Hi Everyone,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed this Wednesday, April 18,
2018 at 11:30 AM (PDT) 18:30 UTC.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1pa-pr6xis
As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. And,
you can watch our past research showcases here.
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#Upcoming_Showcase>
The Critical Relationship of Volunteer Created Wikipedia Content to
Large-Scale Online CommunitiesBy *Nate TeBlunthuis*The extensive Wikipedia
literature has largely considered Wikipedia in isolation, outside of the
context of its broader Internet ecosystem. Very recent research has
demonstrated the significance of this limitation, identifying critical
relationships between Google and Wikipedia that are highly relevant to many
areas of Wikipedia-based research and practice. In this talk, I will
present a study which extends this recent research beyond search engines to
examine Wikipedia’s relationships with large-scale online communities,
Stack Overflow and Reddit in particular. I will discuss evidence of
consequential, albeit unidirectional relationships. Wikipedia provides
substantial value to both communities, with Wikipedia content increasing
visitation, engagement, and revenue, but we find little evidence that these
websites contribute to Wikipedia in return. Overall, these findings
highlight important connections between Wikipedia and its broader ecosystem
that should be considered by researchers studying Wikipedia. Overall, this
talk will emphasize the key role that volunteer-created Wikipedia content
plays in improving other websites, even contributing to revenue generation.
The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System, a Closer LookBy *Nate
TeBlunthuis*Do patterns of growth and stabilization found in large peer
production systems such as Wikipedia occur in other communities? This study
assesses the generalizability of Halfaker etal.’s influential 2013 paper on
“The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System.” We replicate its
tests of several theories related to newcomer retention and norm
entrenchment using a dataset of hundreds of active peer production wikis
from Wikia. We reproduce the subset of the findings from Halfaker and
colleagues that we are able to test, comparing both the estimated signs and
magnitudes of our models. Our results support the external validity of
Halfaker et al.’s claims that quality control systems may limit the growth
of peer production communities by deterring new contributors and that norms
tend to become entrenched over time.
Kindest regards,
Sarah R. Rodlund
Senior Project Coordinator-Product & Technology, Wikimedia Foundation | Hic
sunt leones
srodlund(a)wikimedia.org
Dear all,
Greetings from Berlin! This is another update on the movement strategy
process, this week coming from Wikimedia Conference. I’ve already had the
chance to see so many old friends, and am looking forward to meeting with
many more of you in person. The movement strategy track of the conference
is an important milestone in the strategy process overall -- it provides an
excellent opportunity to engage diverse voices from affiliates representing
many of our communities from around the world.
During the strategy track we will look at the possibilities for envisioning
our future against the strategic direction, and challenges we may face in
making progress. We will discuss our ways forward, with the goal of forming
a more concrete 3-5 year perspective, getting us further toward 2030.
During these discussions we will map out thematic areas that need our
attention, and where we need to take action and make changes, if we are to
fully address our challenges and seize our opportunities.
At the same time, we know that only a fraction of our diverse global
movement will be present at the Wikimedia Conference. Therefore, the
conference is only a starting point. The process following the conference
will be designed to include different perspectives and voices, and we hope
that you feel encouraged to participate in ongoing discussions on wiki, at
Wikimania, and at regional or thematic events.
As I mentioned in my last email, all these discussions will be supported by
the Core Strategy Team. As I also mentioned, we’ve made some progress in
building that team! I am happy to announce that we have filled some of the
important roles:
*Strategy Process Architect *- Responsible for framing, designing and
maintaining the process in consultation with the international Wikimedia
community. *I’m thrilled to announce that Kaarel Vaidla, former Executive
Director of Wikimedia Eesti, has agreed to fill this role.* Kaarel has been
involved with our movement in various ways over the years, and has proven
his strategic abilities through his contributions to Phase 1 in various
volunteer roles.
*Strategy Process Support Lead* - An external partner to the Process Lead
and Process Architect. This person will participate in process design and
will help us find experience from outside Wikimedia when needed. *I’m
delighted to announce that Bhavesh Patel has agreed to fill this role. *Bhav
is a “conversational architect” who works with many different movement
organizations around the globe. You may know Bhav his outstanding
facilitation at WMCON 2017 and Wikimania Montreal. We’re fortunate to have
him back with us.
We have also appointed a *Project Assistant*, *Anne Kierkegaard*, to help
the core team to manage the administrative side of the process. Anne
currently works with WMDE and will be supporting Nicole directly in her
capacity as process lead. We've also recruited our *Thought and Process
Facilitator*, *Anna Lena Schiller*. Anna Lena will support the Process Lead
in shaping a high-performing team and be responsible for designing and
supporting facilitation at meetings and events throughout the strategy
process. Many of you may know Anna Lena as one of the wonderful
facilitators of WMCON between 2011 and 2016. *I am so happy both Anne and
Anna Lena have agreed to join the team!*
I would also like to remind you that there is still an open call for
applications for the positions of the *Information & Knowledge Manager* and
the *Project Manager* in the strategy team. We’re getting great
applications, and I continue to encourage people from across the movement
to apply!
I look forward to seeing many of you at the Wikimedia Conference -- and
many more of you in meetings and events to come. Thank you for your ongoing
engagement in the strategy process!
Tschüssi,
Katherine
--
Katherine Maher
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
+1 (415) 712 4873
kmaher(a)wikimedia.org
https://annual.wikimedia.org
Yes of course the WMF can contact those who are detected reusing our
content without fully complying with licenses and encourage them to comply.
If a case were to go to court it would need to have one or more
contributors who were willing to cooperate with WMF legal in the case. But
I doubt there would be a shortage of contributors who were keen to do so.
As for why the WMF should do so, here are three reasons:
Each of our wikis is a crowd sourced project. Crowd sourcing requires a
crowd, if a crowd settles down and stabilises it becomes a community. The
community is broadly stable, but we need a steady flow of new wikimedians,
and our only really effective way of recruiting new Wikimedians is for them
to see the edit button on our sites. An increasing shift to our content
being used without attribution is an existential threat to the project and
hence to the WMF.
Our communities are made up of volunteers with diverse motivations. For
some of us the BY-SA part of the licensing is important, personally I feel
good when i see one of my photos used by someone else but attributed to me.
If the de facto policy of the WMF was to treat volunteer contributions as
effectively CC0 this would be demotivating for some members of our
community. I'm also active on another site where every member regularly
gets stats on their readership, something I very much doubt would happen if
it wasn't an effective mechanism to encourage continued participation.
Every organisation needs money, the WMF gets most of its money by asking
for it on wikipedia and other sites. Again, encouraging attribution back to
Wikipedia etc tackles the existential threat of other sites treating
wikipedia et al as CC0.
WSC
On 5 April 2018 at 08:04, <wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> On 04/04/2018 08:36 PM, Anthony Cole wrote:
> > I'm curious also. I release my articles under "attribution, share alike"
> > and rely on WMF to preserve those rights.
>
> Why are you relying on the WMF? Wikipedia contributors (like yourself)
> are the ones who own copyright to the articles - the WMF doesn't. Unless
> you've granted/transferred copyright to the WMF (or some other license
> enforcement agreement), I don't think they can pursue legal action for
> you or other Wikipedians. (IANAL, etc.)
>
> -- Legoktm
>
>
Hi Dario&Jake,
Thanks for sharing the plan. Any possibility to include in the plan a
system to archive all reference URLs and external identifiers linked from
Wikidata?
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T143488
Additionally I think it would be interesting to have some research done on
which references are DISPLAYED or CLICKED the most on several Wikipedias.
We know already which sources are cited the most, but on which sources do
users hover their mouse the most? Can we also identify which statements are
involved? It could be used to expand them, improve them, or add more
context.
Finally I believe it would be that a tool to assess the
openness/accessibility of the sources of any given article could be really
interesting.
Regards,
Micru
On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 2:32 AM, Dario Taraborelli <
dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> (apologies for cross-posting)
>
> We’re sharing a proposed program
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technology/Annual_Plans/FY2019/CDP…>
> for the Wikimedia Foundation’s upcoming fiscal year
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2018-2019/…>
> (2018-19) and *would love to hear from you*. This plan builds
> extensively on projects and initiatives driven by volunteer contributors
> and organizations in the Wikimedia movement, so your input is critical.
>
> Why a “knowledge integrity” program?
>
> Increased global attention is directed at the problem of misinformation
> and how media consumers are struggling to distinguish fact from fiction.
> Meanwhile, thanks to the sources they cite, Wikimedia projects are uniquely
> positioned as a reliable gateway to accessing quality information in the
> broader knowledge ecosystem. How can we mobilize these citations as a
> resource and turn them into a broader, linked infrastructure of trust to
> serve the entire internet? Free knowledge grounds itself in verifiability
> and transparent attribution policies. Let’s look at 4 data points as
> motivating stories:
>
> - Wikipedia sends tens of millions of people to external sources each
> year. We want to conduct research to understand why and how readers leave
> our site.
> - The Internet Archive has fixed over 4 million dead links on
> Wikipedia. We want to enable instantaneous archiving of every link on all
> Wikipedias to ensure the long-term preservation of the sources Wikipedians
> cite.
> - #1Lib1Ref reaches 6 million people on social media. We want to bring
> #1Lib1Ref to Wikidata and more languages, spreading the message that
> references improve quality.
> - 33% of Wikidata items represent sources (journals, books, works). We
> want to strengthen community efforts to build a high-quality, collaborative
> database of all cited and citable sources.
>
> A 5-year vision
>
> Our 5-year vision for the Knowledge Integrity program is to establish
> Wikimedia as the hub of a federated, trusted knowledge ecosystem. We plan
> to get there by creating:
>
> - A roadmap to a mature, technically and socially scalable, central
> repository of sources.
> - Developed network of partners and technical collaborators to
> contribute to and reuse data about citations.
> - Increased public awareness of Wikimedia’s vital role in information
> literacy and fact-checking.
>
>
> 5 directions for 2018-2019
>
> We have identified 5 levers of Knowledge Integrity: research,
> infrastructure and tooling, access and preservation, outreach, and
> awareness. Here’s what we want to do with each:
>
>
> 1. Continue to conduct research to understand how readers access
> sources and how to help contributors improve citation quality.
> 2. Improve tools for linking information to external sources,
> catalogs, and repositories.
> 3. Ensure resources cited across Wikimedia projects are accessible in
> perpetuity.
> 4. Grow outreach and partnerships to scale community and technical
> efforts to improve the structure and quality of citations.
> 5. Increase public awareness of the processes Wikimedians follow to
> verify information and articulate a collective vision for a trustable web.
>
>
> Who is involved?
>
> The core teams involved in this proposal are:
>
> - Wikimedia Foundation Technology’s Research Team
> - Wikimedia Foundation Community Engagement’s Programs team (Wikipedia
> Library)
> - Wikimedia Deutschland Engineering’s Wikidata team
>
>
> The initiative also spans across an ecosystem of possible partners
> including the Internet Archive, ContentMine, Crossref, OCLC, OpenCitations,
> and Zotero. It is further made possible by funders including the Sloan,
> Gordon and Betty Moore, and Simons Foundations who have been supporting the
> WikiCite initiative to date.
>
> How you can participate
>
> You can read the fine details of our proposed year-1 plan, and provide
> your feedback, on mediawiki.org: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_
> Technology/Annual_Plans/FY2019/CDP3:_Knowledge_Integrity
>
> We’ve also created a brief introductory slidedeck about our motivation and
> goals: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knowledge_Integrity_CDP_
> proposal_%E2%80%93_FY2018-19.pdf
>
> WikiCite has laid the groundwork for many of these efforts. Read last
> year’s report: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
> WikiCite_2017_report.pdf
>
> Recent initiatives like the just released citation dataset foreshadow the
> work we want to do: https://medium.com/freely-
> sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/what-are-the-ten-most-
> cited-sources-on-wikipedia-lets-ask-the-data-34071478785a
>
> Lastly, this April we’re celebrating Open Citations Month; it’s right in
> the spirit of Knowledge Integrity: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/04/02/
> initiative-for-open-citations-birthday/
>
>
> --
>
> *Dario Taraborelli *Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter
> <http://twitter.com/readermeter>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikidata mailing list
> Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
>
>
--
Etiamsi omnes, ego non
Hi all,
The agenda for the next Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees meeting, on
April 19, 2018, is now available on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_agenda_2018-04
Best,
Charles M. Roslof
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
croslof(a)wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged
information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
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members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see
our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.
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Dear all,
It's with deep sadness to announce the death of our friend and a dedicated
member of the Wikimedia community, Craig Franklin. I got this news on the
wall of his wife, Leanne Maree Franklin.
Franklin served as treasurer of Wikimedia Australia and as member of the
ombudsman commission.
We will forever missed him.
Regards,
Isaac.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lankiveil
Dear Anthony,
I share your concern that "fact checked" is over promising people in a
dangerous and irresponsible way.
"The encyclopaedia anyone can edit" is closer to the truth and the downside
of getting it wrong is much less bad. "My unsourced edit was rejected" or
"my new article on my client was deleted as spam" are easier complaints to
deal with than "your fact checked encyclopaedia that I trusted included
this howler that had sat there for over a year and relying on it has cost
me x". In the last few days I spotted and reverted a blatant vandalism that
had lasted for over two years, and when I'm patrolling for typos I'm not
fact checking plausible but well written content in a subject I know
nothing of. Most of the time I'm checking newish edits for typos I've
patrolled before, so I'm only picking up ancient vandalism when I patrol a
typo, grammatical mistake or risky word I haven't looked at before. Yet it
isn't unusual for me to pick up blatant vandalism that has persisted for
years.
Things are I understand much better on DE where we have flagged revisions,
but on English some edits are not even looked at by a single vandalfighter.
Most of course are looked at and some are looked at by many many eyes. But
the random nature of recent changes patrolling means that some edits are
not patrolled by anyone.
I don't know what proportion of the content is fact checked, but on English
we can't even honestly claim that all newbie and IP edits are currently
checked for vandalism on any meaningful timescale.
At some point I may start an RFC to up our game on EN so that we can at
least promise that "every edit has been screened for blatant vandalism", a
less impressive promise than "the fact-checked encyclopedia" but one that I
think we could and should move to. Draft at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Invisible_flagged_revi…
WereSpielChequers
> On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 8:53 AM, Anthony Cole <ahcoleecu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I just googled “wikipedia” and the first result was a Google ad linking
> > to
> > > wikipedia.org.[1] It calls Wikipedia the fact-checked encyclopedia. We
> > used
> > > to call it the encyclopedia anyone can edit. The latter seems more
> honest
> > > than this new formulation which to me implies a degree of reliability
> and
> > > oversight I'm not sure we can ethically assert. I missed the discussion
> > > about this new self-description. Did it happen on meta? Is anyone else
> > > uncomfortabe with this?
> > > --
> > > Anthony Cole
> > > _______________________________________________
>
> ********************************************
>
Hello all,
During the past day on 14 April 2018, Wikimedia Belgium
<https://be.wikimedia.org> had its annual General Assembly.
One board member leaves (due time constraints):
* Loraine Furter (Lfurter) - our board member dedicated to Gender and
Diversity aspects in Wikimedia projects
We thank her for all her work and valuable input in the past years!
Two board members come in:
* Lionel Scheepmans - long term Wikipedia and Wikiversity editor and
organiser of activities
* AnneJea - long term Wikipedia editor and organiser of activities
Welcome Lionel & AnneJea!
The rest of the board remains the same and the board continues the work and
development of our chapter.
We also have decided one the next steps to come to a solution for the
problems with one of the other organisations in the movement, which we hope
to be able to resolve together.
Kind regards,
Romaine