Dear all,
The European Commission is hosting a Q&A session webinar on the delegated act on data access for researchers under the DSA. It will take place online and it is targeted at researchers who would like to learn more about the delegated act and how it might benefit their research.
**Date and time: 19 November 2024, 10:00-11:30 (CET)**
You can sign up here:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/DataAccessInfoWebinar
Best,
Cristian
--
Cristian Consonni
HUMAINT team
European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency
European Commission
Joint Research Centre (JRC)
https://ai-watch.ec.europa.eu/humaint_enhttps://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/index_en
The views expressed in this e-mail are personal and may not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission, unless explicitly stated otherwise. This e-mail, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential and intended solely for the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.
Hi all!I am writing to let you all know about an upcoming change that may
affect your work. As you may recall from Leila’s email
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia…>
about
a year ago, the Trust and Safety Product team (TSP) at WMF has been working
on releasing Temporary Accounts
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Trust_and_Safety_Product/Temporary_Accounts>
(previously
referred to as IP Masking), a major change to unregistered user identity in
our systems that is precipitated by legal and privacy imperatives. The team
has solidified deployment plans in place for rolling out Temporary Accounts
progressively on all our projects. *The first phase of this deployment
(Minor Pilots) will happen on October 29 and will roll out on approximately
12 small and medium-sized wikis *(see
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T376499). The second round of deployment
is tentatively scheduled for February 2025 and a final all-wiki deployment,
if all goes well, may happen in May 2025. This is a rather ambitious plan
that is driven by the importance and urgency of strengthening privacy for
all our logged-out editors.
This change may affect you if you are actively using IP addresses of
not-logged-in editors of the Wikimedia projects for your research or intend
to do so in the future.When WMF launches Temp Accounts, future edits from
not-logged-in users (sometimes referred to as unregistered users) will no
longer be attributed to their IP addresses. Instead, they will be assigned
auto generated temporary usernames that will be tied to a cookie on their
browsers. As long as the cookie persists, the edits will be attributed to
that user. After 90 days, the cookie will automatically expire. Users who
need access to IP addresses to protect Wikimedia projects from vandalism or
other abuse will be able to do so on a limited basis and for a limited
period of time (see
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Access_to_temporary_account_IP…).
IP addresses of not-logged-in users in the historical data will remain
unchanged. The Temporary Accounts rollout will affect future edits
(relative to the time of rollout) only.
*We are sending this message specifically to the Wikimedia research
communities because we predict these changes may have the following impacts
on data used by many of you:*
- New fields (user_is_temp and user_is_permanent) have been added to
data tables, which will help distinguish between temporary and permanent
accounts. The existing field user_is_anonymous will be false for temporary
users. This impacts how users are classified
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_account_types, and researchers might
need to adjust how they query and analyze data. *It’s important to
mention that while these fields have been added to tables, the work to make
this change visible is still in progress. We will send a further update
when this happens.*
- There will be a transitional period where both temporary and anonymous
user fields are active, but eventually, all editors will have a
username/user ID, and the user_is_anonymous field will be phased out.
- Researchers should think about how they want to handle and classify
temporary users in their projects moving forward, as the rollout will
affect all Wikimedia wikis.
You can stay updated about this project and contact the team leading this
work through the project’s dedicated page
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Trust_and_Safety_Product/Temporary_Acco…
.
Best,
Kinneret
--
Kinneret Gordon
Lead Research Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear all,
I am reaching out to inform you of an initiative by the European Commission that may be of interest to you.
You may be aware that art. 40 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) provides vetted researchers with access to the data of designated Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs). As of today, there are 23 designated VLOPs and 2 designated VLOSEs (*).
The Commission has recently launched a public consultation aimed at gathering insights and perspectives on the development of new rules - through a Delegated Act - that will govern researchers' access to data from online platforms.
The primary objective of this consultation is to ensure that researchers have adequate access to data that will enable them to monitor and analyze systemic risks posed by digital services. These risks are defined in the DSA and include the spread of illegal content, adverse effects on election integrity, and the protection of public health, among others.
The consultation is open to a wide range of stakeholders, including academic researchers. Note that, in the current draft, the "vetted researcher" designation is not limited to people affiliated with academic institutions, but also to other organizations, such as NGOs and non-profits as long as they are a research organisation as defined in Article 2, point (1), of Directive (EU) 2019/790.
I encourage you to share your views and expertise on how such a data access framework should be structured.
Please follow this link to access the consultation document and submit your response: https://europa.eu/!8q9Y9T. Feedback can be sent in any official language of the EU, but the draft is available only in English at the moment.
The deadline for submitting contributions is the 26th of November 2024. After gathering public feedback, the Commission plans to adopt the rules in the first quarter of 2025.
Thank you for considering to participate in the public consultation.
Best regards,
Cristian Consonni
(*): Currently designated VLOPS are Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, PornHub, Shein Snapchat, Stripchat, Temu, TikTok, Wikipedia, X (formerly Twitter), XNXX, XVideos, YouTube and Zalando. Currently designated VLOSEs are Bing and Google Search.
--
Cristian Consonni
HUMAINT team
European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency
European Commission
Joint Research Centre (JRC)
https://ai-watch.ec.europa.eu/humaint_enhttps://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/index_en
The views expressed in this e-mail are personal and may not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission, unless explicitly stated otherwise. This e-mail, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential and intended solely for the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.
Dear all
we are organising a conference at the University of Florence in Italy on Wikidata and research, June 5-6, 2025.
The call for papers is open until December 9, 2024: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_and_research/Call
It would be fantastic if you'd like to present something. There are also lightning talks for projects that still need to be completed and the possibility to submit posters.
my very best regards
iolanda
_____________________________________________________
University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
Department for Environment Constructions and Design
Institute of Design
Iolanda Pensa, PhD
Senior Researcher
Head of Culture and Territory Research Unit
Campus Mendrisio
Via Flora Ruchat-Roncati 15
CH-6850 Mendrisio
T +41 (0)58 666 6362
iolanda.pensa(a)supsi.ch
www.supsi.ch/ide
Hello everyone,
We're happy to announce the *12th edition of Wiki Workshop* [1], our
largest Wikimedia research event of the year! This year’s workshop will be
held *virtually* on *Wednesday, May 21, 2025, from 14:00 to 18:00 UTC*
and *Thursday,
May 22, 2025, from 11:00 to 15:00 UTC.*
As you can see, we are experimenting with expanding the workshop from one
to two days. We hope this format will allow for deeper engagement and
better pacing across both days. This is currently a one-time change for
2025 and based on what we learn from this year, we’ll make informed
decisions for future events.
We look forward to your participation and contributions to make this year's
workshop a great success. Stay tuned for further details and registration
information.
Looking forward to seeing you there,
Kinneret
on behalf of the organizing team
[1] see last year's program and website: https://wikiworkshop.org/2024/
--
Kinneret Gordon
Lead Research Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
*The 11^th International Conference on Computational Social Science*
We are pleased to announce that the 2025 IC^2 S^2 conference will take
place in Norrköping, Sweden on July 22-24, 2025.
The International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC^2 S^2 )
is the premier conference in computational social science and brings
together leading academics and practitioners from social science, data
science, complexity science, and network science.
Please visit the conference website for detailed information:
https://www.ic2s2-2025.org
Please note that the abstract submission deadline is February 24, 2025.
The deadline for tutorial proposals is January 17, 2025.
We look forward to seeing you in Norrköping!
Marc Keuschnigg, Peter Hedström, Sonia Yeh, Nina Tahmasebi, Yuan Liao,
and Martin Arvidsson
Hi all,
We have opened a User Experience (UX) Research Manager position in the
Research team [1] at WMF. The manager who will join us in this capacity
will be accountable for the UX and Design Research team and operations [2].
This email serves multiple purposes:
- A courtesy announcement so you're aware
- Sharing the job posting with you if you are interested to apply
- Asking for your support to spread the word about the position if you
know of people who may be interested
The job description and application form is at:
https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/6340851
If you have questions about how we organize work within the Research team,
this opening, or other topics that you would like to talk with me about, I
invite you to book one of my office hours which you can schedule through
[3].
Best,
Leila
[1] https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html
[2] https://design.wikimedia.org/strategy/index.html
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours#Schedule
--
Leila Zia
Head of Research
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed next Wednesday October 16,
at 9:30 AM PST / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1729096200>. With numerous elections
taking place all around the world this year, the theme for this
showcase is *Wikipedia
for Political and Election Analysis*.
You are welcome to watch via the YouTube stream:
https://youtube.com/live/61j55R7UZZA?feature=share. As usual, you can join
the conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live.
This month's presentations:
*Throw Your Hat in the Ring (of Wikipedia): **Exploring Urban-Rural
Disparities in Local Politicians' Information Supply*By *Akira Matsui,
Yokohama National University*This talk explores the socio-economic factors
contributing to disparities in the supply of local political information on
Wikipedia. Using a dataset of politicians who ran for local elections in
Japan, the research investigates the relationship between socio-economic
status and creating and revising politicians' Wikipedia pages. The study
reveals that areas with different socio-economic backgrounds, such as
employment industries and age distribution, exhibit distinct patterns in
information supply. The findings underscore the impact of regional
socio-economic factors on digital platforms and highlight potential
vulnerabilities in information access for political content.Party positions
from Wikipedia classifications of party ideologyBy *Michael Herrmann,
University of Konstanz*We develop a new measure of party position based on
a scaling of ideology tags supplied in infoboxes on political parties'
Wikipedia pages. Assuming a simple model of tag assignment, we estimate the
locations of parties and ideologies in a common space. We find that the
recovered scale can be interpreted in familiar terms of "left versus
right." Estimated party positions correlate well with ratings of parties'
positions from extant large-scale expert surveys, most strongly with
ratings of general left-right ideology. Party position estimates also show
high stability in a test-retest scenario. Our results demonstrate that a
Wikipedia-based approach yields valid and reliable left-right scores
comparable to scores obtained via conventional expert coding methods. It
thus provides a measure with potentially unlimited party coverage. Our
measurement strategy is also applicable to other entities.
Best,Kinneret
--
Kinneret Gordon
Lead Research Community Officer
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>