English Wikipedia @ Freddythechick:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-10-23/News and notes

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|Where have all the administrators gone?|By Andreas Kolbe, Bri, and HaeB 
|5 October 2023

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Record low number of active administrators

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|image=File:Outcome of English Wikipedia RfAs.svg
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}} We have had eight successful candidacies for adminship so far in 2023, which is just one more than the worst-ever year for RfA, which was 2021. The number of active administrators started the year 2023 at 500, then took a big dive in mid February for no reason that The Signpost has been able to determine, touched 452 a couple of times in April, and until October was steady around 460.

On October 18, we hit a new record low, going back over a decade, of 448 active admins. To find the last time English Wikipedia had fewer than 449 active admins, we have to go back to 2005.[a]

The reasons for this are cloudy and have been covered before by The Signpost, for instance at "Administrator cadre continues to contract – more" in January 2022.

In a recent Administrators' noticeboard discussion titled "Twelve fewer administrators", BeanieFan11 noted not a single month this year have we had a net gain of administrators, and so far all but one have had a net decrease, some large - per the admin's newsletter: January: +3, -11, net -8; February: +1, -5, net -4; March: +1, -2, net -1; April: +1, -1, net 0 (only month without negative net); May: +1, -4, net -3; June: +1, -3, net -2; July: +1, -8, net -7; August: +1, -4, net -3; September: +2, -4, net -2; October: +1, -12, net -11; Overall: +13, -53, net -40

At least one disappeared admin was fallout from the WP:ROADS controversy ending in a content fork and some departures, including Rschen7754 who resigned as an administrator and editor. – B

  1. ^ According to RickBot updates to WP:List of administrators that started in 2014, and charts at User:Widefox/editors before that. Anomalous data 11 September–28 September 2021 are excluded.

Knowledge Equity Fund

The Wikimedia Foundation has published comprehensive notes from the recent community call about the Knowledge Equity Fund on Meta. The notes include a Q&A. The WMF also highlights that the Fund has helped it to make new connections:

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An ongoing English Wikipedia Village Pump Request for Comment on the controversial fund stands at 35:23 in favour of adopting the following non-binding resolution:

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– AK

Community rejects proposal to create policy about large language models

A request for comment (RfC) to create an English Wikipedia policy or guideline regulating editors' use of large language models (e.g. ChatGPT) was rejected recently. Specifically, the RfC concerned the proposal to elevate the draft page Wikipedia:Large language models (expanded from a much smaller version created in December 2022) to policy or guideline status. As summarized by the closing editor:

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Similarly, on Wikimedia Commons a page collecting guidance about AI-generated media (particularly the use of generative AI models such as DALL-E, Stable Diffusion or Midjourney), likewise created in December 2022, is still marked as "a work in progress page", although it appears to have progressed a bit further already towards reflecting community consensus.

In any case, discussions about generative AI are continuing in the Wikimedia movement, also in off-wiki fora such as the "ML, AI and GenAI for Wikimedia Projects" Facebook group and the "Wikimedia AI" group on Telegram (non-public but with public invite link). At Wikimania 2023, it was the subject of various sessions including two panels titled "AI advancements and the Wikimedia projects" (video) and "ChatGPT vs. WikiGPT: Challenges and Opportunities in harnessing generative AI for Wikimedia Projects" (video). The September edition of the Wiki Education Foundation's "Speaker Series" likewise had the topic "Wikipedia in a Generative AI World", featuring three speakers including Aaron Halfaker (User:EpochFail, a former research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation and developer of the AI-based ORES system that is still widely used for vandalism detection and other purposes). – H


Several European regulation efforts may adversely affect Wikimedia projects

In its EU Policy Monitoring Report for September, Wikimedia Europe highlights several legislative efforts that are ongoing on the continent. Some of them raise concerns regarding their possible impact on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects:

  • The EMFA (European Media Freedom Act) is "intended to help a pluralistic media landscape", but also contains problematic provisions, e.g. a requirement for online platforms to warn "media providers, who can be media outlets but also individuals, such as journalists [...] ahead of moderating their content and to give them a fast-track channel to contest decisions. Some lawmakers even suggest that online platforms be prohibited from deleting content by media providers before the provider has had a chance to reply. All this is highly problematic, seeing that disinformation is sometimes produced by media providers." Efforts to exempt Wikimedia projects or at least non-profit "online encyclopaedias" succeeded initially but then were in jeopardy again. However, negotiations are expected to continue into 2024.
  • The controversial Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse (CSAR) proposed by EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson is reported to have "stalled somewhat" recently. It would cover Wikimedia projects too, "and the Wikimedia Foundation has provided [already in 2022] constructive feedback, outlining some risks and challenges posed by the scanning technologies used. Wikimedia is also criticising the idea to scan direct, interpersonal communication in a general manner and without judicial oversight."
  • In France, the proposed Loi SREN "would introduce some provisions on data retention and user identification, in order to not allow already banned users to re-register. That would require the collection of heaps of data and the compulsory identification of all users. Wikimedia projects are squarely in the scope of this proposal." Initial efforts to "take our projects out of the fireline" have failed.

– H


Brief notes

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