Wikimedia-l December 2009

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76 participants
39 discussions

[Foundation-l] Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery
by Brian J Mingus 09 Sep '22

09 Sep '22

This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The [[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age (based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :* Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information. :* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. = Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]], [[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]], [[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion / Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together, Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five Stars Dominate Ratings" http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html… I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system is well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot). :* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page 262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has has this much of these surface and these latent features. = References = - DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…> - Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
by GerardM 09 Aug '22

09 Aug '22

Hoi, I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most excellent bit of news. The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics. What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should approve yet another language :) NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus... Thanks, GerardM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org> Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875. Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org> Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org> Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project <reviews(a)linguistlist.org> Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/ The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, and donations from subscribers and publishers. Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org> ================================================================ To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html ===========================Directory============================== 1) Date: 18-Jun-2007 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers -------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers Dear subscribers, As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the "Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this at: http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm. The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity of our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit more leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on the Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely organizational one. We will: *Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or pages that need improvement; *Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified as "in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any references or sources," etc; *Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or articles; *Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia; *Keep track of our project Wikipedians; *Keep track of revisions and new entries; *Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's efforts. We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us all get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an area needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of Linguists page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and information added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort, please respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which linguistics entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our campaign on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we will share with you soon. This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The end result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth and depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate prospective students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on what we do. Please consider participating. Sincerely, Hannah Morales Editor, Wikipedia Update Project Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable ----------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831

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[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek reconstructed an analysis of a proposal for a new Wikipedia
by Gerard Meijssen 21 Sep '11

21 Sep '11

Hoi, There is a request for a Wikipedia in Ancient Greek. This request has so far been denied. A lot of words have been used about it. Many people maintain their positions and do not for whatever reason consider the arguments of others. In my opinion their are a few roadblocks. - Ancient Greek is an ancient language - the policy does not allow for it - Text in ancient Greek written today about contemporary subjects require the reconstruction of Ancient Greek. - it requires the use of existing words for concepts that did not exist at the time when the language was alive - neologisms will be needed to describe things that did not exist at the time when the language was alive - modern texts will not represent the language as it used to be - Constructed and by inference reconstructed languages are effectively not permitted We can change the policy if there are sufficient arguments, when we agree on a need. When a text is written in reconstructed ancient Greek, and when it is clearly stated that it is NOT the ancient Greek of bygone days, it can be obvious that it is a great tool to learn skills to read and write ancient Greek but that it is in itself not Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek as a language is ancient. I have had a word with people who are involved in the working group that deals with the ISO-639, I have had a word with someone from SIL and it is clear that a proposal for a code for "Ancient Greek reconstructed" will be considered for the ISO-639-3. For the ISO-639-6 a code is likely to be given because a clear use for this code can be given. We can apply for a code and as it has a use bigger then Wikipedia alone it clearly has merit. With modern texts clearly labelled as distinct from the original language, it will be obvious that innovations a writers needs for his writing are legitimate. This leaves the fact that constructed and reconstructed languages are not permitted because of the notion that mother tongue users are required. In my opinion, this has always been only a gesture to those people who are dead set against any and all constructed languages. In the policies there is something vague "*it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion (this requirement is being discussed by the language subcommittee <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee>)."* It is vague because even though the policy talks about a discussion, it is killed off immediately by stating "The proposal has a sufficient number of living native speakers to form a viable community and audience." In my opinion, this discussion for criteria for the acceptance of constructed or reconstructed languages has not happened. Proposals for objective criteria have been ignored. In essence, to be clear about it: - We can get a code for reconstructed languages. - We need to change the policy to allow for reconstructed and constructed languages We need to do both in order to move forward. The proposal for objective criteria for constructed and reconstructed languages is in a nutshell: - The language must have an ISO-639-3 code - We need full WMF localisation from the start - The language must be sufficiently expressive for writing a modern encyclopaedia - The Incubator project must have sufficiently large articles that demonstrate both the language and its ability to write about a wide range of topics - A sufficiently large group of editors must be part of the Incubator project Thanks, GerardM

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[Foundation-l] Office hours next Thursday, November 19
by Cary Bass 20 Jul '10

20 Jul '10

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello all! Next Thursday's office hours will feature Véronique Kessler, the Foundation's Chief Financial Officer. If you don't know Naoko, you can get to know her at <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/V%C3%A9ronique_Kessler>. Office hours on Thursday are from 2100 to 2200 UTC (3:00 PM - 4:00 PM PDT). If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat using a web browser: First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at <http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join. Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning. It should be all right. Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other relevant email lists you happen to be on. Also note, this is Veronique's first foray into IRC, so lets show her how welcoming we can be! :-) - -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksDQcwACgkQyQg4JSymDYl+wACcCsTgIUtThC4agEUwC9533olx 61cAn1titMJqMmNt4GESgoQ9U5sQMFM7 =1DvA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[Foundation-l] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research
by phoebe ayers 21 Jan '10

21 Jan '10

Possibly of interest to Wikimedians: the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting public comment on making federally funded scientific research open access. The deadline is Jan. 7. ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "Charles W. Bailey, Jr." <cwbailey(a)digital-scholarship.com> To: sts-l(a)ala.org Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:50:30 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: [STS-L] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research The Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting input regarding enhanced access to federally funded science and technology research results, including the possibility of open access to them. Comments can be e-mailed to publicaccess(a)ostp.gov. The deadline for comments is January 7, 2010. Here's an excerpt from the announcement (http://bit.ly/5J1ZAp): Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to peer reviewed publications arising from federal research. Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but are not limited to, the following (please respond to questions individually): 1. How do authors, primary and secondary publishers, libraries, universities, and the federal government contribute to the development and dissemination of peer reviewed papers arising from federal funds now, and how might this change under a public access policy? 2. What characteristics of a public access policy would best accommodate the needs and interests of authors, primary and secondary publishers, libraries, universities, the federal government, users of scientific literature, and the public? 3. Who are the users of peer-reviewed publications arising from federal research? How do they access and use these papers now, and how might they if these papers were more accessible? Would others use these papers if they were more accessible, and for what purpose? 4. How best could federal agencies enhance public access to the peer-reviewed papers that arise from their research funds? What measures could agencies use to gauge whether there is increased return on federal investment gained by expanded access? 5. What features does a public access policy need to have to ensure compliance? 6. What version of the paper should be made public under a public access policy (e.g., the author's peer reviewed manuscript or the final published version)? What are the relative advantages and disadvantages to different versions of a scientific paper? 7. At what point in time should peer-reviewed papers be made public via a public access policy relative to the date a publisher releases the final version? Are there empirical data to support an optimal length of time? Should the delay period be the same or vary for levels of access (e.g., final peer reviewed manuscript or final published article, access under fair use versus alternative license), for federal agencies and scientific disciplines? 8. How should peer-reviewed papers arising from federal investment be made publicly available? In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search, find, and retrieve and to make it easy for others to link to it? Are there existing digital standards for archiving and interoperability to maximize public benefit? How are these anticipated to change? 9. Access demands not only availability, but also meaningful usability. How can the federal government make its collections of peer- reviewed papers more useful to the American public? By what metrics (e.g., number of articles or visitors) should the Federal government measure success of its public access collections? What are the best examples of usability in the private sector (both domestic and international)? And, what makes them exceptional? Should those who access papers be given the opportunity to comment or provide feedback? In "The Obama Administration Wants OA for Federally-Funded Research" (http://bit.ly/8fZ6Yh), Peter Suber says: "This is big. We already have important momentum in Congress for FRPAA. The question here is about separate action from the White House. What OA policies should President Obama direct funding agencies to adopt? This is the first major opening to supplement legislative action with executive action to advance public access to publicly-funded research. It's also the first explicit sign that President Obama supports the OA policy at the NIH and wants something similar at other federal agencies." In "Please Comment on Mandate Proposal by President Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)" (http://bit.ly/8OQUEF), Stevan Harnad provides his answers to the OSTP's questions. -- Best Regards, Charles Charles W. Bailey, Jr. Publisher, Digital Scholarship http://bit.ly/Z6HFx

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[Foundation-l] Fundraising banners
by Nathan 31 Dec '09

31 Dec '09

Hi folks, just curious - is the appeal from Jimmy going to be the standard banner for the remainder of the fundraiser? Congratulations, by the way, on the success of the drive thus far - it has raised 92% of the annual goal, or $6.498M, according to the fundraiser statistics page. Despite early hiccups with the banner content, this fundraiser appears to be (by a wide margin) the most successful in Wikimedia's history. Nathan

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[Foundation-l] strategic planning office hours tomorrow
by Eugene Eric Kim 30 Dec '09

30 Dec '09

Hi everyone, The next strategic planning office hours are: Tuesday from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is: Tuesday, 12-1pm PST Tuesday, 3pm-4pm EST There has been a lot of tremendous work on the strategy wiki the past few months, and Task Forces are starting to finish up their work. Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's happened as well as the work to come. As always, you can access the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine. More details at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours Thanks! Hope to see many of you there. =Eugene -- ====================================================================== Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/=eekim Blue Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/ ======================================================================

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[Foundation-l] Board seat reappointments
by Michael Snow 28 Dec '09

28 Dec '09

A bit of housekeeping, but just to let everyone know: Jan-Bart de Vreede, Jimmy Wales, Stu West, and Matt Halprin have all been appointed to additional one-year terms for 2010, by unanimous votes of their fellow board members. I look forward to working with all of them as we continue with the strategic planning process and am grateful for their willingness to serve on the board. --Michael Snow

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[Foundation-l] commercial use of wikipedia content
by Istvan Soos 27 Dec '09

27 Dec '09

Hi, I'm evaluating our legal options around commercially using wikipedia content, if this is not the right forum, please let me know / forward the question. It might be that the method I describe is not legally possible, so if there is any similar situation that does or does not work, please let me know either. I'd like to play safe in this field and avoid potential issues. For the sake of example we would like to automatically convert the page content to a different text and different format (e.g. automatically create text extracts and compile it into a pdf document) and sell it as part of a subscription service or even better as a standalone product. We include all the attributions / links wherever possible, and mark that the source of the product is Wikipedia. What else are we required to do before the sell can happen? Is there any fee or percentage that shall go back to mediawiki foundation in such cases? Can we restrict the copy or re-distribution of such product? For the later, I suppose there is nothing we can do, however this seems to ruin the whole business model, doesn't it? Thank you for your help, Istvan

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[Foundation-l] Case Study: Fan History’s Proposal For Being Acquired by the WMF
by Laura Hale 23 Dec '09

23 Dec '09

This was posted to the Strategy wiki but I don't think I ever mentioned it on list. The case study itself can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf . The blog entry about the case study can be found at http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=1103 . Sincerely, Laura Hale

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Wikimedia-l December 2009