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4 February 2023

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2023-02-04

Films, deaths and ChatGPT

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By Igordebraga, Max BuddyRoo, and SSSB
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Max BuddyRoo, and SSSB.

Ooh, that's where my family's buried and gone (January 15 to 21)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 The Last of Us (TV series) 2,409,748 Ten years after Naughty Dog's acclaimed post-apocalyptic game series debuted on the PlayStation 3, HBO premiered a TV adaptation of Joel and Ellie trying to traverse the continental United States while facing off against the aggressive victims of a fungal infection.
2 The Last of Us 1,469,194
3 Lisa Marie Presley 1,440,847 45 and a half years ago, Elvis died. Now his only daughter with Priscilla Presley, who also went down the music path, is gone too, having suffered a cardiac arrest at the age of 54, leaving behind three daughters (the eldest of which is actress Riley Keough) and studio albums. Even if she once said "I'll shrink my head and put it in a glass box in the living room. I'll get more tourists to Graceland that way.", instead Lisa Marie still went to what she described in one of her songs as "the damn back lawn" of that house, where the Presley family grave is located.
4 ChatGPT 1,272,362 There was already a ruckus regarding artificial intelligence art, so a chatbot that makes very articulate and legible texts rather than word salad is also a big subject of discussion.
5 Avatar: The Way of Water 1,269,079 Avatar continues to be on this list for the 6th week in a row, as it becomes one of the highest grossing movies of all time. After all, it might be overlong, it might follow the first movie in being hailed as forgettable, but it is the sort of spectacle that warrants been seen in a theater.
6 David Crosby 1,183,945 #3 died two days after Jeff Beck, and six before this other acclaimed musician, best known as a member of both The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and who left behind a vast body of work of over six decades, including 8 solo albums.
7 Deaths in 2023 985,404 Let's go with a song featuring the above:
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep...
8 Priscilla Presley 879,568 #3's mother, who along with being the love of The King of Rock n' Roll's life will also have the biggest role of her actress career, in spite of extensive TV work, be as the love of Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun trilogy.
9 Varisu 858,862 This Indian film by Vamshi Paidipally came out last week and is already the highest grossing Indian movie of this year, although judging by the reviews it likely doesn't deserve to be.
10 R'Bonney Gabriel 802,721 The latest edition of Miss Universe was won by this Texan, widening the lead of the United States' women with nine titles – and adequately, runner-up Amanda Dudamel hails from the second biggest winner, Venezuela (7), where only the oil industry is stronger than the beauty pageant one.

I'm thinkin' of you, you're out there so, say your prayers (January 22 to 28)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Pathaan (film) 3,999,949 Shah Rukh Khan is a huge deal in India (He is India and India is him, they said). So it is only appropriate that his comeback film after five years is breaking Hindi film records in its opening weekend. Pathaan (the title character) must stop a private terrorist organisation from releasing a deadly man-made virus into India. As usual, I have pathetically failed in my attempt to sell this film to you via the plot. So I will settle by telling you that critics are impressed.
2 The Last of Us (TV series) 1,664,646 The HBO show based on #6 is receiving massive praise among both critics and audiences, earning a spot at #2.
3 ChatGPT 1,588,826 AI strikes again as this article appears for the 4th time in a row, as fears of the AI increase across the world, with people worrying it will replace jobs (with there being an even bigger AI on the way).
4 Republic Day (India) 1,456,310 Although India became independent in August 1947 (that's Independence Day), it wasn't until January 26, 1950, that the transition to independence was complete, when the Indian Constitution came into effect. The day is marked by parades and an awards ceremony, among other celebrations. The whole thing doesn't even end until November 29, when the Indian military performs a beating retreat.
5 Avatar: The Way of Water 1,123,418 Like its predecessor, the return of Jake Sully and the Na'vi has passed 2 billion dollars and earned a Best Picture nomination (which this writer thought was undeserved, as at least the first one had a compelling if derivative story compared to this overlong if impressive showcase of underwater visual effects).
6 The Last of Us 1,121,753 #2 was based off of it, so people probably went here trying to find the show, if not discover where the plot is going.
7 Death of Tyre Nichols 1,003,941 America's latest case of police brutality. This time, five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee beat Tyre Nichols to death. When it was George Floyd people screamed racism, but this time all the officers involved were all black themselves. So the main conclusion to be drawn (at least from my perspective): the US police force need to be reformed – and it needs to happen now.
8 Deaths in 2023 971,918 The way she held your hand
The little things you planned
Her memory is with you yet
That's someone you never forget
That's someone you never forget
9 Justin Roiland 841,536 The creator of Rick and Morty was fired following the reveal of a past arrest for abuse, but the show already announced they will replace him as the voice actor for title characters.
10 Brock Purdy 783,649 When Purdy was drafted as Mr. Irrelevant at the 2022 NFL Draft everyone thought that would be the last they heard of him – and for a long time that was true. But after the San Francisco 49ers lost their first two quarterbacks to injury, Purdy had to step up. And he hasn't done too badly, winning all of the 7 games he has started. He also plays in the NFC Championship Game in an attempt to make it to Super Bowl LVII on February 12, but fell short.


Most edited articles

For the December 30-January 30 period, per this this database report; shout out to ElijahPepe for some of the write-ups below.

Title Revisions Notes
2023 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election 3607 The 2023 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election began and concluded on the first week of January, with Kevin McCarthy defeating Hakeem Jeffries to become Speaker of the House. Although the outcome was expected, the means were not; a far-right coalition of House Republicans prevented McCarthy from advancing as Speaker. McCarthy was able to flip several votes to his favor on Friday, although was unsuccessful in convincing several Republicans. Following an overnight vote, McCarthy was elected Speaker in the early hours of January 7.
Deaths in 2023 2321 January already had some famous deaths, such as Ken Block, Gina Lollobrigida and the above mentioned Lisa Marie Presley, David Crosby and Jeff Beck. Thankfully Jeremy Renner and Damar Hamlin (see below) were only close calls.
Bigg Boss (Tamil season 6) 2203 The latest edition of one of the Indian Big Brother shows (there are versions in every language, similar to how the movie industry that always brings in highly viewed articles is split in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, etc.).
2023 Australian Open – Men's singles 1304 Novak Djokovic won his record tenth title of this Grand Slam over Stefanos Tsitsipas.
George Santos 1209 New York's 3rd congressional district's new representative, well - he hasn't actually been sworn in yet. Santos has admitted to lying about virtually every aspect of his life (apparently in a bid to get elected in the first place). Meanwhile, Brazil has re-opened an investigation into allegations of cheque fraud. And he is additionally under investigation by federal, state and county authorities - presumably for other crimes, but I can't really be bothered to read the article. Santos has also already promised not to stand for re-election, and according to one expert may even be prevented from sitting, triggering a special election. Surely taking the record for the earliest case of either - let alone both.
Royal Rumble (2023) 1054 The latest wrestling pay-per-view, held in San Antonio and featuring Cody Rhodes and Rhea Ripley winning the title match.
2022–23 NFL playoffs 957 Gridiron's knockout tournaments were held, and the teams going to Super Bowl LVII on the 12th will be the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.
2023 Australian Open – Women's singles 953 Russian and Belarusian tennis players have been playing for no flag ever since the the invasion of Ukraine. Wimbledon downright banned players from those countries, leading the 2022 edition to give no points to the WTA rankings. And in Australia it converged in a final between a Belarusian, Aryna Sabalenka, and a Russian who won Wimbledon because she plays for Kazakhstan, Elena Rybakina, with the former prevailing.
2023 World Men's Handball Championship 945 Poland and Sweden hosted this tournament, and Denmark successfully defended the 2021 title.
Avatar: The Way of Water 833 Took 13 years, but James Cameron finally returned to Pandora, in an overlong movie with a lot of water, a combination that just begs for a bathroom break (or to buy more drinks). Audiences showed their eagerness to return to that world by making the movie earn two billion dollars.
Damar Hamlin 717 This American football safety collapsed on January 2, after tackling wide receiver Tee Higgins in a Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Hamlin's collapse, caused by commotio cordis, ultimately led to the game being cancelled, for the first time in NFL history since 1935. Hamlin's collapse has, unfortunately, given COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theorists more ammunition.
Tornado outbreak of January 12, 2023 702 39 tornadoes hit the Southeastern United States, causing few deaths but widespread damage and power outages.
Wye College 699 Ed1964 is reforming the article on this defunct British university.
Death and funeral of Constantine II of Greece 682 The last King of Greece before the monarchy was abolished in 1973 died in January 10, at the age of 82.
Ronald Reagan 680 Entering the article on the 40th American President leads right away to a maintenance template regarding its neutrality, so a few editors are trying to fix that.
Pathaan (film) 652 A Bollywood thriller that is also breaking out internationally, finishing at third in its North American open weekend.
Death of Tyre Nichols 643 As noted above, the latest case of police brutality in the United States.
Yeti Airlines Flight 691 641 On 15 January 2023, this plane crashed while landing at Pokhara, killing the 72 occupants on board, becoming the deadliest accident with an ATR 72.
List of equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine 598 The resistance to Putin will receive tanks from both the United States (M1 Abrams) and Germany (Leopard 2). We hope it's not a precedent for something worse.
2023 Tripura Legislative Assembly election 591 It will only be held on February 16, but plenty has already happened for this Indian election.
Varisu 589 January might be one of the dump months of North American cinema, but not India. From Kollywood, Vijay's 66th film as a lead actor had a huge opening that already earned half its budget back.
2023 ICC Under-19 Women's T20 World Cup 588 The first edition for this tournament (whose adult, male version has been gathering lots of views in the last two editions) was won by India, as after all it's their favorite sport.
Death and funeral of Pope Benedict XVI 581 Joseph Ratzinger, the first Pope to quit in 700 years because he thought he was too old and frail for the job's demands, died at 95 on the last day of 2022, two months before the tenth anniversary of his resignation.
List of Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain, 1720–1739 564 All this is one editor on mobile. Mostly to erase full stops.
Moneybagg Yo 546 Elina9k has been cleaning up the article for this rapper. At least I won't have to discuss the Southern hemisphere equivalent of the Capitol invasion.

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.


2023-02-04

Furor over new Wikipedia skin, followup on Saudi bans, and legislative debate

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By Bri, Andreas Kolbe and Smallbones
Online safety laws strictly enforced...against Wikipedia?

UK Online Safety Bill

According to Wikipedia, the Online Safety Bill is "intended to improve internet safety" in the United Kingdom. The WMF, and many others, have a dim view of it. For more, see this issue's special report.

Section 230

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has come under fire of late, from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum.
See prior Signpost coverage, and this issue's Section 230 report.

Media articles on the topic of the US Communication Decency Act's famous Section 230 include reactions to an anti-terrorism lawsuit, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, where plaintiffs blame YouTube for the Islamic State's 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.

The Verge tells us: "A number of internet services – including ... the Wikimedia Foundation – filed briefs last week ... encouraging the [United States Supreme Court] not to narrow its definition of Section 230 [of the Communications Decency Act]." But – as pointed out by The Verge – it also comes at a time where the Supreme Court might curtail the Section 230 in the separate NetChoice lawsuits against new state laws in Texas and Florida to restrict online moderation that is defined by these states as viewpoint discrimination. An argument against these state laws is that they essentially compel speech by online hosts such as Wikimedia – what Eugene Volokh writing in Texas Law Review calls "compelled hosting" – which is likely a First Amendment violation. We don't know yet whether it is a violation, and this is what the Supreme Court case will sort out, maybe.

Additional media coverage includes Gizmodo sorting out the views of several participants in Gonzalez, and a number of legal scholars providing opinions and analysis around Section 230 in both cases:

– B

Saudi bans, jail sentences

Osama Khalid (left) and Ziyad Alsufyani, the two Wikimedians jailed in 2020 for 32 and 8 years respectively

The story of the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of sixteen administrators and editors in the Middle-East/North Africa region and the two Saudi Wikimedians, Osama Khalid and Ziyad Alsufyani, who have been jailed in a Saudi Arabian maximum-security prison since 2020 (see previous Signpost coverage) has been attracting further press attention over the past two weeks.

Democracy Now! featured an interview with DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson on 17 January.

On 18 January, a number of human rights organisations (Access Now, ALQST, Article 19, Global Voices, GCHR and IFEX) published a report that called for Osama's and Ziyad's release and also included a short WMF statement:

"We are saddened and deeply concerned about these arrests and the harm they have caused to the freedom and safety of Osama Khalid and Ziad Al-Sufyani. The Foundation shares a common belief with Wikimedia volunteer communities around the world that access to knowledge is a human right."

DAWN Advocacy Director Raed Jarrar

On 26/27 January, a Reuters story titled "Wikipedia Middle East editors ban shows risks for creators" was carried by outlets including the Bangkok Post, Jakarta Post, Deccan Herald, Jerusalem Post and CNBC Africa.

The report included quotes from the recent Signpost coverage as well as a statement from Raed Jarrar, DAWN's Advocacy Director, who questioned Wikimedia's "business model" which he said had created "two classes of humans" – those paid to manage Wikimedia, and the volunteers who produce and edit Wikipedia's content for free:

"The biggest question here is about Wikimedia's model of relying on volunteers who are operating in authoritarian countries, and putting them in danger, and not advocating for their release when they are in trouble."

Pat de Brún, head of artificial intelligence and big data at rights group Amnesty International, commented on the political dimension driving government interest in Wikipedia:

"A huge amount is at stake. Knowledge is power, and the power to rewrite history and do propaganda is valuable for governments who have a lot to hide and have a shameful human rights record."

– AK

Vector 2022

A few articles have been written around the web about the allegedly uncontroversial implementation of Vector 2022. Meanwhile, an RfC regarding the update, created on January 21, has a whopping million bytes of discussion on it. The main question – whether the WMF should roll back the new skin as the default – currently stands at 289 in support, 207 in opposition, and 17 neutral. Further down the page, a side RfC on unlimited text width has 79 in support and 57 in opposition.

– J

In brief

Bloomberg reports that Pakistan has blocked Wikipedia



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit our next edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.


Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Technology report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Essay


2023-02-04

Study examines cultural leanings of Wikimedia projects' visual art coverage

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By MartinPoulter and Waqas Ahmed
The authors are a veteran Wikipedian working as a Wikimedian In Residence (Poulter) and an interdisciplinary scholar, author, and curator (Ahmed). Our research into how the Wikimedia projects cover visual art has recently been published in the peer-reviewed journal Digital Studies. The paper shows how far Wikimedia falls short of a global perspective on visual arts but also sets out actions the community and the global cultural heritage sector can take to improve the situation.

Gender gaps and geographical imbalances on Wikimedia are already well-researched. Our focus is a cultural gap which does not correspond exactly to geography. For example, on the English Wikipedia, List of sculptors is 99% Western, despite sculpture being common to many different cultures, Lists of painters by nationality is around 75% European, and List of contemporary artists is 80% European. Many countries with especially rich artistic traditions, such as Libya and Mali, do not even have dedicated articles about their art (in the same way as there exist exhaustive articles such as French art or Greek art). The English Wikipedia's Level-4 Vital Article list for visual artists currently includes six from non-Western cultures, out of 124 articles.

"The musician Barbad conceals himself within a tree" Manuscript illustration, Tabriz, Iran, circa 1535

On Commons, the Gallery of Non-Photographic Media – Religious Art showcases ninety pieces of art relating to Christianity, alongside eight images for Buddhism, five for Judaism, five for Hinduism, and three for Paganism. Islam, with around two billion followers worldwide, has three examples of religious art (two of which we've uploaded).

It's unequivocally a good thing that Wikimedia projects make so much knowledge about art freely available. Our concern is that its overwhelming focus on the Western canon gives readers a misleadingly narrow picture of visual art and its role in human cultures. It's great that there are extensive articles about John Constable or the Bayeux Tapestry in English; we just want similar recognition for the artists or works from different cultures that are at least as important to those cultures as Constable is to British culture: Shibata Zeshin in Japan, or Raden Saleh in Indonesia, for example.

The Wikidata project Sum of All Paintings is extremely impressive in how it has drawn together details of more than 600,000 paintings from thousands of catalogues. While praising it, we have to be aware that a focus on paintings, usually by named artists, is itself a kind of bias towards European culture. The most celebrated art within another culture might be textile art, architectural features, or calligraphy; we should document these as well.

Researching the cultural gap

For our quantitative research, we consulted books and art experts to build lists of artists and works from cultures outside the Western canon. These were compared against lists of Western artists and works drawn from the Vital Articles lists on the English Wikipedia. Most of the non-Western masterpieces had no dedicated representation at all on the Wikimedia projects (though they might be mentioned in artists' biographies). So the main part of our research calculated the ratio of coverage of the two sets of artists (in terms of bytes of text, Commons files, or Wikidata statements). This measure is independent of the size of the Wikipedia, and allows us to place each Wikimedia project on a spectrum from "Western" to "global" for the visual arts.

Taking all languages in aggregate, Wikipedia gives seven times as many bytes of coverage to the Western artists as the artists from other cultures. Wikidata's coverage is more even, with four times as many statements for Western artists. Commons has 21 times as many files relating to Western artists. The individual language versions of Wikipedia formed a spectrum with Indonesian, Punjabi, and Bengali among the more "global" while Italian, Polish and Serbian were amongst the most "Western". The big surprises: English Wikipedia is one of the most "global" (a ratio of 4) and Thai Wikipedia the most focused on Western art (a ratio of 40).

Closing the gap

Like other biases on Wikipedia, this cultural imbalance results from a combination of factors outside and inside the project: the availability of sources and images as well as the interests of volunteers. So improving the situation involves both external outreach and on-wiki activity.

"Girl reciting Qur'an" by Osman Hamdi Bey

The external factors include the availability of reliable sources in the appropriate language, and of digital images of the appropriate content. We had seen that Commons in particular has a heavy bias toward the Western canon. So we are taking this message to cultural institutions that haven't worked with Wikimedia before. The Khalili Foundation is now reaching out to art museums to encourage them to share images and catalogue data with the Wikimedia projects. We have already uploaded more than 1,100 images of Islamic art and Japanese art as part of the Khalili Collections/Wikimedia UK cultural partnership. As part of the World Festival of Cultural Diversity, the Khalili Foundation is running a series of editathons with partner organisations in the UK.

We have put our lists of artists and masterpieces into a project page where you can see which links are red and which articles have the lowest quality assessments. This is also somewhere to share suggested references. We use Wikidata identifiers, which we hope will make it easy to implement the project page in other languages. The page is situated within WikiProject Visual Arts, but you do not have to be a member of that WikiProject to take part. Improving a linked article, creating a Wikidata item, or even finding a reference that could be used to create an article, are all welcome. We are not just looking to improve the coverage of topics mentioned in our research, but to diversify Wikipedia’s representation of art, so feel free to add artists or topics that you think are lacking.


2023-02-04

Foundation update on fundraising, new page patrol, Tides, and Wikipedia blocked in Pakistan

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By Andreas Kolbe, Bri, Red-tailed hawk, and Smallbones


Wikimedia CEO Maryana Iskander

In a post at the Village Pump on 25 January 2023, WMF CEO Maryana Iskander provided an update on a number of topics covered in recent issues of the Signpost:

  • the December fundraising campaign and the related Request for Comment (RfC) survey (see Signpost coverage last November),
  • software updates in Commons (see Signpost coverage last October),
  • PageTriage updates for New pages patrol (see Signpost coverage last August),
  • the Foundation's relationship with the Tides Network, and specifically the Knowledge Equity Fund, which will now be moved back into the Foundation (see Signpost coverage last October).

Iskander said:

I am back to post a brief follow up message to my November note. Following the close of the RfC, the Wikimedia Foundation set up a co-creation page to seek input from community members on proposed messaging for banners. We posted regular updates on the campaign's performance to this page. In brief, over 450+ banners were tested during this year's campaign, and $24.7M of revenue was raised against an original $30M goal (a shortfall of $5.3 million). During the first few days the new banners resulted in about 70% less revenue than on the corresponding days in the prior year. Additional information on the campaign results are posted here. Next year, the fundraising team will continue to engage with the community on banner messaging. We look forward to building on the process we created this year.

I wanted to provide further updates on a few other issues that were raised:

  • Given the reduced revenue from the English campaign, the Wikimedia Foundation has reduced its budget projections for the current year. At this point, we don’t expect to see the same year-on-year growth in the Foundation’s budget next year. We will have more information by April on future financial projections.
  • The Foundation’s annual planning this year is being led by the needs of our Product & Technology departments. This will be the first time since about 2015 that these two departments will undertake joint planning. @SDeckelmann-WMF has asked me to pass along this update: "We've made progress on PageTriage issues raised by New Page Patrollers in an open letter. In the last 120 days, 141 patches have been reviewed through collaboration between the Foundation and the community. There have also been several meetings between community members and staff to talk about the future of PageTriage and the newcomer experience, and there is now work planned in Q4 to update the extension. We continue to engage with Commons as we are making critically needed software upgrades to community prioritized tools. The Foundation's Wishathon (leading up to the community wishlist kickoff for 2023) involved about 40 staff contributing time over a week in December to deliver 71 patches and 4 wishes granted. We are working with the community to make Vector 2022 the default skin, after 3 years of development work, feedback and iteration with wiki communities. More to come in March!"

  • Some comments were made in the RfC about the unclear role of the Tides Foundation in managing the Knowledge Equity Fund. Over the next few months, we will be moving the remainder of the Equity Fund from Tides back into the Foundation. The Wikimedia Endowment has received its 501(c)(3) status from the US Internal Revenue Service, so we are in the process of setting up its financial systems and transitioning out of Tides.

The message was warmly received by volunteers.

On 31 January 2023 Maryana also posted a longer "One Year Update" on the Wikimedia-l mailing list, marking her first full year in office. This covered some of the same ground as the above update but added further detail, especially as regards the months ahead:

On strategy, the Board of Trustees will meet this March in New York to consider a few topics that require taking a multi-year view:

  1. Wikimedia's financial model and future projections for revenue streams in online fundraising (which we anticipate will not continue to grow at the same rate), the next phase of the Wikimedia Endowment, and the lessons we have learned so far from Wikimedia Enterprise's first year of operation.
  2. Re-centering the Foundation's responsibility in supporting the technology needs of the Wikimedia movement by understanding the needs of our contributor communities, as well as emerging topics like machine learning/artificial intelligence and innovations for new audiences.
  3. Beginning more focused conversations to establish frameworks and principles for understanding the Foundation's core roles and responsibilities. This is intended to help to provide inputs into the movement charter deliberations and broader movement strategy conversations.

Members of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee and Wikimedia Endowment Trustees will join in the March sessions, and we will share a report with you after the meeting.

The update marking Maryana's first year in office is also available as a wiki page on Meta-Wiki. – AK

Pakistan temporarily restricts, then blocks access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects

Pakistan tried in 2020 to censor Wikipedia content related to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community—a religious group whose practices are subject to strict restrictions in the Islamic Republic—and is now threatening to block Wikipedia over "sacreligious content".

UPDATE: Pakistan's Prime Minister has stepped in and ordered the PTA on 6 February 2023 to restore access to Wikipedia in Pakistan. – AK

On 1 February 2023 the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) published an announcement indicating that access to Wikipedia in the Muslim country had been restricted[Note 1] for 48 hours after failing to remove and/or block what the government agency described as "sacrilegious content". The Pakistani government agency stated that it had provided notice to "Wikipedia" for failure to abide by "applicable law and court order(s)" and had previously issued a takedown request on the offending content that was not complied with.

Dawn, Pakistan's flagship English-language newspaper, reports that the PTA had previously issued takedown notices related to Wikipedia's content in 2020. A contemporaneous report from Dawn describes these notices having objected to Wikipedia's characterization of Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the current leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, as being a Muslim.

Ahmadiyya teachings differ significantly from most Sunni and Shia Muslim groups; its teaching that 19th-century Punjabi author and religious leader Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was both the Messiah and the Mahdi is rejected by most other Muslims who consider Muhammad to be God's final prophet. Pakistan's constitution defines the nation's state religion as Islam and a constitutional amendment passed in 1974 declared that people who practice Ahmadiyya are to be considered non-Muslims. Subsequent legislation, such as the 1984 Ordinance XX, have banned Ahmadis from publicly describing themselves as Muslim and have generally restricted the public practice of Ahmadiyya. In Pakistan, it remains illegal for Ahmadis to recite the Islamic call to prayer, to proselytize, and to use various Islamic Honorifics to refer to people within the Ahmadiyya community.

Following Pakistan's block of Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation released a statement calling on Pakistan to restore access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

In 2020, the PTA had also objected to Wikimedia content containing what was described as "blasphemous caricatures" of Muhammad. Disputes involving images of Muhammad have long been a contentious topic on Wikipedia, though the Arbitration Committee recently rescinded its authorization for the use of discretionary sanctions on pages relating to the topic; the authorization thereof was terminated effective November 2022.

The PTA stated on 1 February that it would permanently block Wikipedia if the free encyclopedia would not comply with its censorship demands, though neither the Pakistani government nor the Wikimedia Foundation made public the exact scope of the demands.

On 3 February Bloomberg reported that Pakistan had blocked Wikipedia services in Pakistan, citing a statement by PTA spokesman Malahat Obaid. Later that day, the Wikimedia Foundation released a statement confirming that it had been blocked in Pakistan, saying that the foundation's internal traffic reports showed that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects had been blocked in Pakistan and urging the Pakistani government to unblock Wikipedia in the country. The full statement reads as follows:

On Friday, February 3, 2023 Pakistan’s Telecommunications Authority blocked Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. The Wikimedia Foundation calls on Pakistan to restore access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the country immediately.

The Wikimedia Foundation received a notification from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on February 1, 2023, stating “the services of Wikipedia have been degraded for 48 hours” for failure to remove content from the site deemed “unlawful” by the government. The notification further mentioned that a block of Wikipedia could follow, if the Foundation failed to comply with the takedown orders. As of Friday, February 3, our internal traffic reports indicate that Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are no longer accessible to users in Pakistan.

The Foundation believes that access to knowledge is a human right. Wikipedia is the world’s largest online encyclopedia, and the main source of trusted information for millions. It’s an ever-growing record of history, and gives people from all backgrounds the opportunity to contribute to everyone’s understanding of their religion, heritage, and culture.

In Pakistan, English Wikipedia receives more than 50 million pageviews per month, followed by Urdu and Russian Wikipedias. There is also a sizable and engaged community of editors in Pakistan that contribute historical and educational content. A block of Wikipedia in Pakistan denies the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository. If it continues, it will also deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s knowledge, history, and culture.

Wikipedia is written by nearly 300,000 volunteer editors. Together, this global community of volunteers has designed robust editorial guidelines that require strict citations and references to verified sources of information. Content on Wikipedia is mined from secondary sources; it does not allow original research. The community is guided by values of neutrality, reliability, and equitable access to information.

The Foundation does not make decisions around what content is included on Wikipedia or how that content is maintained. This is by design to ensure that articles are the result of many people coming together to determine what information should be presented on the site, resulting in richer, more neutral articles. We respect and support the editorial decisions made by the community of editors around the world. There are dedicated response channels available to individuals, organizations, or governments that would like to raise concerns about the site’s content directly with volunteer editors for their consideration and review. This contributes to Wikipedia’s transparency and upholds its collaborative model.

We hope that the Pakistan government joins with the Foundation in a commitment to knowledge as a human right and restores access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects promptly, so that the people of Pakistan can continue to receive and share knowledge with the world.

Stephen Laporte (pictured in 2012), a WMF lawyer, addressed the Pakistan-imposed ban in an email to Wikimedia-l.

Stephen LaPorte, a lawyer for the Wikimedia Foundation, said in an email to public mailing list Wikimedia-l that the foundation "is already examining various avenues and investigating how we can help restore access, while staying true to our values of verifiability, neutrality, and freedom of information."

"For over twenty years, our movement has supported knowledge as a fundamental human right," LaPorte said in his email, "In defense of this right, we have opposed a growing number of threats that would interfere with the ability of people to access and contribute to free knowledge. We know that many of you will want to take action or speak out against the block. For now, please continue to do what is needed to remain safe. We will keep you updated on any new developments, actions we are taking, and ways which you can help return access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in Pakistan."

– R, AK

Wikimedia Foundation board member Esra'a Al Shafei joins board of Tor project

Esra'a Al Shafei has joined the Tor board.

Wikimedia Foundation Board member Esra'a Al Shafei has announced that she joined the Board of the Tor project on 15 December 2022.

In a post on the Wikimedia-l mailing list dated 24 January 2023 she says:

Tor's privacy technologies have been critical resources for my human rights advocacy work. It felt fitting to have this opportunity to support an organization and community that made my work and the work of many other activists possible, especially those who live in countries where censorship and surveillance are the norm.

In the rare event that any Board decision from Tor or Wikimedia Foundation may impact either organization, I will be fully recusing myself from them. Like the Foundation Board, this position is voluntary and unpaid.

Tor's own announcement is here. – AK

New Endowment Board Directors

As announced in a Diff blog post, the Wikimedia Endowment has added two new "At-Large Directors" to its Board: Alex Farman-Farmaian and Lisa Lewin.

Alex Farman-Farmaian has been a Wikimedia donor for more than a decade and is passionate about Wikimedia’s vision of bringing free knowledge to all the world’s people. Since 2006, Alex has been Vice Chairman, Partner, and Portfolio Manager at Edgewood Management. Prior to Edgewood, he was a senior member of the Portfolio Management team at W.P. Stewart & Co., chairing the Investment Oversight Committee. Alex will bring his finance and investment expertise to the Wikimedia Endowment as a member of the Finance Committee. [...]

Lisa Lewin served on the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation from January 2019 through to September 2021. She is CEO of General Assembly, which has built transparent career pathways for over one million people and diverse talent pipelines for hundreds of the world’s leading employers. She brings to the Endowment Board a deep knowledge of the Wikimedia movement as well as 25 years of experience leading and advising private, public, and nonprofit sector organizations. Lisa will serve on the Governance Committee, helping to ensure the Board is governed efficiently and effectively.

The full Endowment Board roster can be found on the Wikimedia Endowment website.

The Diff blog post also quotes Jimmy Wales referring to the "fact that we met – and even surpassed – our expected timeline for the Endowment’s maturation into a 501(c)(3)." Readers of The Signpost will recall that WMF promises to transfer the Endowment to its own 501(c)(3) organization, which would then file public financial statements, date back as far as 2017 (see previous coverage).

Under the present arrangement with the Tides Foundation, the money held in the Endowment is not included in the net assets of the Wikimedia Foundation, as those funds are held by the Tides Foundation. Donations to the Endowment that are received by the Wikimedia Foundation as a pass-through are redirected and sent to the Tides Foundation. Therefore, they are not reflected on the Wikimedia Foundation's financials as revenue or net assets. When the Wikimedia Foundation makes special grants to the Endowment Fund, those are reflected as "Awards and Grants" expenses on the Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Independent Auditors' Report.

As stated in the above updates from Maryana Iskander, the Wikimedia Foundation is currently still in the process of "transitioning out of Tides", having restarted this process in 2021 and gained approval for its new 501(c)(3) organization last year (see previous coverage). – AK

Investigative challenge

The logo of OpenAI, the creators of the ChatGPT chatbot
Will the first AI-generated Wikipedia article please stand up?
The staff of The Signpost have identified what we believe to be the first AI-generated article in English Wikipedia, created on 6 December 2022. We challenge our readers to find this article, or any earlier AI-generated mainspace article. In the Comments section below, please let us know how you did it and what methods you used.

While the Village Pump section about content generated by large language models draws toward a close, and Wikipedia:Large language models a draft proposal for their use on Wikipedia is beginning to take shape, new tools to assist in identifying this output are not far behind.

A number of websites currently offer access to models that attempt to detect LLM-generated text, some of them seedier than others: https://detector.dng.ai/, https://contentatscale.ai/ai-content-detector/, https://corrector.app/ai-content-detector/, and https://writer.com/ai-content-detector/ all offer quick free analysis, with at least one of them using the opportunity for a sidebar upsell on their own "undetectable" generative models. Most of these seem to be implementing some form of roberta-base-openai-detector, a model based on RoBERTa (Robustly-optimized Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers-approach) and freely available on Hugging Face. However, RoBERTa-BOAID was optimized for detection on OAI's 2019 GPT-2-1.5B model.

OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, have released a test version of a classifier model (account required) designed to detect if text was generated by current GPT-series models: GPT-3, InstructGPT, and GPT-3.5 (ChatGPT). There is currently no whitepaper associated with the classifier model, and OpenAI says in the model card that they "do not plan to release the model weights", continuing a trend that began after their release of GPT-2 and subsequent partnership with Microsoft.

The Signpost tested the current text of the article mentioned above, which has been edited by 18 editors a total of 67 times since its creation. The detector reported that "The classifier considers the text to be very unlikely AI-generated."

Another detector, GPTzero, was created by Edward Tian, a senior at Princeton University, and was also used to test the same text. It reported that "Your text may include parts written by AI" and identified 12 sentences that were "more likely to be written by AI".

OpenAI and GPTzero's creator were both contacted for comments on this article at short notice, but neither have, as yet, replied. – J, S, B,

WikiLearn

WikiLearn, the free online learning platform created by the Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation, has come out of its beta testing period. It has a major new feature: course content translation.

For more info see Meta-Wiki. There is also a catalog listing courses people can enroll in right now, using their Wikimedia account (via OAuth, no password necessary). – AK

Brief notes

  • Wikimedia Enterprise: WMF Legal has said that a passage in the Wikimedia, LLC Operating Agreement that ostensibly allows the WMF to admit additional members to the limited liability company that handles Wikimedia Enterprise's for-profit work, and allows it to transfer all or any part of the WMF's interest in the company to another individual or entity, is standard wording that was included by outside counsel drafting the document. WMF Legal's Shaun Spalding stated there was no intent on the part of the WMF for this language ever to be triggered, and said it would be removed in the ordinary course of business if or when the Operating Agreement is ever updated. He also stressed that no such change as the section nominally allows could be made without the approval of the WMF Board of Trustees. – AK
One of the projects of the Wikimedians of Peru User Group was a photo campaign covering Peru's 2022 LGBT pride events
Serbian Wikimedians' collaboration with the Meridian sports news agency led to 175 photos of sporting events being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  1. ^ Official documents described access as "degraded". Experts who talked with Geo News said that this took the form of blocking access to Wikipedia for some users in Pakistan, while the Editorial board of Dawn said that the government had "slowed down access" to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/In focus Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Arbitration report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Humour

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