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8 participants
2988 discussions

Quality issues
by Gerard Meijssen 27 Nov '15

27 Nov '15

Hoi, At Wikidata we often find issues with data imported from a Wikipedia. Lists have been produced with these issues on the Wikipedia involved and arguably they do present issues with the quality of Wikipedia or Wikidata for that matter. So far hardly anything resulted from such outreach. When Wikipedia is a black box, not communicating about with the outside world, at some stage the situation becomes toxic. At this moment there are already those at Wikidata that argue not to bother about Wikipedia quality because in their view, Wikipedians do not care about its own quality. Arguably known issues with quality are the easiest to solve. There are many ways to approach this subject. It is indeed a quality issue both for Wikidata and Wikipedia. It can be seen as a research issue; how to deal with quality and how do such mechanisms function if at all. I blogged about it.. Thanks, GerardM http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2015/11/what-kind-of-box-is-wikipedia.ht…

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] [Wikimedia-l] Quality issues
by Andreas Kolbe 27 Nov '15

27 Nov '15

Gerard, On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 7:15 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hoi, > To start of, results from the past are no indications of results in the > future. It is the disclaimer insurance companies have to state in all their > adverts in the Netherlands. When you continue and make it a "theological" > issue, you lose me because I am not of this faith, far from it. Wikidata is > its own project and it is utterly dissimilar from Wikipedia.To start of > Wikidata has been a certified success from the start. The improvement it > brought by bringing all interwiki links together is enormous.That alone > should be a pointer that Wikipedia think is not realistic. > These benefits are internal to Wikimedia and a completely separate issue from third-party re-use of Wikidata content as a default reference source, which is the issue of concern here. To continue, people have been importing data into Wikidata from the start. > They are the statements you know and, it was possible to import them from > Wikipedia because of these interwiki links. So when you call for sources, > it is fairly save to assume that those imports are supported by the quality > of the statements of the Wikipedias The quality of three-quarters of the 280+ Wikipedia language versions is about at the level the English Wikipedia had reached in 2002. Even some of the larger Wikipedias have significant problems. The Kazakh Wikipedia for example is controlled by functionaries of an oppressive regime[1], and the Croatian one is reportedly[2] controlled by fascists rewriting history (unless things have improved markedly in the Croatian Wikipedia since that report, which would be news to me). The Azerbaijani Wikipedia seems to have problems as well. The Wikimedia movement has always had an important principle: that all content should be traceable to a "reliable source". Throughout the first decade of this movement and beyond, Wikimedia content has never been considered a reliable source. For example, you can't use a Wikipedia article as a reference in another Wikipedia article. Another important principle has been the disclaimer: pointing out to people that the data is anonymously crowdsourced, and that there is no guarantee of reliability or fitness for use. Both of these principles are now being jettisoned. Wikipedia content is considered a reliable source in Wikidata, and Wikidata content is used as a reliable source by Google, where it appears without any indication of its provenance. This is a reflection of the fact that Wikidata, unlike Wikipedia, comes with a CC0 licence. That decision was, I understand, made by Denny, who is both a Google employee and a WMF board member. The benefit to Google is very clear: this free, unattributed content adds value to Google's search engine result pages, and improves Google's revenue (currently running at about $10 million an hour, much of it from ads). But what is the benefit to the end user? The end user gets information of undisclosed provenance, which is presented to them as authoritative, even though it may be compromised. In what sense is that an improvement for society? To me, the ongoing information revolution is like the 19th century industrial revolution done over. It created whole new categories of abuse, which it took a century to (partly) eliminate. But first, capitalists had a field day, and the people who were screwed were the common folk. Could we not try to learn from history? > and if anything, that is also where > they typically fail because many assumptions at Wikipedia are plain wrong > at Wikidata. For instance a listed building is not the organisation the > building is known for. At Wikidata they each need their own item and > associated statements. > > Wikidata is already a success for other reasons. VIAF no longer links to > Wikipedia but to Wikidata. The biggest benefit of this move is for people > who are not interested in English. Because of this change VIAF links > through Wikidata to all Wikipedias not only en.wp. Consequently people may > find through VIAF Wikipedia articles in their own language through their > library systems. > At the recent Wikiconference USA, a Wikimedia veteran and professional librarian expressed the view to me that * circular referencing between VIAF and Wikidata will create a humongous muddle that nobody will be able to sort out again afterwards, because – unlike wiki mishaps in other topic areas – here it's the most authoritative sources that are being corrupted by circular referencing; * third parties are using Wikimedia content as a *reference standard *when that was never the intention (see above). I've seen German Wikimedians express concerns that quality assurance standards have dropped alarmingly since the project began, with bot users mass-importing unreliable data. > So do not forget about Wikipedia and the lessons learned. These lessons are > important to Wikipedia. However, they do not necessarily apply to Wikidata > particularly when you approach Wikidata as an opportunity to do things in a > different way. Set theory, a branch of mathematics, is exactly what we > need. When we have data at Wikidata of a given quality.. eg 90% and we have > data at another source with a given quality eg 90%, we can compare the two > and find a subset where the two sources do not match. When we curate the > differences, it is highly likely that we improve quality at Wikidata or at > the other source. This sounds like "Let's do it quick and dirty and worry about the problems later". I sometimes get the feeling software engineers just love a programming challenge, because that's where they can hone and display their skills. Dirty data is one of those challenges: all the clever things one can do to clean up the data! There is tremendous optimism about what can be done. But why have bad data in the first place, starting with rubbish and then proving that it can be cleaned up a bit using clever software? The effort will make the engineer look good, sure, but there will always be collateral damage as errors propagate before they are fixed. The engineer's eyes are not typically on the content, but on their software. The content their bots and programs manipulate at times seems almost incidental, something for "others" to worry about – "others" who don't necessarily exist in sufficient numbers to ensure quality. In short, my feeling is that the engineering enthusiasm and expertise applied to Wikidata aren't balanced by a similar level of commitment to scholarship in generating the data, and getting them right first time. We've seen where that approach can lead with Wikipedia. Wikipedia hoaxes and falsehoods find their way into the blogosphere, the media, even the academic literature. The stakes with Wikidata are potentially much higher, because I fear errors in Wikidata stand a good chance of being massively propagated by Google's present and future automated information delivery mechanisms, which are completely opaque. Most internet users aren't even aware to what extent the Google Knowledge Graph relies on anonymously compiled, crowdsourced data; they will just assume that if Google says it, it must be true. In addition to honest mistakes, transcription errors, outdated info etc., the whole thing is a propagandist's wet dream. Anonymous accounts! Guaranteed identity protection! Plausible deniability! No legal liability! Automated import and dissemination without human oversight! Massive impact on public opinion![3] If information is power, then this provides the best chance of a power grab humanity has seen since the invention of the newspaper. In the media landscape, you at least have right-wing, centrist and left-wing publications each presenting their version of the truth, and you know who's publishing what and what agenda they follow. You can pick and choose, compare and contrast, read between the lines. We won't have that online. Wikimedia-fuelled search engines like Google and Bing dominate the information supply. The right to enjoy a pluralist media landscape, populated by players who are accountable to the public, was hard won in centuries past. Some countries still don't enjoy that luxury today. Are we now blithely giving it away, in the name of progress, and for the greater glory of technocrats? I don't trust the way this is going. I see a distinct possibility that we'll end up with false information in Wikidata (or, rather, the Google Knowledge Graph) being used to "correct" accurate information in other sources, just because the Google/Wikidata content is ubiquitous. If you build circular referencing loops fuelled by spurious data, you don't provide access to knowledge, you destroy it. A lie told often enough etc. To quote Heather Ford and Mark Graham, "We know that the engineers and developers, volunteers and passionate technologists are often trying to do their best in difficult circumstances. But there need to be better attempts by people working on these platforms to explain how decisions are made about what is represented. These may just look like unimportant lines of code in some system somewhere, but they have a very real impact on the identities and futures of people who are often far removed from the conversations happening among engineers." I agree with that. The "what" should be more important than the "how", and at present it doesn't seem to be. It's well worth thinking about, and having a debate about what can be done to prevent the worst from happening. In particular, I would like to see the decision to publish Wikidata under a CC0 licence revisited. The public should know where the data it gets comes from; that's a basic issue of transparency. Andreas [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-10-07/Op-ed [2] http://www.dailydot.com/politics/croatian-wikipedia-fascist-takeover-contro… [3] http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-201…

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Because visualizations are cool
by Pine W 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

These resources may give ideas to people who create project proposals or any of several kinds of reports. http://www.datavizcatalogue.com/index.html http://survey.timeviz.net/ Have fun exploring, Pine P.S. In the multimedia domain, I'd like to have the ability to add interactive visualizations to Wikipedia and its sister projects. For example, imagine how engaging it would be to have interactive phylogenetic trees that allow the user to zoom in and out and see images of species.

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Please help finish "Cases" page of CoC (+updates)
by Matthew Flaschen 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

We are now working on the "Cases" page of the draft Code of conduct. This will become a separate page (for readability of the final CoC), but is being drafted on the same page with the rest. This includes both the intro section, and all the sub-sections, which means everything that starts with "2." in the ToC. Currently this is "Handling reports", "Responses and resolutions", and "Appealing a resolution". However, the sections within "Cases" may change: * Section: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct/Draft#Page:_Code_of_conduct_… * Talk: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Draft#Finishing_the_Cas… * Alternatively, you can provide anonymous feedback to conduct-discussion(a)wikimedia.org . This is the best time to make any necessary changes to this page (and explain why, in edit summaries and/or talk) and discuss it on the talk page. Other updates: * The text of the "Report a problem" section has been frozen. Thanks to everyone who helped discuss and edit these sections. Participation (including both named and anonymous) helped us improve the confidentiality line. Thanks, Matt Flaschen

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Reinforcing or incentivizing desired user behavior
by Pine W 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

Hi all, Some of us plan to have a conversation at the WCONUSA unconference sessions about ENWP culture. Are there any recommended readings that you could suggest as preparation, particularly on the subject of how to reinforce or incentivize desirable user behavior? I think that Jonathan may have done some research on this topic for the Teahouse, and Ocassi may have for done research for TWA. I'm interested in applicable research as preparation both for the unconference discussion and for my planned video series that intends to inform and inspire new editors. Thanks, Pine

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OpenSym 2016 General Call for Submissions (Papers)
by Dirk Riehle 22 Nov '15

22 Nov '15

OpenSym 2016 General Call for Submissions (Papers) ---------------------------------------------- OpenSym 2016, the 12th International Symposium on Open Collaboration August 17-19, 2016 | Berlin, Germany http://opensym.org/os2016 ABOUT THE CONFERENCE ---------------------------------------------- The 12th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (OpenSym 2016) is the premier conference on open collaboration research and practice, including open source, open data, open education, wikis and related social media, Wikipedia, and IT-driven open innovation research. OpenSym is the first conference series to bring together the different strands of open collaboration research and practice, seeking to create synergies and inspire new collaborations between computer scientists, social scientists, legal scholars, and everyone interested in understanding open collaboration and how it is changing the world. OpenSym 2016 will be held in Berlin, Germany, on August 17-19, 2016. OpenSym is held in-cooperation with ACM SIGWEB and ACM SIGSOFT and the conference proceedings will be archived in the ACM digital library like all prior editions. The research paper submission deadline is March 25th, 2016. RESEARCH TRACK CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS ---------------------------------------------- The conference provides peer-reviewed research tracks on - Free, libre, and open source software research, chaired by Stephan Koch, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, and Daniel German, University of Victoria. For more information see http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/free-libre-and-open-source-so… - Open data research, chaired by Dirk Riehle, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, and Ina Schieferdecker, Fraunhofer FOKUS and TU Berlin. For more information see http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/open-data-research-track/ - Open education research, chaired by Astrid Wichmann, Ruhr-University Bochum, and Johannes Moskaliuk, University of Tübingen. For more information see http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/open-education-research-track/ - IT-driven open innovation research, chaired by Albrecht Fritzsche, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, and Srinivasan R, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. For more information see http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/it-driven-open-innovation-res… - Wikipedia research, chaired by Claudia Müller-Birn, Freie Universität Berlin, and Benjamin Mako Hill, University of Washington. For more information see http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/wikipedia-research-track/ - Open collaboration (wikis, social media, etc.) research, chaired by Oscar Diaz, Universidad del Pais Vasco, and Dirk Riehle, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. For more information see http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/open-collaboration-research-t… Research papers present integrative reviews or original reports of substantive new work: theoretical, empirical, and/or in the design, development and/or deployment of novel concepts, systems, and mechanisms. Research papers will be reviewed by a research track program committee to meet rigorous academic standards of publication. Papers will be reviewed for relevance, conceptual quality, innovation and clarity of presentation. Each track has its own call for papers, which you can find at http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/. Submission deadline is March 25th, 2016. Authors, whose submitted papers have been accepted for presentation at the conference have a choice of - having their paper become part of the official proceedings, archived in the ACM Digital Library, - having no publication record at all but only the presentation at the conference. OpenSym seeks to accommodate the needs of the different research disciplines it draws on. DOCTORAL SYMPOSIUM CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ---------------------------------------------- OpenSym seeks to explore the synergies between all strands of open collaboration research. Thus, we will have a doctoral symposium, in which Ph.D. students from different disciplines can present their work and receive feedback from senior faculty and their peers. The doctoral symposium is lead by Lutz Prechelt, Freie Universität of Berlin. The call for papers for the doctoral symposium can be found at http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/doctoral-symposium-at-opensym/. Submission deadline is May 6th, 2016. INDUSTRY AND COMMUNITY TRACK CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ---------------------------------------------- OpenSym is also seeking submissions for experience reports (long and short), tutorials, workshops, panels, industry and community posters, and demos. Such work accepted for presentation or performance at the conference is considered part of the community track. It will be put into the proceedings in a community track section; authors can opt-out of the publication, as with research papers. The industry and community track is lead by Simon Dückert of Cogneon GmbH and Lorraine Morgan of Maynooth University. The call for submissions to the community track can be found at http://www.opensym.org/os2016/call-for-papers/industry-and-community-track/. The first submission deadline is April 22nd, 2016. A second submission deadline for late-comers (at the risk of not getting a seat) is June 2nd, 2016. THE OPENSYM CONFERENCE EXPERIENCE ---------------------------------------------- OpenSym 2016 will be held in Berlin on August 17-19, 2016. Research and community presentations and performances will be accompanied by keynotes, invited speakers, and a social program in one of the most vibrant cities on this planet. The open space track is a key ingredient of the event that distinguishes OpenSym from other conferences. It is an integral part of the program that makes it easy to talk to other researchers and practitioners and to stretch your imagination and conversations beyond the limits of your own subdiscipline, exposing you to the full breadth of open collaboration research. The open space track is entirely participant-organized, is open for everyone, and requires no submission or review. CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION ---------------------------------------------- The general chair of the conference is Anthony "Tony" Wasserman, CMU Silicon Valley. Feel free to contact us with any questions you might have at info(a)opensym.org. The conference committee can be found at http://www.opensym.org/os2016/organization/. -- Prof. Dr. Dirk Riehle, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg Open Source Research Group, Applied Software Engineering Web: http://osr.cs.fau.de, Email: dirk.riehle(a)fau.de Cell phone: +49 157 8153 4150 or +1 650 450 8550 -- Website: http://dirkriehle.com - Twitter: @dirkriehle Ph (DE): +49-157-8153-4150 - Ph (US): +1-650-450-8550

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Upcoming research newsletter (October 2015): new papers open for review
by masssly＠ymail.com 21 Nov '15

21 Nov '15

Hi everybody, We’re preparing for the November 2015 research newsletter and looking for contributors. Please take a look at: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WRN201511 and add your name next to any paper you are interested in covering. Our target publication date is Wednesday November 25 UTC although actual publication might happen several days later. As usual, short notes and one-paragraph reviews are most welcome. Highlights from this month: An Analysis of the Quality Issues of the Properties Available in the Spanish DBpedia Are Wikipedia Citations Important Evidence of the Impact of Scholarly Articles and Books? Automatic Identification and Disambiguation of Concepts and Named Entities in the Multilingual Wikipedia Change In Access After Digitization: Ethnographic Collections In Wikipedia Collective remembering of organizations: Co-construction of organizational pasts in Wikipedia Cumulative Growth in User-Generated Content Production: Evidence from Wikipedia Economic Downturn and Volunteering: Does a Crisis Affect Content Generation on Wikipedia? Gender by language How do Twitter, Wikipedia, and Harrison's principles of medicine describe heart attacks? How Structure Shapes Dynamics: Knowledge Development in Wikipedia - A Network Multilevel Modeling Approach Improving Website Hyperlink Structure Using Server Logs Individual versus Collaborative Information Processing: The Case of Biases in Wikipedia Influence Of Wikipedia And Other Web Resources On Acute And Critical Care Decisions. A Web-Based Survey Intellectual Interchanges in the History of Massive Online Open-editing Encyclopedia, Wikipedia Leveraging the Crowdsourcing of Lexical Resources for Bootstrapping a Linguistic Data Cloud Model the social network of movie actors of the 1920s and 1930s with Wikidata Relation between Wikipedia edits and news published The Impact and Evolution of Group Diversity in Online Open Collaboration Top 100 historical figures of Wikipedia Towards a Class-Based Model of Information Organization in Wikipedia Transforming Wikipedia into a Search Engine for Local Experts Transparency, Control, and Content Generation on Wikipedia: Editorial Strategies and Technical Affordances Understanding Editing Behaviors in Multilingual Wikipedia Use and awareness of Wikipedia among the M.C.A students of C. D. Jain college of commerce, Shrirampur : A Study Utilising Wikipedia for text mining applications Visualizing Wikipedia Article and User Networks: Extracting Knowledge Structures using NodeXL Wikipedia and history: a worthwhile partnership in the digital era? Wikipedia und History Wikipedia, Work and Capitalism: A Realm of Freedom? Wisdom of the Crowd: Wikipedia Controversies and Coordinating Policies Zero Rating and Mobile Net Neutrality If you have any question about the format or process feel free to get in touch off-list. Masssly, Tilman Bayer and Dario Taraborelli [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter

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Wikipedia gender gap/inequality indicators
by Piotr Konieczny 21 Nov '15

21 Nov '15

Outside the widely popular percentage of female editors on Wikipedia/WMF projects in general, and the percentage of Wikipedia biographical articles about females, is there anything else that has been used in literature / existing studies that you'd consider worth mentioning? Thanks, -- Piotr Konieczny, PhD http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus

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NYTimes and "verified" commentators
by Pine W 20 Nov '15

20 Nov '15

Perhaps relevant to the ongoing discussions about harassment and/or editor valuation: http://www.nytimes.com/blogs/publiceditor/2015/11/20/change-needed-for-comm… Pine

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Pageview API
by Dario Taraborelli 18 Nov '15

18 Nov '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org <mailto:dandreescu@wikimedia.org>> To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> Cc: Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:43:10 -0500 Subject: Pageview API Dear Data Enthusiasts, In collaboration with the Services team, the analytics team wishes to announce a public Pageview API <https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/?doc#!/Pageviews_data/get_metrics_pagevie…>. For an example of what kind of UIs someone could build with it, check out this excellent demo <http://analytics.wmflabs.org/demo/pageview-api> (code) <https://gist.github.com/marcelrf/49738d14116fd547fe6d#file-article-comparis…>. The API can tell you how many times a wiki article or project is viewed over a certain period. You can break that down by views from web crawlers or humans, and by desktop, mobile site, or mobile app. And you can find the 1000 most viewed articles <https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/top/es.wikipedia/all-ac…> on any project, on any given day or month that we have data for. We currently have data back through October and we will be able to go back to May 2015 when the loading jobs are all done. For more information, take a look at the user docs <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/AQS/Pageview_API>. After many requests from the community, we were really happy to finally make this our top priority and get it done. Huge thanks to Gabriel, Marko, Petr, and Eric from Services, Alexandros and all of Ops really, Henrik for maintaining stats.grok, and, of course, the many community members who have been so patient with us all this time. The Research team’s Article Recommender tool <http://recommend.wmflabs.org/> already uses the API to rank pages and determine relative importance. Wiki Education Foundation’s dashboard <https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/> is going to be using it to count how many times an article has been viewed since a student edited it. And there are other grand plans for this data like “article finder”, which will find low-rated articles with a lot of pageviews; this can be used by editors looking for high-impact work. Join the fun, we’re happy to help get you started and listen to your ideas. Also, if you find bugs or want to suggest improvements, please create a task in Phabricator and tag it with #Analytics-Backlog <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/analytics-backlog/>. So what’s next? We can think of too many directions to go into, for pageview data and Wikimedia project data, in general. We need to work with you to make a great plan for the next few quarters. Please chime in here <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112956> with your needs. Team Analytics (p.s. this was also posted on analytics-l, wikitech-l, and engineering-l, but I suck and forgot to cc the research list. My apologies.) Dario Taraborelli Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org <http://wikimediafoundation.org/> • nitens.org <http://nitens.org/> • @readermeter <http://twitter.com/readermeter>

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