Malware installed on your computer may inject advertising into a page on popular websites, such as this Wikipedia article. This is an example that we've seen in the wild. Note the tiny text "ads not by this site" immediately below the ad, which may or may not appear next to these types of injected advertisements.

One example that we have seen installs itself as a browser extension. The extension is called “I want this” and installs itself in Google Chrome. To remove it:

• Open the options menu via the “pipe-wrench” icon on the top right, and choose Settings.
• Open the Extensions panel and there is the list of extensions installed.
• Remove an Extension by clicking the Remove button next to an item.

There is likely other similar malware that injects ads into Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and other popular browsers. If you see examples that you can document, please point them out in the comments.

Ads injected in this manner may be confined to some sites, even just to Wikipedia, or they may show up on all sites you visit. Browsing through a secure (HTTPS) connection (which you can automate using the HTTPS everywhere extension) may cause the ads to disappear, but will not fix the underlying problem.

Disabling browser add-ins is a good starting point to determine the source of these types of ads. This does not necessarily fix the source of the problem either, as malware may make deep changes to your operating system. If you’re comfortable attempting a malware scan and removal yourself, there are various spyware/malware removal tools. Popular and well-reviewed solutions include Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes. But be aware that these types of tools may also bundle software, or leave your computer in an unusable state.

If in doubt, have your computer evaluated for malware by a competent and qualified computer repair center.

There is one other reason you might be seeing advertisements: Your Internet provider may be injecting them into web pages. This is most likely the case with Internet cafes or “free” wireless connections. This New York Times blog post by Brian Chen gives an example.

But rest assured: you won’t be seeing legitimate advertisements on Wikipedia.

We’re here to distribute the sum of human knowledge to everyone on the planet — ad-free, forever.

Philippe Beaudette, Director of Community Advocacy
Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma is an interdisciplinary high school level program which was developed in collaboration with UNESCO mostly based on European and U.S. models. It is considered to be rigorous, with graduation depending on testing, the writing of essays, and the completion of a community service requirement. This makes IB program ideal for Wikipedia. Students have been prepared to do expository writing in their native language (and often in English as well), and the community service requirement is eighty hours, which allows for the development of various kinds of projects.

Four students who edited Wikipedia as part of their community service requirement of their International Baccalaureate Diploma.

In the pilot program at ITESM-CCM, I trained students on how to edit Wikipedia and helped them come up with article ideas, working at the school’s self access language laboratory, which I run. We began with English-to-Spanish translation on Wikipedia since I have had success with this kind of assignment and the Teylers Museum was doing a translation challenge. Soon after doing several articles related to Teylers, students began to find their own interests over the course the semester. Students worked on translating or creating fifteen articles, as wells as donating and organizing photos in Wikimedia Commons. See a list of articles created or translated.

Opportunities arose during the semester to allow students to explore options other simply working in the lab. The main one was an edit-a-thon held at the Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City. This allowed the one IB student who could attend to not only work with the museum, some university students, and members of Wikimedia México, it also got her picture in the school’s newspaper. Various students have worked with me to create formal proposals in Spanish to be sent to other organizations with interest in working with Wikipedia.

The pilot had only seven students so that time and other considerations could be tested. It turns out that these students adapted to working with Wikipedia rapidly, mostly because they already know the basics of doing expository writing and citation. Since this is a community service requirement, the only assessment is hours served, no grades. This makes working with students in International Baccalaureate programs, which exist worldwide, an attractive option for outreach programs to explore!

Leigh Thelmadatter, Volunteer

Some members of the Language Acquisition seminar at the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta.

The students in the class found this writing assignment a bit scary, but they were curious and eager to see how it could turn out.

“I was nervous about writing for Wikipedia because I didn’t know what to expect and the process seemed a little daunting,” said Alanna Lindsay, a fourth-year student from Wainwright, Alberta. “However, once we began, I quickly got used to Wikipedia and began to really enjoy the project.”

Alanna’s classmate Erika Heiberg, a fourth-year from Kingman, Alberta, agreed, saying she was “slightly intimidated” at the beginning.

“I was unfamiliar with the editing process and was overwhelmed at first by all the new interfaces and things like that, but I was excited to do something different,” said Heiberg.

Dr. Marentette said the traditional research essay generally develops information literacy, critical thinking, and writing skills, but she appreciated the fact that the Wikipedia assignment addressed those and more.

“The students learned a lot about evaluating sources. They learned how Wikipedia works (talk pages, standards etc.). They know now that they can figure out if an article is of reliable or not. It made the typical lesson about evaluating sources very relevant,” she said. “When writing, they need to constantly be aware of the potential audience. They have to address public response as soon as they begin to plan changes to an article. They have to defend their choices, or allow themselves to be persuaded to change their approach. They have to write and rewrite to achieve the tone and clarity and coverage for which they are aiming.”

And her students noticed their skills blossoming as they worked together to improve the two articles.

“The good thing about Wikipedia is that it teaches you to write in a more accessible manner and to leave out a lot of the unnecessary information that you include in a traditional paper to meet the page number requirement,” Heiberg said. ”This project helped me to make my writing much more succinct and easy to follow.”

The students improved their articles, then reached out to their Online Ambassador, Neelix, members of WikiProject Psychology and other editors who contribute to psychology-related articles for feedback. When they felt ready, they submitted both articles to the Good Article review process, then collaborated to make edits based on the feedback of the reviewers. Students said they welcomed the productive feedback on their articles, and they were excited to have had their hard work recognized with the Good Article designation.

All of the students said they preferred Wikipedia assignments to traditional assignments after this experience. In fact, third-year student Lianne Theelen, a native of Red Deer, Alberta, said she hoped to take another class next year where she writes Wikipedia articles for class.

“We get more feedback on our writing and we’re more motivated to make it look good because it’s accessible to the public,” Theelen said. “My favorite part is not having it sit and collect dust or get thrown away after the term. Our article is still there, and it is useful for people.”

Other classmates agreed, echoing the themes that drove APS to call on professors like Dr. Marentette to use Wikipedia in their classrooms in the first place.

“In the future, I would prefer a Wikipedia assignment over a usual term paper, since this will help many Wikipedia users get credible information on psychology related topics,” said Juliet Brown, a fourth-year student born in Ghana and now living in Alberta.

“My favorite part about writing for Wikipedia was knowing that the information being presented is valuable to someone, and in particular to parents,” said Alison Owens, a third-year student from Olds, Alberta. “The joint attention page may be a place where parents of children with developmental disabilities go to look in order to learn more about their child’s disability. I think its great that we can provide that information for them in an easy access format, with reliable sources that they can trust.”

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

Located at the Harvard campus in Cambridge Massachusetts, this Wikipedian will have a unique role facilitating collaboration between the faculty, staff, and fellows at the Center and the Wikipedia volunteer community, with the aim of improving the quality of encyclopedia articles.

The Belfer Center is a focal point for research on international security and policy related to science, technology and the environment. It is also part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. While some experience with the subject matter is preferred, the goal of this fellowship is for a Wikipedian to help unlock the expertise at the Center and see that it is shared with the world. While English Wikipedia alone may have nearly four million articles, the depth and quality of our coverage of international affairs and policy — such as on global nuclear security — is not well known. What we do know is that we are still a long way from Wikipedia’s goal of the “sum of all human knowledge,” and that having a liaison to work with experts and volunteers will do much to improve the free encyclopedia.

This position is funded by a generous grant from the Stanton Foundation. This philanthropic institution has supported both the Belfer Center and the Wikimedia Foundation in the past. Apply now!

Siko Bouterse, Head of Community Fellowships Program, Wikimedia Foundation

One of the two first prize winning entries, showing a Rekla race (Ox cart race) at Avaniyapuram near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, India.
(Author: Essar/User:எஸ்ஸார், CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Logo of the Tamil Wiki Media Contest

Sodabottle discussed the idea with Natkeeran and after brainstorming with two other community members, Logicwiki and Kalaiarasy, they initiated an RfC (request for comment) on the Tamil Wikipedia village pump.  There was unanimous backing from the community. In these two weeks, what started out as a simple proposal – “Shall we have a Media contest this year?” – was fleshed out with the suggestions of over a dozen contributors. Subsequent discussions focused on prize money, type of prizes, outreach strategy and a host of other operational details, after which the grant application was made.
Volunteers were going to be required and this presented both a unique challenge and a great opportunity for Tamil Wikimedians.  The Tamil Wiki community is spread across continents and timezones, and to reach out to everyone, coordinators with specific skill sets were chosen across diverse geographical locations. Although the number of coordinators was limited to 5 to keep the project manageable, more volunteers pitched in at every stage. Logicwiki provided extensive technical support throughout the event.

The other first prize winning entry: "His salt march everyday" (salt field worker in Tamil Nadu, India, photographed by Arvind Rangarajan. CC-BY-SA 3.0)

What was TWMC’s biggest feat then? Sure, it generated a lot of participation, new content and some new tools. But it was also important for community mobilization – the brilliant way in which a community took every step, small and big together, overcame hurdles through team solutions and managed to connect with people across the planet. Incredibly, this was done over 3 long months!
Further, two long time editors returned from their wikibreaks to help, and four new regular editors are now contributing to Tamil Wikipedia.  TWMC is also an excellent example of sustained outreach, since newbies were given an opportunity to contribute easily and from there explore other facets of Wikimedia projects. It was also a wonderful opportunity to get professional photographers to use Commons and upload their work to it. The community (Tamil and others) now uses almost 8000 of the contest images on different projects.  A Norwegian user has used images from this contest in Norsk Wikipedia.

On prizes, Sodabottle adds, “A contest and prizes are just the right attraction to stop people from leaving after a [quick] look over [a project], and goad them into doing something concrete.” He cites his own example: He started contributing to Tamil Wikipedia only because of an article writing contest. Although he didn’t win a prize there, it lured him in and he has been a regular editor since then. Sodabottle also has a few tips specifically about Commons: “Commons, like any of our projects”, says he, “is undermanned.” So, it is crucial to have your own maintenance workforce for any media contest. Massive effort is require to copyvio check, tag, template, move and categorize  in such volumes. He also suggests a MediaWiki extension to help similar initiatives.

(You can view the the other prize winners or read the detailed Tamil Wikimedians Grant report)

Noopur Raval, Consultant (Communications), India Program

In the Wikipedia Education Program, professors assign their students to edit Wikipedia articles as a grade for class, assisted by volunteer Wikipedia Ambassadors. In fall 2011, 55 courses participated in the program in the United States, with students editing articles on the English Wikipedia. On average, these students added 1855 bytes of content that stayed on Wikipedia, compared to only 491 for a randomly chosen sample of new users who joined English Wikipedia in September 2011. These numbers establish that students who participate in the Wikipedia Education Program contribute significantly more quality content that stays on Wikipedia than other new users.

Examining the distribution of content that survived on Wikipedia for both of these groups, we found that almost half of the Wikipedia Education Program participants added 1,000 or more bytes that stayed on Wikipedia in the first six months. In contrast, more than half of the random sample of new editors added no content that stayed on Wikipedia in the first six months. The targeted recruitment of students, combined with the support provided by the Ambassador Program and instructors, results in a much larger percentage of new editors who contribute quality content to Wikipedia.

To understand the collective impact of the Wikipedia Education Program in fall 2011, we compared the amount of content students added to Wikipedia to the content added by the random sample of new editors. The numbers show that the 920 student editors who participated in the program in fall 2011 added the same amount of content as 2250 typical new editors (editors are defined as users who made at least one edit to an article). In terms of new content, students have twice the impact as typical new editors.

An important consideration for any outreach project is editor retention. Data showed that students who are introduced to editing Wikipedia through the U.S. Education Program are just as likely to continue editing as any other newcomer.

The Wikipedia Education Program has now grown to Egypt, Brazil and other regions beyond North America. With an increased global presence, measuring and understanding the contributions of new student editors (and how they differ from other new users that join Wikipedia) has gained importance. Establishing a common metric for measuring the impact of the Wikipedia Education Program on various Wikipedias is another key motivation for a quantitative study.

There’s a lot more work to be done on measuring the program’s impact. So, stay tuned for more information about these metrics.

Methodology for this research can be found at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Education_Program_evaluation#Methods

Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst, Global Development

(with input from Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research)

Community Fellow Peter Coombe, CC-BY-SA

It is my great pleasure to introduce our newest Wikimedia Community Fellow of 2012, Peter Coombe! As a Wikimedia Community Fellow, Pete will be working with the community to improve help documentation on English Wikipedia. He’ll be leading a 6 month effort and taking a data-driven approach to reorganize and rewrite key help pages in order to make them more usable for new and experienced editors alike.

Like the encyclopedia itself, Wikipedia’s help documentation has grown organically over the years. Wikipedians have produced a great deal of useful documentation, but today’s help system has a vast number of pages that range from introductions addressing beginner needs to highly advanced technical documentation. Some pages are written in a clear style and some are not, and the path to find information on any given topic can be baffling, particularly to new editors. Pete feels that improving the main help landing page and other key help pages could have significant benefits for editor retention, and we agree.

Pete comes to the fellowships program with an impressive Wikipedia and academic resume. He’s been editing English Wikipedia as The wub since 2005, he’s an admin with over 75,000 global edits, and an active member of Wikimedia UK. Pete volunteered on the Social Media Team in the 2010 Fundraiser, and worked as a Production Coordinator in 2011. He’s also got a B.A. and M. Sci. with honors in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

But what really piqued our interest at the Wikimedia Community Fellowship Program is Pete’s experience breaking down complex topics into clear written information. He’s participated twice in a program at Cambridge to create online teaching and learning modules on materials science and engineering topics. In his projects, Pete introduced users to atomic force microscopy and raman spectroscopy. He’s also worked at The Helpful Book Company, publishing books that teach senior citizens how to use computers.

Pete’s talent for making the complex seem simple, combined with his experience A/B testing in the fundraiser and 7 years editing Wikipedia, make him a great fit for his fellowship project. To follow his work or get involved in the redesign project, please visit his project page. Welcome, Pete – the Wikimedia Foundation is looking forward to partnering with you to make help more accessible for all!

More Spring 2012 Fellows will be announced in the coming weeks – we can’t wait for you to meet them!

Siko Bouterse, Head of Community Fellowships

The first stop was at the Dead Sea in Jordan.  Moushira was invited by the e-mediat program to conduct a workshop for participants from more than 20 NGOs from Lebanon and Jordan.  Several Lebanese and Jordanian NGOs working in the areas of history preservation, video blogging, and human rights showed interest in organizing Wikipedia sessions for their members and incorporating their up-to-date, sourced data from their research into Wikipedia articles. According to a recent study, Jordan’s contribution to online content is mainly in Arabic, and the country is one of the main contributors to the 3 percent of global online content that is in Arabic, an interesting fact which opens doors to fruitful activities.

Session about Wikipedia in Tetouan

Next Moushira traveled to Morocco, which, despite its reputation as a francophone country, is the 4th largest content contributor to the Arabic Wikipedia. Her first stop was Tetouan, in northern Morocco, where she hosted a session at The National School of Education, a government-funded higher education institute. It included a talk about Wikipedia by Fayssal, a local of Tetouan and a longtime Wikipedian (formerly a member of the English Wikipedia’s arbitration committee), and Zack, a significant contributor to the Arabic Wikipedia from Meknes, who led a workshop on how to edit Wikipedia. The attendees asked rich and diverse questions, e.g. on neutrality, fundraising, and how the Arabic Wikipedia could be improved. The school administration was excited about hosting more sessions and about considering how Wikipedia could be efficiently incorporated in their curriculum.

Moroccan bloggers at National Library

In Tangier, we met with members of CMNT, an association developing open-source software technology in Morocco and spreading awareness about it. In Rabat, we met in the National Library. Moushira was accompanied by a group of Moroccan bloggers and members of Arabtechies. The National Library is a potential partner in the liberation of knowledge. They are buying the copyrights to a number of valuable Arabic-language books and releasing them for free, and all machines for staff and public operate Ubuntu Linux. We are interested in developing a partnership with the library to accelerate content liberation of source material that would be valuable for Wikisource and for Wikipedia. Finally, Moushira traveled to Fes for a second e-mediat workshop for NGOs.

Barry arrived in Cairo for a two day visit. He participated in a small meeting with ambassadors in the Cairo Education Pilot and in meetings with legal consultants, as well as with ADEF, the Arabic Digital Expression Foundation, which has been supporting our current education program in Cairo. He also met with a translation group that is interested in releasing their translations under an open license in order to support our translation efforts. After two days in Cairo, Barry and Moushira had an early morning flight to Amman, where they had a few meetings, including a community meeting with the Mozilla Foundation, Creative Commons, and the Jordan Open Source Association.

Barry Newstead talking at CUMERC

Gathering at Amman with Jordan OSA

The discussion focused on ways to support local activities in Jordan and some of the best universities to collaborate with. Some attendees showed interest in our grants program, which they can operate for ideas like enhancing content related to Jordanian cities and culture. In the evening Barry gave a talk at the Columbia University Middle East Research Institute (CUMERC) in Amman, which was followed by a number of interesting questions, e.g. about conflict resolution on Wikipedia, and how the free projects have been able to sustain their existence so far.

Free culture folks gathering at AlHamra, Beirut

The day after we had an early flight to Beirut, where we went to a gathering organized by AltCity, a tech and art incubator. It was a nice chance to connect with a longtime Lebanese Wikipedian, Elias, and with Walid, from the open source community Ma’abar, as well as other tech enthusiasts. Barry and Moushira also met with the Qatar Computing Research Institute to discuss their plans to support Arabic Wikipedia.

The next day, Barry gave an inspiring talk on the community day of the Arabnet digital summit.

Barry Newstead talking at Arabnet

Barry’s talk triggered a number of tweets and re-tweets (in English and Arabic). Shortly after his talk, Barry had to leave Beirut for the annual Wikimedia chapters conference in Berlin. Moushira remained in Beirut for a meeting with the Arabthought Foundation, which is currently working on a proposal for supporting Arabic digital content and would like to explore venues of collaboration with Wikipedia. She then met with a founding member of فعل أمر f’eil amer, a local association leading several nationwide campaigns that support Arabic language content.

We are excited about our findings so far and the general enthusiasm for Arabic Wikipedia. There is positive momentum in the community and people we met throughout the region want to contribute. Our challenge is to develop programs that encourage quality contribution and work with the community to support quality growth.  The Wikimedia Foundation plans to expand our investment in the region over the next year and will be seeking consultants to support our work in the coming months.

Cheers, سلام

Moushira Elamrawy
Egypt-based consultant,  Arabic language projects

Edward Erikson

Wikipedia is always present in the classroom – whether it’s invited to attend or not. Students often draw from Wikipedia as a primary source. Too often, it is the place where research begins rather than ends and a semester rarely goes by without a minor or major case of plagiarism. Last semester, when I first introduced the Wikipedia project, a student asked: “how are we supposed to find a topic if it’s not on Wikipedia?” The Wikipedia assignment forces students out of their comfort zone. It pushes them to look beyond the easy sources and take a new approach to research (a new approach that is really an old approach). Good research begins with the search for a question.

The first task and the first struggle students confront is how to find a topic. The assignment breaks students’ dependence on easy answers and familiar subjects and reaffirms the value of the search.  Wikipedia offers some resources to help identify stubs and missing articles, but many times students discover ample noteworthy material by digging through Congressional records, public policy briefs and Supreme Court cases. By placing Wikipedia at the center of the assignment, it overcomes the fundamental concern that nearly all professors share: Wikipedia is NOT a source. Making Wikipedia the end, not the means, revivifies the research experience. It transforms Wikipedia from a problem to a solution.

Many of the students I meet view college as an obligation. But higher education is an extraordinary privilege. In the U.S., just 30 percent of adults over 25 have a college degree. And in the world, it’s less than 7 percent. The opportunity for education comes with the responsibility to produce and share knowledge. These are values shared among faculty and graduate students, but often ignored in undergraduate teaching. Wikipedia helps to break down the barriers between knowledge consumption and production.  It allows students to share their work with a global audience. And it helps students to cultivate the authority of authorship and become more discerning consumers and producers of information.

Students walk away from class with a deeper understanding of research. They walk away with the skills and comfort to edit, revise and add content to Wikipedia. And they walk away with the pride of publication. The Wikipedia assignment opens our classroom to the world. It gives new meaning to the work that we, as students and faculty, do in the classroom and in college.

Edward Erikson teaches Intro to Political Theory and American Political Thought at the University of Massachusetts.  He was twice nominated for the UMass Distinguished Teaching Award in 2009-10 and 2010-11.  He received his M.A. in Communication, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at UMass Amherst.  His dissertation explores tensions in democratic theory and practices surrounding homelessness in America.  He can be contacted at eerikson@polsci.umass.edu or follow him on Twitter @EdwardErikson.

The proportion of quality newcomers over time. (2006-2011)

As part of the 2011 Wikimedia Summer of Research, we uncovered a possible correlation between the decline in new active editors that began in 2007 and the rise of warnings issued to new users by bots and automated tools, which started in 2006.

For those of us studying editor trends, the following question has continued to puzzle us: did the change in communications to new users lead to the decline, or can the rise in warnings be explained by a decrease in quality contributions from new users? Perhaps, as some Wikipedians have argued, the new users of today are being reverted and warned more aggressively than those who entered the project in 2001-2006 because their edits are qualitatively worse (e.g., more self-promotional or spammy, less serious and encyclopedic) than those of previous generations of editors.

While the complexity involved in determining what constitutes a “good” contributor to Wikipedia may never allow us to definitively answer this question, our research argues against the theory that today’s newbies just plain suck.

The proportion of rejection for quality newcomers over time.

To test the hypothesis that new contributors who entered the project in recent years have been more harmful and less interested in positively contributing to the encyclopedia, we randomly sampled the first edits of newcomers to the English Wikipedia from the earliest days of the project to the present. With the help of some experienced Wikipedians, we hand-categorized the edits of 2,100 new users according to a four point quality scale – blatant vandal (obscene language, obvious vandalism), bad faith (jokes and nonsense), good faith poor-quality edit (bad formatting, unreferenced, but trying to add value), and golden (good faith good edits that should not be reverted).

What we found was encouraging: the quality of new editors has not substantially changed since 2006. Moreover, both in the early days of Wikipedia and now, the majority of new editors are not out to obviously harm the encyclopedia (~80 percent), and many of them are leaving valuable contributions to the project in their first editing session (~40 percent). However, the rate of rejection of all good-faith new editors’ first contributions has been rising steadily, and, accordingly, retention rates have fallen. What this means is that while just as many productive contributors enter the project today as in 2006, they are entering an environment that is increasingly challenging, critical, and/or hostile to their work. These latter findings have also been confirmed through previous research.

Survival rate of newcomers over time.

This study has many important implications for community and Wikimedia Foundation efforts to engage and retain new editors. To begin, it reasserts the centrality of one fundamental policy on the project, “Assume good faith.” This research strongly supports efforts in the community and at the Foundation to do a better job of integrating new editors into Wikipedia and its sister projects, not simply for the sake of gaining new editors, but for the quality of these new editors’ contributions overall.

At the Foundation level, this includes major software changes like the creation of a visual editor to lower the technical barrier to entry, as well as more experimental pilot projects like template A/B testing, an attempt to make the template messages received by new users more personalized and clear, and the Teahouse, which gives new users a friendly, low-pressure space to seek help from experienced Wikipedians. With better software and an inviting and supportive atmosphere, the encyclopedia can continue to grow both in quality of material and quantity of dedicated contributors.

• Find out more about this study at Research:Newcomer quality
• This work is part of a journal article in submission to a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist on Wiki Research
• A special thanks to R. Stuart Geiger from UC Berkeley, as well as Maryana Pinchuk, Steven Walling, and Oliver Keyes from the Wikimedia Foundation, for their assistance with this study.

Aaron Halfaker,
Wikimedia Foundation Research Analyst and University of Minnesota PhD candidate