Missing Links and Secret Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries from Across the Known Multiverse
Almost as long as there has been speculative fiction there have been speculative fiction anthologies. This seems to be a particularly fruitful time for them, fueled by electronic publishing and sites like Kickstarter which can bring together a niche idea and its audience. Accordingly, the anthologies are getting more and more specialized, with recent examples like Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's Queen Victoria's Book of Spells and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. In this vein is a particularly esoteric anthology of speculative fiction, filled with imaginary Wikipedia entries from, as the introduction puts it, "the many Wikipedias across the Multiverse."
Review
The cover, which appears muddled and garish in .jpg form, is striking in hard-copy: pastel green and blue framing a distorted Unisphere, which of course resembles the Wikipedia logo. The book is edited by L. Timmel Duchamp, which at first I thought was an amusing pseudonym befitting a postmodern project like this one, but who is actually a real person, a veteran speculative fiction author and founder of the feminist science fiction publisher Aqueduct Press. Thankfully we have Wikipedia to clear up such matters.
The fictional encyclopedia is hardly foreign to speculative fiction. Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction series Foundation is punctuated with excerpts from entries from the future Encyclopedia Galactica. The device became so famous that Douglas Adams could easily parody it with his spacefarer's travel guide The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Wikipedia itself has also been creeping into fiction, such as the recent example of Matt Ruff's 2012 novel The Mirage, which features excerpts of entries from an alternate universe Wikipedia called the Library of Alexandria. Using Wikipedia entries themselves as the actual story is a new innovation, however. It's one of those delightful ideas that seems obvious in hindsight but inspires jealousy in those who didn't think of it first.
Using Wikipedia entries as a storytelling device is an idea full of possibilities and challenges. The dry, neutral tone of Wikipedia, often the butt of jokes and complaints, presents enormous difficulties to a writer, who must find a way to use that often emotionless tone to carry the emotional weight of the story. Most of the writers in the anthology are comfortable with the basic format of Wikipedia articles, and most of the stories feature well-placed and appropriately used tables of contents, citations both real and fictional, citation needed tags, and article warning banners. Some of them, however, mangle the format in ways that would make a veteran editor wince. Many of them have introductions that don't ring true as Wikipedia article introductions, with one article beginning by stating the subject of the article "is a figure of paradox" or another whose introduction refers to the subject only by her first name and omits her last. Others falter when they try to use citations and tags in unusual ways. One story ends with the sentence "Citation removed by unknown source", which instead of creating menace or mystery, seems laughable to those familiar with the workings of Wikipedia.
Both of these aspects of dealing with the Wikipedia form are well illustrated by the anthology's first story, "Mystery of the Missing Mothers" by Kristin King. At the heart of the story is an extraordinarily intriguing idea connecting the paucity of maternal figures in modern corporate fiction to Sumerian mythology, one that seems well suited to the format of an encyclopedia article. King is the only author to construct her tale as a series of articles instead of a single article to simulate the experience of a reader following links to each one in succession, a clever approach which allows her story more flexibility and a broader range. Aside from a few minor things, the articles are largely convincing as Wikipedia articles and real and fictional citations mingle comfortably. But her story, like a number of others in the anthology, is overly reliant on lengthy excerpts from fictional texts that would not appear in a real Wikipedia article to carry the story forward in ways the encyclopedic tone of Wikipedia cannot. And that tone fails in other ways, making menacing elements seem ridiculous or the intentionally black comic seem slapstick.
The majority of the stories in the anthology are metafictional texts which operate in the framework of another fictional text, the kind of story made famous by novels like Wide Sargasso Sea, Grendel, and The Wind Done Gone. Editing the original story like it was a Wikipedia entry, they reimagine the story from the point of view of a secondary character like those three novels do or reinterpret the story through an entirely different frame of reference. Here we have a resistance movement to the fascist government of Flatland, Tolkien's Galadriel in a future world of cyborgs and artificial intelligences, "Bunnypedia" documenting the life of notorious reprobate and Planned Rabbithood founder Peter Rabbit, and a mash-up of Heart of Darkness and The Island of Doctor Moreau. Mark Rich's stories initially read like graduate term papers about Edgar Rice Burroughs' Dejah Thoris and Rudyard Kipling's The Light that Failed, but he quickly weaves fantastic reinterpretations of these ideas. There are so many of these metatexts that they are accompanied by a story that functions as a sort of parody of this mini-genre, Jeremy Sim's amusing "Thaddeus P. Reeder", which posits that the "Dear Reader" addressed by so many Victorian novelists was actually a real person who grew up with the Brontë sisters. Nick Tramdack's "The Gimmerton Theory", which has Heathcliff, during his absence from Wuthering Heights, on the Continent mingling with characters from the works of the Marquis de Sade, is among the best of these, though overly reliant on a lengthy but well-written text excerpt. And perhaps the best story in the entire volume is Alisa Alering's "Madeline Usher Usher", which casts the narrator of " The Fall of the House of Usher" as a lovestruck stalker preying on Poe's wraith-like character, reimagined as both a victim and a creative force in her own right.
Fantasy is another popular genre in this anthology. One of the biggest highlights of this book is Mari Ness' trio of amusing tales set in a world where Wikipedia matter of factly documents the doings of fairies and other fantastical creatures. She also proves the most hilarious fictional citation in the book: I Cannot Take Any More of These Dying Birds and Mournful Songs: The Collected Correspondence of Marguerite-Amelie d'Seductrice-Levres, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Catherine Krahe's "The Blacksmith" is remarkable in that it manages to wring a mysterious and haunting tone out of Wikipedia's normal emotionless prose. Nisi Shawl's "The Five Petals of Thought" is the most successful of these as a Wikipedia article, as it takes the perspective of an objective observer trying to interpret the history of a mysterious religious movement which might be something else entirely, with the book's most well-placed citation needed tags on a statements that might be vandalism or might hint at the more fantastical nature of this enigmatic group.
Disappointingly, few of the stories are overtly science fiction. Perhaps for these authors the nature of the anthology seemed more appropriate to rewriting the past than the original research of writing the future. Duchamp's own story "Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett" is the seemingly straightforward biography of a 25th-century author most famous for the 2407 "alien visitation fable" New Amazonia. Its closest analogy may be not from the world of science fiction, but the nonfiction work A View From the Year 3000 by Michael H. Hart, which places biographical articles about fictional people representing posited future trends alongside the biographies of the likes of Washington and Einstein. But the story is more complex than it appears, as Duchamp's Aqueduct Press is also republishing an 1889 utopian science fiction novel called New Amazonia by a 19th-century Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett. Corbett is an author so obscure I initially thought that New Amazonia and Corbett's Wikipedia article was part of an elaborate hoax, a postmodern art project that stretched beyond the bounds of this anthology. But what Duchamp has done was to, instead of reinterpreting a fictional text, reinterpret a real person's life in fictional terms, using the future setting to examine contemporary issues, just as Corbett and other utopian novelists did. Corbett's fictional biography, especially her conflicts with the Standards & Values Party, illustrates that future citizens will wrestle with many of the same issues that we do today, but also reminds us that progress has been made, as the real Corbett was a journalist who wrote under the name "Mrs. George Corbett" while the future Corbett wrote under her own name and was a Privy Councilor and Eve Fawcett Chair in Ethical Studies at New Cambridge College.
Jeremy Sim's "Sanyo TM-300 Home-Use Time Machine" is another of the few overtly science fiction stories in the anthology, and it is also one of the few stories to manipulate the format of Wikipedia itself to serve the story. It is a classic cautionary tale of technology gone awry and Sim's article changes in real time as the story progresses and the article is "vandalized". It is only marred by the insertion of lines like "edited by amorris, 09:59 5 September 2010", which wouldn't appear in any Wikipedia article and the story is effective enough that these crutches are unnecessary. Duchamp concludes the volume with two other stories that also dramatically subvert the encyclopedic format: Anna Tambour's "God", a satirical "biography" of a deity as juvenile delinquent, and Lucy Sussex's "La Cucaracha Rules", which begins with a flurry of warning banners and becomes a bizarre romp that quickly dispenses with the idea that it is any sort of encyclopedia entry.
Conclusion
Missing Links and Secret Histories is a fascinating experiment. While a number of the stories fail at what they set out to do, even in the worst cases the attempts are interesting to watch. The territory it explores leaves much terrain unmapped; science fiction and alternate history (Alex Dally MacFarlane's excellent "Gerayis (or Gedayis)" is the only story here that might be labeled alternate history under an expansive definition of the term.) are particularly promising genres for this format. I hope it is only the first anthology of its kind and not the last.
- L. Timmel Duchamp, Missing Links and Secret Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries from Across the Known Multiverse (Aqueduct Press, 2013). $18.00 (trade paperback)/$7.95 (ebook).
Reader comments
Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom
Philippe Beaudette's July 2013 application of pending changes level two (PC2) on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under his job as the Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy and its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
In this case, pending changes were applied after a DMCA takedown notice was issued to the Foundation. The notice forced the WMF to remove links to PCI's Local Bus Specifications revisions 2.1, 2.2, and 3.0, according to its official policy governing takedown notices:
| “ | In some cases, the Foundation may be required to remove content from a Wikimedia Project due to a DMCA take-down notice. ... to retain safe harbor status, the Foundation is required to comply with validly formulated notices even if they are spurious. ... As a matter of policy, the Wikimedia Foundation will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of repeat infringers as provided under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 512). … In the event that material is removed due to a DMCA notice, the only recourse for restoring such material is to file a counter-notice with the Foundation. ... Please note that filing a counter-notice may lead to legal proceedings between you and the complaining party to determine ownership of the material. | ” |
English Wikipedia administrator Kww objected to the nature of the protection, since an extensive discussion determined that PC2—which requires review before edits from autoconfirmed and anonymous editors—" should not be used" on the English Wikipedia. While Kww will typically downgrade PC2-protected articles to PC1 or semi-protection, in this case he increased the level of protection (to "fully protected"—only admins can edit) to avoid PC2 from being active on an English Wikipedia article. Doing so put him into conflict with the Foundation for the second time in recent memory; in September, Kww implemented what the Foundation called "badly flawed" code blocking the VisualEditor.
In response, Beaudette wrote Kww that he "just spoke to the legal team about your actions and asked them what to do. ... We select the level of action very specifically and with a great deal of care. If you have a problem with it, you're invited to contact us prior to taking action. That's the minimum standard expected of any admin when overriding an action, much less an office action." Beaudette advised that "On any other wiki, I'd be removing your tools right now. However, on this wiki, because there is a functional Arbitration Committee, I'm going to, instead, refer this to them for them to determine what sanction to take."
As of publishing time, the Committee is voting 6–1 to admonish Kww for "for knowingly modifying a clearly designated Wikimedia Foundation Office action." The motion continues that Kww did so without "any emergency and without any form of consultation", and declines his request for a full case, as it would involve a review of an inviolable office action.
In brief
- English Wikipedia:
- Two RfBs at once: Unusually, there are two current requests for bureaucratship (RFBs). Bureaucrats, known colloquially as "crats", can appoint admins and crats based on community decisions, remove admin rights in certain circumstances, change usernames for most users, and grant and remove bot status. The RFBs are for Worm That Turned, to close 27 January, and Acalamari, to close 31 January.
- Military historian of the year: The Bugle reports that the Military history WikiProject has awarded its prestigious " Military historian of the year" award to AustralianRupert. The award "recognizes the editors who have contributed most to the field of military history on Wikipedia over the course of a given year", as voted on by members of the project. The related "Military newcomer of the year" was given to Khanate General.
- Affcom appoints new members: The Wikimedia Foundation's Affiliations Committee, more commonly known as "Affcom", has resolved to add two new people to its membership, and to reappoint two others. Lodewijk Gelauff and Galileo Vidoni, along with new members, Cynthia Ashley-Nelson and Kirill Lokshin, will serve until 2016. Affcom is the Foundation's primary vehicle for selecting new Wikimedia affiliates.
- Chinese Wikivoyage: The Chinese Wikivoyage was created and opened for editing on 14–15 January.
- Education newsletter published: The Wikipedia Education Program has published its newest newsletter. While its page on Outreach appears to be out-of-date—for example, it makes no reference to the much criticized Wiki Education Foundation, a legally separate organization that now runs the US and Canada aspects of the initiative—the program appears to be partnering with professors in four countries (Brazil, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan) and boasts of much more extensive efforts in others.
- Foundation evaluates institutional content donations: The Wikimedia Foundation has published its latest program evaluation on the impact of content donations from GLAMs—galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. It concluded, in part, that the average implementation time is three months, and large portions of the uploaded content remain unused on Wikimedia projects. Comments on the talk page have criticized the practice of mass image uploads from these sources.
- Picture of the Year competition begins: The first of two rounds in the Wikimedia Commons 2013 Picture of the Year competition has opened for voting. Editors with more than 75 edits to Commons before 1 January this year are eligible to vote for as many images as they wish in this round.
- Visiting Scholar, Wikipedia Affiliate: The US'
George Mason University is seeking a
Wikipedia visiting scholar. The position,
detailed on-wiki, will involve an individual with limited access to scholarly resources, at least a year's editing history, and experience writing Wikipedia articles on historical topics. They will be granted free access to George Mason's online libraries "to help improve Wikipedia’s reliability and accuracy by providing Wikipedia editors with access to the best scholarly information resources while providing a model for other universities to do likewise."
Reader comments
Dr. Watson, I presume
Featured articles
Fifteen featured articles were promoted in the last two weeks.
- Frank Headlam nominated by Ian Rose. "Air Vice-Marshal Frank Headlam CB, CBE (15 July 1914 – 23 December 1976) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)."
- Air Rhodesia Flight 825 nominated by Cliftonian. "Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight that was shot down by Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) insurgents on 3 September 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War."
- Jimi Hendrix nominated by GabeMc. "James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. Despite a relatively brief mainstream career spanning four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century."
- Crocodilia nominated by LittleJerry, Chiswick Chap and Cwmhiraeth. "The Crocodilia (or Crocodylia) are an order of large, predatory, semi-aquatic reptiles. They appeared 83.5 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period (Campanian stage) and are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria."
- Tiruchirappalli nominated by Vensatry. "Tiruchirappalli... also called Tiruchi or Trichy, is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Tiruchirappalli District. It is the fourth largest municipal corporation and the fourth largest urban agglomeration in the state."
- William Hayden English nominated by Coemgenus. "William Hayden English (August 27, 1822 – February 7, 1896) was an American congressman from Indiana and the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1880."
- Interstate 805 nominated by Rschen7754. "Interstate 805 (I-805) is a major north–south Interstate Highway in Southern California. It is a bypass of I-5, running along the eastern areas of the Greater San Diego region from San Ysidro (part of the city of San Diego) near the Mexico–U.S. border to near Del Mar. The southern terminus of I-805 at I-5 in San Ysidro is less than a mile north of the Mexican border."
- Interstate 70 in West Virginia nominated by Admrboltz. "Interstate 70 (I-70) is a portion of the Interstate Highway System that runs from near Cove Fort, Utah at a junction with Interstate 15 to Baltimore, Maryland. It crosses the Northern Panhandle region of West Virginia through Ohio County and the city of Wheeling."
- Hugh Walpole nominated by Tim riley. "Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) was a New Zealand–born English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting, vivid plots, and high profile as a lecturer brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America."
- Roekiah nominated by Crisco 1492. "Roekiah (Perfected Spelling Rukiah; [ruˈkiah]; 1917–1945), often credited as Miss Roekiah, was an Indonesian keroncong singer and film actress. The daughter of two stage performers, she began her career at the age of seven; by 1932 she had become well-known in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), as a singer and stage actress."
- Perseus (constellation) nominated by StringTheory11. "Perseus, named after the Greek mythological hero Perseus, is a constellation in the northern sky. It was one of 48 listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy and among the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It is located in the northern celestial hemisphere near several other constellations named after legends surrounding Perseus, including Andromeda to the west and Cassiopeia to the north."
- Charlie Chaplin nominated by Loeba and TrueHeartSusie3. "Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was a British comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the silent era. Chaplin became a worldwide icon through his screen persona "the Tramp" and is considered one of the most important figures of the film industry. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death at age 88, and encompassed both adulation and controversy."
- James Hogun nominated by Cdtew. "James Hogun (died January 4, 1781) was one of five generals from North Carolina to serve with the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. Initially a major in the 7th North Carolina Regiment, Hogun advanced quickly in rank during 1776 to become the unit's commanding officer. He participated in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown in 1777."
- Jin campaigns against the Song Dynasty nominated by Khanate General. "The Jin campaigns against the Song Dynasty were a series of wars that took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries between the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115–1234) and the Chinese Song Dynasty (960–1279)."
- Hydrus nominated by Casliber. "Hydrus ... is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was first depicted on a celestial atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria."
Featured lists
Nine featured lists were promoted in the last two weeks.
- List of light cruisers of Germany nominated by Parsecboy. "The German navies—specifically the Kaiserliche Marine, Reichsmarine, and Kriegsmarine—built a series of light cruisers between the 1890s and 1940s. The authorization for a major construction program for light cruisers came in the 1898 Naval Law, which ordered the acquisition of thirty vessels of the type."
- List of municipalities in Alberta nominated by Hwy43. "Alberta is the fourth-most populous province in Canada with 3,645,257 residents as of 2011 and is the fourth-largest in land area at approximately 640,000 km2 (250,000 sq mi). Alberta's 357 municipalities cover 98.9% of the province's land mass and are home to 98.6% of its population. These municipalities provide local government services, including roads, water, sewer and garbage collection among others, and a variety of programs to their residents."
- List of Pune Warriors India cricketers nominated by Vibhijain. "Pune Warriors India (PWI) was a Pune-based franchise cricket team that participated in the Indian Premier League (IPL)."
- List of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast members nominated by Miyagawa. "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is an American science fiction television series that debuted in broadcast syndication on January 3, 1993. The series ran for seven seasons until 1999."
- 40th Daytime Emmy Awards nominated by SoapFan12. "The 40th Daytime Emmy Awards, presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) and Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), 'recognizes outstanding achievement in all fields of daytime television production and are presented to individuals and programs broadcast from 2:00 a.m.—6:00 p.m. during the 2012 calendar year.'"
- List of works by E.W. Hornung nominated by SchroCat. "Ernest William Hornung (professionally known as E.W. Hornung; 1866–1921), was an English poet and writer. From a Hungarian background, Hornung was educated at Uppingham School; as a result of poor health he left the school in December 1883 to travel to Sydney, where he stayed for two years. He returned in early 1886 when his father was dying and bankrupt, and began writing professionally shortly afterwards."
- List of Adventure Time episodes nominated by Gen. Quon. "Adventure Time is an American animated television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network. The series follows the adventures of Finn (voiced by Jeremy Shada), a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (voiced by John DiMaggio), a dog with magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo. Along the way, they interact with the show's other main characters: Princess Bubblegum (voiced by Hynden Walch), the Ice King (voiced by Tom Kenny), and Marceline the Vampire Queen (voiced by Olivia Olson)."
- List of Sega CD games nominated by Red Phoenix. "The Sega CD, originally released as the Mega-CD (メガCD Mega-Shī Dī?) in most regions outside of North America, is an add-on device for the Sega Genesis video game console, designed and produced by Sega. It was released in Japan in 1991, North America in 1992 and in PAL regions in 1993. The device adds a CD-ROM drive to the console, allowing the user to play CD-based games and providing additional hardware functionality. It can also play audio CDs and CD+G discs."
- 66th Academy Awards nominated by Birdienest81. "The 66th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 1993 and took place on March 21, 1994, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 23 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates and directed by Jeff Margolis. Actress Whoopi Goldberg hosted the show for the first time."
Featured pictures
-Aerial-Temple_Mount-(south_exposure).jpg)
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Twenty featured pictures were promoted in the last two weeks.
- Dome of the Chain ( nom) created by Godot13 and nominated by Godot13. "Dome of the Chain (Arabic: قبة السلسلة, Qubbat al-Silsila) is a free-standing dome located adjacently east of the Dome of the Rock in the Old City of Jerusalem. One of the oldest structures on the Haram ash-Sharif (Temple Mount), it is not a mosque or shrine, but is used as a prayer house. It was built by the Ummayads, became a Christian chapel under the Crusaders, restored as an Islamic prayer house by the Ayyubids and has been renovated by the Mamluks, Ottomans and the Palestinian-based waqf."
- Aerial view of the Temple Mount ( nom) created by Godot13 and nominated by Godot13. "The Temple Mount, known in Hebrew (and in Judaism) as Har haBáyit (Hebrew: הַר הַבַּיִת) and in Arabic (and in Islam) as the Haram al-Sharif (Arabic: الحرم القدسي الشريف, al-haram al-qudsī ash-sharīf, Noble Sanctuary), is one of the most important religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It has been used as a religious site for thousands of years. At least four religions are known to have used the Temple Mount: Judaism, Christianity, Roman religion, and Islam."
- Groundscraper Thrush ( nom) created by Yathin sk and nominated by Tomer T. "The Groundscraper Thrush (Psophocichla litsitsirupa) is a passerine bird of southern and eastern Africa belonging to the thrush family Turdidae. It is the only member of the genus Psophocichla."
- Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa ( nom) created by Alvesgaspar and nominated by Alvesgaspar. "The Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa (Portuguese: Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa) is a palace located in the civil parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in the municipality of Vila Viçosa, in the Portuguese Alentejo. It was, for centuries, the seat of House of Braganza, one of the most important noble houses in Portugal: it became the ruling house of the Kingdom of Portugal after 1640, until King Manuel II, titular head of the family, was deposed in the 5 October 1910 Revolution that brought a Republican government."
- Firing an RPG-7 ( nom) created by Staff Sgt. Ezekiel Kitandwe, USMC and nominated by Brandmeister. "The RPG-7 (Russian: РПГ-7) is a Soviet portable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher."
- Bathyacmaea secunda ( nom) created by KDS444 and nominated by KDS4444. "Bathyacmaea secunda is a species of very small (adults are typically about 6mm in length), deep-sea limpet, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Pectinodontidae. This species inhabits the dark, chemosynthesis-based marine communities of ocean vents and cold seeps near Japan (e.g. the Okinawa Trough)."
- James Watson ( nom) created by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (edit by Jan Arkesteijn) and nominated by Tomer T. "James Dewey Watson, KBE, ForMemRS (born April 6, 1928), is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known as a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 'for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.'"
- Odiham Castle ( nom) created by BabelStone and nominated by Tractor Tyres. "Odiham Castle (also known locally as King John's Castle) is a ruined castle situated near Odiham in Hampshire, United Kingdom. It is one of only three fortresses built by King John during his reign."
- Cordwainer ( nom) created by Jorgeroyan and nominated by Tomer T. "A cordwainer is a shoemaker who makes fine soft leather shoes and other luxury footwear articles. The word is derived from "cordwain", or "cordovan", the leather produced in Córdoba, Spain."
- National Press Monument 2 ( nom) created by Crisco 1492 and nominated by Crisco 1492. "The National Press Monument (Indonesian: Monumen Pers Nasional) is a monument and museum to the national Indonesian press. Formally established in 1978, more than 20 years after it was first proposed, the monument is located in Surakarta, Central Java, and operated by the Ministry of Communications and Information."
- Babirusa skull ( nom) created by Archaeodontosaurus and nominated by Elekhh. "The babirusas (from Indonesian bābī rūsa, lit. "deer-hog") are a genus, Babyrousa, in the pig family (Suidae) found in Wallacea, or specifically the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi, Togian, Sula and Buru."
- Sambisari 3 ( nom) created by Crisco 1492 and nominated by Crisco 1492. "Sambisari is a 9th-century Hindu temple located at Sambisari hamlet, Purwomartani village, Kalasan, Sleman regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The temple was buried about five metres underground. Parts of the original temple have been excavated. The temple is located about 8 km east of Yogyakarta near Adisucipto International Airport."
- Namaqua chameleon ( nom) created by Yathin sk and nominated by J Milburn. "The Namaqua chameleon (Chamaeleo namaquensis) is a ground living lizard found in the western desert regions of Namibia, South Africa and southern Angola."
- Paisley Abbey from the south east ( nom) created by Colin and nominated by Colin. "Paisley Abbey is a former Cluniac monastery, and current Church of Scotland parish kirk, located on the east bank of the White Cart Water in the centre of the town of Paisley, Renfrewshire, in west central Scotland."
- St Matthew's Church – Paisley – Interior – 5 ( nom) created by Colin and nominated by Colin. "St Matthew's Church in Paisley is notable for its Art Nouveau architecture by WD McLennan, and stained glass window by Robert Anning Bell."
- Michael Collins ( nom) created by Hogan, W. D and nominated by Tomer T. "Michael Collins (Irish: Mícheál Ó Coileáin; 16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance and Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army. Collins was shot and killed in an ambush in August 1922 during the Irish Civil War."
- Liberation of Paris celebration ( nom) created by Jack Downey, U.S. Office of War Information and nominated by Yerevantsi. "The Liberation of Paris (also known as the Battle for Paris) took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on 25 August. The Liberation of Paris started with an uprising by the French Resistance against the German garrison. On 24 August, the French Forces of the Interior (Forces françaises de l'intérieur, FFI) received reinforcements from the Free French Army of Liberation and from the U.S. Third Army under General Patton."
- Six Flags New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina ( nom) created by Bob McMillan/FEMA Photo and nominated by Crisco 1492. "Six Flags New Orleans, also abbreviated to SFNO, is an abandoned theme park in New Orleans, Louisiana that has been closed since just before Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005 and is currently owned by the city of New Orleans. Six Flags had previously owned the park since March 2002, but after assessing the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the related exorbitant expenses of repairing the damage, sought to terminate their 75-year lease with the city, beginning in July 2006 and finally succeeding in September 2009."
- Guildhall, City of London ( nom) created by Diliff and nominated by Diliff. "Guildhall is a building in the City of London, off Gresham and Basinghall streets, in the wards of Bassishaw and Cheap. It has been used as a town hall for several hundred years, and is still the ceremonial and administrative centre of the City of London and its Corporation. The term Guildhall refers both to the whole building and to its main room, which is a medieval great hall. Guildhall complex houses the offices of the City of London Corporation and various public facilities."
- U.S. Treasury (Coin) Notes – complete type set ( nom) created by The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, from the National Numismatic Collection, NMAH, Smithsonian Institution and nominated by Godot13. "The Coin Note (officially Treasury Note) was a type of representative money issued by the United States government from 1890 until 1893 under authority of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100 and $1000. It was issued in two series: an 1890 series with $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $100 and $1000 denominations, and an 1891 series that added the $50 denomination."
Featured topics
One featured topic was promoted in the last two weeks.
- Interstate 96 nominated by Imzadi1979. "Interstate 96 (I-96) is an Interstate Highway that runs for approximately 192 miles (309 km) entirely within the US state of Michigan. The western terminus is at an interchange with US Highway 31 (US 31) and Business US 31 (BUS US 31) on the western boundary of Norton Shores southeast of Muskegon, and the eastern terminus is at I-75 near the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit."
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The few who write Wikipedia
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On 15 January, the English Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power law among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.
Some observations
Every Wednesday, various charts are updated that show trends in editing. These include lists on the top editors, top article creators, and overall bot edit counts, as well as what editors have made the most edits in the last thirty days, which is updated less than the others. Over the past few years, there have been periodic attempts at deciphering this information to figure out what it all means, although as far as I know, no one in the Wikimedia Foundation has published reports using this information. When I came across these lists in 2011 and decided to put these trends on a chart and see what it all meant, unsurprisingly, some interesting trends came up. Fast forward to two weeks ago, when I decided to update the charts for the first time since November of 2012, and I had no idea what I would discover.
One of the more interesting trends that I found during the many hours that I built the charts was how many edits a rather select few Wikipedians have when compared to the rest of the site's users. In terms of overall numbers, 45% of the edits on Wikipedia have been done by a combined ten thousand editors and the 850+ bots on the site. When charted onto a line graph, there is a distinct power law that rises sharply for both bots and editors. Interestingly, the top bot ( Cydebot) has more than three times the top edits than Koavf, the editor with the highest edit count on the site. These high number of edits have helped to push the bots into a significant percentage of the overall edits on the site, totaling 12%. As of the publication of this article, there are 20,590,000+ users on the site, meaning that .052% of Wikipedian users (bots included) have a vast majority of the edits.
Even more surprising was the numbers on article creators. Most Wikipedians who are active on the site have written an article or two, some being as simple as a stub, or some that have been expanded to a Featured Article. Other times, users focus on expanding existing articles, due to knowledge on a specific subject area. Other users, myself included, have created hundreds or tens of thousands of articles. To find the time to even create an article thoroughly takes time and dedication, and it is likely that many of these articles were created as stubs. This is shown in the fact that the top 3,000 editors have written 55% of the articles on the entire site. Adding in the next 2,000 editors shows that they have only written 5% of the articles, but it shows that 60% of the articles on this site have been written by 5,000 users, which equates to .026% of the site's overall users. Of note are the numerous IP addresses that show up on these page creation lists, as before 2005 users were allowed to anonymously submit articles (a feature which was removed because of the Seigenthaler incident). On the list, the IP address 67.173.107.96 has 983 live article creations, a number which places it at 459th on the list.
What does this all mean?
One question that should be asked about the fact that so few editors are writing so many articles is why this is occurring. Wikipedia can often be harsh to new users, as the amount of rules both written and unwritten can scare off even the most dedicated of writers. Those who stay seem to be ones who want to contribute and write more for the site, but the data seems to show that these are an incredibly select few individuals when compared to the over twenty million usernames that have been registered over the years. Furthermore, with declining editor counts, this number is only going to become more of an issue over the years as the Wikipedians who are left will probably start expanding into more niche topics, ones that are not easily researchable to the average person with stable internet access.
One other question that this brings up are what are the costs of having so few editors who write so many articles. In theory, having fewer users write more articles brings standardization to the site, as there are fewer differences in prose and article quality. In reality though, having so few users means that there is going to be an implicit bias in what is written, to degrees which have already been shown through the work of the Wikimedia Foundation. With the already low numbers of females on the site, this means that there will be more coverage of male-oriented topics. If an article is not covered immediately, there is a good chance that it will be created in the coming years. Unfortunately, this means that whatever female-oriented topics are out there will probably get further neglected, as there is less of a chance that someone will even know that the subject exists, never mind it being notable enough for an article (when in doubt, go for it). The amount of these super page creators only exacerbates the problem, as it means that the users who are mass-creating pages are probably not doing neglected topics, and this tilts our coverage disproportionately towards male-oriented topics.
Finally, the last question that is brought up is why are the majority of editors only responsible for 60% of the articles. Most users are aware of the Article wizard, while fewer know about Articles for creation (side note, if you can, please volunteer there, as they have been flooded in the past couple of years by new articles and are in need of knowledgeable Wikipedians for reviews). Oftentimes, articles that are created in either of these two venues that are created by inexperienced users are deleted or shot down before the users have any idea what is going on. This can be a discouraging issue and dissuades users from helping out. Other times, they will come seeking help, but will get discouraged when the topic that they have been working on is deemed unnotable. Most likely, many more Wikipedians out there have attempted to create an article, but because it is deleted, the data skews slightly more in favor of pushing the number of edits towards experienced Wikipedians, who then go on to hold a slightly more majority of article creations as well.
What can we do to fix this?
The Teahouse has been a successful model of helping new editors along in the process. Through providing guidance to new editors, they have found great success in their endeavors. Additionally, mentoring editors and guiding them towards working on articles that they might not have originally thought of working on can also be a good way to direct their enthusiasm into something positive. Through the channeling of talent and encouraging and redirecting editors onto viable paths, it is possible to ensure that a greater amount of knowledge will be present on the site in the coming years. Finally, the Wikipedia Education Program and Wiki Education Foundation have also attempted to make inroads in the classroom, by encouraging students to become more involved with the community through their school work.
The final part of this is whether or not these attempts will work. A community that is dedicated to fixing and addressing the issues that exist on the site is a community that will succeed. In the past, many ideas at reform have been met with resistance from the community, often with mixed results. Other times, approaches to fix these issues run counter to what others want to do in the community, so some editors end up unintentionally (or intentionally, for that matter) sabotaging the intentions of reform-minded users, although this can also be expected in a large community where people have differing views.
In the end, it is up to us as a community to ensure that the site continues for another thirteen successful years, as we are part of one of the greatest social, intellectual, and academic experiments on the internet. Our success in the coming years will be based on how we choose to address these issues, so it is imperative that we attempt to correct these issues while there are still people interested in editing the site, in order to continue to strive to be the most important encyclopedia in the world.
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Architecting the future of MediaWiki
This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.
What do you hope to get out of the Architecture Summit?
- I hope to get a better sense of community involvement in moving things forward in the MediaWiki world. We've done a lot of ad-hoc discussions in small groups but we don't have a good "big picture"—I'm hoping this and future Arch Summits can help us get that: get people involved in the core, make sure multiple voices are heard, and get us to really rally around potentially big changes that are going to take a lot of work to do.
Are there any requests for comment or topics you're especially looking forward to discussing and implementing?
- Service-oriented architecture interests me greatly—we're breaking more and more pieces out into services like search engine, parsing, image scaling; and with experiments like mobile apps we're even changing out the front end in some areas. Potentially, more pieces that fit together and can be maintained separately could be a big change in how we work.
What do you view your role as an architect as?
- It's a vague and mysterious term which no one understands. :) But seriously, as a longtime contributor with lots of fingers in the pudding, as one might say, I can provide historical perspective and, hopefully, can help say "that's a good idea" and "that's a bad idea"!
Recently, there have been discussions about Wikimedia's needs versus the needs of other MediaWiki users in terms of software development, and now the MediaWiki release process has been contracted out to a third-party. Do these differences affect your decisions as an architect?
- It's definitely interesting—when software that used to be done by a tiny group gets used more and more, it takes on a life of its own. I think that's a great thing, and having more input from third-party users is only going to help us make a stronger more flexible product.
You've said that a push is being made for a MediaWiki 2.0. Code aside, what do you think some of the biggest difficulties will be in working towards that goal?
- We're going to have to have some large projects that take time and are controversial with users—look at the VisualEditor project with its associated Parsoid backend for a living example, and the discussions currently going on around video (especially MP4) and discussion systems ( Flow etc). These are going to be Hard because we have to "sell" them to a user community which consistent of multiple constituencies, some of which are loud and make themselves heard and some of which are silent. Of course other things like improving the search engine are almost invisible, but just as much work on the backend!
- I think we're going to reach 2.0 piece by piece, by reforming and refactoring and adding new abilities, and perhaps trimming off some of the old.
Many Wikimedia communities felt that the Foundation was not receptive enough to feedback during the VisualEditor deployment. As a longtime community member and MediaWiki developer, what is your take on the situation?
- We're definitely still learning how to handle these situations... Visual Editor is one of our "moonshot" projects that's very important, and the trade-off between making it available for real testing and keeping it out of the way of people who have established workflows—or don't want to deal with the intermediate bugs—is ... a learning experience.
It's been a little over a year since your last interview with the Signpost. Anything interesting and exciting that you've worked on since then that you'd like to share?
- I've done a lot of work on mobile apps which excites me; we can do more system integration than we can do with a plain web site—but that might change in the future! The web gains a lot of abilities over time, and I'll be excited to see the day when we really can ignore "native apps" on any platform.
- It's also just a good litmus test for reusing and re-presenting content—and for figuring out how to integrate a community workflow into a separate tool. There've been editing helper tools for desktop for a long time but they've always been niche. The apps need to be able to represent the common reader *and* the power user, and it's an interesting set of tradeoffs.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks. Content incorporated from Tech News.
- Deployment freeze: With the combination of a US holiday on Monday and the Architecture Summit, there will be no major deployments this week. ( announcement)
- Special:ActiveUsers disabled: Due to performance issues, the special page has been disabled on all Wikimedia wikis. ( code change)
- No modules requested: The text users see when directly visiting load.php has been improved. Developers are still unsure who "Max" is. ( code change)
- The JavaScript that supports playing videos will now be loaded differently. If you notice videos that go directly to the file when clicked, please file a bug or report it to Bawolff. ( bug 55550)
- Engineering report published: The December 2013 report covering the Wikimedia Foundation's engineering activities has been published onwiki ( blog version), and in summary form.
- ULS disabled: Due to performance issues, the UniversalLanguageSelector extension was
temporarily disabled. Users can opt-in to it by enabling it in their
preferences. (
bug 56433)
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Wikipedia for robots; Wikipedia—a temperamental teenager
Wikipedia for robots
An article in USA Today announced a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense. The project is backed by five technical universities in Europe who recently met in the Netherlands.
| “ | But RoboEarth is more than an encyclopedia. It has a system of networked computers that allow it to perform intensive computing tasks that smaller computers—or in this case simpler robots—may not be able to. It also allows individual robots to communicate between themselves, the so-called RoboCloud of networked computers, and the robot database. | ” |
Wikipedia: a temperamental teenager
Several articles this week noted that Wikipedia is now 13 years old. One, from Mashable.com, opined that Wikipedia has "reshaped the knowledge industry". The article noted that one of Wikipedia's de facto competitors, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has made changes due to Wikipedia, including a 2005 report from Nature that asserted Wikipedia is almost as reliable as Britannica in terms of accuracy despite the encyclopedias' different methods of publication— crowdsourcing for Wikipedia, and top scholars with rigorous review processes for Britannica. Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), noted that, in the opinion of WMF, "In a nutshell, our biggest challenge in 2014, the 13th year of Wikipedia, is: How do we continue to grow that community of global editors?" He went on to say, "How do we sustain that growth, and how do we support the people who are editing Wikipedia today?" The article concluded by wondering what Wikipedia's future holds:
| “ | With more than 30 million articles in 285 languages, Wikipedia seems to be the awkward teenager, sometimes struggling to hide its growing pains. But as the site attempts to come of age, one can't help but wonder what it might turn into if it's around anywhere close to the nearly 250 years Britannica has endured. | ” |
In brief
- Jimmy Wales promotes … cell phones?: NBCNews.com reported that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is promoting a cell phone service called The People's Operator, which, according to its Wikipedia page, aims to be an "ethical" mobile network provider. Wales is a co-chair of the network.
- Wikipedia shows the value of a vibrant public domain: The Electronic Frontier Foundation asserted the value of a vibrant public domain in an article detailing the principles it feels should define and guide copyright policy.
- Richard Sherman is (not) human garbage: LegalInsurrection.com noted that after Seattle Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman made some controversial comments in the aftermath of his team winning a conference championship game to go to the Super Bowl, his Wikipedia article was vandalized to indicate that he is "human garbage", and to change a picture of him to one of a monkey. The vandalism was promptly removed, and the article semi-protected.
- Wiki-Validation for Judith Newman: Judith Newman wrote a follow-up to her New York Times article (discussed in last week's In the Media), describing the feelings she experienced while watching her article being created, nominated for deletion, and kept, along with observations on several Wikipedia editors.
- Fictitious children in Wikipedia: Hugh Dennis was asked by The Telegraph whether he really had two adopted children named Sidney Smith and Dominic Vincent, as stated in his Wikipedia biography. He replied, "Ha, ha, no, my son added that – and if you look at it tomorrow, he'll probably have changed their names again for a laugh." The false information was removed by User:Bilby a day after the Telegraph article appeared; it had been present for four months.
- Ukrainian Wikipedia goes dark: KyivPost reports that the Ukrainian Wikipedia is displaying a banner protesting new laws that make criticizing government officials a crime. Starting from January 21, the report said, the Ukrainian Wikipedia will also go offline for 30 minutes each day to protest the new legislation.
- Collaboration between Cancer Research UK and Wikimedia UK: Third Sector
reported that Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is looking for a Wikipedian in Residence to help ensure Wikipedia's information on cancer is correct and up to date. CRUK is believed to be the first organisation of its type to create a position for a Wikipedian in Residence. Jon Davies of Wikimedia UK said, "This new role would see Wikimedia UK and CRUK joining forces to build on Wikipedia's extensive information on cancer. The possibility of recruiting cancer scientists to help edit these important articles is very exciting."
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No show for the Globes
While the
71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the
top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner
Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway. The most prominent film on the list remains
The Wolf of Wall Street, which didn't even win in the Best Drama category. It will be interesting to see if this disinterest carries over to the
Oscars in March.
For the full top 25 of the week, including exclusions, see WP:TOP25.
For the week of 12–18 January, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages* were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Dian Fossey 
2,807,879 The controversial gorilla conservationist whose life was dramatised in Gorillas in the Mist got a Google Doodle on what would have been her 83rd birthday if she hadn't been murdered in mysterious circumstances in 1985. 2 Jordan Belfort 
799,325 Onetime stockbroker who spent 22 months in prison for running a penny stock boiler room, he went on to write the books that the film The Wolf of Wall Street is based on. 3 Sherlock (TV series) 
741,350 
The contemporary-set revamp of the Sherlock Holmes mythos has become a surprise global hit (and turned its star, Benedict Cumberbatch into an international sex symbol) and is now watched in 200 countries and territories (out of 254), so it's not surprising that its much ballyhooed return from a two-year hiatus was met with feverish anticipation. 4 Facebook
735,322 
A perennially popular article 5 The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)
669,530 Despite not winning a Golden Globe, Martin Scorsese's acclaimed account of one person's contribution to our general economic misery remains popular with the public; it opened to a respectable $34 million on Christmas Day, and has now made almost $125 million worldwide. 6 American Hustle (2013 film)
495,752 David O. Russell's Golden Globe-winning, star-studded caper is getting strong reviews and decent box office, having grossed $108 million domestic in its first 38 days. 7 Leonardo DiCaprio
465,193 
The superstar got a Golden Globe for his performance as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (see above). 8 Deaths in 2014 List 442,753 
The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article. 9 Sunanda Pushkar 
414,873 The curious case of a minister's wife, who was found dead by her husband, Shashi Tharoor, after having received texts suggesting he had been having an affair with a journalist, has excited the Indian press after the coroner ruled her death unnatural. 10 United States
410,618 
The 8th most popular article of 2013 and the 3rd most popular Wikipedia article between 2010 and 2012. Even when not on the list, this article is a perpetual bubble-under-er. Not really surprising that the country with by far the most English speakers would be the most popular on the English Wikipedia.
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