Hello,
I just watched the showcase of December 2018, thank you for the interesting contribution! It would be great it further research could have a look at questions such as language choice. With regard to have more insight in what readers want, I struggled in the past with two questions:
Regionally important content: Should a Wikipedia language version concentrate on regional topics, or try to cover a large variety of topics? Heinz Kloss in the 1970s introduced the idea of "eigenbezogene Inhalte", content, that is closely related to a language and its region, like local history, culture and typical crafts such as fishing on the Faroe islands or farming in the Alps. What do the readers in Hungary want? That hu.WP concentrates on Hungarian topics, while they consult English wikipedia for specialized technical topics or other countries?
Large or small articles: Some printed encyclopedias had relatively few, but large articles. Others segmented the content into many small articles. (Think of Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropedia and Micropedia.) What do Wikipedia readers want? Do they prefer to read about a larger topic in one long, well structured article? Or several short ones, linking to each other?
I could imagine that a reader who is interested in information for work or school prefers long articles that provide an in-depth approach in order to became familiar with the overall topic (that is, what one would expect traditionally). And that "news" readers want to look up something quickly, in a short, simplyfing article.
Kind regards Ziko
I didn't see the showcase but I'm intrigued by Ziko's comments. The general response I would make to his question "What do Wikipedia readers want?" is that different readers want different things, sometimes in conflict with one another. To elaborate on two of Ziko's points:
"Regionally important content." This reminded me of a Signpost editorial some years ago discussing a then-recent Arbcom debate concerning how the city Jerusalem is described in the opening section of several different language Wikipedias. As you can imagine, not only was there strong variance but it seemed that some of the versions were making unstated points that, if not political, were trying to convey stability of definition without alluding to any controversies. Admittedly Jerusalem is an extreme example, but I would think there would be any number of geographic or even topical ideas which certain languages would want to convey certain meanings and issues of which other languages might be unaware.
"Large or small articles." I've noticed this point of contention at the outset of my Wikipedia editing. There are some editors (and presumably readers) who want Wikipedia to look and function like a traditional encyclopedia, with thorough articles reflecting well-written and thoughtful essays that one used to find in encyclopedias. Those who know anything about web design know that a long essay goes against the design ethos of the web where some advise against webpages that require excessive scrolling.
The bottom line is that I don't think one can or should make a definitive rule regarding these issues because different communities will want different attributes and styles. To be sure, editors/readers should be aware that such options exist and that Wikipedia style varies considerably from article to article (and community to community).
Bob (user:kosboot)
On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 5:02 AM Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
I just watched the showcase of December 2018, thank you for the interesting contribution! It would be great it further research could have a look at questions such as language choice. With regard to have more insight in what readers want, I struggled in the past with two questions:
Regionally important content: Should a Wikipedia language version concentrate on regional topics, or try to cover a large variety of topics? Heinz Kloss in the 1970s introduced the idea of "eigenbezogene Inhalte", content, that is closely related to a language and its region, like local history, culture and typical crafts such as fishing on the Faroe islands or farming in the Alps. What do the readers in Hungary want? That hu.WP concentrates on Hungarian topics, while they consult English wikipedia for specialized technical topics or other countries?
Large or small articles: Some printed encyclopedias had relatively few, but large articles. Others segmented the content into many small articles. (Think of Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropedia and Micropedia.) What do Wikipedia readers want? Do they prefer to read about a larger topic in one long, well structured article? Or several short ones, linking to each other?
I could imagine that a reader who is interested in information for work or school prefers long articles that provide an in-depth approach in order to became familiar with the overall topic (that is, what one would expect traditionally). And that "news" readers want to look up something quickly, in a short, simplyfing article.
Kind regards Ziko _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Ziko van Dijk, 13/12/18 12:02:
Regionally important content: Should a Wikipedia language version concentrate on regional topics, or try to cover a large variety of topics?
This question is automatically solved if instead of focusing on Wikipedia you do Wikisource. Wikisource will only contain texts published in that language, such as local fiction and official acts of local entities. An example is Ladino/Ladin (as in lld, not lad/Judaeo-Spanish): https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Categoria:Testi_in_ladino
Federico
Hi all.
On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 2:02 AM Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
I just watched the showcase of December 2018, thank you for the interesting contribution!
For those interested who haven't watched it, Ziko is referring to: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#December_2018
Thanks, Ziko! More below.
It would be great it further research could have a look at questions such as language choice.
Agreed. This has been a request by a few other community members as well. One interesting question to address here is: can we characterize language switching? More specifically: are there specific conditions under which switching happens? This will allow us to answer questions like: Are there specific topics that are covered in language x and not y that trigger switching? Is switching a function of availability of content or we can still see switching even when the content exists in the 2+ languages the user is comfortable reading content in? ...
Diego started looking into this, and you can follow his future work at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Beh... We will do more work in this space in coming 6 months.
With regard to have more insight in what readers want, I struggled in the past with two questions:
Regionally important content: Should a Wikipedia language version concentrate on regional topics, or try to cover a large variety of topics?
This is a good question, and as you stated, it is related to understanding reader needs and some of the research in understanding language switching behavior can help us understand this better. Another aspect to keep an eye on is Denny's recent proposal for abstract Wikipedia [1]. If that direction is picked up, we may have more reason to emphasize on regionally important content creation first.
Large or small articles: Some printed encyclopedias had relatively few, but large articles. Others segmented the content into many small articles. (Think of Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropedia and Micropedia.) What do Wikipedia readers want? Do they prefer to read about a larger topic in one long, well structured article? Or several short ones, linking to each other?
This is an interesting one, too. There are at least two ways to approach this question: study how Wikipedia readers learn (what it means to learn needs to be defined) and then do a series of user studies across languages and regions to find patterns and provide recommendations for how to organize content with readers in mind. The other approach, which I would love to see in action, is to break down the article into many pieces and allow the reader to pick and choose to create a learning experience for learning topic x. Then, learn from the way readers learn. This will be building on Collection [2], Gather [3] or other similar initiatives. Search data can also be valuable here. (just to be clear: this is not something we're looking into right now, but it's a fascinating area that if someone has bandwidth and resources to look into, it can help us learn a lot.)
I could imagine that a reader who is interested in information for work or school prefers long articles that provide an in-depth approach in order to became familiar with the overall topic (that is, what one would expect traditionally).
We don't know if this assumption is correct: in fact, we have the length of article as a feature in the study and it's not picked up as a feature that defines this user group. What we know is that across the 14 languages in the study, this group of readers have longer dwell times on articles, they use the desktop platform, and they come to Wikipedia in the afternoon [4].
The above being said, we can't say for sure based on the recent study that this group of readers don't prefer longer articles because if the longer article in the topic of their interest doesn't exist on Wikipedia, they may have to work with the shorter article. It would be great to have some user studies to understand this group and their needs better.
And that "news" readers want to look up something quickly, in a short, simplyfing article.
This one we don't know. :) What we know is that across languages, this was not observed as a consistent pattern (check table 2 in the most recent paper [5]. for enwiki specific audience, check table 2a in the first paper [6]: while 38% of the users motivated by media are coming to look up a fact another 62% are there for overview or in-depth reading.).
On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 5:58 AM Bob Kosovsky bobkosovsky@nypl.org wrote:
"Large or small articles." I've noticed this point of contention at the outset of my Wikipedia editing. There are some editors (and presumably readers) who want Wikipedia to look and function like a traditional encyclopedia, with thorough articles reflecting well-written and thoughtful essays that one used to find in encyclopedias. Those who know anything about web design know that a long essay goes against the design ethos of the web where some advise against webpages that require excessive scrolling.
We need to understand this better. What we see in the recent study is that readers in countries with low Human Development Index read Wikipedia more frequently in-depth (when compared to those in high HDI countries). What we don't know is if the current forms that the articles are written in is satisfying their learning needs or they would prefer to read and learn using the same content but in different representations. I shared some ideas in my response to Ziko how we can learn more about this aspect of reader needs.
The bottom line is that I don't think one can or should make a definitive rule regarding these issues because different communities will want different attributes and styles. To be sure, editors/readers should be aware that such options exist and that Wikipedia style varies considerably from article to article (and community to community).
Agreed, but I suggest we don't stop there: * We should experiment with ways to bring editors and readers closer to each other. I mention this in the discussion part of the showcase as well: at the moment, the broadly available link from readers to editors is pageviews on an article page, and perhaps some other features. We can experiment with ways that can empower editors to understand the audience of their articles better. * We can think of ways to make the content and its representation less rigid from the reader perspective. While each language community has their own style of writing, we can experiment with allowing the reader to pick and choose content and represent it in the way that is most useful for their reading needs.
On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 6:31 AM Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Ziko van Dijk, 13/12/18 12:02:
Regionally important content: Should a Wikipedia language version concentrate on regional topics, or try to cover a large variety of topics?
This question is automatically solved if instead of focusing on Wikipedia you do Wikisource. Wikisource will only contain texts published in that language, such as local fiction and official acts of local entities.
Correct, but the sources in a given language may or may not be about regional topics. So even in the case of Wikisource, the question of whether to focus on regional (geographically close) topics can be valid. I /think/ in the case of Wikisource you can imagine that while it's important to capture all of the possible sources of a language, you may want to prioritize region-specific sources over others if you have specific objectives.
Best, Leila
[1] http://simia.net/download/abstractwikipedia_whitepaper.pdf [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gather [4] First bullet point on page 6. [5] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.00474.pdf [6] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.05379.pdf
I think the decision on the scope probably depends on whether people who speak that language also speak other languages. For example, many people in the Netherlands and Norway speak English very well. There may be less need to provide some topics in their own language if that topic is well-covered in Wikipedia so perhaps the focus can be more on local content. But if the speakers of that language are less likely to speak a "larger" language, then the need to provide a wide variety of non-local topics may be more important than providing information on local topics.
I don't know if any Wikipedias consciously make a decision to focus (or not) on local content, but even if they do, I presume they are hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
Australians are often surprised to find content about the Australian Outback appears in German Wikipedia and not in English Wikipedia but if you travel in the Outback, the reason is obvious -- the outback is full of German tourists in campervans and this is reflected in their Wikipedia contributions.
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ziko van Dijk Sent: Thursday, 13 December 2018 8:02 PM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
I just watched the showcase of December 2018, thank you for the interesting contribution! It would be great it further research could have a look at questions such as language choice. With regard to have more insight in what readers want, I struggled in the past with two questions:
Regionally important content: Should a Wikipedia language version concentrate on regional topics, or try to cover a large variety of topics? Heinz Kloss in the 1970s introduced the idea of "eigenbezogene Inhalte", content, that is closely related to a language and its region, like local history, culture and typical crafts such as fishing on the Faroe islands or farming in the Alps. What do the readers in Hungary want? That hu.WP concentrates on Hungarian topics, while they consult English wikipedia for specialized technical topics or other countries?
Large or small articles: Some printed encyclopedias had relatively few, but large articles. Others segmented the content into many small articles. (Think of Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropedia and Micropedia.) What do Wikipedia readers want? Do they prefer to read about a larger topic in one long, well structured article? Or several short ones, linking to each other?
I could imagine that a reader who is interested in information for work or school prefers long articles that provide an in-depth approach in order to became familiar with the overall topic (that is, what one would expect traditionally). And that "news" readers want to look up something quickly, in a short, simplyfing article.
Kind regards Ziko _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Hello, Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond < kerry.raymond@gmail.com>:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less ambitious approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the improvement of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015, with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of the four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext not being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's specific learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German) deal with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards Ziko
Pointy? I think you may misunderstand my use of the term “hostage”. I don’t use it with the meaning of abducting people for ransom, but in the sense of “subject to things beyond our control”.
I agree entirely that Wikipedia should serve its readers and to that end “To do” lists are compiled with the intention of giving adequate coverage of topics perceived to be needed. Yet, many of those “To do” lists are full of redlinks years later because we have volunteer contributors whose interests / expertise may not align with the perceived needs. Whereas if Wikipedia employed its writers, it could direct them to write articles about required topics. It would be a wonderful thing if we could harness the volunteer energy that goes into largely unproductive activities like endless category reorganisation (given studies show readers rarely look below the reference section and don’t see or use the categories) into writing content that is actually needed. But alas it is not so.
Kerry
From: Ziko van Dijk [mailto:zvandijk@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM To: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com >:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less ambitious approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the improvement of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015, with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of the four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext not being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's specific learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German) deal with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
I've long seen categorisation on wikipedia as a way to bring articles to the attention of those who follow certain categories. During the cleanup of unreferenced biographies a few year ago this was a useful adjunct, with several wikiprojects cleaning up all the articles legitimately categorised for them. Some of the other Wikiprojects did at least go through and prod or speedy the non-notables and hoaxes in their areas.
I'm pretty sure it still operates that way, categorisation of an uncategorised article sometimes brings it to the attention of people who know the topic.
And of course where the article doesn't contain the words in the category, categorisation then improves search.
If like me you are a glass third full person categories make a useful contribution.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 at 22:21, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
Pointy? I think you may misunderstand my use of the term “hostage”. I don’t use it with the meaning of abducting people for ransom, but in the sense of “subject to things beyond our control”.
I agree entirely that Wikipedia should serve its readers and to that end “To do” lists are compiled with the intention of giving adequate coverage of topics perceived to be needed. Yet, many of those “To do” lists are full of redlinks years later because we have volunteer contributors whose interests / expertise may not align with the perceived needs. Whereas if Wikipedia employed its writers, it could direct them to write articles about required topics. It would be a wonderful thing if we could harness the volunteer energy that goes into largely unproductive activities like endless category reorganisation (given studies show readers rarely look below the reference section and don’t see or use the categories) into writing content that is actually needed. But alas it is not so.
Kerry
From: Ziko van Dijk [mailto:zvandijk@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM To: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond < kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com >:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less ambitious approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the improvement of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015, with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of the four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext not being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's specific learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German) deal with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Hoi, For your information, at Wikidata we have a large number of categories where through query logic we know about articles that should include a category. It is a tool that can be automated for many of them in two ways.. Harvesting Wikipedia for inclusion in Wikidata and also the reverse; harvesting Wikidata for including a category in an article. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 at 16:26, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
I've long seen categorisation on wikipedia as a way to bring articles to the attention of those who follow certain categories. During the cleanup of unreferenced biographies a few year ago this was a useful adjunct, with several wikiprojects cleaning up all the articles legitimately categorised for them. Some of the other Wikiprojects did at least go through and prod or speedy the non-notables and hoaxes in their areas.
I'm pretty sure it still operates that way, categorisation of an uncategorised article sometimes brings it to the attention of people who know the topic.
And of course where the article doesn't contain the words in the category, categorisation then improves search.
If like me you are a glass third full person categories make a useful contribution.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 at 22:21, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
Pointy? I think you may misunderstand my use of the term “hostage”. I don’t use it with the meaning of abducting people for ransom, but in the sense of “subject to things beyond our control”.
I agree entirely that Wikipedia should serve its readers and to that end “To do” lists are compiled with the intention of giving adequate coverage of topics perceived to be needed. Yet, many of those “To do” lists are
full
of redlinks years later because we have volunteer contributors whose interests / expertise may not align with the perceived needs. Whereas if Wikipedia employed its writers, it could direct them to write articles about required topics. It would be a wonderful thing if we could harness the volunteer energy that goes into largely unproductive activities like endless category reorganisation (given studies show readers rarely look below the reference section and don’t see or use the categories) into writing content that is actually needed. But alas it is not so.
Kerry
From: Ziko van Dijk [mailto:zvandijk@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM To: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond < kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com >:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors
are
willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less
ambitious
approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the
improvement
of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015, with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of
the
four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext
not
being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's
specific
learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German)
deal
with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
I’m not suggesting categories are bad. I certainly don’t want uncategorised articles. I also make use of hidden tracking categories to manage groups of articles associated with various projects. But we do have to recognise that it is editors that appear to make the most use of them. Eye-tracking studies on desktop and I believe some instrumentation in mobile viewing shows that readers don’t look at them (although I acknowledge that they may indirectly benefit the reader through improved search). I do outreach work (general talks about Wikipedia and edit training) and I know from those interactions that our readers have mostly never seen or used our categories, even many librarians (folks for whom categorisation is part of their fundamental way of working) appear not to have noticed our categories.
What I am objecting to is what I see on my watchlist every day, many recategorisations into increasingly fine-grained categories. Also Categories for Discussion Speedy seems to be a way to constantly fiddle with the category tree (mostly just renaming) which then result in huge numbers of edits to rename the categories in all the affected articles. If you look at some of our top contributors, that’s what they do all day, yet goodness knows how much time is spent by the rest of us reviewing these very-low value edits on our watchlists. I would be very interested if anyone had any studies on the cost/benefit of various types of edit (maybe a job for ORES) against the benefit to the article (and hence the reader) and the consumed time (by all parties) of that edit. For example, vandalism would score strongly negative (damage to article content) but corresponding removal of that vandalism would not score as strongly positive, because it’s not a zero-sum game due to risk of exposure of the vandalism to the reader before the revert and due to the reviewer cost (I review many changed articles that have had an edit-revert sequence) and the window in which the vandalism may have been ex, so even though the impact on the content is net zero, the impact on everyone who reviews it needlessly is a net negative for the project). All edits (good or bad) have a reviewer cost. Do we know anything about reviewer costs of edits?
A couple of people have asked me about my mention of studies showing people don’t look below the references. I was referring to a presentation at Wikimania this year (URL to slides below). While the slides do not explicitly mention categories, it shows readers rarely get to the bottom of an article, where the categories lurk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Which_parts_of_a_%28Wiki...
I don’t know if there is more information available on the topic, but hopefully as it was WMF Research, someone on this list may be able to point us to more info.
Kerry
From: WereSpielChequers [mailto:werespielchequers@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, 17 December 2018 1:26 AM To: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
I've long seen categorisation on wikipedia as a way to bring articles to the attention of those who follow certain categories. During the cleanup of unreferenced biographies a few year ago this was a useful adjunct, with several wikiprojects cleaning up all the articles legitimately categorised for them. Some of the other Wikiprojects did at least go through and prod or speedy the non-notables and hoaxes in their areas.
I'm pretty sure it still operates that way, categorisation of an uncategorised article sometimes brings it to the attention of people who know the topic.
And of course where the article doesn't contain the words in the category, categorisation then improves search.
If like me you are a glass third full person categories make a useful contribution.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 at 22:21, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com > wrote:
Pointy? I think you may misunderstand my use of the term “hostage”. I don’t use it with the meaning of abducting people for ransom, but in the sense of “subject to things beyond our control”.
I agree entirely that Wikipedia should serve its readers and to that end “To do” lists are compiled with the intention of giving adequate coverage of topics perceived to be needed. Yet, many of those “To do” lists are full of redlinks years later because we have volunteer contributors whose interests / expertise may not align with the perceived needs. Whereas if Wikipedia employed its writers, it could direct them to write articles about required topics. It would be a wonderful thing if we could harness the volunteer energy that goes into largely unproductive activities like endless category reorganisation (given studies show readers rarely look below the reference section and don’t see or use the categories) into writing content that is actually needed. But alas it is not so.
Kerry
From: Ziko van Dijk [mailto:zvandijk@gmail.com mailto:zvandijk@gmail.com ] Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM To: Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com >; Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com > >:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less ambitious approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the improvement of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015, with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of the four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext not being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's specific learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German) deal with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
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I am more active in categorisation on Commons than on Wikipedia, and there is a difference there as images in a very fine grained category may be the specific images that one sees if they click on the commons category link in a Wikipedia article.
But on both I see allocating more specific categories as part of the workflow of many of our editors. Checking through entries in a high level category, sifting out hoaxes and the like and moving the rest into more appropriate categories.
I suspect what we really need is a better watchlisting system, one that doesn't just give you options to ignore bot and minor edits but also to ignore category edits and edits that are just reversions of IP and newbie edits.
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________________________________ From: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2018 11:43 pm To: 'WereSpielChequers'; 'Research into Wikimedia content and communities' Subject: RE: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
I’m not suggesting categories are bad. I certainly don’t want uncategorised articles. I also make use of hidden tracking categories to manage groups of articles associated with various projects. But we do have to recognise that it is editors that appear to make the most use of them. Eye-tracking studies on desktop and I believe some instrumentation in mobile viewing shows that readers don’t look at them (although I acknowledge that they may indirectly benefit the reader through improved search). I do outreach work (general talks about Wikipedia and edit training) and I know from those interactions that our readers have mostly never seen or used our categories, even many librarians (folks for whom categorisation is part of their fundamental way of working) appear not to have noticed our categories.
What I am objecting to is what I see on my watchlist every day, many recategorisations into increasingly fine-grained categories. Also Categories for Discussion Speedy seems to be a way to constantly fiddle with the category tree (mostly just renaming) which then result in huge numbers of edits to rename the categories in all the affected articles. If you look at some of our top contributors, that’s what they do all day, yet goodness knows how much time is spent by the rest of us reviewing these very-low value edits on our watchlists. I would be very interested if anyone had any studies on the cost/benefit of various types of edit (maybe a job for ORES) against the benefit to the article (and hence the reader) and the consumed time (by all parties) of that edit. For example, vandalism would score strongly negative (damage to article content) but corresponding removal of that vandalism would not score as strongly positive, because it’s not a zero-sum game due to risk of exposure of the vandalism to the reader before the revert and due to the reviewer cost (I review many changed articles that have had an edit-revert sequence) and the window in which the vandalism may have been ex, so even though the impact on the content is net zero, the impact on everyone who reviews it needlessly is a net negative for the project). All edits (good or bad) have a reviewer cost. Do we know anything about reviewer costs of edits?
A couple of people have asked me about my mention of studies showing people don’t look below the references. I was referring to a presentation at Wikimania this year (URL to slides below). While the slides do not explicitly mention categories, it shows readers rarely get to the bottom of an article, where the categories lurk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Which_parts_of_a_%28Wiki...
I don’t know if there is more information available on the topic, but hopefully as it was WMF Research, someone on this list may be able to point us to more info.
Kerry
From: WereSpielChequers [mailto:werespielchequers@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, 17 December 2018 1:26 AM To: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
I've long seen categorisation on wikipedia as a way to bring articles to the attention of those who follow certain categories. During the cleanup of unreferenced biographies a few year ago this was a useful adjunct, with several wikiprojects cleaning up all the articles legitimately categorised for them. Some of the other Wikiprojects did at least go through and prod or speedy the non-notables and hoaxes in their areas.
I'm pretty sure it still operates that way, categorisation of an uncategorised article sometimes brings it to the attention of people who know the topic.
And of course where the article doesn't contain the words in the category, categorisation then improves search.
If like me you are a glass third full person categories make a useful contribution.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 at 22:21, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.commailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com> wrote: Pointy? I think you may misunderstand my use of the term “hostage”. I don’t use it with the meaning of abducting people for ransom, but in the sense of “subject to things beyond our control”.
I agree entirely that Wikipedia should serve its readers and to that end “To do” lists are compiled with the intention of giving adequate coverage of topics perceived to be needed. Yet, many of those “To do” lists are full of redlinks years later because we have volunteer contributors whose interests / expertise may not align with the perceived needs. Whereas if Wikipedia employed its writers, it could direct them to write articles about required topics. It would be a wonderful thing if we could harness the volunteer energy that goes into largely unproductive activities like endless category reorganisation (given studies show readers rarely look below the reference section and don’t see or use the categories) into writing content that is actually needed. But alas it is not so.
Kerry
From: Ziko van Dijk [mailto:zvandijk@gmail.commailto:zvandijk@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM To: Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.commailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>; Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.commailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.commailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com> >:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less ambitious approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the improvement of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015, with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of the four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext not being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's specific learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German) deal with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
WP should serve the readers, but it has to be written by the available writers. We're dependent on volunteers from the people interested in working on an encyclopedia like ours'. They'll have not just certain interests, but certain abilities. This will vary with the different encyclopedias , but at the enWP, there are very few people in most fields who have the ability to write long comprehensive well--organized articles. No matter how desirable it might be to have them, they arenotthee, and the many education programs have brought in rather few regular partcipants.
On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 6:58 AM Jonathan Cardy werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
I am more active in categorisation on Commons than on Wikipedia, and there is a difference there as images in a very fine grained category may be the specific images that one sees if they click on the commons category link in a Wikipedia article.
But on both I see allocating more specific categories as part of the workflow of many of our editors. Checking through entries in a high level category, sifting out hoaxes and the like and moving the rest into more appropriate categories.
I suspect what we really need is a better watchlisting system, one that doesn't just give you options to ignore bot and minor edits but also to ignore category edits and edits that are just reversions of IP and newbie edits.
Get Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef
From: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2018 11:43 pm To: 'WereSpielChequers'; 'Research into Wikimedia content and communities' Subject: RE: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
I’m not suggesting categories are bad. I certainly don’t want uncategorised articles. I also make use of hidden tracking categories to manage groups of articles associated with various projects. But we do have to recognise that it is editors that appear to make the most use of them. Eye-tracking studies on desktop and I believe some instrumentation in mobile viewing shows that readers don’t look at them (although I acknowledge that they may indirectly benefit the reader through improved search). I do outreach work (general talks about Wikipedia and edit training) and I know from those interactions that our readers have mostly never seen or used our categories, even many librarians (folks for whom categorisation is part of their fundamental way of working) appear not to have noticed our categories.
What I am objecting to is what I see on my watchlist every day, many recategorisations into increasingly fine-grained categories. Also Categories for Discussion Speedy seems to be a way to constantly fiddle with the category tree (mostly just renaming) which then result in huge numbers of edits to rename the categories in all the affected articles. If you look at some of our top contributors, that’s what they do all day, yet goodness knows how much time is spent by the rest of us reviewing these very-low value edits on our watchlists. I would be very interested if anyone had any studies on the cost/benefit of various types of edit (maybe a job for ORES) against the benefit to the article (and hence the reader) and the consumed time (by all parties) of that edit. For example, vandalism would score strongly negative (damage to article content) but corresponding removal of that vandalism would not score as strongly positive, because it’s not a zero-sum game due to risk of exposure of the vandalism to the reader before the revert and due to the reviewer cost (I review many changed articles that have had an edit-revert sequence) and the window in which the vandalism may have been ex, so even though the impact on the content is net zero, the impact on everyone who reviews it needlessly is a net negative for the project). All edits (good or bad) have a reviewer cost. Do we know anything about reviewer costs of edits?
A couple of people have asked me about my mention of studies showing people don’t look below the references. I was referring to a presentation at Wikimania this year (URL to slides below). While the slides do not explicitly mention categories, it shows readers rarely get to the bottom of an article, where the categories lurk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Which_parts_of_a_%28Wiki...
I don’t know if there is more information available on the topic, but hopefully as it was WMF Research, someone on this list may be able to point us to more info.
Kerry
From: WereSpielChequers [mailto:werespielchequers@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, 17 December 2018 1:26 AM To: Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
I've long seen categorisation on wikipedia as a way to bring articles to the attention of those who follow certain categories. During the cleanup of unreferenced biographies a few year ago this was a useful adjunct, with several wikiprojects cleaning up all the articles legitimately categorised for them. Some of the other Wikiprojects did at least go through and prod or speedy the non-notables and hoaxes in their areas.
I'm pretty sure it still operates that way, categorisation of an uncategorised article sometimes brings it to the attention of people who know the topic.
And of course where the article doesn't contain the words in the category, categorisation then improves search.
If like me you are a glass third full person categories make a useful contribution.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 at 22:21, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com> wrote: Pointy? I think you may misunderstand my use of the term “hostage”. I don’t use it with the meaning of abducting people for ransom, but in the sense of “subject to things beyond our control”.
I agree entirely that Wikipedia should serve its readers and to that end “To do” lists are compiled with the intention of giving adequate coverage of topics perceived to be needed. Yet, many of those “To do” lists are full of redlinks years later because we have volunteer contributors whose interests / expertise may not align with the perceived needs. Whereas if Wikipedia employed its writers, it could direct them to write articles about required topics. It would be a wonderful thing if we could harness the volunteer energy that goes into largely unproductive activities like endless category reorganisation (given studies show readers rarely look below the reference section and don’t see or use the categories) into writing content that is actually needed. But alas it is not so.
Kerry
From: Ziko van Dijk [mailto:zvandijk@gmail.commailto:zvandijk@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2018 3:32 AM To: Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.commailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>; Research into Wikimedia content and communities < wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Readers of Wikipedia
Hello,
Thanks for the link and the comments, Leila!
Am Fr., 14. Dez. 2018 um 00:44 Uhr schrieb Kerry Raymond < kerry.raymond@gmail.commailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com <mailto: kerry.raymond@gmail.commailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com> >:
hostage to the interests of their contributors (unless they actively remove the material). That is, you get the topics that the contributors are willing and able to write, no matter what the intention might be.
That's a very pointy expression: "Hostage to the interests of their contributors"! In fact, WP should serve recipients, but the reality is often different. We alreday saw that Article Feedback Tool as a means to find out what recipients think. I would be happy with a new, less ambitious approach, where we don't expect recipients to contribute to the improvement of content but just want to know their opinion.
By the way, the distincion of large and short articles I have found in Collison's "Encyclopedias through the ages" (or similar) from 1966. It is not very prominent in there, but I have elaborated on the idea in 2015, with a distinction of definition articles, exposition articles, longer articles and dissertations.
An encyclopedia with "short" articles - or a meaningful combination of the four types above - would fit well to the original concept of hypertext not being an actual set of texts (or nodes), but being an individual's specific learning strategy or reading path.
Federico: remember, most of the oldest German texts (Old High German) deal with Biblical topics... :-)
Kind regards
Ziko
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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