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29 November 2020

 

2020-11-29

Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready"

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By Tilman Bayer, Bri and Smallbones
Congress of Industrial Organizations poster, 1946 by Ben Shahn

WMF Board considering the removal of Jimmy Wales' trustee position amid controversy over future of community elections

The Wikimedia Foundation may be inching toward removing the board seat of its founder Jimmy Wales against his objections, amid a controversy over planned bylaws changes that according to Wales may greatly reduce community influence on the organization and risk "takeover by outside interests who do not understand our values."

As described in detail in last month's Discussion report, on October 7, the Foundation's Board had published a number of proposed bylaw changes for community discussion. These include an increase in the number of Board members from 10 to 16, and removal of the current requirement to hold a regular "community voting" process to fill three of the board seats, in favor of a more vaguely described "community nomination process" determined by the Board. This gave rise to concerns in last month's discussions, which Wales addressed by stating that "I will personally only support a final revision which explicitly includes community voting and I believe it is abundantly clear to everyone on the board that this is mandatory." It appears that he might have been overruled, as the updated bylaws draft posted after that feedback round still omits community voting. However, according to the same update, the item "Remove or change the structure of the Founder seat", previously not part of the proposed changes, was added to the agenda of the subsequent (November 17) meeting of the Board's Governance Committee. (The current bylaws reserve a "Community Founder Trustee Position" for Jimmy Wales on the Board, to which he needs to be reappointed by the Board every three years, with his current term expiring in September 2021. If he is not reappointed, the seat would remain vacant.)

Mike Godwin highlighted the issue earlier this week in the "Wikipedia Weekly" Facebook group, stating – as the former general counsel of WMF responsible for 2008 bylaws change that instituted the Founder seat – it "was designed to give Jimmy Wales a continuing connection to the Foundation and to tie the Board's activities more closely to its history and values ... More than almost any other non-profit enterprise, the Wikimedia Foundation depends on maintaining and honoring its originating culture, of which Jimmy is necessarily a part. In my view, he shouldn't be kicked out of the traditional position before he's ready to go."

WMF chair María Sefidari replied to Godwin that

"This is in response to the community petition to remove the Founder seat at the recent bylaws consultation. While it is not within the scope of the current proposed changes, it was well supported by multiple community members and is something that Jimmy quite calmly has said is open to considering, so it is being acknowledged as something that could well be explored in the future in several possible ways."

With "the community petition", Sefidari appears to refer to a talk page thread started by Liam Wyatt (User:Wittylama) during last month's consultation about the proposed bylaws changes (which up to that point had not included abolishing the Founder's seat). There, Wyatt had argued that "Now that the WMF is a mature organisation, I do not believe it is appropriate any longer for a single individual to have an infinitely-renewable and non-transferrable position on the board." Several other editors agreed, but former board member Sj objected that "Now strikes me as a particularly poor time to dissolve the founder's seat. To the underlying point, I agree that the WMF (specifically the roles of stewarding the brand, and channeling resources and public interest into support for the movement and the projects) is not currently trending towards ultimate control by the community. If anything, community involvement in governance has decreased and the scale of WMF-internal governance has increased, since non-WMF budgets were frozen and the FDC suspended [cf. Signpost coverage]."

In this week's discussion on Facebook, Jimmy Wales stated:

"In the past few years, there have been several crises that have made it increasingly clear to me: the biggest problem on the board is not a lack of professional expertise, but rather a lack of community representation and control. [...]

I am deeply concerned about the tone of some of the latest proposals from some quarters: a reluctance to be firmly clear that community control – in the form of voting and not just some vague "community-sourced board members" language that might mean anything or nothing – is not negotiable.

I believe that we need to be moving in a mildly different direction with the board expansion. I don't want to make a specific proposal but I will say this: rather than an expansion that keeps community in a slight +1 position, I think we need an expansion that gives the community an absolutely dominant role.

[... My] preference is not to step aside until I am sure that the "professional" appointed seats are absolutely always in service to the community, by making sure that their numbers are – relative to the community numbers – reduced.

Removing my voting seat – yes, it's a good idea in the long run, as I am just one person and not that important in the grand scheme of things. But for now, I feel that my role is to represent the moral conscience of the movement and to prevent takeover by outside interests who do not understand our values. So for those who ask when, I would say: when we are safe. And I don't think that's true just yet."

Arbitration Committee election

Voting in the Arbitration Committee election began November 24 and will continue until Monday 23:59 UTC, December 7. There are 11 candidates this year running for seven positions on the committee. The candidates with the largest percentage of support votes get a two-year term if more than 60% of those who voted either support or oppose (rather than voting neutral) voted support, but if the percentage of support votes is less than 60% but more than 50%, they are only eligible for a one-year term.

The candidates are Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, Guerillero, Hawkeye7, L235, Maxim, Primefac, Scottywong, and SMcCandlish. You don't need to register for any special process to vote. Any editor who meets the following criteria can vote.

  • has registered an account before 00:00, 1 October
  • has made at least 150 mainspace edits before 00:00, 1 November
  • has made at least 10 live edits (in any namespace) within one year of 00:00, 1 November
  • is not blocked from the English Wikipedia at the time of their vote.

As of about 16:00 UTC Sunday, 1,327 voters had cast their votes. If you change your mind after voting, you can vote again, but only the last vote counts. TonyBallioni withdrew his candidacy today, so you may wish to revisit your vote.


Brief notes

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Reader comments

2020-11-29

Re-righting Wikipedia

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By Newslinger

"It is widely known that Wikipedia smears and lies about many conservatives (including The Gateway Pundit) and promotes leftist dogma. [...] Only legal action will prevent these far left hacks from censoring truthful news to the public", retorted the owner of The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that was deprecated by the Wikipedia community as an unreliable source in 2019, one month before his message. "Wikipedia has been and always will be fake news, and they know it. They believe facts are subject to a democratic process, and the only people with a vote are the bubbled leftists who edit Wikipedia", insisted the editor-in-chief of the far-right website Breitbart News shortly after the Wikipedia community deprecated it in 2018.

Is there any merit to these allegations?

A quick search reveals that media outlets tend to respond negatively when they are deprecated, regardless of their political orientation:

  • MintPress News, a left-leaning, anti-Israel website that was deprecated in 2019, purported: "For over ten years, Wikipedia has been a key focus of right-leaning, pro-Israel groups that have effectively weaponized the online encyclopedia as a means of controlling the narrative when it comes to the state of Israel's more than 50-year-long military occupation of Palestine."
  • The Grayzone, a far-left, pro-authoritarian blog that was deprecated earlier this year, complained: "The campaign to blacklist The Grayzone was initiated by Wikipedia editors who identify as Venezuelans and openly support the country's right-wing, US-backed opposition. These users obsessively monitor Venezuela-related articles, aggressively pushing a regime-change line and working to excise any piece of information or opinion that interferes with their agenda."

All of these deprecated media outlets accuse the Wikipedia community of having a bias that is opposite to the websites' own political orientations. But there is only one English-language Wikipedia. Deprecation is like a mirror: a source's response to being deprecated reflects its own bias more than it says anything about Wikipedia itself.

Recently, The Critic, a "contrarian conservative" magazine, published an article in October titled "The left-wing bias of Wikipedia", in which two pseudonymous authors who identify as American academics criticized Wikipedia editors for deprecating more right-wing sources than left-wing sources. What does this tell us about Wikipedia and its treatment of American media?

America's media landscape

In a highly-cited 2017 report from Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, "Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation", researchers Robert M. Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler examined the United States media landscape in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Using a corpus of 4.5 million Twitter posts, these researchers measured the "candidate valence" of popular websites, which was determined by comparing the likelihood an article was shared by users who also retweeted posts by either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. (Less than 1% of users in the data set retweeted both Trump and Clinton.) On a scale of -1.0 to 1.0, the candidate valence of a website shows how likely the website was to be aligned with Clinton or Trump supporters in 2016, with a score of -1.0 (left) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Clinton supporters, and a score of 1.0 (right) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Trump supporters.

The Berkman Klein Center report identified Wikipedia as a "center-right" website on the candidate valence scale throughout the 2016 U.S. elections. Wikipedia was quite lonely – among the top 75 websites, there were only 3 sources with a center-right valence in the American media landscape during this time period: Wikipedia, RealClearPolitics, and the National Review. Based on the number of link shares generated by sources across the left–right valence spectrum, far-right and center-left valence sources dominated public discourse, with far-right valence sources obtaining the highest number of link shares, while center-right valence sources received the lowest amount of attention. In particular, The Wall Street Journal, an acclaimed conservative newspaper with a centrist valence, was usurped in popularity by Breitbart News, an Internet-native far-right publication with a far-right valence.

The dearth of center-right sources is confirmed in the current version of Ad Fontes Media's Media Bias Chart, a graph that shows the political bias and reliability of popular English-language publications as reviewed by Ad Fontes analysts. The Media Bias Chart portrays the American media landscape as a bell curve in which centrist sources tend to be most reliable, while an increase in a source's bias is correlated with a decrease in the source's reliability. In the chart, there is a discontinuity in the center-right region, which has a mere sprinkle of sources, while the center-left and far-right regions are much more densely populated.

The Critic uses the Media Bias Chart to point out that Wikipedia deprecates more right-wing sources than left-wing sources in community discussions. This is true, and results from a feature of the American media landscape: among low-quality sources, the most popular websites are right-wing sources. In December 2018, I compiled a table of all sources rated by Ad Fontes as "Nonsense damaging to public discourse", and compared their political bias ratings to their Alexa ranks. Although there were low-quality sources on both ends of the left–right political spectrum, there was no comparison in terms of popularity. Hyper-partisan right-wing sources were considerably more popular than hyper-partisan left-wing sources, with no left-wing equivalent to sources such as Breitbart News, which had an Alexa rank of 253. The most popular hyper-partisan left-wing source with a low reliability score was AlterNet, which was less popular with an Alexa rank of 14,007.

Popularity and political bias of low-quality sources

Almost two years have passed since I posted the December 2018 list, so it is time for an update. The following table details all of the sources with a reliability score under 24.0 on the Media Bias Chart, which includes the following categories: "Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info", "Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info", and "Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion":

Sources with a reliability score under 24.0 on the Media Bias Chart
Source Status Overall source reliability Political bias Alexa rank
The Gateway Pundit Deprecated 14.5 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.8 Hyper-partisan Right 521
InfoWars Deprecated Blacklisted 12.0 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.5 Hyper-partisan Right 2,413
Newsmax Deprecated 18.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.4 Hyper-partisan Right 2,621
PJ Media N/A 19.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.4 Hyper-partisan Right 6,459
RedState N/A 21.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 25.1 Hyper-partisan Right 6,577
WorldNetDaily Deprecated 18.8 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.1 Hyper-partisan Right 6,680
The Federalist N/A 23.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.1 Hyper-partisan Right 7,308
One America News Network Deprecated 20.1 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 22.1 Hyper-partisan Right 8,430
American Thinker N/A 19.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 29.4 Hyper-partisan Right 11,845
Twitchy N/A 15.4 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 22.6 Hyper-partisan Right 12,267
Palmer Report N/A 16.9 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -27.6 Hyper-partisan Left 13,119
Before It's News Blacklisted 4.7 Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info 25.8 Hyper-partisan Right 15,728
Natural News Generally unreliable Blacklisted 8.3 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 31.8 Most Extreme Right 17,368
American Greatness N/A 18.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 27.2 Hyper-partisan Right 26,521
AlterNet Generally unreliable 23.2 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -20.1 Hyper-partisan Left 31,744
The American Spectator N/A 20.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 25.6 Hyper-partisan Right 37,759
The Right Scoop N/A 20.2 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.7 Hyper-partisan Right 42,248
The Daily Signal N/A 20.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 22.0 Hyper-partisan Right 50,975
Big League Politics N/A 19.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 29.4 Hyper-partisan Right 51,674
NewsPunch N/A 13.9 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.2 Hyper-partisan Right 54,839
Bill O'Reilly N/A 21.4 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 26.9 Hyper-partisan Right 55,910
LifeZette N/A 19.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 26.1 Hyper-partisan Right 58,147
Glenn Beck N/A 21.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.9 Hyper-partisan Right 65,138
Occupy Democrats Deprecated 21.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -25.7 Hyper-partisan Left 74,059
Wonkette N/A 15.0 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info -29.1 Hyper-partisan Left 77,446
WorldTruth.TV N/A 7.0 Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info 11.7 Skews Right 78,653
Life News N/A 23.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.6 Hyper-partisan Right 96,231
Bipartisan Report N/A 19.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -24.6 Hyper-partisan Left 218,772
National Enquirer Deprecated 8.8 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 10.8 Skews Right 362,156

Among the 29 lowest-reliability sources rated by Ad Fontes Media, 5 are "Hyper-partisan Left", 2 "Skew Right", 21 are "Hyper-partisan Right", and 1 is in the "Most Extreme Right". The Critic disapproves of how Wikipedia has not yet deprecated AlterNet, a website classified as "Hyper-partisan Left", but fails to note that there are six "Hyper-partisan Right" sources that are more popular than AlterNet which have also not yet been deprecated or blacklisted. Over the past decade, the prominence of hyper-partisan right-wing sources has been a key feature of the American media landscape. Considering the lack of popular low-reliability sources in the left, it is hardly surprising that a significant proportion of deprecated sources on Wikipedia are right-wing sources.

Re-righting America

Wikipedia editors try to apply the verifiability policy and the reliable sources guideline evenly to all sources, regardless of the sources' political orientation. Although a significant subset of political discourse in American politics centers around content published in low-quality, hyper-partisan right-wing sources, Wikipedia cannot use those sources in most cases because they do not meet the encyclopedia's reliability standards. Wikipedia is a reality-based encyclopedia, which means that false and fabricated information is correctly excluded from Wikipedia, even when it is disproportionally published by media outlets with a particular direction of bias.

As the neutral point of view policy states, "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[a] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects."

The lack of high-quality center-right sources is a problem in the American media landscape, and you may be wondering how you can fix this issue. Currently, conservative media outlets have a stronger financial incentive to publish content that is less reliable. Look no further than Newsmax, which recently increased its viewership by a factor of nine after it started publishing baseless claims of fraud regarding the 2020 U.S. elections, with most of the new viewers migrating from the more reliable and less partisan Fox News. This apparent preference for disreputable media is sparking a crisis in American journalism.

To correct the situation, the American public can return to prioritizing high-quality information over partisan misinformation. Specifically, Americans who want to see a more balanced media landscape need to:

  1. Reject low-quality, hyper-partisan right-wing media. These sources currently dominate conservative discourse in American politics on the Internet, and are gradually siphoning attention from more moderate conservative sources in traditional media. To reverse this trend, conservative media outlets that reduce the quality of their content need to suffer a decrease in their audience.
  2. Embrace high-quality center-right media. These sources are few and far between in the American media landscape, and their influence is declining. Market conditions have been too hostile for more center-right outlets to flourish, and this will not change unless the general American public becomes more receptive to high-quality conservative news reporting.

As an individual, whether you are a Wikipedia editor or reader, it is unlikely that anything you personally do would make a significant difference to the state of the American media landscape. However, all demographic changes are dependent on individuals taking action to support the changes they want to see. What Wikipedia desperately needs is a larger selection of high-quality conservative sources that represent the underserved population of Americans who align with the center-right. Once those sources are available, Wikipedia editors will be able to use them to rebalance articles that could benefit from more content that reflects a conservative perspective.

And only then can we re-right Wikipedia.

Notes

  1. ^ The relative prominence of each viewpoint among Wikipedia editors or the general public is not relevant and should not be considered.



Reader comments

2020-11-29

How billionaires rewrite Wikipedia

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By Smallbones
In this article I report on editing that was apparently paid for by Greg Lindberg, who is now in prison following his conviction for bribery and fraud. I have participated in editing the article about Lindberg. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the rest of the Signpost staff or of other Wikipedians.

"The rich are different from you and me—they have more money."[1] Like the rest of us, billionaires are people whose behavior does not necessarily reflect that of others, even among those with similar-sized bank accounts. The only conclusion we can draw about billionaires is that they have more money—and thus more power—than most Wikipedians. They do not appear to edit articles themselves; instead, they pay editors to edit on their orders. In this article, I examine three current or former billionaires who appear to have paid editors and the changes these editors made to related Wikipedia articles. Based purely on Wikipedia edit histories, it is impossible to prove that an editor has been paid to edit for a billionaire, even in cases where the paid editor claims to work for the billionaire. We are nevertheless able to present strong evidence of a paid-editing relationship in at least two of the following cases.

The three main individuals discussed below, Greg Lindberg, Robert T. Brockman, and Robert F. Smith, have all recently had brushes with the law. Lindberg reported to federal prison on October 20, 2020, following his conviction on fraud and bribery charges.[2]

Brockman was indicted on allegations of tax evasion, "the largest U.S. tax case ever against an individual".[3][4] Smith was involved in the same case, but reached a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department following his payment of $139 million to the U.S. Treasury, and is expected to testify against Brockman.

In December 2019, The Wall Street Journal published a report, "How the 1% Scrubs Its Image Online", about five rich people who were believed to be employing Status Labs, the successor of Wiki-PR, to whitewash Wikipedia articles. Their suspected clients included U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Jacob Gottlieb, billionaire financier Kenneth C. Griffin, the fraudulent blood testing company Theranos and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes, and Omeed Malik. According to the Journal, Status Labs created fake news sites to remove negative news about these people from Google searches.

A December 2019 Special Report in The Signpost covered other whitewashing tactics in detail, focusing on Theranos Labs and edits by Status Labs' apparent employee User:Jppcap.

Greg Lindberg

Lindberg's net worth was estimated between $860 million and $1.46 billion after subtracting a loss of $400 million resulting from the legal actions against him. He commissioned this estimate from Berkeley Research Group for an August 2020 legal filing.[5]

He attended Yale University, where in 1991 he started his first business, a healthcare newsletter. He is still the sole owner of this business, now known as Global Growth. By the early 2000s he was worth $12.8 million.[6] In 2013, before he went on a spree of buying insurance companies, Lindberg reported a net worth of $340 million. By 2017 he reported a net worth of $1.7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.[7] Lindberg has sued the WSJ over this and other articles.[2]

The purchase of insurance companies provided Lindberg with much of his cash. Insurance companies typically invest their customers’ premiums in low-risk investments, such as U.S. Treasury bonds, to ensure that they will have money to pay future claims. Lindberg moved many of these safe investments to more risky "affiliated investments" in companies he controlled. While small amounts of affiliated investments, less than 10% of total assets, are fairly common in the insurance industry, companies Lindberg controlled had over 40% affiliated investments, and much higher in some cases, raising questions as to whether he was using these insurance reserves as his own personal piggy bank. In total, his insurance companies made over $2 billion in affiliated loans.[6]

North Carolina law, unlike that in most states, allowed the state insurance commissioner to determine the amount of affiliated investments on a case-by-case basis. As his insurance empire grew, Lindberg became one of the largest political campaign donors in North Carolina, including funding the campaign of Mike Causey's predecessor as insurance commissioner. When Causey was elected to the office in 2017, Lindberg began complaining that the commission's decisions about his company were unfair and asked that the state employee in charge of supervising his company be replaced. Subsequently he asked for a Global Growth employee to be assigned as supervisor. Lindberg then began offering campaign donations to Causey. Causey contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and met with Lindberg, with the meetings secretly videotaped by the FBI.[7][8]

Lindberg was indicted in March 2019 for bribery and wire fraud. He was tried and found guilty in March 2020, and is serving an 84-month sentence.

While Lindberg appears to have paid four editors, only one, User:Mikec85, declared that he was paid by Lindberg, and then only after making 23 edits. Four of those edits reverted edits of mine that removed unsourced statements or fluff, such as a photo taken from Lindberg's website of a preteen Lindberg with a caption beginning "Remember the creativity and limitlessness of youth". On Mikec85's user talk page, he writes:

I can confirm I am a SPA and that I'm a paid editor as I am the webmaster/administrator for www.greglindberg.com. I have the authorization to cite any material from his website. I am paid by a company called Apex International LLC. (bold in the original)

Apex International, a firm Lindberg owns, is something of a jack-of-all-trades in the security business. Besides apparently editing Wikipedia for Lindberg, it was kept busy guarding his many mansions and protecting Lindberg and his family. His ex-wife believes that Apex spied on her after their divorce.[9]

On February 7, 2018, User:Sarah G Eli, later known as Green Beans 721, started Lindberg's Wikipedia page in their user sandbox. Their only previous edits were made the day before—three quick edits to unrelated articles, and three edits to Eli Global, the company Lindberg owned, now known as Global Growth. Green Beans 721 was a single-purpose account (SPA), with nine of their 12 edits made on the two Lindberg-related articles. The original article contained clichés such as calling Lindberg a "bootstrap entrepreneur" and "as a leader, Lindberg focuses on finding and investing in the right people."

The next year, another SPA, User:MT9429, defended Lindberg after an article in The Wall Street Journal reported that Lindberg had diverted $2 billion from insurance company reserves for his own use. MT9429 improperly cited a press release as a reliable source and stated that Lindberg "refuted" the WSJ story, rather than just "disputed" it. I reverted that edit, but they restored the PR source to the article.

Starting in November 2019, User:Mikec85 made 32 edits to the Lindberg article, including one where they presented detailed, though unaudited, financial information based on a single press release. They later admitted that they were an SPA and paid editor. Their final edit, in April 2020, was a request for arbitration against me. It was rejected within a few hours as "premature".

After Lindberg's conviction in March 2020, another SPA, User:Jumpingjacks67, made 17 edits, generally removing information about Lindberg's conviction or adding information on his philanthropic activities, including this series of edits.

The Signpost contacted Lindberg's legal representative requesting comments on this section. He declined to comment on any question of fact.

Bob Brockman

Robert T. Brockman was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Reynolds and Reynolds, a major software provider to auto dealers, until this month. He was indicted in October on 39 counts of tax evasion, wire fraud, money laundering, and other offenses, arising in part from the allegation that he hid $2 billion in capital gains income in a series of Caribbean accounts. More than $1 billion in his Swiss bank accounts has been frozen.[10] Prosecutors called this "the largest U.S. tax case ever against an individual".[4][3][11] (Please remember that indictments and allegations are not proof of guilt and that he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.)

Brockman is publicity-shy and there was no article about him on Wikipedia until I created a redirect from Robert T. Brockman to Reynolds and Reynolds. He may not have hired undeclared paid editors to edit the article about his company, but anonymous editors can be traced by their IP addresses from the Reynolds and Reynolds article to the firm. He or his firm did apparently hire a paid editor, CorporateM, formerly known as Corporate Minion, who declared that he was paid by Reynolds and Reynolds.

Brockman founded Universal Computer Systems in 1970 and the firm has remained privately owned since then. UCS bought Reynolds and Reynolds in 2006 and the combined firm took the name Reynolds and Reynolds.[12][13]

After the buyout, many of Brockman's employees expressed disagreement with the new management's policies. The Reynolds and Reynolds article reflected this "culture clash" in the section Merger issues, which included three solid references—to the Houston Business Journal, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Dayton Business Journal—plus one weaker reference, to Glassdoor.

Working slowly, CorporateM ultimately removed almost all this information. First he accused a couple of editors of edit warring in August 2015. There was no evidence of edit warring, so he may have just wanted to scare newer editors away from the article. Then in February and March 2016, he created a draft to replace the whole article. CorporateM gives an example of how he works in creating draft articles with a client, likely a different client, at his website ethicalwiki.com. "I hammered out the content of the draft with the client over several weeks, sometimes line-by-line or word-by-word."[14]

He then discussed the draft with two well-known Wikipedia administrators. In April 2016 one of the admins replaced the entire article with the draft. Three months later, after 26 edits by CorporateM and four edits by an anonymous editor traceable to Reynolds and Reynolds, the section was gone except for two sentences as a faint reminder.

CorporateM does not violate Wikipedia's paid editing disclosure policy as he declares his paid status on the talk pages of affected articles. He nonetheless remains bound to uphold Wikipedia's other policies and guidelines, including the neutral point of view policy, and the policy prohibiting using Wikipedia for advocacy, promotion, advertising, marketing or public relations. CorporateM does work to get approval from other editors to insert his paid-for text, but that doesn't mean that those editors have the time or expertise to vet every editorial choice CorporateM or his employers make. And sometimes our busy volunteer editors just make abysmal mistakes that they wouldn't have made if a paid editor weren't pushing them to include specific wording.

In September 2012 CorporateM edited his new user page, placing this text at the top of the page: "I consider myself to be a good corporate lapdog and welcome editors who choose to invite me to take the corporate stance on an issue." As long as our policies permit good corporate lapdogs to edit for pay, we'll continue to have problems with billionaires whitewashing our articles. It's time we reconsider those policies or just ban paid editing altogether.

Robert F. Smith

Robert Smith is by all accounts a remarkable person. With a net worth of over $7 billion, he is likely the richest Black person in the U.S.[15] In his 2019 commencement speech at Morehouse College, he promised to pay off the student loans of all Spring 2019 Morehouse graduates, costing him $34 million.

He has also paid $139 million and agreed to forgo a $182 million tax refund to help settle a tax evasion allegation and reach a non-prosecution agreement from the Department of Justice. He is expected to testify in the tax evasion case against Brockman.[15][16] There is some evidence that Smith or his private equity fund Vista Equity Partners paid for editing on Wikipedia's articles on Smith and Vista.

In 1997 Smith started his first private equity fund with Brockman, investing $1 billion as its sole investor. Part of their agreement was that Smith would conceal part of his earnings in an offshore trust. According to Smith’s signed statement to prosecutors, Brockman "presented this unconventional business proposal as a 'take-it-or-leave-it' offer, dictating the unique terms and unorthodox structure to the arrangement. Despite any misgivings, Smith accepted [Brockman’s] offer, viewing it as a unique business opportunity he eagerly wanted to pursue."[15]

User:Lilil399 was an single-purpose account (SPA) with 20 edits focusing on the Robert F. Smith (investor) article they created, two edits to Smith's firm Vista Equity Partners, and two others—later deleted—to create other articles related to the firm. Only their two edits to Mack McLarty had no obvious connection to the firm. Their edits were not blatant advocacy, but low-key updates of Vista's capital, awards, and philanthropy. One edit that stands out was the removal of the fact that Smith's wife had been a Playboy Playmate. Lilil399 did not declare that they were a paid editor.

About a year after Lilil399 stopped editing, User:Johnny.thesn began editing the same articles, adding comparable content in a similar but not identical style. Johnny.thesn is not a classic SPA: they had actively edited pro wrestling articles and the Mack McLarty article for a year before starting to edit the articles on Smith and Vista. For the next 18 months, with the exception of two edits, they edited only articles related to Smith. Johnny.thesn did not declare themself to be a paid editor.

The similarity of the editing of Lilil399 and Johnny.thesn convinces me that both were working for the same person or business. All articles edited by Lilil399 were also edited by Johnny.thesn, including the seemingly unrelated article on Mack McLarty. The type of content they added or deleted from the Vista-related articles was similar. Still, I would be surprised if an administrator blocked them as sockpuppets, since they didn't edit the same articles at the same time, and due to the modest nature of their edits, it's unlikely that they would be blocked for advocacy. Proving paid editing typically requires a bit more for our administrators, who usually have fairly strict evidentiary standards.

What can be done?

The three billionaires described in this article are very different, and each appears to have had a different method of rewriting Wikipedia's articles about himself. Lindberg's paid editors were blunt and aggressive. Brockman's paid editor avoided the limelight as much as possible, but planned the rewrite in advance and took his time. Smith's apparent paid editors were extremely low-key, to the extent that some might not even believe that they were paid editors.

Can Wikipedians stop billionaires from using paid editors to whitewash the articles about them? It was difficult and time-consuming, but in Lindberg's case we did. We might just have been a bit lucky in this case. There was excellent information from a reliable source, The Wall Street Journal, co-written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. While the legal system can seem agonizingly slow, it worked faster than usual in this case. Several unpaid Wikipedians worked together to overcome Lindberg's advantages. Perhaps it was just that Lindberg wildly overestimated his abilities and those of the people he hired. But people who are tempted to edit Wikipedia's articles about themselves should remember: even a billionaire's whitewashing can be stopped and exposed.

Brockman's situation is a bit scarier than Lindberg's. The paid editor declared his conflict of interest and his actions were right in front of our eyes the whole time. It may be that only Brockman's tax case indictment led us to examine the case anew. But with our blinders off and five years' distance providing perspective, it's clear that the Reynolds and Reynolds article was whitewashed. We should never let professed "corporate lapdogs" edit for pay.

Was the editing done for Smith actually a problem? Was it against our rules? The editing itself might seem harmless, but if you agree with me that the editing was paid for, then the editors certainly broke our rules by not declaring that they were paid. Supervision of paid editors, if we want them here at all, is definitely needed in all cases.

What could we have done better? I recommend that other editors finding themselves in the position I was while editing the Lindberg article contact the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard early on. Working together is the only way Wikipedia editors can stop those who attempt to corrupt our articles the same way they try to corrupt public officials. Perhaps we could form a new WikiProject focusing on the biographies of billionaires. There must be a couple of thousand billionaires who are tempted to remove embarrassing bits from time to time.

But did we really do anything about the paid editing in the cases of Brockman and Smith? It seems they got away scot-free. But now their paid editing arrangements have been exposed. With the benefit of hindsight we were able to track their paid edits fairly well. Other billionaires who are tempted to hire paid editors should understand that almost all edits on Wikipedia are permanently saved. Whether it's five, 10, or 20 years later, your edits can be tracked, perhaps by technology that has not yet been developed.

We need to better publicize that we have rules against undisclosed paid editing and self-promotion. The Signpost is not capable of doing this job alone. The Wikimedia Foundation must take an active role in letting billionaires and others know we have rules that must be followed. Flouting our rules has consequences, such as exposure to the general public. We also invite press around the world to expose those who would corrupt Wikipedia.

References

  1. ^ While this quote is often attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, the truth may be more complex. See Dow, Eddy (November 13, 1988). "The Rich Are Different". New York Times. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
  2. ^ a b Maremont, Mark (October 10, 2020). "Insurance Executive Ordered to Prison on Seven-Year Sentence". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  3. ^ a b Voreacos, David; Weinberg, Neil (15 October 2020). "Houston Tech Mogul Indicted for 'Largest-Ever Tax Charge'". Bloomberg. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  4. ^ a b "CEO of Multibillion-dollar Software Company Indicted for Decades-long Tax Evasion and Wire Fraud Schemes". United States Department of Justice. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  5. ^ Hilton, John (August 12, 2020). "Judge Upholds Greg Lindberg Bribery Conviction". Insurancenewsnet.com. Retrieved August 23, 2020.
  6. ^ a b Eanes, Zachery (13 April 2019). "Who is Greg Lindberg? The man at the center of the NCGOP bribery scandal". News and Observer. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  7. ^ a b Maremont, Mark; Scism, Leslie (February 28, 2019). "Financier Who Amassed Insurance Firms Diverted $2 Billion Into His Private Empire". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 23, 2020. (paywall)
  8. ^ Robinson, Gary D. (February 15, 2020). "Political corruption trial of big N Carolina donor to start". Associated Press. Retrieved March 16, 2020.
  9. ^ Maremont, Mark; Scism, Leslie (October 3, 2019). "'Active Interest': Insurance Tycoon Spied on Women Who Caught His Eye". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 23, 2020. (paywall)
  10. ^ Miller, Hugo; Weinberg, Neil (6 November 2020). "Swiss Freeze More Than $1 Billion Held by Tech Mogul Robert Brockman". Bloomberg. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  11. ^ "Robert Brockman: Technology mogul charged in largest ever tax fraud scheme of $2bn". The Independent. Associate Press. 16 October 2020. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  12. ^ "Biography". bobbrockman.com. Archived from the original on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  13. ^ "Our Leadership". Reynolds and Reynolds. Archived from the original on 22 July 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  14. ^ "Ending an Edit-War". ethicalwiki.com. 20 July 2015. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2020. I hammered out the content of the draft with the client over several weeks, sometimes line-by-line or word-by-word.
  15. ^ a b c Whoriskey, Peter; Torbati, Yeganeh; Alexander, Keith L. (13 November 2020). "A dodgy deal helped make him a billionaire. It worked, until now". Washington Post. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  16. ^ Smith, Robert F. (18 October 2020). "Robert F. Smith's Letter to Investors". RobertSmith.com. Archived from the original on 19 November 2020. Retrieved 22 November 2020.



Reader comments

2020-11-29

Relying on Wikipedia: voters, scientists, and a Canadian border guard

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By Bri and Smallbones

US elections

"Hail to the Chief" has been associated with both the U.S. President and the President of the Confederacy (Hail to the Chief#History)

Media recognized Wikipedia's role in providing neutrally sourced information to citizens preparing for the U.S. November elections. In particular, Wikipedia's community-based model (versus the top-down control of other social media platforms) was shown as an effective way to forestall potential problems by adding extra protection to elections-related topics. It wasn't all positive, though, with some sources pointing out continuing issues around women's biographies, and potentially politically-motivated vandalism. – B

Wikipedia@20

Reviews and extracts of Wikipedia@20, a thick book of essays about Wikipedia's first twenty years, have started coming out. The essays are written by academics and by Wikipedians and are aimed at the same groups.

  • The book column in The New Yorker, titled "Wikipedia, 'Jeopardy!', and the Fate of the Fact" explores Wikipedia's history and intellectual foundations with reference to the book, especially to the chapter by Yochai Benkler. The author, Louis Menand, is a colleague of Benkler's at Harvard. Menand pulls out an amazing range of facts and examples – from Hegel and Hayek to Dick van Dyke and Duck à l'orange by way of Siri, copyleft and Pierre, South Dakota. You should avoid the detour to Jeopardy! unless you are an Alex Trebek fan. The use of all the cute facts almost seems to be the point of the piece, but the author does squeeze in a lot of information about Wikipedia in between them. More likely Menand is illustrating his thesis – at the same time he is making fun of himself and of Wikipedia – "There is no longer a distinction between things that everyone knows, or could readily know, and things that only experts know" because of Wikipedia and the internet.
  • How 9/11 Shaped Wikipedia, by Brian Keegan in Slate is an updated version of his Wikipedia@20 chapter about how news stories are covered on Wikipedia.

The creation, rejection, and disappearance of the Sept. 11 memorial wiki’s content remains an underappreciated cautionary tale about the presumed durability of peer-produced knowledge: This content only persists when it remains integrated with the larger common project rather than being relegated to a smaller and more specialized project. Wikipedia’s peer production model is not immune from "rich get richer" mechanisms.

  • Science (paywalled) reviews Wikipedia@20 in "The ascent of Wikipedia". "Anyone interested in the history, current constitution, and possible future development of a singular contemporary global phenomenon will be stimulated by this anniversary collection." – S

Don't mess with a Canadian border officer armed with Wikipedia

Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of Huawei was detained at the Vancouver airport on December 1, 2018 with the help of a Canada Border Services Agency officer who prepared for an interview with her with an "open-source query" – reading Wikipedia for 5 or 10 minutes. Meng is facing possible extradition to the U.S. and her detention soon became a major international incident. In "Wikipedia was source of security concern questions for Meng: Border officer", The Canadian Press reported on the in-court testimony of Sanjit Dhillon, a CBSA supervisor at Vancouver International Airport.

Before Meng's plane landed, Dhillon said she was flagged in an internal database for an outstanding warrant in her name.
Anticipating her arrival, Dhillon testified he found a Wikipedia page about Huawei that said the company doesn't operate in the United States because of security concerns and that Huawei was suspected of violating U.S. economic sanctions with Iran. [...]
Dhillon asked Meng what she did. She said she was the chief financial officer of a global telecommunications company, he told the court.
He asked where the company did business. When she listed countries without including the United States he asked her why.
"She said we don't sell our products in the United States," Dhillon said.
He asked if there was a reason why and Meng responded she didn't know. Dhillon said he then reframed the question.
"Since she's the chief financial officer of this telecommunications company, I would assume that she would know why her company isn't able to sell its products in one of the most lucrative markets in the world," Dhillon said.
"She was quiet. She didn't respond right away. And eventually she said there was a security concern with the product the U.S. government had."
He testified Meng didn't say what those concerns were.
Dhillon said his questions were based on his own online search and he was not directed by anyone to ask her questions.

The South China Morning Post reported the story similarly, adding the detail that "Dhillon said he spent five to 10 minutes reviewing the Wikipedia article."

Business in Vancouver added that Wikipedia was the only source he used!

The Signpost can confirm that on December 1, 2018 the Huawei article contained a large section about Iran, espionage, and security concerns in the US, consistent with Dhillon's testimony. – S

Lockdown 1.0 – following Wikipedia?

BBC Two reportedly had an excellent hour-long documentary "Lockdown 1.0 - Following the Science?" airing on November 19 about the UK government's handling of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately those of us outside the UK cannot view the online version due to licensing restrictions.

The Guardian provided a detailed review of the documentary, giving it 4 stars, and surveying the many facts presented, including one about Wikipedia:

"The public may be surprised to hear we were using data from Wikipedia very early on – but it really was the only data publicly available." — Dr. Ian Hall of Manchester University, deputy chair of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling

Several UK tabloids have featured this quote in their reporting on the documentary. – B, S

In brief

Anarchisch und chaotisch



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next month's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page. For a listing of more news stories about Wikipedia, please see Wikipedia:Press coverage 2020



Reader comments

2020-11-29

Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria

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By Adam Cuerden and Gog the Mild
Frontonia sp. digesting cyanobacteria, a new featured picture by Wiedehopf20. Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here in Scotland - there's Harvest Festivals, I suppose, but good luck having something like that in the middle of COVID-19 - and the Canadian one was back in October, so we're being a bit Americocentric ... but, screw it, we need a title and the image is great, so "Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria" it is!
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 21 October through 11 November. For nominations and nominators, see the featured contents' talk pages.
Stay safe, and avoid others... especially this guy. He sucks.

So, we're doing a bit of a shorter timeframe on the featured content this month because, frankly, last month was a rush to get done in time, since it was meant to be finished and published so soon after the content window closed. Not ideal. Still, Wikipedia creates a lot of great content - Hell, remember when we used to do these weekly? ...Am I the only one? Damn, I feel old. Anyway! It's a bumper crop of fantastic content for your perusal! Trying something new and putting featured pictures between articles and lists to break the content up. Let us know what you think! Anyway, that's it from your friendly Signpost reporter for this week! I mean, month! ...Feeling so very old here. When did I last do these, like five years ago? Ten? Pretty sure I had techniques for doing this back then that made it a lot easier. Ah, well! Still, hope you're all having a great month, and are going to have a great holiday season of avoiding other people and not getting COVID-19!

— Adam

20 featured articles were promoted this period. Text is from the articles, but often abridged for length.

A reconstruction of the Réunion swamphen, driven to extinction before it could be studied.
Réunion swamphen, nominated by FunkMonk
The Réunion swamphen (Porphyrio caerulescens), also known as the Réunion gallinule or oiseau bleu, is a hypothetical extinct species of rail that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Réunion. While only known from 17th and 18th century accounts by visitors to the island, it was scientifically named in 1848, based on the 1674 account by Sieur Dubois. A considerable literature was subsequently devoted to its possible affinities, with current researchers agreeing it was derived from the swamphen genus Porphyrio. It has been considered mysterious and enigmatic due to the lack of any physical evidence of its existence.
This bird was described as entirely blue in plumage with a red beak and legs. It was said to be the size of a Réunion ibis or chicken, which could mean 65–70 cm (26–28 in) in length, and it may have been similar to the takahe. While easily hunted, it was a fast runner and able to fly, though it did so reluctantly. It may have fed on plant matter and invertebrates, as do other swamphens, and was said to nest among grasses and aquatic ferns. It was only found on the Plaine des Cafres plateau, to which it may have retreated during the latter part of its existence, whereas other swamphens inhabit lowland swamps. While the last unequivocal account is from 1730, it may have survived until 1763, but overhunting and the introduction of cats probably drove it to extinction.
1984 World Snooker Championship, nominated by Lee Vilenski
The 1984 World Snooker Championship was a ranking professional snooker tournament that took place between 21 April and 7 May 1984 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The event featured 94 participants, of which 78 players competed in a qualifying event held in Bristol from 1 to 13 April. Of these, 16 players qualified for the main stage in Sheffield, where they met 16 invited seeds. The total prize fund for the event was £200,000, the highest total pool for any snooker tournament at that time; the winner received £44,000. The defending champion was English player Steve Davis, who had won the title twice previously. He met fellow-countryman Jimmy White in the final, which was played as a best-of-35-frames match. Davis took a significant lead of 12–4 after the first two sessions; although White battled back into the match, Davis eventually won 18–16, becoming the first player to retain the title at the Crucible.
Trading Places, nominated by Darkwarriorblake
Trading Places is a 1983 American comedy film directed by John Landis and written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. It stars Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, and Jamie Lee Curtis. The film tells the story of an upper-class commodities broker (Aykroyd) and a poor street hustler (Murphy) whose lives cross when they are unwittingly made the subject of an elaborate bet to test how each man will perform when their life circumstances are swapped.
Harris conceived the outline for Trading Places in the early 1980s after encountering two wealthy brothers who were engaged in an ongoing rivalry with each other. It was considered a box-office success on its release, earning over $90.4 million to become the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1983 in North America. It also received generally positive reviews. Reviewers were consistent in their praise for the central cast, and they appreciated the film's revival of the screwball comedy genre prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s.
The French battleship Suffren in 1911, off Toulon
French battleship Suffren, nominated by Sturmvogel 66
Suffren was a predreadnought battleship built for the French Navy and completed in 1902. She twice collided with French ships and twice had propeller shafts break before the start of World War I in 1914. Suffren was assigned to the naval operations off the Dardanelles, participating in a series of attacks on Ottoman fortifications. The ship provided gunfire support for the Allied forces during the Gallipoli campaign; as the Allies withdrew she accidentally sank one of the evacuation ships. While en route to Lorient for a refit, Suffren was torpedoed off Lisbon by a German submarine on 26 November 1916 and sunk with all hands.
Muhammad IV of Granada, nominated by HaEr48
Muhammad IV was the ruler of the Emirate of Granada on the Iberian Peninsula from 1325 to 1333. The initial years of his reign were marked by civil war between his ministers, which ended in 1328 when Muhammad began taking a more active role in government. Castile and Aragon, Granada's Christian neighbours, invaded in 1330. Muhammad requested help from the Marinid Sultanate in North Africa, which sent 5,000 troops to capture Gibraltar in 1333. The Castilians in turn besieged Gibraltar, but after confused fighting a truce was agreed. One day later Muhammad was assassinated, aged 18.
SMS Preussischer Adler in a painting by Christopher Rave
SMS Preussischer Adler, nominated by Parsecboy
SMS Preussischer Adler was a paddle steamer built in the mid-1840s for commercial use. Requisitioned by the Prussian Navy during the First Schleswig War in 1848, she took part in the first naval battle of the Prussian fleet. During the Second Schleswig War, in company with four other vessels, Preussischer Adler attacked a Danish force blockading the German North Sea ports. The resulting Battle of Heligoland in May 1864 was tactically inconclusive, but the Danes abandoned their blockade. She was decommissioned and sunk as a target ship during experiments with torpedoes in 1879.
Arthur Sullivan (Australian soldier), nominated by Peacemaker67
Arthur Sullivan was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross. He joined the Australian Imperial Force during World War I but had not completed training when the war ended. He enlisted in the British Army for service with the North Russia Relief Force. In North Russia in 1919 he was a member of a rearguard as his platoon crossed the river on a one-plank bridge. Under intense fire from Bolshevik troops, four men fell into the river. Sullivan jumped in and rescued all four, one by one; and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions.
Hurricane Hector from the International Space Station on 7 August 2018
Hurricane Hector (2018), nominated by Hurricane Noah
Hector was a powerful and long-lasting tropical cyclone that traversed the Pacific Ocean during late July and August 2018. Hector was the eighth named storm, fourth hurricane, and third major hurricane of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season. It originated from a disturbance located north of South America on July 22. The disturbance tracked westward and gradually organized over the next several days, becoming a tropical depression at 12:00 UTC on July 3, being upgraded into a tropical storm about 12 hours later and received the name Hector. Throughout most of its existence, the cyclone traveled due west or slightly north of west. A favorable environment allowed the fledgling tropical storm to rapidly intensify to its initial peak as a Category 2 hurricane by 18:00 UTC on August 2. Hector reached Category 3 status by 00:00 UTC on August 4 and went through an eyewall replacement cycle soon after, which caused the intensification to halt. After the replacement cycle, the cyclone continued to organize, developing a well-defined eye surrounded by cold cloud tops. It reached its peak intensity around 18:00 UTC August 6, with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h) and a pressure of 936 mbar (27.64 inHg). Hector's intensity fluctuated between Category 3 and Category 4 over the next several days before it fell below major hurricane intensity around 18:00 UTC on August 11. Hector had spent 186 hours at that intensity – longer than any other hurricane on record in the eastern Pacific basin. The impact on land from the storm was minimal.
2010 Football League Championship play-off Final, nominated by Kosack and The Rambling Man
The 2010 Football League Championship play-off Final was an association football match played at Wembley Stadium, London, on 22 May 2010 between Blackpool and Cardiff City. The match was to determine the third and final team to win promotion from the Championship, the second tier of English football, to the Premier League for the 2010–11 season. The culmination of the 2010 Football League Championship play-offs, the match saw Blackpool beat Cardiff City to earn promotion alongside the Championship winners Newcastle United and runners-up West Bromwich Albion. As a consequence of winning promotion, Blackpool's Bloomfield Road stadium, which had a capacity of 16,750, became one of the smallest stadiums to host Premier League football. It also meant Blackpool returned to the top flight of English League football for the first time since the 1970–71 season, when they spent one season in the old First Division, finishing bottom. In the season following their 2010 play-off final victory, they were relegated back to the Championship. Cardiff reached the play-offs again the following season but were defeated in the semi-finals.
The file description page labels this as "Peter Raw in the cockpit of a Vampire aircraft". Surprisingly, he survived the vampire attack, and lived thirty-six more years.
Peter Raw, nominated by Nick-D
Peter Raw was a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilot and officer. He served as a flight instructor, bomber pilot and the commander of a communications unit during World War II. He was appointed the commander of No. 2 Squadron in 1953 and subsequently served in staff and diplomatic roles until taking command of No. 82 Wing in 1965. Between May 1966 and April 1967, he served as the air support co-ordinator for the Australian forces in South Vietnam; his initial refusal to commit RAAF helicopters to assist the Australian Army during the Battle of Long Tan in August 1966 generated lasting controversy. Raw retired from the RAAF in 1978.
2018 FA Cup Final, nominated by The Rambling Man
The 2018 FA Cup Final was an association football match between Manchester United and Chelsea on 19 May 2018 at Wembley Stadium in London, England. It was the 137th FA Cup final overall and was the showpiece match of English football's primary cup competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup), organised by the Football Association. It was the second successive final for Chelsea following their defeat by Arsenal the previous year. The match was played in sunny conditions in front of a Wembley crowd of 87,647. After a relatively even start to the match, on 21 minutes, Chelsea's Eden Hazard was brought down in the Manchester United box and Oliver awarded a penalty. Hazard scored from the spot to make it 1–0 to Chelsea, a lead they maintained to half time. Manchester United dominated the second half, and saw a 63rd-minute goal from Alexis Sánchez ruled out for offside after being referred to VAR. The match ended 1–0 to Chelsea who won the FA Cup for the eighth time.
"Favorite Son" (Star Trek: Voyager), nominated by Aoba47
"Favorite Son" is an episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager, a show which follows the adventures of the Starfleet and Maquis crew of the starship USS Voyager after they are stranded in the Delta Quadrant, far from the rest of the Federation. In the episode, Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) experiences déjà vu and develops a rash when the Voyager enters a new sector of the Delta Quadrant. Mostly female aliens known as Taresians tell him that he is not human but is a member of their species. On discovering this is a ruse by the female aliens to attract and kill their men during reproduction, the crew rescues Kim and restores him to his original state.
Keke Rosberg, winner of the drivers' side of the 1982 Formula One World Championship. You'll be seeing him again next month.
1982 Formula One World Championship, nominated by Zwerg Nase
The 1982 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 36th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It included two competitions run over the course of the year, the 33rd Formula One World Championship for Drivers and the 25th Formula One World Championship for Constructors. The Drivers' Championship was won by Keke Rosberg and the Constructors' Championship by Scuderia Ferrari. Eventual champion Rosberg won only one race all season – the Swiss Grand Prix – but consistency gave him the Drivers' Championship
Motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck later wrote that 1982 was "an ugly year, pock-marked by tragedy, by dissension, by greed, and yet, paradoxically, it produced some of the most memorable racing ever seen".
Squirm, nominated by GamerPro64
Squirm is a 1976 American horror film written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, starring Don Scardino, Patricia Pearcy, R.A. Dow, Jean Sullivan, Peter MacLean, Fran Higgins, and William Newman. The film takes place in the fictional town of Fly Creek, Georgia, which becomes infested with carnivorous worms after a storm. Lieberman's script is based on a childhood incident in which his brother fed electricity into a patch of earth causing earthworms to rise to the surface. Millions of worms were used over the five-week filming in Port Wentworth, Georgia; worms were brought in from Maine to augment local supplies. Makeup artist Rick Baker provided special effects using prosthetics for the first time in his career. The film was a commercial success, but opened to lukewarm reviews. It has since become a critical favourite, and cult classic.
1789 Virginia's 5th congressional district election, nominated by Wehwalt
The first election for Virginia's 5th congressional district took place on February 2, 1789, for a two-year term to commence March 4 of that year. In a race that turned on the candidates' positions on the need for amendments (the Bill of Rights) to the recently ratified U.S. Constitution, James Madison defeated James Monroe for a place in the House of Representatives of the First Congress. It is the only congressional election in U.S. history in which two future presidents opposed each other.
Catapulta by Edward Poynter, 1868; modern depiction of a Roman siege engine at the Siege of Carthage during the Third Punic War
Third Punic War, nominated by Gog the Mild
The Third Punic War was the third and last of the Punic Wars fought between Carthage and Rome; it lasted from 149 to 146 BC. The war was fought in what is now north-east Tunisia. The Romans besieged the city of Carthage but suffered repeated setbacks. A new Roman commander took over in 148 BC, and fared equally badly. Scipio Aemilianus was appointed commander in Africa in 147 BC and in spring 146 BC launched a final assault, systematically destroying the city and killing its inhabitants; 50,000 survivors were sold into slavery. The formerly Carthaginian territories became the Roman province of Africa
2020 World Snooker Championship, nominated by Lee Vilenski
The 2020 World Snooker Championship was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 31 July to 16 August 2020 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 44th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible. The final ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season, the tournament was originally scheduled to take place from 18 April to 4 May 2020, but both the qualifying stage and the main rounds were postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was one of the first to allow live audiences since the onset of the pandemic, but on the first day it was announced that the event would be played behind closed doors for subsequent days. A limited number of spectators were allowed in for the final two days of the championship. Ronnie O'Sullivan won his sixth world title, defeating Wilson 18–8 in the final, the 37th ranking event win of his career, the highest of any player.
A popular tribunal in Ozurgeti, 1905, during the Gurian Republic
Gurian Republic, nominated by Kaiser matias
The Gurian Republic refers to an insurrection and protest movement that took place in the western Georgian region of Guria (known at the time as the Ozurget Uyezd) against the Russian Empire between 1902 and 1906. This rose from a revolt over land grazing rights in 1902. Several issues over the previous decades affecting the peasant population including taxation, land ownership and economic factors also factored into the start of the insurrection. It gained further traction through the efforts of Georgian social democrats, despite some reservations within their party over supporting a peasant movement, and grew further during the 1905 Russian Revolution.
During its existence the Gurian Republic ignored Russian authority and established its own system of government, which consisted of assemblies of villagers meeting and discussing issues. A unique form of justice, where trial attendees voted on sentences, was introduced. While the movement broke from imperial administration, it was not anti-Russian, desiring to remain within the Empire.
Heaven Upside Down, nominated by Homeostasis07
Heaven Upside Down is the tenth studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on October 6, 2017 by Loma Vista Recordings and Caroline International. The record had the working title Say10 and was initially due to be issued on Valentine's Day. However, the release was delayed by numerous events, most notably the death of Marilyn Manson's father Hugh Warner, who died during production and to whom the album was later dedicated. The record features many of the same musicians who performed on the band's previous album, 2015's The Pale Emperor, including producer Tyler Bates and drummer Gil Sharone. Despite Manson's early implications, long-time bassist Twiggy did not participate on the album. He left the group following a sexual assault allegation by a former girlfriend.
The album received positive reviews from music critics upon release, with multiple publications saying it continued a creative resurgence which began with their previous album. It was also a commercial success, debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200 and charting in the top ten in most of the major markets.
Australian Journal of Herpetology, nominated by Collin
The Australian Journal of Herpetology was a scientific journal specialising in the study of amphibians and reptiles (herpetology) published from 1981 until 1983 with an additional supplemental series released in 1985. Richard W. Wells, a first-year biology student, served as the journal's editor-in-chief, supporting an editorial board of three Australian researchers. In what became known as the "Wells and Wellington affair", Wells stopped communicating with the journal's editorial board for around two years before suddenly publishing three papers without peer review in the Australian Journal of Herpetology between 1983 and 1985. Co-authored by himself and high school teacher C. Ross Wellington, the papers reorganized the taxonomy of all of Australia's and New Zealand's amphibians and reptiles and proposed over 700 changes to the binomial nomenclature of the region's herpetofauna. The herpetological community reacted strongly to the pair's actions and eventually brought a case to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to suppress the scientific names they proposed. After four years of arguments, the commission opted not to vote on the case, leaving some of Wells and Wellington's names available. The outcome highlighted the vulnerability to the established rules of biological nomenclature that desktop publishing presented. As of 2020, 24 of the names assigned by Wells and Wellington remained valid senior synonyms.

20 featured pictures (including the ones used for this article's header and footer) were promoted this period.

The Punic Wars, originally nominated as a Good topic by Gog the Mild, has been upgraded into Wikipedia's newest featured topic.

The Punic Wars were a series of three wars between 264 and 146 BC fought by the states of Rome and Carthage. All three were won by Rome. The First Punic War broke out in Sicily in 264 BC and lasted 23 years, until 241 BC, when after immense materiel and human losses on both sides the Carthaginians were defeated. The end of the war sparked a major but unsuccessful four-year-long revolt within the Carthaginian Empire known as the Mercenary War. The Second Punic War began in 218 BC and witnessed Hannibal's crossing of the Alps and invasion of mainland Italy. The successful Roman invasion of the Carthaginian homeland in Africa in 204 BC led to Hannibal's recall and to Carthage suing for peace after 17 years of war. Carthage ceased to be a military threat but Rome contrived a justification to declare war again in 149 BC in the Third Punic War. The Romans stormed the city of Carthage in 146 BC, sacked it, slaughtered most of its population and completely demolished it.
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Punic Wars
5 articles
First Punic War
Mercenary War
Second Punic War
Third Punic War

15 featured lists were promoted this period.

The Engelsberg Ironworks, one of the many World Heritage Sites in Sweden
List of World Heritage Sites in Sweden, nominated by Tone
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites are places of importance to cultural or natural heritage as described in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. As of 2020, there are fifteen World Heritage Sites in Sweden, including thirteen cultural sites, one natural site and one mixed site. The first Swedish site added to the list was the Royal Domain of Drottningholm in 1991, and the most recently listed was the Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland, in 2012.
List of awards and nominations received by RuPaul, nominated by Leo Mercury
RuPaul Charles is an American drag queen, actor, model, singer, songwriter, and television personality. He is considered to be the most famous drag queen ever, and in 2017 he was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Since 2009, he has produced and hosted the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race and its various spin-offs, which have earned Charles eight Primetime Emmy Awards, making him the person with the most wins in the category of Outstanding Host for a Competition Program, amongst other awards. He had already achieved international fame as a drag queen with the release of his single "Supermodel (You Better Work)", from the album Supermodel of the World (1993), for which he received two Billboard Music Awards and an MTV Video Music Award nomination. He was also honored with the GLAAD Vito Russo Award in 1999, presented to an openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equality for the LGBT community, and in 2018 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the television industry, making him the first drag queen to be given such an award.
Joan Sebastian won the Grammy Award for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album twice.
Grammy Award for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album, nominated by Javier Espinoza
The Grammy Award for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album was an award presented to recording artists for quality albums in the Mexican music genre at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. Since its inception, the award category has had several name changes, until, in 2009, the category was split into two new fields: Best Norteño Album and Best Regional Mexican Album. Mexican-American artist Pepe Aguilar is the most-awarded performer in the category with three wins. He is followed by American singers Vikki Carr and Linda Ronstadt, American artist Flaco Jiménez, Mexican singers Luis Miguel and Joan Sebastian, and bands La Mafia and Los Lobos, with two wins each.
Ray Bradbury Award, nominated by PresN
The Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation (formerly the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation) is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy dramatic works such as movies or television episodes. To be eligible for Nebula Award consideration a work must be published in English in the United States. Works published in English elsewhere in the world are also eligible provided they are released either on a website or in an electronic edition. Only individual works are eligible, not serials such as television series, though miniseries of three or fewer parts are allowed. The award, named to honor prolific author and screenwriter Ray Bradbury, was begun in 1992 as the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation.
Eksta Church, one of Gotland's medieval churches
List of medieval churches on Gotland, nominated by Yakikaki
There are 92 well-preserved churches from the Middle Ages on the Swedish island Gotland, which is more than in any other part of Sweden and unusual compared with other parts of Europe. Benefiting from its location in the middle of the Baltic Sea, the island enjoyed an increase in trade and wealth thanks to increasing trade between Western and Eastern Europe, giving the inhabitants the means to build large and prestigious churches. The preserved churches date from between the early 12th century and the middle of the 14th century. The first churches were stave churches, but of these only fragments remain. The oldest substantially preserved churches on Gotland are simple Romanesque churches. Church architecture remained conservative on Gotland, and while Gothic forms eventually replaced Romanesque, it never acquired the structurally light character it did elsewhere in Europe. The churches built during the first half of the 14th century on Gotland are sometimes referred to as "counter-Gothic" in Swedish literature (kontragotik).
The churches were often decorated with paintings on walls and vaults and stained glass windows inside, as well as decorative sculptures both inside and outside. In the Gothic period particularly the portals of the churches were adorned with stone sculptures. Workshops specialising in the production of decorated baptismal fonts established themselves on Gotland during the 12th century and supplied the churches with fonts which in many cases still exist in the churches. Wooden sculptures were also produced from an early time, including rood crosses and sculptures of saints like the Viklau Madonna.
Asin filmography, nominated by 25 Cents FC
Asin is a former Indian actress who is known for her work in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi-language films. She made her acting debut at the age of 15 in the Malayalam-language satirical comedy-drama Narendran Makan Jayakanthan Vaka in 2001. Asin had her first commercial success with the Telugu film Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi (2003). For her performance as a Tamil girl in the film, she received the Filmfare Best Telugu Actress Award. In the same year she won the Santosham Best Actress Award for her role in Telugu film Sivamani. She would go on to further success from there.
The Historic Area of Willemstad, Inner City and Harbour, Curaçao, one of the World Heritage Sites in the Netherlands, (Curaçao, in the Carribean, being part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.)
List of World Heritage Sites in the Netherlands, nominated by Tone
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites are places of importance to cultural or natural heritage. As of 2020, there are ten properties in the Kingdom of the Netherlands inscribed on the World Heritage List. Nine of those sites are in the Netherlands and one is in Curaçao, in the Caribbean, as both the Netherlands and Curaçao are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Nine sites are cultural properties and one is a natural property. The first site added to the list was Schokland and Surroundings in 1995, and the most recent was the Van Nelle Factory in 2014. The transnational site Wadden Sea is shared with Denmark and Germany.
List of Most Played Juke Box Folk Records number ones of 1945, nominated by ChrisTheDude
From 1944 until 1957, Billboard magazine published a chart that ranked the top-performing country music songs in the United States, based on the number of times a song had been played in jukeboxes; until 1948 it was the magazine's only country music chart. In 1945, 14 different songs topped the chart, then published under the title Most Played Juke Box Folk Records, in 52 issues of the magazine. The term "country music" would not come into standard usage until the late 1940s and "folk music" was one of a number of terms used for the genre in earlier years. The chart ranked "the most popular Folk records on automatic phonographs thruout [sic] the nation", based on "reports from all the country's leading operating centers", which were averaged to produce the final placings. This methodology allowed for the possibility of records tying for a position, and on several occasions during 1945 two or more songs tied for the number one spot, including the issue of Billboard dated November 24, when four songs tied for the number-one position. The Juke Box Folk chart is considered part of the lineage of the current Hot Country Songs chart, which was first published in 1958.
The slender mongoose is one of the many mongooses (and the meerkat) that form the herpestid family
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. The 34 species of Herpestidae are split into 14 genera within 2 subfamilies, Herpestinae and Mungotinae, comprising 11 extant species native to Africa. Herpestidae is believed to have diverged from the existing Feliformia suborder around 21.8 million years ago in the Early Miocene.
List of Broadway theaters, nominated by Found5dollar
There are 41 active Broadway theaters listed by The Broadway League in New York City, as well as 9 existing structures that previously hosted Broadway theatre. Beginning with the first large long-term theater in the city, the Park Theatre built in 1798 on Park Row just off Broadway, the definition of what constitutes a Broadway theater has changed multiple times. The current legal definition is based on a 1949 Actors' Equity agreement with smaller theaters in New York to allow union members to perform, dividing theater spaces in the city into the system of Broadway and Off-Broadway seen today. Current union contracts clearly spell out if a production is "Broadway" or not, but the general rule is that any venue that mostly hosts legitimate theater productions, is generally within Manhattan's Theater District, and has a capacity over 500 seats is considered a Broadway theater. Previous to this legal demarcation a Broadway production simply referred to a professional theatrical production performed in a theater in Manhattan, and the theaters that housed them were called Broadway theaters. While Broadway theaters are colloquially considered to be "on Broadway", only three active Broadway theaters are physically on Broadway (the Broadway Theatre, Palace Theatre, and Winter Garden Theatre).
Swayambhunath is one of the stupas in Nepal that is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a place of importance to cultural or natural heritage as described in... oh, you heard about them already? Good.
List of stupas in Nepal, nominated by CAPTAIN MEDUSA
Stupas in Nepal date back to the Licchavi period; a stupa is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics (such as śarīra – typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that is used as a place of meditation. Swayambhunath is one of the oldest known buildings in the country and was likely built in the 5th century. It was built in Swayambhu, Kathmandu, where the land was declared as sacred to Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), by the 3rd Emperor of the Maurya Dynasty Ashoka the Great in the 3rd century BCE. According to the legends, the stupa came out of a sacred lotus at the centre of Kathmandu when the city was a lake.
Wales national football team results 1920–1939, nominated by Kosack
The Wales national football team represents Wales in international association football and is governed by the Football Association of Wales (FAW). Between 1920 and 1939 the side played 62 matches, the majority against the other national teams of the Home Nations in the British Home Championship. The side played their first official match after the end of World War I in February 1920 on the resumption of the Home Championship, drawing 2–2 with Ireland. A draw with Scotland and a win over England, their first since 1882, in the 1919–20 tournament secured the second Home Championship in Wales' history. Wales won the Home Championship again in the 1927–28 tournament but, as Football League sides became increasingly reluctant to release Welsh players for international competition, results dropped as the decade drew to a close. When the Football League added further restrictions on releasing players ahead of the following tournament to avoid fixture clashes, Wales were forced to call-up a mixture of non-league and lower division players which led to the side being dubbed by media outlets as "Keenor and the ten unknowns", in reference to team captain Fred Keenor and the relative obscurity of his teammates. The side secured a draw with Scotland but suffered a 4–0 defeat to England before being replaced by the returning first team players. When Wales relented on hosting fixtures alongside those of the Football League, they were able to call upon their first team more frequently. This coincided with one of the most successful periods in the team's history as they won four Home Championships between 1933 and 1939. The 1938–39 British Home Championship was the final hosting of the tournament before World War II.
Philo T. Farnsworth Award, nominated by MWright96
The Philo T. Farnsworth Award (also called the Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award) is an non-competitive award presented as part of the Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards to "an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have significantly impacted television technology and engineering." Named for Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the first fully working all-electronic television system and receiver, the winner is selected by a jury of television engineers from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ (ATAS) Engineering Emmy Awards Committee who consider "all engineering developments which have proven their efficacy during the awards year and determines which, if any, merit recognition with an Engineering Emmy statuette." The accolade was first awarded in 2003 as a result of about a year of lobbying to ATAS by Farnsworth's wife Pam Farnsworth and Hawaii-based Skinner Entertainment management and production firm owner Georja Skinner.
List of Most Played Juke Box Folk Records number ones of 1946, nominated by ChrisTheDude
From 1944 until 1957, Billboard magazine published a chart that ranked the top-performing country music songs in the United States, based on the number of times a song had been played in jukeboxes; until 1948 it was the magazine's only country music chart. In 1946, nine different songs topped the chart, which was published under the title Most Played Juke Box Folk Records. The chart was compiled based on a survey of jukebox operators nationwide, and its methodology allowed for the possibility of records tying for a position. On several occasions during 1946 two or more songs tied for the number-one spot, including the issue of Billboard dated February 2, when four songs tied for the peak position. The Juke Box Folk chart is considered part of the lineage of the current Hot Country Songs chart, which was first published in 1958.
List of awards and nominations received by Joaquin Phoenix, nominated by CAPTAIN MEDUSA
Joaquin Phoenix is an American actor who has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for his starring role in Joker (2019), two Golden Globe Awards for Joker and Walk the Line (2005), and one Grammy Award, also for Walk the Line). Besides those he won, he was additionally nominated for three Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. That's not a comprehensive list of awards, though, which is why this article exists.
A new featured picture by Giulio Rossi, with restoration by Adam Cuerden. Like several other recent featured pictures, this forms part of a Wikipedian in Residence project with the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which dropped a huge number of high-quality images primarily related to Italian opera of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Set in the grounds of the Villa Verdi, it shows Giuseppe Verdi with his family, friends, and work colleagues, specifically:
Standing: Teresa Stolz, Umberto Campanari (one of Verdi's estate lawyers), Giulio Ricordi, and Leopoldo Metlicovitz
Seated: Maria Carrara Verdi (Verdi's adopted daughter), Barberina Strepponi (Verdi's sister-in-law), Giuseppe Verdi, and Giuditta Ricordi (Giulio's wife).



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2020-11-29

007 with Borat, the Queen, and an election

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By Igordebraga, Kingsif, Benmite
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga , Kingsif, Benmite and TheConflux.

The pandemic cancelled Halloween, so instead an even scarier event dominates this report: the American election!

So he strikes, like Thunderball (October 25 to 31, 2020)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (October 25 to 31, 2020)



Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Sean Connery 3,278,571 It's been a terrible year for James Bond fans, as not only No Time to Die wound up postponed until 2021 due to the pandemic, but death came for the first and still best 007. Proud Scotsman Thomas Sean Connery retired from the film business in an unflattering note with LXG, but thankfully had already left a remarkable filmography behind, where he was a man romancing a thief, Robin Hood, an Immortal, Indiana Jones' father, a submarine captain, a dragon, a spy who escaped from Alcatraz, and, in the role that gave him an Oscar, a cop partner of Elliot Ness who knew how to make use of a corpse.
2 The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) 1,918,895 Netflix continues to release new shows that bring in lots of attention. This time, it's an adaptation of a novel about a chess prodigy who tries to become the world's greatest chess player in the 50s and 60s while struggling with emotional issues and substance abuse.
3 Sacha Baron Cohen 1,409,756 It was a big month for the British actor\comedian, who revived Borat Sagdiyev in #8, released on Prime Video, and played Abbie Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago 7, released on Netflix. (Man, can't wait for theatrical releases to stabilize so films can stop being relegated to streaming.)
4 Khabib Nurmagomedov 1,364,426 One of the most victorious MMA (Mixed martial arts) fighters retired after his bout with Justin Gaethje, leaving behind a record of 29 wins.
5 Amy Coney Barrett 1,336,174 This judge joined the U.S. Supreme Court after the Senate approved her nomination.
6 Mirzapur (TV series) 1,052,322 India pushing in an entry, a Prime Video show about criminals in Purvanchal, starring Pankaj Tripathi (pictured).
7 2016 United States presidential election 1,045,629 On the 9th (thanks, Michael Moore), it will be four years since America chose not to elect Hillary Clinton. Soon the election will show if buyer's remorse settled in or if Trump still has enough supporters.
8 Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 962,702 #3 retired Borat Sagdiyev because a hit movie would make the character too recognizable to continue his 'purpose' of showcasing the worst of his interviewees. Well, what a surprise that Borat returned in Prime Video, roaming the pandemic-infested America of "McDonald Trump" with his daughter Tutar and lots of disguises, embarrassing the common citizen and big names such as "Michael Pen-is" and Rudolph Giuliani along the way.
9 Halloween 956,670 It was a year where Jack Skellington would have reason to try to take over Santa Claus' place, as the spooky part of All Hallows' Eve was a pandemic that made people scared to have parties or go trick-or-treating.
10 Anya Taylor-Joy 938,936 An American-Argentine-British actress, already seen this year in The New Mutants (making her actually fight things after being pestered by a witch and a sociopath with multiple personalities), and currently starring in our #2.

I know the guys that we are choosing from (November 1 to 7, 2020)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 1 to 7, 2020)


Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 2016 United States presidential election 9,142,304 The fear of having what put Trump (#6) in the White House repeat itself brought more views to that election that stunned everyone (just see our numbers back in the day!) than whatever was happening in the current one (#4). Pictured: an official ballot from the election. Not all states allow photographs of ballots (for the record, that one's from Wisconsin).
2 Joe Biden 8,426,305 After 3 presidential campaigns, 8 years as VP, and 4 days of vote counting, you have President-Elect Joe Biden. The day he's inaugurated, he'll be the oldest president in history. It's probably appropriate he also landed at #2 here. In contrast to his opponent, #6, and running mate, #5, Biden hasn't yet topped this list since it began to be tabulated in 2013.
3 United States Electoral College 8,336,683 The only college from which you can never graduate. For those not from the United States, and those from the United States, it's an archaic system that means you vote and then other people also vote based on how you voted. The party it advantages has varied from election to election, but right now, it's solidly favoring the Republican Party. Apparently it was designed to empower slave-owners, so it's kind of ironic how it should be installing a Black woman in the coming months.
4 2020 United States presidential election 7,181,141 Because of an abundance of mail-in ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a certain soon-to-be-ex-president not wanting them to start counting until after polls closed, this year's election took longer than usual to be called (and to think one of the writers lives in a country where 100% of the vote is electronic, and the counting is over in just one day!). Pictured: The public responds in the streets after Biden was announced President-Elect.
5 Kamala Harris 5,636,406 While she may be the first, she will not be the last woman, woman of color, Black woman, or woman of Asian descent to be vice president.
Much less relevant, she's the first Democratic president or vice president from the West Coast.[a] Who knew!
6 Donald Trump 3,253,619 Receiving about 5 million less views than #2... Did I say views? I meant votes. No, make that both.
You're Fired!
7 2012 United States presidential election 3,074,994 The second time #2 got elected as VP. Pictured: President Obama receiving a concession phone call from Mitt Romney hours after polling closed. All of these elections were probably boosted by the prominent links from presidential election page to presidential election page.
8 2008 United States presidential election 2,954,352 Until this week, the 2008 election saw the highest number of votes for a Presidential ticket in U.S. history, with #16 taking the top spot and #2 as VP. The election was lost by the late John McCain (pictured), a diplomatic moderate Republican from Arizona beloved by his home state, #6's policies and insults towards McCain in recent years may have (along with massive minority turn-out) swung the traditionally red state to turn blue. Not that we're certain; Arizona and neighbor Nevada are still counting.
9 Sean Connery 2,339,531 This recently-deceased legendary Scottish actor is still being remembered.
10 2000 United States presidential election 2,201,274 This election also notably took a while to decide, based on voting irregularities that have since been long fixed. Pictured: The languishing recount in southern Florida.
  1. ^ Richard Nixon was born in California, and was both a Representative and a Senator from that state – Signpost editors

Are they all a bunch of jerks? (November 8 to 14, 2020)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 8 to 14, 2020)
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Donald Trump 15,162,676 Where to begin? At the start of the week that redeemed 2020, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected President and VP of the United States of America. This is a big deal. One of the most notable people who doesn't like that fact is Donald Trump – also the outgoing President, joining a very short list of one-term presidents and starting a new list of one-term presidents who have been impeached – who still, as of writing, refuses to concede (not a necessary step in removal of a president, but a polite one) and demands his legal challenges against nearly every state that voted for Biden be taken seriously. That's hard to do when the man announcing the lawsuits is making his big speech by some flyers out the back of a garage of a landscaping company next to a porn shop in an industrial unit in northeast Philly.

Trump has been popular on Wikipedia for a long time; though he hasn't hit #1 in awhile (after all, nearly everyone knows who he is). He topped the list once in 2015, a whopping nine times in 2016, and twice in 2017. His article is also the second-most popular of all time, trailing only United States.

2 Kamala Harris 9,602,086
3 Joe Biden 6,496,836
4 2020 United States presidential election 3,200,218
5 Alex Trebek 2,626,849 Trebek, the longstanding host of Jeopardy!, passed away November 8 from pancreatic cancer. Trebek was one of the most popular people on television. On almost any other week, he would almost certainly have been #1 on this list.
6 Jill Biden 2,562,638 Members of the incoming First and Second Families. Doug becomes the first Second Gentleman. (and his first wife would be #28 if this was a Top 30)
7 Beau Biden 2,474,577
8 Douglas Emhoff 1,962,545
9 The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) 1,804,738 Netflix still captivates enough to break up the election families.
10 Shyamala Gopalan 1,733,395 VP-Elect Kamala Harris's mother, who she spoke of in her acceptance speech, about how she who immigrated from India at the age of 19, and sent powerful messages about dreaming to young minority girls around the world.

But that's how voting works! (November 15 to 21, 2020)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 15 to 21, 2020)
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Donald Trump 6,387,834 Donald Trump, in a preposterous fourteenth time getting #1 on this list, has officially become the child we never asked for who throws a temper tantrum whenever he’s told it’s time to put his toys away and go to bed. You'd think people would already know who Trump is and not bother reading his Wikipedia article, but nope. How wonderful.

For those who were comatose for the past few weeks (or for those who don’t live in the United States and can afford not to hear about American politics) Trump still refuses to concede to the real winner (#24) of the recent presidential election (#12). However, for a moment, it seemed as though Our Man in Mar-a-Lago was finally getting past the first stage of grief when he tweeted out a semi-concession to his rival ("He won..."), albeit with yet another baseless accusation of voter fraud ("...because the Election was Rigged,"), only to, for once in his life, actually think about the implications of what he was saying and immediately take it back. The Trump legal team worked overtime last week filing tons of useless lawsuits to try to invalidate as many Biden votes as they could, and, in a turn of events that everyone saw coming, most of them were dismissed from the get-go.

As evidenced by the numbers on this list, Trump is doing exactly what he knows how to do best, which is keep his name in the headlines. As tiresome as his shenanigans may be, it’s doubtful that he’ll cease until Joe Biden is inaugurated, but there’s uncertainty surrounding his willingness to even let that happen without things getting ugly. Anyway, here’s a particularly rousing moment from one of his speeches in 2018.

2 Margaret Thatcher 2,929,180 The Crown released its fourth season, now in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and thus boosting the views of some important British women: the ever-controversial Prime Minister known as "Iron Lady" (when she died, "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" entered the charts!), played there by Gillian Anderson, and the ever-beloved Princess known as "People's Princess" (when she died, "Candle in the Wind 1997" dominated the charts), played there by Emma Corrin .
3 Diana, Princess of Wales 2,839,941
4 Megan is Missing 2,340,447 Well, I guess they Found her.

This 2011 found footage horror film about the titular Megan and her friend going titular-ly missing after being (SPOILER!) abducted and killed by a creeper that Megan meets on the internet hasn’t seen much buzz since its release. Even then, its discussion was mostly kept to the internet, where it was lambasted for being rife with continuity errors, exploitation, and clumsy acting, writing, directing, you name it. It was so bad, it even got banned in New Zealand! Then again, so did Mad Max...

But recently, like many a forgotten franchise (looking at you, Clone High), the film has been given new life by TikTok users, most of whom seem particularly shaken by its final act. It was enough for the movie’s writer-director-editor Michael Goi to venture onto the platform, where he issued a "warning" telling viewers not to watch it alone or in the dark, which is clearly meant to be an advertisement for the film rather than a deterrent. (He also says that this is the "customary warning" he used to give people before they watched the film despite the warning showing up nowhere in the film itself. As one TikTok comment puts it, "ITS A LITTLE LATE FOR THIS MICHAEL".) All I’ll say is this: if you’re looking for a found footage movie about a teenage girl gone missing, stick to Searching.

5 Elizabeth II 2,241,692 The Crown again, only this time with people born in the royal family. Let's see, there's the show's main character (the Queen from The Favourite), the uncle of her husband who was killed by the IRA (the Hand of the King from Game of Thrones), her sister (the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland), and her son who remains waiting for the throne at the age of 72 (...OK, Josh O'Connor hasn't played another royal yet).
6 Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma 2,169,279
7 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon 2,018,293
8 Charles, Prince of Wales 1,747,672
9 The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) 1,526,501 It seems like the world won’t stop telling me to watch this show, and as much as I say I don’t have time, I definitely do, I just lack motivation. But I have faith that, once I get around to it, watching it will be worth it. It’s already become one of the top 100 highest-rated shows of all time on IMDb with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and has maintained a spot on the Top 25 for 4 weeks. Who knew people loved chess that much? Well, it might just be that they like watching a show about people playing it. In any case, I would genuinely love to see a series about the guys who play chess at McDonald’s (and trust me, there are plenty).
10 Anne, Princess Royal 1,381,775 British royals again! To wit, #5's only daughter, played in The Crown by Erin Doherty.

Exclusions

  • 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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2020-11-29

An assignment that changed a life: Kasey Baker

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By LiAnna Davis
Kasey Baker speaking at a student panel at the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit in 2011.
Wiki Education's Wikipedia Student Program, then part of the WMF, started 10 years ago. Since then they've helped 83,996 students and their 1,852 instructors in 4,088 courses with class assignments creating 9,958 Wikipedia articles and editing 95,749 other articles. This fall Wiki Education celebrated the anniversary by publishing 14 blog-posts at 10 years - Recent news from Wiki Education. This article was originally published on November 20 and is licensed CC BY-SA 3.0. LiAnna Davis is the Chief Programs Officer and Deputy Director of Wiki Edu.

Ten years ago, Kasey Baker was pursuing his master's degree in public administration at Western Carolina University, when he took a policy analysis course that changed his life: It introduced him to Wikipedia editing.

The course was participating in the pilot of what is now known as the Wikipedia Student Program, where professors assign students to edit Wikipedia as a class assignment. Kasey tackled the article on the nuclear energy policy of the United States. Then the Fukushima meltdown happened.

"More than 65,000 characters, hundreds of hours of writing, hundreds of hours debating with fellow Wikipedians later, I was off to the races," Kasey reflects now. "Wikipedia was a jumping off point for my academic career: if it were not for that assignment and those in the community and Wikimedia who helped me blunder though such a massive undertaking, I honestly might have gone a different direction in my career. Looking back, the process of writing an article up to the standards of Wikipedia was just as difficult, rigorous, and rewarding as publishing independent research."

After that first assignment, Kasey was hooked. He volunteered in future terms as a Campus Ambassador, helping the next generation of student editors. Now, as a political science professor, he's taught Wikipedia assignments in many classes. With fellow Wikipedians in his region, he founded the North Carolina Wikimedians user group. He's run many edit-a-thons, and supported countless new editors.

He loves sharing Wikipedia with people throughout academia, encouraging those initially opposed to alter their perceptions of Wikipedia. Kasey even admits one of his hobbies is breaking down teachers' barriers by explaining the positive impacts of teaching students to critically use and improve Wikipedia. Over the last decade, he's shifted from writing articles himself to training others how to write articles. In the time it would take him to research and write one, he points out, he helps 30 students write their own articles.

"Over the 10 years teaching and sharing Wikipedia, I've never once met a student who thought this was a throw-away assignment. It actually has one of the highest engagements of anything I teach, because who doesn't like telling their friends and family 'Look what I wrote on Wikipedia,' and seeing thousands of impressions each month on the page?" Kasey says. "Unlike most college assignments, even with harsh criticism from Wikipedians, students get immediate validation that 'This work matters, I'm proud of what I've done.' That fills a very important void for high school, undergraduates, and even master's/PhD students."

Kasey has a lot to be proud of in his decade of work on Wikipedia, but he points to his work preserving the written and oral history of Holocaust survivors on Wikipedia as the most fulfilling work he's done. Through a series of edit-a-thons, students, faculty, and staff have expanded or created 200 articles, adding more than 600,000 characters to Wikipedia.

"I have even had a Holocaust Survivor speak to me about an article on him that some of my students adopted/expanded, and let me tell you, it is a humbling experience to be told we all are combatting Fascism/Nazism," Kasey says.

Kasey has noticed a change in academia's perception of Wikipedia since he was a student ten years ago. He attributes this in part to the community's rigorous standards, and in part because of what Wikipedia is.

"A lot of it has to do with these pages being a battleground for the history of humanity," he says. "It's never a dull day editing articles here, and that's a good thing in my opinion."




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2020-11-29

West Coast New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large

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By Mike Dickison
After winding up the project described here, Mike will start work at the Westland District Library as a digital librarian. He'll be continuing the work he began as a Wikipedian, including recruiting editors and supporting meetup groups and edit-a-thons. The role will involve digitisation of museum collections, a Wikisource project with an early explorer's notebooks, Wikicite work with library collections, and improving the coverage of threatened species. He'll also help organise the New Zealand user group's first Wikimedia conference in Hokitika in March. This article was first published in the GLAM Newsletter this month.

From 5 September to 26 October 2020 I was a Wikipedian at Large on the remote West Coast region of New Zealand. In September I was based in Hokitika, Greymouth, and Westport, and in October in Ōkārito, Franz Josef, Fox Glacier, Reefton, and Arthur's Pass. The project was largely funded by Development West Coast, with additional support or accommodation supplied by Westland District Library, Grey District Library, and Glacier Country Tourism. The brief was to do the following:

  • Working with heritage organisations such as museums and libraries to organise uploads of public-domain photos into Wikimedia Commons.
  • Improving articles on iconic West Coast features, places, and people using the resources of non-profits, tourism agencies, and individual tourism operators.
  • Running a public Wikipedia event in each location, where people could learn the basics of editing Wikipedia and donating photos to Commons.
  • Running training for gallery, library, museum, and archives (GLAM) staff in each location – introducing them to Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata, and helping each develop a Wikimedia strategy for their collections.
  • Giving presentations to tourism organisations and operators in each area on improving Wikivoyage, making print media coverage available to Wikipedians, and donating high-quality photos to Commons.

Achievements

I ran over a dozen talks, workshops, and meetups over the six weeks; the Grey District Library has organised two edit-a-thons as a follow-up to these. Seventeen volunteers signed up to assist with the project. Most were working remotely; both from Australia, and from Wellington, Dunedin, and Christchurch in New Zealand. They reported their achievements each day. Prizes were donated by Development West Coast and Friends of Waiuta and given out for the most and best contributions in different areas. Dozens of articles and Wikidata items were created, dozens of articles improved, and numerous Commons categories were cleaned up. For more on the participants and what they achieved, see the final report on the project.

Over 1,000 photos were added to the category Uploads by West Coast Wikipedian at Large in the course of the project. Here are a selection:

  • Walking trails
  • Cockayne Nature Walk
    Cockayne Nature Walk
  • Lake Gault track
    Lake Gault track
  • Lake Matheson Walk
    Lake Matheson Walk
  • Point Elizabeth Walkway
    Point Elizabeth Walkway
  • Canoe Cove Walk
    Canoe Cove Walk
  • Stewart Nimmo photos for Tourism West Coast
  • Reefton
    Reefton
  • Lake Brunner
    Lake Brunner
  • Hokitika Gorge
    Hokitika Gorge
  • Tuatara at West Coast Wildlife Centre
    Tuatara at West Coast Wildlife Centre
  • Historic Buildings of Greymouth
  • Clock Tower
    Clock Tower
  • Grey Country Chambers
    Grey Country Chambers
  • Dispatch & Garlick
    Dispatch & Garlick
  • High Street Barber
    High Street Barber
  • Waitaiki House
    Waitaiki House
  • High Street Auto Centre
    High Street Auto Centre
  • Images from History House Museum
  • Amalgamated Association of Reliable Drivers, 1925
    Amalgamated Association of Reliable Drivers, 1925
  • Greymouth Opera House, 1958
    Greymouth Opera House, 1958
  • The Opera House burning down 9 Feb 1958
    The Opera House burning down 9 Feb 1958
  • Union Hotel flooded, c. 1900
    Union Hotel flooded, c. 1900

Media coverage

In an interview with the Christchurch Press, I mentioned that the Wikipedia coverage of some towns and localities on the West Coast was so incomplete that tourists would be dissuaded from visiting. This led to a TV interview, and my comments were quoted in international reporting of the Hinnosaar et al. 2019 study on the effect of Wikipedia article improvement on visitor numbers. I've subsequently been approached by two NZ tourist organisations wanting to know what they can do to work with Wikipedia.




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2020-11-29

Lee Vilenski wins the 2020 WikiCup

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By Cwmhiraeth and Adam Cuerden

2020 has seen many difficulties and challenges around the world, but for the WikiCup, it has been an excellent year, with several new entrants to the contest doing exceptionally well. The earlier rounds were dominated by Epicgenius, who achieved 113 good articles during the course of the competition, and the coverage of New York's buildings and other locations improved dramatically! However, the score is reset to zero at the end of each round, and the final round was very productive, with 15 high-scoring featured articles being achieved. The eight finalists also performed 75 reviews of FA candidates, achieved 88 good articles and performed 108 reviews of GA nominations during the last round. The scores achieved by Lee Vilenski and by Gog the Mild this year were nearly three times higher than the score that gave last year's winner first place. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

Signups have opened for the 2021 competition. To join, click here.

A sampling of the finalists' work...

We can't cover everything (and if we did, it'd probably have an awful lot of overlap with the Featured Content report), but just to give a quick sampler of the finalists' contributions in the last round....




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2020-11-29

Wikipedia's Shoah coverage succeeds where libraries fail

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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.


Wikipedia succeeds where libraries fail, showing "an unmet interest" in the Shoah and Israel, also in Muslim countries

In a paper titled "The Political Geography of Shoah Knowledge and Awareness, Estimated from the Analysis of Global Library Catalogues and Wikipedia User Statistics"[1] Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch finds a disturbing "global North-South and North-East divide in the library presence of Shoah-related titles", contrasting it with "a more optimistic [trend], based on freely available information on the internet" – namely the availability and popularity of Wikipedia articles about the same topic in multiple languages. For example, the study highlights their pageview numbers in the Farsi, Arabic and Indonesian Wikipedias as "truly a hopeful sign".

The bulk of the paper consists of detailed bibliometric examinations:

"Based on the data of our research project covering 165 library catalogues (54 nationwide union catalogues, 81 national libraries, 16 legislative-assembly libraries, 14 libraries of international organizations) and the OCLC Worldcat, which by itself includes no less than 70,000 libraries in more than 170 countries, we found that there is indeed a huge global gap in Shoah library holdings. Some 69.3% of the global library presence of the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, in principle available to global publics, is encountered in libraries within the geographical distance of less than 1,000 miles from New York City or Brussels. We particularly analyze the lack of Shoah knowledge and awareness in many Muslim and Catholic countries."

The author contrasts this with webometrics, where "we must regard Wikipedia download statistics [i.e. page view data] as a first and very reliable seismograph of global social network trend ... Its 49.3 million articles in almost 300 languages are therefore also a treasure trove for the research on Judaism, Israel, the memory of the victims of the Shoah, and global anti-Semitism. ....[To] estimate whether or not a given language community on Wikipedia has a high or a low relative tendency to seek information on the Shoah", he compares the pageview numbers for the corresponding article with the annual pageview numbers for the entire Wikipedia in that language, or alternatively with "the culturally most neutral article in this context, the Wikipedia article on the encyclopedia Wikipedia itself."

The paper's detailed bibliometric studies contain many observations on particular countries or regions, e.g. "Among the countries holding less than 100 titles in their combined entire countrywide library system, we find countries where considerable numbers of Jews were sent to the Nazi German death camps".

While praising Wikipedia as an information source with more even coverage (across languages or countries), the author still notes that "compared to the presumed size of the Wikipedia user community [i.e. total pageview numbers], the Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, Persian, and French speaking Wikipedia users had a higher tendency to download the main Shoah Wikipedia article. Results for the Wikipedia downloads in Japanese, Turkish, Russian, Chinese, Swedish, Polish, Korean, Ukrainian, Czech, Finnish, English, Indonesian, Arabic, and Dutch (in descending order) were below the trend." The study similarly examines the article about Israel, observing e.g. that "With 844 daily downloads of the Israel article in Persian and 1,254 daily downloads of the Israel article in Arabic, a certain presence of the theme of Israel among Wikipedia audiences in the Middle East has now been achieved."

The article was published in a journal of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think-tank which (according to the English Wikipedia article about it) "is considered to be politically neo-conservative". That said, few of the author's previous publications appear to have focused on topics related to the Holocaust or the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Libraries and their biases are the main focus of the paper, with the Wikipedia-related results occupying a smaller part. Still, the former are of interest to Wikimedians and Wikipedia researchers as well - for example as evidence for possible risks in GLAM-WIKI collaborations, where the biases and political constraints of such cultural institutions might negatively affect Wikipedia's efforts to achieve a neutral point of view.

Briefly

Other recent publications

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.

"NwQM: A neural quality assessment framework for Wikipedia"

From the abstract:[2]

"In this paper we propose Neural wikipedia Quality Monitor (NwQM), a novel deep learning model which accumulates signals from several key information sources such as article text, meta data and images to obtain improved Wikipedia article representation. We present comparison of our approach against a plethora of available solutions and show 8% improvement over state-of-the-art approaches with detailed ablation studies."

"Evidence of a mostly productive and continuous effort to improve the quality of references" on English Wikipedia

From the abstract:[3]

"... we present a publicly available dataset of the history of all the references (more than 55 million) ever used in the English Wikipedia until June 2019. We have applied a new method for identifying and monitoring references in Wikipedia, so that for each reference we can provide data about associated actions: creation, modifications, deletions, and reinsertions. [...] We use the dataset to study the temporal evolution of Wikipedia references as well as users' editing behaviour. We find evidence of a mostly productive and continuous effort to improve the quality of references: (1) there is a persistent increase of reference and document identifiers (DOI, PubMedID, PMC, ISBN, ISSN, ArXiv ID), and (2) most of the reference curation work is done by registered humans (not bots or anonymous editors)."

"The network structure of scientific revolutions"

From the abstract:[4]

"Philosophers of science have long postulated how collective scientific knowledge grows. Empirical validation has been challenging due to limitations in collecting and systematizing large historical records. Here, we capitalize on the largest online encyclopedia to formulate knowledge as growing networks of articles and their hyperlinked inter-relations. We demonstrate that concept networks grow not by expanding from their core but rather by creating and filling knowledge gaps, a process which produces discoveries that are more frequently awarded Nobel prizes than others. Moreover, we operationalize paradigms as network modules to reveal a temporal signature in structural stability across scientific subjects."

"Using logical constraints to validate information in collaborative knowledge graphs: a study of COVID-19 on Wikidata"

From the abstract:[5]

"we catalog the rules describing relational and statistical COVID-19 epidemiological data and implement them in SPARQL, a query language for semantic databases. We demonstrate the efficiency of our methods to evaluate structured information, particularly COVID-19 knowledge in Wikidata, and consequently in collaborative ontologies and knowledge graphs, and we show the advantages and drawbacks of our proposed approach by comparing it to other methods for validation of linked web data."

"PNEL: Pointer Network based End-To-End Entity Linking over Knowledge Graphs"

From the abstract:[6]

"Question Answering systems are generally modelled as a pipeline consisting of a sequence of steps. In such a pipeline, Entity Linking (EL) is often the first step. [...] In this work we present a novel approach to end-to-end EL by applying the popular Pointer Network model, which achieves competitive performance. We demonstrate this in our evaluation over three datasets on the Wikidata Knowledge Graph."

"A decade of writing on Wikipedia: A comparative study of three articles"

From the abstract:[7]

"This article reports what observable writing activities characterized three Wikipedia articles, archive, design, and writing, over a three-year period from 2012–2014. It then compares these results to writing in these same three articles 10 years earlier, from 2002–2004. Results show that articles were longer and more referenced in 2012–2014. The most frequent written contributions in 2012–2014 were adding and deleting content, followed by vandalizing and reverting vandalism. Ten years earlier, content addition was likewise the most frequent activity, though vandalism and its removal were not found."

References

  1. ^ Tausch, Arno (2020). "The Political Geography of Shoah Knowledge and Awareness, Estimated from the Analysis of Global Library Catalogues and Wikipedia User Statistics". Jewish Political Studies Review. 31 (1/2): 7–123. ISSN 0792-335X. JSTOR 26870790.
  2. ^ Reddy, Bhanu Prakash; Bhusan, Sasi; Sarkar, Soumya; Mukherjee, Animesh (2020-10-14). "NwQM: A neural quality assessment framework for Wikipedia". arXiv:2010.06969 [cs.SI].
  3. ^ Zagovora, Olga; Ulloa, Roberto; Weller, Katrin; Flöck, Fabian (2020-10-06). "'I Updated the <ref>': The Evolution of References in the English Wikipedia and the Implications for Altmetrics". arXiv:2010.03083 [cs.CY].
  4. ^ Ju, Harang; Zhou, Dale; Blevins, Ann S.; Lydon-Staley, David M.; Kaplan, Judith; Tuma, Julio R.; Bassett, Danielle S. (2020-10-16). "The network structure of scientific revolutions". arXiv:2010.08381 [cs.DL].
  5. ^ Houcemeddine Turki; Dariusz Jemielniak; Mohamed Ali Hadj Taieb; Jose Emilio Labra Gayo; Mohamed Ben Aouicha; Mus'ab Banat; Thomas Shafee; Eric Prud'Hommeaux; Tiago Lubiana; Diptanshu Das; Daniel Mietchen (2020-08-30). "Using logical constraints to validate information in collaborative knowledge graphs: a study of COVID-19 on Wikidata". doi:10.5281/zenodo.4008359.
  6. ^ Banerjee, Debayan; Chaudhuri, Debanjan; Dubey, Mohnish; Lehmann, Jens (2020-08-31). "PNEL: Pointer Network based End-To-End Entity Linking over Knowledge Graphs". arXiv:2009.00106 [cs.CL].
  7. ^ Purdy, James P. (2020-08-03). "A decade of writing on Wikipedia: A comparative study of three articles". First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v25i9.10857. ISSN 1396-0466.




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2020-11-29

Writing about women

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By SarahSV
This Wikipedia essay was first published on February 26, 2015 and written by 53 other editors. 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.

When writing about women on Wikipedia, make sure articles do not use sexist language, perpetuate sexist stereotypes or otherwise demonstrate a prejudice against women.

As of June 2019, 16.7% of editors on the English Wikipedia who have declared a gender say they are female.[1] The gender disparity, together with the need for reliable sources, contributes to the gender imbalance of our content; as of March 2020, only 18.27% of our biographies are about women.[2] This page may help to identify the subtle and more obvious ways in which titles, language, images, and linking practices can discriminate against women.

Data

graph
graph

Among editors of the English Wikipedia who specify a gender in their preferences, 115,941 (16.7%) were female and 576,106 male as of 13 June 2019.[1][a]

As of 10 March 2020, the English Wikipedia hosted 1,693,225 biographies, 291,649 (18.27%) of which were about women.[2] As a result of sourcing issues, almost all biographies before 1900 are of men.[5]

In 2009 the percentage of biographies of living persons (BLPs) about women was under 20%, but the numbers have been rising steadily since 2012–2013. As of 5 May 2019, the English Wikipedia hosted 906,720 BLPs, according to figures produced by Andrew Gray using Wikidata. Wikidata identified 697,402 of these as male and 205,117 as female.[b] The percentages of those that specified a gender were 77.06% male and 22.67% female; 0.27% had another gender.[6]

Male is not the default

See also: Other (philosophy) § Sex and gender, Male as norm, and Androcentrism

Avoid language that makes female the Other to a male Self.[7]

Researchers have found that Wikipedia articles about women are more likely to contain words such as woman, female and lady, than articles about men are to contain man, male, or gentleman. This suggests that editors write with an assumption of male as the default gender and expect that individuals are assumed to be male unless otherwise stated.[8][9] This tendency is easily countered by removing unnecessary specification of sex or gender. Avoid labelling a Margaret Atwood as a female author or Margaret Thatcher as female politician except in specific sentences or paragraphs in which their gender is explicitly relevant.

Categories are equally susceptible to asymmetric treatment of genders. In April 2013 several media stories noted that editors of the English Wikipedia had begun moving women from Category:American novelists to Category:American women novelists, while leaving men in the main category.[10][11] Labelling a male author as a "writer" and a female author as a "woman writer" presents women as marked—requiring an adjective to differentiate them from a male default.[12] Symmetry of categories has improved since 2013, but where editors encounter an imbalance they should correct it by moving male subjects to explicitly male categories (for as long as the current consensus regarding gendered categories holds).

Use surnames

See also: MOS:LASTNAME

In most situations, avoid referring to a woman by her first name, which can serve to infantilize her.[c] As a rule, after the initial introduction ("Susan Smith is an Australian anthropologist"), refer to women by their surnames ("Smith is the author of ..."). Here is an example of an editor correcting the inappropriate use of a woman's first name.

First names are sometimes needed for clarity. For example, when writing about a family with the same surname, after the initial introductions they can all be referred to by first names. A first name might also be used when a surname is long and double-barreled, and its repetition would be awkward to read and write. When a decision is made to use first names for editorial reasons, use them for both women and men.

Writing the lead

Importance of the lead

According to Graells-Garrido et al. (2015), the lead is a "good proxy for any potential biases expressed by Wikipedia contributors".[14] The lead may be the only part of an article that is read—especially on mobile devices—so pay close attention to how women are described there. Again, giving women "marked" treatment can convey subtle assumptions to readers.

First woman

See also: Finkbeiner test § Checklist
"First woman"

An article about a woman does not pass the Finkbeiner test if it mentions that "she's the first woman to ...." The test raises awareness of how gender becomes more important than a person's achievements.

Avoid language that places being a woman ahead of the subject's achievements. Opening the lead with "Smith was the first woman to do X", or "Smith was the first female X", immediately defines her in terms of men who have done the same thing, and it can inadvertently imply: "She may not have been a very good X, but at least she was the first woman."[15] When prioritizing that the subject is a "first woman", make sure it really is the only notable thing about her. Otherwise start with her own position or accomplishments, and mention the fact that she is a woman afterwards if it is notable.

For example, as of 10 March 2015, Wikipedia described Russian chemist Anna Volkova solely in terms of four first-woman benchmarks.[16] But the biographies of Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, as of the same date, began with the positions they held, and only then said that they were the first or only women to have held them.[17]

Infoboxes

Infoboxes are an important source of metadata (see DBpedia) and a source of discrimination against women. For example, the word spouse is more likely to appear in a woman's infobox than in a man's.[18]

When writing about a woman who works or has worked as, but is not primarily known for being a model, avoid {{Infobox model}}. It includes parameters for hair and eye colour and previously contained parameters for bust, hip, waist size and weight. The latter were removed in March 2016 following this discussion. If you add an infobox (they are not required), consider using {{Infobox person}} instead.

Relationships

Defining women by their relationships

Shortcuts

Wherever possible, avoid defining a notable woman, particularly in the title or first sentence, in terms of her relationships (wife/mother/daughter of). Do not begin a biography with: "Susan Smith is the daughter of historian Frank Smith and wife of actor John Jones. She is known for her work on game theory." An example of the kind of title the Wikipedia community has rejected is Sarah Brown (wife of Gordon Brown).

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2017, the artist's hometown: "Rachel Ruysch was the daughter of Frederik Ruysch, a professor of botany. Her artistic talent was recognized early on and she became a renowned painter of floral still lifes."

Researchers have found that Wikipedia articles about women are more likely to discuss their family, romantic relationships, and sexuality, while articles about men are more likely to contain words about cognitive processes and work. This suggests that Wikipedia articles are objectifying women.[19][d] Women's biographies mention marriage and divorce more often than men's biographies do.[21] Biographies that refer to the subject's divorce are 4.4 times more likely to be about a woman on the English Wikipedia. The figures are similar on the German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and French Wikipedias.[e]

[T]he greater frequency and burstiness of words related to cognitive mechanisms in men, as well as the more frequent words related to sexuality in women, may indicate a tendency to objectify women in Wikipedia. ... [M]en are more frequently described with words related to their cognitive processes, while women are more frequently described with words related to sexuality. In the full biography text, the cognitive processes and work concerns categories are more bursty in men biographies, meaning that those aspects of men's lives are more important than others at the individual level."[15]

A woman's relationships are inevitably discussed prominently when essential to her notability, but try to focus on her own notable roles or accomplishments first. For example, consider starting articles about women who were First Lady of the United States, which is a significant role, with "served as First Lady of the United States from [year] to [year]", followed by a brief summary of her achievements, rather than "is/was the wife of President X".

Marriage

When discussing a woman who is married to a man, write "A is married to B" instead of "A is the wife of B", which casts the male as possessor. Avoid the expression "man and wife", which generalizes the husband and marks the wife. Do not refer to a woman as Mrs. John Smith; when using an old citation that does this, try to find and use the woman's own name, as in: "Susan Smith (cited as Mrs. J. Smith)".

When introducing a woman as the parent of an article subject, avoid the common construction, "Smith was born in 1960 to John Smith and his wife, Susan." Consider whether there is an editorial reason to begin with the father's name. If not, try "Susan Jones and her husband, John Smith" or, if the woman has taken her husband's name, "Susan Smith, née Jones, and her husband, John", or "Susan and John Smith". Where there are several examples of "X and spouse" in an article, alternate the order of male and female names.

The focus on relationships in articles about women affects internal linking and therefore search-engine results. One study found that women on Wikipedia are more linked to men than men are linked to women. When writing an article about a woman, if you include an internal link to an article about a man, consider visiting the latter to check that it includes reciprocal information about the relationship; if it merits mention in the woman's article, it is likely germane to his. Failure to mention the relationship in both can affect search algorithms in a way that discriminates against women.[f]

Language

Gender-neutral language

See also: MOS:GNL, Language and gender, and Gender marking in job titles

Use gender-neutral nouns when describing professions and positions: actor, author, aviator, bartender, chair, comedian, firefighter, flight attendant, hero, poet, police officer. Avoid adding gender (female pilot, male nurse) unless the topic requires it.

Do not refer to human beings as a group as man or mankind. Sentences such as "man has difficulty in childbirth" illustrate that these are not inclusive generic terms.[24] Depending on the context, use humanity, humankind, human beings, women and men, or men and women.

Word order

Some will set the cart before the horse, as thus: "My mother and my father are both at home", even as though the goodman of the house did wear no breeches, or that the gray mare were the better horse. ... in speaking at the least let us keep a natural order and set the man before the woman for manners' sake.

— Thomas Wilson (Arte of Rhetorique, 1553).[25]

The order in which groups are introduced—man and woman, male and female, Mr. and Mrs., husband and wife, brother and sister, ladies and gentlemen—has implications for their status, so consider alternating the order as you write.[26]

Girls, ladies

Do not refer to adult women as girls or ladies,[27] unless using common expressions, proper nouns, or titles that cannot be avoided (e.g., leading lady, lady-in-waiting, ladies' singles, Ladies' Gaelic Football Association, First Lady). The inappropriate use of ladies can be seen in Miss Universe 1956, which on 12 March 2015 said there had been "30 young ladies in the competition", and in Mixer dance, which discussed "the different numbers of men and ladies".[28]

Pronouns: Avoid generic he

See also: Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns and Gender neutrality in English

The use of the generic he (masculine pronouns such as he, him, his) is increasingly avoided in sentences that might refer to women and men or girls and boys.[29] Instead of "each student must hand in his assignment", try one of the following.

  • Rewrite the sentence in the plural: "students must hand in their assignments."
  • Use feminine pronouns: "each student must hand in her assignment." This is often done to signal the writer's rejection of the generic he,[30] the "linguistic equivalent of affirmative action".[31] See WP:HER.
  • Alternate between the masculine and feminine in different paragraphs or sections.[31]
  • Rewrite the sentence to remove the pronoun: "student assignments must be handed in."
  • Write out the alternatives—he or she, him or her, his or her; him/her, his/her.
  • Use a composite form for the nominative—s/he or (s)he.[32]
  • Use the singular they: "each student must hand in their assignment". It is most often used with someone, anyone, everyone, no one.[33]
Singular they
Nominative
(subject) 		Accusative
(object) 		Dependent possessive pronoun Independent possessive pronoun Reflexive
When I tell someone a joke, they laugh. When I greet a friend, I hug them. When someone leaves the library, their book is stamped. A friend lets me borrow theirs. Each person drives there themselves (or, nonstandard, themself).

Sources

Avoid using openly sexist sources unless there is a strong editorial reason to use them. For example, do not use pornographic or men's websites and magazines (such as AskMen, Playboy, and Maxim) in the biographies of female actors. Be careful not to include trivia that appeals predominantly to men. A source need not be overtly sexist to set a bad example. For example, most women are underrepresented in certain institutions that are slow to change. Often such institutions can be fine to use as a source for men, but for women, not so much.

Images

See also: Male gaze, Sexual objectification, and Scopophilia

Avoid images that objectify women. In particular, do not use pornography images in articles that are not about pornography. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images states that "photographs taken in a pornography context would normally be inappropriate for articles about human anatomy".

Except when the topic is necessarily tied to it (examples: downblouse and upskirt), avoid examples of male-gaze imagery, where women are presented as objects of heterosexual male appreciation.[34] When adding an image of part of a woman's body, consider cropping the image to focus on that body part.

When illustrating articles about women's health and bodies, use authoritative medical images wherever possible.

Medical issues

Main page: Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)

When writing about women's health, make sure medical claims are sourced according to the medical sourcing guideline, WP:MEDRS. As a rule this means avoiding primary sources, which in this context refers to studies in which the authors participated. Rely instead on peer-reviewed secondary sources that offer an overview of several studies. Secondary sources acceptable for medical claims include review articles (systematic reviews and literature reviews), meta-analyses and medical guidelines.

To find these sources, enter the search term (e.g., "mammography") into the National Institutes of Health search engine PubMed at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/, and select "reviews" from the "article types" menu. A search for review articles on "mammography" brings up this list. Or select "customize", then the article type (e.g., meta-analysis or guideline). To check an article type (e.g., P. M. Otto, C. B. Blecher, "Controversies surrounding screening mammography", Missouri Medicine, 111(5), Sep–Oct 2014), open the drop-down menu "Publication type" under the abstract. In this case, the classification is "Review". When in doubt, ask for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Women are thought to comprise between 8.5%[3] and 16.1%[4] of editors on the English Wikipedia.
  2. ^ Another 2,464 had some other value, 1,220 had none, and 517 were not on Wikidata.
  3. ^ Milman (2014): "More stylistic choices by journalists further contributed to the paternalistic construction of the [Mothers' movement] protesters as girls and their subjugation to father-like figures ...[T]he press ... infantilized the protesters by referring to them as "the girls" ... and by using their first names rather than referring to them by their family names as is the custom when writing about political figures ..."[13]
  4. ^ Graells-Garrido, Lalmas and Menczer (2015): "Sex-related content is more frequent in women biographies than men's, while cognition-related content is more highlighted in men biographies than women's."[20]
  5. ^ Wagner et al. (2015): "[I]n the English Wikipedia an article about a notable person that mentions that the person is divorced is 4.4 times more likely to be about a woman rather than a man. We observe similar results in all six language editions. For example, in the German Wikipedia an article that mentions that a person is divorced is 4.7 times more likely about a woman, in the Russian Wikipedia its 4.8 times more likely about a woman and in the Spanish, Italian and French Wikipedia it is 4.2 times more likely about a women. This example shows that a lexical bias is indeed present on Wikipedia and can be observed consistently across different language editions. This result is in line with (Bamman and Smith 2014) who also observed that in the English Wikipedia biographies of women disproportionately focus on marriage and divorce compared to those of men."[22]
  6. ^ Wagner et al. (2015): "[W]omen on Wikipedia tend to be more linked to men than vice versa, which can put women at a disadvantage in terms of—for example—visibility or reachability on Wikipedia. In addition, we find that women's romantic relationships and family-related issues are much more frequently discussed in their Wikipedia articles than in articles on men. This suggests differences in how the Wikipedia community conceptualizes notable men and women. Because modern search and recommendation algorithms exploit both structural and lexical information on Wikipedia, women might be discriminated when it comes to ranking articles about notable people. To reduce such effects, the editor community could pay particular attention to the gender balance of links included in articles about men and women, and could adopt a more gender-balanced vocabulary when writing articles about notable people."[23]

References

  1. ^ a b "Overall ratio of declared genders". quarry.wmflabs.org. 13 June 2019.
  2. ^ a b "Gender by language: All time, as of Mar '20". Wikidata Human Gender Indicators (WHGI).
  3. ^ WMF 2011, p. 2.
  4. ^ Hill & Shaw 2013.
  5. ^ Graells-Garrido, Lalmas & Menczer 2015.
  6. ^ Gray, Andrew (6 May 2019). "Gender and deletion on Wikipedia". generalist.org.uk.
  7. ^ Jule 2008, p. 13ff.
  8. ^ Wagner et al. 2015.
  9. ^ "Computational Linguistics Reveals How Wikipedia Articles Are Biased Against Women", MIT Technology Review, 2 February 2015.
    Titlow, John Paul (2 February 2015). "More Like Dude-ipedia: Study Shows Wikipedia's Sexist Bias", Fast Company.
  10. ^ Amanda Filipacchi (24 April 2013). "Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Female Novelists". The New York Times.
  11. ^ Alison Flood (25 April 2013). "Wikipedia bumps women from 'American novelists' category". The Guardian.
  12. ^ For marked and unmarked, see Deborah Tannen, "Marked Women, Unmarked Men", The New York Times Magazine, 20 June 1993.
  13. ^ Milman 2014, 73.
  14. ^ Graells-Garrido, Lalmas & Menczer 2015, p. 3.
  15. ^ a b Graells-Garrido, Lalmas & Menczer 2015, p. 8.
  16. ^ Anna Volkova, wiki.riteme.site, accessed 10 March 2015.
  17. ^ Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, wiki.riteme.site, accessed 10 March 2015.
  18. ^ Graells-Garrido, Lalmas & Menczer 2015, p. 4.
  19. ^ Graells-Garrido, Lalmas & Menczer 2015, pp. 2, 5–6, 8.
  20. ^ Graells-Garrido, Lalmas & Menczer 2015, p. 2.
  21. ^ Bamman & Smith 2014, p. 369.
  22. ^ Wagner et al. 2015, p. 460.
  23. ^ Wagner et al. 2015, p. 9.
  24. ^ Jule 2008, 14.
  25. ^ Wilson 1994, p. 193.
  26. ^ APA 2009, pp. 72–73; Hegarty 2014, pp. 69.
  27. ^ Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 2003, pp. 38–39; Lakoff 2004, 52–56; Holmes 2004, 151–157; Holmes 2000, pp. 143–155
  28. ^ "Miss Universe 1956" and Mixer dance, wiki.riteme.site, accessed 12 March 2015.
  29. ^ Huddleston & Pullum 2002, p. 492.
  30. ^ McConnell-Ginet 2014, p. 33; Adami 2009, pp. 297–298.

    Wilder, Charly (5 July 2013). "Ladies First: German Universities Edit Out Gender Bias", Der Spiegel.

  31. ^ a b Huddleston & Pullum 2002, p. 493.
  32. ^ Huddleston & Pullum 2002, p. 493; Adami 2009, pp. 294–295.
  33. ^ Huddleston & Pullum 2002, 493; for a history of "singular they", see Bodine 1975, p. 131ff. Also see Whitman 2010.
  34. ^ "Male gaze", Geek Feminism Wiki.

Works cited

  • Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition. American Psychological Association. 2009.
  • "Wikipedia Editors' Survey" (PDF). Wikimedia. Wikimedia Foundation. April 2011.
  • Adami, Elisabetta (2009). "To each reader his, their, or her pronoun". In Renouf, Antoinette; Kehoe, Andrew (eds.). Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments. Rodopi. pp. 281–307.
  • Bamman, David; Smith, Noel (2014). "Unsupervised Discovery of Biographical Structure from Text" (PDF). Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 2: 363–376. doi:10.1162/tacl_a_00189. S2CID 10896312.
  • Bodine, Ann (1975). "Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular 'they,' sex-indefinite 'he,' and 'he or she'". Language in Society. 4 (2): 129–146. doi:10.1017/S0047404500004607. JSTOR 4166805. S2CID 146362006.
  • Eckert, Penelope; McConnell-Ginet, Sally (2003). Language and Gender. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Graells-Garrido, Eduardo; Lalmas, Mounia; Menczer, Filippo (2015). "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media - HT '15. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 165–174. arXiv:1502.02341. doi:10.1145/2700171.2791036. ISBN 9781450333955. S2CID 1082360.
  • Hegarty, Peter (2014). "Ladies and gentlemen: Word order and gender in English". In Corbett, Greville G. (ed.). The Expression of Gender. Walter de Gruyter.
  • Hill, Benjamin Mako; Shaw, Aaron (2013). "The Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with Propensity Score Estimation". PLOS ONE. 8 (6): e65782. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...865782H. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065782. PMC 3694126. PMID 23840366.
  • Holmes, Janet (2004). "Power, Ladies and Linguistic Politeness". In Bucholtz, Mary (ed.). Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Holmes, Janet (2000). "Ladies and gentlemen: corpus analysis and linguistic sexism". In Mair, Christine; Hundt, Marianne (eds.). Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Freiburg im Breisgau: 20th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora, 1999. pp. 143–155.
  • Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Jule, Allyson (2008). A Beginner's Guide to Language and Gender. Multilingual Matters.
  • Lakoff, Robin Tolmach (2004) [1975]. Bucholtz, Mary (ed.). Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • McConnell-Ginet, Sally (2014). "Gender and its relation to sex: The myth of 'natural' gender". In Corbett, Greville G. (ed.). The Expression of Gender. Walter de Gruyter.
  • Milman, Noa (2014). "Mothers, Mizrahi, and Poor: Contentious Media Framings of Mothers' Movements". In Woehrle, Lynne M. (ed.). Intersectionality and Social Change. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. pp. 53–82.
  • Wagner, Claudia; Garcia, David; Jadidi, Mohsen; Strohmaier, Markus (2015). "It's a Man's Wikipedia? Assessing Gender Inequality in an Online Encyclopedia". Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media: 454–463. arXiv:1501.06307v1.
  • Whitman, Neal (4 March 2010). "Do's and Don'ts for Singular 'They'". vocabulary.com.
  • Wilson, Thomas (1994) [1553]. Medine, Peter E. (ed.). The Art of Rhetoric. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Further reading

General

Books, papers

(chronological)
  • Lakoff, Robin (April 1973). "Language and women's place". Language in Society, 2(1), 45–80.
  • Lakoff, Robin (1975). Language and Women's Place. New York: Harper & Row.
  • Miller, Casey and Swift, Kate (1976). Words and Women: New Language in New Times. Anchor Press/Doubleday.
  • Spender, Dale (1980). Man Made Language, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
  • Miller, Casey and Swift, Kate (1980). The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing for Writers, Editors and Speakers. New York: Lippincott and Crowell.
  • McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1984). "The origins of sexist language in discourse", in S. J. White and V. Teller (eds.). Discourse and Reading in Linguistics. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 123–135.
  • Cameron, Deborah (1985). Feminism and Linguistic Theory. London: Routledge; revised 2nd edition, 1992.
  • Frank, Francine Harriet and Treichler, Paula A. (1989). Language, Gender, and Professional Writing. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
  • Cameron, Deborah (ed.) (1990). The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge.
  • Penelope, Julia (1990). Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers' Tongues, New York: Pergamon Press.
  • Tannen, Deborah (1990). You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, New York: William Morrow.
  • Eckert, Penelope and McConnell-Ginet, Sally (2003). Language and Gender, New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Curzon, Anne (2003). Gender Shifts in the History of English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Lakoff, Robin (2004). Language and Woman's Place (original text), in Robin Lakoff, Mary Bucholtz (ed.), Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Ehrlich, Susan, Meyerhoff, Miriam, [and [Janet Holmes (linguist)|Holmes Janet]] (eds.) (2005). The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons; 2nd edition, 2014.
  • Jule, Allyson (2008). A Beginner's Guide to Language and Gender, Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
  • Corbett, Greville G. (ed.) (2014). The Expression of Gender. Walter de Gruyter.



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