Jess Wade, a scientist and Wikipedian, had several media reports appear about their article-writing prowess this month:
Thedeletion debate for Clarice Phelps, a scientist whose biography was created by Wade, was covered byToday and in readers' comments on a previousSignpost'sCommunity view "The Incredible Invisible Woman" by Megalibrarygirl, and anOp-ed by Wade herself. –B
The Wikimedia Foundation has decided that theGrowth Team features are ready for the public spotlight. Adi Robertson, a reporter atThe Verge, Vox Media's technology news outlet, picked up the pitch, running with the headline"Wikimedia is adding features to make editing Wikipedia more fun".
"Wikipedia is one of the sturdiest survivors of the old web, as well as one of the most clearly human-powered ones, thanks to a multitude of editors making changes across the globe," she writes. From there, the article provides a straightforward overview of the new mentorship system and suggested edits tool. It is mostly deferential to the foundation's perspective, although Robertson notes that gamified interfaces have been criticized as addictive, and that "the algorithm's own accuracy rate isn't exemplary: editors deem about 75 percent of the link recommendations accurate". (After the newcomer chooses which recommendations to adopt, 10 percent of edits have been reverted.)
TheIndo-Asian News Service published ashort, thinly reported version of the same story. –Sdkb
The time draws nearer for the WMF's annual plea to donate, accompanied by a plea fromAndrew Orlowski tonot donate. This year, appearing inUnherd, he argues that –
These banner ads have become very lucrative for the NGO that collects the money – the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit based in San Francisco. Every year the NGO responsible for the fundraising adds tens of millions of dollars to its war chest. After a decade of professional fund-raising, it has now amassed $400 million of cash as of March. [...] Wikipedia’s Administrators and maintainers, who tweak the entries and correct the perpetual vandalism, don’t get paid a penny — they’re all volunteers. What has happened is that the formerly ramshackle Foundation, which not so long ago consisted of fewer than a dozen staff run out of a back room, has professionalised itself. It has followed the now well-trodden NGO path to respectability and riches.
Much to think about. For additional coverage on the subject, seethis month'sNews and notes. Orlowski has been a harsh critic of the project sinceat least 2004, when he described Wikipedians as "the Khmer Rouge in diapers".–AK,S,J
In June, trans comic artistJul Maroh, the French creator of the graphic novelBlue Is the Warmest Colorposted to Instagram about the turmoil they were experiencing as a result of discussions onfr:Discussion:Jul' Maroh aroundmisgendering and the repetition of theirdeadname on their French-language biography. They alsoposted to Instagram Stories asking for support from Wikimedians. This was lightly covered in the media at the time, mainly by French-language online magazineActuaBD. After the discussion, theyposted a toolbox for other trans BLP subjects and attendedthe annual general meeting ofLes sans pagEs, the French-language equivalent toWomen in Red.
After that AGM,Les sans pagEs announced that they were professionalising, having secured funding from theFrench national chapter (with grants proposals under review withWMF andWikimedia CH) to employ project founderNatacha Rault as a director, causing several days worth of heated discussion onLe Bistro, the Francophone equivalent to ourVillage pump. As a result,Wikimedia LGBT+ organized anOpen letter of support forLes sans pagEs, criticising "bad-faith arguments" and "harassment" that included calls for the disestablishment of the project. The open letter has been signed by 77 wikimedians, including representatives of affiliates such asAfroCROWD,Art+Feminism,Noircir Wikipédia,Whose Knowledge?,WikiDonne,Wikimedians of Slovakia and theWikimedians in Residence Exchange Network plus national chapters includingWikimedia Belgium andWikimedia UK, as well as individuals.(Note: the author here was lead organiser on the Open letter.)
Les sans pagEs came back energised from the controversy, with Natacha presenting with Wikimedia LGBT+ to promoteQueering Wikipedia 2022 atWikimania before working on gaining a consensus update tofrwiki's MoS guidelines on trans biographies and being featured in young-women's magazineMadmoizelle, headlined " 'Wikipedia reproduces the sexist bias of our society': Les sans pagEs, the collective filling in the encyclopedia's gender gap".
Which brings us neatly back to Jul' Maroh, who in October led anopen letter in French news-weeklyL'Obs, reported in literary news magazineActualitté denouncing insensitive coverage of trans, nonbinary and intersex biographies on the Francophone Wikipedia and crediting the efforts ofLes sans pagEs andNoircir Wikipédia incountering systemic bias. –O
James Vincent inThe Verge offersa hearty recommendation of Wikipedia's mobile app as an alternative toGoogle Search. He says it's more useful, less bloated, and more fun.
After a frustrating search session blighted by nearly a full page ofad-cruft, the author sums up their experience: "why the hell am I Googling this stuff anyway? If half of my Google searches on mobile are just Wikipedia lookups, why not cut out the middleman altogether?" The Wikipedia app goes straight to the juice and provides diverting and illuminating side trips for "a nerd with an affinity for factoids" in the bargain: "Wikipedia is actually one of the true wonders of the internet", they say.
"Up with the knowledge keepers and down with the middlemen," he concludes. We're blushing.
TheArkansas Democrat-Gazette alsoacknowledged that "some people" use the Wikipedia app instead of searching with Google, but found an error in a pirate-related search that resulted in the answerAlexander von Humboldt – who, theDemocrat-Gazette reminds us, "was not a pirate". –B,Sdkb
Think tanksInstitute for Strategic Dialogue andCentre for the Analysis of Social Media presenteda report discussing the possibility of state-sponsored bad actors using Wikipedia as a channel fordisinformation,propaganda, or as part of aninformation warfare campaign. Various media sources reacted.El País in particular called out the study's concern over "long-term infiltration by state-sponsored actors" to take over Wikipedia's "underlying policies and governance processes". Later, an ISD employee was able to add enough citations to the organization's article to save it froma nomination at Articles for Deletion. –B,BR,J
See alsoDisinformation report andRecent research in this month'sSignpost.
@OwenBlacker: Hold on, it appears that you were a lead author and/or main organizer of the open letter about whose success and claimed positive impact ("energised") you are reporting on here as Signpost writer, no? That should have been disclosed at least. Regards,HaeB (talk)05:29, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, while we're talking about transparency, I agree with the concerns voiced independentlyhere andhere by uninvolved Wikimedians, who pointed out thatyour open letter does not provide any links or other details that would enable readers to understand what the "continual bad-faith argument[s]" and "hostile reception"/"harassment" (that the affiliates' formal statement centers on on) actually consisted of. (It does get more concrete elsewhere at one point, when explaining why the project at the center of the controversy doesnot involve paid editing, contrary to what some French Wikipedia editors had assumed apparently. But that kind of clarity is missing from the rest of the letter.)
Honestly, this also devalues the weight of the signatures, as it makes it appear likely that the majority of them were mere pile-ons ("Yes, Les sans pagEs are great and harassment is bad, so let's sign this") rather than informed endorsements of the assessments expressed in the letter.
This kind of pile-on vagueposting has been a problem with some other open letters in the movement too (in the comments to last month's Signpost issue Icalled it out in context of the NPP open letter to the Foundation; on the other hand the more recent open letter criticizing the Foundation's lack of technical support for Wikimedia Commons does a better job of actually explaining what the problems are). But it seems particularly problematic with a letter that is directed against specific community members, accusing them of major wrongdoing that should generally entail bans or other administrative sanctions. While they are not named in the letter, many presumably know who they are. (I'm writing this without having tried to form an opinion myself on whether harassment took place in this case; fwiw I do recall having read some community conversations in context ofthis incident some years ago - which incidentally also involved paid editing concerns, but in a quite different constellation - and coming away with the impression that Nattes à chat had indeed be the target of highly problematic comments in that case.) On a deeper level, there are good reasons why the Wikimedia movement generallydiscourages polling and voting in favor of the exchange of informed arguments (in !vote formats such as RfCs), and I think they also apply to openlettering.
Regards,HaeB (talk)15:54, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't asked..., though... (a statement I accept at face value, for the record): I had a quick look, and AFAICT it seems to be completely true.
If deadnaming is an issue, why is it practically English Wikipedia policy?Wendy Carlos hasn't had anything released under her deadname in about 50 years, and, while mentioning it might be appropriate somewhere in the article, the article literally starts with her name, the word "born", and then her deadname. That's the most efficient outing of a person's deadname possible.Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.1% of allFPs17:11, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder how the lawsuit will pan out now that there is a new version of the article in place.– robertsky (talk)06:50, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A strange legal theory that for a given source tostop publishing an article about you is a valid cause of action.
Also, I see the article is up now. I take it the consensus on the subject's notability has changed?CharredShorthand (talk)09:21, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
…yeah, what the hell happened there? Doesn’t this come under WP:NLT? If so it ought to have been deleted until the legal action ended.2600:1011:B13B:392E:F01A:9AFD:55AD:DE42 (talk)12:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also atWikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#An_interesting_lawsuit.Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk)12:14, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Growth team has spent millions developing this hugely complex mentorship programme (I've been lurking). It's not going to stem that viscous stream of hundreds of barely relevant so-called articles that ooze along in NPP'sSpecial:NewPagesFeed on their inevitable route to deletion or draftifying. All it would need is a decent landing page that provides someproper, clear information before they put their fingers any further to their keyboards (or smart phones), instead of having it rammed down their throats what they can do to help the Wiki further maintain the job slots for the devs. But of course, the WMF has itsspecial galley slaves to do the cleaning up who are told if they want new oars, they best go cut down some trees and make them themselves.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)08:25, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
