Hi Pine et al.,
Apologies for resurrecting this old thread, but my colleague Michael
Gilbert alerted me the other day that the API we set up a couple years ago
to collect and expose data about EnWiki WikiProject size and membership is
still up and running!*
Here's a couple samples:
- pages claimed by WikiProject Cats:
https://alahele.ischool.uw.edu:8997/api/getProjectPages?project=WikiProject…
- members of WikiProject Cats:
https://alahele.ischool.uw.edu:8997/api/getProjectMembers?project=WikiProje…
Some pretty detailed API documentation is available at Michael's GitHub repo
<https://github.com/mdgilbert/node-reflex>.
The data should be up-to-date and accessible to all, but let me know if it
looks stale and/or you can't access it--it may have been turned off, or
placed behind a wall to avoid server overload. I could probably convince
the maintainers to start it up or open it up again, if people are
interested.
A little more about the methodology we used to gather these data is
available in our 2013 OpenSym papers[1][2]
Hope that helps,
Jonathan
1.
http://pensivepuffin.com/dwmcphd/papers/Morgan.ProjectTalk.WikiSym2013.pdf
2.
http://pensivepuffin.com/dwmcphd/syllabi/info447_wi14/readings/08-Organizin…
*a minor miracle for an academic prototype system
On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 4:31 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I believe that Operation Majestic Titan, a subproject
within Wikiproject
Military History, was operating at level 5 for awhile, largely thanks to
the work of a small number of high-frequency contributors. Perhaps there
were and are other projects active in this manner. Also, the Signpost, when
it is going well -- it has ups and downs -- functions at level 5.
J-Mo, is there a chance that I can set up a meeting with you in a month or
two to discuss using Quarry to extract Wikiproject activity data on a
semi-automated basis, if that's possible?
Pine
On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 1:07 PM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I would say that projects have a number of levels
of activity:
1. dead
2. someone is running around tagging articles with the Project banner
3. there is genuine conversation (not just spam) on their Project talk
4. there is some kind of To-Do list that gets added to
5. items actually come off the To-Do list because they've been done
In my own editing, I've never seen level 5. I know of a few at levels 3
and 4. There's a lot of level 2 and many are dead. I think you'd need a
project at least at level 3 to make it worthwhile to point a newbie at it,
but that's no guarantee that the conversation taking place will be
encouraging or welcoming.
While I say I have never seen level 5, I am nonetheless aware of very
small groups of editors that act like they have a mission but seem to
coordinate via User Talk than a project page. I must say I tend to operate
in that mode because I find the formalised projects attract too many people
who want to "lay down the rules to everyone else" rather than get on and do
the job.
Kerry
-----Original Message-----
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]
On Behalf Of Yaroslav M. Blanter
Sent: Saturday, 9 January 2016 2:34 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities <
wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Community health statistics of Wikiprojects
On 2016-01-08 07:27, Samuel Klein wrote:
On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 12:45 AM, Jonathan Cardy
<werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:
More broadly it would be good to know if
wikiprojects are good for
editor recruitment and retention. My hypothesis is that if someone if
someone tries out editing Wikipedia and is steered to an active and
relevant wikiproject then they will be more likely to continue after
that first trial edit. I simply don't know whether introducing people
to inactive wikiprojects is worthwhile or what the cutoff is on
activity.
That's probably right. I think a nice cutoff on activity would be:
ask all wikiprojects to come up with a banner to show to a subset of
newbies, to indicate how many newbies or impressions they want (what
they think they can handle), and to create a page/section with an
intro and projects for newbies, if they don't already have one. Any
project that can manage this is welcome to get a few newbies to work
with if they want, in my book.
Actually, already knowing how many WikiProjects are alive (for example, I
watch several, and most of them are dead) would be already valuable.
May be even posting a question at the talk page of every WikiProject
whether the project is alive and able to set up smth would give the answer.
(Number of watchers certainly does not - many projects are watched by a lot
of inactive users).
Cheers
Yaroslav
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Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
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User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>