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User:Alvaro

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Please, have a look on my awful english. Thanks in advance.

works

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Recent changes edit


Currently mainly working on canals & rivers of France & related.

edit
River
Alène Lignon (Ardèche) Chère Ibie Mortagne (river) Ailette (river) Albarine Smagne Yon Lay (river) Abloux Auroue Diège Rhue (river) Céou Céor Brame Aubetin Asse (river) Othain Verzée Voueize Tardes (river) Semnon Salleron Briance Bouble Arz (river) Orbieu Barguelonnette Barguelonne Gijou Senouire Gesse Vère Guil Airain Vauvise Rupt de Mad Chée Chéran Indrois Clouère Auzoue Sorgues (river) Aujon Bléone Côle Ével Luzège Triouzoune Rère Chalaronne Vallière (river) Sevron Sâne Vive Sâne Morte Solnan Thoré Lizonne Fier (river) Colagne Chavanon Veyle Galaure Séoune Bourbre Lèze Petite Baïse Côney Chapeauroux Vaige Semme Barse Benaize Sormonne (river) Maronne Oudon (river) Lignon du Forez Blaise (Marne) Lignon du Velay Grosne (river) Madon Layon Boutonne Vègre Calavon Dadou Anglin Bouzanne Chassezac Dourdou de Camarès Arconce Meu Cérou Èvre Moder (river) Osse (river) Petite Creuse Bourbince Lunain Cosson Aveyron (Loing) Ouanne (river) Suippe Solin (river) Seugne Louge Touch (river) Ource
Canal
Canal du Loing ☭ Canal de Bourbourg ☭ Canal de Bergues ☭ Canal de l'Aisne à la Marne ☭ Canal des Ardennes ☭ Canal latéral à l'Aisne ☭ Canal latéral à la Marne ☭
Related
Aiguillon Rhue Hugues Cosnier Plateau de Lannemezan Aveyron (disambiguation) Moder

Useful :

  • {{WikiProject France| importance=low | class=Start }} {{river}}
  • {{iw-ref|fr|Alette|April 29, 2009|oldid=38280739}}
Diverses créations.
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Misc
Wolf Rock, Cornwall Georges Wolinski Wallis Island Salvatore Quasimodo
Housekeeping

Alvaro

[edit]
/More about Alvaro
frCet utilisateur a pour langue maternelle le français.
en-2This user can contribute with an intermediate level of English.
de-1Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse.
es-1Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básico de español.
This user participates in WikiProject France.
Wikiproject:WikiProject_RiversThis user is a participant in WikiProject Rivers.





stats

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  • 14:52, 1 April 2009 (UTC) : 162,946
  • 16:33, 6 April 2009 (UTC) : 161,230
  • 18:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC) : 160,436
  • 15:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC) : 157,493
  • 12:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC) : 158,336
  • 13:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC) : 157,401
  • 16:25, 1 May 2009 (UTC) : 157,979
  • 12:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC) : 157,258
  • 20:35, 19 May 2009 (UTC) : 160,202
  • 10:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC) : 158,605
  • 14:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC) : 148,258
  • 17:27, 24 August 2009 (UTC) : 146,307
  • 14:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC) : 147,793
  • 22:37, 18 September 2009 (UTC) : 150,234
  • 16:13, 20 December 2009 (UTC) : 153,356
  • 15:36, 5 March 2010 (UTC) : 163,136
  • 06:50, 19 April 2010 (UTC) : 153,727
  • 10:06, 19 August 2010 (UTC) : 135,534
  • 19:17, 13 September 2010 (UTC) : 132,532
  • 09:25, 20 September 2010 (UTC) : 133,133
  • 23:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC) : 135,528
  • 18:49, 30 October 2012 (UTC) : 133,153
  • 04:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC) : 121,689
  • 14:07, 18 February 2014 (UTC) : 130,769
  • 22:52, 15 August 2015 (UTC) : 118,983

Current {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} : 117,932

tools

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  • Pour Vienne : {{otheruses4|the French department|the French city|Vienne, Isère}}
  • Pour Vienne : {{distinguish|Vienna}}
  • Sur Asse : {{for|a tributary of the [[Durance]]|Asse River}}

people

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Through my watchlist, I often meet Ksnow (talk · contribs), Markussep (talk · contribs), Dickeybird (talk · contribs)...

signpost

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The Signpost
Single-page Edition
WP:POST/1
1 May 2025

Traffic report
Of Wolf and Man
 

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Alvaro

India cut off from Wiki money; WMF annual plan and Wikimedia programs seek comment

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By Bluerasberry, Bri, HaeB, Oltrepier, Smallbones, and Soni

India cuts off the Wikimedia Foundation's funding of the "Access to Knowledge" program

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multicolor logo which says, "Centre for Internet & Society Access to Knowledge"
Access to Knowledge is now halted

On 9 April 2025, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) announced a halt to its longstanding "Access to Knowledge" (A2K) program in India, caused by the country's restrictions on foreign funds for non-profit organizations.

In some ways, CIS is unlike a Wikimedia regional chapter, for reasons such as being a tech-oriented nonprofit with programs that are independent of the Wikimedia movement. In other ways, it performed some of the typical functions of a Wikimedia chapter, given the fact that its staff coordinated activities like Wikimedia training programs and fulfilled community requests for Wikimedia support throughout India – Wikimedia India, a separate organization, was approved as an official chapter in 2010, but was then de-recognized in 2019. The A2K program was the Wikimedia program of CIS. Following its shutdown, the Wikimedia movement no longer has any ongoing major Wikimedia programs in India, although the April 9 announcement mentioned that the CIS-A2K team "is actively exploring possible solutions".

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Editors at a 2014 Centre for Internet and Society event

The reason for the halt in the program is that NGOs in India who receive foreign money must regularly renew their certificate of compliance with the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010. CIS recently lost its FCRA certificate, so it can no longer receive the grants from the US-based Wikimedia Foundation that have supported the A2K program so far. A separate grant to CIS in support of the 2025 edition of WikiConference India – which was set to be held in Kochi next September – was canceled too, according to an April 7 WMF statement that cited "recent regulatory changes in India".

There is no public information about why CIS' FCRA renewal application was rejected. The Wikipedia article for FCRA lists numerous cases where organizations in India lost their certificate, and were therefore shut off from receiving foreign funds. As the Wikipedia page notes, Western organizations affected by this tend to complain, while India's Ministry of Home Affairs argues that compliance is a reasonable expectation.

The loss of certificate occurs in the context of other Wikimedia conflicts in India, including the ongoing Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation court case and the February 2025 accusation of disparaging the Hindu king Sambhaji from the Maharashtra Police.

TKTK
Themes from CIS-A2K's "Strategic plan 2024-2027"

While The Signpost last covered the CIS A2K program 10 years ago, the organizers themselves have continually published numerous reports and newsletters on Meta-wiki. The most recent edition of the "CIS-A2K newsletter", issued in January 2025, featured a study about how Indian contributors engage with the mobile apps for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, as well as news on the "She Leads Bootcamp 2025" (an event for fostering leadership among female Wikimedians in India), and work on developing a Wikisource reader app.

This month's announcement marks the end of an era that first began around 2010, when the Wikimedia Foundation was pursuing serious plans to itself open an office in India, as its first presence outside the US – read previous Signpost coverage at this link. By early 2011, however, these plans had been downgraded to the hiring of an India-based consultant. Later that year, the very well-attended first WikiConference India in Mumbai highlighted the country's high levels of enthusiasm for Wikipedia (apart from the various active Wikipedias in Indian languages, India still boasts the third-highest number of active editors from any country on the English Wikipedia), but also foreshadowed its current hostile legal environment. As reported in The Signpost at the time, [a] group of about a dozen protestors from the youth wing of the nationalist BJP political party demonstrated against one map on Wikipedia, whose depiction of the contested border regions surrounding Jammu and Kashmir they objected to [...] and planned to file a criminal case against "Jimmy Whales and Wikipedia's India chairman [sic]". The BJP subsequently took power in 2014 and remains India's ruling party as of today. – Br, H, O

Wikimedia Foundation 2025-26 Annual Plan – seeking comments

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Until 31 May, the Wikimedia Foundation is seeking community comment on and approval of their 2025–2026 Annual Plan.

Everyone is invited to form their own thoughts on the planned "objectives and key results" (OKRs), but at a glance, the WMF seems to continue to prioritize Wikipedia over other Wikimedia projects, and seek short-term increases in established programs for editor engagement and retention, rather than development of more ambitious multi-year projects and features.

As reported last November, the Wikimedia Foundation's revenue for 2023–2024 was US$185 million. The Wikimedia project values user governance and user input as fundamental to the success of the project, so how the next year's nearly $200 million will be spent is to be decided by Wikipedia editors and Signpost readers. Please give the Wikimedia Foundation board your feedback by commenting. For anyone who wants support from the Signpost in rallying attention and funding commitments to your favorite cause, please consider submitting your manifesto, petition, or other call to action in the next issue, so that you can recruit more people to support it. – Br

Wikimedia LGBT+ hires its first staff

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A composite image showing two headshots and the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group logo. To the left is Bisi Alimi, a Black man with cornrows and short braids and with light facial hair. He is wearing a light-coloured fitted shirt with blue and gold patterns, standing outdoors by a lake. To the right is Vic Sfriso, a Latin non-binary person with short dark hair and glasses. They are wearing an open blue-and-black plaid shirt over a black t-shirt, standing on a balcony with bokeh-blurred buildings in the background.
Bisi Alimi, LGBT+ organizer based in Lagos and London; and Vic Sfriso, based in Buenos Aires and organizer with Wikimedia Argentina

Wikimedia LGBT+, the Wikimedia user group which supports LGBT+ Wikimedia editors and the development of LGBT+ Wikimedia content, welcomes its first staff members Bisi Alimi as first Executive director and Vic Sfriso as Director of programmes and community engagement.

WikiProject LGBT+ studies is among the most popular WikiProjects in English Wikipedia, and it tends to be popular in all Wikimedia language versions where it exists. But it is also the case that there have been many on-Wiki LGBT-related conflicts in Wikipedia's history. Examples include discussions of transgender pronouns in biographies and how to report notions of transgender identity.

The Signpost welcomes Wikimedia LGBT+'s staff and wishes them well in this important and challenging role.

– Sb, Bluerasberry (Br)

Disclaimer: Bluerasberry (Br), one of the authors of this section, has been involved in Wikimedia LGBT+ in several capacities, including the hiring process.

Admin Elections approved

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After a recent Requests for Comment, Administrator Elections have become a permanent process. The first trial election in October 2024 was considered successful, and had 11 out of 32 candidates getting the mop. Future elections are expected to be held every five months, with the next one set to take place sometime mid-2025. Discussion and coordination for it is currently underway at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections. The elections and related RFCs were last covered by The Signpost in the 27 Feb issue. – S

News from WMF

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Affcom announced

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After a selection process earlier last year, the Affiliations Committee (AffCom) announced the incoming members on wikimedia-l mailing list. Notably, the committee added just two Voting members, Aleksey Chalabyan and Lucas Teles, both already having prior AffCom experience. The committee also confirmed seven advisory members for a one-year term, ending in 2026. AffCom as a whole advises the Board of Trustees on Wikimedia affliates, chapters, and user groups. – S

Disclaimer: Soni, the author of this section, had applied for AffCom in the aforementioned selection process.

UCoC Conduct Guidelines up for vote

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The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) has started a voting session on proposed changes to the U4C Charter and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines. – See Village pump notification for local discussions. Editors may vote on these changes until 1 May 2025.

The changes are bundled as five distinct proposals and involve minor changes to wording, changes to U4C policies for recusal and quorum, and the overall process. More notable changes include appointing up to four non-voting members and removing the "homewiki requirement". Currently, only two members with any project as their "homewiki" can sit on the U4C, making 0xDeadbeef and Barkeep49 the only members from the English Wikipedia until their terms end. If passed, other enwiki editors will be eligible for a seat in future elections.

The U4C is generally responsible for enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct, as well as resolving local conflicts in smaller projects or systemic project bias. Since it was seated mid-2024, the U4C has heard case requests for de.wiktionary, zhwiki and Commons, resulting in at least one global ban and one desysopping.

The Committee was last covered by The Signpost in the 27 Feb 25 and 24 Dec 24 issues. – S

WMF Bulletins

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The Wikimedia Foundation released two new Bulletins on April 4 and April 18, respectively.

The former Bulletin included a BoT Noticeboard message, co-signed by BoT Chair Nataliia Tymkiv and WMF CEO Maryana Iskander, elaborating more on the Foundation's recent announcement of new plans to strengthen global NPOV policies – see the News from Diff and In focus columns from the April 9 issue of the Signpost for more context. The report also highlighted the global deployment plan for the the CampaignEvents extension, as well as updates on the Peacock edit check tool, the appointment of a new elections committee and new additions to the Wikipedia Library.

The April 18 Bulletin shed a light on upcoming conversations on the 2025-2026 Annual Plan, the 12th Annual Wiki Workshop (set to be held online on May 21-22), the Wikimedia Hackathon taking place in Istanbul from May 2 to 4, the integration of Wikifunctions with the Dagbani Wikipedia as its first pilot project, the introduction of the Edge Uniques first-party cookie system, and finally the announcement of the Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 winners – see this issue's Gallery section for more information. – O

Brief notes

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Alvaro

Feds aiming for WMF's nonprofit status

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By Bri, Oltrepier, Smallbones, and HaeB

Trump-nominated prosecutor targets WMF's tax status

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As first reported by The Free Press, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin (who has been nominated by president Donald Trump to serve permanently in that role of DC's top prosecutor) has accused "Wikipedia (of) allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public." Martin claims that "information received by my Office demonstrates that Wikipedia’s informational management policies benefit foreign powers." These and other serious accusations are contained in a four-page letter sent to "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. AKA Wikipedia" in Washington, DC on April 24. Martin alleges that the WMF's activities violate IRS rules for 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, so its tax-exempt status should be removed, and has given the Foundation until May 15 to respond.

Major concerns cited in the article include:

  • foreign (non-US) actors spreading propaganda;
  • the dominance of non-US citizens on the Board of Trustees;
  • accusations from Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger on the non-neutrality of the encyclopedia's content.
Letter sent by interim US attorney for DC Ed Martin to the Wikimedia Foundation (downloaded from The Free Press - public domain)

Martin's letter to the WMF asks twelve detailed questions, including:

"4. What steps has the Foundation taken to exclude foreign influence operations from making targeted edits to categories of content in order to reshape or rewrite history? Who enforces these measures, and how? What foreign influence operations have been detected, and what did the Foundation do to reverse their influence and prevent it from continuing?"

The Free Press notes that "the letter is unusual, since investigations into charities and their tax-exempt status are typically handled by the IRS." Moreover, Nonprofit Quarterly reported at length on the difficult and lengthy process required by US law to remove a nonprofit's tax-exempt status.

Note that federal law (26 US Code Section 7217) prohibits senior officials of the executive branch, including the president, from requesting that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) conduct or cease an audit or other investigation of any taxpayer (including tax-exempt entities); there is an exception for written requests by the treasury secretary to the IRS as a consequence of the implementation of a change in tax policy. [...] Congress would seemingly have such authority, but, to date, such legislative action has not been publicly contemplated.

The Washington Post covered the Free Press article, writing that Martin's letter "is part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration and its allies, including Martin, against institutions, media outlets and online platforms they have accused of pushing liberal agendas or political views." The newspaper also reached out to Molly White, who viewed the letter as part of the administration's attempts at "weaponizing laws to try to silence high-quality independent information", as well as Wikipedia beat reporter Stephen Harrison, who said that Martin "seems to want an America First version of Wikipedia", rather than a global information source.

An earlier WaPo article reported that Martin had appeared over 150 times as a guest commentator on Russian state-controlled broadcasters RT and Sputnik from August 2016 to April 2024. Among his statements, he had told "an interviewer on the same arm of RT's global network that 'there [was] no evidence' of a Russian military buildup on Ukraine's borders, criticizing U.S. officials as warmongering and ignoring Russia's security concerns," nine days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Martin did not declare any of these appearances on a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire for his upcoming confirmation vote or possible conformation hearing. Several of Martin's appearances on Russian propaganda outlets are shown in another WaPo video.

The Verge also reported on the original Free Press story, while adding that "Martin is known for thinly justified legal threats against media organizations," having recently sent similar letters to various medical journals, including "the New England Journal of Medicine, the CHEST Journal, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, accusing them of being 'partisan in various scientific debates.'"

In addition to her previous comment for the WaPo, Molly White told The Signpost that "the biggest harm here is not to Wikimedia, but to the rule of law and to free expression. Letters like this, threatening organizations over clearly First Amendment-protected activities, are a shocking illustration of the authoritarianism that has rapidly blossomed under Trump. I'm proud that Wikipedia continues to prioritize accurate and scientific information as determined by its global volunteer editing community and its policies, not the political propaganda of a single administration looking to impose its views." White published an Op-ed on similar topics on the January 15 issue of the Signpost.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales himself took part in a discussion on the matter at Village pump, while a WMF spokesperson released this statement to the media:

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia, the backbone of knowledge on the internet, and other free knowledge projects. Wikipedia is one of the last places online that shows the promise of the internet, housing more than 65 million articles written to inform, not persuade. Wikipedia's content is governed by three core content policies: neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research, which exist to ensure information is presented as accurately, fairly, and neutrally as possible. The entire process of content moderation is overseen by nearly 260,000 volunteers and is open and transparent for all to see, which is why we welcome opportunities to explain how Wikipedia works and will do so in the appropriate forum. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

– S and O

New version of AI-optimized Wikipedia dataset released on Kaggle

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Gizmodo (link) and The Verge (link) both reported that Wikimedia Enterprise and Google's Kaggle are supplying a dataset from Wikipedia formatted for AI companies. Both outlets cite an announcement from Wikimedia Enterprise (a paid service operated by Wikimedia LLC, the Wikimedia Foundation's for-profit subsidiary) that in turn links to the download page on Kaggle. As of April 17 – the date of Gizmodo's report – it had recorded 186 downloads. Google's Blog also reports the news on the dataset.

Contrary to claims made by both Gizmodo and The Verge, the release of this dataset on Kaggle is not a reaction to the impact of scraping on our infrastructure, nor is it an attempt to “fend off” AI scrapers or “get [them] off our back”, as clarified in a statement by the Wikimedia Foundation.

An earlier version of the same dataset had been published on Hugging Face in September 2024 already. As summarized in the current Enterprise announcement, the dataset consists of structured Wikipedia content in English and French [...d]esigned with machine learning workflows in mind, and includes high-utility elements such as abstracts, short descriptions, infobox-style key-value data, image links, and clearly segmented article sections. It does not include the media files from Wikimedia Commons that the Foundation recently described as the primary target of problematic crawler activity (see last Signpost issue: "Op-ed: How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects", "Opinion: Crawlers, hogs and gorillas"). According to an FAQ, Enterprise currently support[s] all text-based Wikimedia projects, but do[es] not currently support Wikidata (besides QIDs) or Wikimedia Commons.

The Signpost covered previous partnerships between the WMF (or Wikimedia projects) and Kaggle back in 2011 and in 2021. – S, H

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Indian block?: According to an April 12 article in the Hindustan Times, the Maharashtra Cyber police, after being frustrated with the WMF neither taking down the "objectionable" content on the page on Sambhaji, nor disclosing the editor's identity, have requested the Indian government's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block Wikipedia in India. See the original Signpost report on objections to content about historical king Sambhaji. If carried out, this would be the latest incident in a long history of Internet censorship in India.

Supreme Court get its say in ANI vs. Wikimedia: On April 17, Bar and Bench wrote that the Supreme Court of India had set aside a lower court's order to remove "defamatory" edits about Asian News International (ANI) from the agency's Wikipedia page. Times Now also reported on the decision, as did others. We aren't sure what it all means yet, but the case isn't over: Bar and Bench said "[the Supreme] Court granted liberty to ANI to move the single-judge of Delhi High Court again for interim relief."

An editorial featured in The Hindu said:

In asking for the takedown of articles by interpreting critical information as defamation and by even threatening penal action against Wikipedia, judicial actions could unwittingly lead to the stifling of open discussion of entities on the encyclopaedia, thereby acting against the interest of the free flow of information.

In case you need help following the plot of the ANI vs. Wikimedia Foundation case, here's a recap by Business Standard as of April 9.– B

In brief

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The U.S. stock market fell 500 points on Black Monday on October 19, 1987, a record at the time. It has since been eclipsed (in terms of index points rather than percentage) in the list of largest daily changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
TKTK
Hoe not pictured here, but you can find it at one of the oldest restaurants in South Korea.



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.




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Alvaro

How readers use Wikipedia health content; scholars generally happy with how their papers are cited on Wikipedia

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By Clayoquot and Tilman Bayer


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


How readers use Wikipedia health content

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Reviewed by Clayoquot
TKTK
Readers use Wikipedia's health content "to learn more", "to improve decision-making" and "for self-advocacy".

How do readers use health information on Wikipedia? A recent paper[1] explores this question using semi-structured interviews with 21 adults from seven countries. All participants had used Wikipedia for health information at least once in the previous year.

The research was qualitative in intent and all participants happened to have at least some post-secondary education, so the results are not necessarily representative of Wikipedia readers as a whole. Nevertheless, it gives a fascinating breadth of results. The whole paper is well worth reading – it's brief, digestible, and probably quite gratifying for Wikipedia volunteers. Some highlights:

  • The most common reason for using Wikipedia was simply to "learn more" about a topic. One participant used Wikipedia to understand the relevant anatomy when preparing to have surgery. The participant said, "What all is like wrapped around that gland? That's the kind of information I was looking for and the doctors weren’t really telling me that."
  • Several participants reported using Wikipedia for self-advocacy. Before or after visiting a health professional, they read Wikipedia so they can better explain their symptoms or understand what kinds of questions to ask.
  • Three quarters of participants expressed "conditional trust" in Wikipedia content, meaning they scroll down to the list of references and decide whether the cited sources are good. Previous research has found that readers click links in references only 0.29% of the time.[supp 1] This paper doesn't contradict the earlier finding. However, it provides evidence that even when readers don't read a cited source, the fact that it was cited might be meaningful to them.

Briefly

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Other recent publications

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

Compiled by Tilman Bayer


"Reader Engagement with Wikipedia’s Medical Content"

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From the abstract:[2]

"We found that WPM [WikiProject Medicine] articles are longer, possess a greater density of external links, and are visited more often than other articles on Wikipedia. Readers of WPM articles are more likely to hover over and view footnotes than other readers, but are less likely to visit the hyperlinked sources in these footnotes. Our findings suggest that WPM readers appear to use links to external sources to verify and authorize Wikipedia content, rather than to examine the sources themselves."


Recently published articles and articles from traditional high-impact journals are preferred for medical references in Wikipedia

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From the abstract:[3]

"From 11,325 Wikipedia medical articles, we identified citations to 137,889 journal articles from over 15,000 journals. There was a large spike in the number of journal articles published in or after 2002 that were cited by Wikipedia. The higher the importance of a Wikipedia article, the higher was the mean number of journal citations it contained (top article, 48.13 [SD 33.67]; lowest article, 6.44 [SD 9.33]). ...We found evidence of “recentism,” which refers to preferential citation of recently published journal articles in Wikipedia. Traditional high-impact medical and multidisciplinary journals were extensively cited by Wikipedia, suggesting that Wikipedia medical articles have robust underpinnings. In keeping with the Wikipedia policy of citing reviews/secondary sources in preference to primary sources, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviewswas the most referenced journal."


"Research citations building trust in Wikipedia: Results from a survey of published authors"

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From the abstract:[4]

"This cross-publisher study (Taylor & Francis and University of Michigan Press) aimed to investigate [scholarly] author sentiment towards Wikipedia as a source of trusted information. [...] A short survey was distributed to 40,402 authors of papers cited in Wikipedia (n=21,854 surveys sent, n=750 complete responses received). The survey gathered responses from published authors in relation to their views on Wikipedia’s trustworthiness in relation to the citations to their published works. [...] Overall, authors expressed positive sentiment towards research citation in Wikipedia and researcher engagement practices (mean scores >7/10). Sub-analyses revealed significant differences in sentiment based on publication type (articles vs. books) and discipline (Humanities and Social Sciences vs. Science, Technology, and Medicine), but not access status (open vs. closed access).

From the "Discussion" section:

"Our results suggest there is general trust among researchers in Wikipedia both in terms of representativeness and accuracy. Most would also recommend the Wikipedia page where their work is cited to a colleague or the general public."

On May 8, two of the paper's authors (from Taylor & Francis and British technology company Digital Science) will present this research at two free webinars, while also giving "a sneak peek at an upcoming collaboration between Wikipedia, Digital Science and Taylor & Francis," together with a Wikimedia Foundation representative.


"A Comparative Study of Reference Reliability in Multiple Language Editions of Wikipedia"

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From the abstract:[5]

"[...] We quantify the cross-lingual patterns of the perennial sources list, a collection of reliability labels for web domains identified and collaboratively agreed upon by Wikipedia editors. We discover that some sources (or web domains) deemed untrustworthy in one language (i.e., English) continue to appear in articles in other languages. This trend is especially evident with sources tailored for smaller communities. Furthermore, non-authoritative sources found in the English version of a page tend to persist in other language versions of that page. We finally present a case study on the Chinese, Russian, and Swedish Wikipedias to demonstrate a discrepancy in reference reliability across cultures. Our finding highlights future challenges in coordinating global knowledge on source reliability."

From the paper:

"To investigate the spread of English Wikipedia’s perennial sources across multiple language editions, we identify the proportion of articles in each edition that include at least one reference to these sources. Figure 1 shows the percentage of articles referencing reliable and non-authoritative sources in the 40 editions with the largest number of articles. [...] The plot shows outliers in the two directions of the confidence interval represented by the gray area. On the one hand, the English edition is located below the confidence interval, meaning the proportion of articles citing reliable domains is larger. This observation is consistent with recent research [...], as the community of English Wikipedia is more aware of the non-authoritative domains listed in the local perennial sources list. On the other hand, the outliers above the confidence interval appear to have a relatively larger proportion of articles citing deprecated or blacklisted domains. These are Russian (ru), Armenian (hy), Chinese (zh), French (fr), and Bulgarian (bg)."

"Figure 3: Top 15 non-authoritative sources (from the perennial source list of the local Wikipedia edition or the one of English Wikipedia) by the number of citations in Russian, Swedish, and Chinese Wikipedia editions":


"Wikipedia as a Reliable Information Source: A Comparison of Chinese and English Versions"

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From this post on the blog of the University of Geneva's Confucius Institute:[6]

"For English Wikipedia, we accessed the “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” page and extracted the list of reliable and controversial sources. Similarly, for Chinese Wikipedia, we accessed the equivalent page containing source reliability information list. [...] in our quantitative analysis, differences in the diversity and number of sources suggest that English Wikipedia may have access to a wider range of sources, whereas Chinese Wikipedia seems to be more selective or restricted in its choice of sources. Due to the existence of [the] “无共识” (no consensus) label, the rating of reliable sources in Chinese Wikipedia is more ambiguous than in the English version."

"Gender and country biases in Wikipedia citations to scholarly publications"

[edit]

From the abstract:[7] From the abstract:

"We investigate gender- and country-based biases in Wikipedia citation practices using linked data from the Web of Science and a Wikipedia citation dataset. Using coarsened exact matching, we show that publications by women are cited less by Wikipedia than expected, and publications by women are less likely to be cited than those by men. Scholarly publications by authors affiliated with non-Anglosphere countries are also disadvantaged in getting cited by Wikipedia, compared with those by authors affiliated with Anglosphere countries. The level of gender- or country-based inequalities varies by research field, and the gender-country intersectional bias is prominent in math-intensive STEM fields."

See also a presentation at the Wikimedia Research Showcase


"ALPET: Active Few-shot Learning for Citation Worthiness Detection in Low-Resource Wikipedia Languages"

[edit]

From the abstract:[8]

"Citation Worthiness Detection (CWD) consists in determining which sentences, within an article or collection, should be backed up with a citation to validate the information it provides. This study, introduces ALPET, a framework combining Active Learning (AL) and Pattern-Exploiting Training (PET), to enhance CWD for languages with limited data resources. Applied to Catalan, Basque, and Albanian Wikipedia datasets, ALPET outperforms the existing CCW baseline while reducing the amount of labeled data in some cases above 80%. ALPET's performance plateaus after 300 labeled samples, showing it suitability for low-resource scenarios where large, labeled datasets are not common. [...] Overall, ALPET's ability to achieve high performance with fewer labeled samples makes it a promising tool for enhancing the verifiability of online content in low-resource language settings."


"Providing Citations to Support Fact-Checking: Contextualizing Detection of Sentences Needing Citation on Small Wikipedias"

[edit]

From the abstract:[9]

"To date, research on automating citation worthiness detection has largely focused on the most resourceful language, English Wikipedia, neglecting the applicability to smaller Wikipedias. In addition, previous research proposed models that analyze the content inherent to a sentence to determine its citation worthiness, overlooking the potential of additional context to improve the prediction. Addressing these gaps, our study proposes a transformer-based contextualized approach for smaller Wikipedias, presenting a novel method to compile high-quality datasets for the Albanian, Basque, and Catalan editions. We develop the Contextualized Citation Worthiness (CCW) model, employing sentence representations enriched with adjacent sentences and topic categories for enhanced contextual insight. Empirical experiments on three newly created datasets demonstrate significant performance improvements of our contextualized CCW model, with 6%, 3% and 6% absolute improvements over the baseline for Albanian, Basque and Catalan datasets, respectively. [...] This has implications for supporting Wikipedia projects across low-resource languages, promoting better article validation and fact-checking."


"Wikipedia and indigenous language preservation: analysis of Setswana and Punjabi languages"

[edit]

From the abstract:[10]

"This study examines Wikipedia’s role in promoting and preserving Setswana and Punjabi. The research is framed by the Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory (EVT), which suggests that language survival lies in reclamation, revitalization, and reinvigoration. A quanti-qualitative approach is used to investigate the issue, integrating quantitative metrics from Wikipedia’s statistical pages with qualitative content analysis of the articles. Data were collected from May 2022 to May 2024, focusing on article counts, edits, active editors, new pages, top edited pages, and views. [...] The findings show that Punjabi Wikipedia has a much larger content volume and user base, but comparatively lower recent activity and collaborative depth compared to Setswana Wikipedia. (Setswana) Tswana Wikipedia, while smaller in content volume, demonstrates a more engaged and active editing community, reflected by a higher depth score and a larger number of active users."


"A dual-focus analysis of wikipedia traffic and linguistic patterns in public risk awareness Post-Charlie Hebdo"

[edit]

From the abstract:[11]

"This study investigates the dynamics of public risk awareness in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack on January 7, 2015, through a dual-focus analysis of Wikipedia traffic and Google Trends data. Analyzing the temporal patterns of Wikipedia page views in both English and French, sheds light on how significant media events, anniversaries, and related incidents influence public engagement with terrorism-related content over time. [...] Francophone regions, particularly France and its former colonies, exhibit a more sustained and consistent interest in the Charlie Hebdo event compared to Anglophone regions. The heightened engagement in French-speaking areas suggests that cultural and historical ties influence public risk perception and awareness."


"WikiReddit: Tracing Information and Attention Flows Between Online Platforms"

[edit]

From the abstract:[12]

"[...] we present a comprehensive, multilingual dataset capturing all Wikipedia mentions and links shared in posts and comments on Reddit 2020-2023, excluding those from private and NSFW subreddits. Each linked Wikipedia article is enriched with revision history, page view data, article ID, redirects, and Wikidata identifiers. Through a research agreement with Reddit, our dataset ensures user privacy while providing a query and ID mechanism that integrates with the Reddit and Wikipedia APIs. This enables extended analyses for researchers studying how information flows across platforms. For example, Reddit discussions use Wikipedia for deliberation and fact-checking which subsequently influences Wikipedia content, by driving traffic to articles or inspiring edits."

See also:


Dissertation: "Wikipedia can be an uncomfortable space for those who don’t participate in hacker culture"

[edit]

From the "Conclusion" section:[13]

"Over the course of this dissertation, I have shown how the infrastructure that constitutes Wikipedia, made out of various connected digital artefacts, does more than embedding values. It cocreates them – on one hand, by welcoming or resisting intervention, and by being a site of ideological negotiation; on the other hand, by suggesting, implicitly, what values are important, what constitutes a moral good in the first place. Beyond affording intervention to humans – being a substrate or a tool for ethical and epistemic meaning making – Wikipedia’s platform offers up technical values to be turned into social, epistemic, aesthetic values. This is true, for instance, of forkability: as I have shown, forkability in its original formulation informed design because of its practical advantages, concerning safety and distribution of code. Forkability then, through the community that created Wikipedia, became an epistemic value as well.

Programming practice is a key component of Wikipedia’s culture, [...] the concrete circumstances in which coders have worked define the way Wikipedia produces knowledge. [...]

A side-effect of the partial overlap between programming and creating Wikipedia’s content is that the flavour of Wikipedia’s community matches cultural traits of hacker culture. The effect of this phenomenon is two-fold. First, Wikipedia inherited assumptions found in hacker culture – downplaying the role of the body, faith in machinery, anti-aesthetic leanings, connecting intelligence and skill with the ability to code. Secondly, because of the connection between taste and belonging to specific communities, Wikipedia can be an uncomfortable space for those who don’t participate in hacker culture."

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Smith, Denise A. (2023-08-12). ""I'm comfortable with it": User stories of health information on Wikipedia". First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v28i8.12897. ISSN 1396-0466.
  2. ^ Maggio, Lauren A; Steinberg, Ryan M; Piccardi, Tiziano; Willinsky, John M (2020-03-06). "Meta-Research: Reader engagement with medical content on Wikipedia". eLife. 9. Julia Deathridge, Peter Rodgers, James Heilman, Besnik Fetahu, Shani Evenstein (eds.): –52426. doi:10.7554/eLife.52426. ISSN 2050-084X.
  3. ^ Jemielniak, Dariusz; Masukume, Gwinyai; Wilamowski, Maciej (2019). "The Most Influential Medical Journals According to Wikipedia: Quantitative Analysis". Journal of Medical Internet Research. 21 (1): –11429. doi:10.2196/11429. PMC 6356187. PMID 30664451.
  4. ^ Areia, Carlos; Burton, Kath; Taylor, Mike; Watkinson, Charles (2025-04-16). "Research citations building trust in Wikipedia: Results from a survey of published authors". PLOS ONE. 20 (4): –0320334. Bibcode:2025PLoSO..2020334A. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0320334. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 12002439. PMID 40238814.
  5. ^ Baigutanova, Aitolkyn; Saez-Trumper, Diego; Redi, Miriam; Cha, Meeyoung; Aragón, Pablo (2023-10-21). "A Comparative Study of Reference Reliability in Multiple Language Editions of Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. CIKM '23. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 3743–3747. doi:10.1145/3583780.3615254. ISBN 9798400701245. Closed access icon / Preprint version
  6. ^ Bloch, Marylaure (2024-12-03). "Wikipedia as a Reliable Information Source: A Comparison of Chinese and English Versions". Blog scientifique de l'Institut Confucius de l'Université de Genève.
  7. ^ Zheng, Xiang; Chen, Jiajing; Yan, Erjia; Ni, Chaoqun (2023). "Gender and country biases in Wikipedia citations to scholarly publications". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 74 (2): 219–233. doi:10.1002/asi.24723. ISSN 2330-1643.
  8. ^ Halitaj, Aida; Zubiaga, Arkaitz (2025-02-05), ALPET: Active Few-shot Learning for Citation Worthiness Detection in Low-Resource Wikipedia Languages, arXiv:2502.03292
  9. ^ Halitaj, Aida; Zubiaga, Arkaitz (2024-09-01). "Providing Citations to Support Fact-Checking: Contextualizing Detection of Sentences Needing Citation on Small Wikipedias". Natural Language Processing Journal. 8: 100093. doi:10.1016/j.nlp.2024.100093. ISSN 2949-7191.
  10. ^ Minhas, Shahid; Salawu, Abiodun (2025-01-29). "Wikipedia and indigenous language preservation: analysis of Setswana and Punjabi languages". Frontiers in Communication. 10. doi:10.3389/fcomm.2025.1442935. ISSN 2297-900X.
  11. ^ Elroy, Or; Woo, Gordon; Komendantova, Nadejda; Yosipof, Abraham (2025-03-01). "A dual-focus analysis of wikipedia traffic and linguistic patterns in public risk awareness Post-Charlie Hebdo". Computers in Human Behavior Reports. 17: 100580. doi:10.1016/j.chbr.2024.100580. ISSN 2451-9588.
  12. ^ Gildersleve, Patrick; Beers, Anna; Ito, Viviane; Orozco, Agustin; Tripodi, Francesca (2025-02-07), WikiReddit: Tracing Information and Attention Flows Between Online Platforms, arXiv:2502.04942 / Dataset: Gildersleve, Patrick; Beers, Anna; Ito, Viviane; Orozco, Agustin; Tripodi, Francesca (2025-01-15), WikiReddit: Tracing Information and Attention Flows Between Online Platforms, doi:10.5281/zenodo.14653265
  13. ^ Falco, Elena (2024-11-28). A technosocial epistemology of Wikipedia (Thesis). UCL (University College London). (dissertation)
Supplementary references and notes:
  1. ^ Piccardi, Tiziano; Redi, Miriam; Colavizza, Giovanni; West, Robert (2020-04-20). "Quantifying Engagement with Citations on Wikipedia". Proceedings of the Web Conference 2020. WWW '20. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 2365–2376. arXiv:2001.08614. doi:10.1145/3366423.3380300. ISBN 978-1-4503-7023-3.




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Sysop Tinucherian removed and admonished by the ArbCom

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By Smallbones and Soni
We would like to return to our old practice of covering Arbcom as well as other major discussions on a regular basis. We'll try to cover such discussions every month or so. Please let us know what you think in the comments section. – Sb

Administrator removed by Arbcom

[edit]

Arbcom desysoped Tinucherian and admonished him for violations of WP:UPE and WP:COI but did not ban him for the apparently obvious undeclared paid editing violations. Tinucherian had made an obscure COI declaration ten years ago and has referenced his LinkedIn page four times where his current paid editing position is made crystal clear. His use of admin tools has been rare since 2014, but he did rollback a promotional tag on his employer's page. His major offense against Arbcom may simply have been responding to their questions with a 2,000 word description of his past achievements on Wikipedia without addressing in any way the UPE and COI accusations against him. Arbcom did leave open the possibility of further community action.

In less dramatic changes, Arbcom also announced that the March 2025 CheckUser consultation did not result in any new CheckUsers, but GB fan did resign from the Oversight team.



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Latest news from Centralized discussions: And don't bite those newbies!

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By Bri, Smallbones, and Soni
We would like to return to our old practice of covering Arbcom as well as other major discussions on a regular basis. We'll try to cover such discussions every month or so. Please let us know what you think in the comments section. – Sb
Don't bite the newbies!
by Smallbones, CC-BY SA 3.0

From the 2025 Centralized discussion archive (WP:CENT):

An RFC closed in January ended with the rewrite of portions of WP:BITE. BITE is a behavioural guideline and often cited by editors.

Another RFC closed with the consensus to rewrite "Self-published sources", without consensus for any specific wording. The section is part of the WP:Verifiability policy.

In January, an RFC allowed those with page mover permission to enable two factor authentication on their accounts. Two-factor authentication on Wikimedia is currently experimental and optional – only users on specific trusted groups are currently allowed to use OAUTH.

A proposal to revive Informal mediation resulted instead in a recommendation to implement a process in Dispute resolution noticeboard for "mid-level informal mediation".

An RFC closed in January with consensus to discount "obvious use of generative LLMs" in discussions. A later RFC on AI closed with the consensus that most images "wholly generated by AI" should not be used on enwiki. In his close, S Marshall also recommended editors draft a guideline for broader community approval.

At Village pump (WMF), Wikimedians are discussing the letter to WMF from U.S. Department of Justice asking questions about 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, and Wikimedia Foundation's potential reactions. Notably, co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has participated. – S, B



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Of Wolf and Man

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By Igordebraga, CAWylie, GN22, Shuipzv3, Rahcmander
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, CAWylie, GN22, (April 6 to 26); Shuipzv3 and Rahcmander (April 13 to 19).

Off through the new day's mist I run
Out from the new day's mist I have come
We report, pulsing with the earth
Company we keep, compiling the data while you sleep...

So seek the wolf in thyself (April 6 to 12)

[edit]
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Dire wolf 2,101,677 Colossal Biosciences decided to do a "de-extinction" of the dire wolf that hasn't lived since the Ice Age, using the DNA from two fossils followed by gene-editing gray wolf genomes and creating clones gestated by domestic dogs, resulting in three pups, Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi (named after Rome's founders who suckled on a she-wolf and a character from A Song of Ice and Fire, a series that has the similarly spelled direwolves). However, they're only hybrid gray wolves, as their genetics are very different than that of the dire wolf.
2 A Minecraft Movie 1,616,223 Hollywood had a rough first trimester where only Captain America: Brave New World made big numbers, but at the end of it came the year's first true blockbuster, with over $500 million in two weeks and analysts even considering the possibility of it becoming the second video game adaptation to surpass a billion after The Super Mario Bros. Movie (which also features Jack Black in its cast!). At the same time, Minecraft fans reacting to the "Chicken jockey!" scene by creating chaos in theaters is not as welcome, and there's even a new disclaimer asking for viewers to behave themselves, if only because someone will need to clean all the spilled popcorn!
3 ChatGPT 1,363,013 This just keeps itself here, helped by how it surpassed 150 million users. And the trend of using it to generate or convert images in the style of Studio Ghibli led to OpenAI deciding to add a watermark to such pictures and environmental concerns.
4 Deaths in 2025 990,219 Sometimes I felt that I couldn't go on
I wanted to leave, just run away from home
But I would remember what my daddy said
With tears in his eyes on his dyin' bed...
5 Natalia Grace 904,917 In 2010, it seemed like an American couple had watched Orphan and decided it was the way to get rid of their own Eastern European adoptive daughter with dwarfism (pictured here in a documentary), leaving her alone in an apartment while telling others she was also a sociopathic adult woman pretending to be a child. But it was all a neglectful lie, leading to criminal charges against the couple, and a Hulu show telling this weird story, Good American Family.
6 The White Lotus season 3 900,758 This popular series ended its third season on April 6 on HBO. Reviews for this installment were mostly positive, although some critics disliked its slow pace, and the season finale was called "disappointing" by a Forbes reviewer. (Warning: spoilers in the review and at the season link.)
7 The White Lotus 880,148
8 Mickey Rourke 760,324 This 72-year-old American actor entered the Celebrity Big Brother UK's house for its 24th series and its 17-episode run that premiered on April 7. Almost immediately, he began making physical advances toward the host, AJ Odudu, and disparaging remarks toward housemate JoJo Siwa. He was given a formal warning by series producers and was removed from the house on April 12, following similar behavior toward other housemates.
9 Peter Navarro 753,454 Trump's senior counselor for trade and manufacturing got into a war of words on social media with senior advisor Elon Musk this month. President Trump's global trade tariffs have cost Musk around $31 billion, causing Musk to question Navarro's Harvard education and calling him a "moron".
10 Adolescence (TV series) 742,277 Falling out of this list's top five, where it has been for nearly a month, this Netflix crime drama has been viewed 114 million times in as short of time, making it the platform's third most popular English-language series. It has even gotten the attention of UK's Prime Minister Keir Starmer (pictured in a meeting with series producers), discussions in Parliament, and been made free to view in secondary schools. Its success (and Starmer) has prompted the series' producers to discuss ideas for a second season.

Somebody take me in your arms tonight, alright (April 13 to 19)

[edit]
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Rory McIlroy 2,917,887 On April 13, this Northern Irish golfer became the sixth golfer ever to achieve the career Grand Slam by winning the 2025 Masters Tournament, after already emerging successful in the 2011 U.S. Open, 2012 and 2014 PGA Championship, and the 2014 Open Championship.
2 Sinners (2025 film) 1,406,940 Ryan Coogler writes and directs this movie where Michael B. Jordan (pictured) plays twins in the 1930s Mississippi Delta, whose opening of a juke joint is crashed by terrifying visitors. The atmosphere, cast and a sweet blues soundtrack win the viewer even before the plot changes halfway through (the trailers spoiled it, but for the uninformed it's the same thing done in From Dusk till Dawn), so reviews were glowing and Sinners topped the box office with $61 million worldwide.
3 Justin Rose 1,196,084 This English golfer led for the first two days of the Masters before falling six strokes behind #1 on day three. In the final round, he was able to make a resurgence and end the tournament tied for first. He ended up losing by one stroke in the sudden-death playoff, making Rose a three-time Masters runner-up.
4 Jaat (film) 1,177,898 Released on April 10, this Indian action film (featuring Regina Cassandra, pictured) has yet to recoup its ₹100 crore budget. But it's getting there, and, with not many new releases happening for the rest of April, it should well surpass it. In other news, the film received some backlash on April 18 for its negative portrayal of Jesus in a church scene, with additional condemnation of releasing the film during the Easter holiday. The scene in question was subsequently removed from the film.
5 ChatGPT 1,135,784 Millions of people use this chatbot, and the CEO admitted that treating with the same politeness of a human spends a lot of energy.
6 WrestleMania 41 1,059,902 Professional wrestling's annual "show of shows" began in Paradise, Nevada, with the first of two nights ending the week. The first match saw Jey Uso become the new WWE world heavyweight champion, and the night ended with Seth Rollins (pictured) winning a triple threat match with the help of his new manager Paul Heyman. The second night occurred on Sunday and is sure to be listed here.
7 Deaths in 2025 986,210 From #2's soundtrack:
"Sing with me for the dawn
The long goodbye
Beckons all..."
8 Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia 980,982 A Maryland resident, who was never convicted of a crime, is confined in a El Salvador prison – initially the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) – after an administrative error. U.S. president Donald Trump and El Salvador's self-styled "coolest dictator in the world" Nayib Bukele have done nothing to bring him back despite a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return.
9 A Minecraft Movie 940,771 Beware the chicken jockey. This highly-successful movie loosely based off a highly-successful video game is continuing to be highly successful, and inadvertently, highly dangerous. Certain moviegoers…um, overreacting…when Jack Black exclaims, "Chicken jockey!" have caused incidents of asphyxiation and injury. So please, please, please save the drama for the screen.
10 List of Black Mirror episodes 918,112 Series 7 of the anthology showing how technology brings up the worst in humanity came out on April 10 on Netflix. The episodes were a sequel to the Star Trek send-off, life support being worsened by greed, the Mandela Effect being real, a movie remake being derailed, a simulation game being a man's obsession, and a breakup being revisited through AI.

The Pope is pop, pop doesn't spare anyone (April 20 to 26)

[edit]
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Pope Francis 6,826,504 In 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was just planning on retiring in Buenos Aires when #3 resigned and thus he had to fly to the conclave in Rome. He wound up elected as the new Pontiff, choosing a papal name homaging Saint Francis of Assisi, and never stepped foot in his native Argentina again. Noted for his Jesuit humility – he always wore simple white clothes and lived in the guest house rather than the Papal apartments – and a progressive agenda, Francis had already spent some time in the hospital this year due to respiratory diseases, and less than a day after giving his Easter address at St. Peter's Square (that included a call for a ceasefire in Gaza) and receiving the visit of US vice-president JD Vance, he suffered a stroke and died at the age of 88.
2 Sinners (2025 film) 3,054,880 A saint man directly followed by Sinners, now that's ironic. Michael B. Jordan plays twins in 1930s Mississippi getting unexpected and dangerous visitors at the opening of their juke joint. Reviewers and audiences alike where enthralled by Ryan Coogler's mixture of period piece, supernatural horror, and blues musical, and with the box office having passed its $100 million budget it should soon become profitable.
3 Pope Benedict XVI 2,530,935 #1's predecessor Joseph Ratzinger, who resigned his papacy and lived on as pope emeritus until 2022. There was talk of #1 resigning, but he ultimately chose to serve for life.
4 WrestleMania 41 2,381,330 On April 20, the second night of the annual WWE event, John Cena (pictured) won his 17th championship, setting a record for the title. Spending the past seven weeks as a heel, Cena hit Cody Rhodes with a low blow to secure the victory.
5 2025 NFL draft 1,885,673 On May 1, 2024, Deion Sanders tweeted the prediction that his son Shadeur Sanders, who was quarterback for his father's college team, would be one of the first five players to be picked in #5. Nearly a year later, 143 selections went by, before Shedeur was selected by the Cleveland Browns, their seventh choice in the three-day event.
6 Pope John Paul II 1,810,868 "The pope was shot at point blank, pop doesn't spare anyone!" Before #3 we had 27 years of the Polish Karol Wojtyla, making him the third longest-serving pope after Pius IX and the first one, St. Peter. John Paul II was fairly popular – even if, as mentioned previously, a hitman tried to kill him once – for going all around the world, attempting to improve the Catholic Church's relations with other religions, fighting against dictatorships, and helping ending the communist rule in his country and the rest of Europe.
7 List of popes 1,653,320 When Jesus told one of his apostles "I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church", the one eventually known as Saint Peter followed that founding the Diocese of Rome that became the center of the Catholic Church, and the bishop of that diocese earned the title of 'Pope', derived from the Greek word for 'father'. #1 was the 266th Pontiff, although the list of popes is fairly complicated as the count includes some of the antipopes that claimed to be Bishop of Rome, but are not currently recognized by the Catholic Church.
8 Pope 1,177,472 The leader of the world's 1.28–1.41 billion Catholics. Currently, it's sede vacante until the end of the 2025 papal conclave.
9 Deaths in 2025 1,022,885 Sing with me now, just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the Good Lord will take you away...
10 Pope John Paul I 1,003,197 1978 was the year of three popes: Paul VI died on August 6, and later that month Albino Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, was elected pontiff, naming himself after his predecessor and the previous one (John XXIII). Yet he died after only 33 days, leading to a second conclave that put #6 at the Holy See.

Exclusions

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

Most edited articles

[edit]

For the March 21 – April 21 period, per this database report.

Title Revisions Notes
Deaths in 2025 2048 Aside from the Pope listed above, deaths of the period include George Foreman, Manoj Bharathiraja, Jay North, Rubby Pérez, Kyren Lacy, Mario Vargas Llosa, and two that earned proeminent spots in the last Traffic report, Val Kilmer and Richard Chamberlain.
2025 Myanmar earthquake 1526 Already afflicted by a civil war, the Southeast Asian nation entered a state of emergency after the most powerful earthquake to hit the country since 1912, killing up to 5,352 people (a significant number being Muslims given the seismic activity happened during the Friday prayer and collapsed mosques) and injuring thousands more. Neighbors Thailand, China and Vietnam were also affected.
Margaret 1377 Some IPs have seemingly decided to add just about every famous Margaret to this article.
Department of Government Efficiency 1253 The divisive company set up to cut down expenses of the U.S. government. Its figurehead Elon Musk told his investors that he planned to reduce his government work, but that he will "likely" continue for the remainder of Trump's term.
Candidates of the 2025 Canadian federal election 1199 Plenty of updates on who can received votes on the election that starts on April 28.
2025 World Snooker Championship 1197 On April 19, the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield received the world's best snooker players for a tournament that lasts until May.
Tariffs in the second Trump administration 1048 New tariffs were placed on all goods brought into the U.S., causing an immediate stock market crash and bear market. A breakdown on the tariffs lead to the much mocked discovery that one of the locations hit by taxes is Heard Island and McDonald Islands, a distant archipelago that isn't inhabited by humans, but by penguins! The outcry eventually made Trump notice that the other countries were "getting a little bit yippy" and put a pause on all of those over 10% (except for China, which Trump slapped with a 145% tariff). Trump also exempted electronics from the tariffs.
Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia 1022 Kilmar Abrego Garcia left his El Salvador for the United States in 2011 to escape gang threats, and was given withholding of removal to remain living and working legally. 14 years later, having started a family and no criminal charges, an administrative error mistakenly sent him to a maximum security prison in his home country. The United States Supreme Court concluded that he deserves to be sent back to the U.S., but the Salvadorean president has refused the requests so far.
L2: Empuraan 908 This Mollywood action thriller film, a sequel to the 2019 film Lucifer and the second instalment in the Lucifer trilogy was released on March 27 and managed to recover its budget of ₹180 crore (US$21 million) in just 4 days and break several records. It was jointly produced by Aashirvad Cinemas, Lyca Productions, and Sree Gokulam Movies, with Mohanlal reprising his role as the lead character.
Snow White (2025 film) 846 Disney remade its first animated feature in live action, it wasn't received well (the reactions go from critics being unimpressed to haters deciding to do some review bombing on IMDb to make it the website's lowest rated movie) and hasn't even made $200 million worldwide when the budget is on the $240–270 million range. The bad response even made the studio stop the development of a Tangled remake. Yet there is another one of those adaptations due this year, and Lilo & Stitch is actually being eagerly awaited.
List of Philippine television shows 836 Another case of IPs extending a list.
2025 Turkish protests 760 Once Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was arrested, this was taken by the population as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan trying to weaken his opposition, leading thousands and eventually millions, of both sides of the political spectrum, to protest against the economic crisis, democratic backsliding and other issues that the government caused.
2024–25 Liga 4 national phase 752 A few users are really dedicated into updating the fourth tier of Indonesian football.
A Minecraft Movie 729 Hollywood's biggest hit of the year so far, with over $800 million worldwide. (although it's only the second highest-grossing movie of the year, as China's population of billions was enough for their cartoon Ne Zha 2 to become only the seventh movie to surpass $2 billion!)
Jaat (film) 728 Given I mentioned one country with a population surpassing a billion, the other, India, has the world's largest film industry, and this Bollywood action film is one of its releases.



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At WikiCredCon, Wikipedia editors and Internet Archive discuss threats to trust in media

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By Bluerasberry

Since its foundation, Wikipedia has attracted a globally networked community of hundreds of thousands of editors who share the vision of producing freely available truth that is verifiable through reliable sources. While there are many other trustworthy information sources, Wikipedia also has an extraordinarily large audience that helped it become a major influence on global media. Wikipedia editors use several fact-checking processes and other editorial practices to maintain Wikipedia's quality. Readers come to Wikipedia because it has information that they like and trust, and editors post to Wikipedia because they want to serve those readers.

Wikipedia invites anyone with complaints about the site's limits to join in as editors themselves, and to participate in the platform's online, public and transparent editorial process. Complaints are welcome as part of the civil discourse and editorial process of building the encyclopedia. On the other hand, unfortunately, there are some entities who attack Wikipedia without civility and in bad faith. These may be individuals, organizations, corporations, or even governments, who all criticize Wikipedia because it shares information or media that they dislike. Sometimes, they may demand that editors bypass the usual editorial process to make an exception for presenting special content. At other times, there is no pretense of negotiation, and those targeting Wikipedia simply make demands that Wikipedia publish only statements or content that reflect a particular point of view, to the exclusion of other stakeholders. Sometimes, the attacks just take the form of harassment without a clear motivation.

While criticism can be valid, negativity never is, and Wikipedia remains one of the world's few attempts, if not the only one, at producing a community-governed, community-fact-checked, free of cost, multilingual and multicultural reference source for general interest.

Pointing to evidence of increased acts of hostility against Wikipedia editors is difficult to explain with digital media metrics alone. Still, the Wikimedia community is a network of actual humans who talk to each other, and enough of them have been observing a trend of increased attempts to spread misinformation in the media and bring that same misinformation into Wikipedia, as well as increased push-back against editors for applying our fact-checking process to those instances.

From 14 to 16 February, the Internet Archive hosted Wikipedia editors at WikiCredCon 2025 (both virtually and in person in San Francisco), where they gathered to discuss threats to trust in the media and threats to our editors. The Internet Archive and Wikipedia have common goals and common concerns, as both are non-profit organizations that provide free public access to their content, and both rely on crowdsourced contributions. The two organizations already collaborate in various ways: Wikipedia editors frequently access publications at Internet Archive to verify information, whereas since 2016 the Internet Archive has actively backed up digital links, which editors can cite in Wikipedia by using the InternetArchiveBot. While wiki editors convened at Internet Archive's headquarters to discuss common goals and obstacles, here are videos of people[a] talking about the things that they thought were most important to share.

Conflict between politics and media

[edit]
  • Jamie Flood – government censorship
  • Craig Newmark – Wikipedia is where facts go to live
  • Lane Rasberry – Editing Wikipedia is not a crime
  • Mary Mark Ockerbloom – disinformation threatens trust
  • Vic Sfriso – Wikimedia Argentina against misinformation
  • Quincy – disinformation in climate change

Community networking increases safety

[edit]
  • Robin Isadora Brown – birds flock for safety
  • Colby Webster – social connections
  • Fabian Garcia – if you don't see yourself represented, then represent yourself
  • B – defend Wikipedia and journalism

Wikipedia + Internet Archive

[edit]
  • Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight – Wayback Machine for multilingual fact-checking
  • Mark Graham – Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for fact-checking in Wikipedia
  • Sawood Alam – Wayback Machine Turn all References Blue
  • Maximilian Doerr – InternetArchiveBot archives sources for Wikipedia
  • Peter Meyer – Wikipedia and Internet Archive are allies

Wikipedia content development

[edit]

Allies

[edit]

Footnotes

[edit]
  1. ^ Some of the people listed use pseudonyms for privacy, which are used for identification in the captions.



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Product & Tech Progress on the Annual Plan

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By AEira-WMF

Ana Eira is a Movement Communications Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation. Part of the content of this post was previously published on Diff.

Every year, the Wikimedia Foundation, together with Wikimedians across the projects, creates an Annual Plan that outlines our priorities for the year ahead. Since July, we've been working under a new plan that puts a strong focus on Product and Technology. In this post, we'll share some highlights of the progress we've made in the first two quarters of the fiscal year 2024–2025.

Wiki Experiences

[edit]

In Q1, we released the highly anticipated Dark mode, which had been a longstanding wish shared by many Wikimedians. This feature reduces eye strain for readers by providing a low-contrast reading experience. We have now deployed Dark Mode to over 40 wikis, including for anonymous users.

Another longstanding request was a way for contributors to easily find on-wiki events and communities that interest them. In Q2, this resulted in the expansion of the Collaboration List feature in the Campaign Events extension, which now includes a tab for "Communities". This tab features WikiProjects on the local wiki, as well as links to the WikiProject page and the associated Wikidata item. The Collaboration List was also recently enhanced with more search filters, so people can now search for events by wikis or topics. Additionally, wikis with the CampaignEvents extension enabled can access the Invitation List feature, which was released in Q1. This feature helps organizers identify users who might be interested in their upcoming event or WikiProject, based on their contribution history.

Automoderator is the latest deployment in a suite of tools that volunteer editors can use to fight disinformation while making content moderation more efficient. A substantial number of edits are made to Wikimedia projects which should unambiguously be undone, reverting a page back to its previous state. In the past, patrollers and administrators had to spend a lot of time manually reviewing and reverting these edits. Powered by the new "Revert Risk" machine learning models, Automoderator automatically detects and reverts harmful edits. Between Q1 and Q2, Automoderator was deployed on six new wikis.

In addition to that, AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. In the same spirit of supporting editors on the wikis, the Chart extension, which enables editors to create data visualizations, is now available on MediaWiki.org and three pilot wikis.

We have started introducing updates aimed at enhancing the editing experience on the iOS mobile app as part of a broader transition from a reader-focused platform to one that fully supports both reading and editing. Editors on the iOS mobile app have now updated navigation features, which include a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view. Expanding on this effort, the Alternative Text suggested edits feature has now been fully deployed to production on the iOS App for Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and French Wikipedias. This feature is designed to help newcomers add alt text to images, aiming to improve accessibility and engagement.

We are also continuing to look for ways to improve the experience for contributors with extended rights on the projects, like stewards. Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.

To guarantee a more secure and privacy-conscious experience without compromising convenience, we are updating Single User Login, the system that allows users to login on one Wikimedia site and be automatically logged in across all, to ensure compatibility with browser anti-tracking measures and will roll out to all users by the end of March. This will also further improve account security by limiting all authentication to a single domain.

The Foundation launched a series of community conversations with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for the next fiscal year. While current efforts focus on improvements to the UploadWizard that will make it easier for moderators, there are a wide variety of interests and needs across Commons that have been discussed with and across community members in the last few months.

We've resolved a total of 650 volunteer-reported issues in Phabricator in the last 6 months. For instance, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page. We have also resolved bugs in important areas like Add a Link, the Android Wikipedia App, and the "Download as PDF" system, among others.

To foster close, ongoing collaboration with community members across WikiExperiences work, the Foundation launched a Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) as a one-year pilot in October 2024. The council brings together technical contributors, affiliates and the Foundation to collaborate on building a more resilient, future-ready technological platform. The Council is charged with making recommendations around product and tech development work over a multi-year horizon to help align to the strategic direction of the Foundation. PTAC has already released its first recommendation.

Future Audiences

[edit]

We are responding to volunteer requests to experiment with how new generations of people may read and use Wikipedia content. Our reader experience teams are running six experiments now to help us learn where to invest even more time and attention. To learn more about "free knowledge everywhere" as a potential strategy for multigenerational sustainability, we began an experiment to remix Wikipedia content into short "fun fact" videos and publish them on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube – popular platforms where younger generations like to spend time and learn. Over the course of October 2024 to January 2025, we attained a total of 1.87M views and 1.51M unique users reached via this experiment, indicating that this is an effective strategy to bring Wikipedia knowledge to younger audiences at scale. We are continuing to test different content types and are inviting community members who are active on these platforms to join in and collaborate with us.

These are just a few examples of the progress made in the first two quarters. To learn more, read the full update on Diff.




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Crisis erupts as furious admins, functionaries complain about crappy t-shirts

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By Relativity
Shirt that says: I'm an admin, and all I get is this crappy t-shirt.
The shirt causing all the controversy.

The crisis

[edit]

General outrage from admins has spread quickly through the Wikipedia server. The cause? Crappy t-shirts.

One admin commented the following: "I spend YEARS editing Wikipedia, giving up my VALUABLE TIME to this cause, and I had to brave RfA! And what do I get??? Just this crappy t-shirt! But at least it's SOMETHING—I'm a Checkuser, and there are ZERO t-shirts for that!"

Sensing chaos about to erupt, a committee was formed to address the problem. The committee, comprised of the authors of the jokes at Wikipedia:List of jokes about Wikipedia, swapped ideas for solutions. While a plan for more admin and functionary appreciation and recognition was discussed, they eventually settled on creating shirts with extremely cheesy jokes. The collection is available for preview below.

The following week, the shirts were handed out to the annoyed editors. Needless to say, the masses were not pleased. There were some reports of the new shirts called "worse than the crappy admin one". They also complained that not every advanced permission was covered by the shirts. The committee apologized and tried to address this issue, but after creating a shirt for bureaucrats that said "I'm a bureaucrat, and even I say Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy", the committee was quickly banned from creating new T-shirts, with a statement from ArbCom:

The T-Shirt Committee is indefinitely banned from creating cheesy t-shirts for wasting community time on a solution which would have never worked in anyone's mind. Plus, no one thinks they're funny, except Jimbo, and even that one's a stretch.

They forced kindly requested I mention that they've found a loophole in their ban. Apparently, they are not supposed to create shirts, but there is no section in the ban that says anyone not in the committee cannot. They are asking for uninvolved editors to assist in creating cheesy t-shirts, and encourage you to use Template:Stupid t-shirt or File:T-shirt.png.



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By territory

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"AND WHEN YOU TAKE THE PICTURE, MAKE SURE IT'S OVER A JURISDICTION THAT PERMITS FREEDOM OF PANORAMA!! UNLESS AIRSPACE RIGHTS ARE BEING LEASED OR UNDER EASEMENT FROM A DIFFERENT SOVEREIGN ENTITY!!!"







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Using AI on the Russian Wikipedia: opportunities or challenges?

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By VladimirPF

The Russian Wikipedia community discusses the challenges and opportunities brought by the widespread adoption of large language models. While many participants refer to these systems as artificial intelligence (AI), they refer to different types of neural networks.

First discussion and first problems

[edit]

The first significant discussion about AI took place from February 1 to 7, 2023. U:Proeksad, who initiated the debate, identified a central theme that connects all subsequent discussions: "I believe that Ruwiki will also have to deal with generative models. Moreover, this may be worse than the problem with the automatic translations. Are we going to do something now?" In this brief discussion, concerns about using AI for writing Wikipedia articles quickly emerged:

  • Who holds the copyright for AI-generated content based on copyrighted sources? How should AI’s contribution to an article be acknowledged?
  • How will collaboration work between authors who write from scratch and those who use AI assistance?
  • Who is responsible for ensuring the verifiability and accuracy of AI-generated content? Who should correct any errors or violations?

Evolution of concerns

[edit]

On March 1, 2023, U:Sagivrash reported on the village pump about an anonymously published article that appeared to be AI-generated. The article was removed, but the community took the issue seriously. Reactions varied, U:VladimirPF (who is the author of this Signpost article) argued that if an article meets Wikipedia's rules, there’s no problem, while U:Rampion warned that AI-generated content might include seemingly logical but entirely false information.

By March 20, the debate had escalated. U:VladimirPF proposed banning unregistered users from creating new articles, citing AI’s growing ability to produce seemingly high-quality yet misleading content. He expressed concern that the Russian Wikipedia community lacks the resources to verify every such article. The discussion was intense, with 49 participants contributing 120 messages, an unusually high level of engagement for the Russian Wikipedia community. During the discussion, a critical issue became clear: the volume of new content was beginning to outpace the community's ability to ensure its quality.

On May 17, 2023, U:VladimirPF demonstrated this problem by presenting a fake article about a nonexistent entrepreneur, politician, and philanthropist. The article was generated using YandexGPT, a Russian-language model considered inferior to ChatGPT. Despite its limitations, the AI-produced article appeared convincing and well-structured.

On June 1, 2023, U:Котик полосатый shared another case in a separate forum thread. He attempted to write an article using ChatGPT and concluded that while AI can be helpful, it is far from a perfect solution. Writing with AI still requires extensive preparation, careful proofreading, and significant editing. He also pointed out that AI’s adaptability to the Russian language remains a major challenge.

The apogee of rejection

[edit]

In response to growing concerns raised in heated discussions, a vote was held from June 2 to 16 on whether to "Introduce a ban on article creation by anonymous and newly registered users" to curb the mass appearance of AI-generated content. This was one of the most active votes in recent years, with 196 participants contributing 553 messages. The final tally was 114 in favor, 63 against, and 3 abstentions. Although the proposal did not pass, the results reflected the widespread concern in the Russian Wikipedia community regarding AI-generated content. In the final message, U:AndyVolykhov emphasized the need for at least some intermediate restrictions.

Shortly after the vote, from June 26 to 30, U:Томасина initiated a discussion on a specific case of AI-assisted article writing. For the first time, the author explicitly credited ChatGPT as the main contributor in the edit description. The article was deleted, with the administrator citing it as "complete nonsense"—a decision that went undisputed. This marked the first confirmed deletion of an AI-generated article in the Russian Wikipedia. Amid the debate, U:РоманСузи proposed creating a ChatGPT Guide for Wikipedia to outline best practices for AI use. The idea received mixed reactions from the community, highlighting the ongoing uncertainty about AI’s role in article creation.

During the June 2023 discussions, the community increasingly recognized that detecting AI-generated content in articles is virtually impossible. As a result, many concluded that relying solely on restrictive measures would be ineffective. Moreover, such bans could lead to unintended consequences, including discrimination against users who incorporate AI in a productive way. This, in turn, might encourage contributors to conceal AI involvement, rather than ensuring transparency about its use.

Softening of positions

[edit]

In September 2024, the topic of AI-generated illustrations was raised for the first time. The discussion highlighted that such images often serve a decorative rather than informative role and are not necessarily authoritative representations of an article’s subject.

On October 22, 2024, U:Котик полосатый opened a forum thread showcasing articles that had been improved using AI. His main argument was that AI tools could help clean up problematic articles, especially in cases where an article is in such poor condition that "it is impossible to delete or leave as is." While some users pointed out issues in AI-assisted editing, the discussion was generally positive. U:Skorp24 summarized: "ChatGPT does a decent job proofreading for punctuation and style."

On November 3, 2024, the question of banning AI-generated articles resurfaced on the rules forum. Administrator U:Андрей Романенко initiated the discussion after quickly deleting several poor-quality, AI-generated articles. He posed a direct question: "Isn't it time to explicitly ban such articles?" U:Грустный кофеин responded just as directly: "It doesn't make much sense since GPT is evolving very quickly, and such bans are likely to become obsolete in a year or two." This response reflected a broader concern that static restrictions might not keep pace with rapidly improving AI technology.

Overall, the discussion concluded that existing rules are sufficient for evaluating and managing AI-generated contributions to Wikipedia. Instead of outright bans, the focus shifted toward adapting current policies to new technological realities. U:Mike Somerset proposed an alternative approach—using AI to patrol articles—suggesting that AI could help identify issues rather than just create content.

The latest debate, "Why Neural Networks Should Be Banned from Wikipedia", began on February 1, 2025, signaling that concerns about AI’s role in content creation remain an ongoing issue in the community.

Implementation of opportunities

[edit]

One of the most constructive viewpoints came from U:Poltavski, who argued that an outright ban on AI was both unfounded and impractical: "AI has an undeniable future. At the same time, I have not found evidence that available AI tools can compete with an experienced Wikipedia editor in writing articles. However, they can be useful to someone as an auxiliary resource".

Following this, U:Rampion shared his own experience of using AI while working on the article "Northern European Enclosure Dam". He described AI as a supporting tool rather than a replacement for human authorship: "The neural network helped me with structuring the article, checking and analyzing sources, citing excerpts, translating text, formatting templates, wikification, double-checking data, and refining style and spelling. However, I wouldn’t say that the neural network ‘wrote’ the article—the article was written with the help of AI. I did not ask the AI to use its pre-trained knowledge, but instead uploaded the sources I had found and instructed it to work exclusively with that material. I then had the AI double-check its output multiple times, manually verifying its excerpts and actively revising its suggestions". He concluded with a valuable insight: "The only thing I didn’t think of was verifying the final result with another neural network—now I see that as a good practice".

This exchange illustrated a balanced approach to AI on Wikipedia editing—acknowledging its potential benefits while emphasizing the need for human oversight and verification. U:Rampion concluded that using AI significantly improved his efficiency: "Writing the article took me about 7–8 hours, including time for reading the sources and double-checking/correcting the text. Without the help of the neural network, I would have probably spent twice as much time".

Similarly, U:Ghuron shared that the article "WDS J22121+2904"—excluding template formatting, wikification, and tables—was also written with AI assistance.

These examples reinforced the idea that AI can be a valuable tool for experienced editors, helping streamline workflows while still requiring human oversight and refinement.

How big can Wikipedia be?

[edit]

After reviewing the article "WDS J22121+2904" U:VladimirPF initiated a new forum discussion titled "Billions of Potential Articles, or How Big Can Wikipedia Be". He explored the possibility of using AI and digitized sources to generate a billion Wikipedia-compliant articles—with astronomical objects as a primary example.

He pointed out that the sources for "WDS J22121+2904" were found with AI assistance, and those same sources could quickly be used to generate nearly a thousand similar articles. U:VladimirPF proposed that, with the right approach, dedication, and persistence, it is already feasible to train AI to produce high-quality Wikipedia articles in quantities surpassing any existing language edition—not just by a factor of a few, but by several orders of magnitude.

His argument raised both optimistic and critical perspectives, fueling further discussions on the scale, feasibility, and implications of AI-generated content on Wikipedia. As an example of AI’s potential, VladimirPF analyzed significant events in cities with over 1 million people. He estimated that if 1,000 noteworthy events occurred annually in 46 of India’s largest cities between 1975 and 2025, AI could generate 2.3 million Wikipedia articles—just for local events in India alone. This staggering figure does not include articles on people, international events, scientific discoveries, literary works, or countless other topics. His analysis underscored the sheer volume of untapped information that AI could help document.

One of the most significant outcomes of these discussions was the shift in perspective within the Russian Wikipedia community. Initially, many users strongly opposed AI-generated content. However, over time, the conversation evolved into a constructive dialogue about AI’s role on Wikipedia. Reflecting this change, U:Rampion created a dedicated page, "Wikipedia: Artificial Intelligence" where contributors:

  • Compiled recommendations on AI-assisted editing
  • Identified key AI errors
  • Shared effective prompts for AI interaction
  • Discussed real case studies of AI use in Wikipedia articles

This transition from rejection to structured exploration marked a major milestone in how the Russian-language Wikipedia approaches AI usage.

The future that needs to be prepared for today

[edit]

The possibilities that AI offers for writing articles are pretty tempting. Still, we must not forget about the expected consequences that will arise if not only authors but also all wiki projects and the wiki movement do not begin to change in anticipation of the future:

  • An increase in the number of articles will lead to the collapse of manually checking new articles and making new changes to articles. People will not be able to patrol changes made to a billion articles, will not be able to discuss 100,000 articles on the deletion forum, etc.;
  • Increasing the number of articles will lead to a significant load on the infrastructure. Each article contains 2-3 templates and 5-6 categories - software and hardware of wiki projects must be ready to service one-time requests for hundreds of millions of templates and categories used in articles;
  • the development of digitlization of scientific research will lead to an explosive growth in the number of articles that, at first glance, may seem unnecessary. Does anyone need 2 billion articles on astronomical objects (that meet the minimum requirements for articles) that the Gaia project catalogued? This would most likely lead to censorship of articles published on Wikipedia, directly violating Wikipedia's goals—the free dissemination of knowledge.
  • The use of digitized local media will lead to an increase in articles that are not reflected in major media at the national or international level. This can lead to source discrimination based on the non-recognition of the authority of local sources and, thereby, a sharp tightening of the criteria of significance. The traditional procedure for recognizing authority will not be able to cope with hundreds of thousands of local digitized sources.
  • The main threat is the dissolution of the role of living participants in the life of wiki projects.

I want to draw your attention to the fact that all the expected numbers in the article should be multiplied by the number of language projects that will start actively using AI. This will be further multiplied by the number of Wikimedia projects that will join this process. For example, AI perfectly solves all the problems with filling in Wikivoyage.

The Wiki community should already now actively discuss the changes that await our projects in connection with the development of AI to predict actions, expenses, capital investments, etc. If we do not start predicting and deciding today or tomorrow, Wikipedia will be remembered alongside Nupedia.

Also, considering how difficult it is to implement changes on Wikimedia projects, I am very concerned about the future.



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A Deep Dive Into Wikimedia

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By Feed Me Your Skin
User Feed Me Your Skin agreed to re-publish an original guide on Wikimedia, which can be found on his personal blog, on The Signpost. This will be presented as a multi-part series of columns in this space over the next few issues. – Signpost Editors

Introduction

[edit]

In a single sentence, Wikimedia is an online movement dedicated to making access to knowledge equitable. Because Wikimedia is a grassroots movement, this means that almost the entirety of the information hosted on its platforms comes not from paid experts, but rather from random users that generously volunteer their time to develop projects. In order to make sure that the projects are used for benefit of the public, instead of a corporation's bottom line, the content is shared under a free license, while the code is fully free and open source. You're almost certainly familiar with Wikimedia's most popular project, Wikipedia (how did you end up here if you aren't?). But how familiar? At first, this was supposed to be a short article about Wikipedia and its policies, but as I've dug deeper, I discovered that Wikipedia was merely a single part of an unfathomably complex online ecosystem. This blog post will go over everything that I found in broad strokes, but I strongly encourage everybody to click on the links I provide to get a deep understanding of the subject matter.

Part 0: The Foundation and the Movement

[edit]

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit founded by Jimmy Wales in 2003, about two years after he co-founded Wikipedia. Its goal is to provide infrastructure for the Wikimedia projects, offer legal services for Wikimedia, provide critical technical support where necessary, and provide funding for people working on tasks that are important for Wikimedia's health (more on all of that later). The projects and the communities that sprung up around the Foundation, or were otherwise inspired by it, are collectively called the Wikimedia movement. By necessity, these two groups constantly interact with one another to promote their agenda, sometimes blurring the lines between the two. This can be confusing, so throughout this blog post, I'll explicitly say whether or not I'm referring to the Foundation or the movement.

Part 1: The Wikimedia Projects

[edit]
TKTK

The Wikimedia projects are the core of the Wikimedia Foundation, where information can be freely disseminated. There are 12 projects in total, and each one of them has its own unique mission. While they're all built with the same MediaWiki software and are hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, they mostly run independently from each other, with a few major exceptions. These projects vary widely in usage, history, and quality.

Besides being dedicated to the free distribution of knowledge, a common unifying feature of the Wikimedia projects is that they're entirely run by the community. That doesn't just mean the content hosted in the projects is created by users: it means that the policies guiding the projects have been crafted by users, as well. Despite hosting the projects, the Foundation does virtually nothing for them, except maintaining the software. While the Wikimedia movement isn't explicitly political, the emphasis on communal effort over an ingrained hierarchy can be seen as a natural extension of the libertarianism of both Jimmy Wales and the broader free-culture movement Wikimedia originally sprouted from.

As you can imagine, there's quite a bit of similarities between the projects, despite being independently run and having different purposes. To avoid being redundant, I'm not going to repeatedly mention shared features, like how anybody is allowed to edit. Instead, I'm only going to mention things that I found interesting while researching the projects, and then explain the features shared by all the projects in part 2 and 3.

Wikipedia

[edit]

You already know what Wikipedia is. This is the flagship project of Wikimedia and easily the largest online encyclopedia. It introduced three major improvements over traditional encyclopedias: it's free to use, it leverages the collective knowledge of the user-base by letting everybody edit at any moment, and it freely uses citations whenever making a claim – something most encyclopedias didn't do, since the process would take up too much space. These are all things we take for granted now, but at the time of its institution, these changes were so revolutionary that Wikipedia essentially set a new standard for encyclopedias, which has almost completely killed traditional print encyclopedias. Wikipedia has grown so large that most people think that it's the only thing that the Wikimedia Foundation ever does, but not many people know exactly how it works behind the scenes.

Wikipedia As A Community

[edit]

The Wikipedia namespace is the namespace for pages that deal with the internal workings of Wikipedia, but not the Wikipedia articles about the encyclopedia itself. Pages in this namespace tend to fall into three different categories:

1. Pages for communication between Wikipedians. The Village Pump page, which is linked to on the front page of Wikipedia, contains other links to these sort of pages, where people ask questions about how Wikipedia works, suggest policies, or get help with references, among other things.

2. Essays about Wikipedia. People have LOTS of thoughts about Wikipedia, and occasionally they take to Wikipedia to write an essay about it. Some authors don't want other people to edit their own essays, and so they store these pages in their user namespace, but essays in the Wikipedia namespace are designed to be collaboratively written. There's over 2000 of them, so you're sure to find at least one essay that you find interesting.

3. Pages clarifying policies. Wikipedia is big, and that means that you need to have policies to handle day-to-day activities. These pages tell you how to properly select sources, what belongs on Wikipedia, and how conflicts are handled, among many, MANY other things. There's over 300 policies you are expected to abide by, bringing me to one of the most contentious parts of the Wikipedia community.

The Bureaucracy

[edit]
TKTK
Adminship is "but a signpost on the road—our going hence, another post to mark transition and our progress."

While you're obviously going to need at least some policies to run a website as large as Wikipedia, and despite official Wikipedia policy reiterating that it is not a bureaucracy, it's pretty clear that the number of rules that you're expected to know if you want to edit is ridiculous. This creates a hierarchy between the average user and the powerusers who actually take the time to learn these policies and track them as they get updated. As anybody who's ever done a fair bit of editing on Wikipedia can tell you, some of these powerusers treat the pages that they've worked on as a fiefdom. If you dare try to correct anything wrong that you see on a page that they think they own, they will often use their superior knowledge of Wikipedia to shut you down by quoting obscure policies, a practice known as Wikilawyering. Besides that, powerusers tend to have more power than casual users because of their willingness and capacity to become admins, or serve in other important roles within the Wikipedia community.

The actual process to become an admin on the English-language Wikipedia is bizarre, to say the least. Rather than a straight-forward democratic election, admins are elected based on consensus. People give arguments for or against the nominee whose request for adminship is being evaluated, and then a bureaucrat (which is like an admin, but with the authority to create admins or other bureaucrats) weighs the arguments based on quality. Not only is there not any rubric that the bureaucrat has to use to weigh the arguments; there isn't even a set amount of consensus the nominee needs to have. All that is mentioned on the official guide is that 75% support means that the nomination is likely to succeed, whereas 65% support means that it's unlikely; nominees for the bureaucrat role are said to require around 85%. While anybody can be a nominee, it's very rare for somebody to actually get the role with an edit count of less than 10,000.

When Wikipedia does use democracy, it does so in a way that disenfranchises the majority of the community. The main election in the Wikipedia community is the one for the Arbitration Committee, which handles disputes. To simply cast a vote, you need to have had 150 edits in mainspace. For context, having 100 edits puts you in the top 1% of all users. To actually run as a nominee, you need to have made 500 edits, which puts you in the top 0.25%. Either way, there's no way for the average user to actually impact a committee that might make a judgment affecting them. At the same time, Wikipedia does need some sort of barrier to keep vandals out. It's not a simple problem, although I personally think that these barriers are too high.

Bots

[edit]

Having a small minority of users handle most of the management of such a large website isn't very easy. To make the process easier, certain users have created bots designed to automate some of the work that would have otherwise been impossible for people to do at scale. A prominent example of this on the English Wikipedia is ClueBot NG, an automoderator designed to detect and revert vandalism. From what I understand, this is a major reason why vandalism, which used to be a common sight on Wikipedia, is now very rare. As you can imagine, the community doesn't want just anybody to create a bot that can modify pages, since it's way easier to create one that vandalizes than it is to revert the vandalism. To have your bot accepted for usage, you have to make an official request, where your bot will be evaluated to make sure that it follows established policy.

Edit-a-thons

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As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia obviously doesn't want to not have an article on something important. Unfortunately, the encyclopedia tends to have wider gaps in certain areas, like women's history and art. To cover these gaps and improve the diversity of the overall Wikipedia community, some people organize something called an edit-a-thon, where people get together to collectively edit Wikipedia, while learning about how to contribute to the website in the first place.

WikiProjects

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Not everybody has the same interests, but since there's so many people on Wikipedia, people can form smaller communities within the larger community. These are the WikiProjects, which help maintain and create articles within their sphere of interest. There's tons of them for just about anything that you can think of, and they all stem from so many different cultures that it's impossible to write about them all. It's interesting stuff, so I recommend diving in head first and seeing all of the WikiProjects out there.

Wikipedians In Residence

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While the Wikimedia movement is mostly represented by the Wikimedia Foundation, traditional establishments often also want to help out and contribute. One of the ways they do this is by hiring what is known as a Wikipedian in residence. This is a job position where somebody works to make Wikipedia contributions related to an institution's mission (e.g. an art museum hiring a Wikipedian in residence to write articles about art history). Besides their contributions to the site on behalf of their employers, Wikipedians in residence can also represent Wikipedia's interests by promoting outreach and helping to establish the encyclopedia as a legitimate source of information.

The Newsletters

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A lot of things are happening on Wikipedia, and you probably don't want to go looking for all the news by yourself. Instead, the people that do often create newsletters for the community to read. The biggest newsletter by far, actually a newspaper, is The Signpost, which gives an exhaustive overview of the state of the website every two or three weeks. There's many newsletters across the Wikimedia movement, with several active newsletters being maintained by WikiProjects to keep enthusiasts up to date about the WikiProject and the subject matter.

The Wikipedia Library

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Making edits requires citations, and a lot of good sources are hidden behind paywalls. Solution: partner with universities around the world to give Wikipedia editors free access to academic articles. the Wikipedia Library. This is technically part of the Meta Wikimedia platform instead of Wikipedia, but its purpose is to be used by Wikipedia editors, and only Wikipedia editors. To access the database, you need to have made 500 edits in total and at least 10 edits in the last 30 days. On one hand, this is an incredible effort to improve Wikipedia and democratize research, but on the other, the high barrier to entry increases the disparity between average users and powerusers. Despite what the description may have you believe, the edits don't actually need to be on Wikipedia. I myself got access to the library primarily for edits that I made on other projects. It also uses a somewhat loose definition of "library". While there's many academic papers, there are also un-paywalled newspapers and access to genealogy records like Ancestry.com. You can learn more about the library on its newsletter, Books & Bytes.

Philosophy Of Editing

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There's a big debate on what the role of an editor should be. On one hand, there's an ideology called deletionism, which believes that articles with very low views should be deleted. On the other hand, there's an ideology called inclusionism, which believes that articles should be kept whenever possible. In my eyes, both of them have some pretty good points. On one hand, the inclusionists argue that Wikipedia isn't paper, so it doesn't make sense to prune articles the way that paper encyclopedias used to. While rarely viewed articles only get a few views a day, they collectively get a large number, so removing them would degrade the overall user experience. On the other hand, while Wikipedia isn't paper, storage space is still finite. An individual article is pretty negligible, but there's millions of articles on Wikipedia, which adds up. In addition, every article not deleted is an article that has to be maintained, which takes up energy that could be directed elsewhere. What the community wants is the best of both: countless articles about any niche topic that you can think about but with countless maintainers that can quickly reverse any vandalism and write new articles. Unfortunately, a trade-off has to be made, but nobody can agree on what it should be.

Mascot

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Wikipe-tan

While Wikipedia doesn't have an official mascot, the unofficial mascot is widely recognized to be an anime girl called Wikipe-tan. She occasionally shows up in certain Wikipedia articles (particularly articles about anime culture) and is occasionally cosplayed at Wikimedia meetups. She also serves as the official mascot for WikiProject Anime And Manga. Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons also have their own anime girls, but they aren't really featured that much outside of this incredible image.

Wikivoyage

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This is my favourite of the sister projects. Like the name implies, Wikivoyage compiles information about travelling, containing information about different locations, guides, and itineraries for you to use. Wikivoyage wasn't directly created by the Wikimedia Foundation. Instead, it's an offshoot of a different website called Wikitravel, which has never been affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation. Also unlike Wikipedia, which expects citations to back up the information you add, Wikivoyage doesn't have citations at all. Instead, you're expected to use your own background knowledge when writing articles. Another neat thing about Wikivoyage is that unlike any other project, Wikivoyage doesn't let you directly create pages. Instead, you're expected to link to an empty page and then edit the page from there. The idea is that every page should be connected to another, creating what the community calls a breadcrumb trail between all of the articles. Like every other smaller Wikimedia project, Wikivoyage also has WikiProjects and policies that are similar to Wikipedia's, but less of both because of its smaller size. However, WikiProjects are called expeditions rather than WikiProjects.

Wikisource

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Okay, so you can't access the Wikipedia Library, but you still want to find a source for something. Enter another one of the Wikimedia projects, Wikisource. This is a huge repository of freely licensed or public domain texts that can be used as a source, whether it's a book, legal proceeding, or poetry. This project requires a lot more effort than may first meet the eye. A lot of sources are obscure articles that only exist in print, so Wikisource is often the first point where they're digitalized. That requires a lot of proofreading, which is done in the page namespace. To make sure that digitalized texts are properly validated, digitalized texts have to be proofread by at least 2 different people before the text is moved to main namespace. To drum up support for what's a very intensive task, the Wikisource community has monthly challenges to finish proofreading key texts. Wikisource sorts texts by subject and author, which makes it easy to find what you're looking for. Wikisource users also translate certain texts and transcribe films, but this is much rarer because of the high level of effort needed to do that.

Wikiquote

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This is a repository for quotes by famous people, TV shows, books, and more. This can be thought of as the intersection between Wikipedia and Wikisource. All quotes have to be verified, famous, and have endured the test of time. However, quotes that can not be attributed to a person are exempt from the verification requirement. While the main purpose of Wikiquote is to record the quotes that a person has said or written, it also gives information about quotes that a person is widely but incorrectly assumed to have invented.

Wikinews

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What would happen if there was a project where people around the world could write news articles that anybody can edit as major events evolve? Turns out, not much. This is the graveyard of the Wikimedia project. Even though there's so much news coming out all the time, Wikinews is lucky to get more than 3 articles a day. Even on the English Wikinews, a lot of attention is given to Russia, with most of the rest being given to America. Even parts of the 1st world like Australia get very little coverage, let alone 3rd world countries. Embarrassingly, Wikipedia has totally outshined Wikinews by having an infobox on the front page that gives more information about the news than Wikinews itself, a fact that it mentions on the somewhat gloaty article for the project. Despite its overall irrelevance, I think that there's still a few interesting things about it that's still worth mentioning.

Sourcing

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Wikinews blends the sourcing requirements of Wikipedia and Wikivoyage by allowing for articles that get information from other news reports and actual original reporting. Both of these are pretty interesting. Blending new reports may make it seem like you're just rehashing news reports made by other outlets, but many news reports often have information that's missing in others. A blended news report could be more objective than one published by traditional agencies. Also, the collaborative writing process could allow for conservatives to challenge any perceived left-wing bias, potentially leading to more bipartisan and neutral reporting. The original reporting could have also helped foster citizen journalism and provide more information on niche events that happen in the author's city. It's not hard to imagine a different future where Wikinews took off and citizen journalists made WikiProjects for their city, with an accompanying newsletter to rival traditional local news.

Accreditation

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To get access to certain events, a journalist needs a press pass. To help citizen journalists, Wikinews will accredit high-quality contributors so that they can get press passes to access restricted areas.

Wikimedia Commons

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Wikimedia projects tend to make heavy use of images, audio, and video in articles. If you have a duplicate of a piece of media that's already used in a different project, then you waste storage space. In a totally unrelated issue, people often need to find a piece of media to use, but can't because of copyright issues. The Wikimedia Commons is the solution to both problems. It's a repository of media files that are freely licensed or public domain, which other Wikimedia projects use to add media to articles instead of locally uploading. While Wikimedia projects sometimes have to use non-free media in their articles, the Wikimedia Commons has done a very good job at making sure that there's almost always a free media file on Wikimedia Commons that editors can use instead. At the time of writing, there's over 100,000,000 files that have been uploaded.

Wikibooks

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TKTK

Despite the name, this isn't a repository for published books that are freely licensed or public domain. Instead, this is a place where people can collaboratively write textbooks for a variety of subjects. If you use Lichess, you've probably used Wikibooks without even realizing: whenever you use the opening explorer, Lichess fetches information about the opening that you're looking at from the Wikibook Chess Opening Theory. It's a cool idea, but unfortunately, writing a textbook is a lot of effort, which runs into the same problem that Wikinews has where very few people are actually willing to put real work into contributing.

Wikibooks includes an excellent sub-site, The Cookbook. If I had to take a guess, this is because it leverages how shallow books on Wikibooks tend to be. Since a cookbook only really requires you to write a short recipe, the barrier to entry is a lot lower than contributing to something like a math textbook, which requires specialized knowledge and a deep explanation about the subject matter. However, I don't think that's a full explanation about what's going on here. The Cookbook is far too broad and detailed to say that it only took off because it's low-effort. Instead, I think that The Cookbook has spawned an entire sub-community on Wikibooks, having its own namespace and several categories within the namespace that deal with different cuisines, ingredients, and even more abstract ideas like seasonality. While there's a few troll recipes, I would overall say that this is perhaps the best cookbook on the internet.

Wikiversity

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This is a place where people can collaboratively create courses to teach people about a wide variety of topics. As with most Wikimedia projects, the overwhelming majority of learning material is in text, not video or audio. That creates a huge level of overlap with Wikibooks, but without The Cookbook to drive traffic. However, unlike Wikibooks, Wikiversity encourages active participation from learners by promoting a philosophy of "learning by doing". Besides courses, a major part of Wikiversity is learning projects, where users get together to discuss certain subjects. Some of the courses can be good, but most courses are sparse on details or focused on more fringe ideas.

Wiktionary

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This is one that you probably used before. Wiktionary was originally a dictionary that anybody can contribute to, but it's grown to be so much more than that. Wiktionary is now also a thesaurus and gives the etymology of every word. Despite the name, a better way to think about it is the Wikipedia of language. An cool aspect of Wiktionary is that by letting people add whatever word they want, you can also get information on new and slang words, allowing the dictionary to rapidly evolve alongside the language itself.

Wikidata

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If you've been looking at the different Wikimedia projects while reading this blog post, you might have noticed a link on the sidebar called "Wikidata item". This takes you to Wikidata, where information is stripped of all unnecessary details and reduced to structured data. This can be thought of as Wikimedia Commons for facts instead of media. While you can browse this project the same way that you can browse the other projects, it's better used to scrape data for machine learning or as the backend for some sort of Wiki viewer. The primary use of data hosted here is to be used by the Wikimedia projects, where they can all receive up-to-date information by a single change to the linked item on Wikidata. This also helps to ease the problem of maintainability, which is a lifesaver for smaller projects.

Query

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Let's say that you need to query Wikidata. Instead of needing to write your own scraper, Wikidata has a built in way to access the data using SPARQL. While using this tool isn't necessarily the most intuitive, Wikidata has material to help you learn the language. Because you can directly submit your query to this url, it's easy to write a script that accesses Wikidata instead of using the GUI.

WikiCite

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As you might have guessed, getting citations for academic resources is important to contribute to Wikimedia projects, especially Wikisource. To that end, an initiative called WikiCite has started to add citation data to Wikidata so that there can be a centralized database for users to draw from. At the time of writing this, over 41 million items are instances of "scholarly article", and most of them have at least some citation data such as "author" or "DOI" added. Part of the WikiCite initiative is Scholia, a tool that lets you search for academics or academic articles to see their citation data. It also does some other interesting stuff, like automatically generate a citation graph for each academic article (if applicable) and listing the number of citations the article received every year, as well as how many of those citations were made by one of the authors.

The Limits Of Wikidata

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You start to run into problems when your database gets too many queries, and it's begun to seriously affect the Wikidata project. At the time of writing this, the Wikimedia foundation has begun to separate the WikiCite dataset apart from the main Wikidata dataset because the strain on Wikidata servers has become too much. What that means is that you have to specify whether or not you want to search the WikiCite dataset when you use the query service from now on. However, this only scales the Wikidata dataset back to 2018 levels. It's not clear what Wikidata will do to make sure that the project can handle the increased load as more and more data is added. In the mean time, there's an WikiProject to quantify and estimate the various limitations on Wikidata's scope.

Wikispecies

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This is a project designed for biologists needing to look up information about species and other taxons. Specifically, information about animals stripped of all unnecessary details and reduced to a database of species. Hmm, where have I heard that before? As you might have guessed, this is pretty much Wikidata but for biologists and without an easy way to scrape information. The main reason it exists, it seems, is because it was created before Wikidata was conceived of. Wikidata doesn't seem to have quite enough information to totally replace Wikispecies yet, but I feel like Wikispecies is the project that's most at risk of getting deprecated.

Wikifunctions

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This is the newest Wikimedia project. This is a repository of computer functions, which are written in Python and Javascript. Despite first appearances, this isn't meant to be some sort of FOSS replacement to Github. Instead, it's meant to be used for an upcoming project called Abstract Wikipedia.

Abstract Wikipedia

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TKTK
Just turn the crank, and render an article.

It's easy to take it for granted if you speak English, but some of the Wikipedias for other languages can be pretty lacking in information. Also, smaller Wikipedias are at risk of being taken over by bad actors who want to push an agenda or pretend to be Scottish. Something clearly needs to be done, and what the Wikimedia Foundation thinks should be that something is Abstract Wikipedia, which is meant to be language-independent. This project is still in its infancy, but the idea is that the functions on Wikifunctions could be used with the data on Wikidata to create an abstraction of an article, which is then made readable by using a program called a renderer. This should provide more information than can be provided by normal integration with Wikidata. This isn't on the table yet, but there's no reason to think that this couldn't be deployed for other projects if it proves to be successful.

Next month, Part 2: The Technology Behind Wikimedia.




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Barkeep49's RfB debriefing

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By Barkeep49
Barkeep49's request for bureaucratship was closed as successful (219/5/8) on 7 March 2025.

I wonder about having crats, but decided to become one anyway

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Running for the role officially named "bureaucrat" on the English Wikipedia is a strange endeavor. Not just because it happens so infrequently, but because almost no one talks about it. I hadn't originally planned to write about my RfB, questioning its relevance to others, but after Giraffer published a debrief of his request for adminship, I asked whether a similar reflection on my request for bureaucratship would be of interest, and received strong encouragement.

RfA was a production. RfB was not

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Getting ready to run for RfA was an extended process. My friends first started asking when I was going to run for admin before I'd had 12 months of consistent editing. I got serious about positioning myself 6 months before my run. As I noted in my RfA debrief, I could likely have passed 3 months earlier than I ended up running. Starting a month out, and particularly a week ahead of time, there was plenty of coordination with my nominators, with all sorts of planning and preparation.

RfB was nothing like that. I started giving it serious thought on February 25th, and by February 28th I had launched the RfB.

Changing my mind about becoming a 'crat

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In the past, when the topic of 'cratship came up, I had largely excluded myself from consideration for two reasons. First – and this was the major reason – I have concerns about having too many arbitrators who are also bureaucrats, and I thought I was likely to run again in the future for the Arbitration Committee. In fact, early comments by myself and TonyBallioni had helped to scuttle the chances of the RfB previous to mine (which was back in 2022). I knew that this concern about "ArbCrats" was a minority one in the community, but since it was one I held, it was enough to stop me from running.

However, I have really enjoyed the freedom I've experienced since stepping off ArbCom. Further, the work I've been doing on the U4C offers some of the same challenges without all the stress. My thinking has changed, and it's no longer clear that I would want to run for ArbCom again.

After I closed a series of Requests for Comment about administrator elections, I received some positive feedback, and shortly after, someone reached out to ask if I'd ever considered running for 'crat. That prompted me to seriously reconsider the idea. This brought me back to the second reason I'd previously ruled it out: I question whether the English Wikipedia truly needs bureaucrats. Ultimately, I concluded that running could be a productive way to surface that conversation, and that as long as the role exists, it's better to strengthen the team with new voices.

Getting ready to run. Maybe

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Having decided not to rule out the possibility, I reached out to about a half-dozen trusted people, asking their thoughts about the idea. This included my specifically asking them: "am I boring enough to run successfully at RfB?" I want the 'crat team to be excited about being boring, and I didn't think I was all that boring. But evidently the people I trust on-wiki do, because they all said I had the qualities they and the community look for in a 'crat, and that I would likely pass RfB.

It was then on to actually preparing for a run. I knew that if I wanted, I'd have no trouble getting some people to nominate me (in fact, a few of the people I asked about my running even offered to do so without my asking). I ultimately decided against having nominators for a few reasons.

First, I had prior experience with RfB as a nominator: I approached and then nominated Lee Vilenski in 2022, who (until me) was the most recently elected crat. Second, that experience gave me confidence that I could tell my own story effectively through a self-nomination, especially in how it would mesh with the standard questions. And because of my visibility from ArbCom, I felt name recognition wouldn't be an issue, and given how unfamiliar the RfB process is, I didn’t think I’d be missing any critical support by going it alone.

It then became a matter of writing the nomination statement and answering the questions – which I sent to a few for feedback. The most useful feedback I received was to cut down on my skepticism about the role of 'crat, and instead focus on my qualifications. This was good practical advice. Even while creating the RfB page, I wasn't completely sure I would go live. But it became clear to me the next day that there was really no reason to not run, and so I launched.

The part where lots of people show up and start talking about you, which isn't strange or discomforting at all

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Compared to the instructions for launching a RfA, the instructions for launching a RfB are hard to parse. For instance, Create a new RfB page as you would for an RfA isn't entirely true, and there aren't any instructions about actually launching, including removing comments to launch the timer and vote counter, and about transcluding in the RfB section. I have thought about improving the instructions, but I've hesitated, having wondered whether they're written vaguely on purpose to prevent unqualified people from launching.

Once I launched, I felt that mix of excitement and nervousness I get when I'm a part of a RfX. I was optimistic about my chances, but you never really know until the community responds. There was early support, but I expected that (because that's how even unsuccessful RfXs tend to go at first). If my request was going to fail, it would be because of some high-profile concerns which would tip the balance. While there was some concern about the role of the 'crats, and whether I had too many hats already, there just wasn't much substantive opposition, and so the entire thing felt nice on the whole.

The questions also seemed more reasonable than the questions I feel like people get at RfA. Perhaps this just reflects the broad role of being an admin, and the narrower role of being a crat. With RfA, people are still deciding whether they trust you. With an RfB, you've already demonstrated that level of trust. I admit to being surprised at how much support I ended up receiving, and was even more surprised (and felt a bit surreal) when someone told me I was one of the most-supported 'crat candidates ever.

For a role I'm not sure about needing, I've sure done more work than I expected

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One interesting postscript, given how much question there is about a need for 'crats, was how much 'crat work I did in the first couple of weeks. In that time I:

  • acknowledged (and then, after the 24 hour hold, regranted) an uncontroversial resysop,
  • participated in a more complicated resysop discussion – including making the BOLD decision to create a 'crat chat as the procedures offer as an option, and
  • closed an RfA.

RfA closing is one area where there are a bunch of manual steps across pages, and which are bespoke to the process, so I have done some scripting to make that process easier.



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Meet the winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2024

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By Bluerasberry
The Christ the Redeemer status, photographed from above, showing the sun and clouds in the distance
Donatas Dabravolskas submitted the highest-rated winning photo, of Christ the Redeemer photo by Donatas Dabravolskas, CC-By SA 4.0

The 14th annual Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition has concluded voting and announced the 2024 winners. The Diff blog reported details of how Donatas Dabravolskas, the photographer who submitted the winning photo, captured his perspective of Christ the Redeemer. Besides the winning photo, all finalist photos are superb feats of photography and documenting some of the most interesting monuments in the world.

Initiated by Wikimedia Nederland in 2010 (Signpost coverage: "Dutch photo hunt"), Wiki Loves Monuments quickly grew into an international effort and remains the world's largest photo contest. In 2024, more than 4,500 wiki editors in 56 countries submitted about 240,000 photos for judgement in the competition. National-level groups of Wikimedia volunteers coordinated regional ranking, elevating selected photos until finally there were a global 55 photos which made it to a final jury with expertise in photography, who deliberated for several months, resulting in this April 2025 announcement of the results.

Beyond the finalist photos, many others of the hundreds of thousands of photos are excellent and worth browsing by category. As always, anyone can submit photos for the upcoming Wiki Loves Monuments 2025, and anyone can volunteer to participate in judging this year's submissions. – Br

Connecting

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You can see the winners in several convenient formats, including



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JarrahTree, JohnClarknew and Yashthepunisher

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By JPxG, AlphaLemur, Graham87, Tamzin, DreamRimmer and Oltrepier


JarrahTree

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A jarrah tree, photographed by JarrahTree, who preferred to be known only by his username

JarrahTree (formerly known as TomH) was a dedicated, passionate and long-standing member of the Wikipedia and Wikimedia communities who will be sorely missed. He unexpectedly died peacefully in his sleep on Monday, 2 December 2024.

JarrahTree made his first edit to Wikipedia on 25 May 2005, and during the next 19.5 years, he reached 378,034 edits on the site, while creating 931 new articles, and uploaded 2,973 images to Wikimedia Commons; he was an administrator at the latter site, as well as the English Wikivoyage. His primary focus areas included Western Australia, Tasmania, railways, and Indonesia, reflecting his fieldwork conducted during his university studies. He was also an active member of WikiProject Australia, amongst many others, and regularly gave advice and encouragement to new and experienced editors. Finally, he took part in several editions of Wikimania and ESEAP community conferences.

His dedication was particularly evident in his involvement in WikiClubWest, where he tirelessly organised meetups, workshops, and outreach events to grow and energise the local editing community. On 23 November 2024, just over a week before his death, he had attended WikiCon Australia 2024 in Adelaide.

There is a tribute to him on the website of Wikimedia Australia, his national Wikimedia chapter, where he served as Vice-President and Secretary, amongst other roles on the board, for over a decade. Vale, JarrahTree. – AL, G, T, O

John Clark (JohnClarknew)

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Clark in 2009

John Clark, an English actor, director, and producer who had moved to the United States during the 1960s, also edited Wikipedia under the username JohnClarknew from 2006 to 2022; he made the last of his 3,224 edits on 23 August 2022, at the age of 90. He died at his home in California on 6 July 2023, aged 91. – T

Yashthepunisher

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Yash first joined Wikipedia on 16 October 2014, and made over 22,000 edits during his 10-year journey. He was mostly interested in editing articles about Indian cinema and politics, and helped promote several articles to good and featured status. He also helped promote many lists to featured list status, while reviewing 19 different GANs. – DR




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