Hi Everyone,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed this Wednesday, January
17, 2018 at 11:30 AM (PST) 19:30 UTC.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-1uzYYneUo
As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. And,
you can watch our past research showcases here.
This month's presentation:
*What motivates experts to contribute to public information goods? A field
experiment at Wikipedia*
By Yan Chen, University of Michigan
Wikipedia is among the most important information sources for the general
public. Motivating domain experts to contribute to Wikipedia can improve
the accuracy and completeness of its content. In a field experiment, we
examine the incentives which might motivate scholars to contribute their
expertise to Wikipedia. We vary the mentioning of likely citation, public
acknowledgement and the number of views an article receives. We find that
experts are significantly more interested in contributing when citation
benefit is mentioned. Furthermore, cosine similarity between a Wikipedia
article and the expert's paper abstract is the most significant factor
leading to more and higher-quality contributions, indicating that better
matching is a crucial factor in motivating contributions to public
information goods. Other factors correlated with contribution include
social distance and researcher reputation.
*Wikihounding on Wikipedia*
By Caroline Sinders, WMF
Wikihounding (a form of digital stalking on Wikipedia) is incredibly
qualitative and quantitive. What makes wikihounding different then
mentoring? It's the context of the action or the intention. However, all
interactions inside of a digital space has a quantitive aspect to it, every
comment, revert, etc is a data point. By analyzing data points
comparatively inside of wikihounding cases and reading some of the cases,
we can create a baseline for what are the actual overlapping similarities
inside of wikihounding to study what makes up wikihounding. Wikihounding
currently has a fairly loose definition. Wikihounding, as defined by the
Harassment policy on en:wp, is: “the singling out of one or more editors,
joining discussions on multiple pages or topics they may edit or multiple
debates where they contribute, to repeatedly confront or inhibit their
work. This is with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance or
distress to the other editor. Wikihounding usually involves following the
target from place to place on Wikipedia.” This definition doesn't outline
parameters around cases such as frequency of interaction, duration, or
minimum reverts, nor is there a lot known about what a standard or
canonical case of wikihounding looks like. What is the average wikihounding
case? This talk will cover the approaches myself and members of the
research team: Diego Saez-Trumper, Aaron Halfaker and Jonathan Morgan are
taking on starting this research project.
--
Lani Goto
Project Assistant, Engineering Admin
* Proceedings published by ACM and indexed by Scopus and Web of Science.
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIETY
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (JULY 18-20, 2018)
THEME: Networked Influence and Virality - REVISITED
IMPORTANT DATES
Full & WIP Papers Due: Jan. 29, 2018
Panels, Workshops, & Posters Due: Mar. 19, 2018
PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITIES
Full and WIP (short) papers presented at the Conference will be published in
the conference proceedings by ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
(ICPS) and will be available in the ACM Digital Library. All conference
presenters will be invited to submit their work as a full paper to the
special issue of the Social Media + Society journal (published by SAGE).
SUBMISSION DETAILS: http://socialmediaandsociety.org/submit/
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Join us on July 18-20, 2018 for the 9th annual International Conference on
Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). The conference is an
interdisciplinary gathering of social media researchers, practitioners, and
analysts from around the world. The 2018 conference is hosted by the Centre
for Business Data Analytics at the Copenhagen Business School.
In 2012, in the wake of Occupy and the Arab Spring, the #SMSociety community
explored networked influence and virality, and saw social media and viral
events as a democratizing force. Fast forward five years and we find
ourselves in quite a different, some would argue, darker social media
landscape where those same democratizing forces are now being exploited in
ways we could not foresee. With the rapid change on social media platforms
and their affordances, the heightened emphasis on mobile and visual
communication, the rise of bots, and the increased participation of state
actors, we believe it is time to revisit the ideas of Networked Influence
and Virality once more!
Powered by networked influence and made possible by privately owned social
media platforms, we are said to be in a sharing economy. We are now owning
less and sharing more, giving and receiving crowdsourced content, adapting,
innovating, remaking, and re-sharing original and remixed materials. New
attitudes, practices, and legal precedents about ownership, rights, and
information evaluation are emerging with the growing use of social media.
The joys of sharing and connecting through social media-as amateur music
videos inspire responses and the sharing of cute animal videos brings joy to
millions-are tempered with concerns about the manipulation and exploitation
of social media platforms. Hateful, anti-social speech, coordinated
misinformation campaigns (i.e. "fake news") and "false flag" operation by
actors unknown now dominate the news cycle and compete for an opportunity to
"go viral."
Considering the rapid changes in social media environments, use, and users,
the conference organizers invite scholarly and original submissions that
relate to the 2018 theme of "Networked Influence and Virality." We welcome
both quantitative and qualitative work which crosses interdisciplinary
boundaries and expands our understanding of the current and future trends in
social media research, especially those that explore some of the questions
and issues raised below:
* How do ideas spread online? What are the outcomes of the viral
spread of news, memes, content, and creative production?
* Who are the new influencers and power players in the information
landscape of social media?
* How important are bots in this landscape? How do bots act as social
actors? In what ways are they transforming social media?
* Algorithmic filtering is now the norm on all major social media
platforms; how has their implementation changed the user experience?
* What are the impacts of misinformation and propaganda on elections,
commerce, and the attention economy?
* Is faster, frictionless communication still an ideal to strive for
or have we gone too far? Do we need to reintroduce some frictions back to
social media platforms?
* How do corporate interests, activities, sales, and profit
motivations drive or otherwise affect sharing practices?
* What are the characteristics of contemporary social media practices
that drive the need for new laws, sharing conventions, censorship, rights to
be heard and to be forgotten?
* Do social media users understand, or are they even aware of, the
ethical considerations related to sharing, and re-mixing content on social
media?
* How do users evaluate information received through social media?
* How does viral culture affect policy, power dynamics, corporations,
activists, and personal interests?
* What new methodologies, tools, and frameworks can researchers bring
to bear in studying the flow of information on social media?
* How do sharing, memes, and viral events contribute to
theory-building about our society?
>From its inception, the International Conference on Social Media & Society
Conference (#SMSociety) has focused on the best practices for studying the
impact and implications of social media on society. Our invited academic and
industry keynotes have highlighted the shifting questions and concerns for
the social media research community. From introducing media multiplexity and
networked individualism with Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman in
2010 and 2011, to measuring influence with Gilad Lotan and Sharad Goel in
2012 and 2013, to defining social media research as a field with Keith
Hampton in 2014, to identifying our commitments as social media researchers
in policy making with Bill Dutton in 2015, to exploring the future of social
media technologies with John Weigelt in 2015, to highlighting the challenges
of social media data mining in the context of big data with Susan Halford
and Helen Kennedy in 2016; and more recently discussing the dark side of
social media with Lee Rainie and Ron Deibert in 2017.
Organized by the Social Media Lab <http://socialmedialab.ca/> at Ted Rogers
School of Management at Ryerson University, the conference provides
participants with opportunities to exchange ideas, present original
research, learn about recent and ongoing studies, and network with peers.
The conference's intensive three-day program features workshops, full
papers, work-in-progress papers, panels, and posters. The wide-ranging
topics in social media showcase research from scholars working in many
fields including Communication, Computer Science, Education, Journalism,
Information Science, Management, Political Science, Sociology, Social Work,
etc. <http://socialmediaandsociety.org/submit/>
TOPICS OF INTEREST
. Social Media Impact on Society
. Political Mobilization & Engagement
. Extremism & Terrorism
. Politics of Hate and Oppression
. Social Media & Health
. Social Media & the News
. Social Media & Business (Marketing, PR, HR, Risk Management, etc.)
. Social Media & Academia (Alternative Metrics, Learning Analytics, etc.)
. Social Media & Public Administration
. Online/Offline Communities
. Trust & Credibility in Social Media
. Online Community Detection
. Influential User Detection
. Identity
. Theories & Methods
. Qualitative & Quantitative Approaches
. Opinion Mining & Sentiment Analysis
. Social Network Analysis
. Theoretical Models for Studying, Analysing and Understanding Social Media
. Social Media & Small Data
. Case Studies of Online Communities Formed on Social Media
. Case Studies of Offline Communities that Rely on Social Media
. Sampling Issues
. Value of Small Data
. Social Media & Big Data
. Social Media Data Mining
. Social Media Analytics
. Visualization of Social Media Data
. Scalability Issues & Social Media Data
. Ethics of Big Data/Algorithms
. Social Media & Mobile
. App-ification of Society
. Privacy & Security Issues in the Mobile World
. Apps for the Social Good
. Networking Apps
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Anatoliy Gruzd, Ryerson University, Canada - Conference Chair
Ravi Vatrapu, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark - Host Chair
Philip Mai, Ryerson University, Canada - Conference Chair
Jenna Jacobson, Ryerson University, Canada - Conference Chair
Hazel Kwon, Arizona State University, USA - WIP Chair
Jeff Hemsley, Syracuse University, USA - WIP Chair
Anabel Quan-Haase, Western University, Canada - Panel Chair
Luke Sloan, Cardiff University, UK - Panel Chair
Jaigris Hodson, Royal Roads University, Canada - Poster Chair
ADVISORY BOARD
William H. Dutton, Michigan State University, USA
Susan Halford, University of Southampton, UK
Zizi Papacharissi, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Barry Wellman, INSNA Founder, The Netlab Network, Canada
Dear all,
The 2nd *Applied Machine Learning Days* are around the corner!
The event will be held at the SwissTech Convention Center on the EPFL
campus in *Lausanne, Switzerland,* and will span four days *(January
27-30):* two days of hands-on workshops on the weekend, and two days of
conference with amazing speakers, on Monday and Tuesday.
You can find the full program and get tickets at appliedMLDays.org
<http://www.appliedMLDays.org>
There will be workshops for a lot of different areas, from technical
tutorials to business workshops to girls’ coding classes to deep learning
crash courses (even one for artists!). The open food hackathon will also
happen on the same weekend in the same building.
The conference will have speakers from very different domains and actors,
including DeepMind, Facebook, Zebra Med, Swisscom, Google, and of course
some from academia as well. There will also be poster sessions, panel
discussions, a conference dinner, a job fair, and plenty of time to
network. Childcare is available as well.
The generous support from our sponsors has allowed us to keep this
non-profit event affordable.
We hope to see you there!
All the best, and keep on (machine) learning in 2018,
Marcel Salathé
Martin Jaggi
Bob West
Call for Papers
formal papers - informal papers - doctoral programme - workshops - tutorials
11th Conference on Intelligent Computer Mathematics
- CICM 2018 -
August 13-17, 2018
RISC, Hagenberg, Austria
http://www.cicm-conference.org/2018
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digital and computational solutions are becoming the prevalent means for the
generation, communication, processing, storage and curation of mathematical
information.
CICM brings together the many separate communities that have developed
theoretical and practical solutions for mathematical applications such as
computation, deduction, knowledge management, and user interfaces. It offers a
venue for discussing problems and solutions in each of these areas and their
integration.
CICM 2018 invites submissions in all topics relating to intelligent computer
mathematics, in particular but not limited to
* theorem proving and computer algebra
* mathematical knowledge management
* digital mathematical libraries
CICM appreciates the varying nature of the relevant research in this area and
invites submissions of very different forms:
1) Formal submissions will be reviewed rigorously and accepted papers will be
published in a volume of Springer LNAI:
* regular papers (up to 15 pages) present novel research results
* project and survey papers (up to 15 pages + bibliography) summarize
existing results
* system and dataset descriptions (up to 5 pages) present digital artifacts
2) Informal submissions will be reviewed with a positive bias and selected for
presentation based on their relevance for the community.
* informal papers may present work-in-progress, project announcements,
position statements, etc.
* posters and system demos will be presented in parallel in special sessions
3) The doctoral programme provides PhD students a forum to present early results
receive constructive feedback and mentoring.
4) Workshops allow smaller groups to self-organize focused discussions.
5) Tutorials allow presenting a particular system in depth.
* Important Dates *
Formal submissions
- Abstract deadline: April 15
- Full paper deadline: April 22
- Reviews sent to authors: May 21
- Rebuttals due: May 27
- Notification of acceptance: June 4
- Camera-ready copies due: June 8
- Conference: August 13-17
Informal submissions and doctoral programme
Two separate submission rounds are offered so that some authors can make early
travel plans while other authors submit spontaneously.
- First round submission deadline: April 22
- Second round submission deadline: July 31
Workshop and Tutorial proposals
- Submission deadline: February 26
All submissions should be made via easychair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cicm2018
Hello,
I'm software engineer working in clean energy in sub-Saharan Africa.
Noticing that the availability of science / math / engineering information
on the internet in Swahili is very poor, and given the recent improvements
in Google Translate, I'm in the process of auto-translating the relevant
sections of Wikipedia and caching on another site to avoid bad grammar on
Wikipedia. I will track usage and approximate the usefulness of current
state of machine translated pages for such sections.
I would love to hear what data and analysis would be useful for the
community on such a translation set.
I've created this page for more details and discussion:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Judging_the_Usefulnes…
Cheers,
Olya
Dear Mr. or Ms.,
I thank you for your efforts.
Want to share and discuss your Wikimedia experience with African community? Need to have African volunteers involved in your Wikimedia project? Like to explain useful ideas and knowledge to African wikimedians?
It is time to do that. In fact, you can easily do that by submitting a proposal to WikiIndaba 2018 in https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_2018/Submissions. If you need to have a full or partial scholarship to attend this conference, you can apply to it in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_2018/Scholarships. Please keep in mind that you have to submit your proposal and apply for the conference scholarship before or in January 15th, 2018.
Yours Sincerely,
Houcemeddine Turki
Hi,
I[0] am an Outreachy Round 15 intern and I am working on AICaptcha[1]
project. This project is aimed at creating a better captcha system (like
the Google invisible captcha) which can prevent/reduce the incidence of
bots creating user accounts and spamming Wikipedia. My mentors on this
project are Gergő Tisza[2] and Adam Roses Wight[3].
The key aspects of this project are:
1. Data capture for training a machine learning classifier which is
elaborated in Phabricator task[4]. The data can be captured from the
registration page using the WikiMediaEvents extension.
2. Feature selection, dealing with selecting the most appropriate features
which can improve the classification model, explained in Phabricator task[5]
3. Finding appropriate machine learning classifier to create the model [6].
Kindly provide suggestions/ideas on Phabricator, so that any idea missed by
oversight can be discussed. Also if there are any possible issues which I
have not thought about yet, please comment on the tasks so that I can take
care of them sooner rather than later.
Links:
[0]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Groovier
[1] : https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/3137/
[2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Tgr_(WMF)
[3]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Adamw
[4]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183991
[5]:https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183998
[6]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T184013
Thanks
Vinitha
Hi there wiki-research folks,
This is just a heads-up that English Wikipedia has adopted a new policy[1]
about research on that project. The policy codifies some new requirements
for community notification and disclosure that potentially apply to all
research projects (regardless of the affiliation of the researcher).
You can read more about the policy on WP:NOT[1], but I've included the
major points below for your convenience:
- any research project that involves directly changing article content,
surveying a large number of editors, or asking editors sensitive questions
about their real-life identities needs to be discussed on Wikipedia's
Village Pump[2] before it is begun[3]
- researchers should disclose who they are on their user pages,
including their institutional affiliation, sources of research funding (if
applicable), and the intentions behind their research[4]
Many aspects of this policy boil down to either common sense, existing
ethical standards for human subjects research, or both. However, this
policy also leaves certain definitions and thresholds undefined. What is a
"large number" of surveyed users? What is a "sensitive question"?
There are no concrete answer to these questions yet, and that's probably a
good thing. The best way to keep this policy from becoming overly
restrictive[5] is for researchers to follow its guidance in good faith, and
ask questions when they're uncertain.
Projects that are deemed to be in violation of these guidelines may lose
editing privileges. If the violations are deemed particularly frequent or
severe, the EnWiki community may decide to make even more rules, which
could have a chilling effect on wikiresearch in general. Nobody wants
that.
If you have general questions about this policy or its application, the
best place to ask is the WP:NOT talkpage.[6]
If you have questions related to a specific planned research project, the
best thing to do is to err on the side of caution and open up a discussion
on the Village Pump before you begin.
You are also welcome to post your project plan to this list, where we, your
friendly peers, will hopefully offer constructive feedback and links to
relevant resources.
Wikimedia Foundation research staff are not in charge of these guidelines,
but are happy to offer advice "from the trenches" so to speak if asked. We
are on this list too.
As always, if you are currently researching Wikipedia, or plan to do so,
please create a Research Project page on MetaWiki[7] (example[8], tips[9]),
keep it up to date, and link to it from your userpage[10]. That way
interested parties can follow your research and ask questions, and you
won't need to constantly re-explain what you're doing every time someone
asks.
Happy researching,
Jonathan
1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_…
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)
3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#cite_note-7
4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#cite_note-8
5. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Instruction_creep
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not
7. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Projects
8.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Supporting_Commons_contribution_by…
9.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Project_documentation_best_practic…
10. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LZia_(WMF)
--
Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>
Hi Jonathan,
Can you please give a concrete example of what, for example, the
http://ide.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/SSRN-id3039505.pdf
researchers would have had to do differently under this new policy?
Best regards,
Jim
> Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2018 15:29:03 -0800
> From: Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: Wiki Research-l <Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wiki-research-l] New policy about performing research on English Wikipedia
>
> Hi there wiki-research folks,
>
> This is just a heads-up that English Wikipedia has adopted a new policy[1]
> about research on that project. The policy codifies some new requirements
> for community notification and disclosure that potentially apply to all
> research projects (regardless of the affiliation of the researcher).
>
> You can read more about the policy on WP:NOT[1], but I've included the
> major points below for your convenience:
>
> - any research project that involves directly changing article content,
> surveying a large number of editors, or asking editors sensitive questions
> about their real-life identities needs to be discussed on Wikipedia's
> Village Pump[2] before it is begun[3]
> - researchers should disclose who they are on their user pages,
> including their institutional affiliation, sources of research funding (if
> applicable), and the intentions behind their research[4]
>
> Many aspects of this policy boil down to either common sense, existing
> ethical standards for human subjects research, or both. However, this
> policy also leaves certain definitions and thresholds undefined. What is a
> "large number" of surveyed users? What is a "sensitive question"?
> There are no concrete answer to these questions yet, and that's probably a
> good thing. The best way to keep this policy from becoming overly
> restrictive[5] is for researchers to follow its guidance in good faith, and
> ask questions when they're uncertain.
>
> Projects that are deemed to be in violation of these guidelines may lose
> editing privileges. If the violations are deemed particularly frequent or
> severe, the EnWiki community may decide to make even more rules, which
> could have a chilling effect on wikiresearch in general. Nobody wants
> that.
>
> If you have general questions about this policy or its application, the
> best place to ask is the WP:NOT talkpage.[6]
>
> If you have questions related to a specific planned research project, the
> best thing to do is to err on the side of caution and open up a discussion
> on the Village Pump before you begin.
>
> You are also welcome to post your project plan to this list, where we, your
> friendly peers, will hopefully offer constructive feedback and links to
> relevant resources.
>
> Wikimedia Foundation research staff are not in charge of these guidelines,
> but are happy to offer advice "from the trenches" so to speak if asked. We
> are on this list too.
>
> As always, if you are currently researching Wikipedia, or plan to do so,
> please create a Research Project page on MetaWiki[7] (example[8], tips[9]),
> keep it up to date, and link to it from your userpage[10]. That way
> interested parties can follow your research and ask questions, and you
> won't need to constantly re-explain what you're doing every time someone
> asks.
>
> Happy researching,
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> 1.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_…
> 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)
> 3.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#cite_note-7
> 4.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#cite_note-8
> 5. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Instruction_creep
> 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not
> 7. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Projects
> 8.
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Supporting_Commons_contribution_by…
> 9.
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Project_documentation_best_practic…
> 10. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LZia_(WMF)
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan T. Morgan
> Senior Design Researcher
> Wikimedia Foundation
> User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>