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How does censorship work? In Russia, you can start with intentionally sowing confusion about the name of your brand new website, by calling it essentially the same name as the website you are trying to censor. In this case, "Рувики" inCyrillic characters, or "Ruviki" in Latin characters.
So let's call a spade a spade. We'll call the legitimateRussian Wikipedia (ru.wikipedia.org) by its common on-Wiki name, Ruwiki. It is being forked with the support of Russian PresidentVladimir Putin's regime by an imposter website (ru.ruwiki.ru) that we'll call Ruviki.
Novaya Gazetareports how Ruviki has been operating since its officialJanuary 15 launch. Almost all of Ruwiki's 1.9 million pages have been copied and pasted onto the fork, and then edited to "delete everything that raises even the slightest doubt" about compliance with Russian media law – at leastin the words ofVladimir Medeyko. In general, the censor mostly edits politically sensitive topics involving the Russian government’s policies onfree speech,human rights and, most notably, the ongoinginvasion of Ukraine.
Medeyko was the long time director ofWikimedia RU (aka Wikimedia Russia), a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate intended to support WMF projects in Russia. He launched Ruviki's beta versionback in May 2023 and was soonstripped of his position at Wikimedia RU by the organization's members, before being alsobanned indefinitely from editing all Wikimedia sites by the WMF.
Medeyko's post at Wikimedia RU was taken byStas Kozlovsky, who in turnannounced the dissolution of the organization in December 2023, after being forced to resign from his job as associate professor atMoscow State University, and thenincluded in the Russian government’sforeign agent blacklist.
According toNovaya Gazeta, about 110 Wikipedia pages about the war in Ukraine have been cut entirely from Ruviki, while graphic designer Konstantin Konovalov, whotabulated the number of characters changed for every major category of Ruviki articles following their copying from Ruwiki, compared the extensive censorship process to "something out of [...]1984". Ironically, Ruviki's version of the article aboutGeorge Orwell's dystopian novel is missing the whole section about theMinistry of Truth, which theRuwiki page describes as "continuously falsifying various pieces of information (statistics, historical facts)". Other examples of altered pages include the2022 documentary film about the murdered dissidentAlexei Navalny, both theWagner Group's co-founders,Yevgeny Prigozhin andDmitry Utkin,GRU colonelAnatoliy Chepiga – who was reportedly involved in thepoisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 – andHead of ChechnyaRamzan Kadyrov.
Moreover, Ruviki users have attempted to minimize the influence of sources from Russian independent media, by removing most of the links toNovaya Gazeta itself – even deleting references to articles penned by the assassinated journalistAnna Politkovskaya – as well asMeduza andDozhd. While Wikipedia is still alive in Russia, despiterepeated struggles with the national government, Ruviki's effective censorship process might cast doubt on the future of Ruwiki, the truly free Russian encyclopedia, and more generally, the freedom of information within the country. –S andO
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Meanwhile, a group of Russian billionairesare trying to hide their ties with the Kremlin by editing pages both on the Russian and English Wikipedia, according to theKyiv Post, who in turn covered anarticle inImportant Stories reported withWikiganda. In an attempt to keep traveling, running their businesses, or accessing their money freely in the West, the billionaires are minimizing, or even eliminating, mentions of Russia and Putin in the Wikipedia articles about themselves. According to these sources, they justwikiwash the inconvenient facts away (or more poetically, they stayтише воды, ниже травы, "quieter than water, lower than grass"). BillionairesArkady Volozh,Dmitry Pumpyansky,Alexander Mamut andIgor Altushkin, as well asNikolai Choles – the son ofKremlin Press SecretaryDmitry Peskov –, all seem to have tried this tactic. Vladimir Putin's daughters,Maria Vorontsova andKaterina Tikhonova, may have also tried it, but perhaps only to mask the activities of their large groups of bodyguards. –S andB
In a year full of key elections, includingone in the U.S. andanother one over in Europe, the city ofSan Francisco is no exception: in November, its citizens will line up to vote for the newMayor,District Attorney, and members of the localBoard of Supervisors. Asreported by theSan Francisco Examiner, though, the local political debate has become so heated that it has spilled into Wikipedia articles on several prominent candidates: "The City" is where theWikimedia Foundation has its headquarters.
TheExaminer report focuses onedit wars involving local supervisors and their views on thehousing shortage affecting San Francisco – a problem the city's administration tried to tackle directly last year, byannouncing a plan to build more than 80,000 new housing units by 2031. According tothe data collected by the newspaper, the total number of edits made to the Board members' pages has increased significantly from 2022 to 2023, and 2024 could soon set a new record, since 164 revisions have been made in this year's first quarter alone. Four supervisors who have gained the most attention areDean Preston andConnie Chan, who are seeking re-election, andAhsha Safaí andAaron Peskin, who havebothswitched to themayoral race.
Preston has become the subject of the fiercest virtual battle. TheDemocratic Socialist supervisor's page has beenedited at least 177 times over the last year, almost as much as the article forGovernor of CaliforniaGavin Newsom, with its sizemore than doubling in the process. Most ofthese edits involved Preston's political career, the perceived contrast between his political views and his controversial record on housing, as well as the extent of his wealth – reportedly including a house worth $2.5 million, a detail thathas now been removed from the page. Two users,Coffeeandcrumbs andThenightaway, have been noted for their frequent contributions to the page, with the former even diving inlengthy and fiery discussions with other editors. –O
In a recent episode of theCBS comedy panel showAfter Midnight, aired onApril Fool's Day, hostTaylor Tomlinson brought back the mini-gameWikipedia Link for another edition – seepreviousSignpost coverage about its first instance – as her fellow comedians Jourdain Fisher, Zach Zimmerman andArden Myrin competed in awikirace to guess how many clicks it takes to go fromJacob Elordi to theDutch West India Company on the English Wikipedia.
Once the three panelists submitted their final guesses to Tomlinson, who reminded the show's audience of how Wikipedia is "the most educational way to waste your time", she finally revealed the solution to the enigma: we have to click four times to go from the actor last seen inPriscilla andSaltburn, toVin Diesel, toGreenwich Village, toWouter van Twiller, to the infamous Dutchchartered company. Obviously, there are likely unlimited combinations of pages hiding behind wikiraces like this one, but as for Tomlinson's own disclaimer: "This is a comedy show, not an accuracy show!"
Something we can all agree on, though, is that Taylor and theAfter Midnight staff have seemingly fallen in love with our encyclopedia and its comedic potential, quite likethat English baby who grew really fond of his brother's finger back in the day. Well, the respect is mutual! –O
In the end, it seems like theItalian Ministry of Culture did get the memo (kind of). Asreported byPiergiovanna Grossi forWikimedia Italy(in Italian), on 21 March 2024 the MoC publisheda revised version of thecontroversial decree that had aimed to introduce minimum fees for the commercial use of digital reproductions of state-owned cultural heritage, including works in thepublic domain. This decision had received widespread backlash from the academic community and had been criticized even by the nationalCourt of Audit – seepreviousSignpost coverage.
The new bill brings some encouraging updates for researchers who work with and produceopen access material: academic publications of every kind, newspaper and magazine articles and art catalogues, together with brochures and other publications (printed in up to 4,000 copies) involving exhibitions and cultural events,have all been exempted from payment for using reproductions, in line with the so-calledCultural Heritage and Landscape Code (CCHL), an Italian law originally approved in 2004 to "support the role of cultural heritage institutions in sustainable economic and social development".
However, both Grossi andUniversity of Florence professorPaolo Liverani remarked that the bill and the CCHL still present some legislative flaws and confusing passages that could be detrimental for freedom of access to and sharing of reproductions of cultural heritage in the public domain. Inan analysis forJLIS.it(in Italian), Liverani noted how the MoC "didn't have the courage to [fully] abandon the previous formula [of the bill]" and host public conversations with academic and cultural experts. As a result, the original fee system has been kept in place, despite being "neither acceptable, nor practically feasible", especially outside of Italy: in fact, thetrial court ofStuttgart recentlyrejected(source in German) the MoC's request for compensation to allow toy companyRavensburger to use a reproduction ofLeonardo Da Vinci'sVitruvian Man for a new model of their 1,000-piecejigsaw puzzle series. Among other aspects, Liverani also points out at the vague definition of "open access" provided by the bill, which is generically indicated as "publications freely accessible by everyone in virtue of not having a cover price", without any clear reference to thevarious types of Creative Commons licenses.
Plus, the decree still delegates reviews of requests submitted by non-exempted applicants to local cultural institutions: this bureaucratic process might not only take a toll upon the boards' economic and human resources, but also put researchers at risk of unequal treatment, since the bill could be interpreted differently depending on the area. On the other hand, as argued by Grossi, this same aspect could also lead to wider freedom of access to cultural heritage, if local institutions prove virtuous enough to extend exemption rights to other categories; she also noted that such organs have the right to cut fees entirely, which might be particularly beneficial to institutions in lesser-known areas and/or with lower budgets.
Overall, Grossi and Liverani agree that, despite some notable issues, the new version of the MoC's decree is a step back on the right track, although the former reminds that "it's now the turn of cultural institutions, the scientific community, researchers and volunteers to put these concessions to the test and see how far we can go". —O
The Wikimedia Foundation staff have presenteda draft for the "Wikimedia Research Best Practices Around Privacy Whitepaper", which aims to outline privacy guidance for academic researchers to avoiddoxing contributors, as requested last year by the English Wikipedia'sArbitration Committee in one of theremedies of thecase "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland" — seepreviousSignpost coverage. The Arbitration Committee said:
Formal request to the Wikimedia Foundation for a white paper on research best practices
1) The Arbitration Committee formally requests that the Wikimedia Foundation develop and promulgate awhite paper on the best practices for researchers and authors when writing about Wikipedians. The Committee requests that the white paper convey to researchers the principles of our movement and give specific recommendation for researchers on how to study and write about Wikipedians and their personal information in a way that respects our principles. Upon completion, we request that the white paper be distributed through the Foundation's research networks including email newsletters, social media accounts, and web publications such as theDiff blog.
This request will be sent by the Arbitration Committee to Maggie Dennis, Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability with the understanding that the task may be delegated as appropriate.
- Passed 11 to 0 with 1 abstention at 16:30, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
- Updated to includePhabricator tracking at 09:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Community feedback on the newly-presented draft is invited by 30 April. The WMF has also scheduled a Conversation Hour:
* Join us for a Conversation Hour on23 April 2024 at 15:00 UTC. This conversation will be guided by some questions to encourage actionable feedback.Join via Google Meet.
- We encourage you to use thetalk page/discussion feature to provide your input. If you need a private space to communicate your feedback, you can do so by sending an email to research-feedback@wikimedia.org with "privacy white paper" in the subject line.
–AK
Following extensive discussions (seelast issue'sTechnology report) about how to handle the outage of the Graph extension (which had been deactivated in April 2023 due to security issues, leaving tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles with broken content) and multiple abandoned attempts at a more limited technical fix, the Wikimedia Foundation hasannounced a plan for
[...] building a new service to replace the Graph extension. This approach will enable editors to create basic visualizations, will require coordination with communities around migrating existing graphs, and will be extensible by developers who want to build and maintain additional functionality.
The Foundation asks for input on several questions (e.g. "What are the basic visualization types that are most important to support? Which ones can we do without?" and "Which use cases are you concerned about being missed?"). The announcement indicates that implementation work on this project won't ramp up fully before July, and won't include interactive features yet:
In the many conversations around graphs, volunteers have also raised longer term questions about “interactive content”, such as timelines and 3D objects. Rebuilding the capability to serve simple graphs securely will be a large amount of work for staff and volunteers. As part of this, the new extension will be readily extensible by volunteers who have the technical skill to add more sophisticated visualizations and more data sources. This may be an open door to some kinds of interactive content, but the larger topic of interactive content is worthy of separate, continued conversations moving forward.
In the meantime, Basque Wikipedia, in collaboration with theWiki Project Med Foundation, hasimplemented a feature for displaying interactive graphs fromOur World in Data inline in Wikipedia articles (example,documentation). For privacy reasons, it initially shows a static image from Commons and requires the reader to click a button and provide consent (to have theirIP address shared with a non-WMF site) before the interactive version of the graph is loaded from OWID's servers. Another community-driven implementation of interactive content using the same "Template gadgets" system (enabled by a March 22 software change that allows the loading ofgadgets for pages in a specific category) can be seen inthe Spanish Wikipedia's article on theGame of Life. Both workarounds have obvious downsides in terms of the editability of the displayed interactive content. –H
FormerSteward Mohsen Salek (User:Mardetanha) wasglobally banned by the Wikimedia Foundation on 8 April 2024.
Mohsen has been a prominent movement figure for many years, as a past co-author ofWikimedia "Diff" blog posts, as well as the recipient of anhonorable mention in the Wikimedian of the Year 2016 event for creating the Persian-language version of the "Wikipedia Library".
He also served as an administrator and bureaucrat for thePersian Wikipedia, which in recent years, according toseveralindependentreports, has been subject to interference from Iranian authorities, most notably from theMinistry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. –AK,G,O
WikiConference North America 2023 was held in Toronto from 9-12 November 2023. Here we share outcomes of this event including newly published videos and photos, thearchived conference website and program, and share some attendee reflections on its significance.
WikiConference Toronto was the 10th annualWikiConference North America and the first in-person conference since 2019 in Boston before theCOVID-19 pandemic. Wikimedia volunteers organize the conference for other volunteers, and the invited programming includes whatever issues seem most important to the volunteer community. The format of the conference is to have a day of "culture crawl", which are trips to local museums and sites of Wikipedian interest, followed by two days of presentations and workshops. The conference counted 440 attendees. Funding for about 80 scholarships to attend came from the Wikimedia Foundation, which has a practice of sponsoring diversity in participation. Wikipedia's friendCraig Newmark, who supports aspects of Wikipedia including contributor safety and the fact-checking of the content itself, also funded parts of the conference, as did the nonprofit organizationsHacks/Hackers, which promotes community journalism, andCredibility Coalition, which is concerned with increasing accuracy in popular media.
As the conference changes city with every iteration, local people wherever it is held are always a large portion of the attendees, and the most likely to attend as inexperienced Wikimedia editors. Organizations which have completed a Wikimedia project in the last year use the event to share results, so attendees from universities, museums, and other knowledge centers are always present. Wikimedia functionaries attend the event to have in-person discussions on topics which are challenging to address in wiki talk page posts or virtually otherwise. This conference was the first in-person meetup of theEnglish Wikipedia Functionaries User Group. Members of otherWikimedia movement affiliates were in attendance, but of more general interest to the North American Region, theNorth American Hub Research Project surveyed attendees and presented focus-group findings which included intent to better support Wikimedia contributors who are not members of a Wikimedia community organization.
Every event is also someone's first event, and some new attendees are experienced Wikimedia contributors. New attendees unfailingly remark and wonder that they have followed the discussion topics online, but did not anticipate how it would feel to talk face-to-face with their virtual collaborators whom they meet in person for the first time.
It is common knowledge among Wikimedia organizers that transparency is a value of our community. WikiConference North America organizers practice this transparency with the budgets of Wikimedia community events.The conference team identifies themselves on Meta-Wiki. They approach the Wikimedia Foundationmeta:Grants:Conference program to submita funding request for the conference.Interpret the budget for yourself, but at a glance, it requests US$110,000 total, of which $50,000 is for travel scholarships, $22,000 is catering, $12,000 reserves the conference venue, and $11,000 pays for language interpretation and translation services. Thefinal report closes out the grant with accounting updates and a narrative of the event impact.
Theconference program is the best published description of the conference topics which framed conversation at the event. Any summary of the conference would be subjective, but many conference attendees remarked that many of the presentations – regardless of how they were described in the program – veered into discussion and bewilderment of how suddenly artificial intelligence is changing Wikimedia activities (though this was already a topic at Wikimania 2015, seepriorSignpost coverage – eds.). Topics discussed included users submitting AI text to Wikipedia, generating AI images for Commons, summarizing long talk page discussions with AI, the state of Wikimedia tools developed with AI features, and especially, what Wikipedia's place might be in a future where more readers interact directly with an AI rather than browse our encyclopedia.
The bravest, most welcome, and most celebrated conference attendees are those who come to report and recruit collaborators for community projects. These kinds of projects are often the most original in scope, surface new social and ethical issues in knowledge sharing, and have a precedent of bringing new engaged editors to Wikimedia projects. Examples of these include "An Alternative to the Pushpin Map in the Neighbourhood Infobox", "Indigenous Artists and Wikidata", "WP:WELW Women Electronic Literature Writers Project editathon or round table". Again, reading the presentation titles in theconference program is a reflection of the interests of the time.
Wikimedia governance was continually discussed. OurWikimedia Movement Strategy givesrecommendations for how to achieve our goals. Everyone has their own way of discussing what Movement Strategy means to them. One perspective is that it concerns money, includingUS$17 million in grants to community projects out of the Wikimedia Foundation'sUS$154 million revenue as noted in the latest reports for each.
The Signpost previously covereda bomb threat targeting the conference. Discussing harassment, terrorism, and threats against Wikipedia editors is difficult online, but easier in person. This bomb threat took hours out of everyone's conference while the bomb squad searched the building. Those hours were costly, and that was in addition pondering the unnerving reality that editing Wikipedia greatly increases one's likelihood of attracting stalking and harassment. There was no bomb. The threat was a hoax to waste time and scare people.
Efforts to addressGender bias on Wikipedia or developLGBT and Wikipedia are routine targets, but also vulnerable are those who edit content on any controversy in Wikipedia, which can include any topic.The Signpostpreviously reported that the international Wikimania conference in Singapore in 2023, protestors came to the event to protest the availability of gender-neutral toilets. Previously at WikiConferences, the 2016 WikiConference in San Diego included a yelling protestor who ran around until security was able to physically remove them, and the 2014 WikiConference in New York City included someone who communicated their objection to the event by pooping on the floor. Typical conferences and gatherings do not attract such hostility, and these generalized attacks are in addition to the personal attacks against attendees which they often keep private, and which they often assume is a rare occurrence rather than the systemic problem it is.
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User:Bluerasberry invited attendees to the conference to come to the video room and share whatever brief message about Wikimedia projects anyone would like to record. See them and hear their own words.
Commons:Category:WikiConference North America 2023 presentations
The Signpost is the newsletter that anyone can edit. If anyone identifies additional subjects of in-focus pictures inCommons:Category:People at WikiConference North America 2023, then please edit this gallery to include them.
WikiConference is for volunteers and by volunteers. Thanks to all attendees, to speakers, and to the organizers.
WikiProjectsNewspapers andMagazines spun fromWikiProject Journalism and likeWikiProject Academic Journals, these projects focus primarily on the textual periodicals themselves rather than the humans or organizational structures behind them.
News is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want reported: all the rest is advertisement.[1]
Behind the scenes in thewiki-lawyer trenches, hundreds of Wikipedia editorsdebate discuss at theReliable sources/Noticeboard to which degree different sources are suitable for usage within Wikipedia articles. Is itnews...oradvertisements?
Wouldn't it be great if there existed a digital resource that readily made available thesum of human knowledge about various topics, something like an encyclopedia that included different newspapers in order to help editors and readers alike ascertain thereliability of said sources?
Reading Skimming sources takes time, so Wikipedia users sometimes try to gloss over by checking whether there is ablue link, which could be an indicator that the article topic isnotable. It mayWP:SHOCK some, but it does not necessarily meanThe Onion akaAmerica's Finest News Source isreliable.
Conversely, ared link does not mean popular newspapers likeDie neue Fußballwoche [de;fi] are unsuitable for usage within English Wikipedia for an article's source.
Tracking source usage within Wikipedia is already done for magazines and journals. You can find an example atWP:Magazines cited by Wikipedia and readlast year's Signpost coverage about it.
In addition to the venerableSignpost, there are11,962 articles insideWikiProject Newspapers and12,184 articles insideWikiProject Magazines. These two projects are distant cousins of the morebroad (pun intended)WikiProject Journalism.
You are probably reading this WikiProject report on English Wikipedia's internal newspaper,Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. If you don't know whatThe Signpost is, you can learn moreabout it on Wikipedia's article calledThe Signpost. The article was hopefully edited by uninvolved editors. What else is news? English Wikipedia's home page features the latestIn The News. Despite all that, you should know thatnews is notWP:NEWS which is also notWP:NOTNEWS![FBDB] If you cannot accessNewspapers.com orNewspapers.com you are likely better off visitingWikipedia:Newspapers.com to access it for(500 edits) free. It is amazing anything gets published on thisnewsless site.
How did you get involved in these WikiProjects?
What are some of the challenges you encountered and how did you address them?
How do you find sourcesabout a periodical that is widely cited in other publications but aren't about the periodical itself?
What is a publication related article you created or significantly expanded that you are proud of?
Sources are biased, ergo Wikipedia is biased. How do youcounter system bias and ensure representation of non-English and non-digitized periodicals?
Anything else you would like to add?
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as theWikimedia Research Newsletter.
From the abstract:[2]
"The dataset focuses on Wikipedia users and contains information about demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents and their activity on Wikipedia. The data was collected using a questionnaire available online between June and July 2023. The link to the questionnaire was distributed via a banner published in 8 languages on the Wikipedia page. [...] The survey includes 200 questions about: what people were doing on Wikipedia before clicking the link to the questionnaire; how they use Wikipedia as readers ("professional" and "personal" uses); their opinion on the quality, the thematic coverage, the importance of the encyclopaedia; the making of Wikipedia (how they think it is made, if they have ever contributed and how); their social, sport, artistic and cultural activities, both online and offline; their socio-economic characteristics including political beliefs, and trust propensities. More than 200 000 people opened the questionnaire, 100 332 started to answer, and constitute our dataset, and 10 576 finished it."
This dataset paper doesn't contain any results from the survey itself. And from the communications around it (including the project's page on Meta-wiki atResearch:Surveying readers and contributors to Wikipedia) it is not clear whether and when the authors or others are planning to publish any analyses themselves. Hence we are taking a quick look ourselves at some topline results below (note: these are taken directly from the "filtered" dataset published by the authors, without any weighing by language or other debiasing efforts). It remains to be hoped that more use will be made of this data soon, also considering that various questionsappear to have been designed for compatibility with certain previous surveys.
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These gender ratios are notably somewhat more balanced than e.g. thefigures from the Wikimedia Foundations "Community Insights" surveys of recent years; however, those targeted a different population consisting exclusively of contributors. Still, the gender gap in this new survey data is even somewhat smaller than that found for English-language Wikipedia readers in a past survey by the Wikimedia Foundation (cf. below).
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Unless we are dealing with a data anomaly here, this chart shows a general preponderance of left-of-center political positions among Wikipedia users, partly balanced out by a substantial share of far-right users (10 on a scale from 1 = left to 10 = right).
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.
From the abstract and introduction:[3]
"From a global online survey of 65,031 readers of Wikipedia and their corresponding reading logs, we present first evidence of gender differences in Wikipedia readership and how they manifest in records of user behavior. More specifically we report that (1) women are underrepresented among readers of Wikipedia, (2) women view fewer pages per reading session than men do, (3) men and women visit Wikipedia for similar reasons, and (4) men and women exhibit specific topical preferences"
"Across 16 surveys, men represent approximately two-thirds of Wikipedia readers on any given day. Additionally, we observe that women view fewer pages per reading session than men do. However, we also find that on average, men and women visit Wikipedia for similar reasons. That is, the depth of knowledge that they seek, referred to as information need for the remainder of this paper, and their triggers for reading Wikipedia, referred to as motivations, are remarkably similar. Finally, men and women exhibit specific topical preferences. Readership of articles about sports, games, and mathematics is skewed to-wards men, while readership of articles about broadcasting, medicine, and entertainment is skewed towards women. We further observe evidence of self-focus bias[...], i.e. that women tend to read relatively more biographies of women than men do, whereas men tend to read relatively more biographies of men than women do."
"closing content gaps is not a panacea as evidenced by prior research on Welsh Wikipedia, where a majority of the biographies are about women [...], a majority of Welsh speakers are women,[...] but readership is still heavily skewed towards men"
See also project page on Meta-wiki:m:Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Demographics_and_Wikipedia_use_cases anda subsequent literature review which formulated various potential explanations for the observed gender gap in Wikipedia readers.
From the abstract:[4]
"A recently developed historicophilosophical taxonomy of curious practice distinguishes between the collection of disparate, loosely connected pieces of information and the seeking of related, tightly connected pieces of information. With this taxonomy, we use a novel knowledge network building framework of curiosity to capture styles of curious information seeking in 149 participants as they explore Wikipedia for over 5 hours spanning 21 days. We create knowledge networks in which nodes consist of distinct concepts (unique Wikipedia pages) and edges represent the similarity between the content of Wikipedia pages. We quantify the tightness of each participants' knowledge networks using graph theoretical indices and use a generative model of network growth to explore mechanisms underlying the observed information seeking. We find that participants create knowledge networks with small-world and modular structure. Deprivation sensitivity, the tendency to seek information that eliminates knowledge gaps, is associated with the creation of relatively tight networks and a relatively greater tendency to return to previously-visited concepts. We further show that there is substantial within-person variability in knowledge network building over time and that building looser networks than usual is linked with higher than usual sensation seeking."
See also an explanatoryTwitter thread by one of the authors
From the abstract:[5]
"[...] most curiosity research relies on small, Western convenience samples. Here, we expand an analysis of a laboratory study with 149 participants browsing Wikipedia to 482,760 readers using Wikipedia's mobile app in 14 languages from 50 countries or territories. By measuring the structure of knowledge networks constructed by readers weaving a thread through articles in Wikipedia, we provide the first replication of two distinctive architectural styles of curiosity: that of the busybody and of the hunter [in reference to the above paper involving some of the same authors ...] Finally, across languages and countries, we identify novel associations between the structure of knowledge networks and population-level indicators of spatial navigation, education, mood, well-being, and inequality."
See also research project page on Meta-wiki:m:Research:Understanding Curious and Critical Readers
From the paper:[6]
"[...] we explore the dominant path of knowledge diffusion in the 21st century using Wikipedia, the largest communal dataset. We evaluate the similarity of shared knowledge between population groups, distinguished based on their language usage. When population groups are more engaged with each other, their knowledge structure is more similar, where engagement is indicated by socio-economic connections, such as cultural, linguistic, and historical features. Moreover, geographical proximity is no longer a critical requirement for knowledge dissemination.
We used Wikipedia SQL dump of 59 different language editions on February 1, 2019. [...] Specifically, we used two collections of the Wikipedia dump: category membership link records (*-categorylinks.sql.gz) and interlanguage link records (*-langlinks.sql.gz). [...] From the linkage between Wikipedia pages and categories, we extracted a hierarchical knowledge network of each language edition. [...Based on these per-language structures] we constructed the similarity network from the pairwise knowledge structure similarity, where nodes represent the language of Wikipedia, and the link's weight indicates similarity between languages.
"English is in the center and serves as a hub node, while intermediate hub languages such as Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, and Dutch also function as clustercentroids"
From the abstract:[7]
"The article is based on a quantitative study in which 381 Estonian school children [9th and 12th grade students] participated in filling out an online survey. The questionnaire included both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Findings: Statistical analyses and responses to open-ended questions showed that students often use Wikipedia as a primary source of information, but that their use of the site for learning tasks is guided by teachers' attitudes and perceptions towards Wikipedia. Students perceive Wikipedia as a quick and convenient source of information but are uncertain about its reliability."
From the "Results" section:
"[...] 5% of the students surveyed use Wikipedia every day, 51% at least a couple of times a week and 30% a couple of times a month. To compare the groups, we conducted a t-test, which concluded that statistically significant differences were present across gender and grades. For the purpose of the calculations, we treated responses as numerical (rarely/not at all = 1, a few times a year = 2, a few times a month = 3, a few times a week = 4, every day = 5). For gender, the mean is 3.73 for women and 3.46 for men (p < 0.05). Thus, there is a statistically significant difference in the frequency of Wikipedia use between the two groups, with female students using Wikipedia more often than male students. [...] 24% of the students surveyed said that teachers had no objection to using Wikipedia, 3% said that teachers did not allow to use Wikipedia, 47% said that some teachers did and some did not and 10% said that they did not know. Teachers do not explicitly forbid students from using Wikipedia for learning tasks, but they do recommend that students use more trustworthy sources [...]"
From the abstract:[8]
The study is based on semi-structured interviews with 49 teachers from 11 general education schools in Estonia. The results of the qualitative content analysis of the interviews indicate that teachers consider the use of Wikipedia to be a suitable for teaching, alongside other information sources and environments. However, teachers acknowledge some uncertainty and caution towards Wikipedia, as they do not consider it a very reliable teaching tool: an attitude largely inherited from the early days of Wikipedia. While teachers themselves are active and frequent Wikipedia users, and allow students to search for information, they do not assign Wikipedia-based text-creation tasks to students. "
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indian Premier League |  | 4,610,878 | .jpg) | In case you never noticed, cricket is the favorite sport of a nation of billions, and thus the national championship is heavily attended and valuable (estimated at US$10.9 billion!), so big Wikipedia views should come as no surprise. |
| 2 | Francis Scott Key Bridge (Baltimore) |  | 2,218,745 | .jpg) | In 1814,Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" aboutFort McHenry, built in 1798 and still standing today. In 1977, a bridge was built inBaltimore bearing his name. The bridge will not enjoy the same longevity as the fort, however, as it was destroyed after being struck by a container ship (see #8). |
| 3 | 2024 Indian Premier League | | 2,156,687 |  | The latest edition of #1, with ten teams from all over India and a qualifying stage lasting until mid-May. |
| 4 | 3 Body Problem (TV series) |  | 1,828,994 | _(cropped).jpg) | Netflix released this science fiction series whereRosalind Chao plays an astrophysicist making discoveries that will change mankind's fate. |
| 5 | The Three-Body Problem (novel) | | 1,431,574 | ||
| 6 | Sean Combs |  | 1,365,599 |  | Controversies aren't new for the rapper once known as Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, and Diddy, and the newest ones this week revolved aroundHomeland Security raiding his properties for an investigation, and former associate Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones suing Combs accusing him of sexual assault, paying to keep sex workers, and having a drug mule. |
| 7 | Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire | | 1,126,911 | .png) | Three years ago,Godzilla vs. Kong had a surprisingly strong showing in theaters in spite of thegoddamned pandemic and a simultaneousHBO Max release. Now the most famous giant monsters are back,Godzilla fighting whateverkaiju decides to go on rampage on land, andKing Kong exploring an underground world and discovering he's not the only living giant ape, and because of them is willing to destroy the surface world. And of course, there's a human plot that was highlighted by reviewers as the weakest part of the movie, albeit audiences just wanting to see massive creatures punching each other (including a climax in a partially frozenRio de Janeiro!) will get what they want, to the point the movie is expected to earn over $190 million worldwide in its opening weekend. |
| 8 | Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse | | 1,082,978 | .jpg) | During the night of March 26, a container ship struck the piers of theFrancis Scott Key Bridge inBaltimore,Maryland, causing it to collapse entirely and leading to deaths and injuries. The incident gained massive traction across news outlets and social media, with some expressing their condolences to the families of the victims, and others throwing outconspiracy theories on who was to blame for the situation. |
| 9 | Dan Schneider | | 1,022,915 | Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV aired onInvestigation Discovery and the former HBO Max, now justMax (except in Europe), detailing how some nasty things allegedly happened behind the scenes ofNickelodeon's 1990s and early 2000s sitcoms, giving a particular shine on the hostile work environment allegedly created by producer Dan Schneider, who in the wake of theMeToo movement got fired from the channel in 2018 as stories of his sexual misconduct and gender discrimination were made public. | |
| 10 | Deaths in 2024 |  | 974,325 |  | Don't get too tired for love Don't let it end Don't say goodnight to love It may never be the same again |
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indian Premier League | | 3,610,348 | .jpg) | Once again, the top article regards the latest season of the Indian cricket league (breaking the 94% mobile views threshold for exclusion becausemost Indians can only access Wikipedia through their phones, but we'll let it fly again at least this week). |
| 2 | 2024 Indian Premier League | | 2,154,516 | ||
| 3 | 3 Body Problem (TV series) | | 1,118,058 |  | This Netflix show opens on a Chinese scientist beingpublicly beaten to death during theCultural Revolution, but instead deals with his daughter years later making groundbreaking and world-changing discoveries in astrophysics. |
| 4 | WrestleMania XL | | 1,089,704 | .jpg) | A possible chart-topper for next week, WWE's biggest event that was held in Philadelphia and featuredThe Rock! |
| 5 | Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire | | 1,065,368 |  | Godzilla fans noted that after the Japanese creators offered a 'fancy meal'-like movie withGodzilla Minus One, it was time for the Americans of theMonsterVerse to deliver the fast food equivalent, as the Big G beats up otherkaiju, including some thatKing Kong discovered roaming the massive underground ecosystem of theHollow Earth. Plenty of cinema goers wanted to see giant monsters fighting, givenGodzilla x Kong had one of the best Easter opening weekends, and remained strong atop the box office, having already passed $350 million worldwide. |
| 6 | Deaths in 2024 | | 980,506 |  | In the warrior's code There's no surrender Though his body says stop His spirit cries, never! |
| 7 | Caitlin Clark |  | 928,912 | .jpg) | After driving up ticket sales for her final season attending theUniversity of Iowa, theHawkeyes' top basketball player again pushed them to the March Madness finals, while continuing her streak of wrecking as many NCAA records as possible (includingTV viewership ones!). Standing against Clark in the finals are theSouth Carolina Gamecocks, led by Brazilian wunderkindKamilla Cardoso. |
| 8 | Vontae Davis | | 871,903 |  | Davis, a former football player, was found dead on April 1, with the cause of death unknown but foul play was not suspected. He was drafted in the first round by theMiami Dolphins, was traded to theIndianapolis Colts where he spent most of his career, and controversially retired from football mid-game in 2018 while playing for theBuffalo Bills. |
| 9 | The Three-Body Problem (novel) | | 860,520 |  | A Chinese novel named aftera complex physics theory that inspired #3. |
| 10 | Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 | | 830,629 |  | On April 8, theMoon passed directly between theEarth and theSun, obscuring the Sun for a bit and in its direct path causing the world to go dark. This total eclipse gained particular attention for being the first in the United States since2017, and the last until2044 for most of the country. |
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | O. J. Simpson | | 4,021,730 |  | If Orenthal James Simpson had died on April 10, 1994, shortly after the release ofNaked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, he would've gone relatively young at 46, but left behind a good legacy as both an American football player inducted in both thecollege andpro football halls of fame and as an actor. Instead two months later he was arrested accused of murdering his ex-wife (#6) and a friend of hers. Even if he was acquitted in a trial-turned-media circus (#7), Simpson couldn't ensure the blemish on his reputation being "possible criminal" once he actually went to jail forstealing from a Vegas casino in 2007. In short, when "The Juice" died on April 10, 2024 of prostate cancer, there was an excuse forinformal if not outright disrespectful eulogies (while acknowledging his children and grandchildren's requests to "please respect their wishes for privacy and grace"). |
| 2 | Indian Premier League | | 2,608,607 |  | As the top rivalries (exceptMI v CSK) of IPL at #5 took place in the past week, it brought more people to its articles. |
| 3 | WrestleMania XL | | 2,557,335 |  | Normally WWE's premier event tops the Report, but with a big death and another week not excluding the IPL in spite of high mobile views, they had to settle for third in 2024. |
| 4 | Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 | | 2,254,760 |  | The #8 happened last Monday brought more people's attention as it's the firsttotal solar eclipse forCanada since1979, forMexico since1991 and forUnited States since2017. The next total solar eclipse in the US will be on2033 overAlaska and in thelower 48 states of the US will be on2044. The next total eclipse of similar width will take place in2045. It's the only solar eclipse in 21st century to appear in all three countries. |
| 5 | 2024 Indian Premier League | | 1,659,772 | | As the top rivalries (exceptMI v CSK) of #2 took place in the past week, it brought more people to its articles. |
| 6 | Fallout (American TV series) | | 1,640,411 |  | LikeThe Last of Us, a post-apocalyptic series based on video games. Only this one is on Prime Video, and the disaster was a nuclear war, with the show following a girl who leaves her underground bunker to seek her kidnapped father in the destroyed remains of Los Angeles.Fallout earned much praise for feeling like an extension ofthe games, including its distinctiveretrofuturism aesthetic heavy onatompunk, and has already been renewed for a second season. |
| 7 | Nicole Brown Simpson | | 1,098,507 |  | On June 12, 1994, the second wife of #1 was found dead at her home alongside her friendRon Goldman, both covered in knife wounds. WhenLAPD came to his house to notify, they found some suspicious evidence, and by June 17 there was an arrest warrant issued for OJ, who even tried to evade in aFord Bronco. The trial spanned eleven months, from November 1994, to October 1995, and in spite of the prosecution having a lot in their favor, including the reveal that the marriage had ended amidst accusations of domestic abuse and was followed by Nicole being stalked and harrassed, Simpson was acquitted. The impact of the events in culture were big, from making household names out ofthe defense attorneysRobert Shapiro,Johnnie Cochran,Alan Dershowitz and (for all the good this caused)Robert Kardashian, to two high-profile productions in 2016, the Oscar-winning documentaryO.J.: Made in America and the Emmy-winning miniseriesThe People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story. |
| 8 | Murder trial of O. J. Simpson | | 1,055,773 | ||
| 9 | Solar eclipse | | 1,029,599 |  | The Moon stood in front of the Sun last Monday (#4), bringing much attention as it's the firsttotal solar eclipse forCanada since1979, forMexico since1991 and forUnited States since2017. |
| 10 | Civil War (film) | | 969,535 |  | WhileGodzilla x Kong: The New Empire andDune: Part II fell off this list, filmgoers were hyped by this dystopian war film byAlex Garland, where the United States are instead divided and disputed between four warring factions. |
For the March 15 – April 15 period, perthis database report.
| Title | Revisions | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Crocus City Hall attack | 2538[1] | On March 22, four gunmen stormed theCrocus City Hall during a concert and opened fire on the crowd, killing 144 and injuring 551. TheIslamic State claimed responsibility shortly after.Vladimir Putin declared a day of national mourning while also making baseless accusations against Ukraine. |
| Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse | 2356 | As mentioned above, the collapse of a bridge in Baltimore after it was hit by a ship. |
| Deaths in 2024 | 1942 | Our obituary. Notable deaths since the last "most edited" besides O.J. and Vontae Davis includedLouis Gossett Jr.,Joe Lieberman,Chance Perdomo,Jaclyn Jose,Paul Alexander,Pankaj Udhas,Kenneth Mitchell andJacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild. |
| Legalism (Chinese philosophy) | 1337 | For those who don't know, no one has ever edited an article so much asFourLights with this one. |
| List of Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance candidates for the 2024 Indian general election | 1213 | I.N.D.I.A. will face the current government in the biggest election in the world (almost a billion people can vote!). |
| Cowboy Carter | 1196 | Beyoncé Knowles-Carter went country forCowboy Carter, meant as a reinvention ofAmericana (even iftrack two is the cover ofa Liverpudlian...) and featuring stalwarts of the genre likeDolly Parton,Linda Martell andWillie Nelson. Reviews were glowing, streaming records were broken, and lots of people are seekingcowboy clothes to wear. |
| Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire | 961 | A sequel to the movie revolving around the conflict between an ape and a lizard who spews radiation, now having them both facing off against an ape and a lizard who spews ice. |
| 2024 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament | 913 | Dan Hurley coached theUConn Huskies to his second straight March Madness victory, over thePurdue Boilermakers ofZach Edey. Hurley was also named theNaismith College Coach of the Year and received theSporting News Men's College Basketball Coach of the Year Award. |
| 2024 Indian Premier League | 902 | Our South Asian fans love cricket, so no surprise for lots of coverage regarding theirTwenty20 league. |
| Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 | 878 | Pink Floyd took this as an opportunity torelease a fan-made video ofthe song I quoted for the titles above. |
| Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire | 855 | After winning back fans with the nostalgia-festGhostbusters: Afterlife, the best known spectral hunters return in a movie where New York is threatened by a ancient god trying to both build a ghost army and restart theice age. Originally scheduled for December before the2023 Hollywood labor disputes delayed it to March 2024,Frozen Empire got mixed reviews for a crowded script that brings everyone back from the previous movie and still introduces new characters, and in spite of opening atop the box office has not performed so well, having barely passed its $100 million budget domestically. |
| 2023–24 Australian region cyclone season | 797 | Over 8 cyclones have hit Australia since December, with the strongest storms beingKirrily andJasper. |
| Regency of Algiers | 784 | Given a few months ago this article on the North African parcel of theOttoman Empirefailed its GA review, the dedicated editors are extensively editing it hoping for another shot. |
| Francis Scott Key Bridge (Baltimore) | 758 | To quote fromLast Week Tonight, "It has been a busy week, from a massive bridge collapse in Baltimore toSam Bankman-Friedgetting sentenced to 25 years in prison. Are these two events related? Experts say 'no', but given enough time, morons can find a path to 'maybe'!" |
| 2024 Indian general election | 741 | The largest ever elections in the world will be held in India from April 19 to June 1, where 970 million people will elect 543 members of 18thLok Sabha.Modi with hisNDA alliance is competing for his third consecutive term againsta big tent alliance of 41 parties led byIndian National Congress. Expect this entry to reach even higher as we witness the event. |
