[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/method/mailman-msgid?showcomments=yes
As someone who is interested in and cites email conversations, the opacity
of the mailman interface -- or the lack of my understanding -- is a pain. I
was spoiled by the W3C's system [1] where each email had a header with a
URL to its place in the archive, which corresponded in some way to the
msg-id! When processing comments on a spec, or citing conversations, its
very handy to be able to link to a persistent Web representation of an
email.
In writing about Wikipedia discourse I'm stuck with using the message-id if
I happen to have that email in a mbox, or a URL if I happen to have a Web
page, but from one I can not easily get the other, and I'm not confident
that the URL will be stable in any case. (For example, will [2] always
correspond to the message with the message-id "42BEC0EF.6070906(a)web.de"?)
Without a guarantee of stability, I suppose its best to use msg-id in citing
WP discourse, but that makes finding that message problematic for the
reader. I'd provide a hint if I could somehow obtain it myself, but the
HTML page for a message in the archive has no indicatation of the msg-id.
And even if I have the msg-id, I can't easily find the corresponding
archive URL. Before sending this message, I thought there would be a search
interface and I could write a script, but there doesn't appear to be one,
and it doesn't work in Google (e.g., [3]).
What to do??
[1] http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Devel
[2] http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-June/040600.html
[3]
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=42BEC0EF.6070906%40web.de&num=10&hl=en&ie…
]]
--
Regards, http://reagle.org/joseph/
Joseph Reagle E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E
[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/method/mailman-msgid?showcomments=yes
As someone who is interested in and cites email conversations, the opacity
of the mailman interface -- or the lack of my understanding -- is a pain. I
was spoiled by the W3C's system [1] where each email had a header with a
URL to its place in the archive, which corresponded in some way to the
msg-id! When processing comments on a spec, or citing conversations, its
very handy to be able to link to a persistent Web representation of an
email.
In writing about Wikipedia discourse I'm stuck with using the message-id if
I happen to have that email in a mbox, or a URL if I happen to have a Web
page, but from one I can not easily get the other, and I'm not confident
that the URL will be stable in any case. (For example, will [2] always
correspond to the message with the message-id "42BEC0EF.6070906(a)web.de"?)
Without a guarantee of stability, I suppose its best to use msg-id in citing
WP discourse, but that makes finding that message problematic for the
reader. I'd provide a hint if I could somehow obtain it myself, but the
HTML page for a message in the archive has no indicatation of the msg-id.
And even if I have the msg-id, I can't easily find the corresponding
archive URL. Before sending this message, I thought there would be a search
interface and I could write a script, but there doesn't appear to be one,
and it doesn't work in Google (e.g., [3]).
What to do??
[1] http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Devel
[2] http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-June/040600.html
[3]
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=42BEC0EF.6070906%40web.de&num=10&hl=en&ie…
]]
Hello!
Since the archive is public I registerd archiving this list via gmane.
You can access it as "gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.research" then.
I just read about Kasper Souren's work at Mali and the Fulfulde
Wikipedia ( see http://ff.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ndimaagu ). I asked myself
how to manage such small Wikipedias - especially how to avoid spam and
vandalism. So here is research question:
* How can small (language) Wikimedia Wikis be managed efectively?
According to the last Wikistat-cvs output there are 94 wikipedias with
no (sic!) active contributor (>5 edits) - 56 have never had a
contributor (5 of them with no single edit - I wonder why they were
created at all?) and 37 have contributors and more than 1 articles. Of
course we cannot push all of these languages but the questions are
* What small languages are used online?
* How do you get to know if a small Wiki gets a) its first users b)
vandalized - and how do you react the best way?
Thinking about this another research question occurs
* How are different Wikipedia languages connected via
** common users (overlap, interaction)
** translation (directed flow of information)
Since we do not have single-login we could use analysis of interwiki-links.
Enough ideas for the beginning - I have to progress the ideas I already
had first ;-)
Greetings,
Jakob
FYI, this week Wall Street Journal (perhaps Asia only) had one of the
more useful stories on Wikipedia, which has some comments from
academics/expets on WP articles. In general, very good opinions of
Wikipedia. My comments are probably the harshest. :)
-User:Fuzheado
---
June 17, 2005
PERSONAL JOURNAL
---
Your Life -- Loose Wire:
Trusting an Internet Encyclopedia
----
By Jeremy Wagstaff
The Asian Wall Street Journal via Dow Jones
[...]
I've found Wikipedia to be pretty good on the few subjects I know a little
about. But you aren't interested in what I think. So I polled some people who
might have something to say: random academics from diverse disciplines in North
America, Australia and the United Kingdom. I asked them to look up five to 10
subjects in their field and offer their impressions. Here's what they said:
-- Claudia Eberlein, a theoretical physicist at the U.K.'s University of
Sussex, checked entries relating to quantum and laser science: "I must say I am
impressed! Not everything was 100% accurate, but it was close enough for a
general knowledge encyclopedia, and in places it was much more detailed than I
would possibly have expected."
-- William J. Jackson, an expert in Hinduism at Indiana University-Purdue
University at Indianapolis, says he was "pleasantly surprised at how accurate
the information is -- not because I assumed Wikipedia would get things wrong,
but because often sources from the West often seem put together by people who
haven't studied the other culture in depth."
-- Ray Trygstad, Director of Information Technology at the Illinois Institute
of Technology, focused on several areas of interest: Internet & Web, Information
Security and Navy/Naval Aviation. He was impressed with accuracy and balance,
but felt that some entries were thin or nonexistent: "The information security
article was an outstanding introduction to the field and very well balanced . .
. The helicopter article was very complete and very accurate although there
were some additional areas that could be discussed."
-- Komninos Zervos, a lecturer in CyberStudies at Australia's Griffith
University, looked up digital poetry (poetry that in some way uses the computer)
and found it "a good starting point to a new and developing field of new
media/cyber/digital/web poetry" although he found it "still very patchy
mentioning types of digital poetry."
-- Charles Chapman, manager of digital marketing at Massachusetts' Babson
College and an occasional tweaker of entries covering emerging technologies
found entries on his subject matter 95% accurate. "I can't say 100% because
there was missing information, rather than incorrect information, on some of the
topics I researched. I was happy to find most everything correct."
-- Chris Ewels, a nanotechnology expert at the University of Paris, was
lukewarm on entries on nanotechnology ("started well, then lumpy") and
transmission electron microscopy ("it's a good, very introductory description,
but is missing many of the important features of this type of microscopy"), but
was impressed by density functional theory ("would give this 100% on all fronts
-- very accurate, detailed, well written"). Overall, Mr. Ewels said he was
impressed by how far Wikipedia has come since he last checked: "(I) must admit I
didn't realize to what depth information was available," he said.
I would take those responses as a general thumbs up. If the experts can't pick
big holes in Wikipedia, I'd say the rest of us can use it. This doesn't mean, of
course, that we should use the information in it without confirming it
elsewhere. As Andrew Lih, director of technology at Hong Kong University's
Journalism and Media Studies Centre and a long-time contributor to Wikipedia,
puts it: "It's a good starting point for things; it isn't a good authority."
Why is something so easy to tamper with so good? This is easily answered:
Guardians of the site constantly monitor the updated information by viewing a
real-time feed of changes and can quickly spot a vandal or heavily biased
contributor and undo the damage, or refer the case to others. Vandalism usually
stays there for only a few minutes, or even less.
Indeed, comparing it with an existing encyclopedia may be missing the point of
Wikipedia. It isn't written by individual contributors -- who, like everyone
else, may be fallible -- but by a vast network of people of varying expertise
whose contributions are open to challenge and review by anyone else. In other
words, it isn't about what qualifications you have. It's about what you
contribute. If your contribution is good enough, well-sourced enough and
balanced enough to survive the challenges of others, then it's probably pretty
good stuff. There's always room for improvement, but then any print editor who
has had to issue a correction would acknowledge that.
Wikipedia, for what it is, is an impressive monument to collective scholarship
and curiosity.
---
Send comments to jeremy.wagstaff(a)awsj.com
Once again, I have to apologise for my absence at the last research
network meeting. (I think weekends are problematic for getting
everyone together, though I know we're in different timezones - it was
saturday night for me - and there's probably no other solution than
doing it on weekends - a bit Catch 22). Erik (M) noted we need more
psy-soc input, which is definitely my slant on all this, and I feel
bad about not contributing to something I'm very much interested in.
I'd even assured Erik I was coming... bah.
I've responded to some ideas on m:Research, specifically Erik's (Z)
idea on a general user survey, which I'd like to lend a hand to - also
wikis in education, which is the focus of my masters. Which then got
me thinking about that I'm currently restarting work on my
dissertation, which is on "Wikipedia as a learning community" (and
which I'm writing a paper on for Wikimania) and which raises a lot of
issues on how information and experience is collated and used within
the organisational schema of Wikimedia and what lessons need to be
learned on an ongoing basis. Basically, I'm proposing that I could
slant my dissertation to incorporate a study that was needed, broadly
within the aforementioned framework. I'm happy to collaborate on this,
ie. make my study a part of a wider one, or even a starting point to a
survey/project, like testing a particular methodology for quality of
data, response rate etc.
I'll be doing this in some way anyway (and you can get a picture of
what I've been doing so far in my wikimania paper, link below) but
essentially what I'm doing here is throwing it open to other ideas and
see if we can work on anything together, or if there's something that
you'd like to see done. No guarantees mind, and bear in mind that too
much technical stuff tends to fry my brain :)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Paper-CL1
All the best,
Cormac / Cormaggio
I am on the programme committee for the Wikimania conference in August,
so I can give you some quick overview of what kind of research is likely
to be presented and discussed there. I can guarantee you, if you're into
Wikimedia-related research of any kind at all, this is an event you
absolutely must attend, the first of its kind.
However, the programme has not yet been finalized, and all of this is
subject to change as we sort out the travel budget, timeslots, etc. So,
for all of the speakers listed below, insert a "probably maybe". Also
keep in mind that this is organized *entirely* by unpaid volunteers and
primarily over the Internet.
Wikimania, while primarily a conference for the community, is going to
have a lot of presentations by academics, perhaps too many. The
proceedings will of course be edited on a wiki, namely, on:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05
The following speakers who are doing research into content or community
have been notified as accepted. I am not listing tech-research, of which
there will also be quite a lot, including my own presentation.
1) Erik Zachte: Timelines in Wikipedia
2) Erik Zachte and Jakob Voss: Measuring and visualizing Wikipedia content.
3) Yaron Ariel: Wikipedians’ sense of community, motivations, and
knowledge building: a cross-cultural study
4) Jeremy Tobacman: The Motivation of Wikipedia Contributors
5) Amruta Lonkar, et al: Global Wikipedia. Communities of Langues & Culture
6) Cormac Lawler: Wikipedia as a learning community: content, conflict
and the ‘common good’
7) Joseph Reagle: A Case of Mutual Aid: Wikipedia, Politeness, and
Perspective Taking
8) Cathy Ma, et al: Wikipedia – Anonymous Users as Good Users
9) Andreas Brand: Comparison between Wikipedia and open source projects:
10) Network analysis: Robert Bonato (evaluation of link relationships)
11) Boud(?): The role of pos/neg feedback and NPOV on meme evolution in
the wikisphere
12) Tsila Hassine: The dynamics of NPOV disputes
13) Samuel Klein: History of the reference work
14) Wolfgang Georgsdorf: A Wiktionary for sign languages
More information about the conference at:
http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/
Best,
Erik
Hi,
Jimmy Wales asked me to act as a moderator for this mailing list. Since
its purpose and scope has never been fully defined, I have tried to
supply such a definition and added it to the mailing list page. It
currently reads:
--<snip>--
The purpose of this mailing list is to discuss scientific research into
the content and the communities of the Wikimedia projects: Wikipedia,
Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikispecies,
Wikimedia Commons, and Meta-Wiki.
Research into the technology of Wikimedia, MediaWiki, should primarily
be discussed on wikitech-l instead. For content or community research
projects with a strong technological component, cross-posting to both
lists may be advisable.
Please note that only people who are actively involved in research on
Wikimedia projects should post to this list. Typical on-topic posts include:
* announcement of a new research project
* discussions of methodology
* questions and answers about related projects
Mailing list traffic should be kept at a reasonably low level. The list
is softly moderated, and individuals posting off-topic material
repeatedly may be removed.
This list is not directly associated with the Wikimedia Research
Network, though members of the Network are welcome to post here if they
are involved in research projects relating to content or community.
Internal Wikimedia matters, discussions of new projects and similar
threads should be kept off the list.
--<snip>--
I would appreciate comments on this definition.
I have avoided the word "academic" because I see no reason to exclude
non-academic researchers as long as we consider their input valuable.
However, I would like to *strongly* emphasize the distinction between
research into content and communities, and technological research. The
latter really needs to go to wikitech-l, where the developers can follow
the discussions and provide input. The subscription page for that list
is at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
As Jimbo said, this mailing list is intended to be low volume. But low
volume is not "no volume". So please do feel free to introduce yourself
and describe your current research projects insofar they fall under the
above definition.
I would also like to systematically invite researchers to join this
mailing list. I will inform the members of the Wikimedia Research
Network about it, which currently includes some people involved with
academic research as described above, and will also try to go through
the list of individuals on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research
So please add any missing names to the list under the heading "Who is
currently doing research ..".
As for the Wikimedia Research Network itself, it is at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research_Network
and open for anyone to join. It will likely be split into three main
teams, "Technology", "Sociology", and "Content Analysis". The latter two
are relevant to this list where their efforts are not purely internal.
I apologize that these structures may be a bit confusing at the present
time, but we're only just now adding an organizational level to
Wikimedia research, and we will need some time to find the best models
of work and collaboration.
Please don't hestitate to contact me by private e-mail if you have any
questions or suggestions.
Sincerely,
Erik Möller
Chief Research Officer, Wikimedia Foundation
I was looking at the potential topics for the Wikimania conference
and saw a number that looked like they would be research
presentations. I'm thinking of going to the conference, but the the
conference organizers have not yet posted the actual papers that will
be presented. If i was going to attend I would need to start making
arrangements pretty soon. I'm just curious how many other researchers
are considering attending?
Kevin
This mailing list is directed at people doing research on or about the
Wikimedia Projects and Communities, broadly conceived.
If there is to be a list for the internal research group it should have
a distinctively different name.
This list is intended to be a low volume list for academic researchers
(though not confined to traditional academics of course) to make
contacts for potential co-authors, report on research, discuss research
programs and proposals.
--Jimbo
Hoi,
The IEEE LOM is a standard for providing Meta-data to the educational
system. It is an open standard and it is being implemented in several
countries. Technically the standard exists into two parts. the technical
labels and its localisations and localised vs universal content.
There was a Dutch organisation that asked in OTRS to host the Dutch
Wikipedia so that it would be able to combine the Wikipedia content with
the IEEE LOM data. In principle there is nothing wrong with that.
However if 50% of the Dutch data is of an universal nature, it would
mean that this 50% does not need to be entered for the articles in other
languages. Hosting this metadata on the Wikimedia servers makes sense;
it allows for the opening up of Free content in a proprietary world. It
would make a huge deduction in cost for every second language
implementing the IEEE LOM data.
The questions I put to you are:
* Are we willing to host open standard meta data for the educational
world.
* Are we willing to cooperate with organisations that are interested
in implementing this data.
* How will we manage such things; funds can be found to pay people
doing this kind of work - can we consider this
Thanks,
GerardM