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11 November 2015

 

2015-11-11
As one thousand of us requested, Superprotect has been removed
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By Pete Forsyth


One Sunday afternoon in 2014, without fanfare or advance warning, the Wikimedia Foundation deployed "Superprotect" – a new user privilege that enabled the Foundation's paid staff to overrule elected volunteer administrators. Without pausing to describe what circumstances would merit its use, the Foundation immediately used Superprotect to unilaterally enforce the rollout of the Media Viewer software on the German Wikipedia. Several local communities had questioned Media Viewer’s suitability for broad release. The Foundation forcefully asserted its own authority – a climax in several years of disputes with volunteers over various software features. Then-Trustee Samuel Klein later characterized the move, saying it "opposed our wiki values, distracted the projects, and did not solve any pressing problem."

I was moved to urge the Foundation to remove Superprotect, and to disavow its newly asserted authority. I wrote a letter to this effect, invited others to sign it, and delivered it in September 2014 to the organization’s ten Trustees and top two executives.

The letter’s popularity was substantial and diverse. More than a thousand people have signed it; they hail from dozens of language communities and multiple Wikimedia projects. Yet for more than a year, the Foundation declined to publicly acknowledge either the letter or the problems with Superprotect. But what a difference fourteen months can make: on November 5, 2015, Superprotect was removed, and the executive director publicly addressed the issue for the first time, declaring that its "precedent of mistrust" had to be reversed.

What changed in that time? Will the announcement have the desired impact on restoring trust and effective collaboration between the Foundation and Wikimedia volunteers?

Elections have consequences

All that changed, it seems, was Foundation leadership. The executive most strongly associated with Superprotect left his position in April, and in June all three community-elected Trustees lost their bids for reelection to candidates who opposed Superprotect. Several months later, with no further visible changes beyond the announcement of a new software development process, the Foundation regretted having established a precedent of mistrust. Superprotect was removed as suddenly as it was introduced, and with little more fanfare.

I have had only one conversation with a recipient of the letter. A Trustee I spoke with a few months after delivering the letter characterized it as conveying frustration and anger (which, I submit, it did not); acknowledged that she did not remember what specific actions it requested; and opined that those signing the letter probably didn't know what it said, and signed it as a proxy for various complaints.

About a month ago, I heard similar things from a senior staff member working on related issues: he also did not distinctly remember the two requests, and also felt that some of those signing the letter did so without reading it carefully. As I told both the Trustee and the staffer, I believe their words reflect a major failure in their leadership. Anyone seeking to improve Wikimedia's social dynamics should remember two concise requests that generated substantial support. Even if some of the signatories were no better informed about the letter's contents than the two Foundation personnel, many signed it with eyes wide open. Our request deserved timely consideration.

As the Foundation seeks to move forward by finally removing the Superprotect user right – granting at least some of the letter's provisions – what are the implications going forward? Is this yet another unilateral Foundation action, or did the volunteer-driven letter play a role? To assess this question, we should revisit the exact things the letter said – and the things it did not say. Let’s begin with a review of what I intended when I composed the letter.

What I sought to accomplish with the letter

The frustration and anger the Wikimedia personnel identified do, of course, exist. In the weeks before Superprotect was implemented, I felt them deeply. Those feelings were justified: with the Media Viewer, the Foundation had – as with many previous software releases – suddenly activated a new product that was far from ready, and which ran afoul of important Wikimedia values (not to mention, it would seem, intellectual property law) in a number of ways. They did so, in part, to meet a deadline that could and should have been extended, in order to better address the feedback volunteers were generating. The efforts of myself and many other volunteers to get the software rollout reversed were repeatedly dismissed by Foundation staff as self-interested, despite my many years of full-time work (much of it on the Foundation's payroll) to improve Wikimedia's recruitment and retention of contributors. My time and expertise were being treated as a resource without any particular value.

But in my years of Wikipedia editing, I have learned an important lesson: however justified frustration and anger might be, allowing them to guide your action is rarely productive. So I took a step back, and considered my options. I sought the advice of respected friends and colleagues – especially a few who had no particular stake in Wikimedia, who could help me think about the big picture. They reminded me that any effective advocacy had to reach beyond the immediate conflict, and invoke the core principles that united us all – volunteers, Foundation staff, and readers.

What the letter did and did not say

In order to place that common ground front-and-center, I began with the words "Along with you, we envision...", and then quoted from the community- and board-approved Wikimedia vision statement, which states: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."

It's one thing to begin from a place of alignment, but it's quite another to carry that spirit through to a specific requested action. I considered, "we demand that the Foundation offices be dismantled brick by brick before another line of code is written," but cooler heads prevailed. With support from many quarters, I kept pushing back to Wikimedia's core needs around software development, ultimately settling on two simple requests:

… the following are necessary conditions for a healthy and productive path forward. … :
  1. … Foundation should remove the "superprotect" ... and
  2. … Foundation should permit local projects ... to determine the default status of the Media Viewer uninhibited.

I bold the word "necessary" above for a reason: the letter aimed to establish conditions that could permit all parties to work together to solve complex problems. It never aimed or promised to identify conditions that would solve the problems; it was not that ambitious. Sufficient conditions for a healthy and productive path forward were not proposed; that's the work that could commence once a reasonable baseline had been established.

The two requested actions are not arbitrary; neither action would carry much meaning without the other. The first is a technical action, while the second is a social or rhetorical expression of the related principles. The second is what would form the basis for future accountability. Without #2, the Foundation could comply with the #1, but then create "super-duper-protect" – and even if it didn't do so, the very possibility of a different technical obstacle to enforce its will would be enough to demotivate volunteers like me.

My emphasis on specific, achievable goals, clearly tied to the core vision that unites all Wikimedians (volunteer and staff alike), was crucial to the popularity of the letter. A thousand signatures is far more than I hoped for; but as the signatures and comments came in, I heard from many signatories who felt the letter wasn't critical enough of the Foundation, and also from many who liked the Media Viewer software. By carefully choosing specific requests, I established a core position that appealed to a broad range of viewpoints in the Wikimedia community.

Comparing the requests to the Foundation's recent statements

Let's look at two of the Foundation's various statements this month, as they announced the demise of Superprotect:

  1. At the November 5 Metrics and Activities Meeting, Wikimedia's executive director stated:
  2. On November 9, the engineering community manager stated:

I urge you to take a moment and compare numbers one and two in each section. The first request was clearly granted.

But what about the second? The statement quoted – which came not in the initial email message, but in response to pointed questions – addresses how the principles relate to a specific kind of software deployment or configuration – those which are determined by an admin-editable wiki page.

Are all software deployments in which the volunteer community has a stake carried out by wiki pages? Will they be in the future?

I don't know the answers to these questions. We have heard a strong assertion about how principles apply to specific set of pages. Statement #1 above offers assurance that volunteers may participate in a discussion led by the Foundation, but that framing is far out of step with the reality of how Wikipedia and the other projects have achieved their success. So I'm not sure: 14 months later, has the Foundation heard the complaint?

Was the letter finally successful?

Following the Foundation's announcement, I suggested to the first twenty signatories of the letter that we should declare it a success. But nearly everybody who answered said "no," with the following reasons:

(a) The Foundation took too long (about fourteen months rather than, say, fourteen minutes) to fulfill the requests. (b) The Foundation never formally acknowledged the letter's existence. (c) There was initially no statement about local administrators' ability to assess and enforce consensus around software changes. (d) When there was a statement, it was not from top leadership, and it may be at odds with routine practices that don't specifically involve Superprotect. (e) The core problems around software releases and Foundation-volunteer relations remain, and may even be "unfixable."

These are all worthwhile points; I will respond briefly to each:

  1. The Foundation took too long. Any responsible executive or Trustee should have immediately recognized how badly Superprotect would impact trust, in a system that is deeply rooted in trust. It should not have been deployed to begin with, and every minute it survived – before or after the letter – was a minute too long.
    But as bizarre as Superprotect's fourteen-month tenure may be, we cannot change the past. The necessity of its removal is as necessary now as it ever was. In evaluating the letter's success, we should not be too distracted by the many months in which it was unsuccessful.
    Furthermore, the negative impacts of the extended tenure of Superprotect affected the Foundation, as well as Wikimedia as a whole; four good leaders in the organization are now gone, arguably due to Superprotect. The mistrust has hurt many parties, but dwelling on that point accomplishes nothing.
  2. The letter was not acknowledged. This is irritating – perhaps to me more than anybody, given my focus in the letter on clear, limited, reasonable requests. But this shouldn't be about me, or any of our feelings as individuals. It's always been about getting the Wikimedia effort back on track. I devoted my time to this because I believe in an outcome, not in a quest for acknowledgment. If the Foundation's goal is truly to rebuild trust – which goes somewhat beyond the scope of what this letter sought – its leadership might do well to consider the body of research around trust and acknlowledgment, which executive coach Charles Feltman sums up as: "The only known antidote to betrayal...is to acknowledge it and apologize for it."[1] Superprotect was a betrayal of trust. Without acknowledgment of that basic complaint – without Foundation leaders reflecting back what they heard, what resonates, and how it impacts the path forward – I suspect questions about whether the problems have been understood will only continue to fester.
  3. The removal of Superprotect was poorly communicated. The Foundation's statements have been rather random, with bits and pieces being communicated in numerous venues, by various staff and Trustees. All parties would be better served by a single, thorough, carefully written announcement. I would counter that communication in our wiki world is complicated. While I'd like to have a Foundation that is able to rise above the fray with, for instance, a clear press release or blog post outlining principles, in our community, we are pretty good at parsing text and identifying themes. So this is not a big deal in itself.
  4. Senior Foundation leadership should have made the announcement. The Foundation's position would be clearer if it came initially, and comprehensively, in a statement from the executive director and/or the board of trustees. And if indeed there are routine practices that violate the principles stated by the engineering community manager, then yes, there is a legitimate concern here.
  5. Not everything has been resolved. This is true. In particular, Foundation leadership seems to still undervalue the significance of Wikimedia volunteers' efforts. But look closely at the text we agreed to: we never spoke of total resolution in the letter. We asked for a couple of actions that were necessary before we could solve the underlying problems, but we never claimed they would be sufficient in themselves. There is still work to be done to establish a better process, but we always knew there would be.

It's murky – so I would say, "no."

I take the various objections seriously – there are many reasons to be dissatisfied with the Foundation's handling of Superprotect. Some of the objections are incidental, and should be deferred until later. But others are compelling. Why have we not heard a more comprehensive statement about the community's value in guiding software decisions? Is it because the Foundation doesn't perceive that value, or because its leaders think it "goes without saying?" The Foundation created an opportunity to speak with clarity – by announcing a decision on Superprotect – and then declined to address the context. That seems very odd, and makes me think the letter's requests are as relevant as ever.

Was the Wikimedia Foundation's response enough?
Enter your response in this poll

What do you think? Are you satisfied with the Foundation's response to the issues brought up in the letter? Please weigh in on the letter's talk page. And if you feel the conditions are right, take a look at the product development process outlined by the Foundation – your opinion, feedback, reasoned complaint, or endorsement there will help establish whether or not the next step is attainable.

  1. ^ Feltman, Charles (2009). The thin book of trust an essential primer for building trust at work. Bend, Oregon: Thin Book Publishing. ISBN 9780982206836.


Pete Forsyth has been a Wikipedia editor since 2006 and runs a Wikipedia training and consulting business, Wiki Strategies. He worked for the Wikimedia Foundation from 2009 to 2011. The views expressed in this editorial are the author's alone and do not reflect any official opinions of this publication. Responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section.




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2015-11-11
Elections, redirections, and a resignation from the Committee
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By GamerPro64

Election season begins again

On 8 November, the nomination period has begun for this year's Arbitration Committee Elections. Nominations will be accepted until 23:59 UTC, 17 November.

By the end of the year, the two-year terms of seven arbitrators will end: GorillaWarfare, Seraphimblade, Roger Davies, AGK, NativeForeigner, and LFaraone, while Thryduulf's one-year term will end. But in an unexpected announcement, Yunshui, another one-year arbitrator, has resigned from the committee and retired from Wikipedia. Posted on their talk page:


This is not the only arbitrator to be leaving their seat early. Euryalus posted on their talk page back in September their plans to retire a year early. Because of the shakeups, this means there will be nine vacant seats in this year's election. If you're interested in putting your hat into the ring, you can go here to become a candidate. Best of luck to anyone running.

Neelix case

While the election for new Arbitrators is going on, a new case has been accepted on 10 November. The Neelix case was opened after a thread titled "Thousands upon thousands of unnecessary redirects" was made at WP:AN/I on 5 November, where an IP address pointed out how Administrator Neelix was creating unnecessary redirects. These redirects have been deleted but they included "Constructed titty", "Constructions of the booby", "Feminine shape", "Feminine build", and hundreds more redirects with the similar motif. The thread closed mentioning that Neelix was blocked back in 2010 for making redirects similar to this incident. He was unblocked four hours later and apologized for what he did. He became an admin the following year. An Arbitration Motion was made to have him desysoped but was decided to be made into a case. Neelix has since given up his administrator status. Because of his resignation, the case was closed on 13 November. Neelix has also been topic banned by the community from making redirects for one year.

Current cases



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2015-11-11
Compromise of two administrator accounts prompts security review
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By Esquivalience

Compromised accounts and security RfC

Related articles
Security

On November 4, in a protest against Wikimedia security practices, a grey hat hacker compromised the accounts of the administrators Salvidrim! and OhanaUnited and, from those accounts, posted two messages to the bureaucrats' noticeboard requesting immediate desysopping of those accounts.

The hacker claimed responsibility for the breach on Reddit[1], criticizing the status quo of security on Wikimedia projects:

Countless usernames, emails and plain text passwords of Wikipedia accounts are listed in the data breaches, including accounts with CU/OS permissions. One that stood out was that of a former arb and WMF staff member whose same password was listed on multiple dumps. I also came across login details for multiple emails ending with @wikimedia.org, recognized some as having developer access. FWIW, they all had mostly strong passwords, although it hardly matters if they use the same password on WP. Now, I didn’t try logging into any of these to check if they work or not. The only reason I tried logging into these two accounts is because I recognized them as familiar admin accounts which had numbers as passwords and I was convinced it wouldn’t give me access. Once it did, I only had two options, either post to BN or forget about it. Had I reported it to Arbcom or privately, it would have been swept under the rug.

For all we know, people have been accessing admin accounts with impunity for years without anyone knowing. Nothing short of a forced reset for passwords on all privileged accounts is going to solve this.

I didn’t comb through the data further nor do I intend to - but that does not mean others won't.


— cwmtwrp

Although both administrators were able to regain access to their accounts, editors nonetheless raised concerns about account security on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. Some ideas were raised at the noticeboard discussion, including password complexity requirements and identifying privileged accounts with weak passwords. One day later, after consultation with the Wikimedia security team, Worm That Turned opened a RfC to review the status quo of security and to receive proposals on how to strengthen account security.

In brief

  • BASC motions: On the ArbCom motion request page, two motions were proposed relating to the Ban Appeals Subcommittee (BASC). The former motion proposed narrowing the scope of BASC to functionary blocks and blocks unsuitable for public discussion, and the latter motion proposed disbanding BASC altogether.
  • WP:NOTHERE as a blocking rationale: A few weeks ago, Doc9871 added "not here to build an encyclopedia" (WP:NOTHERE) to Wikipedia:Blocking policy as a suggested rationale for blocking. Concerned with the page's essay classification, Staszek Lem reverted the addition. A RfC was opened on whether 'NOTHERE' should be added as a suggested rationale. Some also suggested promoting WP:NOTHERE to a guideline or a policy.
  • Poetic militancy: An editor has proposed banning the promotion of violent acts ("poetic militancy") on user pages as a polemic.
  • RfA reform, again: Started by Biblioworm "to move past the disorderly and spontaneous discussion [on RfA reform]", the 2015 administrator election reform project is the most recent in many attempts to reform the requests for adminship process. Aimed at identifying the issues with RfA, the first RfC was closed very recently; reception has been mixed on most proposed issues, but most agree that RfA needs more participants and that RfA subjects candidates to a less-than-friendly environment.



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2015-11-11
Texas, film, and cycling
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By SSTflyer and Armbrust
Snow Patrol spent eight weeks at number one on the UK Album Downloads Chart during the 2000s, more than any other artist.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted up between 1 and 7 November.
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.


Featured articles

Hurricane Emily off North Carolina coastline

Two featured articles were promoted this week.

  • Runaway Scrape (nominated by Maile66) was the 1836 evacuation by Texas residents fleeing the Mexican Army of Operations. The ad interim government of the new Republic of Texas, and much of the civilian population accompanied by the Republic's army, fled eastward immediately after the Battle of the Alamo.
  • Hurricane Emily (nominated by Hurricanehink and Hylian Auree) caused record flooding in the Outer Banks of North Carolina while remaining just offshore. The threat of Emily prompted hurricane warnings for much of the North Carolina coast and northward through Delaware. Due to uncertainty in forecasting Emily's path, there were also evacuations from the coasts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Fire Island in New York.

Featured lists

Publicity photograph of Rudolph Valentino and his dog

Nine featured lists were promoted this week.

  • List of accolades received by Lagaan (nominated by Yashthepunisher) Lagaan is a 2001 Indian sports drama film, written and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker. The film grossed over ₹1.3 billion (US$16 million) globally on a production budget of ₹250 million (US$3.0 million). It received nominations, and awards in several categories both in India and internationally, with particular praise for its direction, acting and landscapes.
  • Rudolph Valentino filmography (nominated by SchroCat) Rudolph Valentino (1895–1926) was an Italian-born actor in the era of silent films. He appeared in several films until 1921—many of which are now lost. That year he got his major break when he appeared in the role of Julio in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Valentino played leading roles in fourteen films as a romantic figure. He died suddenly of peritonitis on August 23, 1926, at the age of 31.
  • List of teams and cyclists in the 2015 Vuelta a España (nominated by Relentlessly) The 2015 Vuelta a España was the 70th edition of the race. All 17 UCI World Tour teams were automatically entitled to start. At the end of the final stage, there were 158 riders left in the race, with 40 riders failing to finish.
  • Kerala State Film Award for Best Actress (nominated by Vensatry) The Kerala State Film Award for Best Actress is an honour presented annually at the Kerala State Film Awards of India since 1969 to an actress for the best performance in a leading role within the Malayalam film industry. Throughout the years, accounting for ties and repeat winners, the Government of Kerala has presented a total of 47 Best Actress awards to 30 different actresses.
  • List of teams and cyclists in the 2012 Tour de France (nominated by BaldBoris) The 2012 Tour de France was the 99th edition of the race, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The race was contested by a total of twenty-two teams. The number of riders allowed per squad was nine, resulting in a start list total of 198 riders.
  • List of Alamo defenders (nominated by Maile66) The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) was a crucial conflict of the Texas Revolution. Colonists from the United States joined with Tejanos (Mexicans born in Texas) in putting up armed resistance to the centralization of the Mexican government. The list contains 256 known combatants: 212 who died during the siege, 43 survivors, and one escapee who later died of his wounds.
  • List of ant subfamilies (nominated by Jonkerz) Ants (family Formicidae in the order Hymenoptera) are the most species-rich of all social insects, with more than 12,000 described species and many others awaiting description. Formicidae is divided into 20 subfamilies, of which 16 contain extant taxa, while four are exclusively fossil.
  • List of UK Album Downloads Chart number ones of the 2000s (nominated by A Thousand Doors) The UK Album Downloads Chart is a weekly music chart that ranks the most downloaded albums in the United Kingdom. During the 2000s, the chart was compiled by The Official UK Charts Company (OCC) on behalf on the British music industry, and was based solely on Sunday-to-Saturday sales of non-subscription music downloads from selected online stores.
  • England cricket team Test results (1877–1914) (nominated by Harrias) The England cricket team represented England, Scotland and Wales in Test cricket. Between 1877 and 1914, when competitive cricket was interrupted by the First World War, England played 123 Test matches, resulting in 59 victories, 22 draws and 42 defeats. Overall, by 1914, England had played 94 Test matches against Australia and 29 versus South Africa.

Featured topics

One featured topics were promoted this week.

Featured pictures

Sixteen featured pictures were promoted this week.



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2015-11-11
Sanger on Wikipedia; Silver on Vox; lawyers on monkeys
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By Gamaliel and Loicyouth

Sanger: "The inmates started running the asylum"

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger was interviewed by Vice for the story "Wikipedia's Co-Founder Is Wikipedia's Most Outspoken Critic". Sanger spoke of the beginnings of Wikipedia and the personalities it attracted:

According to Sanger, the resulting problems persist today:

At the end of the interview, Sanger reflected on his role in Wikipedia's founding and its success:

Sanger's interview was the subject of a few media reports, such as The Independent's story "Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says website has been 'taken over by trolls'". Sanger complained that newspaper "basically made an article out of" the interview "without interviewing me or doing any fact-checking. And they got the thrust of the interview wrong." G

FiveThirtyEight boss blasts Vox, accusing the site of using "shortcuts"

Nate Silver

In an interview with Catie Lazarus on her show Employee of the Month, FiveThirtyEight boss Nate Silver, blasted Vox for a lack of originality in their work. He said when working on a topic, his team gets immersed in it so they can do the best work possible. In terms of checking for bias in his own work, Silver says through dialogue with people he disagrees with and encouraging feedback from a wider audience.

However, he clearly stated that Vox reads Wikipedia pages and “writes a take on” the articles and also accused Vox of not being able to back up its published information - “I know how hard my writers and my editors work to try and get the facts right, to not always go for the hot take that you can’t really provide evidence for, right?”

Vox has gotten in trouble for inaccuracy in its stories before but the Vox editor-in-chief, Ezra Klein, defended the site’s efforts. “I’m tremendously proud of the incredible work my writers do – good explanatory journalism is very, very hard, and as such, I think it’s best to let it speak for itself.”

In September, Vox was criticized for an article which was largely taken from a Wikimedia Foundation blog post (see previous Signpost coverage). L

"Monkey see, monkey sue"

Techdirt reports on motions to dismiss in the bizarre lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) over the monkey selfie copyright dispute (see previous Signpost coverage). Motions from lawyers representing wildlife photographer David Slater and his publisher Blurb, Inc. ignored copyright issues and focused on the lack of standing, namely making the point that a monkey could not sue nor could PETA sue on the monkey's behalf. Blurb's motion summarizes this point in its first line: "This is a copyright case filed on behalf of a monkey." Slater's motion favors amusement but is almost as succinct:

G



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.



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2015-11-11
Doodles of popularity
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By Milowent
Google wants you to search about Boolean logic AND saxophones AND Mexican holidays.

The power of a Google Doodle to drive traffic to a Wikipedia article is well known. But this week Google really flexed its muscle, cementing three of the top five spots. The chart is topped by George Boole, the inventor of Boolean logic, celebrated by a Doodle on his 200th birthday. And saxophone inventor Adolphe Sax hit #4 with a Doodle on his 201st birthday. (Though their fields were very different, I wonder if Boole and Sax could have ever met?) And coming in at #2 is Day of the Dead, which is primarily a Mexican holiday but has been featured by a Google Doodle displayed in Mexico and the United States (which has a substantial population of Mexican origin) for the past two years. But even when Google only ran its Day of the Dead Doodle in Mexico in 2013, it still hit #4 on this chart, making it difficult to say just how much Google is influencing its traffic.

Outside the top five, we see the annual return of Guy Fawkes (#8) and his night (#11), and the normal mix of pop culture and entertainment topics of the day, from varied niches including country music fans with male vocalist of the year Chris Stapleton (#6) and English football with a BBC documentary raising Salford City F.C. to #13.

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

For the week of November 1 to 7, 2015, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 George Boole B-class 1,462,428
The inventor of Boolean logic was celebrated by a Google Doodle on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth. Boole's work is credited for laying the foundations for the information age. If you're American and missed this Doodle, it is because a Day of the Dead (#2) doodle was used in the United States and Mexico, while Boole was available everywhere else. This makes it even a bit more impressive that this doodle came in at #1 this week, a feat which last happened in late August when surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku topped the chart.
2 Day of the Dead B-class 1,109,918
Mexico's carnival of the cadavers is the living dream of any kid who ever wished Halloween could last three days. Up from #9 last week, and probably helped by a Google Doodle which was used in the United States and Mexico. This event also hit #2 last year, and #4 in 2013. Perhaps the jump between 2013 to 2014 is explained in part by the fact that although Google also ran Doodles in those years, it was limited to Mexico only in 2013. Google has run a Day of the Dead Doodle every year since 2008.
3 Spectre (2015 film) Start-class 1,069,633
Holding steady at #3 for a second week, but a 35% jump in views. The British are not known as titans of the filmmaking world, but they have staked their claim with this latest in their defining James Bond series. The budget, topping $300 million, makes this the most expensive film ever made without the words "Pirates of the Caribbean" in front of it. After the last Bond film made over a billion dollars, it seems the proudly British producers have confidence enough to stand apart from Hollywood, initially releasing the film in six national territories - but not the US until November 6. The strategy has worked; the film has made almost $300 million so far (as of November 8th).
4 Adolphe Sax Start-class 1,019,466
Google's nefarious quest to educate the human race continues, as a worldwide Doodle on November 6 commemorated the 201st anniversary of the birth Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone in 1846. How many times have you looked upon a saxophone, or even considered the heyday of 1980s rock music saxophone solos, without wondering how or why that instrument got its name?
5 Halloween B-class 731,914
On its way back down after peaking at #1 last week.
6 Chris Stapleton Start-class 696,463 Views peaked on November 5, after the country and bluegrass music singer won the "male vocalist of the year" award at the 2015 Country Music Association Awards. The highlight of the night was when Justin Timberlake joined him on stage to sing his version of the song popularized as a George Jones live show staple, "Tennessee Whiskey", and Timberlake's "Drink You Away".
7 Ben Carson C-class 584,606
The soft-spoken neurosurgeon and U.S. Republican Presidential candidate has risen to the top of a number of national polls, and thus inviting more attention and scrutiny. The scrutiny includes many press articles dragging up silly things Carson has said, such as stating in 1998 (and confirming last week) that he believes the Pyramids were built by the Biblical Joseph and used to store grain. And on November 6, Politico broke a story that Carson had never been offered a scholarship to the United States Military Academy (West Point), despite stating in his biography and elsewhere that he had. This appears to be more puffery than an outright lie, assuming he was informally told he could get a scholarship which is what he now maintains, not that it matters in the rough and tumble world of politics.
8 Guy Fawkes Featured Article 573,619
Down about 100,000 views from last year's appearance. In the week of Fawke's eponymous night, which came in at #11, interest in the man himself usually also spikes. Whereupon our readers can learn that the only reason he's been vilified as a master criminal for the last 400 years is because he was the only one of his terror cell who was stupid enough to get caught.
9 Deaths in 2015 List 557,741
The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550 thousand on average, apparently heedless of who actually died. Deaths this week (random selections) included Army General Abdikarim Yusuf Adam of Somalia, who was shot (November 1); Japanese actress Haruko Kato (November 2); Colombian actress Adriana Campos (November 3); Finnish sculptor Laila Pullinen (November 4); Russian media executive Mikhail Lesin, who helped found Russia Today (November 5); English football player and manager Bobby Campbell (November 6); and former President of Israel Yitzhak Navon (November 7)
10 Bob Ross Start-Class 393,217
Up from #17 and 393K views last week. Until last week, Twitch.tv was mostly noted as a means for psychopathic tweens to swat hapless gamers. But now, with the launch of the new stream "Twitch Creative", the jaded generation is being introduced to one of my childhood's most serene influences: art instructor Bob Ross, who, in his lilting whisper, urged my parents to paint "happy little trees". A stream of Ross's program aired on Twitch, leading to typically polarised reactions from a perplexed wired community, most of whom have never heard of him. If you do click on this article, I encourage you see the chart which painstakingly tracked the elements which Ross used in every painting he ever did -- trees do dominate the list.



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2015-11-11
Paris
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By Gamaliel





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