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Byrd and notifications leave, but page views stay; was a terror suspect editing Wikipedia?

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By Jerodlycett, Gamaliel, Noyster, and Alex Stinson

Garfield Byrd's departure

Garfield Byrd

On 10 September, Garfield Byrd announced in an email that he would be stepping down on 30 September. He had served as chief of finance and administration of the Wikimedia Foundation since 2011. He is taking a position at an unnamed foundation focused on public education.

Many people wished him well and thanked him for his time. A few mentioned his presence at Wikimanias, [1][2], and several mentioned his dancing.[3][4][5] J

Did terrorism suspect edit Wikipedia?

On September 9, the FBI arrested Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a 20-year-old Jewish resident of Orange Park, Florida, for allegedly supplying bomb-making information for a plot to attack a Kansas City ceremony commemorating September 11 attacks. A series of reports in the Sydney Morning Herald detailed Goldberg's alleged history of "trolling" using a variety of online personas, including a GamerGater, an ISIS supporter, a white supremacist, a radical free-speech crusader, and a feminist. Given Goldberg's many accounts on various websites, including Twitter and Reddit, it seems possible that he attempted to use Wikipedia accounts as part of his web of online activity. A persona named in media reports and the criminal complaint against Goldberg shares its name with a Wikipedia account that was blocked for sockpuppetry and editwarring by a checkuser in 2013. That persona's Twitter account claimed to have created a particular Wikipedia article in 2015. The account that created that article was blocked for personal attacks and harassment earlier this month. The Arbitration Committee seems to have learned of this matter, as an arbitrator indefinitely blocked the second account following Goldberg's arrest. Neither account appears to have edited articles involving terrorism, but instead focused on film, especially horror films, animation, and video games. G

Is Google taking eyeballs away from Wikipedia?

Oliver Keyes of the Wikimedia Foundation has investigated claims that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites have been losing "an insane amount of traffic" over recent months, due to Google possibly diverting searches toward its own or other sources of information.

A special study of a sample of pageviews was carried out. The results indicate that search traffic referred directly from Google has in fact increased between January and August this year. However, search traffic with no known referer has dropped. This change may or may not be related to what Google is doing, and the report concludes with a call for direct discussions with Google, as well as for more complete ongoing tracking of how searchers reach Wikimedia sites.N

Notifications (Echo) reversal

Screenshot of Notifications breaking Commons in Firefox 3.5

On 15 September, the WMF decided to roll back the recent changes to Notifications (Echo).[6] This is due to two bugs introduced in the recent change.

The first bug was a large increase in the size of the CSS being loaded, causing a slowdown. The initial slowdown was reported to be five-fold.[7] They tried to work on it, but even after their efforts there was still a 30% increase in the size of the CSS, and up to a second longer in load-time on uncached views.

The second bug was a rendering error in Firefox 3.5 and Safari.[8] In Firefox text was spread throughout a large portion of the page (see image), while in Safari the text was constrained to the top portion of the page.[9] J

Brief notes

  • Milestones: No milestones this week, but the English Wikipedia is rapidly approaching five million articles.
  • SSL Certificate Expirations: The SSL certificates for wmfusercontent.org and wmflabs.org (tools.wmflabs.org) expired without being renewed. They will be added to the tracking calendar for the future.[10][11] J
  • The Wikipedia Library launches seven new partnerships: EBSCO (expansive academic and popular databases), IMF eLibrary (international trade and economics publications), Newspaperarchive.com (international historical newspapers), Sabinet (African journals), Numérique Premium (French language books), Al Manhal (Arabic and English multidisciplinary publications), and Jamalon (English and Arabic books). Also expansions of ScienceDirect (science, medicine and social science journals), BMJ and DynaMed Plus (medical content), as well as additional accounts from many other available resources. S
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Do you have a link to the Wikimedia Foundation Google study results? I assume they were published as the Signpost provides a summary. Thank you! Liz Read! Talk! 18:19, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's on Commons at File:Google referral report.pdf. Gamaliel (talk) 19:13, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Gamaliel, it's much appreciated! Liz Read! Talk! 23:10, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Woah, who wrote THIS:

"On September 9, the FBI arrested Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a 20-year-old Jewish resident of Orange Park, Florida, for allegedly supplying bomb-making information for a plot to attack a Kansas City ceremony commemorating September 11 attacks."

A "20-year-old Jewish resident"? That's how historical accounts might describe someone who was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. We don't describe people as Muslim residents or Roman Catholic residents either. This is tacky, Wikipedia. It isn't consistent with modern (as in the past 50 years) standards of writing.--FeralOink (talk) 19:45, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Most media accounts noted he was Jewish and contrasted that with his alleged impersonation of an Islamic terrorist. I am open to suggestions about how to word this differently while still including this widely noted and commented upon fact. Gamaliel (talk) 19:51, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
He impersonated a lot of things, which I found noteworthy (and the variety to be amusing, e.g., ISIS, feminist, white supremacist, GamerGate). As for wording, it is better to say he was Jewish, than a Jewish resident. In most countries, with the exception of a few theocracies, residents of all religions are allowed. Saying that he was a Jewish resident makes it seem like he was a foreign national, not an American. I agree that it is worth mentioning that he is Jewish, but phrase it so that it is part of the news story, not an identifying aspect. I can be more specific if you want. Thank you for clarifying, by the way. Note that I wasn't saying that you were being anti-Semitic or anything like that, as you weren't!--FeralOink (talk) 20:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if its that note-worthy a terror suspect edited wikipedia. This day in age, there's probably a lot of suspects, and a lot of people edit wikipedia, so its unsurprising that there is an intersection. If he was convicted of something, that would be more interesting (imo). Bawolff (talk) 19:54, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The conclusion seems to be that he didn't edit Wikipedia, based on this: "Both accounts do not appear to have edited articles involving terrorism, but instead focused on film, especially horror films, animation, and video games." Gamaliel, this was not what you asked about, but I'll start here. I would rephrase that sentence as, "Neither account appears to have..."--FeralOink (talk) 20:05, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That was spot on, I've made the change. Gamaliel (talk) 20:11, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
<Visualize a smiley face of acknowledgement here>--FeralOink (talk) 20:15, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Notification bug

Woo, my bug screenshot made the signpost. Is this what its like to be famous? Bawolff (talk) 19:54, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 3.5?

Wikipedia supports Firefox 3.5 from 2009? Why? 99.41.93.30 (talk) 02:54, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. Its safari that's the support target (Although the basic components of the site is supposed to work at least in a limited way on old browsers). I just happen to have a really old version of firefox installed on my computer that I sometimes use to test things. Bawolff (talk) 03:08, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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