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Submission + - Wikimedia changes mobile site, hopes to save an annual 450 TB of mobile data (wikimedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Users using Wikipedia's mobile site will likely see lower data costs now that it prevents unnecessary image downloads. Projections indicate that this could save users 450 terabytes of mobile data; a test on the English Wikipedia saw a 47% decrease in data being shipped.

Submission + - Wikipedia's longest featured articles (wikimedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: Elvis leads the list, coming in at 17,659 words. In today's strangest juxtaposition, "History of Poland (1945–89)" features just behind. A pope, Michael Jackson, and the Maya civilization also land spots.

Submission + - Prince's death would have broken Wikipedia, but Michael Jackson did it first (wikimedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: At one point, over 800 people per second were visiting Prince's Wikipedia article. When coupled with a large number of attempted edits, Wikipedia's "PoolCounter" kicked in. Put into place after the death of Michael Jackson, it protects Wikimedia's servers from traffic spikes. An engineer said “Without PoolCounter, all of [the] servers would have been tied up with the work of displaying and processing the Prince article ... It would have been impossible to view or edit the majority of all other content on Wikimedia.”

Submission + - Sweden's Supreme Court rules against Wikimedia (wikimedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wikimedia argues that freedom of panorama in the country has been challenged by the ruling, as it "does not allow individuals or organizations to post images online of publicly-placed artwork without permission from the artist."

Submission + - Turning online harassment into Wikipedia articles on women scientists (wikimedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Emily Temple-Wood writes about women scientists. What does she get in return? From the article, she is "targeted by a significant amount of harassment based on her gender. Throwaway email addresses frequently send her requests for dates, condescendingly discuss her body, insinuate that she got to where she is through sexual favors, ask her to reserve those favors for themselves, and when she doesn’t reply, they spew profanities."

Submission + - "Shit I cannot believe we had to fucking write this month" (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: Stories from people filling Wikipedia's gender gap: "This month in systemic bias, we had to write a whole bunch of shit that should have been written forever ago and generally made the world a better place. Go read these articles and learn about some badass people."

Submission + - What are the origins of Wikipedia's Knowledge Engine?

Submitted by Mdann52
Mdann52 writes: This week ,a Wikipedia Signpost report" raised some questions into the origin's of the sites upcoming "Knowledge Engine", funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation. While the Wikimedia Foundation claims this would be for internal use, the grant documents seem to tell a different story — with external use being specific referenced.

Submission + - What are the most-edited articles through Wikipedia's history? (wikimedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: Some of the juxtapositions on this list have to be seen to be believed. Creationism and feminism were 2001's #1 and #3 most-edited articles. 2002 had "List of Canadians." 2003 had a timeline of video games. On the overall list from all time, there's George W Bush alongside WWE wrestlers, Michael Jackson next to Jesus, and—in order—Barack Obama, Adolf Hitler, and Britney Spears.

Submission + - Movies Dominate 2015 Year-end Wikipedia Viewership Statistics

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We're clearly a morbidly curious society, as "Deaths in 2015" was the most viewed English Wikipedia article in 2015 with almost 28M views. As a Wikipedia blog post describes, movies dominate the top 25 with "Star Wars", "Avengers", and "Jurassic World" among the entries. The article having the "best day" was that of Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the night of his big fight vs. Manny Pacquiao, with 2.1M views. Raw data takes the top list out to 5000 entries, although automated pageviews sometimes have influence.

Submission + - Live a year in 4 minutes (wikimedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Kicking off the inevitable flood of year-in-review pieces, Wikipedia looks back on 2015 by trolling Cubs fans, including a World War II sequence inspired by the Fifth Element, and using a soundtrack from Vivaldi.

Submission + - A dark side of comedy: Wikipedia cleans up after John Oliver's fowl jokes (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: Comedian John Oliver devoted Sunday's Last Week Tonight to the plight of chicken farmers in the US and the congressional representatives who are making their lives harder. Oliver called on his viewers to shame the representatives by calling them "chicken fuckers," noting that this label would "not come off a Wikipedia page easily." Suddenly, Wikipedia's volunteer editors had a major problem on their hands.

Submission + - Most popular Wikipedia articles of 2014 (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: Wikipedia's 2014 page view statistics include several intriguing nuggets, chiefly that "this year's 25 most viewed articles together comprised 288.6 million views; last year's total was 350 million. That's a decrease of 18 percent." The gold medal winner is the Wikipedia article on Deaths in 2014, followed closely by Facebook. Ebola, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and Game of Thrones round out the top five.

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