Wiki-research-l April 2011

wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org

32 participants
20 discussions

Archiving wikis
by emijrp 14 Apr '11

14 Apr '11

Hi all; We know that websites are fragile and that broken links are common. Wikimedia (and other communities like Wikia) publish dumps of their wikis, but, that is not common. Most wiki communities don't publish any backups, so their users can't do anything when a disaster occurs (data loss, attack), if they want to fork, etc. Of course they can use Special:Export, but that requires a huge hand-made effort, and the images are not downloaded. I'm working in WikiTeam,[1] a group inside Archive Team, where we want to archive wikis, from Wikipedia to tiniest ones. As I said, Wikipedia publishes backups, so not problem here. But I have developed a script that downloads all the pages of a wiki (using Special:Export), it merges them into an unique XML file (as pages-history dumps) and downloads all the images (if you enable that option). That is great if you want to have a backup of your favorite wiki, or to clone a defunct wiki (abandoned by its administrator), or you want to move your wiki from a free wikifarm to a personal paid hosting, etc. Also, of course, you can use this script to retrieve the full histories of a wiki, and research, just as a Wikipedia dump. We are running this script in several wikis and uploading the complete histories to the download section[2], building a little wiki library. Don't be fooled by their sizes. They are 7zip files which usually expand to many MB. I hope you enjoy this script, make backups of your favorite wikis and research them. Regards, emijrp [1] http://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/ [2] http://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/downloads/list?can=1

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Fwd: Call Summer School
by Iassen Halatchliyski 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

Dear Colleagues, the Knowledge Media Research Center, especially the Leibniz Graduate School for Knowledge Media Research and the ScienceCampus Tuebingen, would like to invite the young researchers of your Lab to the Summer School on "Making Sense of Social Media" to be held in August 1-4, 2011 in the Swabian Alb, Germany. The Summer School addresses empirically oriented psychologists and social scientists dealing with questions in the field of Web 2.0 and social media. It presents a unique opportunity for young researchers to meet fellow researchers and learn from outstanding scientific leaders by developing new research ideas. Across three parallel workshop tracks (about 10 participants each), the Summer School »Making sense of social media« provides the framework to discuss recent developments from a scientific point of view, share ideas and gain insights into how we as a research community can make sense of social media. Keynote Speakers: - Robert Kraut, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA - Judith Donath, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Track Leaders: - Sonja Utz, VU University, Amsterdam, NL (Track I: Learning about Others Interpersonal Relationships) - Dan Cosley, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (Track II: Learning from Others Social Navigation) - Jan Van Aalst, The University of Hong Kong, RC (Track III: Learning with Others Knowledge Building) The Summer School is designed for PhD students and post-doctoral researchers within two years after completion of their thesis in psychology or social sciences. We want to offer your young researchers to take part in and we thank you very much informing them by this E-Mail. The deadline for application is May 1, 2011. All information are available on web: www.wissenschaftscampus-tuebingen.de. Kind regards Susann Pfeiffer WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen "Bildung in Informationsumwelten" Managing Director _________________________________________________________________________________ Eva Schwämmlein Institut für Wissensmedien Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 40 D-72072 Tübingen Tel.: ++49 (0)7071 979-310 Fax: +49 (0)7071 979-300 e.schwaemmlein(a)iwm-kmrc.de

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New research project -- survey of new editors (WPP project)
by Coye Cheshire 12 Apr '11

12 Apr '11

Hello, My research team and I are ready to begin data collection on a new study called the Wikipedia Progression of Participation (WPP) project. Our goal is to use a combination of pre-post surveys and activity analysis to understand how Wikipedians move from their first editing experiences to different forms of participation over time. Details about the project are available on our project page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research/Projects/Wikipedia_Progression_of_P… I am sending this message because our methodology requires us to contact Wikipedians to request their participation. Complying with Wikipedia’s policies and best practices, being respectful, and remaining non-disruptive to the community is very important to us. To that end, we have discussed our project with other Wikipedia researchers, conducted informal discussions with several folks at the Wikimedia foundation, consulted with members of the Wikipedia Research Committee, and received IRB/human subjects certification at UC Berkeley. Now we would love your feedback so we may address any concerns as we prepare to begin the study. We plan to begin the study later this month (April). Please feel free to email me directly or post comments on our project page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research/Projects/Wikipedia_Progression_of_P…) We look forward to your thoughts and feedback! Thank you-- Coye -- Coye Cheshire Assistant Professor School of Information University of California, Berkeley http://ischool.berkeley.edu/~coye coye(a)ischool.berkeley.edu

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Workshop on Mathematical Wikis at ITP 2011 (Nijmegen, NL, August 27; abstract submission May 30)
by Christoph LANGE 08 Apr '11

08 Apr '11

Workshop on Mathematical Wikis (MathWikis-2011) at ITP (2nd International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving) 2011 Nijmegen, Netherlands, August 27th, 2011 INVITED SPEAKER: Joe Corneli: The PlanetMath Encyclopedia ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE May 30th Mathematics is increasingly becoming a collaborative discipline. The Internet has simplified the distributed development, review, and improvement of large proofs, theories, libraries, and knowledge repositories, also giving rise to all kinds of collaboratively developed mathematical learning resources. Examples include the PlanetMath free encyclopedia, the Polymath collaborative collaborative proof development efforts, and also large collaboratively developed formal libraries. Interactive computer assistance, semantic representation, and linking with other datasets on the Semantic Web are becoming very interesting aspects of collaborative mathematical developments. The ITP 2011 MathWikis workshop aims to bring together developers and major users of mathematical wikis and collaborative and social tools for mathematics. TOPICS include but are not limited to: * wikis and blogs for informal, semantic, semiformal, and formal mathematical knowledge; * general techniques and tools for online collaborative mathematics; * tools for collaboratively producing, presenting, publishing, and interacting with online mathematics; * automation and computer-human interaction aspects of mathematical wikis; * practical experiences, usability aspects, feasibility studies; * evaluation of existing tools and experiments; * requirements, user scenarios and goals. SUBMISSIONS Researchers interested in participating are invited to submit a short (2-10 pages) abstract via EasyChair. Submissions will be refereed by the program committee, which will select a balanced program of high-quality contributions. Submissions should be in standard-conforming Postscript or PDF. To submit a paper, go to the EasyChair MathWikis page (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mathwikis11) and follow the instructions there. FINAL VERSIONS Final versions should be prepared in LaTeX using the easychair.cls class file (http://www.easychair.org/easychair.zip). Proceedings will be published as EasyChair or CEUR Workshop Proceedings. IMPORTANT DATES * Submission of abstracts: May 30th, 2011, 8:00 UTC+1 * Notification: June 23rd, 2011 * Camera ready versions due: July 11th, 2011 * Workshop: August 27th, 2011 PROGRAM COMMITTEE * Jesse Alama * David Aspinall * Joe Corneli * Cezary Kaliszyk * Fairouz Kamareddine * Michael Kohlhase * Markus Krötzsch * Christoph Lange (co-chair) * Lionel Mamane * James McKinna * Piotr Rudnicki * Carst Tankink * Josef Urban (co-chair) * Denny Vrandečić -- Christoph Lange, Jacobs Univ. Bremen, http://kwarc.info/clange, Skype duke4701 Semantic Publication workshop at ESWC 2011, May 30, Hersonissos, Crete, Greece Submission deadline March 15, http://SePublica.mywikipaper.org LNCS Post-proceedings of selected submissions, Best Paper Award by Elsevier

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Seeking Wikipedia contributors for brief e-mail interview
by Kristin Eckert 05 Apr '11

05 Apr '11

Why Wikipedia works -- Wikipedia contributors for brief e-mail interview needed The Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland is seeking Wikipedia contributors willing to participate in a brief e-mail interview. If you have been contributing to Wikipedia and you are over 18 years old, please consider participating in our study. We will share the result of the study with you. Your information will be confidential and your name will not be used. If you are interested please e-mail Dr. Linda Steiner at lsteiner(a)jmail.umd.edu or Stine Eckert at keckert(a)jmail.umd.edu.

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OKCon 2011: Call for Participation
by Daniel Dietrich 05 Apr '11

05 Apr '11

Dear all, As you might know, we're busily preparing the schedule for this year's Open Knowledge Conference - OKCon, which is going to be in Berlin on the 31st June and 1st July. We're really excited about this year's event - so much has happened in the last 12 months! Also, it would be *fantastic* to have presentations, workshops, discussions or lightening talks from people on this list - there's so much activity in the field, it would be great to get a bit of a taster of all your work. I've attached a short PDF version of the Call for Participation, and if you haven't already seen it you can check out the full version at http://okcon.org/2011/cfp/ The submissions form is at http://okcon.org/2011/submit/ Looking forward to meeting lots of you in Berlin! Please get in touch with us at okcon(a)okfn.org if you have any questions or suggestions. Registration is open at: registration: http://okcon2011.eventbrite.com/ All the best Daniel -- Daniel Dietrich The Open Knowledge Foundation Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age www.okfn.org - www.opendefinition.org Mail: daniel.dietrich(a)okfn.org Mobil: +49 171 780 870 3 Skype: ddie22 Twitter: @ddie

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Theory and Practice of Provenance workshop: deadline 8 April
by Sumana Harihareswara 03 Apr '11

03 Apr '11

I saw this and thought it might interest the folks on this list who deal with authenticating the sources of their data. Conference organizers specifically request "pie-in-the-sky research ideas." :-) best, Sumana Harihareswara --- original message follows --- From: Lionel Garth Jones<lgj(a)usenix.org> To:nylug-talk@nylug.org Subject: [nylug-talk] TaPP '11 Submission Deadline Approaching Message-ID:<0262A348-709F-4400-B2EF-9BB0358D2C4A(a)usenix.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii We're writing to remind you that the submission deadline for the 3rd Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP '11) is quickly approaching. Please submit all work by April 8, 2011, at 11:59 p.m. PDT. More information and submission guidelines are available at http://www.usenix.org/tapp11/cfpb TaPP '11 will bring together researchers and practitioners doing innovative work in the area of provenance. With the deluge of digital data we are currently experiencing, it has become increasingly important to capture and understand the origins and derivation of data--its provenance. Provenance provides important documentation that is an essential part of the quality of data, and it is essential to the trust we put in, for example, the data we find on the Web and the data that is derived from scientific experiments. The workshop may cover any topic related to theoretical or practical aspects of provenance, including but not limited to: provenance in databases, work flows, programming languages, security, software engineering, or systems; provenance on the Web; or real-world applications of or requirements for provenance. The Program Committee is determined to make TaPP '11 a real workshop at which new ideas are discussed and developed and where the participants can learn how other subjects make use of provenance. While the workshop will have online proceedings, the Committee does not want the workshop to become another "mini-conference" that has nothing but paper presentations. The Committee is eager to receive short papers and vision papers describing challenges for provenance research, brief descriptions of new applications, proposals for mini-tutorials, pie-in-the sky research ideas, and anything that will create a successful workshop. While brief and readable descriptions of research are encouraged, recycled conference submissions are strongly discouraged. TaPP '11 will take place June 20-22, 2011, in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, the week after the meeting of ACM SIGMOD in Athens. We look forward to receiving your submissions! Sincerely, Peter Buneman, University of Edinburgh Juliana Freire, University of Utah TaPP '11 Program Co-Chairs tapp11chairs(a)usenix.org ------------------------------------------------------------------ TaPP '11 Call for Contributions 3rd Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP '11) June 20-22, 2011, Heraklion, Crete, Greece http://www.usenix.org/tapp11/cfpb Submission deadline: April 8, 2011, 11:59 p.m. PDT ------------------------------------------------------------------

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[acawiki-general] Proposal: new hosting for AcaWiki
by Jodi Schneider 02 Apr '11

02 Apr '11

Resending since my reply bounced earlier... -Jodi ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jodi Schneider <jschneider(a)pobox.com> Date: Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 10:59 AM Subject: Re: [acawiki-general] Proposal: new hosting for AcaWiki To: Reid Priedhorsky <reid(a)reidster.net> Cc: wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, acawiki-general(a)lists.ibiblio.org Hi Reid, Glad to have your interest! On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Reid Priedhorsky <reid(a)reidster.net> wrote: > [I am putting the most interesting stuff at the beginning, but there are > some responses in-line below too.] > > I spoke with Mako Hill, one of the principals at AcaWiki, last week and > am now quite enthusiastic about the system. I believe the flaws can be > fixed and we should take advantage of the small but present community > which is hungry for new members. > > The key problem is hosting, and Mako shares this concern. It turns out > that the current hosts (Creative Commons) also would like to transfer > hosting somewhere else, as running a MediaWiki is not part of their core > mission. So, our interests align. > > Thus, I propose that we move AcaWiki hosting to Referata, retaining all > existing history and user accounts. If acawiki.referata.com is OK, then > it can be done for free; if keeping the acawiki.org domain is important > (in this case, the move would be completely transparent to users), then > we'll need to find $50/mo; Yes--keeping the domain name is important. Otherwise, we break all links, and alienate existing users -- many of whom do not read these lists, and who may check the site infrequently. Since we're a nonprofit, we should ask about a discounted price. Further, we might want to change hosting again sometime in the future (for instance if Referata went away or significantly changed). I see that "Referata offers hosting of semantic wikis" but I hadn't heard of it before, though WikiWorks is well-known. What's your connection with Referata, and how stable are they? It appears that hosting is funded by the fees, with the free hosting just coming along for the ride... All I find on the FAQ is: "From the time of its release in July 2008 until December 2009, Referata was run by its creator, Yaron Koren <http://referata.com/wiki/User:Yaron_Koren>. Since December 2009, it has been run byWikiWorks <http://wikiworks.com/>, a MediaWiki consulting company that Yaron founded." There's more info about WikiWorks at http://wikiworks.com/ if keeping the existing skin is important > (which think it is not - see below), then $80/mo. > No--the existing skin needs improvement. Is there info about the default Refarata skin? > AcaWiki folks, what do you think about this? Have I mischaracterized > anything about you above? > > I would be happy to lead this process (Mako gave me some technical > people at CC to talk to) and could start on this in late April. (I have > some unavoidable responsibilities in the next few weeks and won't have > time until then.) > > Once this is done, I could then facilitate the other technical tasks > which I offered to do (uploading existing stuff into AcaWiki). > It's great to have your offer of help for the transition. But one challenge is ongoing technical leadership. I'd like some clarification from Referata about what is included in hosting. Any volunteers for technical administration would be welcome, too! > > >> I don't necessarily believe that we need it to be the standard MW look > >> in all respects (though I personally like the consistency), but the wiki > >> controls need to be consistent with other MW installs (most importantly, > >> Wikipedia) so people can see easily that it's a wiki and in particular > >> one they've used before. > I agree with that! We were relatively close to Wikipedia, but Wikimedia has made significant usability improvements this past year. -Jodi > > > > Actually, the controls seem to me to be quite similar to the standard > > Wikipedia layout. For example, look at > > > http://acawiki.org/Measuring_user_influence_in_Twitter:_The_million_followe… > . > > The page edit controls are on the top of the article, and the navigation > > bar is on the left, all very similar to Wikipedia. Since these key > > functional elements are very similar to the default, I assumed that your > > comments had more to do with the aesthetic elememts. Could you perhaps > > point out some specific differences in the core MediaWiki functionality > > elements that you think might confuse new users who are familiar with > > editing Wikipedia? > > Hmm, looking again you are right. I'm not sure exactly what happened; > perhaps I was confusing AcaWiki with something else. > > Anyway, I still don't like the AcaWiki default skin. I could provide a > specific critique of the problems I see, but it might be better to > simply offer a better one for comparison, which I am happy to do. At a > high level, it's a little sloppy, it wastes important vertical space, > and standard elements (e.g., search, login) are in nonstandard > locations. On the other hand, the default MW skin is very professional > looking and gets these things right. It's another aspect of separation > of responsibilities - let people who are good at web design design the > pages. > > > Actually, another reason for my comments is that I would assume that the > > core audience of contributors (academic researchers who are willing to > > share their research summaries online) would not have trouble trying to > > learn how to edit, even if AcaWiki used something other than MediaWiki. > > That is true; however, many won't. Barriers to entry matter a lot more > than one might think, even small ones. The basic theory is, folks who > are new to a system don't care much about it and are easy to drive away > by making small mistakes. On the other hand, if their initial experience > is smooth and pleasant, and enables microcontributions right away, that > builds emotional investment in the community and those people are more > likely to come back and help build the community and the resource. > Researchers in particular are very busy and (I claim) will have less > patience than average to hassle with bad systems. > > Reid > > -- > I work for IBM, and sending this e-mail might be part of my job. > However, I speak for myself only, not the company. > _______________________________________________ > acawiki-general mailing list > acawiki-general(a)lists.ibiblio.org > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/acawiki-general >

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Request for feedback on new data dump formats
by Yuvi Panda 01 Apr '11

01 Apr '11

Hi, I'm a student planning on doing GSoC this year on mediawiki. Specifically, I'd like to work on data dumps. I'm writing this to gauge what would be useful to the research community. Several ideas thrown about include: 1. JSON Dumps 2. Sqlite Dumps 3. Daily dumps of revisions in last 24 hours 4. Dumps optimized for very fast import into various external storage and smaller size (diffs) 5. JSON/CSV for Special:Import and Special:Export Would any of these be useful? Or is there anything else that I'm missing, that you would consider much more useful? Feedback would be invaluable :) Thanks :) -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Proposal: build a wiki literature review wiki-style
by Jodi Schneider 01 Apr '11

01 Apr '11

Hi Reid, I'm involved with AcaWiki, so I'll start answers to your questions here. Hopefully others will comment, too. <Resending from the subscribed address...> On 23 Mar 2011, at 23:49, Reid Priedhorsky wrote: > On 3/22/11 4:28 PM, Chitu Okoli wrote: >> >> Reid wrote: >>> >>> There also appear to be various options for Semantic MediaWiki hosting: >>> Wikia, Referata, etc. It would be nice to not have to deal with the >>> sysadmin aspects of the project. >> >> I agree that going with a reliable host would be the way to go. I think >> that for the nature of our project, choosing a paid Referata plan would >> probably be better than going for Wikia. I for one could probably easily >> find grant funding to keep it going. > > Sure. If nothing else I'd be happy to chip in personally. I could also > ask around for funding here at IBM, but I'm quite pessimistic on that. > > Paid plans run from $240 to $960/year, and we could certainly get > started for free (http://www.referata.com/wiki/Referata:Features). > > I'm not ready to write off AcaWiki, but I have a number of significant > concerns. Some of these I've mentioned before. I'd really like someone > from that project to comment on these. > > * Is the project dead? The mailing list is pretty much empty and the > amount of real editing activity in the past 30 days is pretty low. Definitely not dead! > > * It appears that the project self-hosts - this means that the project > has to do its own sysadmin work, Neeru & Mike, can you comment on who's doing sysadmin work now? > which appears to have been a problem > (e.g., the domain expired earlier this month and no one noticed until > the site went down!). > > * Is the target audience correct? I think we want to specifically target > our annotated bibliography to researchers, but AcaWiki appears to be > targeting laypeople as well as researchers (and IMO it would be very > tricky to do both well). The main interest, from my perspective (others may be able to add their own), is in making research more accessible. Several AcaWiki users are grad students who are writing summaries in order to consolidate their own knowledge or prepare for qualifier exams. Asking on the > > * I don't think the focus on "summaries" is right. I think we need a > structured infobox plus semi-structured text (e.g. sections for > contributions, evidence, weaknesses, questions). I agree! Right now there's some structured information, but that could be readily changed. I'm definitely open to restructuring AcaWiki, so do propose this on the mailing list (acawiki-general(a)lists.ibiblio.org), and we can discuss further. One ongoing issue is the best way to handle bibliographic information--which has subtle complexities which we're only partly handling now. > > * It doesn't look like a MediaWiki. Since the MW software is so > dominant, that means pretty much everyone who knows about editing wikis > knows how to use MW - and not looking like MW means there's no immediate > "aha! I can edit this". There's a lot of value in familiarity. Actually, AcaWiki uses MediaWiki -- specifically Semantic Media Wiki. For full details, see http://acawiki.org/Special:Version > > I will post an invitation on the AcaWiki mailing to come here and > participate. > >>> One final note on bibliographic software: many of these claim to do >>> automatic import of a reference simply by pointing the software at the >>> publisher's web page for the references. But I have never seen this work >>> correctly; always, the imported data needs significant cleanup, enough >>> that personally I'd rather type it in manually anyway. For example, >>> titles of ACM papers aren't even correctly cased on the official ACM >>> pages (e.g.,http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753615)! >> >> My only experience with "scraping" pages is with Zotero, and it does it >> beautifully. I assume (but don't know) that the current generation of >> other bibliography software would also do a good job. Anyway, Zotero has >> a huge support community, and scrapers for major sources (including >> Google Scholar for articles and Amazon for books) are kept very well up >> to date for the most part. > > Perhaps I'm just unlucky, then - I've only ever tried it on ACM papers > (which it failed to do well, so I stopped). Zotero used to scrape quite well from the ACM digital library -- now that they've changed their site again the scraper needs to be updated (not hard to do). Last time I tried, Zotero scraped ok from certain ACM pages (item pages) but not from search results: YMMV. -Jodi > >>> Bi-directional synchronization is hard to get right, particularly when >>> the two sides have different data models. I think we are much >>> better off declaring one or the other to be the master and the rest >>> should remain read-only (i.e. export rather than synchronization). >> >> I like this idea; with SMW as the primary, editable source, a read-only >> Zotero library imported from the SMW would work well. The problem, >> though, is that duplicate detection would need to prevent imports from >> adding existing articles. A complete overwrite would not work, since >> this would break article IDs for word processor integration. Zotero has >> been slow on implementing duplicate detection, but they finally have a >> very impressive solution in alpha >> (http://www.zotero.org/blog/new-release-multilingual-zotero-with-duplicates-…). > > I don't know anything about how article IDs works in Zotero, but how to > build a unique ID for each is an interesting, subtle, and important > problem. Others have suggested using opaque IDs such as DOI. I think > this is a mistake, because it means that they are utterly meaningless to > people when creating citations. For example, consider the following two > citations that I might put in my LaTeX code. > > \cite{10.1145/1753326.1753615} > \cite{Panciera2010Lurking} > > The first means nothing to me, but the second is a useful reminder as to > the paper I'm citing. That's what CiteULike does, and it's built from > first author, year, first meaningful word of title. In the tiny > percentage of cases where this is not unique, a disambiguation digit > could be added. > > I don't know how citation works in Word et al., but I would hope you're > not stuck with opaque numeric IDs and/or that Zotero doesn't force you > to use integers or something like that. > > Reid > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

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Wiki-research-l April 2011