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17 February 2016

 

2016-02-17

Search and destroy: the Knowledge Engine and the undoing of Lila Tretikov




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2016-02-17

Shit I cannot believe we had to fucking write this month


Christian Ramsay and a fucking bird
  • Christian Ramsay: a badass gardener and botanist who collected hella plants and, y’know, just contributed massive catalogues of detailed knowledge and gigantic herbaria. She’s now a good article thanks to the awesome efforts of Worm That Turned!
  • Elizabeth Alexander: this lady was an ACCIDENTAL astronomer. In her regular life she was a freaking geologist who accidentally made a bigger discovery (radio waves coming from the Sun) than most of us could dream of by, like, trying our whole lives. I'll be in the corner feeling inadequate if anyone needs me.
  • Angela Hartley Brodie: she only discovered aromatase inhibitors, one of the most important classes of breast cancer drugs. She only saved millions of lives. Seriously, COME ON. I can’t believe we had to write this shit in fucking 2016. Thanks to Staceydolxx for correcting this giant glaring omission.
  • Mary Amdur: she discovered that inhaling sulfuric acid was bad for you. I shit you not, she got fired for discovering that. Sometimes I have very little faith in humanity. Except then I read about people like Mary fuckin' Amdur, who made a major discovery about smog and public health and persevered despite getting fired, eventually being TOTALLY vindicated, and I feel a little better.
  • Kathryn Barnard: basically the Florence Nightingale of our generation, literally invented the modern isolette and discovered (DISCOVERED!) that rocking babies is good for them. And she quantified it so well that basically every hospital in the US was like “shit, we better get rocking chairs”. And we didn’t have an article on her 'til, like, yesterday. She spent her life studying parent-child bonding and early childhood development and in her spare time (hah!) founded a nonprofit and a research center. Come on, join me in the inadequacy corner. It’s cozy.
  • Mary Fernández: kickass computer scientist who, in her spare time, works on helping young women enter STEM careers. Hella great combination of awesome career and awesome nonprofit work = awesome scientist.
  • Dottie Thomas: the “mother of bone marrow transplantation” who didn’t have an article 'til, like, last week. She and her husband were the hematology power couple of the 20th century (words I never thought I’d say in a row) and guess who had an article? Yeah, her husband. Guess who got the Nobel Prize alone for their collaborative work? Yeah, her husband. I’m still really fucking salty about this. “Just a technician”, my ass. Add her to the long list of “women who got totally screwed out of a Nobel because they worked with their husbands/other dudes/were women”. It’s a long fucking list.
  • Anita Kurmann: this one is sad. She was a cool-ass Swiss endocrinologist/researcher/surgeon (did she ever sleep?) but got hit by a truck and died. But not before she discovered how to make thyroid cells from stem cells, something people have been trying to do for DECADES.

After reading this, if you feel inspired to write something yourself, let me know. I’ll feature it next time.

Emily Temple-Wood is a member of the Arbitration Committee and founder of WikiProject Women scientists.



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2016-02-17

This week's featured content

Satellite image showing Hurricane Juan near its peak intensity.

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 7 to 13 February.
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Sting has held the WCW International World Heavyweight Championship on two occasions.
Trent Bridge hosted Nottinghamshire's debut home match in first-class cricket and remains the club's primary ground.

One featured article was promoted this week.

  • Hurricane Juan (nominated by Hurricanehink) was a large and erratic tropical cyclone that looped twice near the Louisiana coast, causing widespread flooding. It was the tenth named storm of the 1985 Atlantic hurricane season, and the last of three hurricanes to move over Louisiana. Juan originated in the central Gulf of Mexico and was classified as a subtropical cyclone. It moved northward after its formation, and became a hurricane on October 27, and made a landfall near Morgan City on October 29. Weakening to a tropical storm over land, Juan turned back to the south-east over open waters. After turning to the north-east, the storm made its final landfall just west of Pensacola, Florida, late on October 31. Juan continued quickly to the north and was absorbed by an approaching cold front, although its moisture contributed to a deadly flood event in the Mid-Atlantic states.

Three featured lists were promoted this week.

  • Jonah Lomu (1975–2015) was an international rugby union winger who played for New Zealand between 1994 and 2002. He scored a total of 37 tries in 63 international appearances (nominated by The Rambling Man and Mr.Apples2010), which make him the sixth highest try scorer for New Zealand and the eighteenth highest on the all-time list.
  • The WCW International World Heavyweight Championship (nominated by Grapple X) is a defunct professional wrestling championship. The title was contested in World Championship Wrestling between 1993 and 1994, and it was represented with the Big Gold Belt. During it's existence, eight title reigns were shared between four wrestlers. Rick Flair was the final champion, who unified it with the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and the title ceased to exist.
  • Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 member clubs of the English County Championship, representing the historic county of Nottinghamshire. Although there are records of a team competing as Nottinghamshire at an earlier date, the current club was established in 1841. The Nottinghamshire team have played first class, List A, or Twenty20 matches at eight different grounds (nominated by AssociateAffiliate and ChrisTheDude), although of these only one has hosted Twenty20 games.

Five featured pictures were promoted this week.



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2016-02-17

Super Bowling

The Super Bowl (#20) returns for its annual domination of this chart with Super Bowl 50 (#8) having been played on February 7, placing thirteen articles in our top 25, only slightly off last year's showing of fifteen articles. Aside from American football, the new film Deadpool takes two slots in the top 10, as did two Reddit "Today I Learned" threads. The American domination of the chart this week also saw Donald Trump high again at #4 after easily winning the Republican New Hampshire primary, and Bernie Sanders at #9 for winning the Democratic side of that contest.

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 February 7 to 13, 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 Peyton Manning Good Article 2,454,310
In what may have been his final hurrah after a long career, the American football quarterback led the Denver Broncos (#25) to a solid victory over Cam Newton (#7) and the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50 (#8) on February 7.
2 Deadpool (film) Start-class 1,939,593
The Marvel Comics antihero film starring Ryan Reynolds (pictured) was released on February 12.
3 Omayra Sánchez Featured Article 1,871,179 As Reddit learned this week, a photo of this young girl, taken before she died in a volcanic eruption in Colombia (see Armero tragedy), was the World Press Photo of the Year for 1985.
4 Donald Trump B-Class 1,504,756
Trump won the Republican New Hampshire primary for U.S. President on February 9. He roundly clobbered his opponents with over 35% of the vote. His promises of winning so well we could not not believe it have become reality, and as improbable as it once seemed, the prospect of Trump winning the party's nomination is now being taken very seriously.
5 Deadpool C-class 1,452,087
The character on which #2 is based.
6 Christopher Paul Neil C-Class 1,445,649 Reddit learned this week that Neil is a notorious pedophile known as "Mr. Swirl" or "Swirl Face" who was tracked down and arrested in 2007 after police were able to digitially "unswirl" photos of his face available online.
7 Cam Newton C-class 1,411,026
Cam Newton, the quarterback for the Carolina Panthers, lost in Super Bowl 50 (#8) to the Denver Broncos (#25), primarily because the Broncos' defense was able to shut down Newton unlike any other team had this season.
8 Super Bowl 50 Start-class 1,283,341
Up from #17 and 636,927 views last week, it was played on February 7 at the Levi's Stadium outside San Francisco (pictured). Last year's Super Bowl XLIX placed fourth on this report with about 110,000 more views than this year. Personally I blame the drop on the failure to use Roman numerals this year.
9 Bernie Sanders C-class 1,272,272
The lovable democratic socialist easily won the Democratic Party New Hampshire primary over Hillary Clinton. While even some in his own party view his plans as quixotic at best and confrontational at worst, his idealism has proven catnip to disenchanted young voters.
10 List of Super Bowl champions Featured List 999,486 This list invariably pops up once a year, as Americans first scramble for facts to determine which team will win, then rush back to see if their dream/nightmare came true.



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2016-02-17

Tech news in brief

The following content has been republished as-is from the Tech News weekly report.



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2016-02-17

Antonin Scalia and the editor tracking his legacy

The following content has been republished from the Wikimedia Blog. Any views expressed in this piece are not necessarily shared by the Signpost; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments. For more information on this partnership, see our content guidelines.
Since its creation in 2003, Scalia’s article has attracted some 3,500 edits (as of publishing time on 17 February).

“I was inspired to improve his Wikipedia article by reading a biography of him, and having long admired his dissents, which were blunt, often funny, and never minced words,” he says. “I attended a talk he gave at my law school, George Washington, in the late 80s. The place was packed, but I found a perch on a garbage can. All I remember of what he said is the constitution which was stuffed with the greatest guarantee of rights was the Soviet one.”

Wikipedia’s article on Scalia was updated as news of his death broke. An anonymous editor was the first to edit the article to reflect the death, with an interesting choice of edit summary. In part due to the high quality and importance of the article, the update took some time to mix into the prose; Wikipedia works on verifiability, so editors waited for respected publication to report on the death.

“I quickly realized that [Scalia’s death] would put a whole new intensity into this year’s election, but more immediate need was trying to keep the article from going out of control,” Greenbaum recalls. “There are times when the public truly takes over a Wikipedia article, and this is one of those times.

“Think of it as a huge heavy object sliding across ice. You don’t want to get in front of it because you’ll wind up underneath, but by pushing and hitting it at an angle, you can sometimes keep the article from exploding.”

Readers certainly did flock to Scalia and other related articles in the wake of his death. Pageviews on his article jumped by 33,710% and 49,730%—or in actual terms, from about 1,876 per day to over 634,269 and 934,798 on February 13 and 14, respectively. You can see and play with this (and related) data yourself on Wikimedia Labs.

With Scalia’s death, it is widely commented that Obama, as a fairly liberal President, would likely nominate a liberal-minded justice to fill Scalia’s conservative seat. The Republicans, however, have threatened to block Obama’s nomination, arguing that Obama’s selection would not represent the wishes of voters (and that, instead, that of his successor, to be elected in November, would). The Republicans run the Senate, making Obama’s job harder still.

The American press has already identified several potential candidates for the role, all of which you can read about on Wikipedia. The highest-profile include Sri Srinivasan, Merrick Garland, and Paul Watford.

Barack Obama has a lot of thinking to do to fill this vacant seat.

Greenbaum suggests that, whomever he opts for, Obama will likely get his way based on the history of these situations. “The stakes are very high, and [the Senate] might prefer just refusing to confirm and hoping for the next president,” he explains. “I don’t see Obama compromising though, he doesn’t in this sort of thing. Whoever it is, it will be uncomfortable for the Republicans to refuse.

“The record of the nominee will be gone over in very close detail and the nomination will be tried in the public eye before ever the Senate weighs in.” Indeed, the Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, which debates the president’s nominated candidate, holds its hearings on television as of 1987.

“Basically it will be a war of public relations,” he adds.

The situation is complex, but throws another issue into what has already proven a quite remarkable presidential race. Candidates not given much chance only months ago are giving once runaway favorites a run for their money.

“In my younger days, I enjoyed political novels such as those of Allen Drury,” Greenbaum says. “But he would have strained to imagine someone like Justice Scalia, and strained even more to invent a situation like this. But we are living it, and there is no way to flip to the end early.”

"Antonin Scalia and the editor tracking his legacy" is part of the "News on Wikipedia" series. You can read them on the Wikimedia Blog.



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