Howdy.
(adding wikien-l folks to this thread. my apology for not including
wikien-l with my initial email.)
The usability study has started today as scheduled. The usability team
is monitoring the interviews and how ten test participants interact with
Wikipedia when they are asked to edit an article at the lab facility in
San Francisco today and tomorrow. The remote usability study on
Thursday (March 26 PDT) will be done remotely, which means we recruit
participants from Wikipedia through the site notice, and connect with
them through web conferencing. Therefore the site notice for
recruitment will appear again on Thursday. We expect to compile the
results in a few weeks and the findings with you.
Naoko Komura
Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
Naoko Komura wrote:
> One of the important components of the usability initiative is to
> conduct multiple rounds of usability tests. The plan is to conduct at
> least three rounds of tests for qualitative usability evaluation over
> the span of twelve months, i) the initial evaluation, ii) the progress
> evaluation, and iii) the final evaluation. The initial usability test
> is scheduled on March 24, 25th and 26th. In-person lab tests are
> conducted in San Francisco at the first two days, and remote tests will
> be conducted on the third day.
>
> As a preparation for the initial usability test, we incorporated the
> recruiting tool into English Wikipedia's site notice. You might have
> encountered site notice inviting for the participation. The target
> audience of testers are Wikipedia readers who have little or no
> experience in editing the Wikipedia articles. The banner is displayed
> within the range of 1:400 to 1:100 page views, and it will continue till
> early next week.
>
> We look forward to learning from the usability tests and sharing the
> result with you.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Naoko ... on behalf of the usability team.
>
>
>
--
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
"Improving Wikipedia: educational opportunity and professional responsibility."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19269059
Trends Ecol Evol. 2009 Mar 5
Callis KL, Christ LR, Resasco J, Armitage DW, Ash JD, Caughlin TT, Clemmensen SF, Copeland SM, Fullman TJ, Lynch RL, Olson C, Pruner RA, Vieira-Neto EH, West-Singh R, Bruna EM; Graduate Seminar in Plant-Animal Interactions, Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida
'As part of a graduate seminar on plant–animal interactions, we set out to assess the quality and content of Wikipedia entries with an ecological focus. To do so, we critiqued entries on five major categories of plant–animal interactions: frugivory, herbivory, pollination, granivory and seed dispersal. We found that the entries were generally limited in both breadth and depth, included only cursory lists of citations and occasionally devoted attention to topics that were at best marginally relevant (one memorable example was the discussion of ‘fruitarians’ – people who consciously adopt a strictly frugivorous diet – in the entry on frugivory).'
'We found the process straightforward and efficient, particularly once we learned the protocol for proposing and implementing changes. Editing was also simplified by adhering to Wikipedia’s clearly established framework for page organization, reference management and the inclusion of tables and pictures...We were occasionally frustrated by interactions with an intransigent author who rapidly and repeatedly reverted our revisions – something that might be common when editing entries on controversial topics. However, we nonetheless found the experience to be rewarding, similar in scope and time commitment to writing a more traditional term paper (Figure 1) and extremely valuable as an exercise in critical thinking and communication skills.'
'Although we recognize that the time, professional incentives and public recognition for doing so are limited, we believe that improvements to this now ubiquitous reference source are particularly important given the increasingly public debates on ecological and evolutionary topics. The revision of Wikipedia entries can easily be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate courses, the service activities of student organizations, laboratory meetings, extension programs and the annual meetings of professional societies.'
--
gwern
I found it annoying that, to enter a new reference, you'd have to go
to edit mode, find the position again, and then put in the reference.
So I wrote a little javascript...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/insertref.js
Works like this:
1. In /view/ mode, select some text (has to be unique, no fotmatting)
2. Click on the "Insert reference" link in the toolbox
3. The script internally loads the raw wikitext, looks if it can find
the selected text uniquely in the wikitext (stops with error
otherwise)
4. The script asks for the reference text and "insert right or left of
selection"
5. The script adds <references/> section if necessary, then opens edit
mode with the changes made, ready to save
Some issues:
* If you select a (unique) link, it will try to "break out" of the
link before inserting the reference, but success is not guaranteed
* I couldn't make it open diff mode by default - yet...
* Some fancier reference entry mechanism would be nice. Ideas?
* It might be possible to make the selection mechanism more
"formatting-tolerant"
* This mechanism could be used to enter other things (turn text into a
link, add images, templates, etc.) - might be worth investigating
Cheers,
Magnus
http://www.newsless.org/2009/03/wikipedia-foretold/
'I was revisiting Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay “As We May Think” the
other night, a text credited with having presaged the Web. Reading it,
I realized that Bush had also foreseen Wikipedia: “Wholly new forms of
encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative
trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and
there amplified.” '
Also some nice words for Wikinews and similar endeavours.
- d.
Hello, I have to conduct some research about the main problems that wikipedia
is facing; those being inaccuracy and vandalisim.
I have a questionaire which I've attached below. I would appriciate it if
anyone who is experienced with these problems were to answer it.
You would be of great help.
I do realise that there are a fair amount of questions, thefore please fell
free to address only those question that to fell are necessary.
Furthermore if you do not have the time to do so, a paragraph describing
your opinion of the content on Wikipedia and a vaible method to address the
issues of realability and vandalism would be great too
Thanks and regards
Dhruv
1) What is your name, your profession and designation?
2) How often do you engage in research and for what purpose?
3) Are you concerned about the authenticity of what you read? If yes why?
4) What form of research do you prefer using the most (books, magazines,
journals, internet etc)?
5) Have you ever used a free web-based encyclopedia such as Wikipedia
before?
6) If yes
a. could you elaborate on the process with which use it to search for
information
b. Do you use articles from Wikipedia as a source for your citations?
c. Please elaborate on your reasons for doing/not-doing so
d. Are you aware Wikipedia is a free- to -edit encyclopedia?
e. Have you ever edited an article on Wikipedia?
f. If yes do you follow the norms suggested by Wikipedia for doing so?
g. Do you double check what you learn at Wikipedia?
h. If yes, then why do you use Wikipedia in the first place?
i. Have you ever come across anomalous/incorrect information on Wikipedia?
j. If yes, have you ever thought about doing any thing about it?
7) If no
a. Do you have any particular reason for not doing so? Is it linked with the
questionable reliability of the articles?
8) In light of the above questions, I’m sure you have come to be aware of
some of the flaws that using websites such as Wikipedia entails. Therefore
what changes would you recommend to be made on such websites?
9) Further elaborating on the above point, how would you recommend the
increase in factuality of the articles on Wikipedia?
10) Would you recommend Wikipedia as a primary source of information to your
colleagues? Please specify with a reason?
PS Please leave a name an e-mail address if possible ( for citation
purposes)
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Interview-tp22401800p22401800.html
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
There will always be debate about the best model to fund open access efforts,
but our approach intended to give people a choice, not to have any
surprises. The choice is for BestThinking to be either completely free with
advertising, or require a small subscription without advertising (similar to
the model used for example at Ning.com).
Therefore, access, participation, and the ID verification are always
completely free for everyone, with non-intrusive advertising (required by ad
policy). Likewise, credentials appear openly and without charge for
everyone who enters them.
There is an optional credentials verification check feature (which most
people will not feel the need to do) that has a cost (because it is very
expensive to actually check degrees, licenses, awards, etc.). But having a
credential check is not required and doesn't give any more access, features,
or capability on the site. You simply get a logo that tells others the
credentials you listed are presumably more reliable.
The only other charge is for high bandwidth and storage. Charging for larger
bandwidth and storage is quite common where people are allowed to upload and
download their own content (or absolute limits are set). We'll keep an open
mind about the right level (we studied what others were doing and felt we
were in line), but the intention is only to use this charge to address edge
cases where high uses are contemplated.
Bob Butler
BestThinking.com
David Gerard-2 wrote:
>
> http://www.bestthinking.com/information/about
>
> A collaboration site for new idea and information creation.
>
> Downside (not clear on that page): they charge to show verified
> credentials ($5/mo, $50/yr).
>
> Interesting idea apart from that.
>
> MetaFilter reactions:
> http://www.metafilter.com/79989/New-type-of-Wikipedia-BestThinkingcom
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/BestThinking%3A-A-new-collaborative-knowledge-site-tp…
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Hello!
We recently studied the properties of the English Wikipedia graph and
observed that:
(1) the graph consists of dense subgraphs (socalled "graph communities")
that are in turn less densely connected to each other;
(2) Wikipedia articles falling into the same community exhibit more
semantic similarity to each other than randomly selected articles.
Encouraged by the above observations, i computed the community hierarchy for
the English Wikipedia:
http://modis.ispras.ru/wikipedia/
The hierarchy shows the grouping of similar Wikipedia articles into
communities, based on purely Wikipedia link information, and reflects the
link structure of the Wikipedia graph.
In your opinion, could such data organization be helpful for navigation and
finding related information in Wikipedia?
Your feedback is welcome!
Dmitry
http://dizzythinks.net/2009/03/government-cut-and-pastes-wikipedia-in.html
"You can read the full story on IPtegrity.com but the long and short
of it is that the Government has made proposals to the EU to stamp on
users rights to access content and services on the Internet, and it's
done it by cutting and pasting a technical article on bandwidth
management from Wikipedia without attribution."
Certain thready discussions on certain contentious talk pages would
benefit from less disorganized (ie. standard format) talk pages, and
more topical-based ones. I wrote up a basic concept at WP:TP (direct
shortcut WP:OBT ):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page#Organization_by_topic
仇恨郵件
最值得歡迎的
-SV