Hi everyone,
We are delighted to announce that Wiki Workshop 2021 will be held
virtually in April 2021 and as part of the Web Conference 2021 [1].
The exact day is to be finalized and we know it will be between April
19-23.
In the past years, Wiki Workshop has traveled to Oxford, Montreal,
Cologne, Perth, Lyon, and San Francisco, and (virtually) to Taipei.
Last year, we had more than 120 participants in the workshop and we
are particularly excited about this year's as we will celebrate the
20th birthday of Wikipedia.
We encourage contributions by all researchers who study the Wikimedia
projects. We specifically encourage 1-2 page submissions of
preliminary research. You will have the option to publish your work as
part of the proceedings of The Web Conference 2021.
You can read more about the call for papers and the workshop at
http://wikiworkshop.org/2021/#call. Please note that the deadline for
the submissions to be considered for proceedings is January 29. All
other submissions should be received by March 1.
If you have questions about the workshop, please let us know on this
list or at wikiworkshop(a)googlegroups.com.
Looking forward to seeing many of you in this year's edition.
Best,
Miriam Redi, Wikimedia Foundation
Bob West, EPFL
Leila Zia, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://www2021.thewebconf.org/
Hi all,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, February 17,
at 9:00 AM PST/17:00 UTC (Note that this is 30 minutes earlier than the
usual time). This month’s showcase will be around the topic of censorship
(of Wikipedia). In the first talk, Daniel Romero presents a study examining
the effect of censorship on the collaborative behavior of editors. In the
second talk, Margaret Roberts presents work on disaggregating the effects
of censorship on proactive vs incidental consumption of information.
Youtube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z52wPt34rJc
As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You
can also watch our past research showcases here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
Talk 1:
Speaker: Daniel Romero (University of Michigan)
Title: Shocking the Crowd: The Effect of Censorship Shocks on Chinese
Wikipedia
Abstract: Collaborative crowdsourcing has become a popular approach to
organizing work across the globe. Being global also means being vulnerable
to shocks – unforeseen events that disrupt crowds – that originate from any
country. In this study, we examine changes in collaborative behavior of
editors of Chinese Wikipedia that arise due to the 2005 government
censorship in mainland China. Using the exogenous variation in the fraction
of editors blocked across different articles due to the censorship, we
examine the impact of reduction in group size, which we denote as the shock
level, on three collaborative behavior measures: volume of activity,
centralization, and conflict. We find that activity and conflict drop on
articles that face a shock, whereas centralization increases. The impact of
a shock on activity increases with shock level, whereas the impact on
centralization and conflict is higher for moderate shock levels than for
very small or very high shock levels. These findings provide support for
threat rigidity theory – originally introduced in the organizational theory
literature – in the context of large-scale collaborative crowds.
Talk 2
Speaker: Margaret Roberts (University of California San Diego)
Title: Censorship's Effect on Incidental Exposure to Information: Evidence
from Wikipedia
Abstract: The fast-growing body of research on internet censorship has
examined the effects of censoring selective pieces of political information
and the unintended consequences of censorship of entertainment. However, we
know very little about the broader consequences of coarse censorship or
censorship that affects a large array of information such as an entire
website or search engine. In this study, we use China’s complete block of
Chinese language Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) on May 19, 2015, to
disaggregate the effects of coarse censorship on proactive consumption of
information—information users seek out—and on incidental consumption of
information—information users are not actively seeking but consume when
they happen to come across it. We quantify the effects of censorship of
Wikipedia not only on proactive information consumption but also on
opportunities for exploration and incidental consumption of information. We
find that users from mainland China were much more likely to consume
information on Wikipedia about politics and history incidentally rather
than proactively, suggesting that the effects of censorship on incidental
information access may be politically significant.
--
Martin Gerlach
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi
It seems there are no pageviews data for February 9th available, Does
anyone know when they will be available?
Best,
~Josh
Joshua Haecker
VP of Product and Analysis
Predata, Inc.
josh(a)predata.com
609-865-2181
777 6th St Northwest
Washington, D.C.
*This message and its contents are confidential. If you received this
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Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours next week on 2021-02-02 at 17:00-18:00 PM UTC (9am PT/6pm
CET).
To participate, join the video-call via this Wikimedia-meet link [2]. There
is no set agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the
etherpad [3] (You can do this after you join the meeting, too.), otherwise
you are welcome to also just hang out. More detailed information (e.g.
about how to attend) can be found here [4].
Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves more available to
answer some of the research related questions that you as Wikimedia
volunteer editors, organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in
your projects and initiatives. Some example cases we hope to be able to
support you in:
-
You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
in my wiki?
-
You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
harder to find an answer for during an office hour, however, discussing
them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
-
You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
of you interested more closely in this space.
-
You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].
Hope to see many of you,
Martin (WMF Research Team)
[1] https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html
[2] https://meet.wmcloud.org/ResearchOfficeHours
[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html
--
Martin Gerlach
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation