Hello!
Since the archive is public I registerd archiving this list via gmane. You can access it as "gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.research" then.
I just read about Kasper Souren's work at Mali and the Fulfulde Wikipedia ( see http://ff.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ndimaagu ). I asked myself how to manage such small Wikipedias - especially how to avoid spam and vandalism. So here is research question:
* How can small (language) Wikimedia Wikis be managed efectively?
According to the last Wikistat-cvs output there are 94 wikipedias with no (sic!) active contributor (>5 edits) - 56 have never had a contributor (5 of them with no single edit - I wonder why they were created at all?) and 37 have contributors and more than 1 articles. Of course we cannot push all of these languages but the questions are
* What small languages are used online?
* How do you get to know if a small Wiki gets a) its first users b) vandalized - and how do you react the best way?
Thinking about this another research question occurs
* How are different Wikipedia languages connected via ** common users (overlap, interaction) ** translation (directed flow of information)
Since we do not have single-login we could use analysis of interwiki-links.
Enough ideas for the beginning - I have to progress the ideas I already had first ;-)
Greetings, Jakob
- How do you get to know if a small Wiki gets a) its first users b)
vandalized - and how do you react the best way?
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SWMT which stands for "Small Wiki Monitoring Team". It hasn't been very active yet, but I believe there are a number of users who do monitor at least some of the small wikis even though they're not signed up on that page.
It's fairly easy via bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/public/inactivewikipedias) to watch a number of wikis at once. It worked well with Wikicities (http://www.bloglines.com/public/Wikicities) up to about 250 wikis, at which point there were too many changes to monitor in this way.
Angela.
Angela wrote:
- How do you get to know if a small Wiki gets a) its first users b)
vandalized - and how do you react the best way?
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SWMT which stands for "Small Wiki Monitoring Team". It hasn't been very active yet, but I believe there are a number of users who do monitor at least some of the small wikis even though they're not signed up on that page.
It's fairly easy via bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/public/inactivewikipedias) to watch a number of wikis at once.
Well, it's not what I call comfortable, but the aggregated RSS-feeds could be used for further analysis and visualization. You could also browse through Erik's Wikistat pages for each small Wiki.
Greetings, Jakob
Jakob Voss wrote:
I just read about Kasper Souren's work at Mali and the Fulfulde Wikipedia ( see http://ff.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ndimaagu ). I asked myself how to manage such small Wikipedias - especially how to avoid spam and vandalism. So here is research question:
- How can small (language) Wikimedia Wikis be managed efectively?
This is not an appropriate question for this list. We need to be clear on the purpose of this list. This list is for people doing research *about* Wikipedia/Wikimedia, not for the work of Erik's research committee.
I envision this list as a low-volume list primarily for _academic_ researchers (but not exclusively academics) who are working on articles for publication about Wikimedia stuff. It will not serve that audience if we spend a lot of time here discussing ideas of how to better manage our work, etc.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
- How can small (language) Wikimedia Wikis be managed efectively?
This is not an appropriate question for this list.
Sorry, but in my opinion the question *is* appropriate if you define research as "an active, diligent and systematic process of inquiry in order to discover, interpret or revise facts, events, behaviours, or theories, or to make practical applications with the help of such facts, laws or theories." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research]
But your're right that there may be *better* places to ask the question.
We need to be clear on the purpose of this list. This list is for people doing research *about* Wikipedia/Wikimedia, not for the work of Erik's research committee.
I'm not clear on the prupose of this list. I'm just interested in research community, not in research committee.
I envision this list as a low-volume list primarily for _academic_ researchers (but not exclusively academics) who are working on articles for publication about Wikimedia stuff. It will not serve that audience if we spend a lot of time here discussing ideas of how to better manage our work, etc.
What if you want to write an article in how to manage Wikis? I better specify my research questions:
* How much vandalism does occur in small wikis compared to large ones? * How fast is vandalism reverted in small wikis compared to large ones? * Are there phases of growth in a wiki? (yes there are) * How can you determine when a small wiki starts to growth essentialy? * How much do decisions in the starting phase of a Wiki influence it's evolution? Can you detect factors of influence? * Can you discriminate healthful and unhealthful at all? * Can you support small wikis in growing well?
I really don't know how to divide research into "for all researchers" and "for committee members only". It's easier to send technical stuff to wikitech-l, but what kind of "organizational issues of the Research Network" do you want to delegate to another place?
Greetings, Jakob
On 22/06/05, Jakob Voss jakob.voss@nichtich.de wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
- How can small (language) Wikimedia Wikis be managed efectively?
This is not an appropriate question for this list.
It depends on the purpose of the question, not the question itself.
Are you aiming to write a paper on this, or will the results be used only for internal Wikimedia purposes? If the former, then I would have thought this list was the right place.
Angela.
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org