The 2024WikiCup, hosted by usersCwmhiraeth,Epicgenius andFrostly, is entering its final phase, after Round 4 ended on 29 August. A total number of135 users, including thelateVami IV, joined the contest at the start of this year; however, just eight of them have made it to the ultimate showdown. Here are the finalists, ranked from first to last as pertheir scores in the latest round:

• Generalissima (1150 points);
• Arconning (791 points);
• AirshipJungleman29 (718 points);
• BennyOnTheLoose (714 points);
• Hey man im josh (601 points);
• BeanieFan11 (579 points);
• AryKun (499 points);
• Sammi Brie (472 points).

Since its creation back in 2007, the WikiCup has strived to "encourage content creation and improvement and make editing on Wikipedia more fun", and this year's edition is no exception: according tothe official data, competitors have so far contributed to 44featured articles, 72featured lists, 385good articles, 94In the News credits, and over 300Did You Know credits; thanks to their efforts, 38 articles were also added tofeatured topics andgood topics.

On behalf ofThe Signpost, we would like to thank the judges and every participant in the 2024 WikiCup, and wish good luck to the eight finalists.

–O

As of 18 August, theJournals cited by Wikipedia (JCW) compilation (seepreviousSignpost coverage) nowtracks the number of distinctDOIs present on Wikipedia, and how many are flagged with|doi-access=free. Several of these are automatically tracked and tagged asfree to read by templates and bots (seepreviousSignpost coverage). As of the 1 Augustdump, the compilation kept track of 3.70M citations, of which 2.41M had DOIs. Of the citations that had DOIs, 661,103 were identified as free to read, or about 27.44%.

The17–18 August 2024 update of theCS1/CS2 modules further identified theLeibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (doi prefix10.4230) and theLiving Reviews journal series (doi prefix10.12942) as free-to-read registrants, as well as 11 individual journals that can be identified by the starting pattern of DOIs (like10.1046/j.1365-8711...,10.1093/mnras.., and10.1111/j.1365-2966... for theMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society). Citation bot will automatically flag those with|doi-access=free when it runs on the article (seeour guide on how to use Citation bot yourself).

If you notice a DOI link that takes you to a free-to-read article that wasn't flagged by the bot, you can flag the citation manually with|doi-access=free. You can also try to useWP:OABOT (seeour guide on how to use OAbot yourself). If you are aware of fully free-to-read journals/publishers that aren't already kept track of by the CS1/CS2 templates (seeCS1/2 FAQ), leave a note atHelp talk:CS1 andUser talk:Citation bot.

Following the 20 August dump, the compilation kept track of 3.72M citations, of which 2.42M had DOIs. Of the citations that had DOIs, 663,976 were identified as free to read, or about 27.46% (up from 27.44%). It took a few days for theserver cache to clear and tracking categories to be populated. I estimate that the 'true' count should have been about 666K, mostly due toMNRAS andMNRAS Letters being identified as free to read.^[a]

Related to the JCW update, all CS1/2 templates (like{{cite journal}} and{{citation}}), and the standalone templates{{doi}} and{{doi-inline}}, now support the flagging of free-to-read DOIs with|doi-access=free. The standalone versions, however, are not currently supported by any bot, nor do they have tracking categories.

Thanks toTrappist the monk for their efforts on templates and the identification of free-to-read publishers/journals (I was also involved), as well as the maintainers ofCitation bot,JL-Bot, andOAbot (particularlyAManWithNoPlan,JLaTondre andNemo bis) for facilitating the mass-tagging of free-to-read articles.

–H

In ablog post, the Wikimedia Foundation provides an overview of several statements it has submitted since last year in response to

[...] governments and international organizations [...] seeking stakeholder feedback about how [AI] policies should be formulated in order to best serve the public interest. [...] The Foundation’s comments have fallen into two categories. Some are directly relevant to the work being done by volunteer Wikipedia editors around the world, such as on copyright and openness of foundational AI models. Others applied our values and the valuable lessons we have learned from our AI/ML work to benefit public interest projects focused on free knowledge and the online information ecosystem—i.e., decentralized community-led decision-making, privacy, stakeholder inclusion, and internet commons.
— "AI for the people: How machines can help humans improve Wikipedia" (Wikimedia Foundation)

For example, in aresponse to the US Copyright Office's Request for Comments on AI and Copyright, the Foundation states that it "generally supports uses of Wikipedia content for purposes including AI model development", but (as summarized in the blog post) argues that

At a minimum, AI developers who include Wikipedia in the training data used to create large language models (LLMs) should publicly acknowledge that use and give credit to Wikipedia and the volunteer editors who made this rich source of raw materials for LLMs.

At the same time, the Foundation's statement indicates that this attribution might not always be legally required, depending on whether courts decide that the unauthorized use of copyrighted content in training of such AI models is covered byfair use (in which case the attribution requirements of Wikipedia'sCC BY-SA 4.0 license would be moot). The Foundation refrains from taking a categorical position on this legal question: "Based on our analysis, we do not believe that training AI models should either be categorically fair use or categorically not fair use. Rather, the particulars of the training process and the way courts view the purposes of a use should inform whether a particular training process is fair or not." The analysis does however offer some detailed if speculative observations on how courts might evaluate thefour fair use factors in this context. For example, it is argued that because "the vastness of the datasets used in training mean that any single copy [of a copyrighted work] is barely a drop in the ocean of the whole", judges may want to focus on "the extent to which a work is weighted in the development of a model": "Hypothetically, if a copyright protected work was manually weighted to have an outsized impact in model development, then one could argue that although the uses of other full works may be fair, the amplification of one particular work in the training set is not." (Various LLMs are known to have weighted Wikipedia more highly than other parts of their training dataset, for exampleGPT-3.)

On the other hand, the Wikimedia Foundation's statement also urged the Copyright Office to take not only the perspective of copyright owners into account, but also that of the users of copyrighted works and of AI-based tools – noting that "The Foundation is somewhat uniquely positioned as both the host of a primary source of training material for generative AI and a user of many AI and ML tools that aid human editors with the creation of free knowledge." In particular, it cautions to keep public interest in mind in possible future changes to copyright laws and AI regulations, e.g.

On the use of data, specifically, we encourage regulators and legislators to align their approaches with existing models, such as the European Union’s inclusion of anexemption for text and data mining in the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, that enable public interest research and other beneficial uses of protected works.

[...] we encourage the Office to consider the potential impacts that changes to copyright law could have on competition among AI developers. If copyright law changes are enacted such that the acquisition and use of training materials becomes more expensive or difficult, there is a risk that dominant firms with greater resources will become further entrenched while smaller companies, including nonprofit organizations, struggle to keep up with mounting development costs.

–H

Chosen by communities, selected by affiliates, and appointed by the WMF, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC), a committee of 15 Wikimedians, first took on the job of draftinga Charter for the Wikimedia movement in November 2021.

There were multiple feedback rounds, a lot of conversations, more discussions anda final ratification vote where the community and affiliate support was overwhelming (albeit with a low turnout in both cases due to the voter eligibility criteria), but the WMF'sBoard of Trustees decided the draft was not good enough (notsafe to try). Asreported in the previous issue ofThe Signpost, the Foundation published three pilot projects to take the work forward.

In August 2024, the committee (which still included 11 people), shared theirprocess and ratification reflections pre-Wikimania. Before dissolving on 30 August, they alsopublished their recommendations for next steps, including a response to the three pilots proposed by the WMF.

–Ciell, former MCDC member

• China blocks Wikimedia Foundation's WIPO accreditation for the fourth time: In what has become an annual tradition, an application by the Foundation to be accredited as a permanent observer at theWorld Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) failed because of opposition by the Chinese government, despite support from several other countries. Asexplained by the Foundation's Global Advocacy team, the WIPO is "the specialized United Nations (UN) agency that determines global policies on copyright, patents, and trademarks. Observer status would enable the Foundation to participate in and contribute to WIPO committees where intellectual property norms are set." The Foundation first applied in 2020, when Beijing's delegate objected to "a large amount of content and disinformation in violation of [the] ‘One China’ principle" (seeSignpost coverage: "Beijing blocks WMF from World Intellectual Property Organization, citing Wikimedia Taiwan"). China has since alsoblocked several Wikimedia chapters from gaining permanent observer status.
• Wikimedia ESEAP Conference:Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia has uploadeda video with highlights of the May 2024 WikimediaESEAP Conference to YouTube.
• Articles for Improvement: This week'sArticle for Improvement isCancel culture. Please be bold in helping improve this article! Next week's Article for Improvement (beginning 9 September 2024) isCaroline Islands.
• New record low count for active administrators: A new low point of 427active administrators was reached on 26 August, marking a new decline afterthe slight increase in July. Meanwhile, thefirst RfA since June was initiated just a few days before we went to press with this issue.
• The curtain rises on a new edition of WLM: The fifteenth edition ofWiki Loves Monuments kicked off on 1 September. For this year's photo contest, which will focus on built heritage, 53 countrieshave enrolled. The respective national campaigns will be hosted until 31 October, and then each nation will send their Top 10 to the international jury for the Grand Finale in December.
• Article on non-existent species removed: "Pratylenchus dulscus," aten-word article without references, was deleted on 22 August, after existing in the encyclopedia for over 17 years. Though not strictly speaking a hoax – it appears to have been created in good faith, based on a species name in a Wikipedia list article that had beenaltered by an IP – it is currently listed among thelongest-lived hoaxes on Wikipedia.
• TheCampaigns teams would like to learn about how you collaborate online: Editors can take thisGoogle Form survey or share examples ofsuccessful collaborations on Meta Wiki.

• "Long-lived hoax article removed: "Pratylenchus dulscus,"". Sigh. I've been saying this for years, but before we call something a hoax, we need to do due diligence. Where is a discussion confirming this is a hoax, i.e. intentional misinformation, and not just some typo or good-faithed mistake? I've been (slowly) providing some analysis for the 'false statements in articles' section of theWikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia page; I haven't gotten to 'hoax articles' yet, but some are not hoaxes, just errors. Please read the definition of what a hoax is, folks, and don't assume that an error is a hoax. That "Pratylenchus dulscus" may be a hoax, or it may be some sort of a typo. We can't assume bad faith (intentional fabrification) perWP:AGF. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}14:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I wasn't involved in the write-up of this story, but[1] contains further information, to wit:

  • Editor Somanypeople created List of almond diseases in early 2007. On March 16 2007, the list of almond diseases was vandalized by an IP, replacing P. vulnus with P. dulscus (P. vulnus is supported by sources in the list). In the ensuing months, Somanypeople went on to create articles for species listed in the list of almond diseases, including Pratylenchus dulscus (apparently not being aware of the vandal's edit). An article was created for Pratylenchus in August 2007, which included P. dulscus in the list of species, presumably because Wikipedia had an article for it at that point. I'm going to remove the link to this article from the genus article and will restore a link to P. vulnus in the almond disease list.

  So it appears indeed that the article was not created as a hoax. Thanks for mentioning it.AndreasJN46615:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I wrote the comment that is being quoted. I wouldn't call Pratylenchus dulscus a hoax myself. It was a sloppy good-faith creation that was ultimately rooted in vandalism.Meloidogyne gajuscus andMeloidogyne fruglia were two other 17 year "hoaxes" I found a few days later that were created in identical circumstances; Somanypeople created a list of plant diseases, it wasvandalized, and Somanypeople then created articles for non-existent species based on the vandalism.Plantdrew (talk)16:10, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Seems like an odd take to call it a hoax when it's merely a byproduct of vandalism.OhanaUnited^{Talk page}21:44, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @OhanaUnited @Plantdrew @Jayen466 A common type of error (i.e. it is sadly common to call a regular error or vandalism a hoax, even if there is no proven intent to mislead). Is there any chance of correcting it in The Signpost, at least? I'll also @TenPoundHammer who added it to the list of hoaxes. We could really use more folks reviewing entries there and separating confirmed hoaxes from plausible or unlikely. Here, there is no reason to assume anon was vandalizing - it could be a typo, accidental page save, or some good faithed if wrong error fixing ("I think it sounds better in Latin this way", whatever)._{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}06:53, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I've rewritten the entry per the discussion above. Look okay?AndreasJN46607:39, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Jayen466 May be adjust the article's title as well. It still says hoax on the start of News and NotesSoni (talk)07:58, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Above my pay grade as changing the title would affect other pages as well.@JPxG: Could you take a look?AndreasJN46608:17, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Even if the hoax would be correct (and we pretty much agree here it wasn't), I found it weird from the beginning that this made it into the heading despite being just a small note at the bottom. A bit too clickbaitish for regular TS style anyway...WP:TROUT should be applied somewhere, perhaps :)_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}09:19, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It doesn't even need vandalism to get something false into WP. A while ago I sent an article calledSnake Bight, Florida, which was described as a ghost town, to AfD. "Snake Bight" is abight on the coast of Florida Bay in Everglades National Park. A prehistoric canal called the "Snake Bight Canal" runs inland from Snake Bight. The National Park Service maintains a hiking trail along the canal called the "Snake Bight Canal Trail". The ruins of a formerfish factory can be seen from the trail. That all led to the ruins being labeled the "ghost town of Snake Bight" on a web site listing ghost towns, even though there was never a populated place called "Snake Bight". A source existed, so of course there had to be a WP article.Donald Albury13:58, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]