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2020-12-28

Year-end legal surprises cause concern, but Public Domain Day is imminent

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By Bri, Smallbones, WereSpielChequers and Tilman Bayer
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In a complex late-2020 budget/policy scenario, retention of Confederate names at U.S. installations could affect Wikipedians' legal protections (soldiers at Camp Lee shown).

Lame duck US President Donald Trump created more puzzlement on Wednesday with his veto of the United States defense appropriations act, which had passed Congress with a "veto-proof majority". His stated reasons were the inclusion in the bill of a process that could be used to rename military bases that are named for Confederate military leaders, and the lack of a repeal of Section 230 in the bill. His veto message states that "Section 230 facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online".

Voting on a veto override is expected to take place on Monday, December 28, a day after publication of this issue of The Signpost. If successful, it would be the first veto override of his presidency.

Section 230 provides immunity to the Wikimedia Foundation, and social media sites in general, from lawsuits arising from most user generated content. In 2017 the WMF said "The Wikipedia we know today simply would not exist without Section 230." On December 15, WMF announced that "to ensure that laws support vibrant online communities such as Wikipedia", it had joined Internet.Works, a newly formed coalition aiming to defend Section 230. Members include Automattic, eBay, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium and other internet platforms (but none of the Big Tech companies).

A simple repeal of the section, which would have to be written into a new bill, and then passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, would likely be very difficult. Failure to override the veto would delay $740 billion in defense appropriations, so would also be very difficult.

While Trump's current challenge to Section 230 may seem unlikely to succeed, two other legal year-end surprises are set to become law that will affect Internet users and platforms. On December 21, Congress approved the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which combines $900 billion in COVID-19 stimulus aid with a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill for the 2021 fiscal year. At 5,593 pages, it is the longest bill ever passed by Congress. Besides details on the actual appropriations, it contains around "3,000 pages [of] totally unrelated bills that Congress couldn't pass through the rest of the year" (as summarized by Techdirt). These include two controversial copyright bills which were only publicly confirmed to be part of the act on the day of the vote:

  • The CASE Act will enable copyright owners to bring alleged copyright violations before a tribunal at the Copyright Office, without having to go through the court system. It had been opposed by public interest groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge and the Authors Alliance, who argue that it does not appropriately protect individuals from "sophisticated actors" (corporations, copyright "trolls" and similar abusers). Other law experts worry that the new mechanism may be used to target fair use and de minimis usage. Law professor Eric Goldman unfavorably compared the CASE Act's $30,000 maximum fine with the $600 COVID-19 relief introduced elsewhere in the same appropriations act: "you're going to need 50 stimulus checks to cover the damages demanded by a copyright owner in your first CASE Act proceeding".
  • The other new provision makes it a felony to stream copyright protected content. While it seems less likely to affect Wikimedia contributors, it is worth noting that a different version of it had been part of the 2011/12 SOPA/PIPA bills that Wikipedia and many other websites protested at the time.

Ironically, during the last few days the remaining obstacle for both provisions to become law was the threat of another Trump veto to the entire Consolidated Appropriations Act (over his objections to the $600 relief amount). However, as we go to press on Sunday, December 27, The New York Times has reported that Trump just signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act into law. – S & H

Will European trolls become able to sue over code of conduct enforcement?

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Logo of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group

On December 15, the European Commission unveiled its long awaited proposals for the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). In a special edition of its monthly "EU Policy Monitoring Report", the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU reacted with "very rough first notes", expressing appreciation that the DSA reflects "the idea of safeguarding fundamental rights and freedom of speech even within online services", but warning that "Communities/community-driven moderation and platforms are not really thought of anywhere, which leads to a few risks." (The group consists of European Wikimedia chapters and community members, and is also known as the EU Policy group.) The Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy team followed up a few days later with "early impressions" on the DSA. The two groups highlighted different aspects within the same two areas of concern in the proposal text.

Firstly, Article 12-2 requires online services to "act in a diligent, objective and proportionate manner in applying and enforcing the restrictions" of their terms and conditions, "with due regard to the rights and legitimate interests of all parties involved, including the applicable fundamental rights of the recipients of the service". The EU Policy group is concerned "that people claiming rights in bad faith might try to alter Wikipedia articles by going over a legal process supposed to force platform operators to defend fundamental rights." The Foundation said:

[We worry] that 'diligent, objective and proportionate' can mean very different things depending on who you ask, and that community-governed platforms would be hurt by unclear standards and a lack of discretion. Terms of use (like the Foundation’s Terms, or even the Universal Code of Conduct) frequently include provisions prohibiting clearly harmful but often hard-to-define and even platform-specific things like harassment, disruptive behavior, or trolling. At what point would a regulator or a litigious user think that a certain volume of trolling meant that a service wasn't being 'diligent' in enforcing its 'don’t troll other users' rule? Or what happens when someone whose posts are moderated, or who thinks someone else's behavior should be moderated, decides that the moderators aren’t being 'objective?'
— Wikimedia Foundation Public Policy Team via Medium

Secondly, the EU Policy group argues that "in Articles 14-19 (basically the content moderation systems) we need stronger safeguards and rights for communities and individual users ('counter-notices' within the Notice & Action system being one basic example)." The Wikimedia Foundation is worried that it will become subject to undue burden caused by a vague wording in Article 14:

[The article] says that an online provider will be presumed to know about illegal content — and thus be liable for it — once it gets a notice from anyone that that illegal content exists. There’s a number of different ways that ambiguities in this section can create problems [...]. For example, if the Foundation got a notice from someone alleging they had been defamed on one article, what would the Foundation be responsible for, if the alleged defamation was referenced in or spread across multiple articles, or talk pages, that the user may not have specified?
— Wikimedia Foundation Public Policy Team via Medium

On the other hand, the Foundation's Public Policy team applauded "that the DSA preserves [the intermediary liability provisions] of the e-Commerce Directive, which ensure that the Foundation can continue hosting the knowledge of countless editors and contributors" (similar to Section 230 in the United States, see also above).

In its monthly report, the EU Policy group clarifies that the other big new proposal unveiled by the EU Commission on December 15, for the Digital Markets Act, should not affect Wikimedia projects and organizations: "This basically is a list of 'dos and don’t' for very large platforms that have a so-called gatekeeper position on the internal market. To be part of that club you need to have a turnover of over 6.5 billion euro, so Wikimedia is out."

But the report notes relevant recent developments on several other ongoing EU regulation efforts:

  • "On December 10th a compromise was adopted on terrorist content regulation" ("TERREG", still to be finalized and formally adopted by the Council of the EU, and to be voted on by the European Parliament, possibly next month already). The group appreciates that in contrast to earlier versions, the current proposal "will exclude material disseminated for educational, journalistic, artistic or research purposes" and "content which represents an expression of polemic or controversial views in the course of public debate." Still, it criticizes that "the competent authorities [which can order removals of "terrorist" content, generally to be taken down within one hour] will not be judicial or independent." Also, the group notes that its "desired outcome ... has not been reached" on the subject of cross-border removal orders. (This issue might become more salient if recent concerns persist that some EU countries like Hungary and Poland fail to uphold the rule of law and democratic principles such as media freedom and judiciary independence.)
  • The EU Policy group worries that an exception in the EU's proposed Data Governance Act "is worded in a way that Wikidata and Europeana might have issues with".
  • Regarding the e-Evidence regulation, "we got one fix - prosecutors won’t be able get data about which IP accessed [which] Wikipedia article without a judge’s stamp. But we also have one fail - the hosting Member States agency won’t have a veto right on production orders [requiring e.g. a website to provide user data] if fundamental rights are violated by the issuing prosecutor." – H

Public Domain Day, 2021

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First edition dust jacket cover of The Great Gatsby, whose text will enter the public domain on January 1 (with the dust jacket already being in the public domain for different reasons)

On January 1, 2021, works first published in 1925 in the US will enter the public domain, according to the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at the Duke University School of Law. The books affected include:

Films affected include:

Some musical compositions are also affected, but not necessarily the performances of those works. Compositions affected include Sweet Georgia Brown and some works written by Lovie Austin, Amy Beach, Sidney Bechet, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, George and Ira Gershwin, W.C. Handy, Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace, and Fats Waller. -S

Billionth edit draws closer, as does 20th birthday

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Wikipedia's 20th birthday is on 15 January

The billionth edit to English Wikipedia made in the current Wikipedia database software will be made soon – according to analysis by The Signpost staff, likely between 12 January and 16 January, just before or after Wikipedia's 20th birthday on 15 January. The current Wikipedia database was initiated on January 25–26, 2002, when Wikipedia used phase II software. Before that date, UseModWiki was used to edit and edit counts are murky - perhaps there were a few hundred thousand edits using UseModWiki, some but not all of which have since been recovered and reloaded into the system as part of the thousand million edits. Some purists might wish to include the number of edits transferred from Nupedia to Wikipedia as well. While the "billionth edit" may be inexact, it does symbolize a remarkable achievement – an encyclopedia of over 6,215,569 articles built by at least 1,000,000,000 edits. Even if a hundred million or more of those were vandalism or spam. – B & S & W and – G

Reversal of active administrator decline?

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Number of active administrators by month in 2020 – over 500 more often than not

The Signpost noted exactly one year ago that "the tally of active administrators...does not appear likely to rise above 500 again, unless there is a major change in trend." Well, we are ending the month (as of time of publication) with 504 active admin accounts on the list, and it was over 520 earlier this year. At first blush, this looks like good news going forward?

However, with only 243 new admins in the last ten years and only 17 new administrators this year, the long-term trend is still unsustainable: The average new admin would need to be active for thirty years for a supply of 17 new admins a year to maintain a cadre of 500 active admins. It isn't just that a large majority of our active admins were appointed over a decade ago. Only 50 of our current administrators first created their accounts in the last ten years. We are not recruiting enough admins from among members of the community who joined us between 2011 and 2019. – B & W

O Wikibaum

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Growing the wikiforest

Wikimedia Foundation announced on December 7 that it had reached a fundraising milestone allowing it in turn to fund the planting of 400,000 trees. It is working with the Plant Your Change initiative which aims to plant 100 million trees in the next decade, as part of the foundation's carbon footprint reduction strategy. -B

Brief notes

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2020-12-28

Concealment, data journalism, a non-pig farmer, and some Bluetick Hounds

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By Llewee, Bri, and Smallbones

Revealing the obvious concealment

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"Wikipedia page for Biden's new Covid czar scrubbed of politically damaging material" states Politico. The article reports how an account linked to consulting firm Saguaro Strategies removed potentially politically compromising details from Jeff Zients's Wikipedia page. US President-elect Joe Biden plans to put Zients in charge of his administration's response to COVID-19. The account – which initially operated under the username Saguarostrat, was renamed, then was indefinitely blocked for undisclosed paid editing in violation of the WMF Terms of Use – removed information related to Zients's corporate career, made him appear less "Republican" and added that he left his role on the board of Facebook "over differences with company leadership over governance and its policies around political discourse" though Zients has never claimed such publicly. The article discusses how the online images of both Democrats and Republicans have been a common cause of scandal in recent years and attempts to clean them up have become a normalized part of American political life, with an inside source suggesting that while the law firms which specialize in helping candidates for senior positions through their confirmation processes generally focus on other issues such as removing social media posts, editing Wikipedia is more likely done by consultants. Another Wikipedia-related scenario mentioned was the period prior to Kamala Harris' nomination as Biden's VP candidate: her Wikipedia page "was edited far more than the other contenders for vice president and the majority of the edits were by a single person".

However, America's politicians certainly aren't the only ones not always playing above board in the Wiki world. Staffers in the Canadian and Australian governments got into hot water for Wikipedia editing in 2014 and 2016 respectively, while analysis from 2012 suggested that British MPs and their staff were responsible for nearly 10,000 changes to the site. – L

Introducing Wikipedia and data journalism

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"Harnessing Wikipedia's superpowers for journalism" by Wikipedian Monika Sengul-Jones on DataJournalism.com gives a great introduction to Wikipedia in 4,000 words – with many charts, tables and illustrations. It would be worth every word even if you only wanted an academically-oriented introduction to the encyclopedia, but it spends most of those words on how journalists can use Wikipedia – a skill that many general reporters could use – and then describes how the data provided to the public as well as to reporters can be even more useful. This reporter, who has spent a couple of years writing for The Signpost, picked up a few pointers. Those Wikipedians who wish to become reporters for this newspaper are highly encouraged to read and re-read Sengul-Jones's article.

Her first example shows how a Twitter bot, which monitors Wikipedia's data feeds, revealed that an anonymous editor with an IP address from the Executive Office of the President in the White House removed the following from the article on Adam S. Boehler: "During college, Boehler was a summer roommate of his future Trump administration boss Jared Kushner." Then Sengul-Jones adds "but there's evidence the bots can be manipulated". After discussing some of the limits of Wikipedia data she quotes Benjamin Mako Hill: "The reality for journalists working on the internet is fraught [...] Most internet data sets are controlled by commercial companies. That means there's never going to be a full data set and what's available has been – or is being –manipulated. Wikipedia is different. It's free, it's accessible, and it's from a public service organization."

In just the first half of the article pageviews are covered in detail, as are the Wikipedia organizational structure, editing model, and Section 230 with quotes from Noam Cohen, Brian Keegan, Jackie Koerner and WMF CEO Katherine Maher along the way. The second half is just as packed with information. -S

The article on Michael Perry falsely said that he is a pig farmer

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Michael Perry claims that he types for a living. He writes a weekly column in the Wisconsin State Journal and formerly kept a passel of five pigs. While he might return to his porcine pursuits, he doubts that it will be possible, so he wanted to correct "his" Wikipedia article. With that premise and some quirky humor he cranked out a 500 word column. He's got this writing business down to an art.

I wasn't quite convinced, so I emailed him and asked – what was that column all about? Yep, he just wanted the Wikipedia article about him to be correct. It was corrected on the same morning the column was published. It looks like Perry has solved one of the most ancient mysteries of the internet – how to get a Wikipedia article corrected. You just need to publish an article in a reliable source. Of course not everybody can write a newspaper article about themself, but thinking along the same line, article subjects might make a YouTube video of themselves, or even just write a press release to get noticed. Not that a press release would always work, but it's got to be better than writing on the article talkpage: "I'm not a pig farmer, I'm a writer, I'm a former pig farmer, a reformed swineherd, a redundant hog handler, please believe me, please ...".

Perry has written ten books, including a New York Times bestseller, Visiting Tom. He is a musician, radio show host, comedian, and nurse. He grew up on a dairy farm where he had "a childhood spent slinging manure – the metaphorical basis for a writing career." – S

External videos
video icon Hound Dog, Elvis Presley
video icon Blue Christmas, Elvis Presley

In brief

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A Bluetick Hound, state dog of Tennessee, and maybe Twitter someday
"Root hog or die", a "controversial" American expression with an article found by the media
Sign held by a protester during the George Floyd protests in Michigan
  • "Twitter Wants to Use Wikipedia to Help Determine Who Gets a Blue Checkmark": Stephen Harrison in Slate discusses Twitter's plan to use Wikipedia as part of its verification process. The new system would require that bluetick wannabes prove they have a 'presence in public indices' in the case of companies or 'Off Twitter Notability' for individuals. A Wikipedia article covering the person or organization in question could be used as evidence of either status. Harrison quotes Wikipedia editors Monika Sengul-Jones, and Kevin Li, who reacted to the proposal with a mixture of 'pride and wariness' and suggests that it wouldn't hurt Twitter to bring in a few other features of Wikipedia in particular the {{Citation needed}} tag. The Twitter proposal seems to import Wikipedia's definition of "notability" into Twitter and might end up importing the systemic biases that go along with the definition. At the same time "It’s a form of Twitter offloading its work to us and expecting us to deal with it," according to Li. Perhaps Twitter should consider increasing its donation to the Wikimedia Foundation by several times.
  • "Govt asks Wikipedia to remove wrong map showing Aksai Chin as part of China": India Today (via MSM) covers a decision by the Indian government to "request" that Wikipedia take down a map depicting Aksai Chin (a part of the disputed region of Kashmir governed by China) as part of China. The issue which has created a great deal of debate in the world's largest democracy and on the world's best encyclopedia (including advice from WMF's legal counsel to the community) was sparked when a Twitter user shared an image of the map. The article suggests that India may take legal action against Wikipedia or even block the website if the map is not removed.
  • Here are a few of Wikipedia's most surprisingly controversial topics: Mike Vago at The A.V. Club takes a look down the "Wiki Wormhole". Perhaps the term 'controversial' is used too liberally in the article's headline, but the column does glance over several niche topics from the underbelly of medieval measurements to some rather contrarian traffic control methods. During December Vago has departed slightly from his usual subject matter by collecting a group of smaller topics rather than writing about one Wikipedia article per column. His December 20 column speeds through Honkbal Hoofdklasse, Root hog or die, and our favorite, List of games that Buddha would not play.
  • "Let's walk" sheriff merits Wikipedia page: The Flint, Michigan radio station, WCRZ did a story on the creation of a biography for their county's sheriff, Christopher R. Swanson. His notability is due largely to his humane response to the George Floyd protests, taking off his riot gear and telling protesters "let's walk". He has also written a children's book.

Odd bits

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2020-12-28

2020 election results

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By Bri

Arbcom election results

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Arbitration Committee Elections December 2020 voting ended on December 7, followed immediately by scrutineering of the results, and an announcement of the outcome on December 21. The seven newly elected or re-elected members of the Arbitration Committee will be:

The new members' terms will begin on January 1.

Functionary team

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Functionary team changes announced: Anarchyte was appointed as an Oversighter, while EdJohnston, Oshwah, and Yamla were appointed as CheckUsers.

New discretionary sanctions for Horn of Africa

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Horn of Africa case was resolved by motion on December 9:

Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes) for a trial period of three months and until further decision of this Committee. After March 1, 2021 (or sooner if there is good reason), any editor may ask that this request be reopened for the purpose of evaluating whether the discretionary sanctions have been effective and should be made permanent or if a full case should be accepted to consider different or additional remedies.

Pending case

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Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Flyer22 and WanderingWanda was opened 5 December by WanderingWanda and accepted by the committee 16 December; evidence is due 30 December. At issue are alleged gender (transgender) motivated aspersions involving on-wiki and off-wiki writing.

Flyer22 Frozen, one of the involved parties and an active editor since 2007, retired after the case was opened.




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2020-12-28

How to make your factory's safety and labor issues disappear

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By Zarasophos
Disclosure: The author is an unpaid line member of a union that has organised demonstrations supporting the workers mentioned in this article. Neither his editing nor this article are connected to his union activities, apart from an interest in the subject matter.

Textiles are the most important export sector of Bangladesh's economy. Trousers, hoodies, t-shirts and so on are produced by Bangladeshi firms and then exported to Europe or America, where they are sold by some of the world's most important brands at steep mark-ups. The textile sector is also plagued by safety problems and labor issues, but more on that later.

One large group of companies in this sector is Dragon Group. From the eponymous Dragon Tower in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the group exports sweaters and socks to international customers, which have included Walmart and Lidl. In fact, the group "is the pioneer of Bangladesh's sweater industry" and "directly responsible for the establishment of the sweater industry in Bangladesh"; it "is among the world's largest sweater suppliers and is the largest sweater industry in south and southeast Asia."

At least according to the first version of its article, created in October 2009 by editor Mqsobhan.

Over the years, some of these sentences were cut from the article. It was also marked as missing references. An article for Dragon Sweater, one of Dragon Group's subsidiaries, was changed into a redirect – Mqsobhan had posted it with the same contents as the Dragon Group article. In December 2015, Mqsobhan returned, adding that the machinery of Dragon Group "produces most supple and excellent yarns and the quality is among the best in South and South East Asia", and that the Group's chairman, father of Mostafa Quamrus Sobhan, was "widely known as the Father of Bangladesh's sweater industry".

Just over a year later, some of this promotional material was again cut from the article. It was then nominated for deletion in 2018 – "Only negative sources", according to the nominator. (The nominator, Farooqahmadbhat, was later blocked as a sockpuppet in an unrelated case). But other editors involved in that discussion argued that there were enough sources to show notability and that negative coverage was not a reason for deletion. In the end, the article was kept. By September of this year, the tectonic-plate-paced push-and-pull had resulted in an article a few lines long, still lacking references and structure.

Suspiciously similar names

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That was the state of the article when I first read it. I proceeded to add headers for organisation and history, added about twenty links to sources (which were published in Bangladesh's most noteworthy newspapers and therefore indeed not very hard to find) and, most importantly from the aesthetic point of view, added an infobox. That infobox included a list of Dragon Group subsidiaries and some of the key people, again including the chairman and his son, the managing director Mostafa Quamrus Sobhan. I also filed a conflict of interest notice regarding Mqsobhan, noting the suspiciously similar name and editing behaviour.

However, since the editor at that point hadn't edited in four years and didn't reply to my notification, no action was taken. But Mqsobhan was not gone for good. On December 3, an anonymous editor with an IP address from Dhaka, Bangladesh deleted most of the article, but was immediately reverted. A new account, Mqs2020, was then created and deleted the same parts of the article, three times, only to be reverted three times. And then, after about three and a half hours of edit warring, the Mqsobhan account returned from its four-year slumber and deleted the same parts of the article, again. The reason: "False information in the history section which are travestry of facts" that had been "edited by a miscreant who is trying to ransom money from the editor by posting and editing false claims." The account also proceeded to add some new links to the article in what an edit note described as "quakity news".

When the new Mqs2020 account was asked on its talk page whether there were any relations to the Mqsobhan account or to Dragon Group, the answer came from Mqsobhan: "Sorry no connection with mqs2020 or this company." Both accounts were indefinitely blocked as confirmed sockpuppets a few hours later.

Unpaid wages and safety issues

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The sockpuppeting block was not the end of the story. Five days afterwards, two new anonymous editors, both with IP addresses from Dhaka, again edited the article. One of the IP accounts modified a citation in the last paragraph of the history section, where a link to news website "bdnews24.com" was changed to "bdnew.24com", making it unusable. The linked source dealt with the firing of around 500 Dragon Group workers earlier this year. The Group says they were laid off due to COVID-19; the workers say they were fired for organising to demand unpaid wages.

The Mqsobhan account had already remarked on the linked article during its edits on December 3: "The article also falsely claims that there r disputes with workers but Dragon Group and Dragon sweater are not related entities." In a later reply to an email from The Signpost, the person behind both the Mqsobhan and Mqs2020 accounts said that the issues with Dragon Sweater workers had been resolved. They also said that Dragon Group was not a company, that it did not own Dragon Sweater, and demanded anonymity. The websites of Dragon Sweater and Dragon Sweater and Spinning clearly state that both are a part of Dragon Group.

"It is reprehensible that the owners of Dragon Group have engaged in such biased propaganda mongering against the workers movement on such a widely read and circulated platform as Wikipedia", a spokesperson for the Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Centre (GWTUC), the union representing the fired workers, told The Signpost. "Once again Dragon Group has engaged in a campaign of misinformation against the ongoing labor struggles. The deletion of information must be seen in the context of pulling of local news articles related to the movement, and propaganda against international solidarity movements."

The other of the two IP accounts that edited the Dragon Group article concentrated on another part of the article: A mention of a 2015 inspection that had found "cables directly laid on floors without proper safety, insufficient exit capacity through exit doors and the absence of sprinklers" at Dragon Sweater was changed into one that had found "cables directly laid on floors without proper safety, sufficient exit capacity through exit doors and the installation of sprinklers" – without changing the source.

There is a history of major fires in Bangladesh's garment factories. The most notable was in 2012, when a Dhaka factory burned down, killing at least 117. The suspected cause were exposed wires, compounded by a lack of emergency exits. The inspection that found the exposed cables and others was done by the Bangladesh Accord, an eponymous organization formed by an agreement signed by Bangladeshi trade unions and international companies following the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, in which 1,134 people lost their lives. And the 2015 inspection was not the only time they reported structural flaws in Dragon Group factories.

In September 2018, an Accord inspection found cracks on a Dragon Sweater factory ground floor column. One year later, the column had only been retrofitted up to the third of the required seven floors. Since then, Dragon Group has asked seven times for an extension to complete the work. While the Accord has refused each time to delay the deadline, verification that the required repairs have been completed is still reported as pending in December 2020. According to Accord reports, sprinkler systems have also not been fully installed and there are still issues with unprotected wiring. Dragon Group's deletion of the Accord inspection was in line with a repeated lack of enthusiasm on matters of working conditions and labor rights, the GWTUC spokesperson told The Signpost. "Labor violations are abundant over the years in the factories, and the pandemic has brought to the fore numerous health and social violations too."

Edit wars fought on the back of workers

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The whole case was not surprising to Christie Miedema, who works with the Clean Clothes Campaign. According to her, the garment market is competitive, and brands and retailers hold the power to dictate terms to factories. Therefore, it would make sense for factories to try to influence the opinions of these international companies, for example through Wikipedia. "We have noticed in other instances, for example our own reporting, that some factory owners are very much on top of the information circulating about their factories and that they care a lot about their image", she told The Signpost.

The Dragon Group article has now been semi-protected until January 14. In the end, our response to the manipulated article looks pretty good. The first time around, it took more than a year until some of Mqsobhan's claims were marked as unsourced. By the same time in 2015/16, most of the added promotional material was already deleted; and in 2020, Mqsobhan et al were blocked after just a few hours. The article is still incomplete, especially for such a noteworthy company – but then again, it is a company in Bangladesh, one of the areas suffering most from a systemic lack of attention on the English Wikipedia.

The story also shows the potential relevance of our articles for real people, though. Miedema said she did not know on what information international companies based their decisions, but that having fewer controversies available through Google was of course in favor of a factory. But these "controversies" are not immaterial: exposed wires, lacking sprinklers and cracked columns have the potential to do real harm to many people. The deletion of these issues from a company's article in order to allow that company to act as if these issues did not exist can not be permitted.

That leads me to one thing that could probably be improved: The only version of the article in another language is in Bengali, which looks to be a translation of a 2018 version of the English article. That version still has much of the promotional material inserted by Mqsobhan in it. Since Dragon Group is comprised of Bangladeshi companies, it would probably be good for it to have an extensive Bengali article.




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2020-12-28

Very nearly ringing in the New Year with "Blank Space" – but we got there in time.

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By Adam Cuerden
Canary Wharf, one of our newest* featured pictures.

* ...And by "newest" we mean that it was promoted over a month before this article was published, but there's conventions for how you phrase things in these sorts of articles.

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 12 November through 11 December. Quotes are generally from the articles, but may be abridged or simplified for length.

As the title implies, besides the article of that name being promoted, Christmas things had kept your humble editor away from the Signpost for very nearly too long, so most of this article was finished the day of publication. Next month, hopefully, this will be done a lot sooner.

Speaking of things still being around from last month...

Moving on, there's a certain oddity with having someone who does image restoration write the featured content report: You might recognise two images from last month's featured content – the featured article "French battleship Suffren", and the portrait of Keke Rosberg from the featured article "1982 Formula One World Championship" – have reappeared in the featured picture section this month.

Whilst this might lead to a certain repetitiveness of images, I can't quite bring myself to apologise.

That said, this month's report had a genuine challenge: Antisemitism is, obviously, wrong, but when the antisemitism is coming from Hitler, it can be important to understanding and contextualizing the Holocaust. As such, this issue features a lengthy quote by Hitler, and I hope that the section of the article quoted alongside it is enough to put it in its proper context. Comments below if you think there's anything we can do better, because I'm sure with the historians and scholars we have on Wikipedia, this won't be the first time the Signpost reports on such things.

In any case, I hope everyone had or will have had a wonderful holiday (whichever one you celebrate), and if you don't celebrate or don't have one in December, well, I hope you had a good month. 2021 approaches, and we can all hope that the vaccines coming through the pipeline bring an end as soon as possible to the pandemic that has made this year so awful. Until then, keep safe.

-Adam.
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27 featured articles were promoted this period.

The remains of Cefnllys Castle
Cefnllys Castle, nominated by Jr8825
Cefnllys Castle was a medieval spur castle in Radnorshire (now part of Powys), Wales. Two successive masonry castles were built on a ridge above the River Ithon known as Castle Bank in the thirteenth century, replacing a wooden motte-and-bailey castle constructed by the Normans nearby. Controlling several communication routes into the highlands of Mid Wales, the castles were strategically important within the Welsh Marches during the High Middle Ages. As the seat of the fiercely contested lordship and cantref of Maelienydd, Cefnllys became a source of friction between Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and Roger Mortimer in the prelude to Edward I's conquest of Wales. Cefnllys was also the site of a borough and medieval town.
"Blank Space", nominated by HĐ
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
...Okay, enough of that: "Blank Space" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her fifth studio album 1989. The song was released to US radio stations as the second single from 1989 on November 10, 2014, by Republic Records in partnership with Swift's label at the time, Big Machine. Swift co-wrote "Blank Space" with its producers Max Martin and Shellback. For the lyrics, she conceived the song as a satirical self-referential nod to her reputation as a flirtatious woman with a series of romantic attachments, which blemished her once-wholesome girl next door image. Musically, it is an electropop song with minimal hip hop-influenced beats.
Raymond Pace Alexander, nominated by Coemgenus
Raymond Pace Alexander (October 13, 1897 – November 24, 1974) was a civil rights leader, lawyer, politician, and the first African American judge appointed to the Pennsylvania Courts of Common Pleas. In 1920, he became the first black graduate of the Wharton School of Business. After graduation from Harvard Law School in 1923, Alexander became one of the leading civil rights attorneys in Philadelphia. He represented black defendants in high-profile cases, including the Trenton Six, a group of black men arrested for murder in Trenton, New Jersey. Alexander also entered the political realm, unsuccessfully running for judge several times. He finally ran for, and won, a seat on the Philadelphia City Council in 1951. After two terms in City Council, Alexander was appointed as the first black judge to sit on the Court of Common Pleas, where he served until his death in 1974.
View of Wembley Stadium during the 2017 EFL Trophy Final. Luckily, the final was held there, or this image would be a lot less relevant.
2017 EFL Trophy Final, nominated by Amakuru
The 2017 EFL Trophy Final was an association football match that was played on 2 April 2017 at Wembley Stadium, London. It was played between League One teams Coventry City and Oxford United. The match decided the winner of the 2016–17 EFL Trophy, a 64-team knockout tournament comprising clubs from League One and League Two of the English Football League (EFL), as well as 16 Category One academy sides representing Premier League and Championship clubs. It was Coventry's first appearance in the final and the second for Oxford, who were beaten by Barnsley in the previous season's match. Coventry won 2–1 to earn their first major trophy since their victory in the 1987 FA Cup Final.
Yugoslav destroyer Zagreb, nominated by Peacemaker67
Zagreb was the second of three Beograd-class destroyers built for the Royal Yugoslav Navy (KM) in the late 1930s. She was designed to be deployed as part of a division led by the flotilla leader Dubrovnik, and was the first warship built in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Zagreb entered service in August 1939, was armed with a main battery of four 120 mm (4.7 in) guns in single mounts, and had a top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph). Yugoslavia entered World War II when the German-led Axis powers invaded in April 1941. On 17 April, Zagreb was scuttled by two of her officers at the Bay of Kotor to prevent her capture by approaching Italian forces. Both officers were killed by the explosion of the scuttling charges. A 1967 French film, Flammes sur l'Adriatique (Adriatic Sea of Fire), told the story of her demise and the deaths of the two officers. In 1973, on the thirtieth anniversary of the formation of the Yugoslav Navy, both men were posthumously awarded the Order of the People's Hero by President Josip Broz Tito.
Sagitta, nominated by Cas Liber
Sagitta is a dim but distinctive constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for "arrow", and it should not be confused with the significantly larger constellation Sagittarius, the archer. It was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union. Although it dates to antiquity, Sagitta has no star brighter than 3rd magnitude and has the third-smallest area of all constellations.
The Royal Artillery Memorial
Royal Artillery Memorial, nominated by Hchc2009 and HJ Mitchell
The Royal Artillery Memorial is a First World War memorial located on Hyde Park Corner in London, England. Designed by Charles Sargeant Jagger, with architectural work by Lionel Pearson, and unveiled in 1925, the memorial commemorates the 49,076 soldiers from the Royal Artillery killed in the First World War. The static nature of the conflict, particularly on the Western Front, meant that artillery played a major role in the war, though physical reminders of the fighting were often avoided in the years after the war. The Royal Artillery War Commemoration Fund (RAWCF) was formed in 1918 to preside over the regiment's commemorations, aware of some dissatisfaction with memorials to previous wars. The RAWCF approached several eminent architects but its insistence on a visual representation of artillery meant that none was able to produce a satisfactory design. Thus they approached Jagger, himself an ex-soldier who had been wounded in the war. Jagger produced a design which was accepted in 1922, though he modified it several times before construction. The memorial consists of a Portland stone cruciform base supporting a one-third over-lifesize sculpture of a howitzer (a type of artillery field gun), which Jagger based on a gun in the Imperial War Museum. At the end of each arm of the cross is a sculpture of a soldier—an officer at the front (south side), a shell carrier on the east side, a driver on the west side, and at the rear (north) a dead soldier. The sides of the base are decorated with relief sculptures depicting wartime scenes. The realism of the memorial, with the depiction of the howitzer and the dead soldier, differed significantly from other First World War memorials, notably the influential Cenotaph, which used pure architectural forms and classical symbolism. The design was controversial when unveiled; some critics viewed the dead soldier as too graphic or felt that the howitzer did not lend itself to rendition in stone. Nonetheless, the memorial was popular with others, including ex-servicemen, and later came to be recognised as Jagger's masterpiece and one of Britain's finest war memorials.
1925 FA Cup Final, nominated by Kosack
The 1925 FA Cup Final was an association football match contested by Sheffield United and Cardiff City on 25 April 1925 at Wembley Stadium in London, England. The final was the showpiece match of English football's primary cup competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup), organised by the Football Association. Sheffield won the game with a single goal.
HMS Pearl battles the Santa Monica off the Azores in 1779.
HMS Pearl (1762), nominated by Ykraps
HMS Pearl was a fifth-rate, 32-gun British Royal Navy frigate of the Niger-class. Launched at Chatham Dockyard in 1762, she served in British North America until January 1773, when she sailed to England for repairs. Returning to North America in March 1776, to fight in the American Revolutionary War, Pearl escorted the transports which landed troops in Kip's Bay that September. Much of the following year was spent on the Delaware River where she took part in the Battle of Red Bank in October. Towards the end of 1777, Pearl joined Vice-Admiral Richard Howe's fleet in Narragansett Bay and was still there when the French fleet arrived and began an attack on British positions. Both fleets were forced to retire due to bad weather and the action was inconclusive. Pearl was then despatched to keep an eye on the French fleet, which had been driven into Boston. Pearl was part of the British fleet that captured the island of St Lucia from the French in December 1778, and was chosen to carry news of the victory to England, capturing the 28-gun Spanish frigate Santa Monica off the Azores on her return journey. She joined Vice-Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot's squadron in July 1780, capturing the 28-gun French frigate Esperance while stationed off Bermuda in September; the following March she took part in the First Battle of Virginia Capes, where she had responsibility for relaying signals. Pearl returned to England in 1783, where she underwent extensive repairs and did not serve again until 1786, when she was recommissioned for the Mediterranean.
Taken out of service in 1792, she was recalled in February 1793, when hostilities resumed between Britain and France. On her return to the American continent, she narrowly escaped capture by a French squadron anchored between the Îles de Los and was forced to put into Sierra Leone for repairs following the engagement. In 1799, Pearl joined Vice-Admiral George Elphinstone's fleet in the Mediterranean where she took part in the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. In 1802, she sailed to Portsmouth where she served as a storeship for sailors' clothes and then a receiving ship. She was renamed Protheé in March 1825 and eventually sold in 1832.
Bluey (2018 TV series), nominated by SatDis
Bluey is an animated television series for preschool children that premiered on ABC Kids on 1 October 2018. The show follows Bluey, an anthropomorphic six-year-old Blue Heeler puppy who is characterised by her abundance of energy, imagination and curiosity of the world. The young dog lives with her father, Bandit; mother, Chilli; and younger sister, Bingo, who regularly joins Bluey on adventures as the pair embark on imaginative play together. Other characters featured each represent a different dog breed. Overarching themes include the focus on family, growing up and Australian culture. The program was created and produced in Queensland; its capital city inspires the show's setting. The program won a Logie Award for Most Outstanding Children's Program in 2019 as well as an International Emmy Kids Award. It has been praised by television critics for depicting a modern everyday family life, constructive parenting messages and the role of Bandit as a positive father figure.
A 1967 conceptual drawing of the Gemini B reentry capsule separating from the Manned Orbiting Laboratory at the end of a mission
Manned Orbiting Laboratory, nominated by Hawkeye7 and Hog Farm
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was part of the United States Air Force (USAF) human spaceflight program in the 1960s. The project was developed from early USAF concepts of crewed space stations as reconnaissance satellites, and was a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane. MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, for which crews would be launched on 30-day missions, and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini spacecraft.
As the 1960s progressed, the MOL competed with the Vietnam War for funds, and resultant budget cuts repeatedly caused postponement of the first operational flight. At the same time, automated systems rapidly improved, narrowing the benefits of a crewed space platform over an automated one. A single uncrewed test flight of the Gemini B spacecraft was conducted on 3 November 1966, but the MOL was canceled in June 1969 without any crewed missions being flown.
Saturn (magazine), nominated by Mike Christie
Saturn was an American magazine published from 1957 to 1965. It was launched as a science fiction magazine, but sales were weak, and after five issues the publisher, Robert C. Sproul, switched the magazine to hardboiled detective fiction that emphasized sex and sadism. Sproul retitled the magazine Saturn Web Detective Story Magazine to support the change, and shortened the title to Web Detective Stories the following year. In 1962, the title was changed yet again, this time to Web Terror Stories, and the contents became mostly weird menace tales—a genre in which apparently supernatural powers are revealed to have a logical explanation at the end of the story. Donald A. Wollheim was the editor for the first five issues; he published material by several well-known authors, including Robert A. Heinlein, H. P. Lovecraft, and Harlan Ellison, but was given a low budget and could not always find good-quality stories. It is not known who edited the magazine after the science fiction issues, but the themes of violence and sex continued to the end of the magazine's run, many stories featuring the torture of women. Sproul finally cancelled the title in 1965 after a total of 27 issues.
Yugoslav destroyer Ljubljana, nominated by Peacemaker67
Ljubljana (Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [/ ˌlu bliˈɑ nə]) was the third and last Beograd-class destroyer built for the Royal Yugoslav Navy (KM) in the late 1930s. She was designed to operate as part of a division led by the flotilla leader Dubrovnik. Ljubljana entered service in December 1939, was armed with a main battery of four Škoda 120 mm (4.7 in) guns in single mounts, and had a top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph).
In 1940, Ljubljana ran aground on a reef off the Yugoslav port of Šibenik, where, badly damaged, she was taken for repairs. Yugoslavia entered World War II when the German-led Axis powers invaded in April 1941, and Ljubljana—still under repair—was captured by the Royal Italian Navy. After repairs were completed, she saw active service in the Royal Italian Navy under the name Lubiana, mainly as a convoy escort on routes between Italy and North Africa. She was lost on 1 April 1943, sources differing as to whether she was sunk by British aircraft, or stranded off the Tunisian coast and declared a total loss.
June 6, 1944: A Rhino ferry, RHF-3, with "Rhino" tug RHT approach the Normandy beaches as part of the Normandy invasion.
American logistics in the Normandy campaign, nominated by Hawkeye7
American logistics in the Normandy campaign played a key role in the success of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwest Europe during World War II. The campaign officially commenced on D-Day, 6 June 1944, and ended on 24 July, the day before the launch of Operation Cobra. The Services of Supply (SOS) was formed under the command of Major General John C. H. Lee in May 1942 to provide logistical support to the European Theater of Operations, United States Army. From February 1944 on, the SOS was increasingly referred to as the Communications Zone (COMZ). Between May 1942 and May 1944, Operation Bolero, the buildup of American troops and supplies in the UK, proceeded fitfully and, by June 1944 1,526,965 US troops were in the UK, of whom 459,511 were part of the COMZ.
The Overlord plan called for the early capture of Cherbourg, and a rapid American advance to secure the Brittany ports and Quiberon Bay, which was to be developed as a port. Crucially, the logistical plan called for a one-month pause at the Seine River, which was expected to be reached 90 days after D-Day, before advancing further. The expectation of an advance at a prescribed rate, while necessary for planning purposes, built inflexibility into a logistics plan that already had little margin for error. Staff studies confirmed that Overlord could be supported if everything went according to plan. No one expected that it would.
The First United States Army was supported over the Omaha and Utah Beaches, and through the Mulberry artificial port at Omaha specially constructed for the purpose, but the American Mulberry was abandoned after it was damaged by a storm on 19–21 June. During the first seven weeks after D-Day, the advance was much slower than the Operation Overlord plan had anticipated, and the lodgment area much smaller. The nature of the fighting in the Normandy bocage country created shortages of certain items, particularly artillery and mortar ammunition, and there were unexpectedly high rates of loss of bazookas, Browning automatic rifles (BARs), and M7 grenade launchers.
Hurricane Walaka, nominated by Hurricane Noah
Hurricane Walaka was a Category 5 hurricane that brought high surf and a powerful storm surge to the Hawaiian Islands. Walaka was the nineteenth named storm, twelfth hurricane, eighth major hurricane, and second Category 5 hurricane of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season.
Although the hurricane did not impact any major landmasses, it passed very close to the unpopulated Johnston Atoll as a strong Category 4 hurricane, where a hurricane warning was issued in advance of the storm. Four scientists there intended to ride out the storm on the island, but were evacuated before the storm hit. Walaka neared the far Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, but weakened considerably as it did so. East Island in the French Frigate Shoals suffered a direct hit and was completely destroyed. The storm caused significant damage to the nesting grounds for multiple endangered species; coral reefs in the region suffered considerable damage, displacing the local fish population. Several dozen people had to be rescued off the southern shore of Oahu as the storm brought high surf to the main Hawaiian Islands.
Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Regiment, nominated by Hog Farm
Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Regiment was a cavalry regiment of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Originally formed as Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Battalion, the unit consisted of men recruited in Missouri by Lieutenant Colonel Alonzo W. Slayback during Price's Raid in 1864. The battalion's first action was at the Battle of Pilot Knob on September 27; it later participated in actions at Sedalia, Lexington, and the Little Blue River. In October, the unit was used to find an alternate river crossing during the Battle of the Big Blue River. Later that month, Slayback's unit saw action at the battles of Westport, Marmiton River, and Second Newtonia. The battalion was briefly furloughed in Arkansas before rejoining Major General Sterling Price in Texas in December. Probably around February 1865, the battalion reached official regimental strength after more recruits joined. On June 2, 1865, the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department surrendered. The men of the regiment were located at different points in Louisiana and Arkansas when they were paroled twelve days later, leading the historian James McGhee to believe that the regiment had disbanded before the surrender.
John Jackson's portrait of Vincent (c.1820)
George Vincent (painter), nominated by Amitchell125
George Vincent (baptised 27 June 1796 – c.1832) was an English landscape artist who produced watercolours, etchings and oil paintings. He is considered by art historians to be one of the most talented of the Norwich School of painters, a group of artists connected by location and personal and professional relationships, who were mainly inspired by the Norfolk countryside. Vincent's work was founded on the Dutch school of landscape painting as well as the style of John Crome, also of the Norwich School. The school's reputation outside East Anglia in the 1820s was based largely upon the works of Vincent and his friend James Stark.
The son of a weaver, Vincent was educated at Norwich Grammar School and afterwards apprenticed to Crome. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, British Institution, and elsewhere. From 1811 until 1831 he showed at the Norwich Society of Artists, exhibiting more than a 100 pictures of Norfolk landscapes and marine works. By 1818 he had relocated to London, where in 1821 he married the supposedly wealthy daughter of a surgeon. There he obtained the patronage of wealthy clients, yet struggled financially. The purchase of an expensive house, combined with a tendency towards drink, exacerbated his financial problems and led to his incarceration in the Fleet Prison for debt in 1824. Before his release in 1827 he had resumed his connection with the Norwich Society of Artists, albeit with a much lower output of work.
After 1831, Vincent disappeared. He was never found, despite attempts by his family to locate him, and his whereabouts after this date remain uncertain. His death may have occurred before April 1832, perhaps in Bath. His picture Greenwich Hospital from the River, which was shown in London three decades after his death, caused renewed interest in his paintings and helped to establish his reputation as a leading member of the Norwich School. The art historian Herbert Minton Cundall wrote in the 1920s that had Vincent "not given way to intemperate habits he would probably have ranked amongst the foremost of British landscape painters".
Hitler's prophecy, nominated by buidhe
During a speech at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, Adolf Hitler predicted "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe":

If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

These words were similar to comments that Hitler had previously made to foreign politicians in private meetings after the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938. The speech was made in the context of Nazi attempts to increase Jewish emigration from Germany, before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.
Allusions to Hitler's prophecy by Nazi leaders and in Nazi propaganda were common from 30 January 1941, when Hitler mentioned it again in a speech. The prophecy took on new meaning with the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the German declaration of war against the United States that December, both of which facilitated an acceleration of the systematic mass murder of Jews. In late 1941, Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels stated that the prophecy was being fulfilled while justifying the mass deportation of Jews from Germany. On 30 September 1942, Hitler referenced the prophecy in another speech, which was adapted into a November issue of Parole der Woche titled "They Will Stop Laughing!!!" Hitler continued to invoke the prophecy as the war went against Germany and referenced it in his last will and testament. Frequently used by Nazi leaders when alluding to their systematic murder of Jews, the prophecy became a leitmotif of the Final Solution and is the best-known phrase from Hitler's speeches.
The prophecy is cited by historians as an example of Nazi belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that supposedly started the war. Despite its vagueness—the prophecy does not explain how the "annihilation" will come about—it is also cited as evidence that Germans were aware that Jews were being exterminated.
Part of the sumptuous mosaic floor by Ludwig Oppenheimer in Honan Chapel
Honan Chapel, nominated by Ceoil
The Honan Chapel, formally Saint Finbarr's Collegiate Chapel or The Honan Hostel Chapel, is a small Catholic church built in the Celtic-Romanesque revival style on the grounds of University College Cork, Ireland. Designed in 1914, the building was completed in 1916 and fully furnished by 1917. Its architecture and fittings are representative of the Celtic Revival movement which evoked the Insular style found in Ireland and Britain between the 7th and 12th centuries.
Its construction was initiated and supervised by the Dublin solicitor, John O'Connell, a leading member of the Celtic Revival and Arts and Crafts movements. He was funded by Isabella Honan (1861–1913), the last member of a wealthy Cork family, who made a significant donation towards the construction of the chapel. O'Connell oversaw both the architectural design and the commissioning of its exterior carvings and interior furnishings. He closely guided the architect James F. McMullen and the builders John Sisk and Sons, and hired the craftsmen and artists involved in its artwork, many of whom incorporated elements of the Art Nouveau style. In 1986, the sculptor Imogen Stuart was commissioned to oversee the building and installation of a new altar and other carvings, furnishings and fittings.
The Honan Chapel is known for its interior which is designed and fitted in a traditional Irish style, but with an appreciation of contemporary trends in international art. Its furnishings include the mosaic flooring, altar plate, metalwork and enamels, liturgical textiles and sanctuary furnishings, and nineteen stained glass windows; fifteen show Irish saints, the remainder show Jesus, Mary, St. Joseph and St. John. Eleven were designed and installed by Harry Clarke, while the other eight were designed by A. E. Child, Catherine O'Brien and Ethel Rhind of An Túr Gloine cooperative studio.
"Candy" (Foxy Brown song), nominated by Aoba47
"Candy" is a song by American rapper Foxy Brown featuring Kelis, released by Def Jam on August 21, 2001 as the third single from her third studio album Broken Silence (2001). A dance-pop track, it was produced by the Neptunes duo Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, who co-wrote the song alongside Brown and Juan Manuel Cordova. The song is about cunnilingus. While this sexually explicit content marked a continuity with Brown's earlier material, it set "Candy" apart from the rest of Broken Silence, which tended toward more introspective subject matters. According to critics, the single has elements of 1980s music, dance music, and new wave music and a more pop sound than Brown's previous albums.
"Candy" received a positive response upon release and in retrospective reviews. Music critics compared it to music by other artists, specifically Lil' Kim, while scholars analyzed its representation of black female sexuality. In the US, the song appeared on Billboard charts, reaching the top ten on the Hot Rap Songs chart. "Candy" appeared on several soundtracks in the early 2000s; it featured in the television series Dark Angel and the films Friday After Next and The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Portrait of John Neal by Sarah Miriam Peale, circa 1823
Portrait of John Neal by Sarah Miriam Peale, circa 1823
John Neal (writer), nominated by Dugan Murphy
John Neal (August 25, 1793 – June 20, 1876) was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s in the United States and Great Britain, championing American literary nationalism and regionalism in their earliest stages. Neal advanced the development of American art, fought for women's rights, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement.
The first author to use natural diction and a pioneer of colloquialism, John Neal is the first author to use "son-of-a-bitch" in a work of fiction. He attained his greatest literary achievements between 1817 and 1835, during which time he was the first American published in British literary journals, author of the first history of American literature, America's first art critic, and a forerunner of the American Renaissance. As one of the first men to advocate women's rights in the US and the first American lecturer on the issue, for over fifty years he supported female writers and organizers, affirmed intellectual equality between men and women, fought coverture laws against women's economic rights, and demanded suffrage, equal pay, and better education for women. He was the first American to establish a public gymnasium in the US and championed athletics to regulate violent tendencies with which he struggled throughout his life.
John Early (educator), nominated by Ergo Sum
John Early (July 1, 1814 – May 23, 1873) was an Irish-American Catholic priest and Jesuit educator who was the president of the College of the Holy Cross and Georgetown University, as well as the founder and first president of Loyola College in Maryland. Early became president of the College of the Holy Cross in 1848, where he unsuccessfully petitioned the state legislature to charter the school. Four years later, he was charged with establishing Loyola College in Maryland, which was intended to educate the lay students who attended St. Mary's Seminary and College, which the Sulpicians sought to keep as a seminary only. While also serving as the first pastor of St. Ignatius Church, he oversaw the early years of Loyola College. In 1858, Early left to become president of Georgetown University. During the Civil War, instruction continued uninterrupted, despite intermittent occupation by the Union Army and dwindling enrollment. Early then returned to Loyola College in 1866 as president for four years, where he resumed the annual conferral of degrees. In 1870, he once again became president of Georgetown University. He died suddenly in his third year of office.
1989 (Taylor Swift album), nominated by HĐ
1989 is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 27, 2014, through Big Machine Records. Inspired by 1980s synth-pop to create a record that shifted her sound and image from country-oriented to mainstream pop, Swift enlisted Max Martin as co-executive producer, and titled her fifth album after her birth year as a symbolic rebirth of her image and artistry. The album's synth-pop sound is characterized by heavy synthesizers, programmed drums, and processed backing vocals. Swift's songs were inspired primarily by her personal relationships, which had been a trademark of her songwriting. The songs on 1989 express lighthearted perspectives towards failed romance, departing from her previous antagonistic attitude. Contemporary critics praised Swift's songwriting for offering emotional engagement that they found uncommon in the mainstream pop scene. Meanwhile, the synth-pop production raised questions regarding Swift's authenticity as a lyricist. The album appeared on several publications' lists of the best albums of the 2010s and featured in Rolling Stone's 2020 revision of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. At the 58th Grammy Awards in 2016, 1989 won Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album, making Swift the first female solo artist to win Album of the Year twice. And speaking of appearing twice, "Blank Space" - also a featured article that appeared in this issue - is one of the songs that appears on 1989.
Walter Cunningham during the Apollo 7 mission
Apollo 7, nominated by Wehwalt
Apollo 7 was an October 1968 space mission carried out by the United States. It was the first crewed flight in NASA's Apollo program, and saw the resumption of human spaceflight by the agency after the fire that killed the three Apollo 1 astronauts in January 1967. The Apollo 7 crew was commanded by Walter M. Schirra, with command module pilot Donn F. Eisele and lunar module pilot R. Walter Cunningham (so designated even though Apollo 7 did not carry a lunar module).
Apollo 7 was launched on October 11, 1968, from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida, and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean eleven days later. Extensive testing of the CSM took place, and also the first live television broadcast from an American spacecraft. Despite tension between the crew and ground controllers, the mission was a complete technical success, giving NASA the confidence to send Apollo 8 into orbit around the Moon two months later. In part because of these tensions, none of the crew flew in space again, though Schirra had already announced he would retire from NASA after the flight. Apollo 7 fulfilled Apollo 1's mission of testing the CSM in low Earth orbit, and was a significant step forward towards NASA's goal of landing astronauts on the Moon.
2002 Football League First Division play-off Final, nominated by The Rambling Man
The 2002 Football League First Division play-off Final was an association football match between Birmingham City and Norwich City held on 12 May 2002 at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. It was held to determine the third and final team to gain promotion from the Football League First Division, the second tier of English football, to the Premiership. The game ended goalless in regular time sending the match into extra time. Seconds into the first half, Iwan Roberts put Norwich ahead with a header from an Alex Notman cross. Eleven minutes later, Birmingham's Geoff Horsfield scored the equaliser. Stern John nodded the ball across the Norwich penalty area allowing Horsfield to head the ball in, making it 1–1. No further goals were scored, leading to a penalty shootout. Philip Mulryne's spot kick was saved by Birmingham City's goalkeeper Nico Vaesen, while Daryl Sutch's strike missed. Birmingham scored all their penalties and Darren Carter took the winning spot-kick, ending the game at 4–2.
Battle of Vrbanja Bridge, nominated by Peacemaker67
The Battle of Vrbanja Bridge was an armed confrontation which occurred on 27 May 1995, between United Nations (UN) peacekeepers from the French Army, and elements of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The fighting occurred at the Vrbanja Bridge crossing of the Miljacka river in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian War. The VRS seized the French-manned United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) observation posts on both ends of the bridge, taking twelve French peacekeepers hostage. Ten were taken away, but two were kept at the bridge as human shields.
A platoon of 30 French peacekeepers led by then-Captain François Lecointre re-captured the bridge with the support of 70 French infantrymen and direct fire from armoured vehicles. During the French assault, elements of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) opened fire on the VRS-held observation posts on their own initiative, accidentally wounding one French hostage. Two French soldiers were killed during the battle, 10 were wounded, and one died of their wounds later that day. The VRS casualties were four killed, three wounded and four captured. Following the battle, VRS forces were observed to be less likely to engage French UN peacekeepers deployed in the city. In 2017, Lecointre, now an army general, was appointed French Chief of the Defence Staff.
Emma Louisa Turner, nominated by Jimfbleak
Emma Louisa Turner (9 June 1867 – 13 August 1940) was an English ornithologist and pioneering bird photographer. Due to family responsibilities, she did not take up photography until she was aged 34, after meeting the wildlife photographer Richard Kearton. She joined the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in 1901, and by 1904 she had started to give talks illustrated with her own photographic slides; by 1908, when aged 41, she was established as a professional lecturer.
Turner spent part of each year in Norfolk, and her 1911 image of a nestling bittern in Norfolk was the first evidence of the species' return to the United Kingdom as a breeding bird after its local extinction in the late 1800s. She also travelled widely in the United Kingdom and abroad photographing birds.
She wrote eight books and many journal and magazine articles, and her picture of a great crested grebe led to her being awarded the Gold Medal of the RPS. She was one of the first women to be elected to fellowship of the Linnaean Society and the first female honorary member of the British Ornithologists' Union. Though not a graduate, she was also an honorary member of the British Federation of University Women.
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14 featured pictures were promoted this period.

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One featured topic was promoted this period, due to the percentage of featured articles within it increasing to the required number. It was originally promoted as a Good Topic through a nomination by Peacemaker67 in 2017.

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Ships of the Royal Yugoslav Navy
36 articles
Dalmacija
Kumbor
Dubrovnik
Beograd-class destroyer
Beograd
Zagreb
Ljubljana
Nada
Beli Orao
Galeb-class minelayer
Malinska-class minelayer
Schichau-class minesweeper
250t-class torpedo boat
T1
T2
T3
T4
T5
T6
T7
T8
Kaiman-class torpedo boat
Uskok-class torpedo boat
Orjen-class torpedo boat
Zmaj
Hrabri-class submarine
Hrabri
Nebojša
Osvetnik-class submarine
Osvetnik
Smeli
Vardar
Sava
Drava
Morava
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12 featured lists were promoted this period.

The black mongoose is one of the herpestids.
List of herpestids, nominated by PresN
Herpestidae is a family of mammals in the order Carnivora, composed of the mongooses and the meerkat. A member of this family is called a mongoose or a herpestid. They are widespread primarily throughout Africa and south Asia, and are found primarily in forests, savannas, shrublands, and grasslands, though some species can be found in wetlands or deserts. Most mongooses are 30–60 cm (12–24 in) long, plus a 20–40 cm (8–16 in) tail, though the Ethiopian dwarf mongoose can be as small as 18 cm (7 in) plus a 12 cm (5 in) tail, and the white-tailed mongoose can be up to 104 cm (41 in) plus a 47 cm (14 in) tail. Most species do not have population estimates, though one, the Liberian mongoose, is classified as vulnerable with a population size of around 5,000. No herpestid species have been domesticated.
The 34 species of Herpestidae are split into 14 genera within 2 subfamilies: Herpestinae, comprising 23 extant species that are native to southern Europe, Africa and Asia, and Mungotinae, comprising 11 extant species native to Africa. Extinct species have also been placed into both subfamiles, though some older extinct species have not been categorized into a subfamily. Around ten extinct Herpestidae species have been discovered, though due to ongoing research and discoveries the exact number and categorization is not fixed. Herpestidae is believed to have diverged from the existing Feliformia suborder around 21.8 million years ago in the Early Miocene.
List of international goals scored by Andriy Shevchenko, nominated by KingSkyLord
Andriy Shevchenko is a Ukrainian former professional footballer who represented the Ukraine national football team as a striker for 17 years from 1995 to 2012. He is the Ukraine national team's all-time top goalscorer with 48 goals in 111 appearances, and the second most-capped Ukrainian international behind Anatoliy Tymoshchuk (144). He has represented the nation in two international tournaments, the 2006 FIFA World Cup and the 2012 UEFA European Championship, and participated in each of his country's qualifying campaigns during his international career.
Louis Schwitzer Award, nominated by MWright96
The Louis Schwitzer Award (also called the Louis H. Schwitzer Award for Engineering Innovation and Excellence) is presented by the Indiana Section of SAE International to an engineer or team of engineers "for their innovative design and engineering excellence" and acknowledges "engineers with the courage and conviction to explore and develop new concepts in racing technology" in racing vehicles for the Indianapolis 500. The accolade also distinguishes engineers who were most responsible for designing and developing the wnning concept complying to IndyCar Series technical regulations, and awards "functional and recent permutations" that improve energy efficiency, performance or safety in chassis, drive train profiles by "emphasizing competitive potential along with future automotive industry possibilities." Although the award specifically recognizes new concepts, experimental ideas arising from previous winners are considered if the development in engineering improves it.
During the 53 years the award has been presented, there have been a total of 98 recipients. The inaugural winner was Andy Granatelli, who developed the gas-turbine run STP-Paxton Turbocar for the 1967 event. The award has been presented for two concepts in a single year just once: in 1977, to Bob Bubenik and Bruce Crower for developing the automatic clutch and flat-eight engine, respectively. Two years later, John Barnard and Jim Hill were the first team to be recognized for designing the Chaparal 2K chassis for that year's Indianapolis 500. Since then, another 24 teams have been recognized. Firestone tire engineer Cara Adams became the first female recipient in the 2019 edition. The award has been presented posthumously once, to Don Burgoon in the 2017 race. The 2020 winners were Tino Belli, Marco Bertolini, Ed Collings, Craig McCarthy, Antonio Montanari, Bill Pappas, Stefan Seidel and Brent Wright, who developed the IndyCar Aeroscreen cockpit protection device.
List of accolades received by 1917 (2019 film) , nominated by Birdienest81
1917 is a 2019 epic war film co-written and directed by Sam Mendes. The film stars George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Based in part on an account told to Mendes by his paternal grandfather, Alfred Mendes, it chronicles the story of two young British soldiers in the spring of 1917 during World War I, who are given a mission to deliver a message warning of an ambush, soon after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line during Operation Alberich. Thomas Newman composed the film's musical score, while Roger Deakins was the cinematographer. Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales were responsible for the production design, and Scott Millan, Oliver Tarney, Rachael Tate, Mark Taylor, and Stuart Wilson were responsible for the sound effects.
The film garnered awards and nominations in a variety of categories with particular praise for its direction, cinematography, sound effects, score, and visual effects. It garnered ten nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director for Mendes. The film went on to win three awards, including Best Cinematography (Deakins), Best Sound Mixing (Taylor and Wilson), and Best Visual Effects. At the 73rd British Academy Film Awards, 1917 received nine nominations and won seven awards including Best Film, Best Direction, BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography, and BAFTA Award for Best Production Design. The film received three nominations at the 77th Golden Globe Awards, winning two, including Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director.
List of Most Played Juke Box Folk Records number ones of 1947, nominated by ChrisTheDude
From 1944 until 1957, Billboard magazine published a chart that ranked the most-played country music songs in jukeboxes in the United States, based on a survey of over 3000 operators "in all sections of the country"; until 1948 it was the magazine's only country music chart. In 1947, nine songs topped the chart, which was published under the title Most Played Juke Box Folk Records with the exception of the issues of Billboard dated September 6 through November 1, when it was titled Most Played Juke Box Hillbilly Records. The Juke Box Folk chart is considered the start of the lineage of the magazine's current country music songs charts. The longest unbroken run at number one in 1947 was the fifteen consecutive weeks achieved by Tex Williams with "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)", which was atop the chart from July until October. This was the first chart-topper for Williams in his own right, although he had been the uncredited vocalist on Western swing bandleader Spade Cooley's 1945 number one "Shame on You".
Reynolds at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con
Promoting Deadpool 2 at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con
Ryan Reynolds filmography, nominated by Cowlibob
Ryan Reynolds is a Canadian actor who has appeared in films, television series, videos, and video games. Reynolds made his acting debut on television in the teen drama Fifteen in 1991. Two years later, he made his feature film debut by playing an orphan raised in India, who is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi to go on a hunger strike in a small town in Canada in Ordinary Magic (1993). Reynolds had a recurring role on the television show The Odyssey (1993). He followed this with minor appearances on The X-Files (1996), and the television film Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996). His breakthrough role was as medical student Michael "Berg" Bergen in the sitcom Two Guys and a Girl. He played a slacker in National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002), and vampire hunter Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity (2004) with Wesley Snipes. Reynolds appeared in lead roles in the commercially successful romantic comedies Just Friends (2005), Definitely, Maybe (2008), and The Proposal (2009). In 2010, he played a military contractor who is captured by terrorists in the psychological thriller Buried. The following year, Reynolds starred in the title role of the superhero film Green Lantern which received a generally negative reception from the critics and performed poorly at the box office leading to a decline in his career. Reynolds experienced a career turnaround when he played the titular antihero in the superhero film Deadpool (2016), which he also produced. It received generally positive reviews from the critics especially for his irreverent comedic performance, and Reynolds garnered a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The film was also a commercial success, grossing a worldwide total of over $782 million at the box-office. He reprised the role in its 2018 sequel Deadpool 2 which received generally positive reviews from critics, and was a commercial success. The following year, he voiced Pikachu in the film Detective Pikachu (2019).
List of international goals scored by Ali Daei, nominated by Mojtaba2361
Ali Daei is a former Iranian professional association football forward who holds the record of the all-time men's international top goalscorer, with 109 goals in 149 appearances between 1993 and 2006. His achievement is listed in Guinness World Records. On 28 November 2003, in an Asian Cup qualifier in Tehran against Lebanon, he scored his 85th international goal, elevating him past Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskás to take the lead of the all-time list of scorers in international matches.
He has scored eight international hat-tricks. On 10 June 1996, he scored his first international hat-tricks, in an 8–0 win over Nepal at Azadi Stadium in Tehran. On 17 November 2004, he scored the last one against Laos in a 2006 FIFA World Cup Qualification match, giving him 102 goals and making him the first male player to score 100 goals in international football.
He scored 36 goals in FIFA World Cup qualification matches, 23 goals in AFC Asian Cup qualification games and 9 goals in Asian Games, as well as 14 goals in AFC Asian Cup Finals. The remainder of his goals, 27, were scored in friendly matches. He scored eight goals two opposition teams, the Maldives and Laos, his highest tally against any country. He scored 44 international goals at the Azadi Stadium, his most at a single ground.
List of Burnley F.C. seasons, nominated by WA8MTWAYC
Burnley Football Club, an English association football club based in Burnley, Lancashire, was founded on 18 May 1882 as Burnley Rovers. The suffix "Rovers" was soon dropped, and the club was simply known as "Burnley Football Club" at the time of its first match on 10 August 1882. For the first six years of its existence, there was no league football, so matches were arranged on an ad hoc basis, supplemented by cup competitions organised at local and national level. The club won its first trophy in 1883: the Dr Dean Cup, a knockout competition between amateur clubs in the local area. Burnley turned professional at the end of 1883, first entered the FA Cup in the 1885–86 season, and were one of the 12 founding members of the Football League in 1888. The team have played in the top four tiers of English football from 1888 to the present day.
List of awards and nominations received by The West Wing, nominated by RunningTiger123
The West Wing is an American political drama television series that aired on NBC from September 22, 1999, to May 14, 2006, broadcasting 156 episodes over seven seasons. Created by Aaron Sorkin and produced by John Wells Productions and Warner Bros. Television, the show follows the lives of White House staffers during the fictional Democratic presidential administration of Josiah Bartlet.
Overall, the show won 99 awards from 285 nominations, including 27 Primetime Emmy Awards from 96 nominations. It was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for all seven seasons it aired and won in each of its first four seasons; it is tied for the record for most wins in the category. By the end of its run, it was tied with Hill Street Blues for the most Emmys won by a drama series, a record later surpassed by Game of Thrones. The show also won nine Emmys for its first season, setting a record for most Emmys won by a series in one year that stood until Game of Thrones earned twelve Emmys in 2015. In addition, it won two Golden Globe Awards, two Directors Guild of America Awards, four Producers Guild of America Awards, six Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Writers Guild of America Awards, among others. The series also received two Peabody Awards in 1999 and 2000.
The Houston toad, the state amphibian of Texas
List of amphibians of Texas, nominated by HAL333
Over sixty amphibian species are found in the American state of Texas, including forty-three species of frog and twenty-six species of salamander. Four species are categorized as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature: the Barton Springs salamander, the Texas blind salamander, the black-spotted newt, and the Houston toad, which is also the state amphibian of Texas. Furthermore, Texas law protects several native amphibians, designating eleven species as threatened within the state and four others as endangered.
The varying geography of Texas, the second largest state in the United States, provides a variety of habitats for amphibians, including swamps and the Piney Woods in the east, rocky hills and limestone karst in the central Hill Country of the Edwards Plateau, desert in the south and west, mountains in the far west (the Trans-Pecos), and grassland prairie in the north, also known as the Panhandle. This vast contrast in biomes makes Texas home to a wide variety of herpetofauna.
List of Billboard number-one country songs of 1948, nominated by ChrisTheDude
In 1948, Billboard magazine published two charts specifically covering the top-performing country music songs in the United States. At the start of the year, Billboard's sole ranking of country music recordings was based on the number of times a song had been played in jukeboxes. The Most Played Juke Box Folk Records chart had been published since 1944 and was compiled based on a weekly survey of "a selected group of juke box operators whose locations require folk records". In May, the magazine added a second country music chart, the Best Selling Folk Retail Records listing, based on a similar survey of "a selected group of retail stores, the majority of whose customers purchase folk records". The Juke Box Folk chart was discontinued in 1957 and the Best Sellers chart the following year; both are considered part of the lineage of the magazine's current country music songs charts.
List of plant genus names (D–K), nominated by Dank
Since the first printing of Carl Linnaeus's Species Plantarum in 1753, related plant species have been grouped according to genus (plural genera). These genera have been catalogued in a variety of works, including Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners. William Stearn (1911–2001) was one of the pre-eminent British botanists of the 20th century: a Librarian of the Royal Horticultural Society, a president of the Linnean Society and the original drafter of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants.



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2020-12-28

2020 wraps up

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By Igordebraga, Benmite, Kingsif, and Mcrsftdog
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga (November 22 to December 19), Benmite (November 22 to 28), Kingsif (December 6 to 12) and Mcrsftdog (December 6 to 19).

In the last report of the year that went up in flames (next one is a 2020 recap!), there's still fallout of the election and Netflix's shows on queens (both British and chess), though every top article is an unrelated subject. And no pandemic in sight, as that vaccine can't come soon enough!

Santa Maradona priez pour moi (November 22 to 28)

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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 22 to 28, 2020)
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Diego Maradona 5,362,266 2020 already had the death of the father of the greatest Argentinian woman, and now the country's greatest sports hero is gone too. "El Pibe de Oro" was an idol for Boca Juniors, FC Barcelona and S.S.C. Napoli, and also single-handedly helped Argentina win the 1986 FIFA World Cup (the "handedly" part being true of one of those goals, which "Dieguito" claimed to have scored with "my head and the hand of God"), making him the second best footballer ever, enough to have his own religion! His death at the age of 60 certainly owed to decades of substance abuse, particularly cocaine.
2 Donald Trump 2,732,729 Ugh. Come on. Again?

I mean, what more is there to say? The guy lost. You all know who he is.

The one light at the end of the tunnel of Trump's big mouth that we saw this week was that his administration finally agreed to let Biden begin transitioning into his role as POTUS, but other than that, same old stuff.

3 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon 2,006,553 Few shows inspire people to research its subjects like the Netflix show The Crown. And we start off with four women, with only the protagonist herself, HM The Queen, not being dead in 2020. And most views actually came for her late sister (died in 2002 of a stroke), though Elizabeth surpassed her famed daughter-in-law (expect in the next seasons that fatal 1997 car crash – even if showrunner Peter Morgan already made a movie about it) and the UK's first female Prime Minister (also a stroke, in 2013).
4 Elizabeth II 1,940,571
5 Diana, Princess of Wales 1,726,210
6 Margaret Thatcher 1,617,267
7 The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) 1,355,752 It's also on Netflix and has a royal title, but has no aristocrats, only chess!
8 Charles, Prince of Wales 1,350,155 Back to The Crown, only this time with men, #4's first born (played by Josh O'Connor), and her husband (Tobias Menzies).
9 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 1,126,458
10 Tony Blinken 994,625 After serving in the position directly under the Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017, Mr. Blinken has risen exactly one rank to become the United States Secretary of State under 46. Yippee!

Oddly enough, this page is actually a redirect to the main page for the next United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, which shows up all the way down at number 338 on the list this week. Must be pretty popular for so many people to personally know him as Tony. Maybe the Tonez knows so many people because of his musical alter ego, ABlinken... no, seriously, that's not a joke!

Always should be someone you really love (November 29 to December 5)

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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 29 to December 5, 2020)
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Elliot Page 5,205,375 The Academy Award for Best Actress nomination earned by Juno is now held by an actor, Elliot (né Ellen) Page, who has announced that he is transgender. Just hope this also doesn't change the gender of Vanya/Number 7, because The Umbrella Academy is complicated enough as is.
2 Donald Trump 1,374,135 Trump hasn't had a personal history with #1, unlike his biggest fan, who most of Brazil if not the world hopes will also be defeated in an election, so his high views are probably still propelled by how he's not helping the presidential transition.
3 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon 1,360,816 In the exact same spot as last week, two royal siblings showcased in The Crown.
4 Elizabeth II 1,349,683
5 The Undoing (miniseries) 1,185,175 HBO finished off this mystery miniseries starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant.
6 Jake Paul 1,162,541 Boxing might have taken a backseat to MMA in recent years, but still has big events that bring in views every now and then. Weirdly enough, one such moment was this YouTuber beating up an athlete of another sport as the opening card for two old champions duking it out.
7 Emma Portner 1,130,091 #1's wife, a dancer and choreographer who has supported the Ellen-to-Elliot announcement.
8 The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) 1,114,652 After weeks seeing this Netflix show high on the report, this here writer finally gave it a shot, and was highly enthralled by the story of a weird girl who becomes addicted to chess – which is filmed in a way that seems a high-octane sport instead of two people moving wooden pieces in a board – and also tranquilizers, booze and a few other recreative substances.
9 Diego Maradona 1,096,747 To mourn this football legend, some have used this song, which even had the adequacy that some people mistook Maradona for Madonna:
Don't Cry for Me, Argentina
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don't keep your distance
10 Diana, Princess of Wales 937,653 The ever-popular "People's Princess" appears in The Crown, which doesn't hide some of her hardships, such as eating disorders and knowing Prince Charles wasn't entirely over his ex.

Was a long and dark December (December 6 to 12, 2020)

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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (December 6 to 12, 2020)
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Cyberpunk 2077 1,596,154
TRIPLE A GAME was released this week, and it was the topic on everyone's mind. While there was plenty of hype – partially based on HOLLYWOOD ACTOR's (pictured) appearance – players found that the game didn't reach their expectations. There've been plenty of reports of DEVELOPER forcing its workers "crunch", which might've caused a few bugs to make their way through.
2 Selena 1,230,925 Netflix, powering through the pandemic, made a biopic of this iconic Texicana singer. It hasn't been received well, but at least the family think actress Christian Serratos (she played the quirky friend that wasn't Anna Kendrick in Twilight) did a good job.
3 Tom Lister Jr. 1,225,322 "Tiny" Lister, an actor (Friday, The Fifth Element) and wrestler ("Zeus," "Z-Gangsta") passed away on December 10. He'd recovered from a bout of COVID-19 earlier in the year, but he may have contracted it a second time.
4 Elizabeth II 1,137,458 She had a lovely phone conversation with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern this week. Hey, one Commonwealth leader is competent. There's also The Crown.
5 Donald Trump 1,089,816 Donald Trump did a very good job as president of the United States – such a good job that he lost re-election a month ago. While the Electoral College is set to vote on December 14, Republicans had a plan: just get Texas to sue Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan, invalidating their electoral votes. Texas v. Pennsylvania was rejected for lack of standing, but Trump still refuses to concede.
6 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon 1,014,231 Seeing Helena Bonham Carter portray #4's late sister in The Crown is still a reason to bring viewers to her page.
7 The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) 884,099 Unfortunately not a ploy to replace Johnson.
8 Deaths in 2020 828,311
To compensate a lack of Diana in this week's Top 10:[a]
"Now you belong to heaven
And the stars spell out your name"
9 Barbara Windsor 751,841 One of the preeminent stage actresses of the 1960s, she won a Tony in her only U.S. role. Despite having the name Windsor she's not part of the Royal Family, and is best known for her roles as an East End girl. Gritty social realism plays by Joan Littlewood and television soap EastEnders were her stomping ground for many years, split apart by a long-running gig in the classic British comedy Carry On films and affairs with two of the Krays before she knew they were running the London mafia. She died on December 10, shortly after being moved to a care home. Go on, Babs, wot a life.
10 Chuck Yeager 734,641 Thanks to The Right Stuff, I know he's first man to break the speed of sound. And 73 years after that flight, Yeager died at the age of 97.
  1. ^ And it will be a very sad day when the responsible for this song enters one of those death lists.

Let's hear it for Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars (December 13 to 19, 2020)

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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (December 13 to 19, 2020)
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 The Mandalorian 978,727 The Baby Yoda show premiered its season finale on December 18. A trio of sibling series were announced on December 10: The Acolyte, Ahsoka, and Rangers of the New Republic – which will culminate in some sort of "climactic story event."
2 Cyberpunk 2077 958,425 Cyberpunk 2077 has been pulled from the PlayStation Store, and Sony is issuing refunds. Last-gen console versions of the game were not sent out to reviewers prior to release, and it turned out there was a simple reason for it: they weren't done.
3 Deaths in 2020 829,478 On my deathbed, I will pray to the gods and the angels
Like a pagan, to anyone who will take me to heaven...
4 Elizabeth II 784,571 Season four of The Crown premiered over a month ago, but its characters continue to chart. Next week, she'll have another reason to be on here – the Royal Christmas Message.
5 Timothée Chalamet 781,296 Chalamet hosted Saturday Night Live on December 12. He and Pete Davidson appeared in a sketch as white rappers singing a song called "Yeet," which has apparently gone viral on TikTok.
6 The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) 721,020 It's sort of like a sports biopic, except the sport is moving pieces on a board and the subject never existed. This one actually premiered two months ago and is still in the top 10, which is especially impressive when compared to the dozen or so original series that premiered in that time period.
7 Peter Sutcliffe 712,482 The Yorkshire Ripper passed away from COVID-19 complications on November 13, but it seems like most of the readers came from a Netflix docuseries released this month.
8 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon 690,541 Elizabeth II's late sister is still getting that Crown bump.
9 Richard Jewell 683,943 Manhunt: Deadly Games made its way onto Netflix this past week, telling the story of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Jewell was a security guard at the park, alerted authorities about the bomb, and was soon labelled as the FBI's top suspect – despite the bombings actually being carried out by Rudolph.
10 Eric Rudolph 660,290

Exclusions

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  • 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.



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2020-12-28

What Wikipedia saw during election week in the U.S., and what we’re doing next

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By Ryan Merkley
A sign with the U.S. flag, the word VOTE and a blue arrow
Sign for early voting in California, 2008
Ryan Merkley is Chief of Staff at the Wikimedia Foundation. He originally published this report on December 17 on The Wikimedia Foundation - News. It is licensed CC-BY SA 3.0.

Election Day in the United States was a critical moment for the country, with impacts that will extend well beyond one election cycle. For many Americans, it was an anxiety-inducing event. While voters waited – and waited – for the results to come in, Wikipedia editors across the globe stood ready.

As one of the world’s most trusted resources for knowledge, it's essential that Wikipedia provide its users with reliable information. In 2020, a high-stakes election and a deadly pandemic were just two of the many reasons that made that mission more important than ever.

That's why the Wikimedia Foundation took significant steps to protect Wikipedia from election-related disinformation. For the first time, a disinformation task force worked closely with Wikipedia's volunteer editors to identify potential information attacks targeting the integrity of the election before they could spread.

Wikipedia’s biggest worry wasn't vandalism – insults or pranks directed at candidates or biased campaign editing, as those types of changes are typically caught and reverted quickly. We were more concerned about the sort of activity that would disrupt the elections – voter suppression tactics affecting information about polling station locations or other topics that could undermine confidence in the facts.

In the end, Wikipedia dealt with only a small number of events relating to election influence activities; neither the Foundation's task force members or Wikipedia's admins saw evidence of large-scale state-sponsored disinformation.

  • Overall, Wikipedia protected about 2,000 election-related pages. Restrictions were put in place so that many of the most important election-related pages, such as the main page about the U.S. 2020 Presidential Election, could be edited only by the most trusted and experienced Wikipedia editors.
  • More than 56,000 volunteer editors monitored the protected pages via real-time feeds of pages they "watch" for new edits. Those editors were distributed across the globe. Someone was always vigilant, no matter the hour.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation's disinformation task force recorded and evaluated 18 events. As always, they worked closely with volunteers, who lead the process of editing and evaluating. All of those edits were quickly reverted by Wikipedia's community.
  • Nearly 800 edits to election-related Wikipedia pages were reverted by the community between November 3 and November 7.
  • The main U.S. Election article saw just 33 reversions during the same time frame — a testament to the community's preparedness and the defenses Wikipedia editors put in place.

Wikipedia's editorial standards played a major role in keeping the platform free of disinformation during the U.S. elections. Editors draw from accurate and verifiable sources – not the latest breaking news, or statements on social media. And they collaborate so that information on Wikipedia reflects multiple editors' areas of expertise.

For instance, the community kept a close eye on the Wikipedia entry for Benford's law, a statistical theory that was used to drive false allegations of voter fraud. Wikipedia’s community of mathematicians coordinated with political editors to make sure the Benford's Law article wasn't used to drive disinformation that would have undermined confidence in the election results.

This sort of interdisciplinary collaboration is possible because of Wikipedia's uniquely collective nature. Users see only the latest versions of articles, and they can investigate how pages have changed over time. That transparency and consistency makes Wikipedia special – there are no different timelines or feeds here. Ads and algorithms don't influence what users see, either.

The U.S. elections may be over, but the work doesn't end here. In the coming weeks, our task force will conduct a deeper analysis with community editors to learn more about what worked well and what didn't, to inform practices for similar events in the future.

The solutions are not simple – they'll require an approach that considers the entire ecosystem of knowledge – from education, to journalistic practice, to platform response. We're committed to doing our part to protect the integrity of information on the Wikimedia projects, and to support communities everywhere who want to share in the sum of all knowledge.

To help meet this goal, we hope to invest in resources that we can share with international Wikipedia communities that will help mitigate future disinformation risks on the sites. We're also looking to bring together administrators from different language Wikipedias for a global forum on disinformation. Together, we aim to build more tools to support our volunteer editors, and to combat disinformation.

As always, convening and supporting the global Wikimedia movement will be at the heart of how we work. Together with editing communities, we'll be looking to develop and refine data-driven tools to support the identification and response to disinformation.




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2020-12-28

Predicting the next move in Wikipedia discussions

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By Tilman Bayer


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


Predicting the next move in Wikipedia discussions, based on six million threads

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A conference paper titled "Modeling Deliberative Argumentation Strategies on Wikipedia"[1] presents the result of analyzing "the entire set of about six million discussions from all English Wikipedia talk pages".

The authors parsed each thread "to identify its structural components, such as turns [i.e. individual comments], users, and time stamps." The six million talk page sections are found to contain 20 million turns. Each turn is labeled with "four types of metadata [...]: the user tag, a shortcut, an in-line template, and links." The result has been published as the "Webis-WikiDiscussions-18" corpus. Interestingly, only "half of the turns are written by registered users" (i.e. anonymous users have contributed the other half of talk page comments).

With "user tag", the authors refer to a bolded word that many comments start with (but by no means all - tags were found in only 100,000 of the 20 million turns), say "Disagree", "Support", or "Conclusion". They are found to fall into 32 clusters, which "can be grouped into six categories that we see as ‘discourse acts’": Socializing, Providing evidence, Enhancing the understanding, Recommending an act, Asking a question, and Finalizing the discussion.

Separately, the authors "identified three further categories based on the user tags, which we see as relevant to ‘argumentation theory’. Each represents a relation between the turn and the topic of discussion or between the turn and another turn." These are Support, attack (e.g. a comment that starts with a bolded "Disagree ...") and neutral. It is not entirely clear to this reviewer whether the study tries to use indentation levels to identify the turn that is being responded to (adjacency pairs). A previous study had found that wrongly indented comments are very common on Wikipedia talk pages.

"Shortcut" means a shortened link to e.g. a policy or guideline (say WP:V for Wikipedia:Verifiability). Around 7000 different shortcuts were found in the around 400,000 (of 20 million) instances that used them. The authors derive four categories from them, which they relate to framing theory: Writing quality, Verifiability and factual accuracy, Neutral point of view, and Dialogue management.

The paper explains these categories with several real-life examples (Figure 1, several of them adapted from this discussion on whether to merge the two articles Natural language processing and Computational Linguistics). E.g. the comment "Thanks for your answer" is classified as a Socializing act, with a Neutral relation, and in the Dialogue management frame.

The researchers proceed to generate a corpus of around 200,000 turns with corresponding categories (published as the "Webis-WikiDebate-18" corpus). They use it to train classifiers that try to predict a comment's categories based on its text (via commonly used text features such as word or n-gram frequencies, or "the number of characters, syllables, tokens, phrases, and sentences in a turn").

As "the ultimate goal of our research", the authors envisage a "tool [that] recommend[s] the best possible moves according to an effective strategy". They note that this will require further work to "study how to distinguish effective from ineffective discussions based on our model as well as how to learn from the strategies used in successful discussions, in order to predict the best next deliberative move in an ongoing discussion."

The authors argue that previous models of Wikipedia talk page discussions (by Ferschke et al. - cf. our previous coverage: "Understanding collaboration-related dialog in Simple English Wikipedia" - and Viegas et al.) "obtain low coverage and/or are over-abstracted". Still, "the three classifiers [constructed in the present paper] achieved results that are comparable to the results of previous methods".

The paper also provides data on the frequency of categories as labeled in their corpus, which presumably is indicative (if not perfectly representative) of their prevalence in the entire six million Wikipedia discussions. For example, the most widely used frame is about verifiability and factual accuracy, followed by Neutral point of view and dialogue management, with writing quality being the least frequent one. (However, the precision of the labeling - as evaluated by an expert - varied, e.g. reaching only 0.51 for the "writing quality" category but 0.89 for "Verifiability and factual accuracy".)

Number of turns in each category
Dimension Category Turns
Discourse act Socializing 83
Providing evidence 781
Enhancing the understanding 671
Recommending an act 137
Asking a question 106
Finalizing the discussion 622
Argumentative relation Support 2895
Neutral 1937
Attack 2605
Frame Writing quality 19893
Verifiability and factual ac. 72049
Neutral point of view 60007
Dialogue management 30372

(excerpt from Table 3 in the paper)


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.

"Wikipedia: A Challenger's Best Friend? Utilising Information-seeking Behaviour Patterns to Predict US Congressional Elections"

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From the abstract:[2]

"past [efforts to use website traffic data to predict elections] have often overlooked the interaction between conventional election variables and information-seeking behaviour patterns. In this work, we aim to unify traditional and novel methodology by considering how information retrieval differs between incumbent and challenger campaigns, as well as the effect of perceived candidate viability and media coverage on Wikipedia pageviews predictive ability. In order to test our hypotheses, we use election data from United States Congressional (Senate and House) elections between 2016 and 2018. We demonstrate that Wikipedia data, as a proxy for information-seeking behaviour patterns, is particularly useful for predicting the success of well-funded challengers who are relatively less covered in the media."

In an accompanying blog post, published on the day of the 2020 United States Senate elections, the authors use their model to forecast these elections: "Of the 35 seats up for re-election, we predict 16 Democrats and 19 Republican candidates to win".

"Using Wikipedia to Predict Election Outcomes: Online Behavior as a Predictor of Voting"

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From the abstract:[3]

"... because traditional poll-based predictions are inherently undermined by self-reporting biases and the intention-behavior disconnect, we can expect that information-seeking trends on widely used social media [... can help correct for some of this error and explain unique, additional variance in election results. [... We use] Wikipedia pageviews along with polling data in a synthesized model based on the results of the 2008, 2010, and 2012 US Senate general elections. Results show that Wikipedia pageviews data significantly add to the ability of poll- and fundamentals-based projections to predict election results up to 28 weeks prior to Election Day, and benefit predictions most at those early points, when poll-based predictions are weakest."

"Predicting 2016 US Presidential Election Polls with Online and Media Variables"

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From the abstract:[4]

"This chapter aims to determine if social media, Internet traffic [including Wikipedia pageviews], and traditional media data can be used to predict elections by searching for patterns between the data and poll numbers for 2016 US Republican and Democratic primaries. The results suggest that machine learning models with linear regression can produce quite accurate predictions ..."

"Extracting N-ary Facts from Wikipedia Table Clusters"

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From the abstract:[5]

"Tables in Wikipedia articles contain a wealth of knowledge that would be useful for many applications if it were structured in a more coherent, queryable form. An important problem is that many of such tables contain the same type of knowledge, but have different layouts and/or schemata. Moreover, some tables refer to entities that we can link to Knowledge Bases (KBs), while others do not. Finally, some tables express entity-attribute relations, while others [e.g. the chart positions table at Commodores_(album)#Singles] contain more complex n-ary relations. We propose a novel knowledge extraction technique that tackles these problems. [...] Our experiments over 1.5M Wikipedia tables show that our clustering can group many semantically similar tables. This leads to the extraction of many novel n-ary relations."

The authors have published the code of their "takco" system, and note that "you can use it to extend Wikidata with information from Wikipedia tables."

"Neural Relation Extraction on Wikipedia Tables for Augmenting Knowledge Graphs"

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From the abstract of this short conference paper[6] (which shares its title with the lead author's master's thesis[7]):

"Knowledge Graph Augmentation is the task of adding missing facts to an incomplete knowledge graph to improve its effectiveness in applications such as web search and question answering. State-of-the-art methods rely on information extraction from running text, leaving rich sources of facts such as tables behind. We help close this gap with a neural method that uses contextual information surrounding a table in a Wikipedia article to extract relations between entities appearing in the same row of a table or between the entity of said article and entities appearing in the table."

Related blog post by one of the authors: "Neural Relation Extraction on Wikipedia Tables"


"What if we had no Wikipedia? Domain-independent Term Extraction from a Large News Corpus"

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From the abstract[8] of this preprint by four researchers from IBM Research's AI division:

"what makes a term worthy of entering this edifice of knowledge, and having a page of its own in Wikipedia? To what extent is this a natural product of on-going human discourse and discussion rather than an idiosyncratic choice of Wikipedia editors? Specifically, we aim to identify such 'wiki-worthy' terms in a massive news corpus, and see if this can be done with no, or minimal, dependency on actual Wikipedia entries. We suggest a five-step pipeline for doing so, providing baseline results for all five, and the relevant datasets for benchmarking them."


"Notable Site Recognition using Deep Learning on Mobile and Crowd-sourced Imagery"

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The Washington Square Arch in New York City, one of the notable sites recognized by the app

From the abstract[9] (see also a related non-paywalled preprint[10]):

"... we design a mobile system that can automatically recognise sites of interest and project relevant information to a user that navigates the city [somewhat similar to Google Lens]. We build a collection of notable sites using Wikipedia and then exploit online services such as Google Images and Flickr to collect large collections of crowd-sourced imagery describing those sites. These images are then used to train minimal deep learning architectures that can be effectively deployed to dedicated applications on mobile devices. [...] We show how curating the training data through the application of a class-specific image de-noising method and the incorporation of information such as user location, orientation and attention patterns can allow for significant improvement in classification accuracy."

The authors have published an iOS implementation of their app ("Aurama") on GitHub; sadly without releasing the code under a free license.


"VideoCutTool - Online Video Editor Tool for Wikimedia Commons"

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From the abstract:[11]

"The image CropTool allows users to crop images present on Wikimedia Commons without leaving the Wikimedia family of sites within a web environment. We implemented the same workflow for videos with the VideoCutTool. [...] This paper talks about the features of VideoCutTool and its implementation."

See also a Google Summer of Code report about the same project.

"Indigenizing Wikipedia: Student Accountability to Native American Authors on the World's Largest Encyclopedia"

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From this paper[12] about a 2013 course project that involved e.g. the creation of the article Trace DeMeyer:

"Wikipedia changes to reflect not only changing facts, like shifting national borders; it has the potential, at least, to reflect shifting intellectual paradigms. In this respect, wikis are not unlike oral traditions, which in Native communities still carry enormous weight, even—interestingly—when it comes to preserving and transmitting literary history. There are writers who are revered within their tribes and beyond [...] and yet they have yet to attract attention from university-based scholars or mainstream publishers. Wikipedia offers one space in which writers with the skills, access and time can mediate between Native authors and powerful editors to improve the representation of Native culture and history. When I call this an exercise in student 'accountability,' [...] I mean our accountability to indigenous people’s own ideas of 'notability' and value: that we vet projects with them beforehand, that we consult actively with them as we try to represent their point of view, and perhaps even [...] that we decline to publish if the work doesn’t meet with their approval."


References

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  1. ^ Al-Khatib, Khalid; Wachsmuth, Henning; Lang, Kevin; Herpel, Jakob; Hagen, Matthias; Stein, Benno (July 2018). "Modeling Deliberative Argumentation Strategies on Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). ACL 2018. Melbourne, Australia: Association for Computational Linguistics. pp. 2545–2555. doi:10.18653/v1/P18-1237.
  2. ^ Salem, Hamza; Stephany, Fabian (2020-10-25). "Wikipedia: A Challenger's Best Friend? Utilising Information-seeking Behaviour Patterns to Predict US Congressional Elections". arXiv:2010.14627 [cs.SI].
  3. ^ Smith, Benjamin K.; Gustafson, Abel (2017-09-07). "Using Wikipedia to Predict Election Outcomes: Online Behavior as a Predictor of Voting". Public Opinion Quarterly. 81 (3): 714–735. doi:10.1093/poq/nfx007. ISSN 0033-362X.
  4. ^ Isotalo, Veikko; Saari, Petteri; Paasivaara, Maria; Steineker, Anton; Gloor, Peter A. (2016). "Predicting 2016 US Presidential Election Polls with Online and Media Variables". In P. Zylka, Matthäus; Fuehres, Hauke; Fronzetti Colladon, Andrea; A. Gloor, Peter (eds.). Designing Networks for Innovation and Improvisation. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer International Publishing. pp. 45–53. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-42697-6_5. ISBN 9783319426969. Closed access icon
  5. ^ Kruit, Benno; Boncz, Peter; Urbani, Jacopo (2020-10-19). "Extracting N-ary Facts from Wikipedia Table Clusters". Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management. CIKM '20. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 655–664. doi:10.1145/3340531.3412027. ISBN 9781450368599. Closed access icon Author's copy, code and data
  6. ^ Macdonald, Erin; Barbosa, Denilson (2020-10-19). "Neural Relation Extraction on Wikipedia Tables for Augmenting Knowledge Graphs". Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management. CIKM '20. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 2133–2136. doi:10.1145/3340531.3412164. ISBN 9781450368599. Closed access icon
  7. ^ Macdonald, Erin (2020). Neural Relation Extraction on Wikipedia Tables for Augmenting Knowledge Graphs (M.Sc. thesis). University of Alberta. doi:10.7939/r3-qgqh-vb79.
  8. ^ Bilu, Yonatan; Gretz, Shai; Cohen, Edo; Slonim, Noam (2020-09-17). "What if we had no Wikipedia? Domain-independent Term Extraction from a Large News Corpus". arXiv:2009.08240 [cs.CL].
  9. ^ Tan, Jimin; Noulas, Anastasios; Sáez, Diego; Schifanella, Rossano (June 2020). "Notable Site Recognition using Deep Learning on Mobile and Crowd-sourced Imagery". 2020 21st IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM). 2020 21st IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM). pp. 137–147. doi:10.1109/MDM48529.2020.00036. Closed access icon
  10. ^ Tan, Jimin; Noulas, Anastasios; Sáez, Diego; Schifanella, Rossano (2019-11-04). "Mobile Recognition of Wikipedia Featured Sites using Deep Learning and Crowd-sourced Imagery". arXiv:1910.09705 [cs.CV].
  11. ^ Vasanth, Gopa; Heilman, James; Shetty, Pratik; Amin, Hassan; Geetha, M (July 2020). "VideoCutTool - Online Video Editor Tool for Wikimedia Commons". 2020 International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing (ICCSP). 2020 International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing (ICCSP). pp. 0823–0827. doi:10.1109/ICCSP48568.2020.9182122.
  12. ^ Senier, Siobhan; Dougherty, Jack; O'Donnell, Tennyson (2015). "Indigenizing Wikipedia: Student Accountability to Native American Authors on the World's Largest Encyclopedia". Web Writing. Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning. University of Michigan Press. pp. 33–46. doi:10.2307/j.ctv65sxgk.8. JSTOR j.ctv65sxgk.8.




Reader comments

2020-12-28

Subjective importance

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By Sebwite
This Wikipedia essay was first published on June 13, 2011. Essays are not project guidelines, policies, or part of the Wikipedia's Manual of Style. They may or may not have broad support among the Wikipedia commuity. You may edit this essay if you wish, but please do it at the original essay page.

Subjective importance is when a subject is perceived as being notable by seeming important or appearing to stand out to a person or group of people. A common misconception about notability is that importance or uniqueness equals notability. But some things that are assumed to be important lack sources that are required by Wikipedia in order to meet the general notability guidelines or other inclusion criteria. Therefore, they are not included.

A subject may be the biggest, the best, or the most well-known of something. It may be possible on this basis to argue that it should obviously be included. But without a single reliable source to verify its existence or accuracy, there is no way it can be included.

For example, a high school basketball player may be the best on their team. A pizza shop may serve the most popular pizza in town. A church may be the oldest place of worship in the region. These facts may be well known to those most familiar with these subjects. But there may be nothing published about any of this that can be used as sources for the basis of an article.

Also, certain factors that are viewed as respectable by society are likewise not automatic grounds for notability. The world has many physicians who have studied hard and save lives. But most of these physicians are relatively unheard of in published sources and are not worthy of articles. Likewise, the principal of a school or the founder of a club do not get automatic articles for their achievements.

Factors that do not automatically render notability

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There are many reasons why one may believe something is notable when they are not. In many cases, these have been used in arguments to keep an article proposed for deletion, and they sometimes have worked.

Age

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Tortoises can live a very long time. But that does not make each one notable.
  • Keep He is the oldest living person in the country right now – Own A Title, 14:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep This store has been around for 105 years – Hand-me-down, 17:35, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep This house was built over 1300 years ago – Restored, 21:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Just because it's old, that doesn't mean it's notable.

Age is just a number, and numbers are not used to judge notability on Wikipedia. Everything and everyone has an age, and with each passing day, that age is increased by one day. That age will continue to increase as long as the person is alive, or the object still exists. At what time will that person or object be ready for an article?

If a structure that is still standing is thousands of years old, and there is a name put to it, it is likely that there will be multiple independent reliable sources ("MIRS"), about it, though these must be provided in order for the article to be written. The same goes if it has been verified to be the oldest example in existence. But there cannot possibly be an article about every living tortoise or tree on planet earth.

The older something is, the more difficult published sources can be to locate. Sources for subjects that existed before the days of the internet are more likely to be offline. While there is no requirement that sources be available online, they must be verifiable. The more clearly you cite an offline source, the less likely it is to be challenged. Remember, the burden is on the editor adding the material to provide sufficient sources.

Popularity

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  • Keep It is the best-selling brand – Keeping up with the Joneses, 06:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep It is a game everyone plays – Challenge me, 06:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Keep It is a favorite recipe – Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, 06:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

There are many things that have reached the status of one of the above examples, yet they have never been covered in any published source, and they are nothing more than word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is not only insufficient for Wikipedia notability, but it may also be original research.

There are sites, such as Urban Dictionary, that more readily accept entries without proof, taking the word of the submitter as enough to make it plausible. This, in theory, can allow anyone to pass off their own creation as something long in existence. The main point of the notability guideline is to provide objective criteria for inclusion rather than subjective criteria such as importance which depend on an individual's perspective on the subject.

Fame

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"WP:FAME" redirects here. For the essay "An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing", see WP:FAMOUS.
  • Keep He has hundreds of fans – Autograph collector, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep Her picture is in the local newspaper – Instant celebrity, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep They performed at Town Square – Money in the hat, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep He was on a reality TV show – 2000s star, 09:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

There are many levels of fame. These include:

  • International fame: Refers to those who are known around the world.
  • National fame: People who are known within their own country to its own citizens
  • Local fame: Where one is an iconic figure within their own city, town, or region, but unheard of beyond. See WP:LOCAL
  • Time-bound fame: A person is briefly in the spotlight, but soon forgotten. See WP:ONEEVENT regarding this policy. Includes those who have appeared on Reality TV shows, but otherwise have no coverage.

But notability is not temporary. What this means is that once a topic has been the subject of "significant coverage" in accordance with the general notability guideline, it does not need to have ongoing coverage, but brief coverage that ceases quickly may not render a subject notable. The one event guideline in particular discourages standalone articles for those who only received this brief coverage.

Regardless of the degree of fame, a living person or even a deceased person may only have an article about themselves if they meet notability guidelines for biographies. Brief public exposure or word-of-mouth only fame does not make one notable.

Talent

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What a great work of art! I should write about this on Wikipedia. Or should I?
  • Keep He is a really great artist – Autograph collector, 04:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep She is a very fast runner – Triathlon, 04:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep They are a tremendous band – CD collector, 04:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It is nice to have such talent. But all too often, one's talent or greatness is a matter of personal taste. Even when measured by statistics (such as the number of home runs one has hit) and recorded, it means nothing in the way of notability unless it gets published. Furthermore, every single person in any occupation at all could always simply claim to have talent, whether they've actually achieved anything encyclopedically noteworthy or not — however, Wikipedia's inclusion standards are not based on what's been claimed about a person or group, but on what can be reliably sourced as true about a person or group.

And even if a statistic is measurable by numbers, being a great feat is still a point-of-view issue. A high school sports star may not be able to score once at a professional level. A child prodigy may not grow up to be very successful. This is just another reason why sources must continue to rule over so-called "talent."

Rank

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"WP:RANK" redirects here. For the essay on not pulling rank, see WP:SENIORITY.
  • Keep It is the 5th largest Italian restaurant in Bergenshire – StatsKeeper, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep It is the only elementary school on Sunny Drive – No Choice, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep It was the first swim club to open within a 2-mile radius of the only convenience store in the neighborhood of Cedarland Heights – One-of-a-kind, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep Their single reached #98 on the Billboard chart – Chartfanatic, 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

You see how ridiculous this may sound. Believe it or not, arguments similar to these have been made in AfD debates, sometimes by a majority of participants, favoring keeping the article, and in many cases, resulting in the articles being kept. But that does not make the topic encyclopedic.

Notability is not about being the biggest, the best, or the only of something. Likewise, not fitting this description does not make something not notable. Notability is about having published, non-trivial information (i.e., more than a mere mention) in multiple sources independent of the subject, and the article itself not being the first place to provide the information. No matter what, you can combine all the variables you would like, and then find something unique about every person, every business, every idea.

Prestigious position

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A well-educated person may seem automatically worthy of an article. But one's studies alone do not grant them one.
  • Keep He has a master's degree – Earn your article, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep She has a Harvard PhD – Erudition, 14:18, 24 December 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep She is a physician – CPR, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep He is a priest/minister/rabbi/imam – Blessed, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep She is an attorney – It's the law, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)

Certain positions and titles in front of a person's name are a sign of having really accomplished something. Being known as "Dr. John Doe" or "The Reverend John Doe" or "John Doe, Attorney at Law" sounds a lot nicer than simply being called "John Doe." It is quite deserving too. Yet, there are plenty of people out there in these positions who have never received the coverage needed to be given a Wikipedia article. In fact, a very small percentage of those in such positions have accomplished just that.

It may seem strange that at the same time, so many people who have not come close to the above achievements qualify for having articles. Some people have articles for writing one short book, acting in one film, or publishing one song. Some people have articles for playing briefly on a professional sports team. Some people have earned themselves articles just for being victims of crime, or even stranger when you come to think of it, committing the crimes themselves.

While this may seem so unfair, this does not mean a person who has achieved a high academic credential in their field is unimportant, insignificant, or is being dishonored. It is just that getting a Wikipedia article–meeting WP:N–is based on information that has been published in reliable sources, and some fields tend to be better covered by reliable sources than others. Entire books will be written on relatively minor film actors or TV actresses, while professors or lawyers who have had significant careers may only merit a few articles in local newspapers.

Non-profit/government operated

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"WP:NPROFIT" redirects here. For notability of academics and professors, see WP:PROF.
See also: Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause
Many public transport services raise part of their revenue with advertising
  • Keep The subject is not out there to make money – Seeking donations, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep This is a service provided by a government agency – Your hard-earned dollars, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep This article does not advance the subject's cause – Just informing you, 13:16, 22 December 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep This NGO helps cute baby bunnies – Cute'n_cuddly, 13:16, 24 December 2004 (UTC)

It is a given. Wikipedia is not an advertising service. If you've reached this page, you probably know this by now. But the absence of seeking profit is not a free pass to having an article.

For starters, in case you have not noticed, Wikipedia does allow articles about for-profit companies, provided that they meet notability guidelines. Wikipedia has thousands of articles on for-profit companies, ranging from international corporations that are household vocabulary (e.g. Wal-Mart), to some local businesses operating a single location known mostly to those in the region (such as the Hersheypark).

Likewise, an entity that is not out there to make a profit, and is funded by taxes or private donations, or does not operate using money at all, can be excluded if it fails to meet Wikipedia's general notability guidelines.

One thing to be aware of is that many services operated by a national, state/provincial, or municipal government are not 100% tax-funded and do indeed solicit income via advertising, just like a for-profit corporation. For example, the United States Postal Service, as well as selling its stamps, uses televised advertising to make their offerings known. Many government-operated lotteries are run more like businesses. And political candidates are looking for donations for their campaigns, not to mention, votes. This does not exclude them from having articles, but still, all inclusion and citation guidelines must be carefully met.

You also cannot forget that the purpose of many non-profit organizations is to support some partisan, often controversial cause (e.g. NARAL Pro-Choice America, PETA). This does not rule out their ability to have articles, as many such organizations are indeed worthy of them. But it requires that any such article that is written must be based on neutral, factual information, and does not promote or oppose the cause.

Dictionary definitions

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Wikipedia is not a dictionary. There are many subjects that are commonplace in our lives. But the most that can be said about them is a simple definition, nothing more, no matter how hard you search. In such a case, rather than creating an article, it is preferable to link from articles that give important mention on the subect with the following: [[wikt:subject name]]. If the subject is the title of a disambiguation page, a link to the wiktionary entry can be obtained by adding {{wiktionary|subjectname}} to the top. If there is only one other use, this can be accomplished through a hatnote of {{see wiktionary|subjectname}}.

For example, the title "nice" is used for the French city Nice. On the page Nice (disambiguation), there is such a link to the word "nice," which includes the English adjective.

Entry of What goes around comes around leads to the album by Waylon Jennings. At the top, using {{see wiktionary}}, is a hatnote that says For a definition of the phrase "what goes around comes around", see the Wiktionary entry {{wikt:what goes around comes around}}.

If one more piece of sourceable information besides the very basic definition can be included, even if the article is still a stub, it is worthy of inclusion.

See also

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2020-12-28

An unforgettable year we might wish to forget

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By Smallbones

2020 was a year of torturous tragedy, seemingly drawn out in order to inflict the most pain. It was also a year of potential triumph. But for Wikipedia, much of it was a story of overcoming adversity. This article draws from stories in The Signpost, the mainstream press, and from Wikipedia itself to describe Wikipedia's experience of 2020.

The year began in triumph as the English-language Wikipedia celebrated its 6 millionth article on January 23. While it's impossible to determine exactly which article was the 6 millionth, Maria Elise Turner Lauder, created by Rosiestep, was chosen by consensus to symbolize the achievement. Rosie's status as an internet icon was confirmed and extended. The article, already a hefty 483 words by the end of the 23rd, has now almost doubled in size to 845 words. The English Wikipedia continues to grow and now has 6,216,138 articles.

Just eight days before the six millionth article, Wikipedia celebrated its 19th birthday. Nineteen days from now, we'll be celebrating our 20th birthday.

But in early January the painful future had already appeared. The article on the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign was created in February 2017 and Black Lives Matter had been created in 2015. The COVID-19 pandemic, then known as the 2019-2020 China pneumonia outbreak, was created on January 5, 2020.

By the week of January 26 to February 1 the article on the coronavirus was already the second most-viewed article on the English Wikipedia, and 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, as the COVID-19 pandemic article was known by then, was the fourth most viewed.

The March 1 issue of The Signpost marks the end of the pre-pandemic days, as the World Health Organization issued its statement that the outbreak was a pandemic on March 11. Perhaps the most joyful story in the issue was the announcement by the Smithsonian Institution that they were releasing 2.8 million high quality photographs into the public domain. Yet in the same "In the media" article, we reviewed Omer Benjakob's amazingly prescient February 9 article on how "On Wikipedia, a fight is raging over coronavirus disinformation". Newer press articles on the quality and importance of Wikipedia's coverage of the pandemic were repeated dozens of times over the next several months. It still bears repeating however – thank you to all those Wikipedia editors who contributed to dozens of articles in many languages about the pandemic.

By our March 29 issue, the pandemic was essentially The only thing that matters in the world. Seven stories in that issue covered the pandemic. In the "News from the WMF" column WMF CEO Katherine Maher explained that Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time.

Only five COVID-19 stories appeared in the April issue, and there was even space for Denny Vrandečić to propose a new Wikipedia project, a wiki for functions then known as Wikilambda, which has now been approved by the Board of Trustees and recently renamed "Wikifunctions".

By May politics had started to heat up. Atsme opined in an Op-ed that mainstream news media were leading our editors astray, away from our bedrock position of sticking with a neutral point of view, but by late November Newslinger was opining that Wikipedians were simply following what reliable sources were saying, and rejecting non-reliable sources.

The article on the killing of George Floyd was created on May 26, the day after the killing and the first mention of it in The Signpost was five days later. Like many people, we were caught unaware of the depth of the problem of violence by the police against minorities.

By June the WMF had issued a statement of principle We stand for racial justice. WikiProject Black Lives Matter had been organized and interviewed by The Signpost and we also published a photo essay about the following protests, After the killing of George Floyd.

Problems with a couple of the smaller Wikipedia projects showed up in August with the Scots Wikipedia and in September with the Malagasy Wiktionary. The main administrator on the Scots Wikipedia turns out to have very limited knowledge of the Scots language. A clean-up project was started almost immediately. The Malagasy Wiktionary had 6,103,961 entries, mostly automatically translated by a bot. The cleanup there has now reduced the number of entries to less than 2,000,000.

Early November's issue brought political news, including disinformation from the Trump campaign that said Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was promoting an assassination plot against President Trump. Wikipedia's efforts to stop disinformation were examined in Noam Cohen’s Wired article. Other press stories wondered why it took so long for Theresa Greenfield, the Democratic candidate for Iowa's senate seat to have an article on Wikipedia.

By late November The Signpost reviewed the election news. Voters and COVID-19 scientists had been faithfully served by Wikipedia articles. There have been lots of challenges this year, but Wikipedians should be proud at how well we've met them.




Reader comments

2020-12-28

Angels in the architecture

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By Smallbones
Angel representing Scotland at St. Andrews Anglican Church, Moscow

A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the third world
Maybe it's his first time around
Doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
...
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says, "Amen and Hallelujah!"
—Paul Simon, Call Me Al (video)

During Christmastide you can see them, coming through the mail slot with their cards, waiting patiently on the tops of trees, helping to sell knick-knacks in advertisements. You might even see them on a can of vegetables, "Peas on Earth, Goodwill to All".

But wait a few weeks and you'll see them in their normal abodes. Peek through the windows of a church, look up at the roof, check out the weathervane. They're in cemeteries, on bridges, helping children. Angels in the architecture. They're everywhere.

On bridges, doors, columns, roofs, walls and windows

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And weathervanes

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  • Weathervane on Santa Justa Chapel, São Lázaro, Braga, Portugal
    Weathervane on Santa Justa Chapel, São Lázaro, Braga, Portugal
  • Weathervane in São João do Souto, Braga, Portugal.
    Weathervane in São João do Souto, Braga, Portugal.
  • Weathervane in Póvoa de Lanhoso, Portugal
    Weathervane in Póvoa de Lanhoso, Portugal

Jacob's ladder

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An angel in Staglieno

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The music of the angels with trumpets and otherwise

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Guardian angels

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Jimmy Stewart (seated) and Henry Travers in It's a Wonderful Life

George Bailey: Look, I think maybe you better not mention
getting your wings around here.
Clarence Odbody: Why? Don't they believe in angels?
George: A... Yeah, but... you know...
Clarence: Then why should they be surprised when they see one?
—It's a Wonderful Life (video)

May the better angels of our nature always appear when we need them. Happy holidays to all!




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2020-12-28

'Twas the Night Before Wikimas

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By Nick Moyes
Nick Moyes published the original version of 'Twas the Night Before Wikimas about three years ago at the Teahouse. The current version has evolved since December 26, 2017 at WP:The Night Before Wikimas.
Saint Jimbo arrives to help a pair of sleepy editors
Reindeer #1 to #3: em Dasher; Images and Actrial
Reindeer #4 to #6:Patrolled; Users and IPs
St. Jimbo: "Happy Editing to all, and to all users a good night!"
Facial composite of man wanted for questioning in connection with digital break-ins on Christmas eve.

'Twas the night before Wikimas, when all through the Teahouse
Not an editor was stirring, not even a mouse.

The references had been inserted by users with care,
In hopes that St. Jimbo[who?] soon would be there.

Most editors were nestled all snug by their beds,
While visions of new articles danced in their heads.
When out from a keyboard there arose such a clatter
I sprang to my screen to see what was the matter.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a question on sources and how to use them well here.

More rapid than eagles these questioners came,
And the hosts from the Teahouse welcomed each one by name.

"Now, em Dasher! Now, Images!
Now, Actrial! Now, Patrolled!
On, Users! On, IPs!
On, Young and on, Old!
To the top of each article, be it long, short or tall,
Now, type away, type away, type away all!"[This quote needs a citation]

As dry words that before an old dictionary fly,
when they meet with a synonym, mount to the sky,[citation needed]
So, onto these articles the edits they flew,
With a sleigh full of facts, and citations, too.

And then in a twinkling, I saw on the page
Our wiki-creator: a man of great age.
As I checked it on Commons and was turning around,
Down my router St. Jimbo came in with a bound.

Over 6 million articles he had flung on his back,
And he looked like most users with the editing knack.
His eyes – how they twinkled! slightly square – but how merry!
Too much editing, folks, had turned his nose red like a cherry![medical citation needed]
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.[citation needed]

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his editing,
And filled bare urls; did sourcing and crediting
And confirming notability with a tap on his nose,
And pressing "Publish changes", back up my modem he rose.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, leaving me to my epistle.[anachronism]
But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Editing to all, and to all users a good night!"


With grudging acknowledgement to Clement C. Moore, 1823.




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