Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2015-03-11
An advance look at the WMF's fundraising survey
The Wikimedia Foundation gave the Signpost an advance copy of the results of a survey of English Wikipedia readers regarding Wikimedia fundraising, due for official release today, and shared details that do not appear in the final report. The survey, conducted by Lake Research Partners in February, asked a number of questions about readers' attitudes towards the WMF's fundraising to gauge the awareness and effectiveness of those efforts.
This is not the first WMF fundraising survey. After contributing to Wikipedia, donors are able to complete a survey if they wish; more than 250,000 of them did so in December 2014. Professional surveys are also done, such as the 2011 readership survey, which included questions about fundraising—but Lisa Gruwell, the Foundation's chief revenue officer, told the Signpost that "this is the first professional, randomized survey of Wikipedia fundraising to include donors and non-donors."
Methodology
| Country | Number of readers surveyed (% of respondents) | % of total English Wikipedia page views, December 2014 |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1000 (41.7%) | 36.4 % |
| United Kingdom | 500 (20.8%) | 9.7 % |
| Canada | 400 (16.7%) | 5.8 % |
| India | 0 | 5.8 % |
| Australia/New Zealand | 400 (16.7%) | 3.4 % |
| Germany | 0 | 2.0 % |
| Philippines | 0 | 1.5 % |
| France | 0 | 1.2 % |
| China | 0 | 1.2 % |
| Ireland | 0 | 0.7 % |
The survey questioned a sample of 2,300 people who said they used Wikipedia at least once a month. They were from five primarily English-speaking countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with the last two countries combined into one sample group. Celinda Lake of Lake Research told the Signpost that "the sample was stratified geographically by region and the data were weighted by gender, age, region, and race where appropriate to reflect the population of internet users in each country."
Lake said "Respondents for the survey were drawn from an international panel of over 2 million Internet users in the target countries who have agreed to participate in online surveys, supplied by GMI", a market research company that specializes in selecting participants for surveys. The selection bias is unclear for people who apparently had previously agreed to GMI's request that they participate in unspecified online surveys.
Lake Research did not survey readers in countries where English is not the primary language, but nevertheless have significant populations of readers of the English Wikipedia, such as India, Germany, the Philippines, France, and China. Gruwell said that they chose to focus only on five English-speaking countries for a number of reasons, including making the survey more manageable and achieving more comparable results.
The 2,300 participants ranged from daily users of the encyclopedia to casual visitors, with most responding that they use the encyclopedia several times a week (27–35%, depending on the country) or several times a month (21–24%). Those who indicated they use Wikipedia less than once a month were not included in the survey.
Perceptions of Wikipedia
Surprisingly, up to 40% of people are not aware that Wikipedia is a non-profit operation. While this is an improvement on the 2011 Readership Survey – which reported that about half of Wikipedia readers were unaware of this – it is troubling given the importance attached within the community and the Foundation to its non-profit status.
Wikipedia's revenue source was similarly not well understood. UK readers were the only group in which a majority identified reader donations as Wikipedia's primary funding source. Significant numbers of respondents in all countries surveyed have no idea where the money comes from, or identified it as a mix of sources including government funding. A disturbing percentage (13–20%) thought that Wikipedia is supported by advertising.
Perhaps respondents were confusing fundraising appeals with paid advertising. Lake told the Signpost that "They may be confusing other online ads they see in close proximity to their use of Wikipedia pages. They are also possibly making an assumption that since many major websites are supported by ads, Wikipedia must be also." Lake noted the survey also asked if they had seen commercial advertising on Wikipedia. While 56–60% said no, some 20% either thought they had seen ads on the encyclopedia or were unsure.
The result may point to a lack of awareness of Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality and independence. Gruwell said: "This is a fairly consistent misunderstanding about Wikipedia that we see across the board and we have seen it for years, and it's an ongoing challenge for the movement. We think it is important to communicate the non-profit or non-commercial message in banners and other communications to help better educate readers about this."
Motivations
Depending on the country, 55–63% of respondents recalled seeing a fundraising appeal on Wikipedia. When asked about how many they remembered, around one-third said two or three, and slightly fewer said four to nine. Despite some vocal complaints about the frequency of the banners last year, only 4–5% regard the appeals as "too intrusive".
Perhaps the most surprising results were respondents' primary reason for donating to Wikipedia. By overwhelming numbers, they stated that their motivation was their frequent use of Wikipedia. Given that support of Wikipedia is often expressed in terms of a strong commitment towards free and open access and dissemination of knowledge, it is surprising that relatively few donors cited this. Perhaps those who have those principles are already avid users of Wikipedia, or perhaps it is indicative of the widespread use of Wikipedia – as the sixth-most-used website in the world for so long, it may have simply become part of the furniture for most people. This may be a reason for donating, but it may also lead to apathy or indifference in those who do not donate, something the survey was not designed to explore.
Targeting donors
It is important to know why readers donate to Wikipedia, but other questions need to be asked to reach people who do not donate. The survey identified about a quarter of respondents as "donor targets": people who donate elsewhere but not to the encyclopedia.
The survey examined which types of causes were favored among both donors and non-donors. In most of the countries, those who donate to Wikipedia appear to be generally more altruistic than non-donors, in that they are more likely to donate to other charitable causes too. Popular charities among those who did not donate to Wikipedia were those related to poverty, health and medicine, and, in the US, religion, causes which are generally perceived to have little to do with Wikipedia's mission of encyclopedia building and the free dissemination of knowledge.
Given the nature of these causes, specialized appeals may be needed to reach these donor target groups, as they may be unlikely to be swayed by typical fundraising banners or testimonials featuring sad-eyed Wikipedia editors. Targeted banners including statements that Wikipedia is perhaps the world's most frequently consulted medical resource or touting the ability of free access to information to help alleviate poverty may be effective. Gruwell said "It is an interesting finding and we may explore how to talk about this area of work with those who care most about certain kinds of information in Wikipedia."
Fundraising messages: responses and effectiveness
The survey concludes that "Users are not turned off by Wikipedia's fundraising messages", and the survey results appear to bear that out. Despite vocal dissenters voicing criticism of the campaign, these sentiments don't appear to be shared among the respondents. More than half of respondents generally feel that Wikipedia asks for less money than other organizations and that fundraising messages do not appear "very often".
When asked about the statement "I don't mind the fundraising messages on Wikipedia because I know the fundraising is necessary", up to 70% in each country indicated agreement. The suggested cause in this statement might be considered a loaded question. When asked about whether the response would have been different had the last seven words been omitted, Gruwell replied: "It's possible. I don't think we should try to guess how readers would have answered a different question."
Similar questions worded differently yielded smaller majorities, though still indicate a generally positive attitude towards fundraising appeals. For example, 42–51% indicated they "enjoyed learning" about Wikipedia from the fundraising campaign (another potentially loaded question compared with what might have been more neutral wording – "learned" rather than "enjoyed learning"). Fundraising messages "annoyed" 19–31% of people; this might seem to conflict with the results of the "I don't mind" option, or it might indicate that while they are personally annoyed by the messages, they also saw the need for them.
Up to half of the respondents said the more the fundraising messages appear, the less they notice them. However, 34–46% said they pay attention to the messages. This may indicate a widespread concern among Wikipedia readers about desensitization and overexposure, even if those readers don't feel they are personally susceptible.
The size of the banner ads was the focus of some of the questions. Readers think the larger banner ads are clearer and more convincing, but only by slight margins. When asked about the intrusiveness of the different sized banners, readers rate them about the same irrespective of size.
Gruwell said: "This survey helps us understand reader's opinions of the banners. We pair this with what we know about what readers do when they see the banners through our donation rates." She pointed to results that appear in the Foundation's latest quarterly review of fundraising which indicate that in December 2014, the large banners produced a donation rate five times that of the smaller ones. Those results speak for themselves, so it appears the large banners are here to stay.
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WikiWomen's History Month—meetups, blog posts, and "Inspire" grant-making campaign
WikiWomen's History Month
March is international Women's History Month and March 8 is International Women's Day. The community has arranged a number of commemorative initiatives focused on the gender gap, under the banner "WikiWomen's History Month". The first such effort was organized in 2012: in the Signpost, then-community fellow Sarah Stierch said: "while I believe every day should be women's history day, I also feel we should take advantage of the month of March to bring awareness to the lack of coverage about women's history on Wikipedia, and concerns about the gender gap in Wikipedia: only 9% of our active contributors are women." A number of sizable community events and editathons are scheduled in March in support of this year's effort (though more than half of them will be in the United States) under the banner. An even larger number of events are clustered around March 7 and 8 were organized by the ArtAndFeminism campaign, including 50 meetups in the US alone and a main event at the MoMA in New York City.
Concurrently, the Wikimedia Foundation has announced that this month's Foundation blog is focusing on gender diversity in the Wikimedia movement. The communications team is asking for community suggestions on "your favorite, high-quality Wikipedia articles about notable women ... we're looking for factual, well-written and insightful articles, from the wiki of your choice." The winning articles, selected by the communications team, will be written into a report to be posted in the Foundation blog sometime after March 15. The blog will also be publishing profiles, research overviews, program reports, and best practices during the month.
Most significantly, the WMF rolled out their "Inspire" grantmaking campaign on March 4, an open invitation to the community for thoughts and opinions on possible ways to address the gap. The best of the ideas, drawn from the IdeaLab and endorsed by community, will be matched to long-term advisors. When necessary, funding is also available, and is likely to be disseminated by a new committee of existing committee members from the two grantmaking volunteer bodies, the IEG and GAC. If the pilot project is successful (signs so far indicate a high level of activity) it is likely to be broken off entirely into a new, third grantmaking scheme, Inspire Grants. The two next major dates will be April 1–15, when the funding committee will make its final recommendations to the Wikimedia Foundation, and April 30, when winning grantees will be announced by WMF staff. The hope is for 20 new grant-supported gender gap-focused projects and an (ambitious) five- to ten-fold increase in IdeaLab traffic; as of writing the project has attracted some 200 participants and 40 IdeaLab submissions.
The maximum budget for the campaign is US$250,000, funded by withdrawals from the IEG and PEG programs, currently on hold for non-time-sensitive proposals for the three months from February to April. This, and the timing of the announcement, has been a source of controversy. In communications on the community mailing list, the director of community resources Siko Bouterse stated in January that the campaign is an experiment in proactive grantmaking, "to see if we can provide meaningful community support and significantly increase impact on Wikimedia projects in a single strategic area". If successful, she said, the campaign will serve as a pilot for other single-issue campaigns. Experimental thematic campaigns are a new organizational theme that was included in this year's annual plan (albeit see previous Signpost coverage) and planning for the Inspire campaign has been in progress since last December. The event is the first such experiment by the WMF. It is likely to be a part of the recent Foundation pivot towards a grantmaking focus on more and smaller projects than in the past. R
For more Signpost coverage on the gender gap see our Gender gap series.
Obvious hoax lasts nearly a decade on Wikipedia
An article was deleted on March 3 this week which is ostensibly the longest-lasting hoax article found on Wikipedia to date. The article, Jar'Edo Wens, was created on May 29, 2005 by an IP address originating in Australia. At its creation, the article, in its entirety, read "In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Jar'Edo Wens is a god of earthly knowledge and physical might, created by Altjira to oversee that the people did not get too big-headed, associated with victory and intelligence." It remained largely unchanged until its deletion; the same editor also added a link to Jar'Edo Wens to the article Australian Aboriginal mythology.
The link was removed from that higher-traffic page in 2007, though the original hoax article remained. In November 2014, an IP editor added a hoax template to the article, which automatically placed it in Category:Wikipedia suspected hoax articles. Snowager told the Signpost that he regularly patrols that category and found this article there. On March 1, Snowager submitted the article to Articles for Deletion. In the resulting discussion, Calamondin12 noted that Jar'Edo Wens was "perhaps derived from the actual English name Jared Owens". The article was speedy deleted by Newyorkbrad "as a blatant and indisputable hoax", making it, as of time of writing, the longest-lived discovered hoax on Wikipedia: nine years and nine months, a half month longer than the previous record-holder, Pikes on Cliffs, a fake historical structure in Spain.
Though this may now be the longest-lived hoax ever in the pages of Wikipedia, it is not the highest profile one, since the article was orphaned throughout much of its existence. G, R
For more Signpost coverage on hoaxes see our Hoaxes series.
In brief
- Wales wins another award: The long list of honors bestowed on Jimmy Wales in recent months now includes the 2015 Deutscher Vordenker Preis (German Thought Leader Award), presented at the March 5 Munich Leadership Conference. The award includes prize money of €25,000. See the acknowledgment from Wales and an interview with him. G
- Game of Drones: Wikimedia South Africa, in conjunction with the 2015 FPV Fest South Africa, is running the Wiki From Above 2015 contest from March 1 to April 30. The contest offers over R 10,000 in prizes for aerial photographs and video of African landmarks. It notes that "Photographs and video can be taken from on top of mountains, tall buildings (above 10 floors), aeroplanes, drones, hot-air-balloons, helicopters, or any other type of flying craft." G
- Travel disbursement: Wikimedia France this week formalized and released their travel disbursement policy alongside User:GuillaumeG's publication of a related learning pattern, both releases done for the benefit of other chapter organizations looking to establish or embellish their own travel policies. By the organization's own count this is the sixth such travel policy published to date. R
- CIS-A2K: The current Centre for Internet and Society Access to Knowledge program director Vishnu Vardhan has announced that he will be transitioning out of the role by June 2015 due to health reasons. Vardhan has been the program head since February 2013; the selection process for the next director is currently under way. This announcement comes on the heels of last week's Train the Trainer community workshop; for more details see previous Signpost coverage. R
- Wikimedia Conference 2015: Registration for Wikimedia Conference 2015 closes this week. For a list of participants see here. The Wikimedia Conference is a specialty conference organized for the benefit of chapter members and other volunteers involved in the organization of the Wikimedia movement; for more information on previous conferences see Signpost coverage of the 2014 event. R
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Gamergate; a Wiki hoax; Kanye West
"Gamergate Refuses to Die"
ThinkProgress tech reporter Lauren C. Williams wrote a long article (March 6) on how the Gamergate controversy has spilled over onto Wikipedia. Disputes regarding this video game controversy have raged for months on Wikipedia, culminating in a contentious Arbitration case which involved numerous editors and administrators, including this author. This has already received heavy media coverage, but Williams has produced what appears to be the most thorough piece of journalism about the Wikipedia controversy, including a number of original interviews.
| “ | There is no reason why anybody, regardless of gender or political beliefs, should have to go onto a website about sharing knowledge and writing an encyclopedia — which is pretty damn geeky — and get harassed while doing it. It’s absurd. | ” |
| — Sarah Stierch | ||
Williams corrected the widely-reported misconception that the "Five Horsemen", the Wikipedia editors targeted by Gamergate, were feminists, noting that only one of the five was female and edited articles related to feminism, while the others were "longtime Wikipedia editors aiming to return normalcy and factual accuracy to the Gamergate pages". Williams interviewed one of them, NorthBySouthBaranof, who was topic banned by the Arbitration Committee, as well as Mark Bernstein, whose vocal blog posts about Gamergate made him a target of their ire as well. Both discussed the harassment they and others received at the hands of Gamergate. NorthbySouthBaronof complained that “I haven’t seen one note of sympathy about the harassment from anyone in ArbCom, which says, ‘We don’t care about what happens off Wikipedia.'" Williams also spoke with GorillaWarfare, noting that she was the only member of ArbCom who openly identified as female. She said "The Arbitration Committee rules only on user conduct, which is a fact that outside observers have been missing. We do not, have not, and cannot make rulings on the content of articles or the validity of users’ ideologies.”
Williams interviewed two female longtime Wikipedia editors, Amy Senger (ASenger) and Sarah Stierch (Missvain), about larger issues on the encyclopedia, including systemic bias and the gender gap. Senger said that the ArbCom decision was evidence of the former and that “the people who are more vocal and combative tend to prevail in disputes” before the Committee. Stierch spoke of "a history of hostility" on the website and said "The fact that I have to go to my volunteer ‘job’ and fear that I’m going to get yelled at by somebody and get called a nasty name...You shouldn’t have to worry about what happens in your personal life...There is no reason why anybody, regardless of gender or political beliefs, should have to go onto a website about sharing knowledge and writing an encyclopedia — which is pretty damn geeky — and get harassed while doing it. It’s absurd.” She is among those who feel that the Wikimedia Foundation is not doing enough about these issues. "They’re the hospital administrator and the lunatics are running the asylum," Stierch said.
At Slate, Amanda Marcotte responded to Williams' article by writing "On Wikipedia, Gamergate Refuses to Die" (March 6). Marcotte wrote: "In an effort to stick to Wikipedia’s touted belief in 'neutrality,' the committee decided to hand out banishments on both sides of the equation: both to people for injecting the harassing claims into pages and for the people who were trying to clean it up...Wikipedia lost the very people who were trying to guard the gates in the first place. What happens to the next victim of a Wikipedia harassment campaign if the defenders are getting squeezed out through this pox-on-both-your-houses system?" G
For more Signpost coverage on Gamergate see our Gamergate series.
Examining a Wikipedia hoax
At Medium, Gilad Lotan, chief data scientist at Betaworks, examines (March 7) last September's Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax. The hoax, whose perpetrators are still unknown but who may be Russian, involved fake accounts on Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other services. Lotan identified AmandaGray91 as the source of a hoax article on Wikipedia attributing the fake explosion to a terrorist attack. The account, created only eight days earlier, had made previous edits to articles about Russian author Alexander Asov, the Aditya Birla Group, owner of the chemical plant, and carbon black, which is manufactured there. Lotan wrote "Wikipedia editors are a global community that has very clear rules of conduct as well as an internal authority rank. As a completely new Wikipedia editor, it is very difficult to simply add a page, especially one depicting an ISIS terror attack on US territory, and expect it to stick around for long. The page was taken down quite rapidly, as users who were led to it from tweets flagged it as potentially problematic." G
For more Signpost coverage on hoaxes see our Hoaxes series.
Kanye's nemesis
The Daily Beast profiles (March 4) Brian Connelly, owner of the domain loser.com, which made headlines (and a traffic spike for Wikipedia) last week when Connelly redirected it to the Wikipedia article for Kanye West, after West nearly interrupted Beck on stage at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. (Beck first became famous in 1993 with the single "Loser".) Connelly has owned the domain since 1995 and in the past he redirected it to other targets, including sites for Governor Jim Hodges, Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks, Google, and Reddit. Some of Connelly's ire is based on seeing West perform at the Bonnaroo Music Festival last year:
| “ | Kanye got up onstage and just started bitching at the audience because I think someone had spray painted "F--- Kanye" on a porta-potty or something. Then he started yelling, "Where the press at? Point out the press!" and started going crazy and yelling at everybody about how they didn’t respect his genius. Then he started naming names of people he should be compared to—George Washington, Henry Ford, etc. My wife was really enjoying it, but I wasn’t. We’re a paying audience showing him respect, and he launches into us with this egocentric f---ing bull---- rant, and it was insane. And he didn’t even play "Gold Digger. G | ” |
In brief
- Paging Doctor Wikipedia: CBC News profiles (March 11) Doc James and his fight to rid Wikipedia of medical errors. G
- St. Louis Blues: Three writers at Jezebel discuss the Wikipedia article St. Louis cuisine, which they find "Goddamned Hilarious" (March 11). They mock the article for, among other things, its regional boosterism and claiming local credit for foods including toasted ravioli, hot dogs, the waffle cone, and the hamburger. Following publication of the article, Wikipedia editors tagged or removed many of these claims. G
- Tulu incubator: The Hindu reports (March 10) on efforts by students and teachers to create articles for the Tulu Wikipedia, which is now in the incubation stage. They report that over 700 Tulu language articles have been uploaded and that they hope to reach 1000 articles soon. G
- Will the FTC ever drop the hammer on paid Wikipedia edits?: The Kernel wonders (March 8) whether the Federal Trade Commission will ever take action on paid editing of Wikipedia, given the lack of disclosure to the reader (the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use only require disclosure to the Wikimedia community). The piece, which features comments by Wikipedia consultants David King and William Beutler, had previously been published on author Simon Owens' blog. A.K.
- Truly outrageous: At Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston reports (March 8) on the brief difficulties faced by Sophie Campbell, an artist whose credits include the current Jem and the Holograms comic book from IDW Publishing, with her Wikipedia article after she came out as transgender on March 6. G
- Sneaking through Wikipedia's notability test: Andrew McMillen, author of last month's widely circulated Backchannel profile of Giraffedata, writes "How I Snuck Through Wikipedia's Notability Test" (March 6). He compares his "ridiculously detailed" 1,905 word Wikipedia article to others; it is shorter than articles on Santa's Little Helper, Rickrolling, and spontaneous human combustion, but longer than articles on Lena Dunham, Frances McDormand, and Joe Rogan. McMillen recounts the creation of his article by JHunterJ as a stub in April 2014 and his surprise at its significant expansion by Soulparadox later that year. Following the publication of the Backchannel piece, his Wikipedia article was proposed for deletion. G
- The Inspire Campaign: Think Wikipedia is sexist?: Fast Company reports (March 5) on the Wikimedia Foundation's "Inspire" grants campaign looking for ideas to narrow the gender gap, which is also discussed in a report (March 5) on edit-a-thons in Wired. A.K.
- Wikiwand on iPhone: Venture Beat reports (March 5) that Wikiwand, a third-party skin for Wikipedia, is now available for iPhone. "It’s perhaps what a Wikipedia of 2015 should look like," the article says. Wikiwand says it will donate 30 percent of its profits to the Wikimedia Foundation. A.K.
- Who founded Wikipedia?: The Epoch Times revives (March 4) an old story, looking at how the account of Wikipedia's earliest days has differed over time, depending on when and by whom it was told. A.K.
- The Oracle of Wikipedia: At KQED, Adrienne Blaine discusses (March 6) how The Delphian Course of Reading, a ten volume series published by the Delphian Society in 1913, inspired her to contribute to Wikipedia. G
- US drug capitals according to Wikipedia edits: Quartz reports (March 3) on the American cities that have contributed the most edits to Wikipedia's articles on certain drugs. A.K.
Note
- Coverage of Wikipedia's NSA lawsuit appears in this week's In focus section.
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WMF to NSA: "stop spying on Wikipedia users"
- "This dedicated global community of users is united by their passion for knowledge, their commitment to inquiry, and their dedication to the privacy and expression that makes Wikipedia possible. We file today on their behalf."
In an effort to protect and maintain the privacy of Wikipedia's thousands of editors, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has filed a lawsuit against the United States' National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Attorney General. This action takes aim at the so-called "upstream surveillance" practiced by the NSA, whose broad scope can include the communications between and edits made by Wikipedia users. The WMF has been joined by eight other organizations, including Amnesty International USA, Global Fund for Women, and Human Rights Watch. They are all being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is supplying much of the lawsuit's financial backing.
The move comes as the latest chapter in the WMF's long-standing opposition to government intrusion on the Internet, including the unprecedented one-day SOPA blackout in 2012 and Jimmy Wales' high-profile Wikimania speech in 2013.
The lawsuit states that "seizing and searching Wikimedia's communications is akin to seizing and searching the patron records of the largest library in the world—except that Wikimedia's communications provide a more comprehensive and detailed picture of its users' interests than any previous set of library records ever could have offered" (clause 67). It asserts that confidential communications among Wikipedia volunteers and staffers are being intercepted, and that "there is a substantial likelihood that the NSA retains, reads, and disseminates Wikimedia's international communications because Wikimedia is communicating with or about persons the government has targeted" (clause 71).
The upstream surveillance targeted by the WMF includes four different processes, laid out in clause 43 of the lawsuit: copying, filtering, content review, and retention and use. As alleged by the WMF, this means, respectively, that
- The NSA is copying nearly all Internet traffic between the US and foreign countries, in addition to its substantial intra-US monitoring;
- Automatic filtering and discarding of purely domestic US communication, although much of it is actually kept for various reasons;
- A content review program detects instances of an unknown number of key words ("selectors") related to NSA foreign intelligence targets, a broad category that includes far beyond suspected agents or terrorists;
- The remaining information is retained and used; the NSA saves any communications it believes are relevant to its mission, as well as any information that was bundled with it.
Moreover, the lawsuit states that there are few restrictions on the use of the information from (4):
| “ | Upstream surveillance is not limited to communications sent or received by the NSA's targets. Rather, it involves the surveillance of essentially everyone's communications. The NSA systematically examines the full content of substantially all international text-based communications (and many domestic ones) for references to its search terms. In other words, the NSA copies and reviews the communications of millions of innocent people to determine whether they are discussing or reading anything containing the NSA's search terms. [clause 44; emphasis in source] | ” |
The NSA's legal justification for this is in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, 50 U.S.C. § 1881a.
The WMF's standing rests in the Edward Snowden leaks. On a PowerPoint slide detailing the NSA's interest in HTTP, Wikipedia is listed; it also remarks that "nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet uses HTTP." This was a major factor in hurrying the deployment of HTTP Secure (https) by default to all Wikimedia projects. Beyond this solitary slide, the lawsuit declares that Wikimedia communications "are intercepted, copied, and reviewed" by the NSA. Katherine Maher, the WMF's chief communications officer, wrote in an email to the Signpost that this line was "based on what we know about how the NSA has interpreted FAA and the breadth of the surveillance practices the NSA implemented under the authority of the FAA. The slide helped confirm that conclusion. We will present further information as the case moves forward."
The WMF claims that such intelligence gathering is harmful to their mission, such as in countering systemic bias—the tilt of focus when, for instance, a broadly white, educated, middle-to-upper class male group writes an encyclopedia. In the Foundation's view, non-US editors could justifiably fear that their Wikimedia-related contributions, emails, and even page views will be intercepted by the NSA and shared with their own governments. In a related New York Times op-ed, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and WMF executive director Lila Tretikov contend that given the long-standing links between American and Egyptian intelligence, a hypothetical Egyptian editor would "surely be less likely to add her knowledge or have that conversation, for fear of reprisal." Maher echoed these points, writing that these "dragnet mass surveillance practices create a chilling effect on free expression and association."
The lawsuit rhetorically echoes the idea that the NSA "undermines" the plaintiffs:
| “ | Upstream surveillance undermines Wikimedia's ability to conduct its work. Wikimedia depends on its ability to ensure anonymity for individuals abroad who view, edit, or otherwise use Wikimedia projects and related web pages. The ability to read, research, and write anonymously is essential to the freedoms of expression and inquiry. Upstream surveillance harms the ability of Wikimedia's staff to engage in communications essential to their work and compromises Wikimedia's organizational mission by making online access to knowledge a vehicle for U.S. government monitoring. [clause 74; related clauses include 2, 83, 88, 93, 98, 103, 108, 113, and 118] | ” |
In the New York Times op-ed, titled "Stop Spying on Wikipedia Users," Wales and Tretikov assert that Wikimedia editors should be free to edit and email without fear of government oversight: "Privacy is an essential right. It makes freedom of expression possible, and sustains freedom of inquiry and association. It empowers us to read, write and communicate in confidence, without fear of persecution. Knowledge flourishes where privacy is protected."
In a similar vein, the WMF published a blog post emphasizing privacy as "the bedrock of individual freedom" and "a universal right that sustains the freedoms of expression and association." The post decried the NSA's activities, which they said "rightfully alarmed" the Wikipedia community when disclosed (see previous Signpost coverage). At the conclusion of the post, the WMF legal team answered many frequently asked questions, which were reproduced on Meta for convenience. Of note, however, is that while the WMF correctly identifies that individuals can register anonymous accounts—"we don't require real names, email addresses, or any other personally identifying information, and we never sell your data"—they do not mention that those who edit without one are publicly identified, in on-wiki records, with their individual IP address.
The ACLU is representing the plaintiffs pro bono, so no Wikimedia donor funds will be devoted to the lawsuit beyond those already budgeted for the legal team and regular staff time. This is significant, given that a similarly scoped case, Clapper v. Amnesty, took years to wind its way through the US legal system before it was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2013. We asked Maher if the WMF was prepared to fight a case that could last just as long:
"The Foundation is prepared and committed for the duration."
- Andrew Lih and Tony1 assisted in editing this story.
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Wikipedia: handing knowledge to the world, one prank at a time
The net punking of Kanye West, which redirected the web address "loser.com" to his Wiki page, shot him to the top of the list and got Wikipedia in the news again. Other than that, a dull week, with only three new entries in the top 10: a UFC champion, a Google Doodle and a Hindu festival involving people throwing powder at each other (though that does sound fun).
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. See here for a list of the most edited articles of the week.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of 1 to 7 March 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Kanye West 
4,291,451 
The rapper/entrepreneur is, it is fair to say, a polarising figure. Whether he's campaigning against other artists' award wins during their acceptance speeches, comparing himself to God and Picasso, or naming his daughter North West, it seems the 21-time Grammy winner just can't stop throwing the media for a loop. But it seems his most persistent recent gaffe has been his ill-judged tirade against Beck, winner of this year's Grammy for album of the year, which has apparently earned him the undying enmity of Beck fans. This enmity has manifested itself in many ways, but this week, the web address "loser.com", which just happens to share a name with Beck's best known single, was redirected to his Wikipedia page. This redirect has led, naturally, to a spike in views to said page. The perpetrator of this egregious offence eventually made himself known as Brian Connelly, a 44-year-old systems analyst from South Carolina, whose reasons are apparently deep-seated. "I went to Bonnaroo last year," he told The Daily Beast, "He started yelling, 'Where the press at? Point out the press!' and started going crazy and yelling at everybody about how they didn't respect his genius. Then he started naming names of people he should be compared to—George Washington, Henry Ford, etc ... And he didn't even play 'Gold Digger'." 2 Momofuku Ando 
1,705,988 A Google doodle for the noodle guru occurred on his would-have-been 105th birthday on 5 March. 3 House of Cards (U.S. TV series) 
885,920 
The third season of this political thriller TV series debuted in its entirety on Netflix on 27 February. 4 Leonard Nimoy 
873,806 
The death on 27 February of this beloved actor, best known for playing the role of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise, led to widespread tributes. Spock's Vulcan salute bade us to "live long and prosper," as Nimoy did himself. 5 Stephen Hawking
841,024 
The former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his 18th straight appearance in the Top 25 this week. And at the Oscars, Eddie Redmayne won Best Actor for portraying him in The Theory of Everything. 6 Ronda Rousey
788,398 
The UFC women's bantamweight champion beat Cat Zingano in a record-breaking 14 seconds during UFC 184 on 28 February. 7 Fifty Shades of Grey
736,594 
The release of the film adaptation of this onetime Twilight fanfic continues to draw fans, though a 74% drop in views on the second weekend and a 56% drop on the third weekend suggest that everyone who was going to see it has done so. 8 House of Cards (season 3)
554,178 see #3 9 Holi
591,417 
This fun Hindu festival of colours and love, notable for people throwing coloured powder on the streets, fell on 6 March this year. 10 Fifty Shades of Grey (film)
585,927 See #7.
Reader comments
Here they come, the couple plighted –
On life's journey gaily start them.
Man and maid for aye united,
Till divorce or death shall part them.
...and also featuring mostly-naked men and absinthe, which are, strangely, unrelated.
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Featured articles
Six featured articles were promoted this week.
- Shepseskare (nominated by Iry-Hor) Shepseskare, an ancient Egyptian Fifth Dynasty pharaoh, lived in the middle of the 25th century BC. Traditionally believed to have reigned seven years, the paucity of artefacts from his reign has led some Egyptologists to think that he only reigned for a few months. He has no known pyramid, though the barely-started construction of a pyramid at Abusir, between other Fifth Dynasty pyramids belonging to known pharaohs has been suggested to be all the work on Shepseskare's that his short reign allowed. It amounts to a few weeks' work levelling the ground and digging a ditch. Otherwise a couple of cylinder seals carved with his name, a few impressions of seals and some cursory mentions in historical records are all that's left of him.
- Bramshill House (nominated by Dr. Blofeld) Bramshill House is one of the largest Jacobean mansions in England. There was a manor house on the site from 1360, in a 2,500-acre (1,000 ha) wooded park. In 1605, Baron Zouche bought the estate, demolished the house, and built a 15-bedroom mansion. The house is reputed to be haunted by fourteen ghosts, but we think that's transparent nonsense. Well, translucent nonsense, anyway. I mean, you can only partially see through ghosts. Must be precise.
- God of War III (nominated by JDC808) The God of War, the God of War / I'm destined for, I'm destined for / A terribly famous conqueror / With a sword upon his thigh! / When army's meet with angry shout, / Or war-like rout, or war-like rout / You'll find me there without a doubt / The God of War am I! is what goes through my head every time I see the game mentioned. Made worse because the music to Thespis is lost, but I set it to a theme from Victoria and Merrie England and... but I get way off topic. This is the third in the popular video game series which sees the anti-hero Kratos slaughter his way through the Greek gods. In this one, he manages to kill Helios, destroying the sun, Hera, destroying all plants... and generally makes a huge mess of things. Eh, well. It'll probably be alright in the end. Probably....
- American Arts Commemorative Series medallions (nominated by RHM22) American Arts Commemorative Series medallions are ten gold-coloured medals that depict American artists, architects, writers, poets and musicians. They were made from 90% gold and 10% copper; later issues had a smidgen of silver to alter the appearance. The medallions were intended to compete with Krugerrands and other gold bullion coins. They were made in two sizes, "one ounce", containing one Troy ounce of gold, or 31 grams, and "half ounce", containing 16 grams of gold, and were sold to the public for the market price of the gold content "plus the cost of manufacture, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and overhead expenses including marketing costs." Which, by our reckoning, makes the half-ounce coin a bit expensive compared with its big brother. The gold price was set using the previous day's closing price on the London bullion market, so sales rose and fell depending on whether the price of gold had risen or fallen in the meantime. Not that they sold very well at the best of times: They were eventually withdrawn from the market and replaced by a gold coin. If you're thinking of buying one, the rarest is the 1983 half-ounce Alexander Calder, of which it's estimated there are only 8,000 left. Why not buy several and make a mobile; it'll still be cheaper than buying one of Calder's mobiles.
- Cucurbita (nominated by HalfGig, Sminthopsis84, and Chiswick Chap) The genus Cucurbita, which includes butternut squash, courgettes (zucchinis to our American readers), various pumpkins, and other squashes and gourds, is a delicious and important part of the human food supply. Evidence of domestication goes back at least eight thousand years in the Americas, and happened as far north as Canada and as far south as Argentina. Cucurbita pepo, a species with a wide variety of cultivars, including the famous orange pumpkin, is believed to be one of the oldest domesticated plants, if not the oldest. They reached Europe after Columbus' voyage, with the earliest record being a French devotional book, of all things, from between 1503 and 1508. Famously, pumpkins replaced the traditional turnip in the carving of jack-o'-lanterns. This Hallowe'en, say no to revisionism. Carve a turnip. Then have a nice pumpkin pie or a butternut squash stew, because they're delicious, hearty meals for a cold autumnal evening. Or, if you live in a place unlike Scotland where it's hot in October, then, if they're available and not out of season, why not roast pumpkin and butternut squash, cut them into cubes, add cherry tomatoes, some pine nuts, a little olive oil, perhaps, and have a delicious cold salad?
- Exhumation of Richard III of England (nominated by Prioryman) Long thought to have been thrown from the old Bow Bridge in Leicester into the River Soar, the remains of Richard III of England were rediscovered under a car park once used by social workers. Acting on a hunch, archaeologists dug up part of the site of the long-lost Greyfriars church in which Richard's tomb had been once been located. On the first day of the dig, the skeleton of a thirty-year-old man was found, with signs that he'd been severely hacked about, both before and after death. The skeleton's spine was also severely curved in an S-shape, which would have made his right shoulder higher than his left. The skeleton's genome was sequenced and compared with that of a direct descendant of Richard's sister, Anne. It matched, confirming that these were indeed the villain's remains. Following standard archaeological practice, it was intended that Richard should be re-interred in the nearest consecrated ground, which is Leicester Cathedral, and, after some controversy, he'll finally be re-interred there on 26 March. Try and get ringside seats: We want featured pictures of his skeleton, and we're running out of time for that.
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The Kiss
Oh! Sir! You forget yourself! -
Lady Seated at a Virginal
I am trying to concentrate! If everybody would at least keep quiet, I could start this sonata. -
Self-portrait with Two Pupils
Oh, Adélaïde, that was wonderfull!
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Featured lists
Three featured lists were promoted this week.
- List of scheduled monuments in North Somerset (nominated by Rodw) Over the last year or thereabouts, we've had a long series of list of scheduled monuments – historical sites or buildings of national importance – from the various administrative divisions of Somerset, England. Like all in that series, there has been a valiant effort to get photographs for as many monuments as possible. The list includes various prehistoric burial sites – including the fairly well-known Aveline's Hole and quite a number of barrows – complete with barrow wights if my Tolkien has taught me anything – Bronze and Iron Age hillforts and other settlements, deserted Roman and Medieval towns, farmsteads, castles and houses, village and church crosses, a relatively well-preserved priory, 17th- and 18th-century industrial buildings, and even a World War I gun emplacement.
- Savilian Professor of Astronomy (nominated by Bencherlite) Created by Henry Savile in 1619, this professorship at the University of Oxford was part of a campaign to improve the understanding of mathematics in England, alongside the related Savilian Professorship of Geometry. Originally requiring an understanding of Aristotle and Plato, to have begun before any higher sciences were studied, this original part of the bequest was likely dropped long ago. With a number of great scientists and researchers, the Savilian Professors include twenty people who can be said to have improved our understanding of astronomy and related fields, and also include George Johnson.
- List of New York Islanders draft picks (nominated by Gloss) The New York Islanders are a professional ice hockey team in the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League who, since 1972, have have selected 459 players from a predetermined list, in 52 drafts. This article lists all 459 of them. Only two of those – Denis Potvin and Bryan Trottier – have played over 1,000 games for the Islanders, and eight others have played more than 1,000 games in the NHL. Five of the players have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
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Kullervo, from Finnish mythology, cursing shirtlessly. -
Eugen Sandow, posing in very little clothing. Though this is somewhat well-dressed for him... -
"Thor will deal with the nudity! Thor SMASH!"
"...Could you try less smash?"
"No, thinking is for the weak! Thor SMASH!!"
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Featured pictures
Forty (!!!) featured pictures were promoted this week.
- Old Route 66 (created by Dietmar Rabich (XRay), nominated by Crisco 1492) Get your kicks on this scenic highway, depicted here as it enters Amboy, California. The historic U.S. Route 66 used to travel from Chicago, Illinois, to Los Angeles, California, and it remains a behemoth of American popular culture. Quite a nice photo by Dietmar Rabich; we hope to see more.
- Young Knight in a Landscape (created by Vittore Carpaccio, nominated by Hafspajen) A painting by the classic Italian Renaissance artist Vittore Carpaccio, Portrait of a Knight shows a young knight, surrounded by a series of symbolic objects and animals. The heron fighting with the hawk in the sky might hint at a battle; an alternative theory is that this is a memorial portrait. In the left lower corner is a white ermine and a scroll stating "I prefer to die rather than to incur dishonour" ( malo mori quam foedari ). The European legend had it that a white stoat would rather die before allowing its pure white coat to be besmirched, thus this could be an allusion to the knight's pure character and morality, or maybe his fate. Art historians continue to debate, without any signs of it resolving.
- Self-Portrait with Two Pupils (created by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, nominated by Hafspajen and Crisco 1492) Unsurprisingly, this is a self-portrait by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (sitting) with two of her pupils, Marie-Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond – the latter of whom we'd like to see an article on, although apparently none of her well-praised works survives, at least, not attributed to her. Sign your work, kids. Anyway! Labille-Guiard was a female painter who trained other women artists, because art schools were not open to women at the time. These three women were unusual woman artists who counted among their customers several members of the royal family, and even other members of Parisian society. However, women were not considered serious painters, and were barred or all-but-barred from the Art Academies; for instance, in the early 1790s, Labille-Guiard had to campaign for the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture to be reopened to women, and, even when she succeeded, the number of women painters allowed in was still limited to only four. Self-Portrait with Two Pupils was part of a campaign for recognition of women when it was exhibited at the Salon at the Académie Royale. It was still a slow process. Fast quiz: QUIZ, check your knowledge about women painters.
- Lady Seated at a Virginal (created by Johannes Vermeer, nominated by SchroCat) A c. 1670 genre painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Vermeer, Lady Seated at a Virginal depicts a young woman in a blue silk dress playing the virginal, a keyboard instrument similar to a harpsichord. Virginals were usually decorated on the inside lid, and this one has a painting of a landscape there. The painting on the wall is probably a copy of Dirck van Baburen's painting The Procuress, which was once owned by Vermeer's mother-in-law.
- Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu (created by Philippe de Champaigne, nominated by SchroCat) The Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu is a painting by Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674), a Brabançon-born French Baroque painter and a founding member of the French Academy for Painting and Sculpture. He was mainly active in Paris, where he portrayed the entire French court, the French high nobility, royalty, high members of the church and the state, parliamentarians and architects and other notable people, some more than once. And he was simply crazy about Cardinal de Richelieu, he painted him from the left, right, facing him, sitting, standing ... sometimes he painted him three times in the same painting too (guess when!)... he just simply couldn't have enough of him. Or was it the other way round?
- Thor's Fight with the Giants (created by Mårten Eskil Winge, nominated by Armbrust) Thor's Fight with the Giants displays the Norse god Thor (or "Tor" - the spellings vary throughout Scandanavia and Germany) fighting the Jötunns, or Giants, one of his primary antagonists in Norse mythology. He can be seen here in his chariot, pulled by the goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, smiting the giants with his hammer Mjölnir. In the painting, Mårten Eskil Winge depicts him as clean-shaven and blond-haired. This is not very accurate to the mythology, which gives him red hair and a beard, but does, at least provide a plausible excuse for his appearance in the Marvel Comics.
- Bath Abbey set: Exterior, nave looking east, and nave looking west (created and nominated by David Iliff) The wonderful set of featured photos of Bath Abbey were taken by our excellent photographer David Iliff. Bath Abbey, a now-Anglican parish church in Bath, Somerset, England, was founded in the 7th century, has a cruciform floor plan, and was rebuilt several times. It is a spectacular example of the Perpendicular style, a Gothic style strongly associated with English architecture. The vaulting over the nave is made from local Bath stone. The west front has charming sculptures of angels climbing to heaven on ladders, a theme inspired by Jacob's dream. The church is an active place of worship, and is also used for secular civic ceremonies, concerts, and lectures, a stone's throw from where naked Romans sweated under the stern gaze of a Celtic god. As for the details of the photograph, we don't know what the flautist is playing; his audience seems to be listening intently... but no-one's throwing coins into the bowler hat. Maybe they did after the photo?
- Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel (created by Francisco Goya, nominated by SchroCat) Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel is a painting made by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya around 1805, and depicts a young woman with her hands on her hips, dressed festively with a high Spanish mantilla on her head with a black lace veil. The veil is worn over a high comb, and this ingenious arrangement covers her head and shoulders. This fashion came into use in the warmer regions of Spain towards the end of the 16th century, starting in the Andalusia region of Spain. Women still wear mantillas in Spain during Holy Week (the week leading to Easter), bullfights, and weddings.
- Kullervo Cursing (created by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, nominated by Crisco 1492) Kullervo Cursing is a painting by the Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela. It depicts a scene from the Kalevala in which Kullervo curses a herd of cows, turning them into bears who attack a woman who tormented him. Kullervo is an ill-fated character from the Finnish Kalevala epic. Kullervo is the only tragic character in Finnish mythology. He survived a massacre of his tribe and was raised by his enemy Untamo's tribe. Kullervo grew up thinking his family was dead, amongst people who hated him and whom he did not trust, knowing that they were his people's murderers. Later, he was sold into slavery and mocked and tormented further. When he finally ran away, he finds his family, only to lose them again, and unknowingly seduces and has sexual relations with his sister, whom he thought dead. When she finds out it was her own brother who seduced her, she commits suicide. Kullervo becomes mad with rage, returns to Untamo and his tribe, exterminates them using his powers, and commits suicide. The story of Kullervo differs from all other folktales in that it describes the effects of child abuse. In the end of the poem, the character Väinämöinen warns parents about abusing their children:
- Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel,
- As he hears the joyful tidings,
- Learns the death of fell Kullervo,
- Speaks these words of ancient wisdom:
- "O, ye many unborn nations,
- Never evil nurse your children,
- Never give them out to strangers,
- Never trust them to the foolish!
- If the child is not well nurtured,
- Is not rocked and led uprightly,
- Though he grow to years of manhood,
- Bear a strong and shapely body,
- He will never know discretion,
- Never eat the bread of honor,
- Never drink the cup of wisdom.
- Translation by John Martin Crawford
- The Kiss (created by Francesco Hayez, nominated by Hafspajen) The Kiss is a painting which, unsurprisingly, depicts a passionate kiss, painted by the Italian artist Francesco Hayez from about 1859. It is, possibly, his best-known work. This magical kiss is one of the most passionate and intense representations of a kiss in the history of Western art. The painting is enormously popular in Italy, seen as a symbol of Italian Romanticism that emphasizes deep feelings rather than rational thought, and that presents a reinterpretation and a reevaluation of the Mediaeval romantic love ideals.
- Caucasus embroidery (unknown creator; nominated by Alborzagros) This is a Verni or Azerbaijani kilim, a flat-weave rug (rather than one that has a knotted pile). The Azerbaijani rug was declared a Masterpiece of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in November 2010. According to the article's section on the Verni, "The technical perfection and utmost emotionality of these carpets is a sort of acme of the Azerbaijani carpet art". Usually, when the conversation turns to the emotional life of a carpet, there's a Camberwell Carrot involved.
- Moss leaf cells (created by Des Callaghan, nominated by The Herald) Live leaf cells of the moss Bryum capillare form a beautiful repeating pattern. Sadly, our article on the genus is terrible: Your project for the week is to improve it to "tolerable". There's only a few letters difference between terrible and tolerable, so it shouldn't be too hard!
- Toyota FJ Cruiser (created by Stefan Krause, nominated by FakeShemp) The Toyota FJ Cruiser is a retro-styled SUV introduced by Toyota in 2005. It's a rugged performer, and has been offered in variants such as the Trail Teams Special Edition and the ARB Edition FJ Crawler. The "F" is the engine type and, according to the official Toyota blog, the "J" stands for "Jeep"- the original Land Cruiser of the 1950s used a "B" engine, and was known as the Toyota Jeep BJ. It was a simpler time...
- Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (created by Johannes Vermeer, nominated by SchroCat) Woman Reading a Letter is a painting by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It was the first Vermeer acquired by the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The painting depicts... er, well, a woman... reading a letter. The woman wears a blue silk dress and is standing in front of a window; some clues in the painting, like the map of the Netherlands on the wall, suggest that the letter was written by a traveling husband or lover. Those were the days: People wrote and read letters.
- Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (created by Bronzino, nominated by Étienne Dolet) Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time is a complicated, obscure, and ambivalent allegorical painting by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino. The themes of the painting appear to be lust, deceit, and jealousy, displaying the kind of eroticism that was characteristic of the Mannerist period. It depicts Cupid to the left of Venus, who holds the golden apple she won in the Judgement of Paris; Time, at the upper right of the scene with a the hourglass, is pulling away a curtain revealing what will come. The identity of the other figures remains uncertain. The screaming figure has been interpreted as Jealousy or Despair — though some believe this figure to represent the ravaging effects of syphilis, meaning that one single tempting, desirable mistake can have terrible consequences later. The creature at the right-hand extending a honeycomb may represent Pleasure or Fraud; the boy scattering roses might be Folly or Pleasure. The painting was brought by Napoleon from Paris to Vienna, and today it is hosted by the National Gallery, London.
- Portrait of an African Man (created by Jan Mostaert, nominated by Crisco 1492) The subject of a recent new article which ran on the "Did you know?" section of the main page, Portrait of an African Man depicts an unidentified African man who is speculated to be a soldier, a nobleman, or Saint Maurice of the Roman Theban Legion, a 3rd-century Roman legion who converted to Christianity and were martyred. This is the only early modern European painting which features a man of African descent independently. Now, when can we get a painting of an African man by an African artist as a Featured Picture?
- Jeju Province (created by NASA, nominated by Alborzagros) This is Jeju Island, home to Jeju Province, one of the nine provinces of South Korea. Before 1910, the islanders were regarded as foreigners by the mainland Koreans. In 1910, Korea, including Jeju, was annexed by Japan, and a period of hardship and oppression followed for the islanders. This occupation ended in 1945 with the Surrender of Japan at the end of World War II. Three years later, in 1948, a year-long leftist uprising against local government and police forces resulted in the deaths of between 14,000 and 30,000 islanders in a period of violent suppression, massacres, and executions, aided by the mainland's official intolerance of islanders. Movements for the island's independence sprang up in the wake of the resulting genocide, which was never prosecuted.
- Chocolate brownie (created by ɱ, nominated by The Herald) A chocolate brownie! It's brown, it's got chocolate, it's a chocolate brownie. It's a nice, quite tempting bit. Perfect to make your own Wikilove message with to thank your friends... Or go out in your kitchen and bake one, because... why not? Just melt precisely eight ounces of chocolate with butter and add a very small amount of flour, also add 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, which sweetens it up if semi-sweet chocolate is used, also add 1/4 cup of brown sugar, which gives a moist texture... go on and add 3 eggs, which give the brownies a fudgy texture, try to also add chocolate chips or chunks or some delicious bits of caramel, yum, to the brownie batter. You can even add chocolate frosting on top. We take no responsibility for this luxury brownie recipe. If you want to go safe, try the naked chef's brownie recipe instead. Nakedness will be a theme in this issue....
- British soldiers loading a shrapnel shell (created by Photopress, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) The gun is a Quick Firing 18-pounder, and the shrapnel shell being loaded has the typical red-painted tip (below the fuse) and band. The shrapnel shells fired by the British army used a time and percussion fuze designed by the German arms manufacturer Krupp in 1905. They were manufactured under licence by Vickers, who had to pay Krupp £40,000 in royalties after the war. These shells were fired at a rate of up to one million a week; many fell into soft mud and failed to explode... so if you go camping in a Flanders field, be careful where you hammer in the tent pegs.
- Bulb Fields (created by Vincent van Gogh, nominated by Crisco 1492) Bulb Fields, completed in 1883, is van Gogh's first garden painting. The fields of blue, white, yellow, pink, and red hyacinths were depicted in parallel rows of flowerbeds emerging towards a vanishing point directly opposite the viewer. It was one of Van Gogh's attempts to explore his interest in perspective. Later he abandoned this style, to favor more asymmetric compositions. So many flowers here, almost as many as the number of van Goghs we've featured. Now, what the article really needs is how many individual flowers there are. Get counting!
- At the Café (created by Édouard Manet, nominated by SchroCat) Edouard Manet's 1879 painting, At the Café is also called The Café-Concert, and should not be confused with an 1878 Manet painting also called At the Café. It depicts people sitting, eating, and drinking... not only coffee, apparently: it looks more like beer. Manet (1832–83) painted scenes from the Cabaret de Reichshoffen on the Boulevard de Rochechouart in Paris. The cabaret was one where "where women on the fringes of society freely intermingled with well-heeled gentlemen", according to the Walters Art Museum, who holds the painting.
- Messier 106 (created by NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team and Robert Gendler with acknowledgment to R. Jay GaBany; nominated by The Herald) Seems like something to do with space or the conquest of it never escapes the featured photo section for long, and it's not hard to see why. Here we are looking at another galaxy through the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope... with a little help from an amateur astronomer. Part of the emission from the center of Messier 106 is produced by a process that is somewhat similar to that in a laser, although this rather larger scale process produces bright microwave radiation. Messier 106 is located a little over 20 million light-years away, practically close enough for a weekend visit, if you're able to withstand the deep freeze it will require to get you there. Don't forget your sweater! Also, be sure to contact advanced aliens first: the lack of any proven way to revive people from cryogenic sleep might make your trip very expensive suicide otherwise.
- CG 4 (created by ESO, nominated by The Herald) Cometary globule CG4 glows menacingly in this image from ESO's Very Large Telescope. We have a source for that, actually – that's part of the official description, which also calls it "the gaping mouth of a gigantic celestial creature". Oh no! CG4 is a star-forming region located in the Puppis constellation, which is just a short hop away at only 1,300 light-years away from earth. When the stars are right, it will awaken and approach the earth, but we don't... think it can exceed light speed, so we're probably safe for now... er... moving on... Although it looks huge and bright in this image, it is actually a faint nebula and not easy to observe, making it stealthy and perfect for sneaking up on us. The exact nature of CG4 remains a mystery, because no-one likes to admit there is an alien horror a mere millennium or so of travel away from us. If you happen to visit Messier 106 and enjoy a good mystery, consider a "quick thaw" on CG4, drop in, and transmit the footage of your horrific demise at the jaws of this hideous creature back to earth, so we may learn the terrible truth at last.
- Ocellaris clownfish (created by Nick Hobgood, nominated by Jim Carter) The photo depicts an ocellaris clownfish, a nice little fish in love with an anemone. They can be found in the seas near northern Australia, Southeast Asia, and Japan. The clownfish have a particular lifestyle. They are born male and at some point in their lifespan change sex to female. They are also completely dependent on their accompanying sea anemone, with which they have a symbiotic relationship, needing the anemone for survival and shelter. When the fish is chased, it will swim rapidly to the sea anemone, who will sting every fish but the clownfish. In exchange, the clownfish keeps the anemone free from from parasites and clean.
- L'Absinthe (created by Edgar Degas, nominated by Crisco 1492 and SchroCat) "Absinthe is not good for you" was the consensus at the time Degas completed this painting, and it's clear that he agreed. The seated people are off center, and staring off into the distance, sitting so near to each other, yet also sitting miles apart. The drab colors suggest a life wasted, one of loss and depression, similar to how the French were facing social isolation in the face of advanced modernization and development. Now, why am I thirsty?
- An International High Noon Divorce (created by Samuel D. Ehrhart, restored by Adam Cuerden, and nominated by Adam Cuerden and Paris 16) An International High Noon Divorce is a caricature by Samuel D. Ehrhart for Puck magazine, parodying the the circus-like atmosphere of the divorce of Anna Gould and Le Comte Boni de Castellane. Anna Gould is depicted holding a bouquet made of indictments against her husband. The correspondents are just behind, together with a bunch of hopeful creditors. However, things didn't end with the divorce. Her husband tried to get the marriage annulled so that he could marry again as a Catholic. Time magazine wrote on April 13, 1925:
Probably not since Henry VIII tried in vain to get an annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon has a matrimonial case been so long in the courts of the Roman Catholic Church as that on which nine Cardinals have just handed down a final decision. The male in this case is the son of one of France's most historic houses − Le Comte Boni de Castellane. The female is the daughter of a United States stockbroker, the late Jay Gould − the present Anna, Marquise de Talleyrand Périgord, Duchesse de Sagan. On March 14, 1895, Anna became La Comtesse de Castellane by a marriage solemnized in Manhattan by the late Archbishop Corrigan. After three children were born, La Comtesse obtained a civil divorce from Le Comte on grounds of infidelity. In 1908, she married Le Marquis de Talleyrand Périgord, Duc de Sagan. Thereupon, Le Comte asked the Vatican to annul the marriage, apparently that he might be free to marry again, within the Church.
- Anna Gould was a bit spiteful, to be honest, challenging the annulment, and, in the end, winning her case that the marriage had been valid, thus keeping him from being able to marry again as a Catholic. Oh, did we mention she married his cousin two years after divorcing him?
- Eugen Sandow (created by D. Bernard & Co, Melbourne; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) The photo shows the early bodybuilder Eugen Sandow modelling. Biffy and great, the Father of Bodybuilding stands in a striking position in this picture, in no way ridiculous or silly. He wanted from the beginning to illustrate the Grecian Ideal, which he introduced to bodybuilding. He even posed several times as the statue The Dying Gaul, consistently trying to model his body after the ancient Greek and Roman ideals of beauty. Now, here's a question for you: Did the men buying these magazines only buy them because they wanted to become buff like him, or did they buy them because they wanted him?
- Portrait of Dr. Gachet (created by Vincent van Gogh, nominated by SchroCat) The Portrait of Dr. Gachet shows Paul Gachet, the doctor who took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life but never managed to cure him. Vincent van Gogh's first impression of Gachet was unfavorable. Writing to his brother Theo, he remarked: "I think that we must not count on Dr. Gachet at all. First of all, he is sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much, so that's that. Now when one blind man leads another blind man, don't they both fall into the ditch?" This remark shows that one should always trust one's first impressions. Too bad he started rationalizing instead of getting the **** out of that place at high speed – who knows: he might have lived like fifty years more, and what a loss for humanity that he didn't. He was only thirty-seven when he committed suicide. The painting was sold for the first time in 1897 by Van Gogh's sister-in-law for 300 francs; in 1990, it was sold for a record price of 82.5 million dollars at an auction in New York.
- Ridge between Segla and Hesten (created by Simo Räsänen (Ximonic), nominated by Jim Carter) This photograph depicts the ridge between the two mountain peaks Segla and Hesten, on the Norwegian island Senja. A large island near the coast of Norway, Senja is often called "Norway in miniature", with numerous small fjords, beautiful scenery, and steep and rugged mountains that rise straight from the sea. The island had exactly 7,782 inhabitants on 1 January 2008.
- Margaret Lee (created by Hans Holbein the younger or his workshop, nominated by Crisco 1492) This is a painting of Margaret Lee, one of the chief ladies-in-waiting of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII of England. She looks a bit severe and harsh, but then ladies-in-waiting were not supposed to outshine their patrons. At least she didn't drink absinthe. Margaret accompanied Queen Anne everywhere, from the secret meetings with Henry VIII, through her marriage, and until Anne's last unfortunate days in prison when Henry ordered Anne's execution at the hands of a French swordsman. Ladies out there: if a man is treating one woman badly, have no hopes he will treat you better. Learn from history, as Winston Churchill always said, and beware the bladed frog.
- Heliconius ismenius (created by Diego Delso, nominated by Jim Carter) The Tiger Heliconian is a orange and black striped butterfly found in Central and northern South America, known for feeding only on specific plants like granadilla. They are toxic and non-palatable to predators, and the pattern showing beautiful orange and black tiger stripes along the long wings is a warning: "Don't eat me, I taste bad, man!"
- The Absinthe Drinker (created by Édouard Manet, nominated by SchroCat) In this painting, a devotee of the Green Fairy is already in her company, having drunk her Fairy Liquid.... did we get that link right? The titular The Absinthe Drinker has a glass of green absinthe beside him. A dark shadow behind him is haunting him for messing around with the bottle... Absinthe was not good for you. It's the thujone that causes the damage: the active ingredient of the infused wormwood. But only when drunk in excess or over-regularly. None of you would do that... right?
- King Gustav III of Sweden and his Brothers (created by Alexander Roslin, nominated by SagaciousPhil) King Gustav III of Sweden and his Brothers is a painting by Alexander Roslin from 1771. Gustav (left) and his two brothers are gathered around a table, studying a plan of fortifications, in flattering flashy velvet, lace, and silk clothes, á là Rococo fashion. Frederick is standing and Charlie is to the right. (Pretty sure that's not the right Prince Charles being linked there.... Anyway! Gustav III was King of Sweden from 1771 until sadly he was assassinated during a masquerade ball. He was an enlightened ruler who fostered the arts, sciences, and education, and further fostered the arts by having his assassination be the subject of an opera by Daniel Auber and the inspiration behind Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera. He was actively engaged in building up the Swedish culture (from scratch, mainly) eh, irony. Gustav III attracted many artists to his court, and when they didn't come to him, he went to them instead. Gustav visited Roslin in Paris to sit for this painting. Roslin's talent was greatly appreciated by all manner of royalty: they all wanted to look good when they finally got into the Signpost. His ability to capture the personality of the sitters gives us a chance to get close to the people he painted. His masterful ability to reproduce the silks, lace, pearls, and gold filaments made him a real asset in those days... and even today. If you zoom in on the painting, you will see that the artistic rendering of the fabrics and other objects is masterful and truly spectacular.
- Discharge tubes set: Helium, Neon, Argon, and Krypton (created by Alchemist-hp, nominated by The Herald) Gas discharge tubes of the first four noble gases. By using electricity to turn the gases into a plasma – a state of matter full of ionized atoms - a characteristic glow is emitted. It's sort of the opposite effect of the one you get from drinking absinthe.
- The Allegory of Faith (created by Johannes Vermeer, nominated by SchroCat) The Allegory of Faith is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in about 1670–72 which depicts a woman in a fine white and blue satin dress with gold trimmings. She sits on a platform a step higher than the black and white marble floor, her right foot on a terrestrial globe and her right hand on her heart as she looks up, adoringly, at a glass sphere hung from the ceiling by a blue ribbon. Vermeer's iconography in the painting is largely taken from Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, an emblem book (a collection of allegorical illustrations with accompanying morals or poems on a moral theme) which had been translated into Dutch in 1644 by D. P. Pers.
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Vittore Carpaccio's Young Knight in a Landscape depicts an unknown knight... -
This photograph, printed in the Illustrated War News shows unnamed but very sexy British gunners loading a shrapnel shell during World War I -
Portrait of an African Man by Jan Mostaert is speculated to depict a soldier, a nobleman, or Saint Maurice, but no-one knows for sure.
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Spectacular panorama of the Norwegian island Senja.
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Why the Core Contest matters
- Casliber is a reviewer, administrator, former member of ArbCom, and coordinator for the yearly Core Contest, as well as, with more than one hundred featured articles and countless good articles under his belt, one of English Wikipedia's most prodigious editors. We featured an interview with Casliber to commemorate this fact last May; here he presents his views on core content on Wikipedia through the lens of the annual Core Contest, and why you, too, should participate.
Wikipedia was in many ways a very different place a decade ago, but in some important ways it was also very much the same. In October 2004, user Danny created the page for the first of three eponymous "Danny's contests", one of Wikipedia's very earliest organized content drives. The three iterations of Danny's contest—focusing, in turn, on creating new articles, destubbing, and featured content—would see editors rewarded for their work in key areas of Wikipedia by hundreds of dollars in Amazon vouchers. The third contest, held in September–October 2006, was the most innovative of these, focusing on improving the quality of established broad articles and in particular on trying to correct or influence the flow of featured content. In introducing the contest, Danny presaged many of the changes that Wikipedia would undergo, stating:
| “ | We have to start changing the focus from quantity to quality. We have to make sure that the key articles that we do have are as good as possible. Rather than getting another million articles, we need 100,000 Feature-quality articles. | ” |
It was on these principles that the contests' spiritual successor, the first English Wikipedia Core Contest, was organized in November 2007. Running from November 25 to December 9, 2007, the Core Contest presented its rationale in its introduction, stating that "we all acknowledge the ideals of quality over quantity and the vital importance of core topics - yet how many really key articles do we each know of in really poor shape? ...so to improve [on] this situation we are announcing a two-week-long contest focusing on Wikipedia's most important articles." Danny and several other users had begun development on Veropedia at the time, an early Wikipedia content scraper which solicited recommendations on high-quality Wikipedia articles from editors for the purposes of static re-hosting, a motivating factor in their assistance in organizing this newer, broader effort. Mirroring the negotiations that still take place with broad community initiatives today, the project generated extensive discussion in late 2007, with the greatest topic of concern in particular being sourcing the monetary reward. This was at first to be fulfilled by Danny again, but after a delay in sourcing it (according to speculation, due to the condition of the success of Veropedia) the winners were finally announced and their prize money awarded on November 25, 2008, with the prize money supplied by Proteins. But despite the success of this first iteration of the contest, the bumpiness of actually awarding the winners discouraged future versions, and so the project went on an indefinite—and seemingly final—hiatus.
I have been interested in contests and games as a way of promoting content-building on Wikipedia for as long as I've been an editor here, and in a particularly glib moment in 2008, I started drafting the Flaming Joel-wiki award, a wiki-award offered to editors who improve one of the many subjects mentioned in Billy Joel's eclectic song "We Didn't Start the Fire". When I stumbled across relics of the Core Contest page in late 2011, I immediately saw value in this project and began the process of reviving it. The community scaffold that keeps Wikipedia running had gone through quite a bit of changes and improvements in the intervening time, so I was able to solve the funding issues which were so problematic in the first effort through application to the Wikimedia UK's microgrants program, which provided enough for a modest but sizable prize.
I decided to use vouchers to steer away from a direct cash incentive, hoping that that would lead to more scholarly and Wikipedia-related purchases on the part of the prize-winners, and I chose Amazon again because I suspect that any winner of such a contest could find something of use to purchase through them. I think that a prize on hand as an incentive is an important thing to have: they are a nice concrete gesture for the hours of work that some folks put into the place and a way to move away from sticks and towards carrots in steering featured content quality and focus.
I have run the competition on four occasions since then: March 10 to March 31 2012, which saw £250 in Amazon vouchers shared by six editors; August 2012, which saw the same prize shared by seven editors; April 2013, with the prize shared by three editors; and 10 February to 9 March 2014, with the prize shared by five. Each time the prizes have come from a WM UK microgrant, and buoyed by the success of this program, I resurrected the Stub Contest as well. Each time the contest has run, I have been impressed by the work that has been done, with the top 2 to 3 entries of each contest being particularly memorable. I almost hate singling out a favorite article, as that would mean omitting others I see as being just as important and enjoyable, and I invite readers to take a look at the diffs in the entries section of the contests to see first-hand what it is that I find so exciting about this program.
The featured article process is becoming ever more rigorous, but while this rigour is improving the quality of the articles we generate though the process, it is at the same time leaning heavily in favor of smaller, more esoteric, and more narrowly-focus articles more easily navigable through the straits of featured article candidacy. I continue to be excited about the Core Contest because I see it as a way of encouraging the expansion of broad articles that are typically neglected by our article improvement incentives, a problem that, though it first emerged in Danny's time, has only become more and more stark today. In examining the edit histories of many of the articles brought before the contest, I notice that the majority of our coverage of broadly-constructed topics, those most critical to our success as an encyclopedia, have seen little in the way of substantive community improvement over the years; except in the cases where specific editors make focused drives to bring an article to good or featured status, our core articles as they appear today were mostly written long ago, their content having changed for the most part only cosmetically in recent years. Though the times and the context we edit in have changed, the central principles of the Core Contest remain the same as they were when the contest first ran: to improve the encyclopedia where it matters most yet sees it the least. I see Wikipedia as being at a crossroads: the novelty of being newfangled is wearing off, replaced by the rigour of guidelines, restrictions, and rules that have proven essential in the evolution of Wikipedia. I believe that Wikipedia is traversing a grey area, where the goal is status as an established and reliable online encyclopedia, and we need to strive to ensure our core content is being improved along the way.
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