His talents were varied, and he produced a great and extensive variety of work including portraits, woodcuts, altarpieces, drawings, tapestries, allegories, and mythological motifs. Baldung was given his nickname "Grien" due to his preference for the color green – he usually wore green clothes. Why not? Green, for lack of a better word, is good. Green is right. Green works.
- Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa (created by User:Cancre, nominated by Yakikaki) Are you in the market for a sweet Benedictine abbey located in the territory of the commune of Codalet, in the Pyrénées-Orientales département, in southwestern France. Well, abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa is a Benedictine abbey located in the territory of the commune of Codalet, in the Pyrénées-Orientales département, in southwestern France, that you can also visit when in New York. Well, kind of: parts of it now make up the Cloisters museum in New York City.
- King Lear, Act I, Scene I (created by Edwin Austin Abbey, nominated by Crisco 1492) The banishment of Cordelia, the youngest of King Lear's three daughters in the play of the same name. She is banished for refusing to profess her love to him in return for one third of the land in his kingdom. Shakespearean tragedy is the classification of drama written by William Shakespeare; it features a noble protagonist, who is flawed in some way and placed in a stressful, heightened situation, and ends with a fatal conclusion. The primary characters in a Shakespearean tragedy are of high status, either by socioeconomic class, like King Lear and Hamlet, or by military rank, like Othello and Macbeth. The main character(s) in a Shakespearean tragedy further the central conflict of the play to the point that their lives, families, and/or socio-political structures are destroyed. Ohh, if not but for the drama of it all!
- Houses at Auvers (created by Vincent van Gogh, nominated by Hafspajen) Houses at Auvers is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, painted in June 1890. Although considered iconic in the modern period, during his lifetime van Gogh sold only a single painting, yet he never ceased to paint. His work resulted in powerful and emotional canvases that contain more than the depicted subject.
- Rüdesheim am Rhein (created and nominated by DXR) Panoramic photograph of Rüdesheim am Rhein, looking east. Rüdesheim am Rhein is a winemaking town (900 years in the making) located in the Rhine Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The area was settled first by the Celts, then, after the turn of the Christian Era, by Ubii and later by Mattiaci. In the first century, the Romans pushed their way to the Taunus. In Bingen, they built a castrum, and on the other side, near what is now Rüdesheim, lay a bridgehead on the way to the Limes. The Romans were followed by the Alamanni, and then, during the Migration Period (Völkerwanderung), the Franks. Archaeological finds of glass from this time suggest that there was already viticulture in Rüdesheim even then. The town's origin as a Frankish Haufendorf (roughly, "clump village") can still be seen on today's town maps. Rüdesheim had its first documentary mention in 1074. Its livelihood came mainly from wine-growing and shipping, particularly timber rafting. On 1 January 1818, Rüdesheim received town rights. In 1977, within the framework of municipal reform, Assmannshausen, Aulhausen, and Presberg also became new Ortsteile of Rüdesheim. Well, it's about time.
- Wood samples (created by Anonimski, nominated by The Herald) A high-quality image of 16 wood samples. Pinus sylvestris: (Pine) -Picea abies: (Spruce) -Larix decidua: (Larch) -Juniperus communis (Juniper) -Populus tremula: (Aspen) -Carpinus betulus: (Hornbeam) -Betula pubescens: (Birch) -Alnus glutinosa: (Alder) -Fagus sylvatica: (Beech) -Quercus robur: (Oak) -Ulmus glabra : (Elm) -Prunus avium: (Cherry) -Pyrus communis: (Pear) -Acer platanoides: (Maple) -Tilia cordata: (Linden) -Fraxinus excelsior: & (Ash) – Wood has been used for thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. Would you hand me some glue, too? Thank you ....
- Napoleon at the Great St. Bernard (created by Jacques-Louis David, nominated by Crisco 1492) One of the most famous paintings of all time, this is the Belvedere version of Napoleon Crossing the Alps. It shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May 1800. In reality, the painting was first and foremost propaganda, and Bonaparte asked David to portray him as "calm, mounted on a fiery steed". The crossing had actually been made in fine weather, and Bonaparte had been led across by a guide a few days after the troops, mounted on a mule. That would also make a great featured picture – Napoleon Crossing the Alps on a Mule. If any of the painters among us cares to give it a go, please by all means get out your paint set and have at it! You could, one day, in a few centuries, be as famous as Jacques-Louis David, or perhaps not.
- Sinking of Japanese destroyer Yamakaze (created by United States Navy, nominated by TomStar81) The Imperial Japanese Destroyer Yamakaze (photographed through the periscope of the USS Nautilus by Cdr Brockman) was the eighth of ten Shiratsuyu-class destroyers and the second to be built for the Imperial Japanese Navy under the Circle Two Program (Maru Ni Keikaku). On 25 June 1942, while steaming independently from Ōminato towards the Inland Sea, Yamakaze was torpedoed and sunk with all hands by USS Nautilus (SS-168) approximately 60 nautical miles (110 km) southeast of Yokosuka. Yamakaze (山風, "Mountain Wind") and the other Shiratsuyu-class destroyers were modified versions of the Hatsuharu-class, designed to accompany the Japanese main striking force and to conduct both day and night torpedo attacks against the United States Navy as it advanced across the Pacific Ocean. None of the ships have survived.
- Tribuna of the Uffizi (created by Johann Zoffany, nominated by Armbrust) This painting shows the northeast corner of an octagonal room in the Uffizi gallery—the room is known as the Tribuna. Built in the late 1580s, the room houses important antiquities and paintings from the Medici collection. Zoffany received a commission from Queen Charlotte to make a painting of the room. Zoffany managed to have extra artwork brought in from the Pitti gallery, some of which is artfully arranged on easels and on the floor. A selection of British gentlemen are depicted having a gander at the top-shelf stuff, the shrewd Zoffany having realised that the Queen might not recognise any of the artworks, but she'd know them geezers anywhere. Even if the Queen didn't recognize them, today's viewers might recognise important works like Raphael's Madonna della seggiola and Titian's Venus of Urbino.
- Saffron threads (created by Hubert1, nominated by Crisco 1492) Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the saffron crocus. Saffron's taste and iodoform—or hay-like—fragrance result from the chemicals picrocrocin and safranal. It also contains a carotenoid pigment, crocin, which imparts a rich golden-yellow hue to dishes and textiles. Its recorded history is attested in a 7th-century BC Assyrian botanical treatise compiled under Ashurbanipal, and it has been traded and used for over four millennia. In February 2013, a retail bottle containing 0.06 ounces could be purchased for $16.26, or the equivalent of $4,336 per pound, making it one of the most costly spices on the market.
- Messier 81 (created by Ken Crawford, nominated by The Herald) Messier 81 or "M81", also known as Bode's Galaxy, is around 12 million light years away. It has an irregular satellite galaxy known as Homberg IX. Only one supernova has been detected in Messier 81; at the time, it was the second-brightest supernova observed in the 20th century. It was observed with Champagne and caviar for those who were able to enjoy it. The stellar explosion is said to have briefly outshined an entire galaxy, radiating as much energy as the Sun or any ordinary star is expected to emit over its entire life span, before fading from view over several weeks. Sounds like we missed a great show! Looking for some travel destinations for your bucket list? Bode's Galaxy is only 12 million light years away, a celestial "hop skip and a jump", should you decide to join the next Star Trek adventure – at warp speed, naturally.
- Self-portrait of Salvator Rosa (created by Salvator Rosa, nominated by Crisco 1492) "Keep silent unless what you are going to say is more important than silence". Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet, and printmaker who was active in Naples, Rome, and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as "unorthodox and extravagant". While his plays were successful, they also gained him powerful enemies among patrons and artists, including Bernini himself, in Rome. By late 1639, he had to relocate to Florence, where he stayed for eight years. His criticisms of Roman art culture won him several enemies. An allegation arose that his published satires were not his own, but stolen. Rosa indignantly denied the charges, but one of the satires deals so extensively and with such ready manipulation of classical names, allusions, and anecdotes that it makes for an interesting conversation. During a Roman carnival play, he wrote and acted in a masque, behind which his character bustled about Rome distributing satirical prescriptions for diseases of the body and, more particularly, of the mind.
Good articles
Apart from these featured contents, forty-six good articles were promoted this week.
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