William Beutler on Wikipedia

Posts Tagged ‘COI’

InstallAware Unaware, or, How Not to Create a Wikipedia Entry About Your Company

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on June 2, 2016 at 4:38 pm

Unless you are a member of the small fellowship of netizens who keep a Google News search for “Wikipedia” bookmarked, chances are you missed out on a truly strange but totally real press release last month from a software company called InstallAware. Its headline: “InstallAware, the Only Alternative to InstallShield, Fails to Get Its Wikipedia Article Published Despite Years of Trying”.

Another reason you may have missed it is because no one picked it up. As far as I can tell, The Wikipedian is the first to write about it at length.[1]And, this being The Wikipedian, I do mean at length. If it’s a failure as a press release, it is a fitting capstone to a failed attempt on the company’s part to attain the exalted status of mattering on the Internet these days: having a Wikipedia entry of one’s own.

Before I go any further, I actually want to recognize InstallAware for trying, however imperfectly, to do the right thing. Instead of trying to sneak an entry into Wikipedia, they used the Articles for Creation (AfC) process as it is intended. Wikipedia has a big enough problem with anonymous PR activity that—regardless of other mistakes the company and its consultants made along the way—Wikipedians should be grateful they tried to follow the rules and use the appropriate channels.

That said, this is a hot mess of a situation. Eight times since September of last year, using two separate Wikipedia accounts, InstallAware has submitted a draft entry, in slightly different versions, to AfC for review. Eight times they have been rejected, with some reviewers offering a couple of jargon-laden phrases to explain the reason, or nothing more than the required template. Most companies in this situation would slink away, dejected and angry. InstallAware seems to feel that way, too—but took a different tack.

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InstallAware press release

The press release itself suggests a blithe unawareness of InstallAware’s position on Wikipedia, not to mention whether anyone would care. It includes cringe-worthy bravado such as “InstallAware’s significance is beyond question” and a ham-handed critique that “Wikipedia is out of touch with its original egalitarian ideals,” says the company founder himself, and even cites unrelated research by the Wikimedia Foundation’s own Aaron Halfaker in support of its claims. As InstallAware sees it:

InstallAware has been repeatedly frustrated in its efforts to contribute an article about itself to Wikipedia. InstallAware, the largest independent software installation vendor for Microsoft Windows, hired a specialist and conducted months of revisions, which ensured that the InstallAware article had more quantity and quality of citations than InstallShield, a similar product which does have a Wikipedia article.

There are two arguments here: a) InstallAware deserves a Wikipedia entry on its own merits, and b) InstallAware deserves a Wikipedia entry because InstallShield, a rival software tool, has one that contains fewer citations than the one they prepared for InstallAware.

To evaluate the first argument, we must consider the guideline Wikipedia editors use to determine whether a given subject should have its own page: Notability. As far as guideline names go, it’s an undeniably loaded word. If one is told “sorry, you’re not Notable” you can understand why they hear “you aren’t important enough”.[2]When discussing this topic with non-Wikipedians, I prefer to use the term “eligibility”. It’s a delicate message that is too often delivered with a one-size-fits-all template.[3]Don’t template the regulars”, says an essay familiar to Wikipedians. I think this is backward: don’t template the noobs.

The generalized version of the Notability requirement[4]“If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list.” is very broad and susceptible to interpretation based on wishful thinking. But it isn’t meaningless: it basically says that Wikipedia outsources its judgment about a topic’s significance to sources it considers reliable, which must have written about the subject more than once and with enough information to write a satisfactory entry. When it comes to extant organizations, this often means mainstream and industry news publications.

To apply this standard, we must consider the draft itself.

The draft is at least an honest attempt to reshape a press release into something resembling an encyclopedia entry. It simply tells the company’s story, plus contains some additional information about its software products. Of course it still makes lots of mistakes: toward the end it reads increasingly like a brochure, offering simply too many product details for an encyclopedia. It actually boldfaces InstallAware like that, which is pretty silly in the press release, and completely absurd for an encyclopedia entry. It’s almost a surprise there aren’t little ® symbols after the name of each product.

InstallAware software, via Google Images.

InstallAware software, via Google Images.

Those problems can be dealt with. The problem we can’t is the sources. The very first draft cited a couple of press releases, and called it good. Once InstallAware was informed they needed better references, what else did they do but add more. Unfortunately, these weren’t much better and the long list now included only makes them look desperate. Among the sources included: InstallAware’s own website (several times), the founder’s own resume, websites of InstallAware partner companies, SEO zombie sites, even Wikipedia itself.[5]In Wikipedia circles, this is just about the funniest mistake one can make. One thing is definitely missing: serious coverage from recognized news publications. As one Wikipedian put it:

Sorry but it seems the currently listed sources are simply not enough, what is needed is solid in-depth third-party sources such as news (any time of news is acceptable except press release and trivial passing mentions). If there’s not enough, then there’s simply not enough for a solidly acceptable article.

That sounds right. I ran my own search, on Google News and Lexis-Nexis, and I just found press releases. Curious whether they were aware of these issues, I reached out to InstallAware via the media contact listed on the press release. Over the course of a few polite if pithy emails, I got a better understanding of where they were coming from.[6]Among the questions I asked: Did they know about the WMF Terms of Use disclosure requirements? No, that one had escaped them, and earlier this week the consultant added a disclosure notice to the draft discussion page. An unfortunate error, but a fair course correction. What was their goal with the press release? “To pressure Wikipedia into accountability and rationality.” Which, fair enough.

Did they know about Wikipedia’s Notability requirement? Yes, they said, and pointed me back to some of the citations to InstallAware’s own website I had ignored. It turns out several of the articles they believe support their eligibility are quite old and no longer online. To make them available for inspection, InstallAware simply scanned them and posted them to their own website, without making this clear to anyone.[7]A simple rule of thumb: don’t expect Wikipedians to read past their initial assumptions, let alone spend time correcting your mistakes.

Did they attempt to discuss the article with Wikipedia editors? Yes, the specialist—whose expertise it turns out is SEO, not Wikipedia—had posted messages on an involved editor’s discussion page, and also the AfC help desk. Click through and you’ll see an unformatted wall of text that is a chore to read. So, guess what: no one read it.

You can find InstallAware’s collected list of sources here, and evaluate them as I have. I think you’ll find, as I did, that the longest article was written by the founder himself, while others are republished press releases, brief mentions in blog posts, pages on commercial websites, and a short product review. There is one bylined Microsoft publication that might be useful if better sources also existed, but it’s still a borderline call. Overall, it is not: InstallAware does not have sufficient coverage to meet the Notability requirement.

Let’s turn to InstallShield.

What’s interesting is that it sure looks like InstallAware has a point here. Indeed, the entry for InstallShield has only two citations, and one of them is actually a press release. The page was flagged more than four years ago for requiring additional citations. Otherwise, the page seems appropriate enough. It isn’t excessively detailed, and it’s reasonable to guess the article was created not by the company that sells it, but by Wikipedia editors who knew both about the software and also how to develop an entry. In fact, the entry has existed since 2004, long before Wikipedia was a place to be seen.

InstallShield software, via Wikipedia.

InstallShield software, via Wikipedia.

But that doesn’t seem fair. Should the page be retained simply because it has been around so long? Is the page somehow more acceptable because it was probably created without a marketing goal in mind? In strict terms the answer should be no, but in reality the answer is often yes. There is, in fact, a double-standard for content[8]and behavior, but that’s another post on Wikipedia: what the policies and guidelines say is ideal, and what Wikipedia editors will actually tolerate. This double-standard is consecrated by the long-established and completely necessary, yet unofficial compromise rule, called “Other stuff exists”, which basically says: just because we have some bad articles that is not a rationale to create more bad articles. InstallShield has been, er, shielded by these circumstances.

Then I ran the same search for InstallShield as I had for InstallAware. The results did not bolster their argument. Although the InstallShield entry contains inadequate citations now, they definitely exist. Some of the stories are quite old, so they are not online, but it’s my opinion there is enough substantial reporting to justify their inclusion. There’s Crain’s Chicago Business in November 1997 with “Installation-software firm set for leap into corporate arena: raising money to push beyond vendor market” and InfoWorld with “Installation software vendor to ship enterprise version” from June 1999, and more. The software has received less press recently, but the snarky IT news site El Reg has mentioned it twice in news stories this year. Taken as a whole, it’s my professional opinion[9]this note is either an appropriate disclosure that Wikipedia engagement is a key service at my firm, Beutler Ink, or an unsubtle advertisement that InstallShield meets the Notability requirement. “Other stuff exists” need not apply.

But there’s something else going on here. Most of InstallShield’s coverage is from the late 1990s, when they were an independent company putting out tons of press releases in an era with many more technology magazines being published than exist today. Do you think it’s possible that InstallAware is at a disadvantage because of the declining journalism industry, to say nothing of the utility of the press release? I do! As noted above, Wikipedia itself outsources many content decisions to the judgment of working journalists, of whom there are fewer than ever. Then again, maybe InstallAware just isn’t very interesting.

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None of this is to say all of the mistakes are on InstallAware’s side. Their errors are specific, attributable to individuals, and therefore simple to point out. What happened here was a failure of communication on both sides, and Wikipedia’s mistakes are long-term, systemic, with a collective responsibility that is all too easy to ignore.

Herewith, the most important mistakes I believe made on both sides:

  • No one at InstallAware, and neither their specialist, bothered to learn much about Wikipedia. Neither disclosed their conflict of interest nor made any kind of introductory statement to the community about their intention and perspectives. When they finally did try speaking with editors, they didn’t keep it brief, and they didn’t follow standard conventions.
  • On the other side of it, Wikipedia editors didn’t immediately offer useful feedback. Instead both InstallAware accounts received only templated messages. Even if they hadn’t responded, Wikipedians never tried to engage on a human level. Yet I noticed something else while researching this: in 2006 the consultant was in a similar COI situation, and at the time received a friendly response from an actual Wikipedia editor. Ten years later, Wikipedia is less hospitable.
  • InstallAware was unwilling to reconsider that the sources it proffered actually fit the standards Wikipedians ask for. Over the past several months, at least one Wikipedian declining their submission enumerated the ways in which the various sources were insufficient for the purposes of establishing Notability. Maybe these justifications seemed arbitrary, but they aren’t, and InstallAware should have educated itself after the first couple of rejections.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation has not done enough to publicize its disclosure requirements, added to the Terms of Use in 2014, to industry professionals. Likewise, Wikipedians haven’t made this clear enough. Even though the disclosure requirement is featured prominently at AfC, it’s hard to fault anyone for overlooking it. Wikipedia has so many points of advice, it can take years to get up to speed.
  • Independent PR consultants take on too many projects they’re not actually qualified for. Relatedly, advice to companies: don’t hire SEO consultants to run a Wikipedia project. SEO and Wikipedia occupy adjacent spaces, as Wikipedia is famously a top Google search result for nearly everything. But the actual knowledge and skills involved in one or the other are vastly different.
  • A successful Wikipedia consultant spends less time looking for ways to make something happen—the creation of a new article, for example—and more time looking out for things that may cause it not to happen.
  • AfC header

  • AfC doesn’t work when submitters don’t know anything about Wikipedia. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about AfC from Wikipedians over time, and they’re right that it often doesn’t work very well. The InstallAware situation is just a more emphatic version of the usual problem. Submitters don’t know what they’re doing, and Wikipedians are too busy to bother with bedside manner.
  • Likewise, Wikipedia should define more clearly which kind of publications it considers appropriate for verifying notability for extant companies and organizations. Besides the General notability guideline (GNG), applicable Wikipedia guidelines such as Notability (software) and Notability (organizations and companies) offer some wise and unavoidably vague advisories. After all, Wikipedians can’t anticipate future situations which might be ill-served by too-specific rules. But it could be clearer, and it might not hurt to include some examples of acceptable sources and why they are.

Ultimately, the most salient issue in this whole kerfuffle is that InstallAware was unwilling to take “no” for an answer. But a close second is the fact that Wikipedia editors made only a half-hearted effort to communicate with them, and third is that AfC is just about impossible to navigate for anyone. InstallAware is only one company, and if this is actually the end of the road for them at Wikipedia, there will still be countless more companies asking for an entry after them.

Working with companies may not be what gets Wikipedians out of bed in the morning, but so long as the site remains one of the Internet’s top destinations, and maintains its famously low barriers to entry, it’s in Wikipedia’s best interest to improve these processes. Yes, that process is still mostly going to reject drafts of articles about companies, who won’t be happy about it. Hopefully, they won’t feel like they have to write press releases.

Notes

Notes
1 And, this being The Wikipedian, I do mean at length.
2 When discussing this topic with non-Wikipedians, I prefer to use the term “eligibility”.
3 Don’t template the regulars”, says an essay familiar to Wikipedians. I think this is backward: don’t template the noobs.
4 “If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list.”
5 In Wikipedia circles, this is just about the funniest mistake one can make.
6 Among the questions I asked: Did they know about the WMF Terms of Use disclosure requirements? No, that one had escaped them, and earlier this week the consultant added a disclosure notice to the draft discussion page. An unfortunate error, but a fair course correction. What was their goal with the press release? “To pressure Wikipedia into accountability and rationality.” Which, fair enough.
7 A simple rule of thumb: don’t expect Wikipedians to read past their initial assumptions, let alone spend time correcting your mistakes.
8 and behavior, but that’s another post
9 this note is either an appropriate disclosure that Wikipedia engagement is a key service at my firm, Beutler Ink, or an unsubtle advertisement

Wikimania 2014: We Needed to Talk About Paid Editing, So We Did

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on August 12, 2014 at 9:23 am

This past weekend I attended Wikimania, the annual worldwide conference for Wikipedia and related wiki-sites, this time held in London and the third I’ve attended. And for the first time, this year, I was a speaker. The presentation was called “We Need to Talk About Paid Editing: Sorting Out Wikipedia’s Most Enduring Argument” and its subject matter is fairly self-evident: Wikipedia has struggled for years with the fact that its volunteer-first community attracts outside interests seeking (or offering) monetary recompense for changes to articles.

On the English Wikipedia, the operating consensus is that paid contributors should refrain from editing directly, and instead seek help from volunteers. The most important factor in this is the opinion of Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder and unofficial community leader—an unwritten rule often referred to as the “Bright Line”. Interestingly enough, this is not the case on other language editions: the French, German, and Swedish Wikipedias tend to be much more accommodating of companies and organizations that seek to change (sometimes even directly edit) the Wikipedia article about themselves.

The goal of myself and my co-presenters was to put all of this together for the first time in a public meeting of Wikipedians, to hold an open discussion about what it means, and to consider whether it is possible to agree on a unifying standard. And the result? Well, it was a very successful presentation, with a packed room (even though we were in the last block of time on the last day) and a lively conversation that could have gone much longer than the 90 minutes allotted. Below, our slides, and an explanation of what we discussed:

I had two co-presenters for the panel, and two guest presenters joined us as well. My main collaborators were longtime English Wikipedia contributor / chronicler Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado), and French Wikipedia contributor / marketing executive Christophe Henner (Utilisateur:Schiste). The two others were former Wikimedia Italia VP Cristian Consonni (Utente:CristianCantoro), and Telecom Italia executive Federico Ascari.

The deck above is short on explanatory text—it was meant to support our speaking on the subject, of course—but it went a little something like this:

  • Slides 1–12 — Leading the way, Andrew delivered a whirlwind history of “paid editing” and other “conflict of interest” edits on Wikipedia, including several of the better known controversies. Most interesting, Andrew created a four quadrant chart showing how paid (and unpaid) editing differs based on whether it is perceived as “conflicted” or “unconflicted”.
  • Slides 13–23 — Here’s where I told a bit of my own story as a consultant on Wikipedia projects for clients, explained how we fit into the so-called Bright Line (short version: I follow it, but it doesn’t work as well as it should), and the Donovan House meeting of Wikipedians and PR thought leaders I convened in February, plus the multi-agency statement which came out of it. As of August 2014, following my lead, 35 companies including the very largest global firms, have pledged to follow Wikipedia’s rules and encourage clients and colleagues to do the same.
  • Slides 24-27 — Christophe described his past work with French telecom Orange to improve its Wikipedia presence, a debate among Wikipedians about whether this was handled correctly, and frustrations by his former client, Yamaha, which was less successful working with Wikipedia but instead created its own wiki.
  • Slides 28–34 — Cristian and Federico took turns explaining the project they undertook. In short, Telecom Italia partnered with a university class, recruiting 6 students completing their undergraduate work, to research and write improved versions of several articles about the company, with input from Cristian and the Italian chapter of Wikimedia.
  • Slides 35–40 — I previewed the next step in the process started with the Donovan House group: an ebook called “Wikipedia and the Communications Professional”, to be released in September 2014. After this, I moderated a free-flowing discussion of these issues among attendees.

And a very interesting discussion it was. I probably shouldn’t try to summarize the discussion, in part because I’ll forget things, in part because I wouldn’t want to characterize a discussion that is still evolving, and in part because this post is already plenty long enough. There will be much more to say in just a few weeks’ time.

The Top 10 Wikipedia Stories of 2013 (Part 2)

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on January 2, 2014 at 5:20 pm

On Tuesday, this blog published the first half of our annual roundup of the biggest Wikipedia events over the past 12 months. In that post, we covered the untimely passing of Aaron Swartz, the launch of Wikivoyage, the rise of Wikipediocracy, battles at Wikimedia Commons, and problems that have followed Wikipedia’s impressive fundraising. Today we finish the job:

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5. Basically ArbCom will never get its act together

Fair warning: I am not an ArbCom insider, I rarely follow its various dramas, and so I am not going to even going to attempt a satisfactory summary of everything that happened with ArbCom this past year. But let’s start with some background: ArbCom is short for Arbitration Committee, a group which I’ve just discovered has its own Wikipedia article. It’s an elected volunteer panel of (generally) respected Wikipedians who weigh in on tough issues and make binding decisions. The comparison to a national Supreme Court is glib but not entirely wrong, especially as they can (and often do) refuse to take certain cases, not to mention set precedents affecting future decisions.

The problem with ArbCom, if I can describe it generally, is that the organization has long been characterized by turnover and chaos. Nothing that happened this year was especially new, but that’s also part of the problem. Back when Wikipedia was just an experimental project, it was plausible enough that ArbCom’s dysfunction was something Wikipedia could grow out of. But the opposite has proved to be the case—as far as I can tell, no one thinks it’s ever getting better.

Two major incidents were big enough to merit rate a mention in episodes later in this post. Among others which didn’t, one more or less started off the tone for the year when, in March, an ArbCom veteran resigned his position while excoriating his fellow members for “stonewalling, filibustering, and downright ‘bullying’” when they weren’t “getting their way”. And then 2013 ended with another bang, as the top vote-getter in the latest ArbCom election, conducted just weeks ago, resigned his position after admitting to maintaining a secret account on—wait for it—Wikipediocracy.

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4. Wikipedia has more than a gender problem…

Bradley_ManningIt won’t take us too long to get back to ArbCom, but first let’s observe that Wikipedia is well known to have a “gender problem”; as The Wikipedian (and many more mainstream publications) have written extensively, Wikipedia’s editorship is overwhelmingly male, and it doesn’t cover certain topics (like women scientists, for example) very well. But this year an ugly row exposed what seems to be a more localized but still serious problem with transgender issues.

In August, Private Bradley Manning was convicted under the Espionage Act, and subsequently announced a public transition from male to female and the intention to be known as Chelsea Manning. (As I’ve written before, Manning’s transgender status was known, but until this point unconfirmed by Manning herself.) Wikipedia is generally considered a more progressive community than most, and references on Wikipedia were changed more quickly than at most news organizations. In fact, some of those same mainstream news publications praised Wikipedia for being quick to act. As it turned out, they should have been slower to praise.

Chelsea_ManningThe move was challenged, and the article was even changed back to Bradley, where it stayed as the debate heated up. Some objections were made in good faith and based on interpretations of guidelines, but some people were just being assholes. And then some of some of Chelsea Manning’s defenders crossed the line as well, and of course it ended up at ArbCom, which could seem to make no one happy in its various conclusions. First, ArbCom decided that yes, “Chelsea Manning” would indeed be the article’s name going forward. But among the punishments handed out, a pro-Chelsea editor was banned over an issue many considered a technicality—specifically for writing this blog post. During the fracas, the media was still watching, and some of the headings stung. Indeed, a newspaper may be slower to change, but when it makes a decision, it usually sticks with it.

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3. What happens when the COI guideline is contested in court?

Some of the problems involving the Wikipedia community have to do with the unusual compensation-based class system that has evolved around its community and “conflict of interest” rules. The more important Wikipedia has become, the more reputational impact it has shown to have, and the more it has been seen as both an opportunity and problem for celebrities, semi-public figures, professionals, companies, brands, bands, campaigns and non-profits. Since this first became an issue in 2006, Wikipedia has never quite figured out what to do about it. At the risk of oversimplifying things, mostly it has done nothing.

This year the worst nightmare of many came true when it turned out that a little-known but ever-expanding investigation into a network of secretly connected “sock puppet” user accounts traced back to an obscure but apparently quite successful startup called Wiki-PR. The name was familiar to some Wikipedians, but no definitive link had been established between the company and these accounts, owing something to the community’s (inconsistently applied) hang-ups about identifying editors’ public identities.

The revelation prompted the Wikimedia Foundation to issue a strongly-worded cease-and-desist letter to the company, although the impact was blunted when it emerged that someone from the Foundation’s own law firm had once anonymously edited the company’s article, violating the same rules it was supposedly defending. One can almost start to understand why the issue has been allowed to slide for so long.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s volunteer community banned the company’s known accounts, and then Arbcom angered some editors when it ordered one of the volunteer investigators to back off for reasons it said it couldn’t explain. Legal action from the Wikimedia Foundation is still possible, which could put the Foundation on an uncertain path just as its longtime leader is about to leave (see next).

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2. Sue Gardner’s departure and the uncertain new era

Sue_GardnerSue Gardner is not exactly the only leader Wikipedia has ever known. After all, Jimmy Wales is still its most widely-recognized figure, and there was that guy who called the FBI on them, once, too. But Sue Gardner is (with one interim exception) the only executive director the Wikimedia Foundation has ever known.

In 2007 she left a position running the CBC’s web operations in Toronto to join the Wikimedia Foundation. By the end of that year she was in charge of the whole thing, at a time of significant growth and staff turmoil (does anyone remember Danny Wool? Carolyn Doran? no?). In the years since, it has grown considerably more (150+ staffers now vs. a handful at the beginning), and she has led the Foundation about as well as anyone could be imagined to do. Now she’s announced that she is leaving on an as-yet-unspecified date to pursue as-yet-unspecified plans. An decision about her replacement is expected by March 2014, though a presumptive favorite hasn’t publicly emerged.

Whomever gets the job in the end has a very difficult task ahead. In fact, asking how much the leader of this San Francisco non-profit is really in control of Wikipedia is really asking the wrong question. The executive director leads the Foundation’s staff, but that’s entirely different than saying she leads the Wikipedia community. Which, as a matter of fact, brings us to the biggest Wikipedia story of 2013…

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1. The Visual Editor debacle is also a potent metaphor for Wikipedia’s chief organizational dilemma

To conclude the thought above: the Wikipedia community does not always agree with the Wikimedia Foundation. Some Foundation initiatives have been met with a indifference at best (see last year’s #9, which is arguably the real predecessor entry to this one). Others have been rejected like antibodies to a transplanted organ.

Into this latter category falls the Visual Editor, a long-in-development software initiative which was rolled out this summer to mixed reviews (hey, I thought it was fun) followed by a backlash that grew and grew until a volunteer editor’s uncontested edit of the source code summarily immobilized the whole expensive project.

Maybe I’m overdoing it to place this at number one. Maybe the underlying issue is less than the existential struggle between those two classes of community members than I think; perhaps the issue was simply one of a botched deployment and avoidable toe-stepping that only temporarily poisoned the well.

But I believe no single event in the past year encapsulated the biggest challenge facing Wikipedia today: it seems no better able to organize itself now than when it was a freewheeling experiment stumbling into greater and greater success in its first seven years of its life. Seven years further on, Wikipedia is a different kind of community, one struggling to cope with its fantastic success, but which hasn’t yet learned to adapt.

Whether the Visual Editor itself ever finds its way into everyday usage—and I think it will, after a long “eventually”—it spotlights Wikipedia’s most critical challenges more than any other story, and that’s why it’s the most important Wikipedia story of 2013.

Photo credits: U.S. Army, Chelsea Manning, Wikimedia Foundation.