Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2016-06-15

Wikiversity Journal: A new user group

From the crème de la crème

Eleven featured articles were promoted these weeks.

• God of War (nominated by JDC808) is an action-adventure video game series loosely based on Greek mythology. Debuting in 2005, the series has become a flagship title for the PlayStation brand, consisting of seven games across multiple platforms with an eighth in development. The series' story centers around its playable character, Kratos, a Spartan warrior tricked into killing his wife and child by his former master, Ares. Kratos kills Ares at the behest of the goddess Athena and takes his place as the new God of War, but is still haunted by the nightmares of his past. Revealed to be a demigod and the son of Zeus, the King of the Olympian Gods, who betrays Kratos, the Spartan then seeks revenge against the gods for their machinations. What follows is a series of attempts to free himself from the influence of the gods and the Titans and exact revenge. Each game chapter forms part of a saga with vengeance as a central motif. Games in the series have been praised for being the best action games for the PlayStation brand, and some of the best action games of all time. Strong sales and support of the series led to the franchise's expansion into other media, such as a comic book series, two novels, and a web-based graphic novel.
• Michael Francis Egan (nominated by Coemgenus) (1761–1814) was an Irish American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Born in Ireland, he joined the Franciscan Order at a young age. He served as a priest in Rome, Ireland, and Pennsylvania and became known as a gifted preacher. In 1808, Egan was appointed the first Bishop of Philadelphia, holding that position until his death in 1814. Egan's tenure as bishop saw the construction of new churches and the expansion of the Catholic Church membership in his diocese, but much of his time was consumed by disputes with the lay trustees of his pro-cathedral in Philadelphia.
• The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Bronx, New York, that competes in Major League Baseball. Their history (nominated by Giants2008) spans more than a century. Frank J. Farrell and William Stephen Devery bought the rights to an American League (AL) club in New York City after the 1902 season. The team, which became known as the Yankees in 1913, rarely contended for the AL championship before the acquisition of Babe Ruth after the 1919 season. With Ruth in the lineup, the Yankees won their first AL title in 1921, followed by their first World Series championship in 1923. Since then they have won the World Series championship twenty-six times again, with their most recent victory coming in 2009.
• The Good Terrorist (nominated by Bruce1ee) is a 1985 political novel by Doris Lessing. The story examines events in the life of Alice, a naïve and well-intentioned squatter, who moves in with a group of radicals in London, and is drawn into their terrorist activities. Three reviewers labelled the novel as a satire, while Lessing called it humorous. Some critics called the novel's title an oxymoron, stating that it highlights Alice's ambivalent nature, and that she is neither a good person, nor a good revolutionary. The Good Terrorist was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and won the Mondello Prize and the WH Smith Literary Award.
• Portrait of Maria Portinari (nominated by Ceoil) is a small c. 1470–72 tempera and oil on wood painting by Hans Memling. It portrays Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, about whom very little is known. She is aged about 14 years old, and depicted shortly before her wedding to the Italian banker Tommaso Portinari. The panel is the right wing of a devotional and hinged triptych; the lost center panel is recorded in sixteenth-century inventories as Virgin and Child.
• Nights into Dreams... (nominated by Jaguar) is an action video game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn in 1996. The story follows two teenagers, Claris and Elliot, who enter a dream world called Nightopia where all dreams take place. With the help of Nights they begin a journey to stop the evil ruler Wizeman from destroying Nightopia and consequently the real world. It received positive reviews upon release; critics praised the graphics, gameplay, soundtrack, and atmosphere. It has been included on multiple lists as being the best Sega Saturn game of all time, as well as among the best games ever made. A direct sequel, Nights: Journey of Dreams, was released for the Wii in 2007.
• Borscht (nominated by Kpalion) is a tart soup popular in several East European cuisines. The variety most commonly associated with the name in English is of Ukrainian origin and includes beetroots as one of the main ingredients, which gives the dish a distinctive red color. It shares the name, however, with a wide selection of sour-tasting soups without beetroots, such as green borscht, white borscht, cabbage borscht, etc.
• Freida Pinto (nominated by Vensatry) (born 1984) is an Indian actress who has appeared mainly in American and British films. Pinto rose to prominence through the 2008 British drama Slumdog Millionaire, her first appearance in a film. She won the Breakthrough Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and was nominated for various other awards. Her biggest commercial success came with the 2011 science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Pinto received major attention for portraying the titular character Trishna and her performance in Desert Dancer received critical acclaim.
• The Dorset Ooser (nominated by Midnightblueowl) is a wooden head that featured in the nineteenth-century folk culture of Melbury Osmond, a village in the southwestern English county of Dorset. The head was hollow, thus perhaps serving as a mask, and included a humanoid face with horns, a beard, and a hinged jaw which allowed the mouth to open and close. Although sometimes used to scare people during practical jokes, its main recorded purpose was as part of a local variant of the charivari custom known as "skimity riding" or "rough music", in which it was used to humiliate those who were deemed to have behaved in an immoral manner.
• Hurricane Patricia (nominated by Cyclonebiskit) was the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere and the second-most intense worldwide in terms of barometric pressure. It also featured the highest one-minute maximum sustained winds ever recorded in a tropical cyclone. Originating from a sprawling disturbance near the Gulf of Tehuantepec, Patricia was first classified a tropical depression. The system later became a tropical storm and was named Patricia. Exceptionally favorable environmental conditions fueled explosive intensification, and Patricia grew from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. The storm acquired maximum sustained winds of 205 mph (335 km/h) and a pressure of 879 mbar. Patricia's exceptional intensity prompted the retirement of its name in April 2016. Patricia made landfall in a significantly weakened state. Despite weakening greatly, it was the strongest landfalling hurricane on record along the Pacific coast of Mexico with winds estimated at 150 mph (240 km/h). Interaction with the mountainous terrain of Mexico induced dramatic weakening, faster than the storm had intensified. Within 24 hours of moving ashore, Patricia degraded into a tropical depression and dissipated soon thereafter.
• Nothomyrmecia (nominated by Burklemore1) is a rare genus of ants consisting of a single species, Nothomyrmecia macrops. It lives in South Australia, nesting in old-growth mallee and Eucalyptus woodlands. It measures 9.7–11 mm (0.38–0.43 in). Workers are monomorphic, showing little morphological differentiation among one another. Mature colonies are very small, with only 50 to 100 individuals in each nest. Workers are strictly nocturnal and are solitary foragers, collecting arthropod prey and sweet substances such as honeydew.

Nine featured lists were promoted these weeks.

• Len Deighton (born 1929) is an English author. His bibliography (nominated by SchroCat) includes novels, works of military history, screenplays and cookery writing. He wrote his first novel in 1962, The IPCRESS File, and has written 26 further until 1996.
• Mad Max: Fury Road is a 2015 action film directed by George Miller. The film is set in a dystopian desert wasteland where gasoline and water are rare commodities. Tom Hardy stars as the title character Max Rockatansky, who helps rebel soldier Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), rescue five women from the imprisonment of despotic leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). It grossed a worldwide total of over $378 million on a production budget of $150 million. Mad Max: Fury Road garnered awards and nominations (nominated by Cowlibob) in a variety of categories with particular praise for Miller's direction, its visual effects, costume design, editing, and Theron's performance. The film received ten nominations at the 88th Academy Awards, and went on to win the most awards at the ceremony with six.
• T-ara is a South Korean girl group, that debuted in 2009 after three years of training. Their discography (nominated by HĐ) includes four studio albums, seven extended plays, two compilation albums, two remix albums, thirty-six singles, and six promotional singles.
• S.L. Benfica is a Portuguese professional football team based in São Domingos de Benfica, Lisbon. Since their first competitive match in 1906, more than 750 players (nominated by Threeohsix) have appeared in first-team matches for the club, and almost 130 have made at least 100 appearances. Benfica's record appearance maker is Nené, who played 575 matches during his record 18-year career at the club; he is followed by António Veloso, with 538 appearances over 15 seasons. Manuel Bento is the oldest player to have played for Benfica.
• The 400-series highways (nominated by Floydian) are a network of controlled-access highways throughout the southern portion of the Canadian province of Ontario, forming a special subset of the provincial highway system. They are analogous to the Interstate Highway System in the United States or the Autoroute system of Quebec, but under provincial jurisdiction and regulated by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario. Although Ontario had been constructing divided highways for two decades prior, 400-series designations were introduced in 1952. Initially only Highways 400, 401 and 402 were numbered; other designations followed in the subsequent decades.
• Buckinghamshire is a county in south-east England. It has an area of 1874 km², and a population of 739,600. As of April 2016, there are sixty-five Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Buckinghamshire (nominated by Dudley Miles). Fifty-five are listed for their biological, and ten for their geological interest.
• London Wildlife Trust (nominated by Dudley Miles and Chiswick Chap) is the local nature conservation charity for Greater London. It is one of 47 members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, each of which is a local nature conservation charity for its area. The trust aims to protect London's wildlife and wild spaces, and it manages over 40 nature reserves in Greater London.
• Spotlight is a 2015 American drama film directed by Tom McCarthy. The film follows The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team and its investigation of sexual abuse in Boston. The film was a commercial success, grossing $88.3 million worldwide on a budget of $20 million. The film has been nominated for 138 awards, winning 71 (nominated by FrB.TG); its direction, screenplay and the performances of Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams have received the most attention from award groups. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture and for Best Original Screenplay.
• Selena (1971–1995) was an American singer, songwriter, spokesperson, actress, and fashion designer. She has released (nominated by AJona1992) five studio albums, three live albums, three boxsets, two remix albums, one soundtrack album, and twenty compilation albums. Credited for elevating a music genre into the mainstream market, Selena remains the best-selling Tejano recording artist whose posthumous releases continue to outsell those of living musicians.

Fourteen featured pictures were promoted these weeks.

• 
  Venus and Adonis
  (created by Paolo Veronese; nominated by EtienneDolet)
• 
  Daniel McCallum
  (created by unknown author; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• 
  Baselios Cleemis
  (created by Blacknclick; nominated by Spongie555)
• 
  Nogi Maresuke
  (created by unknown author; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• 
  Bacteriophages attached to a bacterial cell wall
  (created and nominated by Graham Beards)
• 
  Publicity photo for The Sound of Music
  (created by Toni Frissell; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• 
  Uppsala Cathedral
  (created by Emma Schenson; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• 
  Chien-Shiung Wu
  (created by the Smithsonian Institution; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• 
  Leopard seal
  (created and nominated by Godot13)
• 
  Leopard seal, close-up
  (created and nominated by Godot13)
• 
  Advanced Test Reactor core
  (created by Argonne National Laboratory; nominated by TomStar81)
• 
  "Broke, baby sick, and car trouble!"
  (created by Dorothea Lange; restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden)
• Pressurized water reactor
  (created by the Tennessee Valley Authority; nominated by TomStar81)
• January 31 – February 2, 2011 North American blizzard
  (created by NASA/NOAA/Jesse Allen; nominated by TomStar81)

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2016-06-15

Biography disputes; Craig Newmark donation; PR editing

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By Andreas Kolbe

Sinitta insists Wikipedia makes her older than she is

• Wikipedia not the right tool to repair online reputation: Ragan's PR Daily warns that Wikipedia is not a good tool for repairing a damaged reputation, drawing on a book by Mike Wood, Wikipedia as a Marketing Tool: How to reap the marketing benefits of Wikipedia. (June 14)
• Age dispute: The Daily Mirror, Metro and Yahoo! News are among news outlets reporting that Sinitta has accused Simon Cowell of having altered her Wikipedia entry to increase her age, in order "to wind her up". Wikipedia currently says she is 52; Sinitta insists she is 47, and apparently showed the Daily Mirror reporter her passport to back up her claim. The topic has in the past been extensively discussed on the article's talk page. (June 13)
• Big Brother viewers are watching Wikipedia: Chef Marco Pierre White's biography has become a target for vandalism as a result of his son's participation in reality TV series Big Brother, according to Metro and The Daily Star. (June 12, 14)
• Right to be forgotten: Jimmy Wales has criticised France's recent ruling on the right to be forgotten, as reported by Reuters and many others. As a member of Google's advisory council on this issue, Wales has long argued in the media in favour of Google's view; his present statements come in the wake of an appeal Google lodged in France last month. (June 10)
• A place on the national team, thanks to Wikipedia: In the Herald and the Glasgow Evening Times, rugby player Huw Jones attributes his place in the Scottish national rugby team "to an eagle-eyed member of the Glasgow Warriors' backroom staff—and a page on the Wikipedia website." (June 9)

Vermont news site VTDigger analyses recent and historical edits to Wikipedia's article on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter W. Galbraith

• Edit warring in biography of gubernatorial candidate: Vermont news site VTDigger has two articles chronicling recent and historical edits to the biography of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter W. Galbraith, voicing the opinion that there have been "dozens of strategic cuts and additions". (June 9, 14)
• Craigslist founder donation: Craigslist founder Craig Newmark has donated $1 million to the Wikimedia endowment, as reported by VentureBeat and CBS News. (June 8)
• More Afrikaans: eNCA reports on an initiative "to drastically increase the amount of Afrikaans articles" on Wikipedia. (June 5)
• InstallAware: The Wikipedian reports on a company's vain efforts (2006 AfD) to get a Wikipedia article. (June 2)

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.

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2016-06-15

Commons Picture of the Year; Wikidata licensing

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By Tony1 and NMaia

Commons Picture of the Year: Wikimedians crowded out by external uploads

I could have written the usual, relatively uncritical Signpost coverage of the results of the Commons Picture of the Year competition in "News and notes" or as a "Special report", as we did here, here, and here, for example. But this year feels like the right time to take a look at a fundamental issue concerning the competition.

I should say up-front that I'm neither photographer nor photographic critic; indeed, my last international trip amply showed a talent for turning great photographic opportunities into forgettables. However, I do have a passing acquaintance with the English Wikipedia's featured picture forum from the two years for which I wrote the Signpost's "Featured content" page. There I was first exposed to the expert opinions of our regular reviewers, and it was through reading their comments, as a weekly drop-in observer, that I could at least learn the basic criteria and even a few technical terms (alas, without impact on my flunky tourist photography).

In highlighting featured promotions I also became aware of a fundamental difference between featured pictures and the other featured forums: articles, lists, and topics are solely the work of Wikimedians; in contrast, featured picture candidates are of three types: first, those that have been wholly created by a Wikimedian; second, existing images selected and improved—often very skilfully—by a Wikimedian; and third, existing images merely selected and uploaded without input except for categorisation and a short description note on Commons. Items in these categories involve strikingly different levels of skill and creativity by our people, but if promoted, they're given the same featured status regardless.

I don't mind lumping images of these three types together in a single forum, whether on the English Wikipedia or on Commons, which has its own featured process: there, the throughput and number of active reviewers are just too small to fractionate them into categories. All the same, I must admit to a slight bias in my featured content Signpost coverage towards highlighting the work of Wikimedians over raw uploads from elsewhere. It seemed proper to give more oxygen to creative skill and originality in the community than to great images just grabbed from out there because they happen to be freely licensed.

However, the double-round annual Picture of the Year competition—open to raw uploads of external images, apparently on equal footing—is huge by comparison, and affords much more opportunity to corral those three types of images so that the design and photographic skills of our community can be more fitly recognised. In round 1, 3678 people cast more than 175,000 votes for the 1322 candidates; in round 2, more than 4000 people cast 11,570 votes for 56 finalists (the top 30 overall and the top two in each category). While the competition does aim to encourage uploads to Commons, it seems odd to put all into the same bag, whether the fruits of the highly creative work of community members or merely upload grunt. In any event, this year NASA images won both first and sixth places: I'm sure NASA isn't even aware of these accolades, and probably wouldn't care either way. Are we squandering our social rewards?

Kudos to all place-getters: there's some remarkable work here. However, allow me to bemoan the fact that the second round is not judged by a panel of experts after a democratic vote for the first round. In my view, the second-placed image belies the wealth of artistry in so much Islamic architecture: we're faced with half the image seriously underexposed almost to the point of black, the rest a bath of oversaturated colour without compositional depth. The design of the stained-glass windows does not appear to be worth highlighting—not to me, at least. With apologies to the photographer, I'm disappointed.

To return to the theme of astronomy, the third place-getter, taken from an external site, is indeed striking technically and artistically in several respects, although the gendered and vaguely sexualised title was clearly not thought through ("Milky Way lying above a lady"). At least there's a human in the picture.

David Illif's photograph of The Long Room at Trinity College Library gained fourth place and exemplifies this Wikimedian's prolific contribution to our repertory of article-ready pictures—and his talent for capturing grand interior perspectives.

Fifth place went to an image of the Seljalandsfoss waterfall in Iceland, by Diego Delso, who will be well-known to Wikimedia's featured-picture communities. His work also won 11th place with an image of a basilica church in Colombia, in which ornate gothic revival protrudes from a richly structured craggy hillside. The seventh and eighth place-getters were taken from Flickr, and No. 12 was released by the British Ministry of Defence.

No. 9 was of a pine-forest in Brazil just after dawn, by Heris Luiz Cordeiro Rocha. Here, light and shape combine to produce a serene, fog-streaked landscape. Tenth was Arild Vågen's picture of Rådhuset metro station in Stockholm, in which symmetry, straight lines, and reflection sit astonishingly within earthen walls and ceiling, challenging our preconceptions of railway stations as industrial forms.

Despite my misgivings about the structure of the competition, it has been a pleasure as usual to view so many entries of technical and artistic beauty. Congratulations to all involved. Tony1

Copyleft matters: Why Wikidata should move from CC0 to the ODbL

Andreas Kolbe's thought-provoking piece "Whither Wikidata?" sheds light on several troubling trends regarding the usage of Wikidata by third parties. Google and Microsoft, who secured well over half of Wikidata's initial funding, are now enjoying the fruits of our community's hard work with absolutely no strings attached. No considerations of public good.

As Kolbe shows, Wikidata usage by these companies lacks attribution, and this means end-users don't know the provenance of the data they are served up, and the community loses potential new editors. We are also harmed in a third way: any modifications made by others to this rich dataset do not return to the community at large: as far as Google and Bing are concerned, Wikidata is very much there to exploit as "free" as in "free labor".

Copyleft is the only assurance we editors have that our work will not be proprietarized (privatized, in plain English) down the line by third parties, who only truly care about free culture insofar as they can cash in on it, completely ignoring the spirit of sharing that is the cornerstone of our community.

A solution for this problem would be to move to a copyleft license. The Open Database License (ODbL), for instance, was designed for datasets such as Wikidata, and has been used most notably on OpenStreetMap. ODbL's "ShareAlike" provisions (much like those of CC BY-SA) would be a tremendous step forward for our project, as it would ensure that Wikidata and its contributors are credited and that any derivations of this work will be released freely for all.

We should not fear vain threats made by those who wish to use us as mere free labor for their enterprises. Wikidata's mission is not "to be the most used dataset in the industry". Its purpose goes way beyond that: we are translating knowledge into structured knowledge.

We should not bend to the power of industry monopolists. No amount of venture capital or ill-disguised "donations"—really investments made with certain expectations in return—should interfere with our goal of making knowledge accessible. In this context, accessibility means "trickling down" freedoms; every downstream user needs to have the same guarantees we are granting upstream.

Ideally, this should not be a controversial point. Among all Wikimedia projects, Wikidata is conspicuously alone in not being copylefted. Perhaps we should start asking why that is the case and whose interests benefit from weak licensing choices, and start to organize ourselves to fix this. NMaia

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2016-06-15

Another one with sports; Knockout, brief candle

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By Milowent and Serendipodous

Sports seemed to dominate the pop culture mishmash of the chart in the week of May 29 – June 4, 2016, with the death of Muhammad Ali leading the chart, basketball star Stephen Curry at #6, and two football topics UEFA Euro 2016 (#7) and Copa América Centenario (#9) also placing in the Top 10. But Game of Thrones also had two slots in the Top 10 as well, and probably will until their season finale. Sadly though, the mighty AFC Wimbledon who I have mentioned before, and who amazingly did get promoted to the English Football League One, still failed to get near the Top 25. But their day is coming, I just know it.

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.

For the week of May 29 to June 4, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000, were:

It's not uncommon for this list to become a parade of the dead; death is random, and often falls in quick succession. But as far as I remember, this is the first time the top three slots have been due to recent death. One, Muhammad Ali, the final end of a long, respected and bountiful life; another, Kimbo Slice, the result of the strange random happenstance that seems to be the Reaper's hallmark. And then there's Christina Grimmie, a death so infuriatingly senseless and cruel that calling it tragic is too forgiving. Outside these commemorations, our readers were mainly interested in traditional summer distractions: sports, movies and, of course, Game of Thrones.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of June 5 to 11, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000, were:

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2016-06-15

Why I proofread poetry at Wikisource

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By Sonja N. Bohm

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.

Poetry: “it is the stuff of the soul; it speaks to the body, the mind, and the spirit alike.” Sonja Bohm worked for years to get all of Florence Earle Coates’ poetry online, and now proofreads poetry on the English Wikisource, the free library. We asked why.

Three decades ago, in a buy-sell-trade bookshop in Plattsburgh, New York, I came across a two-volume set of collected Poems published in 1916. Unfamiliar with the poet but intrigued by a platinum print photograph of a woman pasted inside the front board of volume one (above), I purchased the set for $2.50 and went home.

For nearly two decades I wondered over the identity of the woman, and came to find—through an internet search—that it was the poet herself, Florence Earle Coates. Mystery solved. But I would not be satisfied with this knowledge alone. It was merely the beginning of a dedicated search into the life and times of a woman who had become my muse.

Scant information was initially available on the poet. It appeared that her thoughtful, finely crafted works of poetry were important in her day—in her circles—but perhaps had not survived a supposed “renascence of poetry” or test of time.

I resolved to remedy this by bringing her works back to life, but was at a loss as to how to do so until one of my children informed me that they had “edited” the Dr. Pepper article at Wikipedia. This planted a seed which would germinate a couple years later in 2009, when I created Mrs. Coates’ article at Wikipedia and author page at Wikisource—gradually adding all of her volumes of poetry over the span of about two years.

But my activity did not stop there. To quote another contributor, “the power and potential of [Wikisource] is mind-blowing”: where one work refers to another (via wikilinking), thereby contributing to the “great conversation.” One author, one book leads to another author, another book—another idea.

Seeing a work to its completion is a satisfying thing, but the process is perhaps even more rewarding. Word by word, line by line, page by page, proofreading is an active and learning process, as no two works are formatted alike.

Autograph verse of “Poetry” by Florence Earle Coates. Subsequently published as “To the Muse.”

When necessary, there is no shortage of help from other contributors. Each offers different abilities, gifts and perspectives to the site, and I find most are eager and willing to share their unique insights and skills. You get out of proofreading what you put into it. Coates writes, “Great symphonies require more than one hearing; great poems more than one reading.” It is beneficial to first proofread and then re-read, thus ensuring the accuracy of editing, if not the cultivation of the mind.

I developed anxiety following an illness a few years ago, and found proofreading to be a helpful stress reducer. One can develop a rather relaxing rhythm to editing poetry, particularly when proofreading longer works such as The Prelude by William Wordsworth:

“Now here, now there, moved by the straggling wind,
Came ever and anon a breath-like sound,
Quick as the pantings of the faithful dog,
The off and on companion of my walk;
And such, at times, believing them to be,
I turned my head to look if he were there;
Then into solemn thought I passed once more…”

I use this passage to illustrate how proofreading such poetry, for me, is much like walking in step to the cadence of the panting of a faithful dog—it can be a very relaxing bit of mental exercise; but a word of warning: one must be careful to maintain focus and not become overly transfixed by the rhythmic pattern or fall into reverie too often during proofreading otherwise OCR errors and typos will be overlooked!

I owe much to the works of Mrs. Coates, for her poetry sings of hope and joy, beauty and the ideal. But I am also thankful to Wikisource and its welcoming community for providing a space to showcase her poetry—and to my family, who has tolerated this editing hobby of mine.

I received the following after posting some of Mrs. Coates’ poetry (on loss, grief and immortality) to another website: “Thanks for sharing these poems. I love her perspective on the human condition. I’d never heard of Coates before, but I’ll never forget her now.” My reply to the gentleman included a line from Coates’ “Deathless Death,” which states “no good, once given, can be lost.” I shared the same words a few years back with a woman whose son had died. She spoke of her son’s goodness, and the life-affirming words came to mind.

This in a nutshell is why I proofread poetry. It is the stuff of the soul; it speaks to the body, the mind, and the spirit alike. In the words of Mrs. Coates, “poetry in some form is necessary to all—save, perhaps, to those who are content to live upon bread alone.”

Sonja N. Bohm
English Wikisource contributor

“Why I ...” is a new ongoing series for the Wikimedia Blog. We want to hear what motivates you to contribute to Wikimedia sites: send us an email at blogteam[at]wikimedia[dot]org if you know of someone who wants to share their story about what gets them to write articles, take photographs, proofread transcriptions, and beyond.

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