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
Dear Wiki Community,
My name is Mackenzie Lemieux and I am a neuroscience researcher at the Salk
Institute for Biological Studies and I am interested in exploring biases on
Wikipedia.
My research hypothesis is that gender or ethnicity mediate the rate of
flagging and deletion of pages for women in STEM. I hope to
retrospectively analyze Wikipedia's deletion history, harvest the
biographical articles about scientists that have been created over the past
n years and then confirm the gender and ethnicity of a large sample.
It appears that we can identify deleted pages with Wikipedia's deletion log
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_log>, but to actually see
the page that was deleted we need to be members of one of these Wikipedia
user groups: Administrators
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators>, Oversighters
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight>, Researchers
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researchers>, Checkusers
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CheckUser>.
Does anyone have advice on how to obtain researcher status or is there
anyone willing to collaborate who has access to the data we need?
Warmly,
Mackenzie Lemieux
--
Mackenzie Lemieux
mackenzie.lemieux(a)gmail.com
cell: 416-806-0041
220 Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
M6P 3B4
Hello, everyone!
First, let me introduce myself. My name is Sam, and I am a data analysis
intern at a company called Megaputer Intelligence. My comapny makes a
software which which has a lot of promise in improving various Wikimedia
projects, so I am hoping that my work here will lead to a collaboration
between Megaputer and the Wikimedia foundation.
Right now I am trying to produce a better anti-vandalism bot for English
Wikipedia which involves working with a dataset of edits classified as
vandalism or not vandalism. The problem that I am having is that some of
the pages I need to access have been deleted or suppressed. Could
someone tell me where is the right place to apply for researcher rights
so that I can access these?
Thanks,
Sam at Megaputer
Hi all,
Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours on 2020-12-01 at 17:00-18:00 PM UTC (9am PT/6pm CET).
To participate, join the video-call via this Wikimedia-meet link [2]. There
is no set agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the
etherpad [3] (You can do this after you join the meeting, too.), otherwise
you are welcome to also just hang out. More detailed information (e.g.
about how to attend) can be found here [4].
Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves more available to
answer some of the research related questions that you as Wikimedia
volunteer editors, organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in
your projects and initiatives. Some example cases we hope to be able to
support you in:
-
You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
in my wiki?
-
You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
harder to find an answer for during an office hour, however, discussing
them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
-
You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
of you interested more closely in this space.
-
You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].
Hope to see many of you,
Martin (WMF Research Team)
[1] https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html
[2] https://meet.wmcloud.org/ResearchOfficeHours
[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours
[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html
--
Martin Gerlach
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone,
We’re preparing for the November 2020 research newsletter and looking for
contributors. Please take a look at
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WRN202011 and add your name next to any
paper you are interested in covering. Our target publication time is November
29 ca. 14:00 UTC. If you can't make this deadline but would like to cover a
particular paper in the subsequent issue, leave a note next to the paper's
entry below. As usual, short notes and one-paragraph reviews are most
welcome.
*Highlights from this month:*
- A general method for estimating the prevalence of
Influenza-Like-Symptoms with Wikipedia data
- Deriving Geolocations in Wikipedia
- Edit Wars in a Contested Digital City: Mapping Wikipedia’s Uneven
Augmentations of Berlin
- Extracting N-ary Facts from Wikipedia Table Clusters
- Is Wikipedia succeeding in reducing gender bias? Assessing changes in
gender bias in Wikipedia using word embedding
- Modelling User Behavior Dynamics with Embeddings
- Multilingual Contextual Affective Analysis of LGBT People Portrayals
in Wikipedia
- Neural Relation Extraction on Wikipedia Tables for Augmenting
Knowledge Graphs
- Neural Relation Extraction on Wikipedia Tables for Augmenting
Knowledge Graphs
- NwQM: A neural quality assessment framework for Wikipedia
- Spontaneous versus interaction-driven burstiness in human dynamics:
The case of Wikipedia edit history
- Structured Knowledge: Have we made progress? An extrinsic study of KB
coverage over 19 years
- The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts: Quasi-Experimental Evidence
From Peer Production
- Using Natural Language Generation to Bootstrap Missing Wikipedia
Articles: A Human-centric Perspective
- Wikipedia Edit-a-thons as Sites of Public Pedagogy
- Wikipedia: A Challenger's Best Friend? Utilising Information-seeking
Behaviour Patterns to Predict US Congressional Elections
- Women's representation and voice in media coverage of the coronavirus
crisis
*Masssly and Tilman Bayer*
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter
[2] WikiResearch (@WikiResearch) | Twitter
<https://twitter.com/WikiResearch>
Apologies for cross-posting
Over the last year, the DBpedia core team has consolidated great amount
of technology around DBpedia. This tutorial targets developers (in
particular of DBpedia Chapters) that wish to learn how to replicate
local infrastructure such as loading and hosting an own SPARQL endpoint.
A core focus will also be the new DBpedia Stack, which contains several
dockerized applications that are automatically loading data from the
DBpedia databus. The third tutorial will be held on December 8, 2020 at
17:30 CET and it will cover the following topics:
- Using Databus collections (Download)
- Creating customized Databus collections
- Uploading data to the Databus
- Using collections in Databus-ready Docker applications
- Creating dockerized applications for the DBpedia Stack
#Quick Facts
- Web URL: https://wiki.dbpedia.org/tutorials/3rd-dbpedia-stack-tutorial
- When: December 8, 2020 at 17:30-18:30 CET
- Where: The tutorial will be organized online.Registration is required
though.
- Databus: https://databus.dbpedia.org/
#Registration
Attending the DBpedia Stack tutorial is free. Registration is required
though. After the registration for the event, you will receive an email
with more instructions. Please register here to be part of the meeting:
https://wiki.dbpedia.org/tutorials/3rd-dbpedia-stack-tutorial
#Organisation
- Milan Dojchinovski, AKSW/KILT, DBpedia Association
- Jan Forberg, AKSW/KILT, DBpedia Association
- Julia Holze, InfAI, DBpedia Association
- Sebastian Hellmann, AKSW/KILT, DBpedia Association
We are looking forward to meeting you online!
With kind regards,
The DBpedia Team
Wikimedians Strengthening Knowledge
and News Credibility on the Internet
https://www.wikicred.org
Hi everyone,
Join us, Wikimedians, and other journalists, professionals, academics from
the credibility space for the second WikiCred Demo Hour on Tuesday,
December 1st at 12 pm EST / 5 pm UTC.
Here's the event agenda
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Blz4OAXypJe8yqMHFt4nQDufan2ZcmTWvHs5uXW…>.
You can sign up
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEpva_wwZA9xIjtTni7-y0tZ_VgXW8nzV…>
here and we will send you a Zoom link a few days before the event.
*About WikiCerd*
"WikiCred" is an initiative by Hacks Hackers and several other partners
such as the Credibility Coalition, MisinfoCon, and Wikimedians interested
in the conversation about credibility and trust in the entire information
ecosystem.
*About WikiCed Demo Hour*
The WikiCred Demo Hour is a regular monthly online meetup that brings
together members of the Wikimedian community, open-data and open-knowledge
enthusiasts, academics, journalists, researchers, and professionals from
the online credibility space and reliable news. Our calls are held on the
first Tuesday of every month, with ongoing discussions on our Slack channel.
Ahmed + WikiCred Team
wikicred.org
Partners <https://www.wikicred.org/#who-we-are> / Projects
<http://wikicred.org/#projects> / Funders <http://wikicred.org/#funders>
Hello, everyone,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, November 18,
at 9:30 AM PST/17:30 UTC, and will be on the theme of interpersonal
communication between editors. Interpersonal communication, for example via
talk pages, plays a crucial role for editors to coordinate their efforts in
online collaborative communities. For this month’s showcase we have invited
2 speakers sharing their research on getting a deeper understanding of
interpersonal communication on Wikipedia. In the first talk, Anna Rader
will give an overview on editors’ communication networks and patterns, and
the different types of dynamics commonly found in the way that users
interact. In the second talk, Sneha Narayan presents recent work
investigating whether easier interpersonal communication leads to enhanced
productivity and newcomer participation across more than 200 wikis.
YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G35OEDJ53bY
As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You
can also watch our past research showcases here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
This month's presentations:
Talk before you type - Interpersonal communication on Wikipedia
By Dr Anna Rader, Research Consultant
Formally, the work of Wikipedia’s community of volunteers is asynchronous
and anarchic: around the world, editors labor individually and in
disorganized ways on the collective project. Yet this work is also
underscored by informal and vibrant interpersonal communication: in the
lively exchanges of talk pages and the labor-sharing of editorial networks,
anonymous strangers communicate their intentions and coordinate their
efforts to maintain the world’s largest online encyclopaedia. This working
paper offers an overview of academic research into editors’ communication
networks and patterns, with a particular focus on the role of talk pages.
It considers four communication dynamics of editor interaction:
cooperation, deliberation, conflict and coordination; and reviews key
recommendations for enhancing peer-to-peer communication within the
Wikipedia community.
All Talk - How Increasing Interpersonal Communication on Wikis May Not
Enhance Productivity
By Sneha Narayan, Assistant Professor, Carlton College
What role does interpersonal communication play in sustaining production in
online collaborative communities? This paper sheds light on that question
by examining the impact of a communication feature called "message walls"
that allows for faster and more intuitive interpersonal communication in a
population of wikis on Wikia. Using panel data from a sample of 275 wiki
communities that migrated to message walls and a method inspired by
regression discontinuity designs, we analyze these transitions and estimate
the impact of the system's introduction. Although the adoption of message
walls was associated with increased communication among all editors and
newcomers, it had little effect on productivity, and was further associated
with a decrease in article contributions from new editors. Our results
imply that design changes that make communication easier in a social
computing system may not always translate to increased participation along
other dimensions.
-
Paper <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359203>
--
Janna Layton (she/her)
Administrative Associate - Product & Technology
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear all,
I thank you for your efforts in advancing wikis. Please find below the call for proposals for MozFest 2021.
Yours Sincerely,
Houcemeddine Turki
From: Ahmed Medien<mailto:ahmed@hackshackers.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2020 10:52 PM
To: wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikidata@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikidata] You’re Invited to Submit A Session Proposal for MozFest 2021
Hello,
MozFest is a unique hybrid: part art, tech and society convening, part maker festival, and the premiere gathering for activists in diverse global movements fighting for a more humane digital world.
That’s why I’m excited to invite you <https://www.mozillafestival.org/get-involved/proposals/> and your community to participate in the first-ever virtual MozFest!
Submit A Session Idea for MozFest This Year<https://www.mozillafestival.org/get-involved/proposals/>
I am on the openness space and we're particularly looking forward for open science projects. We’re excited to use the programming that we’ve honed over a decade of festivals – participant-led sessions, immersive art exhibits, space for spontaneous conversations, inspiring Dialogues & Debates – to address current and global crises.
Through our Call for Session Proposals (where you're invited to propose an interactive workshop to host at the festival), we’ll seek solutions together, through the lens of trustworthy artificial intelligence.
Anyone can submit a session – you don’t need any particular expertise, just a great project or idea and the desire to collaborate and learn from festival participants. Since it’s online this year, we’re especially eager to see session proposals from those that haven’t been able to attend in year’s past due to travel restrictions.
If you or someone you know is interested in leading a session at MozFest this year, you can submit your session idea here<https://www.mozillafestival.org/get-involved/proposals/>! The deadline is November 23.
Best regards,
Ahmed Medien
Dear all,
TL;DR:
Please consider submitting proposals for tutorials to be held at The Web
Conference 2021:
https://www2021.thewebconf.org/authors/call-for-tutorials/
Submission deadline: 30 Nov 2020
Tutorial dates: 19-23 April 2021
This year we feature a special track for interactive hands-on tutorials.
Hands-on tutorials may be challenging to organize in an online-only
setting, but keeping up the hands-on component is especially important in
these times where ever more interaction is becoming remote and
asynchronous. With an engaging hands-on tutorial, we can make a real
difference in people's lives, now more than ever!
Bob West (EPFL)
Marinka Zitnik (Harvard)
==================
More info:
We invite tutorial proposals on current and emerging topics related to the
World Wide Web, broadly construed, i.e., including mobile and other
Internet- and online-enabled modes of interaction and communication.
Tutorials serve an educational function and are expected to provide a
balanced perspective on a field of research. It is expected that tutorials
target audiences with a diverse range of interests and backgrounds:
beginners, developers, designers, researchers, practitioners, users,
lecturers, and representatives of governments and funding agencies who want
to learn about emerging research areas or develop advanced skills in areas
about which they are already knowledgeable. Only a subset of those profiles
can be addressed in each tutorial. Tutorial proposals are welcome in both
technological (such as algorithmic and software issues) as well as
socio-economic domains (such as market design, interaction design, and
collaboration technologies).
To bridge the gap between research and real-world applications, we are
accepting tutorial proposals in the following two categories:
(1) Hands-on tutorials are targeted at novice as well as moderately skilled
users, with a focus on providing hands-on experience to the attendees. The
pace of the tutorial should be set such that beginners can follow along
comfortably. The covered tools and systems must have a proven track record
of success in the community. Hands-on tutorials introduce the motivation
behind the tools and the associated fundamental concepts and work through
examples to demonstrate applications in real-world use cases. We also
welcome proposals for creative and unconventional training sessions, such
as hackathons, competitions/challenges, etc. as long as participants can
learn practical skills and participate in an active way.
(2) Lecture-style tutorials cover the state-of-the-art research,
development, and applications in a specific data mining related area, and
stimulate and facilitate future work. Tutorials on interdisciplinary
directions, bridging scientific research and applied communities, novel and
fast growing directions, and significant applications are highly
encouraged. We also encourage tutorials in areas that may be different from
the mainstream conference but are still very much related to the Web
Conference mission and objectives of gaining insight from data. The
conference is paying particular attention to themes around the Web’s
impact, technical and socio-technical advances that enhance and expand Web
platforms and technologies, and issues of democratizing access to Web
information and knowledge. Tutorials on these themes are highly encouraged.
Hands-on tutorials feature in-depth hands-on training on cutting edge
systems and tools of relevance to the Web Conference community: data
mining, machine learning, crowdsourcing, computational social science,
security/privacy/trust, semantics & knowledge, systems, user experience &
accessibility, mobile computing.
All tutorials will be part of the main conference technical program and
will be available free of charge to the attendees of the conference. A
tutorial can be for half a day, i.e., 3-4 hours of audience interaction,
including questions, or a full day, which corresponds to 7 hours. Teams of
2-3 presenters are encouraged, though single-presenter tutorials are
possible. Preference will be given to applications that involve at least
one expert in the areas covered by the proposal.
Registration fees will be waived for tutorial presenters.