Discovery June 2016

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Discovery Weekly Update for the week starting 2016-06-13
by Chris Koerner 19 Jun '16

19 Jun '16

Hello, >From the Wikimedia Foundation Discovery department here's this week's updates. * The Portal team turned off A/B test for languages by article count new display [1] * Portal team turned on survey for question 'how did you arrive at wikipedia.org' (second running of survey) [2] * Maps has moved to shiny new servers [3] * Wikidata and Commons can now use maps [4] [5] * Russian Wikivoyage has switched to the new <mapframe>/<maplink>s * Various Discernatron updates: Default snippets open, open/close all snippets button, larger click area for open/close snippet, snippet highlighting * Started AB test for interwiki search based on language detection on enwiki, frwiki, eswiki, dewiki and itwiki * Did you know? Wikimedia wikis see about 31M full text searches a day. [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T131526 [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136874 [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137620 [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138030 [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138029 ---- Feedback and suggestions on this weekly update are welcome! The full update, and archive of past updates, can be found on Mediawiki.org: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates -- Yours, Chris Koerner Community Liaison - Discovery Wikimedia Foundation

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Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] [ANNOUNCEMENT] StrepHit 1.0 Beta Release
by Kevin Smith 15 Jun '16

15 Jun '16

Forwarding to the Discovery list, since this project seems like it might be of interest even outside the wikidata context. Blame me if you've already seen this elsewhere. :) Kevin Smith Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Marco Fossati <fossati(a)spaziodati.eu> Date: Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 9:06 AM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] [ANNOUNCEMENT] StrepHit 1.0 Beta Release To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." < wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org [Feel free to blame me if you read this more than once] To whom it may interest, Full of delight, I would like to announce the first beta release of *StrepHit*: https://github.com/Wikidata/StrepHit TL;DR: StrepHit is an intelligent reading agent that understands text and translates it into *referenced* Wikidata statements. It is a IEG project funded by the Wikimedia Foundation. Key features: -Web spiders to harvest a collection of documents (corpus) from reliable sources -automatic corpus analysis to understand the most meaningful verbs -sentences and semi-structured data extraction -train a machine learning classifier via crowdsourcing -*supervised and rule-based fact extraction from text* -Natural Language Processing utilities -parallel processing You can find all the details here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/StrepHit:_Wikidata_Statements_Va… https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/StrepHit:_Wikidata_Statements_Va… If you like it, star it on GitHub! Best, Marco

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Kitchen Hackathon v2
by Guillaume Lederrey 13 Jun '16

13 Jun '16

Since the first Kitchen Hackathon was fun, we're doing the second one this Sunday (June 19th). Again, the goal is not to be productive as such, but to introduce a few friends to what we do around Wikipedia, have a few beers, pizzas, enjoy the sun (we hope) and talk between techies. In the process, we might actually close a few bugs, but that's a side benefit. That being said, if you know of some issue who might benefit from some more love during one day and that are reasonably easy to understand for someone without too much WMF background, send them my way! We might have people who are familiar with Python, Puppet and PHP. And most of all that are ready to learn about things they do not understand yet. Have fun! Guillaume -- Guillaume Lederrey Operations Engineer, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation

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Discovery Weekly Update for the week starting 2016-06-06
by Chris Koerner 10 Jun '16

10 Jun '16

Hello, >From the Wikimedia Foundation Discovery department here's this week's updates. = Events and news = * Portal team added several files for the wikipedia.org page: ** contributing file [1] ** ready file [2] ** portal page code license [3] ** updated the portal page with a share-alike license link [4] * Portal team launched a new A/B test for collapsing the long list of languages by article count [5] * Analysis team finished research on how long a 'typical' session lasts on the portal [6] * Analysis team helped with defining better data collection for the Search team's TextCat A/B test [7] * Elasticsearch clusters for search have been upgraded to version 2.3.3 with almost no user impact (Translation memories were unavailable for a short period of time). This opens the way to new cool features! * Maps has launched for English Wikivoyage (demo) [8] ** The map can be made full screen, has layers, gets shown when clicking links in text ** Lua is heavily used for geojson generation and conversion of the existing templates [9] ** Community has reported a large number of suggestions and bugs at the Traveller's pub [10] *3 new maps servers have been installed in EQIAD datacenter and are being configured = Other noteworthy stuff= * Portal team will soon re-launch a survey with new/improved bucketing to get more responses on the question of 'how did visitors arrive at the portal?' [11] * The Reading and Portal teams have been collaborating on designs for adding app download badges on the portal [12] * The Internationalization and Portal teams have been collaborating on how to add in translations to the sister project descriptive text phrases [13] * Data visualization hackathon is happening in Seattle on July 22nd. Lets build beautiful graphs and charts for Wikipedia. [14] [1] https://github.com/wikimedia/portals/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md [2] https://github.com/wikimedia/portals/blob/master/README.md [3] https://github.com/wikimedia/portals/blob/master/LICENSE [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T135903 [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T134008 [6] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T134301 [7] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137158 [8] https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Salzburg#By_car [9] https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Module:Map [10] https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers%27_pub#Maps_with_extra… [11] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136874 [12] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T135441 [13] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136441 [14] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/DataViz_Seattle_hackathon ---- Feedback and suggestions on this weekly update are welcome! The full update, and archive of past updates, can be found on Mediawiki.org: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Status_updates -- Yours, Chris Koerner Community Liaison - Discovery Wikimedia Foundation

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Analysis of Stripping Final Question Marks
by Trey Jones 09 Jun '16

09 Jun '16

Hi Everyone, Mikhail recently did a nice analysis of the relationship between various features of queries as strings and zero results rates (ZRR),[1] and I took a quick look at the two most impactful features, quotes and question marks, and how ZRR would be affected on enwiki if they were stripped out of poorly performing queries (< 3 results).[2] Now I've looked at all queries (including zero results queries, poorly performing queries, *and* all other queries for the top 10 Wikipedias by search traffic[3] as part of a Phab ticket[4] which started based on the unexpected results for queries like *How old is tom cruise?* Most queries ending in question marks seem to be questions, but give unexpected results (or no results) because ? is treated as a wildcard. Stripping query-final question marks would help, but might cause problems for a smaller number of users who intend them as wildcards on these Wikipedias, and there might be other unknown issues on other wiki projects. For those who don't like footnotes and want more detail, here's the link to the new report: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/Dropping_Final_Quest… —Trey [1] https://github.com/wikimedia-research/Discovery-Search-Adhoc-QueryFeatures/… [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/Quotes_and_Questions [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_(WMF)/Notes/Dropping_Final_Quest… [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133711 Trey Jones Software Engineer, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation

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Staff change update: Katie Horn now head of Discovery
by Katie Horn 08 Jun '16

08 Jun '16

Hello all, I wanted to let this group know that as of last week, I have taken over as Head of Discovery at the WMF. Tomasz Finc, who previously held the position, left the Foundation to continue his career in Open Source software leadership elsewhere. He will most definitely be missed. I have been with the WMF since mid-2011 as an engineer, and most recently have been leading the fundraising tech team. I am very excited for this opportunity to work with the Discovery team, and can't wait to get better acquainted with this community. Looking forward to working with you! -Katie

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Re: [discovery] [Wikitech-ambassadors] Wikipedia.org portal update - browser language detection and new A/B test
by Deborah Tankersley 08 Jun '16

08 Jun '16

Hi Romaine, Yes, the search box on the wikipedia.org portal only shows results for the language that you're currently searching in (which can be changed by selecting a new language in the dropdown located in the search box). We don't yet have the ability to search in all wikis at once but we'd like to have that capability in the future. I agree completely with your second point, the language question is a difficult one. We have so many English readers that the search box is used quite a bit on the portal, but quite a few other visitors click on one of the primary language links around the globe and then (presumably) do their search on that particular wiki. We visualize this information on our Portal Dashboard <http://discovery.wmflabs.org/portal/#action_breakdown>, if you're curious to find out more. We fully intend to use translatewiki.net to help with our sister project descriptive text once we get the framework setup on the Portal side to incorporate the push files from translatewiki as they get updated. Thanks again for the questions and compliments! :) Cheers, Deb -- Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:33 PM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Deb, > > Thanks! > > I just realised that also the search bar is based on detected language. > This is logic, but at the same time I miss the option to search in all > Wikipedias at once, instead of only the one language. > > The question about the language is a bit complex for me, especially the > second part/option of the question. I am just thinking that if I visit an > internet café or I use the laptop from an other language speaking friend, I > would like the option to read the page in my own language, instead of the > browsers language. Of course the detected language is a good starting point > for most people. > > If I visit the portal page and I see a search option, and I do want to > search something, I would try the search on the portal page. (But I am 100% > sure that other people see their own language mentioned first and click on > it.) > > About the to be translated text from sister projects, can > translatewiki.net be used as for many other translations of system > messages? > > Thanks for the work! :-) > > Romaine > > > > > 2016-06-07 17:51 GMT+02:00 Deborah Tankersley <dtankersley(a)wikimedia.org>: > >> Hi Romaine, >> >> We're glad you like the new page functionality! I've opened up a ticket >> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137215> to fix the Dutch phrase >> translation typo, thanks for letting us know. :) >> >> For your comment about adding in an option to change the language, I'm >> curious about something, as this has come up before. Would you prefer to >> use the portal page in the language that is detected (as we do now) or in a >> different language but not actually searching on that language's wiki? >> >> For instance, if your preferred language is Dutch: would it make sense >> for you to click on that language link on the portal page to go to >> nl.wikipedia.org and then do a search? Or, even if the browser's >> language is detected as Dutch (nl) would you rather use the portal page to >> search in a different language, like English? >> >> Yes, thanks for asking, the sister project links will be translated and >> we have a ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136441> open to get >> that started. We wanted the descriptive text to be visible on the page to >> give more insight into the sister projects, even though we don't have the >> text translated yet. >> >> >> Cheers, >> >> Deb >> >> >> -- >> Deb Tankersley >> Product Manager, Discovery >> Wikimedia Foundation >> >> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:13 AM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Hi Deb, >>> >>> Great improvement! >>> >>> Looking at the page, I only notice one major error. My language is Dutch >>> (nl), and so my browser/computer system is set that way. However the phrase >>> is spelled wrong: it says: "De vrieje encyclopedie" while it should say "De >>> vrije encyclopedie". So: vrieje -> vrije. "vrieje" is not a Dutch word. Can >>> this be fixed? >>> >>> Further I would recommend one thing to be added to the page. Because >>> large parts of the word visit Wikipedia through internet cafés and >>> computers elsewhere, I would suggest in the top right/left corner an option >>> to change the language. >>> >>> And one final question: will the bottom section of the page also be >>> translatable? >>> >>> Thanks! >>> Romaine >>> >>> >>> >>> 2016-06-07 0:05 GMT+02:00 Deborah Tankersley <dtankersley(a)wikimedia.org> >>> : >>> >>>> Hello, >>>> >>>> The Discovery team recently updated the wikipedia.org portal page to >>>> detect what the visitor's browser's preferred language(s) are and then >>>> arrange the language links around the globe to match those language >>>> preferences. >>>> >>>> Earlier this year, we ran a successful A/B test >>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:…> >>>> that proved promoting our visitor's preferred languages resulted in >>>> increased visibility and interest into these projects. Also, the display of >>>> '*The Free Encyclopedia*' phrase is now localized to the visitor's >>>> first preferred browser language. If there isn't a translation available, >>>> the phrase will be displayed in English (view a screenshot >>>> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia_portal_top_10_links_re-…>) >>>> as it currently is today. >>>> >>>> Additionally, a new A/B test >>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:…> will kick >>>> off this week to determine if the listing of languages by article count can >>>> be displayed in a more modern and streamlined way without decreasing usage >>>> of the links. Our goal is to promote easy scrolling through the long list >>>> of languages by article count, but in a dropdown format while also >>>> providing greater discovery of the sister wiki project links. >>>> >>>> More information on past and future work can be found on the wiki page >>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal> as well as the >>>> sprint <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-sprint/> >>>> and backlog >>>> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-backlog/> >>>> boards. We're always interested in receiving constructive feedback >>>> from the community: if you have a question or comment, please start a discussion >>>> on the talk page >>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia.org_Portal>. >>>> >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> >>>> Deb >>>> -- >>>> Deb Tankersley >>>> Product Manager, Discovery >>>> Wikimedia Foundation >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list >>>> Wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors >>>> >>>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list >>> Wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list >> Wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list > Wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors > >

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NYTimes: "Microsoft Finds Cancer Clues in Search Queries"
by Pine W 08 Jun '16

08 Jun '16

Interesting read: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/technology/online-searches-can-identify-c… Pine

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Re: [discovery] [Wikitech-ambassadors] Wikipedia.org portal update - browser language detection and new A/B test
by Deborah Tankersley 07 Jun '16

07 Jun '16

Hi Romaine, We're glad you like the new page functionality! I've opened up a ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137215> to fix the Dutch phrase translation typo, thanks for letting us know. :) For your comment about adding in an option to change the language, I'm curious about something, as this has come up before. Would you prefer to use the portal page in the language that is detected (as we do now) or in a different language but not actually searching on that language's wiki? For instance, if your preferred language is Dutch: would it make sense for you to click on that language link on the portal page to go to nl.wikipedia.org and then do a search? Or, even if the browser's language is detected as Dutch (nl) would you rather use the portal page to search in a different language, like English? Yes, thanks for asking, the sister project links will be translated and we have a ticket <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136441> open to get that started. We wanted the descriptive text to be visible on the page to give more insight into the sister projects, even though we don't have the text translated yet. Cheers, Deb -- Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:13 AM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Deb, > > Great improvement! > > Looking at the page, I only notice one major error. My language is Dutch > (nl), and so my browser/computer system is set that way. However the phrase > is spelled wrong: it says: "De vrieje encyclopedie" while it should say "De > vrije encyclopedie". So: vrieje -> vrije. "vrieje" is not a Dutch word. Can > this be fixed? > > Further I would recommend one thing to be added to the page. Because large > parts of the word visit Wikipedia through internet cafés and computers > elsewhere, I would suggest in the top right/left corner an option to change > the language. > > And one final question: will the bottom section of the page also be > translatable? > > Thanks! > Romaine > > > > 2016-06-07 0:05 GMT+02:00 Deborah Tankersley <dtankersley(a)wikimedia.org>: > >> Hello, >> >> The Discovery team recently updated the wikipedia.org portal page to >> detect what the visitor's browser's preferred language(s) are and then >> arrange the language links around the globe to match those language >> preferences. >> >> Earlier this year, we ran a successful A/B test >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:…> >> that proved promoting our visitor's preferred languages resulted in >> increased visibility and interest into these projects. Also, the display of >> '*The Free Encyclopedia*' phrase is now localized to the visitor's first >> preferred browser language. If there isn't a translation available, the >> phrase will be displayed in English (view a screenshot >> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia_portal_top_10_links_re-…>) >> as it currently is today. >> >> Additionally, a new A/B test >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:…> will kick >> off this week to determine if the listing of languages by article count can >> be displayed in a more modern and streamlined way without decreasing usage >> of the links. Our goal is to promote easy scrolling through the long list >> of languages by article count, but in a dropdown format while also >> providing greater discovery of the sister wiki project links. >> >> More information on past and future work can be found on the wiki page >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal> as well as the >> sprint <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-sprint/> >> and backlog >> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-backlog/> >> boards. We're always interested in receiving constructive feedback from >> the community: if you have a question or comment, please start a discussion >> on the talk page >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia.org_Portal>. >> >> >> Cheers, >> >> Deb >> -- >> Deb Tankersley >> Product Manager, Discovery >> Wikimedia Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list >> Wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list > Wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors > >

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Wikipedia.org portal update - browser language detection and new A/B test
by Deborah Tankersley 06 Jun '16

06 Jun '16

Hello, The Discovery team recently updated the wikipedia.org portal page to detect what the visitor's browser's preferred language(s) are and then arrange the language links around the globe to match those language preferences. Earlier this year, we ran a successful A/B test <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:…> that proved promoting our visitor's preferred languages resulted in increased visibility and interest into these projects. Also, the display of '*The Free Encyclopedia*' phrase is now localized to the visitor's first preferred browser language. If there isn't a translation available, the phrase will be displayed in English (view a screenshot <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia_portal_top_10_links_re-…>) as it currently is today. Additionally, a new A/B test <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal_A/B_testing#A.2FB_test:…> will kick off this week to determine if the listing of languages by article count can be displayed in a more modern and streamlined way without decreasing usage of the links. Our goal is to promote easy scrolling through the long list of languages by article count, but in a dropdown format while also providing greater discovery of the sister wiki project links. More information on past and future work can be found on the wiki page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal> as well as the sprint <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-sprint/> and backlog <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-portal-backlog/> boards. We're always interested in receiving constructive feedback from the community: if you have a question or comment, please start a discussion on the talk page <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia.org_Portal>. Cheers, Deb -- Deb Tankersley Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation

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Discovery June 2016