Wiki-research-l August 2016

wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org

38 participants
36 discussions

Wikipedia Research policy
by song＠cs.umn.edu 14 Jul '23

14 Jul '23

Pursuant to prior discussions about the need for a research policy on Wikipedia, WikiProject Research is drafting a policy regarding the recruitment of Wikipedia users to participate in studies. At this time, we have a proposed policy, and an accompanying group that would facilitate recruitment of subjects in much the same way that the Bot Approvals Group approves bots. The policy proposal can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research The Subject Recruitment Approvals Group mentioned in the proposal is being described at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Subject_Recruitment_Approvals_Group Before we move forward with seeking approval from the Wikipedia community, we would like additional input about the proposal, and would welcome additional help improving it. Also, please consider participating in WikiProject Research at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Research -- Bryan Song GroupLens Research University of Minnesota

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[Analytics] Beeline as Hive client
by Madhumitha Viswanathan 03 Oct '18

03 Oct '18

Hi all, For all Hive users using stat1002/1004, you might have seen a deprecation warning when you launch the hive client - that claims it's being replaced with Beeline. The Beeline shell has always been available to use, but it required supplying a database connection string every time, which was pretty annoying. We now have a wrapper <https://github.com/wikimedia/operations-puppet/blob/production/modules/role…> script setup to make this easier. The old Hive CLI will continue to exist, but we encourage moving over to Beeline. You can use it by logging into the stat1002/1004 boxes as usual, and launching `beeline`. There is some documentation on this here: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Cluster/Beeline. If you run into any issues using this interface, please ping us on the Analytics list or #wikimedia-analytics or file a bug on Phabricator <http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/analytics>. (If you are wondering stat1004 whaaat - there should be an announcement coming up about it soon!) Best, --Madhu :)

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Wikipedia aggregate clickstream data released
by Dario Taraborelli 17 Jan '18

17 Jan '18

We’re glad to announce the release of an aggregate clickstream dataset extracted from English Wikipedia http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1305770 <http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1305770> This dataset contains counts of (referer, article) pairs aggregated from the HTTP request logs of English Wikipedia. This snapshot captures 22 million (referer, article) pairs from a total of 4 billion requests collected during the month of January 2015. This data can be used for various purposes: • determining the most frequent links people click on for a given article • determining the most common links people followed to an article • determining how much of the total traffic to an article clicked on a link in that article • generating a Markov chain over English Wikipedia We created a page on Meta for feedback and discussion about this release: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikipedia_clickstream <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikipedia_clickstream> Ellery and Dario

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Research on automatically created articles
by siddhartha banerjee 13 Sep '16

13 Sep '16

Ziko, Thanks for your detailed email. Agree on all the comments. Some earlier comments might have been harsh, but I understand that there is a valid reason behind it and also the dedication of so many people involved to help reach Wikipedia where it is today. We should have been more diligent in finding out policies and rules (including IRB) before entering content on Wikipedia. We promise not to repeat anything of this sort in the future and also I am trying to summarize all that has been discussed here to prevent such unpleasant experiences from other researchers in this area. -- Sidd

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WikiConference North America - Submissions deadline Aug 31
by Andrew Lih 31 Aug '16

31 Aug '16

WikiConference North America 2016 7-10 October 2016, San Diego, CA, USA SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE: August 31, 11:59pm Samoa Time! https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Submissions WikiConference North America (formerly WikiConference USA) is the third annual conference on the North American continent devoted to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The weekend will feature both academic and casual presentations on Wikimedia-related outreach activities, workshops to improve the skills of grassroots organizers, and discussions on the past, present, and future of the Wikimedia projects. The conference features offerings about community outreach, online activity, partnerships with institutions of knowledge, and technology. Keynote speakers are scheduled to include Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Merrilee Proffitt, Senior Program Officer of OCLC Research. The last day of the conference will feature programming coinciding with Indigenous Peoples' Day. Registration for the conference is now open. You can register at https://wikiconference.org. Scholarships partially covering costs of travel and attendance are available for active contributors to Wikimedia projects. Apply by August 23rd for scholarships at https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2016/Scholarships. This is a volunteer run conference and volunteers are needed for any number of tasks. If you are attending, please consider volunteering for at https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Volunteers. We seek presentations addressing topics related to Wikipedia or open access and culture. Presentations may be from any discipline regarding any relevant topic. Please submit a description of your proposed presentation using our online submission process at https://wikiconference.org/ wiki/Submissions. If you are interested in participating in the peer-reviewed academic track, see our call for academic submissions at https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Call_for_Academic_Presentations. - Sydney Poore (User:FloNight) and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (User:Rosiestep), conference organizers

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Thinking big: scaling up Wikimedia's contributor population by two orders of magnitude
by Pine W 31 Aug '16

31 Aug '16

Thinking big here: popular internationalized computer games can have 10+ million unit sales. Some of the most popular online games have millions of monthly active users. I'm wondering if the research community, including Design Research, can envision a way for Wikimedia to scale up from 80,000 active monthly users to 8,000,000 active monthly users. What would we need in order to stimulate and nourish this kind of growth? What can we learn from popular internationalized games about design that could benefit Wikimedia on a large scale? Pine

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Wikipedia quality statistics
by Pine W 31 Aug '16

31 Aug '16

Hi research community, I have been struggling to find a way to present the subject of Wikipedia's quality to newbies for the LearnWiki video series. On the one hand, I have heard of studies that compare Wikipedia favorably to Britannica, and studies showing that medical students and licensed professionals consult Wikipedia. On the other hand, we have lots of stub articles, and in the August WMF Metrics and Activities meeting we heard that some users are skeptical of the quality of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I am thinking that quality of an article, as well as quality of Wikipedia as a whole (in varied language editions), could be measured in terms of completeness, verifiability, and neutrality, assuming that measures of those three dimensions are possible. For completeness, I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Completeness, which has fascinating if somewhat unhelpful descriptions of encyclodynamics and encyclostatics. Another resource, which may be a bit more helpful, is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessme… . I believe that there have been studies about vandalism reversions, and the accuracy or inaccuracy of Wikipedia science articles. I am wondering if there have been any more holistic studies of Wikipedia completeness, verifiability, and neutrality, either using sampling methods or using automated tools. Thanks, Pine

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August 31 Final day to submit program sessions at WikiConference North America
by Sydney Poore 30 Aug '16

30 Aug '16

Hello everyone, Tomorrow, August 31st, is the final day to submit proposals for program sessions for WikiConference North America on October 8-10 in San Diego. https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2016/Submissions There are already some proposal that would be of interest to the people on this mailing list. But we welcome more submissions. Sydney Poore User:FloNight WikiConference North America https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2016/Main_Page Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sydney.e.poore

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Spreadsheet autoformatting errors, MRIs, and more reasons for open research
by Pine W 29 Aug '16

29 Aug '16

Two articles of potential interest to medical and Wikimedia researchers: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/opinion/sunday/do-you-believe-in-god-or-i… https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-o… <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-o…> Pine <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-o…>

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Thinking big: scaling up Wikimedia's contributor population by two orders of magnitude
by Amir E. Aharoni 28 Aug '16

28 Aug '16

I agree with pretty much all that Bob says here, except one important point: This is probably correct for Wikipedia in English, and maybe a few other very big languages. A rarely remembered fact: most people don't know English. In other languages there's much work to do in writing articles on math, history, geography, medicine and what not (and dictionaries and textbooks and public domain works), but a lot of potential people who would do it fall into two categories: 1. People who know English and can read the English Wikipedia article and don't notice that an article in their language is missing. 2. People who don't know English and can neither translate from the English Wikipedia nor other English-only sources. The upcoming Task List feature in Content Translation ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T96147 ) will try to address this by giving people a more convenient way to see the gaps and fill them, although it will be only a technical tool, which cannot solve everything by itself. As Bob notes, targeted outreach to experts will be needed as well. בתאריך 28 באוג׳ 2016 22:27,‏ "Bob Kosovsky" <bobkosovsky(a)nypl.org> כתב: I've been active with Wikipedia since 2006. My impression (which corresponds with data) is that 2008 was the year with the highest number of editors on English Wikipedia. While it may sound good on paper, in some ways it was a mess because of the frequency of vandalism. Nowadays I know there are more automated techniques for detecting vandalism, but if you want to increase the number of users just to make the stats look good, you're going to get more dubious data into the encyclopedia as well as frustration from editors who dislike spending their time on so much maintenance (although I'm sure there are some editors who would jump at the chance to make corrections all day). I suspected from the outset of Wikipedia's creation that the project would mirror the well-known "life cycle of email lists" as I've always believed Wikipedia is a "social encyclopedia." I feel this well-known meme accurately reflect's Wikipedia's evolution so I repeat it here as a tool from which to learn: *1. Initial enthusiasm* (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls). *2. Evangelism* (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies). *3. Growth* (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up). *4. Community* (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions). *5. Discomfort with diversity* (the number of messages increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed). *6a. Smug complacency and stagnation* (the purists flame everyone who asks an 'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list). *OR* *6b. Maturity* (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly ever after). I feel Wikipedia is at stage 6 (both a and b). Unless there's a significant change in functionality and design, the days of 2008 will never return, and we should stop bothering to think it's possible to replicate them (because their existence was due to the novelty of the project). Instead, I think Wikimedia projects should cultivate those individuals with specialized knowledge. A lot of these people are in specialized communities (for example educators, medical professionals, researchers/scholars, devoted amateurs). These are communities which formerly looked down on Wikipedia but now are reconsidering their formerly negative opinions of the encyclopedia. I feel the as-yet small successes in the medical and GLAM communities (I am sure there are others) show great promise. Being part of the GLAM community, I know there are outreach efforts underway to others within that community. Being part of WM NYC, I know there's a lot of librarians involved in chapter activities--and most of those activities take place in libraries or museums (often museum libraries). Until this year, the WMF showed no real interest in continuous engagement and dialogue with the community that edits the projects. I totally agree with the person who said WMF needs to have a marketing department. This is especially true for the kinds of research which marketers report on and are typical of any organization, profit or non-profit. That would be a first step: Understanding who are the variety of its users/editors from which it can then create action items to determine how it can increase the number of users by going after specific market segments. This would not eliminate the "anyone can edit" ethos, but could be a more effective means to increasing users rather than appealing to a broad public. Bob Bob Kosovsky, Ph.D. -- Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts blog: http://www.nypl.org/blog/author/44 Twitter: @kos2 Listowner: OPERA-L ; SMT-ANNOUNCE ; SoundForge-users - My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions - *Inspiring Lifelong Learning* | *Advancing Knowledge* | *Strengthening Our Communities * _______________________________________________ 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 August 2016