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User:Alvaro

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Please, have a look on my awful english. Thanks in advance.

works

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Recent changes edit


Currently mainly working on canals & rivers of France & related.

edit
River
Alène Lignon (Ardèche) Chère Ibie Mortagne (river) Ailette (river) Albarine Smagne Yon Lay (river) Abloux Auroue Diège Rhue (river) Céou Céor Brame Aubetin Asse (river) Othain Verzée Voueize Tardes (river) Semnon Salleron Briance Bouble Arz (river) Orbieu Barguelonnette Barguelonne Gijou Senouire Gesse Vère Guil Airain Vauvise Rupt de Mad Chée Chéran Indrois Clouère Auzoue Sorgues (river) Aujon Bléone Côle Ével Luzège Triouzoune Rère Chalaronne Vallière (river) Sevron Sâne Vive Sâne Morte Solnan Thoré Lizonne Fier (river) Colagne Chavanon Veyle Galaure Séoune Bourbre Lèze Petite Baïse Côney Chapeauroux Vaige Semme Barse Benaize Sormonne (river) Maronne Oudon (river) Lignon du Forez Blaise (Marne) Lignon du Velay Grosne (river) Madon Layon Boutonne Vègre Calavon Dadou Anglin Bouzanne Chassezac Dourdou de Camarès Arconce Meu Cérou Èvre Moder (river) Osse (river) Petite Creuse Bourbince Lunain Cosson Aveyron (Loing) Ouanne (river) Suippe Solin (river) Seugne Louge Touch (river) Ource
Canal
Canal du Loing ☭ Canal de Bourbourg ☭ Canal de Bergues ☭ Canal de l'Aisne à la Marne ☭ Canal des Ardennes ☭ Canal latéral à l'Aisne ☭ Canal latéral à la Marne ☭
Related
Aiguillon Rhue Hugues Cosnier Plateau de Lannemezan Aveyron (disambiguation) Moder

Useful :

  • {{WikiProject France| importance=low | class=Start }} {{river}}
  • {{iw-ref|fr|Alette|April 29, 2009|oldid=38280739}}
Diverses créations.
edit

Misc
Wolf Rock, Cornwall Georges Wolinski Wallis Island Salvatore Quasimodo
Housekeeping

Alvaro

[edit]
/More about Alvaro
frCet utilisateur a pour langue maternelle le français.
en-2This user can contribute with an intermediate level of English.
de-1Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse.
es-1Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básico de español.
This user participates in WikiProject France.
Wikiproject:WikiProject_RiversThis user is a participant in WikiProject Rivers.





stats

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  • 14:52, 1 April 2009 (UTC) : 162,946
  • 16:33, 6 April 2009 (UTC) : 161,230
  • 18:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC) : 160,436
  • 15:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC) : 157,493
  • 12:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC) : 158,336
  • 13:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC) : 157,401
  • 16:25, 1 May 2009 (UTC) : 157,979
  • 12:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC) : 157,258
  • 20:35, 19 May 2009 (UTC) : 160,202
  • 10:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC) : 158,605
  • 14:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC) : 148,258
  • 17:27, 24 August 2009 (UTC) : 146,307
  • 14:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC) : 147,793
  • 22:37, 18 September 2009 (UTC) : 150,234
  • 16:13, 20 December 2009 (UTC) : 153,356
  • 15:36, 5 March 2010 (UTC) : 163,136
  • 06:50, 19 April 2010 (UTC) : 153,727
  • 10:06, 19 August 2010 (UTC) : 135,534
  • 19:17, 13 September 2010 (UTC) : 132,532
  • 09:25, 20 September 2010 (UTC) : 133,133
  • 23:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC) : 135,528
  • 18:49, 30 October 2012 (UTC) : 133,153
  • 04:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC) : 121,689
  • 14:07, 18 February 2014 (UTC) : 130,769
  • 22:52, 15 August 2015 (UTC) : 118,983

Current {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} : 126,690

tools

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  • Pour Vienne : {{otheruses4|the French department|the French city|Vienne, Isère}}
  • Pour Vienne : {{distinguish|Vienna}}
  • Sur Asse : {{for|a tributary of the [[Durance]]|Asse River}}

people

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Through my watchlist, I often meet Ksnow (talk · contribs), Markussep (talk · contribs), Dickeybird (talk · contribs)...

signpost

[edit]
The Signpost
Single-page Edition
WP:POST/1
7 February 2025

 

File:A human writer and a creature with the head and wings of a crow, both sitting and typing on their own laptops, experiencing mild hallucinations (DALL-E illustration).webp
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Alvaro

GPT-4 writes better edit summaries than human Wikipedians

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By Tilman Bayer


A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.


GPT-4 is better at writing edit summaries than human Wikipedia editors

[edit]

A preprint[1] by researchers from EPFL and the Wikimedia Foundation presents

Edisum, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the first solution to automate the generation of highly-contextual Wikipedia edit summaries [given an edit diff] at large scale, [and] achieves performance similar to the human editors

Average aggregated human evaluation scores for edit summaries generated by language models and by the human editors who originally made the edits

This solution was designed to match the performance and open source requirements for a live service deployed on Wikimedia Foundation servers. It consists of a "very small" language model (ca. 220 million parameters), based on Google's LongT5 (an extension of the company's T5 model from 2019, available under an Apache-2.0 license).

Separately, the authors also tested several contemporaneous large language models (GPT-4, GPT-3.5 and Llama 3 8B). GPT-4's edit summaries in particular were rated as significantly better than those provided by the human Wikipedia editors who originally made the edits in the sample – both using an automated scoring method based on semantic similarity, and in a quality ranking by human raters (where "to ensure high-quality results, instead of relying on the crowdsourcing platforms [like Mechanical Turk, frequently used in similar studies], we recruited 3 MSc students to perform the annotation").

Examples of summaries written by human editors and generated by Edisum and GPT-4
edit human editor Edisum [0%] Edisum [100%] GPT-4
Special:Diff/1172472704 added the range added location Added location information Added information about the location and altitude of Boveys Lookout and the orientation of the Burton Range.
Special:Diff/1169223741 in 1982 Added date and citation. Added the year of the speech Added the year of Fidel Castro's speech.
Special:Diff/1169701032 added artist Added a wikilink and a link Added a new name to the list of artists Added Stefan Brüggemann to the list of artists whose works are included.
Special:Diff/1170976899 lede; infobox infobox (inapplicable); lede; -cats Clarified the nature of Denis- Auguste Affre's cause and added information about his title Updated the description of Denis-Auguste Affre's religious status and clarified the stage of his canonization process.
Special:Diff/1170699096 fixed link to aias awards, it was at 5th, not 7th 5th Corrected the award number from 7th to 5th Corrected the year of the Annual Interactive Achievement Awards nomination.
Special:Diff/1169516533 Amended lists so they are split at 100 m ""at least", not "at least"" Clarified the range of heights in the list Added information about two different height categories for the ranking of buildings and structures in Greater Manchester.
Special:Diff/1173169263 UPD Romelu Lukaku updated Lukaku Removed the end of the season Removed incorrect future date for Romelu Lukaku's tenure at Inter.
Special:Diff/1171641782 "This \"however\" doesn't make sense here" "rmv deprecated, ambiguous "however" per MOS:RELTIME" Removed unnecessary word Removed the word "However," from the beginning of the sentence.
Special:Diff/1168487383 Per feedback given in GA review, elaborated on David King Udall and Ella Stewart Udall in the lead and in Ella Udall's first mention; David Udall was already identified Added link; improved phrasing and punctuation Added additional information about the individuals' professions Added professional details for David King Udall, Ella Stewart Udall, and Mary Ann Linton Morgan Udall.

This outcome joins some other recent research indicating that modern LLMs can match or even surpass the average Wikipedia editor in certain tasks (see e.g. our coverage: "'Wikicrow' AI less 'prone to reasoning errors (or hallucinations)' than human Wikipedia editors when writing gene articles").

A substantial part of the paper is devoted to showing that this particular task (generating good edit summaries) is both important and in need of improvements, motivating the use of AI to "overcome this problem and help editors write useful edit summaries":

"An edit summary is a succinct comment written by a Wikipedia editor explaining the nature of, and reasons for, an edit to a Wikipedia page. Edit summaries are crucial for maintaining the encyclopedia: they are the first thing seen by content moderators and they help them decide whether to accept or reject an edit. [...] Unfortunately, as we show, for many edits, summaries are either missing or incomplete."

In more detail:

"Given the dearth of data on the nature and quality of edit summaries on Wikipedia, we perform qualitative coding to guide our modeling decisions. Specifically, we analyze a sample of 100 random edits made in August 2023 to English Wikipedia [removing bot edits, edits with empty summaries and edits related to reverts] stratified among a diverse set of editor expertise levels. Two of the authors each coded all 100 summaries [...] by following criteria set by the English Wikipedia community (Wikimedia, 2024a) [...]. The vast majority (∼80%) of current edit summaries focus on [the] “what” of the edit, with only 30–40% addressing the “why”. [...] A sizeable minority (∼35%) of edit summaries were labeled as “misleading”, generally due to overly vague summaries or summaries that only mention part of the edit. [...] Almost no edit summaries are inappropriate, likely because highly inappropriate edit summaries would be deleted (Wikipedia, 2024c) by administrators and not appear in our dataset."

Metric Summary (what) Explain (why) Misleading Inappropriate Generate-able (what) Generate-able (why)
Description Attempts to describe what the edit did. For example, "added links" Attempts to describe why the edit was made. For example, "Edited for brevity and easier reading". Overly vague or misleading per English Wikipedia guidance. For example, "updated" without explaining what was updated is too vague. Could be perceived as inappropriate or uncivil per English Wikipedia guidance. Could a language model feasibly describe the "what" of this edit based solely on the edit diff. Could a language model feasibly describe the "why" of this edit based solely on the edit diff.
% Agreement 0.89 0.8 0.77 0.98 0.97 0.8
Cohen's Kappa 0.65 0.57 0.50 -0.01 0.39 0.32
Overall (n=100) 0.75 - 0.86 0.26 - 0.46 0.23 - 0.46 0.00 - 0.02 0.96 - 0.99 0.08 - 0.28
IP editors (n=25) 0.76 - 0.88 0.20 - 0.44 0.40 - 0.64 0.00 - 0.08 0.92 - 0.96 0.04 - 0.16
Newcomers (n=25) 0.76 - 0.84 0.36 - 0.48 0.24 - 0.52 0.00 - 0.00 0.92 - 1.00 0.12 - 0.20
Mid-experienced (n=25) 0.76 - 0.88 0.28 - 0.52 0.16 - 0.36 0.00 - 0.00 1.00 - 1.00 0.08 - 0.28
Experienced (n=25) 0.72 - 0.84 0.20 - 0.40 0.12 - 0.32 0.00 - 0.00 1.00 - 1.00 0.08 - 0.48

"Table 1: Statistics on agreement for qualitative coding for each facet and the proportion of how many edit summaries met each criteria. Ranges are a lower bound (both of the coders marked an edit) and an upper bound (at least one of the coders marked an edit). The majority of summaries are expressing only what was done in the edit, which we also expect a language model to do. A significant portion of edits is of low quality, i.e., misleading."

The paper discusses various other nuances and special cases in interpreting these results and in deriving suitable training data for the "Edisum" model. (For example, "edit summaries should ideally explain why the edit was performed, along with what was changed, which often requires external context" that is not available to the model – or really to any human apart from the editor who made the edit.) The authors' best performing approach relies on fine-tuning the aforementioned LongT5 model on 100% synthetic data generated using a LLM (gpt-3.5-turbo) as an intermediate step.

Overall, they conclude that

while it should be used with caution due to a portion of unrelated summaries, the analysis confirms that Edisum is a useful option that can aid editors in writing edit summaries.

The authors wisely refrain from suggesting the complete replacement of human-generated edit summaries. (It is intriguing, however, to observe that Wikidata, a fairly successful sister project of Wikipedia, has been content with relying almost entirely on auto-generated edit summaries for many years. And the present paper exclusively focuses on English Wikipedia – Wikipedias in other languages might have fairly different guidelines or quality issues regarding edit summaries.)

Still, there might be great value in deploying Edisum as an opt-in tool for editors willing to be mindful of its potential pitfalls. (While the English Wikipedia community has rejected proposals for a policy or guideline about LLMs, a popular essay advises that while their use for generating original content is discouraged, "LLMs can be used for certain tasks (like copyediting, summarization, and paraphrasing) if the editor has substantial prior experience in the intended task and rigorously scrutinizes the results before publishing them.")

On that matter, it is worth noting that the paper was first published (as a preprint) ten months ago already, in April 2024. (It appears to have been submitted for review at an ACL conference, but does not seem to have been published in peer-reviewed form yet.) Given the current extremely fast-paced developments in large language models, this likely means that the paper is already quite outdated concerning several of the constraints that Edisum was developed for. Specifically, the authors write that

commercial LLMs [like GPT-4] are not well suited for [Edisum's] task, as they do not follow the open-source guidelines set by Wikipedia [referring to the Wikmedia Foundation's guiding principles]. [...Furthermore,] the open-source LLM, Llama 3 8B, underperforms even when compared to the finetuned Edisum models.

But the performance of open LLMs (at least those released under the kind of license that is regarded as open-source in the paper) has greatly improved over the past year, while the costs of using LLMs in general have dropped.

Besides the Foundation's licensing requirements, its hardware constraints also played a big role:

We intentionally use a very small model, because of limitations of Wikipedia’s infrastructure. In particular, Wikipedia [i.e. WMF] does not have access to many GPUs on which we could deploy big models (Wikitech, 2024), meaning that we have to focus on the ones that can run effectively on CPUs. Note that this task requires a model running virtually in real-time, as edit summaries should be created when edit is performed, and cannot be precalculated to decrease the latency.

Here too one wonders whether the situation might have improved over the past year since the paper was first published. Unlike much of the rest of the industry, the Wikimedia Foundation avoids NVIDIA GPUs because of their proprietary CUDA software layer and uses AMD GPUs instead, which are known for having some challenges in running standard open LLMs – but conceivably, AMD's software support and performance optimizations for LLMs might have been improving. Also, given the size of WMF's overall budget, it seems interesting that compute budget constraints would apparently prevent the deployment of a better-performing tool for supporting editors in an important task.


Briefly

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  • Submissions are open until March 9, 2025 for Wiki Workshop 2025, to take place on May 21-22, 2025. The virtual event will be the 12th in this annual series (formerly part of The Web Conference), and has been extended from one to two days this time. It is organized by the Wikimedia Foundation's research team with other collaborators. The call for contributions asks for 2-page extended abstracts which will be "non-archival, which means that they can be ongoing, completed, or already published work."
  • See the page of the monthly Wikimedia Research Showcase for videos and slides of past presentations.

Other recent publications

[edit]

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.

"Scholarly Wikidata: Population and Exploration of Conference Data in Wikidata using LLMs"

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From the abstract:[2]

"Several initiatives have been undertaken to conceptually model the domain of scholarly data using ontologies and to create respective Knowledge Graphs. [...] Our main contributions include (a) an analysis of ontologies for representing scholarly data to identify gaps and relevant entities/properties in Wikidata, (b) semi-automated extraction – requiring (minimal) manual validation – of conference metadata (e.g., acceptance rates, organizer roles, programme committee members, best paper awards, keynotes, and sponsors) from websites and proceedings texts using LLMs. Finally, we discuss (c) extensions to visualization tools in the Wikidata context for data exploration of the generated scholarly data. Our study focuses on data from 105 Semantic Web-related conferences and extends/adds more than 6000 entities in Wikidata. It is important to note that the method can be more generally applicable beyond Semantic Web-related conferences for enhancing Wikidata's utility as a comprehensive scholarly resource."

"Migration and Segregated Spaces: Analysis of Qualitative Sources Such as Wikipedia Using Artificial Intelligence"

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This study uses Wikipedia articles about neighborhoods in Madrid and Barcelona to predict immigrant concentration and segregation. From the abstract:[3]

"The scientific literature on residential segregation in large metropolitan areas highlights various explanatory factors, including economic, social, political, landscape, and cultural elements related to both migrant and local populations. This paper contrasts the impact of these factors individually, such as the immigrant rate and neighborhood segregation. To achieve this, a machine learning analysis was conducted on a sample of neighborhoods in the main Spanish metropolitan areas (Madrid and Barcelona), using a database created from a combination of official statistical sources and textual sources, such as Wikipedia. These texts were transformed into indexes using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other artificial intelligence algorithms capable of interpreting images and converting them into indexes. [...] The novel application of AI and big data, particularly through ChatGPT and Google Street View, has enhanced model predictability, contributing to the scientific literature on segregated spaces."

"On the effective transfer of knowledge from English to Hindi Wikipedia"

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From the abstract:[4]

"[On Wikipedia, t]here is a significant disparity in the quality of content between high-resource languages (HRLs, e.g., English) and low-resource languages (LRLs, e.g., Hindi), with many LRL articles lacking adequate information. To bridge these content gaps, we propose a lightweight framework to enhance knowledge equity between English and Hindi. In case the English Wikipedia page is not up-to-date, our framework extracts relevant information from external resources readily available (such as English books) and adapts it to align with Wikipedia's distinctive style, including its neutral point of view (NPOV) policy, using in-context learning capabilities of large language models. The adapted content is then machine-translated into Hindi for integration into the corresponding Wikipedia articles. On the other hand, if the English version is comprehensive and up-to-date, the framework directly transfers knowledge from English to Hindi. Our framework effectively generates new content for Hindi Wikipedia sections, enhancing Hindi Wikipedia articles respectively by 65% and 62% according to automatic and human judgment-based evaluations."


References

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  1. ^ Šakota, Marija; Johnson, Isaac; Feng, Guosheng; West, Robert (2024-04-04), Edisum: Summarizing and Explaining Wikipedia Edits at Scale, arXiv, doi:10.48550/arXiv.2404.03428 Code models
  2. ^ Mihindukulasooriya, Nandana; Tiwari, Sanju; Dobriy, Daniil; Nielsen, Finn Årup; Chhetri, Tek Raj; Polleres, Axel (2024-11-13), Scholarly Wikidata: Population and Exploration of Conference Data in Wikidata using LLMs, arXiv, doi:10.48550/arXiv.2411.08696 Code / dataset
  3. ^ López-Otero, Javier; Obregón-Sierra, Ángel; Gavira-Narváez, Antonio (December 2024). "Migration and Segregated Spaces: Analysis of Qualitative Sources Such as Wikipedia Using Artificial Intelligence". Social Sciences. 13 (12): 664. doi:10.3390/socsci13120664. ISSN 2076-0760.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  4. ^ Das, Paramita; Roy, Amartya; Chakraborty, Ritabrata; Mukherjee, Animesh (2024-12-07), On the effective transfer of knowledge from English to Hindi Wikipedia, arXiv, doi:10.48550/arXiv.2412.05708



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Alvaro

Let's talk!

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By Bluerasberry, Bri, Tilman Bayer, Andreas Kolbe and Oltrepier

January 2025 update from the Wikimedia Foundation

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TKTK
The CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, Maryana Iskander, wants your feedback!

The executive team at the Wikimedia Foundation, led by CEO Maryana Iskander, presents periodic updates about the states of their projects. The January 2025 update presents and links to narratives categorized as technological developments, legal challenges, the state of Wikimedia Movement fundraising, the budget for spending those funds, staff-organized communication into Wikimedia audiences, and the Wikimedia Foundation-developed pilot projects which are the alternative direction from the now deprecated Wikimedia Community Movement Charter.

The Wikimedia Movement has always aspired to community governance and oversight. As such, letters such as this one are Wikimedia Foundation staff responses to Wikimedia user community requests, petitions, and calls for action. As is usual for these things, the letter is rich with links to even more documentation, and that documentation is often the present culmination of hundreds of Wikimedia user community discussions over years. Aspects of this kind of shared governance which work well include mutual good will, the intent of transparency, invitations for community inclusion, and the Wikimedia platform's history of success in inviting and collecting community conversations which often satisfy the volunteers who participate and the Wikimedia community organizations which promote and observe them.

Any Wikimedian who has participated in these process will be able to offer either criticism or suggestions for improvement, but whatever anyone says, they will want to know that the Wikimedia Movement empowers staff, volunteers, and allies of all backgrounds to grow their ability to advance Wikimedia project goals and to distribute power and resources appropriately.

Interested readers should check out the update, and are invited to post questions on the talk pages of various projects. Those with lots of questions are invited to interview Wikimedia Foundation staff for upcoming articles in The Signpost, and outspoken commentators are invited to submit opinion pieces for publication here. – Br

EU policy report: Is age verification coming?

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In its European Policy Monitoring Report for January 2025, Wikimedia Europe shared smaller updates on several legal developments in the European Union, including regarding AI liability rules, geoblocking, ANTI-SLAPP measures, and obligations for online platforms, including Wikipedia, under the Digital Services Act (DSA) – see prior Signpost coverage here and here.

Concerning child protection, the chapter highlights recent comments by a representative of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNCT):

- Age verification is a central issue, and we [the EU] need to work towards a European solution by mid-2025.

- Other ideas than age verification can be implemented, and it's a work in progress. We want to have a public consultation on the DSA guidelines soon.

- We are in close contact with the Australian authorities [these might include the Ministers for Communications, Cyber Security and Social Services] and with Ofcom in the UK [both countries have seen extended debates about mandatory age verification systems in recent years]. Banning seems effective, but it's excluding minors from useful areas. There are other means that are less intrusive. Different platforms pose different issues. Age verification is essential for adult content, but it isn't the answer for social media.

– TB, O

German Wikipedia deletes 20-year-old WP:Café

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In a controversial decision, the German Wikipedia's Café (archive) was recently deleted. Unlike the English Wikipedia's Teahouse, the Café, opened in 2005, was a place for off-topic discussion and socialising. Controversial IP contributions were part of the chain of events that led to the decision to delete – subsequently reviewed and upheld, but still the subject of ongoing discussion as many lament the venue's loss.

– A.K.

Brief notes

[edit]
You can join other editors in editing Ice cream social. And maybe enjoy an actual ice cream social afterwards.



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Fathoms Below, but over the moon

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By Fathoms Below

This is a re-adapted version of user Fathoms Below's own reflections – published with their permission – about their Request for Adminship, which passed in February 2024, when they were known as The Night Watch. Enjoy!

A year on from my RfA, I have some thoughts that I'm willing to share. While I won't go into heavy detail regarding what occurred there and what led to it becoming probably the closest RfA of 2024, I suggest that anyone who reads this essay just look into what happened and come to their own conclusions what I could have done differently. What I do know is that there isn't any response that will satisfy everybody, and so I'm just going to leave the matter to itself. If you were looking for an overview of my week at RfA, there isn't much to talk about and this essay won't focus much on it. But I do want to push back against the idea that "RfA can be fun", because that's not true at all, and frankly, it makes me upset to hear that. Usually, I'd give more restraint to that line of thinking, but I've also remembered someone saying that one of the worst RfAs in several years was just a rare fluke, as if its occurrence was akin to "in order to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs". So, this essay is focused towards those people, and although there is a likelihood that there really isn't another RfA as toxic as mine with the advent of Administrator elections, and that there's probably people out there that just dismisses this essay as the ramblings of a temperamentally unfit admin, but I really don't want some up-and-coming but clueless newbie like me to go down my path.

The week of my RfA was busy for me in real life, though it was six straight days of stress from the very start. Waking up early in the morning and seeing who !voted, pacing around the streets near me to try and relax, listening to music to help cope with the intensity... it wasn't a good ride. But I didn't expect that things would be so hard, and newbie me thought in 2022 that the process wasn't nearly as traumatizing. I think they thought that it might have been "fun" in a way. In the summer of that year, after I helped promote the article Elden Ring to good article status, I read about the RfA that the GA reviewer, Vami IV, had experienced. Now, say and think what you will about Vami, but I try to remind myself that we're all humans here. We do good and bad things, and while Vami did bad things, he also did good. A lot of good that was shared. And newbie me was clueless about how to discuss the RfA with Vami in private. I realized what I had said then by the time it was too late, and it kind of created a "cloud" between us that I thought had gone away about a year or so later.

Fast forward to February 11, 2024, and I speak to him for the last time. That tension hadn't really gone away, and by that point I was dazed about how my RfA went that I could not concentrate on Vami, and I tried recovering from the damage to my esteem. It's weird how traumatic events get burned into your mind and phase in at odd moments. I reread my RfA many, many times over the next few months that it had hurt my mental health. I felt guilty that I passed while my friend was left with more baggage and nothing gained. I really can't describe the feeling, and I don't expect to be able to communicate it here. After all, Wikipedia articles are written in a dispassionate tone that bleeds over into our processes. And when you can't see the human on the other end, the average person doesn't care enough.

But for all of that drama and pushback, I still continued as a relatively unremarkable admin for a few months, resigned as I tried to process a difficult period in my real life, and returned last November. It seems that it's typical of Wikipedia's processes that so much volunteer time is spent on discussions and things that don't objectively matter so much. This article comes to mind immediately. But someone was hurt in real life, and the people around them were hurt too by RfA. That's why I'm upset to hear that RfA can be "fun". So yeah, I'm writing this to all the people out there that see RfA as cluelessly as I did in the Summer of 2022. Maybe some newbie down the line will find this essay and be a bit wiser, à-la The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Or, perhaps, the lessons of the debriefs written by Moneytrees, Tamzin, and Vami IV will fall on deaf ears.

I'd like to acknowledge the following people:

  • Ingenuity and Moneytrees, for being amazing nominators. If either of you are reading this, I really don't feel like I deserved your support and advice. A part of me feels ashamed that you had to watch all of that unfold, and I feel like I let you all both down in a way. I'm not a ScottishFinnishRadish, or GorillaWarfare, or... a Moneytrees, but I suppose I've done some good work in a way and I hope that work gives back to you both somehow. You guys are both awesome.
  • Panini, Shushugah, and the others who reached out to me on my talk page, and Maliner and a few others who reached out to me privately. I was in a really hard point of my life and everything you all said helped give some endurance I needed to reach the end. If you gave me both reasonable and constructive criticism, I really appreciate it, too. Hopefully among you all will be the people who lead Wikipedia to a better future, even in the days that I may no longer be as active as I used to be.
  • Vami IV's sister, for her support and compassion. We miss your brother so much.
  • An anonymous editor. Hopefully I was a source of goodness in your life as you were in mine.
  • And Clovermoss, for her encouragement for me to publish this essay. I doubt my debrief would be as good as your debrief, and I still don't think it's on a comparable level, but I hope it means something to some reader out there. You had my back throughout a lot of last year, and I see how you demonstrated that big things have small beginnings. It's all because of the butterfly effect, y'know? You're an amazing friend, and I would not have gotten this far without you.


See more RfA debriefs here – eds.



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Alvaro

Wikipedia is an extension of legacy media propaganda, says Elon Musk

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By Bri, Jonatan Svensson Glad, Oltrepier, and Smallbones

A Roman salute?

[edit]
Detail from The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David (1785). Painted in Rome for the French King Louis XVI, by a future revolutionary


A gesture made on stage by Elon Musk at the 2025 Donald Trump presidential inauguration was interpreted by some as a Nazi or Roman salute, and by others as an ambiguous wave. The Wikipedia article on the Elon Musk gesture controversy covers both possibilities, but this didn't prevent it from being the focus of attention in the media.

Neutrality-preserving processes at work

On Elon Musk's Wikipedia biography, a long paragraph about the controversy is currently included, following the closure of a request for comment on the article's talk page as accepting that a limited mention should be included. An articles for deletion nomination for Elon Musk's arm gesture was closed with a rough consensus to keep the article. Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review that "Wikipedia's update on Musk's salute is a case in point" of the encyclopedia's neutrality in describing controversial events, as it "includes Musk's physical arm movement and how it was viewed by some as a Nazi gesture, but also notes that Musk denied such intent" (emphasis added).

Reactions, and reactions to reactions

The Independent reported that "Elon Musk was furious" after his Wikipedia page referred to his controversial gesture as a "Nazi salute":

(Musk) called out the online encyclopedia site on X after the gesticulation he made at a rally at the Capital One Arena was referred to as "a Nazi salute or fascist salute" on his Wikipedia page – something the Tesla/X CEO vehemently denies.

But the link to the "denial" is less than it first seemed. Also, Vanity Fair's article on the same matter said that "Elon Musk Sure Isn’t Denying That His Inaugural Gesture Was a Nazi Salute".

Numerous tweets were tweeted (or X'd). A Newsweek piece stated in its title that Wikipedia "fired back" at Musk, but it was actually talking about Jimmy Wales's response to a Musk tweet – both posts were linked to in the aforementioned Independent article:

I think Elon is unhappy that Wikipedia is not for sale. I hope his campaign to defund us results in lots of donations from people who care about the truth. If Elon wanted to help, he'd be encouraging kind and thoughtful intellectual people he agrees with to engage.

– Jimmy Wales

What is certain is that Musk's gesture caused different reactions within Jewish political organizations: The Forward – formerly known as Forverts when it was published in Yiddish – quoted a "conciliatory" statement by the Anti-Defamation League, who said that Musk "made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute". The ADL statement is discussed in the Wikipedia article about the controversy, which also mentions a former director of the association, Abraham Foxman, being at odds with their take. On the other hand, as reported by The Guardian, the head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Amy Spitalnick, expressed more concern over the gesture, saying that "there was nothing ambiguous" about the salutes, and that they "should be enough to warrant condemnation and attention".

Swedish national public broadcaster Sveriges Television added more details about Musk's criticism of Wikipedia (in Swedish), highlighting his claim that the site relies on "legacy media propaganda" for sourcing. It also includes another direct response from Jimmy Wales, who defended Wikipedia's neutrality, stating that the article simply reports verifiable facts: Musk made the gesture, it was widely compared to a Nazi salute, and he denied any intent. Wales also took the opportunity to remind Musk of the failure of his supposed bid to buy Wikipedia.

And the truth is...

France 24 gave a comprehensive video analysis of Musk's gesture, while DW News (a channel of Deutsche Welle) stated what may be the last word on the meaning of the gesture. According to analyst Matthew Moore, "there's only one person I think that really knows whether this was a fascist salute, and that is Elon Musk".

– B, JSG, O

Palestine-Israel Articles decision

[edit]

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report on the Arbitration Committee's Palestine-Israel Articles 5 decision was the core of several stories in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post, both Israeli media, as well as The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

Several Wikipedians provided a mix of anonymous and attributed responses to the Jewish Journal, expressing a range of opinions from optimistic – "I like the idea of something like the article titles restriction...the vacuum [caused by bans of individuals] will be filled by experienced editors who have heretofore been afraid to edit in the topic area" – to ascerbic – "[it is] flabby and insufficient ... the arbs in general were lazy, robotic, and are utterly unsuited to provide 'adult supervision' of Wikipedia."

The decision was also covered by Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), with less emphasis on the ADL commentary.

The JTA was in turn syndicated by several US newspapers, including Miami's South Florida Sun Sentinel (read here) and Brooklyn's Jewish Press (read here).

See related Signpost coverage at this issue's Arbitration report. – B

Big picture

[edit]

Stephen Harrison's latest piece for Slate combines topics we also discuss below, most specifically the Heritage Foundation's plans to "identify and target" Wikipedia editors – see prior Signpost coverage – plus the aforementioned conclusion of an ArbCom case involving Israeli and Palestinian supporters.

Harrison noted how it is not encouraging that "in the long term, Wikipedians, and the rest of us, can ask for stronger privacy protections from both lawmakers and the companies", but "until then, there is not much that users can do to protect themselves from mass surveillance."

The beat reporter sees the Heritage's alleged plan to out editors as a form of harassment to force its views into contentious articles, fearing that, if these tactics were implemented and proved to be successful, they might drive away all but the most strident editors:

Faced with the risk of harassment or real-world retaliation, many volunteer editors—especially those covering politically sensitive topics—may simply stop contributing. Those who remain are likely to be the most ideologically driven voices, further eroding Wikipedia's stated goal of neutrality.

The free encyclopedia will become too toxic to sustain.

– S

John Green's ties to AFC Wimbledon now officially acknowledged on his Wikipedia page

[edit]
Jack Currie and John Green
Jack Currie could definitely tell how much John Green loves AFC Wimbledon... well, so does his Wikipedia page now!

In a recent video for the vlogbrothers YouTube channel, author and philantropist John Green recently shared more details about "something ridiculous", that is, the latest achievement of his charity community, Nerdfighteria: the completion of a real-life soccer transfer. Green, together with his wife and about 1,100 members of Nerdfighteria, helped English League Two club AFC Wimbledon pay for the transfer of Marcus Browne, having collected most of the money through donations on several livestreams hosted at Green's solo channel.

AFC Wimbledon was founded in 2002 by former fans of Wimbledon F.C., in dissent to the controversial relocation of the club to Milton Keynes, which eventually led to the foundation of MK Dons. The phoenix club is majority-owned by a fan association, the Dons Trust, and Green – despite being a life-long fan of Liverpool F.C. – has sponsored them since July 2014, when Nerdfighteria was first announced as a back-of-shorts sponsor.

In his video about the Browne transfer, Green stated that supporting AFC Wimbledon was "one of my great achievements of my life", and that he had "no idea why it's not on my Wikipedia page". As reported by several users in the comment section, the author's call-to-action (of sorts) prompted editor Hameltion to add new information to the Personal life section of his Wikipedia article, so that the "ridiculous" milestone could be celebrated properly. In the words of Green himself, "The ridiculous is perilously close to the sublime!" – O

In brief

[edit]
Wikipedia correctly provided information on The Godfather's lead actor, unlike CNN's recent AI query (director's casting notes shown, with Marlon Brando underlined in red)



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 leave a tip on the suggestions page.




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24th Wikipedia Day in New York City

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By SWinxy
A crowd of about 100 people pose for a photo. Silver balloons in the shape of '24' are held up in front. Pacita Rudder is crouching right in front of them. Some people are holding up finger signs in the shape of the Wikipedia 'W'.
New York City Wikimedians celebrate 24 years of Wikipedia
A photo of a cake. The cake has an edible laptop on top, with a DVD, a flash drive, and a mouse on top. DVDs circle the side of the cake. The laptop screen has text saying "Happy birthday Wikipedia".
One of the cakes baked for the celebration (red velvet)

Over 350 Wikimedians and newbies celebrated 24 years of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at Wikimedia New York City's Wikipedia Day NYC 2025 celebration on January 25, at the Brooklyn Central Library. Special guests Stephen Harrison, tech reporter and author of The Editors, and Clay Shirky, technology writer, joined in a conversation about reliable sources.

Every year, on or around January 15th, Wikimedians around the world host in-person meetups to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the online encyclopedia. Typical at these events are birthday cakes, Wikipedia globes, and short presentations called "lightning talks". Fifteen years have passed since Wikimedia NYC 2010, the first Wikipedia Day celebration in NYC.

The first half of Wikipedia Day NYC 2025 was spent in the atrium of the Central Library, with informational tables run by partner organizations, including AfroCrowd, Wikitongues, BetaNYC, Cybernetics Library, and Farming Concrete. The atrium also featured a photo booth backdrop, an art presentation by the Interactive Telecommunications program at NYU, a vinyl shirt pressing station, and more. Meanwhile, in the nearby Info Commons Training Room, talks included Intro to Wikipedia, Your Neighborhood on Wikipedia, and the first group of lightning talks.

Lightning talks included a wide variety of presentations. Pharos discussed Wikinews, a project I began participating in alongside a push by the NYC chapter to do original reporting. PixDeVl presented "Wikis, beyond 'media", showcasing the wide variety of non-WMF wikis that are created for niche interests. He applauded, for instance, the work of the Minecraft Wiki, a project that forked from Fandom.com, which I also contributed to. bstadt discussed using machine learning to create a latent space for all articles from every language Wikipedia, mapped onto a 2D graph.

Lane Rasberry, a University of Virginia School of Data Science Wikipedian-in-residence, highlighted the unprecedented suppression of an English Wikipedia article by an Indian High Court. Rasberry previously wrote about it back in November for The Signpost. His motto? "Editing Wikipedia is not a crime." Sharon Park showed her beautifully-created, Wikipedia-inspired, animated illustrations she made for 2024's "Wikipedia in Review". Dorothy Howard presented on contributing concert photos to Wikimedia Commons. James Hare dove deep into explaining "Infrastructure and Tools for Source Reliability," preceded by a related talk on "reference parsing" by Wikimedia Enterprise employee Francisco Navas. RoySmith shared insight on "Sourcing the Big Apple". Rosiestep updated the crowd on ongoing research into Wikimedia's Gender Gap. Several others also contributed lightning talks, some of which were not taped.

Attendees spent the second half of the Wikipedia Day NYC 2025 celebration downstairs in the Dweck Cultural Center, where Rhododendrites kicked off the presentations with a micro-keynote on community and thinking locally.

Pacita Rudder

Wikipedia Day NYC 2025 was the first Wikipedia Day event with the first executive director of Wikimedia NYC, Pacita Rudder, who joined the organization in May of 2024. "We're really excited for this particular event because it's not often that we celebrate all of the work that we do, and all of the contributors like yourselves who are making a difference to the world's largest encyclopedia," Rudder told attendees.

2025 is also roughly the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York City. Depending on how you define "founded", there is disagreement on which year the city was established, but the official Seal of New York City was changed in 1977 to date it at 1625. Rudder, with Wikimedia New York City founder Pharos, introduced a new initiative celebrating the quadricentennial anniversary of the city establishment. This initiative seeks to improve 400 articles on neighborhoods in New York City with a website, 400nyc.org, soliciting suggestions for neighborhoods and New Yorkers to improve/create articles for.

Supporting this endeavor is Craig Newmark's Newmark Philanthropies, founder of Craigslist, who appeared in a prerecorded message at the event. In his message, Newmark reiterated his support for Wikipedia: "I'm a passionate believer in what Wikipedia does. I tell people over and over again, Wikipedia is where facts are going to live. Wikipedia is a critically important platform, because it's built on lifting up reliable sources, something which is getting harder and harder to find."

Keynote panel, left to right: Emily Gertz, Stephen Harrison, Clay Shirky, and Molly Stark Dean.

Energetically introduced by Molly Stark Dean, the keynote event was a conversation between author and tech journalist Stephen Harrison and tech writer Clay Shirky, moderated by environmental journalist and Women Do News co-founder Emily Gertz. (I was tapped to moderate the panel, but I declined.) The conversation topic revolved around reliable sources and the threat to fact-based institutions on which the project relies. "I would say, in the spirit of 'reliable sources', that the huge threat right now isn't the engagement of Wikipedians themselves," Shirky said, "but the big risk is the loss of facts upstream. There is an attack on factual accuracy on the availability of facts that is quite profound."

Annie Rauwerda

Following the conversation was Depths of Wikipedia creator Annie Rauwerda, quizzing the audience with obscure Wikipedia lore. Two volunteers won copies of Harrison's new book, The Editors. Finally, before the cakes were served, another round of lightning talks had been delivered.

Information about last year's Wikipedia Day in New York City was published on Wikimedia's blog, Diff. A recording of part of this year's event is available on YouTube. Photos from the event are posted on Wikimedia Commons.

With contributions from Wil540 art.



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Palestine-Israel articles 5 has closed

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A final decision was posted by the Arbitration Committee concerning the case Palestine-Israel articles 5 (aka PIA5).

Summary of decision

[edit]

A concise summary can be found at Special:Permalink/1271417868#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel articles 5 closed. This is a summary of the summary.

Arbs agreed on the following:

  • Extended confirmed protection (ECP) is now the default status of all PIA articles, whether or not disruption has occurred (also, Articles for creation drafts by non-ECP users apparently will not be accepted, according to a clarification issued just before we go to press[footnotes 1]).
  • No new bans occurred – user Ïvana was already banned in pre-case Arbcom action, but re-banned in IPA5.
  • Some topic bans were adopted.
  • A number of warnings and admonishments were handed out.
  • A novel remedy called "Balanced editing restriction", to be enforced technically (via edit filter), was constructed by the committee as a discretionary sanction:

In a given 30-day period, a user sanctioned under this restriction is limited to making no more than one-third of their edits in the Article, Talk, Draft, and Draft talk namespaces to pages that are subject to the extended-confirmed restriction under Arab–Israeli conflict contentious topic procedures.

  • A novel remedy called "Article title restriction" was constructed by the committee (although it failed 10–1).

An article on a violent engagement within the Arab–Israeli conflict, broadly construed...may not describe the engagement as a "massacre", "murder", "bombing", "genocide", or "assassination" or similarly contentious word.

  • The community was encouraged to run a request for comment (RFC) on POV forks.
  • SPI clerks may invite contributors to leave (with existing authorities).

The committee was divided on "AndreJustAndre banned". An 8–6 majority decided not to enact that remedy, but a majority did decide to levy a "suspended site ban", under which a new Clarification and Amendment (ARCA) case can result in a relatively quick ban by motion.

Footnotes:

  1. ^ A clerk even stated that a non-ECP user merely creating a draft in the PIA topic area was a violation of the Arbcom ruling

Community reaction

[edit]

Community reaction to the decision was robust, with nearly 60 kB of comments on the committee noticeboard's talk page, as of this issue's deadline.



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A wild drive

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By Igordebraga, Vestrian24Bio, GN22, Wizzito, Shuipzv3, CAWylie, Royiswariii, Clubette and Rebestalic.
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Vestrian24Bio, GN22, Wizzito and CAWylie (January 12 to 18); by Igordebraga, Shuipzv3, Vestrian24Bio, and GN22 (January 19 to 25); and by Igordebraga, Clubette, GN22, Royiswariii, Rebestalic, Vestrian24Bio, and Wizzito (January 26 to February 1).

She wore blue velvet, bluer than velvet was the night (January 12 to 18)

[edit]
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 David Lynch 2,785,081 A widely acclaimed filmmaker known for works full of mystery and surreal imagery such as the movies Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, and the TV show Twin Peaks, David Lynch died at 78 as his already decayed health caused by emphysema (consequence of decades smoking) took a dive once he was forced to leave his Los Angeles home due to wildfires. Along with the directing gigs that even landed him an Academy Honorary Award, Lynch also worked on music, photography and literature, and also acted on occasion, such as a memorable appearance as John Ford on The Fabelmans.
2 MrBeast 1,868,297 His reality competition show Beast Games, which is currently releasing weekly episodes on Amazon Prime Video, has become their most-streamed unscripted show in history. Despite its success, the show has received negative reviews from critics and some contestants alleged that they were mistreated during its production, with five of the contestants filing a class action lawsuit against MrBeast and his company.
3 Game Changer (film) 1,160,501 Like past mainstay of this list Pushpa 2: The Rule, this is also from Tollywood, but a box-office bomb. This is the directorial debut of S. Shankar (pictured) in the Telugu industry but it ultimately became his fourth consecutive overall film to fail at box office. Yet, what really worries me is another film (from Kollywood) directed by him is releasing next week and its a sequel to the biggest disappointment of 2024.
4 Kumbh Mela 1,079,008 An important Hindu pilgrimage that happens every 6 to 12 years, with the 2025 Prayag Kumbh Mela scheduled to take place from 13 January to 26 February at the Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj.
5 Pete Hegseth 1,073,626 #8's pick for the United States Secretary of Defense had his confirmation hearings this week.
6 Deaths in 2025 1,052,510 From one of #1's movies:
Turn off the sun; pull the stars from the sky
The more I give to you, the more I die!
7 Pam Bondi 999,773 #8's pick for the United States Attorney General had her confirmation hearings this week.
8 Donald Trump 776,542 It’s been a long four years since Trump was last in the Oval Office, but, starting Monday, he will be sitting behind the Resolute desk once again. On his successful campaign to reclaim the Presidency, the 45th and 47th President sustained four indictments and 34 felony convictions, narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a rally by less than an inch, and kept going despite a swap at the top of the Democratic ticket. He won all seven battleground states and (narrowly) even the popular vote, robbing Grover Cleveland of his sole claim to fame in American history (before this point he was the only President elected to nonconsecutive terms). Whether you love him, loathe him, or simply don’t care about him, it’s indisputable that Trump definitely knows something about the art of the comeback!
9 Severance (TV series) 749,163 This American science fiction psychological thriller series, filmed mostly at Bell Labs (pictured), debuted on Apple TV+ in 2022. Its first season received 14 Emmy nominations but only won creative ones (title design and music). It was renewed for future seasons soon after the release of the first, the second of which premiered January 16.
10 Squid Game season 2 699,841 Set three years after Seong Gi-hun won the Squid Game, he returns to the game in season 2 to stop them once and for all. Joining the cast are Park Sung-hoon as a transgender woman seeking a gender reassignment surgery, Im Si-wan as a former YouTube star who lost his fortune, Lee Jin-wook as a man trying to win the money for his cancer-battling daughter, Kang Ae-shim and Yang Dong-geun as mother and son who enter the game individually in a desperate bid to clear his debts just to find each other there, Choi Seung-hyun as a purple-haired rapper, known by his stage name "Thanos", and Jo Yu-ri as a heavily pregnant woman hoping to win enough money to support her baby as a single mother. The season garnered positive reviews and big viewership numbers, set record for highest premiere viewership for Netflix surpassing Wednesday season 1, and it is expected to be followed by the third and final season this year.

He's at it again and he's gonna win (January 19 to 25)

[edit]
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Donald Trump 3,884,456 On January 20, he was sworn in (#8) as the 47th President of the United States, taking over from Joe Biden. He immediately issued a series of executive orders to fulfil his agenda. They include withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement, re-declaring a national emergency at the Mexico–United States border, directed the federal government to only recognize two genders, estabishing the Department of Government Efficiency to be headed by #6, rescinding artificial intelligence policy goals, reversed sanctions on Israeli settlers, pardoned around 1,200 January 6 defendants, commuted sentences for members of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, ordered the federal renaming of #9 to the "Gulf of America" and Denali back to Mount McKinley, and delayed a ban on TikTok by 75 days. An order to end birthright citizenship was quickly blocked by a federal judge. Several inspectors general were also informed of their immediate termination, which may be "inconsistent with the law" and subject to court challenge.
2 MrBeast 3,666,653 From most-subscribed YouTube channel to most viewed show on Amazon Prime Video and now he's biding to buy TikTok.
3 JD Vance 2,319,253 The new Vice President, who prior to inauguration met his Chinese equivalent Han Zheng, and after getting in the role swore in Secretary of State Marco Rubio and cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.
4 Melania Trump 2,173,494 The Slovenian First Lady and the Hindu American Second Lady of the United States.
5 Usha Vance 2,139,252
6 Elon Musk 2,041,055 Elon Musk, Elon Musk. Why you choose that to greet me?

In a rally shortly after the inauguration (#8) of #1, the centibillionaire who will head DOGE saluted the crowd in a way that instantly caused a ruckus. His defenders and a few other organizations tried to claim it was not as it seemed, but as The Hollywood Reporter put it, "Sometimes a Nazi Salute is a Nazi Salute.” Then, on January 25, Musk made a surprise appearance via video link at a Alternative for Germany campaign rally, expressing his support for the far-right party.

7 Ross Ulbricht 1,840,003 Ulbricht created and operated Silk Road, a marketplace on the dark web in which illegal products and services could be traded. In October 2013, the website was shut down by the FBI and he was arrested. Ulbricht was serving a life imprisonment sentence when #1 granted him a full pardon.
8 Second inauguration of Donald Trump 1,073,356 Due to freezing temperatures in DC, this was held inside the United States Capitol rotunda, the first indoors inauguration since the one for Reagan's reelection in 1985. Among the ones in attendance were all the living U.S. presidents, and lots of rich people - a much divulged picture had tech moguls #6, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
9 Gulf of Mexico 1,066,060 #1 signed an executive order to rename this to the "Gulf of America" for federal use. Even still, most of the world, including the majority of everyday Americans, will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico.
10 Mariann Budde 1,061,367 As the Bishop of Washington, she gave a prayer service the day after #8, urging #1 to show mercy and compassion to vulnerable people, specifically citing the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and war refugees. #1 responded with insults and demanded an apology.

Dance little tin goddess, dance (January 26 to February 1)

[edit]
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 DeepSeek 2,542,555 Actually, I’m not sure why I bother. In the end, it too will probably be Made in China.

An arms race to build the best large language model (LLM). OpenAI with ChatGPT, Google with Gemini, Microsoft with Copilot, character.ai, and so on. Established tech giants putting everything into AI. Billions of dollars and thousands of people working on LLMs. The U.S. president investing $500 billion in AI.

An obscure Chinese company releasing DeepSeek. 20 times cheaper, 10 times less processing power, still just as good. People thinking, "Maybe we don't need to pump so much money into the industry?" A trillion-dollar stock market crash.

2 Karoline Leavitt 1,719,534 This gentlewoman is President #6's fifth White House Press Secretary, when including first-term predecessors Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and Kayleigh McEnany. Raised Catholic and hailing from the Live Free or Die state New Hampshire, she recently claimed that $50 million in taxpayer funds were to go to fund "condoms in Gaza".
3 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision 1,585,882 On January 29, a Bombardier CRJ700 airliner collided mid-air with a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter of the United States Army over the Potomac River a half-mile (0.8 km) from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia. All 67 people on board the two aircraft were killed in what was the deadliest air disaster on United States soil since 2009.
4 List of Super Bowl champions 1,246,947 As of this writing, a total of 20 franchises have won the NFL Super Bowl. The winner of each Super Bowl receives the famed Vince Lombardi Trophy. Super Bowl LIX next Sunday will have a repeat winner between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
5 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 1,188,293 One more in the influential Kennedy Family, Mr. Robert F. K. Jr. is President #6's nominee for Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, highest-spending of all Government Departments by more than double the second-placed D. of Defense (see here; 2023 numbers). At a spunky 71 years young, environmental law and health topics have been among his interests; while appraising efforts like the Green New Deal and championing the adoption of solar-cell magic, he also denounces vaccines, claiming they cause autism.
6 Donald Trump 1,079,557 Trump’s back (both in this report and to the presidency), and so are his tariffs. Several of his executive orders are being challenged in court such as the ones attempting to redefine birthright citizenship guaranteed under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution and freeze federal spending.
7 Marianne Faithfull 1,052,186 An English singer and actress who died at the age of 78. Faithfull achieved popularity in the 1960s, with some help from The Rolling Stones (she dated Mick Jagger, co-wrote "Sister Morphine" with him, and he let Faithfull record "As Tears Go By" first, giving her a top 10 single), only for the following decade to have her face hardships, including laryngitis and drug abuse that led to what James Hetfield described as a "weathered, smellin'-the-cigarettes-on-the-CD voice" hauntingly employed in one of his songs.
8 Deaths in 2025 999,735 Speaking of said song:
And can't the band play on?
Just listen, they play my song
Ash to ash
Dust to dust
Fade to black...
9 Royal Rumble (2025) 952,745 WWE Royal Rumble 2025 held Lucas Oil Stadium at Indianapolis, Indiana. We shocked and surprised on the returning on the royal rumble like WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus, Nikki Bella, Alexa Bliss and many more. But, we didn't expect that AJ Lee not return on Royal Rumble. We didn't forget that IShowSpeed like... what the...?. We surprised too that in audience, RVD (Rob... Van... Dam!), Ron Simmons (Damn!) watching Royal Rumble too. 30 Men Royal Rumble, while Jey Uso and John Cena are fighting, we did not expect or was not in my bingo card! that Uso eliminated Cena and he will go and be the main event on WrestleMania 41. WWE Fans was disappointed too that in 30 Women Royal Rumble that Charlotte Flair has won, fans called "a predictable" and Flair will go on WrestleMania 41 too. I wonder if Drew Carey can go again on Royal Rumble just like he did on Royal 2001 Royal Rumble. Hmm... much worse.
10 Sky Force (film) 920,762 This Bollywood action drama film centred around India's first airstrike – the attack against Pakistan's Sargodha airbase in the Indo-Pakistani air war of 1965 – was released last week coinciding with the Indian Republic Day weekend. The film stars Akshay Kumar in the lead role and is directed by Abhishek Anil Kapur and co-produced by Ambani's Jio Studios. It received positive reviews and has almost recovered its budget as of this writing.

Exclusions

[edit]
  • 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.

Most edited articles

[edit]

For the December 27 – January 27 period, per this database report.

Title Revisions Notes
Bigg Boss (Tamil TV series) season 8 3725 Kollywood didn't have a good 2024 with many expected films being met with criticism and becoming box-office bombs, line-up for 2025 isn't very promising either; but this reality show from Tamil Nadu which is part of the Big Brother franchise has made it here. The eighth season hosted by Vijay Sethupathi for the first time premiered on last October and concluded with the Finale on 19 January.
Deaths in 2025 2013 New year, new notable deaths, and the two biggest of January 2025 were directors, the aforementioned David Lynch and Jeff Baena, which aside from one exception made a few unconventional comedies featuring his wife Aubrey Plaza.
January 2025 Southern California wildfires 1920 California has been hit by extreme weather in the last decade, with an extensive drought from 2011 to 2017, floods last year, and now a combination of dry weather and strong winds leading to massive fires in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. 27 people died and hundreds of thousands were forced to evacuate, many of whom wound up losing their homes as the flames destroyed lots of buildings.
2025 New Orleans truck attack 1547 At around 3:15 a.m. on January 1, a man drove a pickup truck into a crowd celebrating the New Year in New Orleans, then engaged in a shootout with police before being shot dead. Fifteen people were killed, including the perpetrator (identified as Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar) and 35 more wounded. According to investigators, the perpetrator had been radicalized in 2024, and pledged allegiance to Islamic State in the minutes before the attack.
Jeju Air Flight 2216 1506 Jeju Air Flight 2216 was a scheduled passenger flight operated by Jeju Air from Bangkok, Thailand to Muan International Airport in South Korea. On December 29, the aircraft operating the flight landed on its second attempt with no landing gear, possibly due to damage from a bird strike. It skidded down the runway, overrunning it and crashed into an embankment, where it immediately burst into flames. Out of the 181 occupants, two cabin crew survived.
Margaret Sanger 1475 Noleander did extensive work on the page for the Planned Parenthood founder so it could become a Good Article.
Bigg Boss (Hindi TV series) season 18 1246 We mentioned the Kollywood Big Brother, here's the Bollywood one.
Donald Trump 1061 Four more years with this guy splitting his time between Mar-a-Lago and the White House.
2024–25 NFL playoffs 918 The lead-up to Super Bowl LIX ended up in a slightly disappointing match-up that is also a rerun of the 2023 edition, namely the Philadelphia Eagles facing the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs. At least there will be Kendrick Lamar at the half-time show!
Bigg Boss Kannada season 11 895 Again, the Sandalwood Big Brother (there are eight Indian versions of the famed reality show).
2025 Australian Open – Men's singles 854 Jannik Sinner successfully defended his title in Melbourne, postponing the dream Alexander Zverev has of a first Grand Slam.
2025 Liberal Party of Canada leadership election 850 Justin Trudeau, who's been prime minister of Canada since 2015, announced on January 6 his pending resignation, to take effect once his party elects a new leader on March 9. His announcement came after a series of by-election losses and the resignation of several members of his cabinet in 2024, most notably his deputy Chrystia Freeland, which triggered the 2024–2025 Canadian political crisis.
2025 795 All is quiet on New Year's Day
A world in white gets underway
I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's Day...
Death and state funeral of Jimmy Carter 794 39th president of the United States Jimmy Carter died on December 29, 2024. His state funeral took place from January 4 to 9, starting in his home state of Georgia, where his body laid in repose at the Carter Center from January 4 to 7. His body was then flown to the capital, where it laid in state in the United States Capitol rotunda until January 9, when a state funeral service was conducted at Washington National Cathedral, attended by the Carter family as well as domestic and foreign dignitaries. After the service, his remains were transported to the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter House in Plains, Georgia, where Carter lived for decades and spent his final years, for a private burial.
Palisades Fire (2025) 793 The most affected area of the aforementioned wildfire was Pacific Palisades, which were basically all burned down, destroying homes of celebrities and commoners alike.



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