Hi everyone,
As part of my internship with WMF I have created
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Data - a single page introduction
to Wikimedia-related data sources. Its intended to inform researchers abou
the variety of Wikimedia data available.
The page can definitely benefit from some review from the actual users of
data. Please take a look and feel free to add or correct information. The
"How-to" and "Existing tools" subsections definitly could be expanded.
Also, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Data/FAQ is still quite
small and can definitely be improved.
My internship is over in a few days. I will still be around some but if you
see anything that can be improved please take the initiative and change it.
If you don't feel comfortable doing it, write a note on the Talk page.
Finally, I would like to encourage you to share any Wikimedia-related
datasets you have or you know of, small or big, on
http://datahub.io/group/wikimedia. The aim is to eventually have all
Wikimedia-related data documented on the Wikimedia group on DataHub.
Regards,
Mariya
https://github.com/wilkie/whitepaper
"This gem will perform a whitepaper lookup on major scholarly databases.
Its purpose is to easily find related papers and organize your paper
collection. With this application, you can easily download pdfs or use
it as a library to automatically assign metadata.
"Currently, CiteSeerX, ACM and IEEE are the only databases it uses along
with a google pdf/ps search to find other pdf or ps links to download."
The author says it is just for personal use.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
I am starting a research project specifically related to Wikipedia.
The project is "Wikipedia Primary School: Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of primary education in the languages used by the different education systems" (please refer below for a short description).
I wanted to inform you about the project and i'd like to invite you to join in if you are interested (please do not hesitate to contact me).
more specifically - and more urgently - i'm looking for research partners in Germany and Belgium. I'm preparing with Tobias Schönwetter (UCT University of Cape Town, IP Law Department and co-coordinator of Creative Commons Africa) the application. The proposal is meant for the ERAfrica programme (new ideas) http://www.erafrica.eu (deadline April 15th).
Unfortunately for this application not all countries are eligible, and we need to specifically address universities (they will receive and manage the eventual grants).
but we can also establish partnerships with stakeholders (wikimedia chapters, NGOs).
At the moment
South Africa: UCT University of Cape Town, IP Law Department (Tobias Schönwetter)
Switzerland: SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (Iolanda Pensa)
Kenya: Strathmore University, Centre for IP and IT Law (Isaac Rutenberg) - pending
Germany: (it would be particular relevant to involve researchers who can work on data analysis).
Belgium: (maybe the University of Leuven with the Anthropological Research on Africa (IARA) - to involve the African studies networks. but we didn't approach them jet)
please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to get involved - io(a)pensa.it and to forward this message.
we are very motivated in developing this project, and we will be focusing on it also with other applications.
The documentation is not confidential and if you are interested in promoting it or implementing it, we are more than happy. we would like the project to actually happen.
thanks and best regards
iolanda/iopensa
--
Iolanda Pensa - via Rabolini, 10 - 20125 Milano - Italia. Tel. +39 335 655 36 33, io(a)pensa.it - http://www.iopensa.it - Skype: iopensa.
Researcher at SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
--------------------------------------
Wikipedia Primary School
Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of primary education in the languages used by the different education systems.
A project allowing students, families and teachers to find on Wikipedia the documentation necessary to obtain the primary school qualification in their country, in their language.
Wikipedia is meant to be an educational tool and it is currently available online, via mobile phones and offline. Experiences have shown that, once accessible, Wikipedia does not provide information that responds directly to curriculum-based questions. The project relies on Wikipedia as an existing and growing resource, it solves the need for an encyclopaedia capable of responding to curriculum-based questions, and it fosters Wikipedia content, quality and outreach.
More specifically the project aims at:
Bridging Wikipedia and primary education. This objective implies to move the Wikipedia community towards a focus on primary education, and at the same time to strengthen the capacity of the education ecosystem to contribute to Wikipedia, and in general to open collaborative knowledge.
Enriching Wikipedia with new content relevant to primary education. This objective implies an assessment of the articles produced.
Fostering the development of translations and new content in different Wikipedia linguistic editions. This objective implies the release of existing educational resources (OER in cc by or cc by-sa), the production of datasets and the involvement of the Wikimedia movement.
Verifying and evaluating the use of Wikipedia as a source of information for primary education. This objective implies the involvement of stakeholders and data analysis.
Wikipedia Primary School contributes to universal primary education and to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG2: Achieve Universal Primary Education). Even if it is scalable and international, the project is conceived primarily to address African countries and languages.
Wikipedia is a very peculiar encyclopaedia. It is a living organism made of a wide community with specific policies, clusters and dynamics. Contributing to Wikipedia means to play a fair game, and to respect the way Wikipedia works, its rules and community. To strengthen the capacity of Wikipedia to respond directly to curriculum-based questions, the project does not simply transfer content from national schoolbooks into Wikipedia. The methodology is centred around research and fieldwork activities.
Research activities focus on monitoring Wikipedia in different linguistic editions; understanding the different national education systems and identifying which are the content capable of responding to curriculum-based questions; involving a scientific committee in contributing to the project; establishing and managing a Wikipedia Scientific Journal, a peer-reviewed scientific publication in Creative Commons attributions share-alike license, designed to involve scholars and to assess Wikipedia articles, in collaboration with other scientific journals and by fostering synergies between scientific knowledge and Wikipedia and open access; producing datasets to generate stub articles on Wikipedia in all linguistic editions; uploading content, in particular OER Open Educational Resources already available and images and texts provided with an open license compatible with Wikipedia; supporting territorial development with tutors and with upload capacities (in particular for countries with low connectivity); monitoring and evaluating the project.
Fieldwork activities focus on testing and enhancing the use of Wikipedia in primary school and it is developed in collaboration with the stakeholders already working in education. They provide training, in particular training for Wikipedians in residence; they organise Wikipedia events, in particular Wiki Loves Monuments; they allow networking with institutions and governments to facilitate the release of content with open licenses; they tutor institutions and people; they develop pilot projects in schools and in collaboration with NGOs working in education; they establish hotspots where needed; and they facilitate the distribution of Wikipedia offline in countries where relevant.
What we do not do
Wikipedia Primary School is a scalable and international project with a specific goal: it responds to a real need, it relies on existing networks and resources, and it is structured to allow people and institutions to contribute to it. The very nature of the project is meant to produce a broad impact. If the project Wikipedia Primary School is successful, it can be developed in the future by producing content for other cycle of education.
We do not break Wikipedia rules. The project respects Wikipedia pillars and the opinions of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia communities.
We do not believe the project substitutes in any way the essential role of people and institutions working in education. We want to contribute in a specific way to the work many people and institutions are already implementing and we believe only a collaborative approach can really allow the project to be effective and relevant.
We do not produce a selection of Wikipedia articles. We want people to access and benefit from the whole Wikipedia.
We do not address students, teachers and families only. Contributing to Wikipedia is meant to provide better knowledge for everyone everywhere.
We do not work for governments and ministries of education. The project is meant to be independent. It selects articles to be based on national educational systems, but it does not implement on Wikipedia governments’ strategies or requests.
We do not provide offline access to Wikipedia over online access. We consider online access to Wikipedia a priority and the best way to access Wikipedia, because it allows to contribute to it.
We do not consider Wikipedia a schoolbook. Wikipedia is not a schoolbook and it can not substitute teachers and educators and other appropriate educational resources.
We do not simplify Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and it requires a certain level of literacy in order to access it. We do not want to adapt Wikipedia to primary school level; we want to include topics and content relevant for primary education.
We do not make content available for Wikipedia only. Using Creative Commons as part of the project methodology allows contents to be available beyond Wikipedia.
We do not promote Wikipedia as a stable and passive resource. We consider essential that people who use Wikipedia understand what Wikipedia is. To understand it, the only appropriate way is to contribute to it and being part of it.
We do not provide Wikipedia as it is. The project aims at fostering a joint effort to improve Wikipedia and to assess its quality.
We do not centralise all the activities. The project can only reach its goal and produce high quality content and impact, if people and institutions can adapt them to their context, vision and work.
The project Wikipedia Primary School and all its documentation is under Creative Commons attribution share alike license. Iolanda Pensa drafted the project in 2012.
At the moment WikiAfrica Cameroon promoted by doual'art with the support of Orange Foundation is implementing a pilot project around Wikipedia and primary school (2012-2013).The WikiAfrica Primary School Feasibility Study has been developed in 2012 with the support of volunteers and lettera27 Foundation to evaluate the possible synergies between Wikipedia and primary school with a focus on the linguistic editions of Wikipedia and their use in primary education in Africa, current Wikimedia projects, OER-Open Educational Resources and case studies on the primary schools systems and current relevant projects in the field of education in Italy, Cameroon and South Africa. The Africa Centre based in Cape Town is currently developing trainings in Africa for Wikipedians in residence. SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland and University of Cape Town, in collaboration with Wikimedia Switzerland and the Africa Centre based in Cape Town have applied in March 2013 for a Swiss South African research project related to Wikipedia Primary School within the SSAJRP programme.
The call is up for:
2013 Digital Societies and Social Technologies (DSST) Summer Institute
http://casci.umd.edu/2013/03/dsst2013/
They really run a great event. Highly recommended for grad students this summer.
-- Amy
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march13/szajewski/03szajewski.html
"This case study examines the use of Wikipedia by the Ball State
University Libraries as an opportunity to raise the visibility of
digitized historic sheet music assets made available in the university's
Digital Media Repository. By adding links to specific items in this
collection to relevant, existing Wikipedia articles, Ball State
successfully and efficiently expanded the user base of this collection
in the Digital Media Repository by vastly enhancing the discoverability
of the collection's assets...
"The results of this study show that the addition of links from relevant
Wikipedia articles to individual digitized assets in the Hague Sheet
Music Collection in the Ball State University Digital Media Repository
was an overwhelming success. Despite the fact that only 57 links to 40
assets were added to Wikipedia articles, pageviews for the collection of
149 assets roughly tripled as a result of this effort. The adding of
links at the item level provided a plethora of highly-visible entry
points to this collection's assets, raising awareness of the existence
of these resources to interested Internet users who were previously
unaware of these materials, as is suggested by the collection's use
statistics. The success of this initiative is also remarkable in its
efficiency, generating a large number of new digital patrons while
requiring relatively little time to plan and execute."
Includes an encouraging graph. :-)
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone,
I am working on creating a single entry page describing all the data about
Wikipedia and WMF projects available for researchers. The idea is to have a
single location, which introduces all possible source of data and makes it
easy for a newbie to understand what suits his/her needs and how to get and
work with the data. This is meant to be useful to the users ( which is
you), so I have a few questions to help me make it better:
1. I was wondering if any of you has used data from sources other than
the listed below and if yes, what? • XML dumps
• the API
• the Toolserver (or it's future replacement on WMF Labs)
• our live IRC feeds
• our raw hourly pageview data dumps (and the rudimentary API that you
can use to query them atstats.grok.se)
• the sources listed on our (experimental) open data registry on the
DataHub http://datahub.io/group/wikimedia (includes DBpedia)
2. Is there any specific information that you wished you had known when
you started using WMF data but is not documented online?
3. Do you have any datasets or tools for
parsing/manipulating/visualizing data, which you think can be reused and
you want to share? (Could be something you built or something you found and
liked)
4. What information should be included about each source. I am thinking
about :
1. description of the data - content, format , method of collection
or how you can collect it, how often it is collected, for what period
2. skills required to get and work with the data ( PHP, SQL, etc.)
3. short sample
4. existing tools - for parsing, importing, etc.
5. maybe examples of projects where it was used?
Any other comments/suggestions will be appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
Mariya
Apologies for cross-posting
********************************
CALL FOR PAPER ABSTRACTS, PANEL PROPOSALS AND POSTERS
What: 2013 International Conference on Social Media and Society
Where: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
When: September 14-15, 2013
Website: http://SocialMediaAndSociety.com/
Twitter hashtag: #SMSociety13
CONFERENCE CHAIRS:
Anatoliy Gruzd, Dalhousie University, gruzd(a)dal.ca (Primary Contact)
Caroline Haythornthwaite, University of British Columbia
Karine Nahon, University of Washington
Stan Matwin, Dalhousie University
ABOUT THE EVENT:
It is no secret that social media has become mainstream in recent years,
and its adoption has skyrocketed. As a result of its growing popularity,
users’ online contributions and membership in online social networks
have exploded. The objective of this 2-day conference is to bring
together experts in social media and online social networks from both
the academic and business worlds, to share ideas on the best practices
around how to study the impact of social media on our society. The
conference will provide researchers in this area an opportunity to
present and debate their ideas, and provide attendees with the
opportunity to build academic and professional contacts, present their
research, and learn about latest research in this area from a
multidisciplinary perspective.
TOPICS OF INTEREST INCLUDE (BUT NOT LIMITED TO):
* BIG Data/Social Media Data
Scalability Issues and Social Media Data
Social Media Analytics
Social Media Data Mining
Social Media Mobile Applications
Visualization of Social Media Data
* Online Communities/Social Networks
Online and Offline Communities Formed on Social Media
Influential User Detection
Online Community Detection
Online Identity
Trust and Credibility in Social Media
* Social Media Impact and Effect on Society
Political Mobilization & Engagement on Social Media
Social Media and Academia
Social Media and Business
Social Media and Journalism
Virality of Information in Social Media
* Theories and Methods
Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis
Social Network Analysis
Theoretical Models for Studying Social Media
TYPES OF SUBMISSIONS:
(1) Paper abstracts
Paper abstracts provide authors the opportunity to present their
original work related to the broad theme of social media and society.
(2) Panel presentations
Panel presentations provide authors the option of organizing three
related papers/talks together in a thematic session.
(3) Research poster presentations
The research poster session provides an interactive forum for authors to
discuss their research.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Paper & Panel Abstracts Due: May 1, 2013
Paper & Panel Notification: May 20, 2013
Poster Abstracts Due: May 30, 2013
Poster Notification: June 15, 2013
Conference dates: September 14-15, 2013
HOW TO SUBMIT:
See more information at http://SocialMediaAndSociety.com/
For further inquiries, please contact Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd at gruzd(a)dal.ca
This year, consider speaking at Open Source Bridge
<http://opensourcebridge.org/> in Portland, Oregon, USA, June 18-21.
OSB is tech talks & hack sessions with hands-on technologists we want,
for Foundation staff recruiting and for volunteer recruiting and
collaboration. Good talks, clueful people, great food. :-)
If you submit a talk and it gets accepted, you can request subsidy from
Wikimedia Foundation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Support> for your travel
and hotel.
Call for talks:
<http://opensourcebridge.org/blog/2013/03/were-extending-our-call-for-propos…>
They especially encourage inexperienced speakers.
We already have proposals from or featuring Brandon Harris, Andre
Klapper, Trevor & Roan, me, Priyanka Nag, Quim Gil, Alolita Sharma, and
Noopur Raval.
Please forward.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear all,
Wikimédia France, a non-profit organization supporting Wikimedia projects
in France, is launching an international research prize of 2500€ to reward
the most influential research work on Wikimedia projects.
We are now in the final "voting" phase of the Award, so please vote and
forward this mail !
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_France_Research_Award/nom…
best
2012/7/25 Rémi Bachelet <remi.bachelet(a)ec-lille.fr>
> Hi all,
>
>
> Wikimédia France, a non-profit organization supporting Wikimedia projects
> in France, is launching an international research prize to reward the most
> influential research work on Wikimedia projects and free knowledge projects
> in general.
>
> What is quite new about this award is that everyone can participate:
>
> 1. by ranking nominated papers to elect the winner (ranking is shared
> with the award jury).
> 2. by submitting important articles in this field of research for the
> Award.
>
> Regarding the latter, we are now in the process of proposing papers and
> we'd appreciate if some of you can lend a hand. If you consider a paper has
> been particularly important in the field of free knowledge/Wikipedia
> studies and must be taken into account, do not hesitate to submit it now!
>
> Please use this form:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_France_Research_Award/pap….
> Deadline for paper suggestion is August 1st.
>
>
> After that, the next phase is shortlisting nominated papers. The Wikimedia
> Award Jury will study all proposed papers to submit 5 papers to the final
> vote in September. The announcement of the winner is planned in November.
>
> Please find all details here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_France_Research_Award
>
>
> If you have any questions, please use the project talk page:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikimedia_France_Research_Award
>
> Thanks!
>