Wikimedia-l December 2011

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134 participants
104 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] just wondering, are we going to take down en.wikipedia.org?
by Domas Mituzas 16 Jan '12

16 Jan '12

Hi! we recently did some practice on italian wikipedia, are we going to protest IP legislation in US by taking down English Wikipedia? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/disastrous-ip-legislation-back-%E2%80… Domas

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[Foundation-l] Blink tag jokes are now obsolete.
by geni 13 Jan '12

13 Jan '12

We appear to have actual blinking ads. Unfortunate. Still I suppose the occasion should be marked. -- geni

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Poland to start a travelling POTY pictures exhibition in Warsaw (an announcement)
by Tomasz Kozłowski 12 Jan '12

12 Jan '12

[I am crossposting this announcement to two mailing lists, feel free to pick up the topic on either of them.] Dear All, I am--yet again!--delighted to announce that Wikimedia Polska, the Polish chapter of the WMF, is organising a travelling exhibition of the winning POTY contest pictures. 16 images chosen by Wikimedians from all over the world in the annual POTY contests from 2006 onwards are going to be shown at exhibitions in various places around Poland. As some of you may recall, the exhibition premièred during the 10th anniversary of the Polish Wikipedia conference, having been visited by a few hundred visitors in just two weeks; some images from the pubic viewing of the exhibition are available on Wikimedia Commons at <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Picture_of_the_Year_exhibition_-…>. Our first stop is Przystanek Książka (a Polish wordplay for "Book Break"), a media library of the Public Library of the district of Ochota in Warsaw. The exhibition starts on Monday, November 28, and will remain until the end of the year. 16 pictures, the best of the best of the Wikimedia movement, will be shown in an exhibition open for the public, with descriptions available in Polish, English and German. For those of you currently living in Warsaw or going to visit the capital in the upcoming weeks: the library is located at 42 Grójecka Street, just two tram stops (and 8 minutes) away from the Warsaw Central railway station (tram lines "9" and "25"), and is open on working days from 10 AM until 7 PM (2 PM-7 PM on Wednesdays). We are still looking for more organisations and institutions willing to hold the exhibition--if there's anyone from the neighbouring (European) countries willing to get involved or just looking for some information, feel free to approach me at <tomasz.kozlowski @ wikimedia.pl>. We hope to have a great event, and even if you can't visit the exhibition, please keep your fingers crossed that it goes well, and spread the news! PS For those going to take a peek at the exhibition _in real life_, there's also a Facebook event: <https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=100219446762276>. Regards, -- Tomasz Kozłowski | [[user:odder]]

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[Foundation-l] Intellectual property policy for open organisations
by John Vandenberg 08 Jan '12

08 Jan '12

There are an increasing number of organisations which have indicated that their output is Creative Commons by default, however there are not as many that have a public IP policy which clearly allows staff to publish "their" work. i.e. We have moved from the IP policy being the stick used to prevent openness, and the "work for hire" and "publish process" are the next frontier. A few staff at University of Canberra (UC) have written an IP policy proposal which clearly gives staff ownership of their work, and requires CC licensing if their staff use organisational infrastructure to create their work. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/Proposed_policy_on_in… Otago Polytechnic adopted an IP policy like that in 2007. http://wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic/Intellectual_property Are there other examples, within or outside academia, where the organisation empowers its staff by providing a policy which clarifies when "work for hire" principle is enforced in this murky world of online collaboration? Does the WMF have an intellectual property policy for works created by WMF employees? Employees edit and upload using free licenses under their own name, but does the copyright belong to the employee or to the WMF? Is anyone in our community going to: Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest Washington College of Law American University, Washington, DC August 25-27, 2011 http://infojustice.org/public-events/global-congress -- John Vandenberg

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[Foundation-l] Software idea: a "Wikipedia Explorer" that lets you browse Wikipedia and more
by Yao Ziyuan 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

Remember there was MSN Explorer (desktop software) that let you browse MSN and use MSN services such as Hotmail? Remember Google Earth (desktop software) that lets you browse the Earth and provides additional services based on the Earth? We can also make a "Wikipedia Explorer" (desktop software) that lets you browse Wikipedia AND provides an added layer that enables users to: * Chat/discuss with other users interested in the same topic (Wikipedia article). * Announce/find resources related to a topic (products, books, jobs, anything). * More. I intend to see such a "Wikipedia Explorer" developed, or personally develop it. Any comments?

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[Foundation-l] Celebrating the 2011 campaign
by Erik Moeller 02 Jan '12

02 Jan '12

Hello all, I just want to send a note to celebrate the enormous success of the 2011 fundraiser. It used to be the case that I was pretty involved in the annual campaign. For the last two fundraiser, Zack Exley's been running the show, and I'm enormously impressed by and proud of what he and his team have been able to accomplish. When we prepared the budget for 2011-12, I worried that we'd need to cross new lines in order to generate that much revenue. The 2010 campaign already felt like we were hitting the ceiling of how much can be raised from a large number of individual donations. Last year, we were showing Jimmy's face and appeals in many different variations through much of the fundraiser. We had tried some pretty aggressive banners, like these ones: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&tem… http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&tem… http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&tem… http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&tem… Jimmy certainly didn't crave this level of attention, but he was a good sport and gave his approval. The campaign was tremendously successful. But after it was over, we weren't just worried that our readers might be feeling "Jimmy fatigue", we were all feeling it, including, I'm sure, Jimmy himself. But it simply remains true that people strongly identify with him, and that his appeals tend to motivate people to give more clearly than anything else. So it was with some anxiety that we approached the 2011 campaign. Zack isn't the kind of person who makes a grand master plan and then sticks to it, so until it played out, I really didn't know what the 2011 campaign would look like. Instead of dreaming up plans, though, Zack and team had spent the months leading up to the fundraiser A/B testing and experimenting with ways to shorten the fundraiser and reduce our reliance on a single message/message-bearer. And so they learned tons of stuff: How long an appeal needed to be to work, what kind of photo/lighting/background was effective, what payment process would work, etc. And there was the usual usability testing, optimization of donations forms, etc. This, by the way, told us that we didn't need graphically obnoxious banners -- the simple text on plain white with a photo worked just fine. (But it needed to be the right kind of photo, and yes, moving it to the left helped as well.) And Zack hired storytellers, not an uncontroversial idea at the time, whose job it would be to go out there and collect the most compelling personal stories from people in our movement, wherever they may be and whatever role they may play. This allowed us to share lots of those stories, both through the testing and then through the actual fundraiser itself. There's more -- prior to the campaign, the tech team worked enormously hard to integrate a new payment system, GlobalCollect. This would allow us to accept payments not just in all major currencies, but also through bank transfer, direct debit, and country-specific payment methods: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en This, too, in combination with more effectively organized efforts by hundreds of volunteer translators, meant that banner impressions that were previously wasted (because people had no way to actually donate) were now going to turn into support for our work. All the testing and infrastructure improvements meant that the first day of the fundraiser was our most effective day ever, by far. And it meant that we could raise our goal in less time than before. We've also turned off the banners for registered users in record time, and for the first time disabled banners for anyone making a donation. But most importantly it allowed us to share appeals like these: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/22/who-is-asking-you-to-donate-to-wikiped… These letters help people understand what Wikimedia is about through many different voices, metaphors and experiences. The story of an editor like Sengai Podhuvanar from India, or of a donor like Akshaya Iyengar, or Ward Cunningham's own story. The storytellers worked hard to capture the essence of these voices, so that they would be heard loud and clear. The team could have chosen to use that time to show more effective Jimmy banners, or to pick one or two other banners and focus the entire campaign on them. Instead it sacrificed short term revenue impact for a more diverse and interesting campaign. Years ago, we used to worry that people wouldn't/didn't understand that Wikimedia is a non-profit, that it's created by volunteers, that it's international/multilingual. Many misconceptions still exist, but for anyone paying attention, we've demolished them. I know that everyone involved is enormously proud of working their butts off for Wikimedia and making this endeavor successful. I am, in turn, really pleased and grateful with where we are as we enter the new year. Not only do we have more resources at our disposal than ever to succeed -- we've firmly established that Wikimedia is a new kind of organization, a new kind of movement. With more than a million people joining this year to support us, we're continuing to make history together. Thanks to everyone involved in making it happen (including, not to forget, the participating Wikimedia chapters), and to all who've supported Wikimedia this year. :-) Happy 2012, Erik

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Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 93, Issue 61
by Craig Franklin 01 Jan '12

01 Jan '12

> Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:52:03 +0100 > From: Jan Ku?era <kozuch82(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia's secret wikis > To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Message-ID: > <CA+n47W+4F+KkwrvPvAXqFyfeo1LJpFm7OMOUaYzp4vcTmiUChQ(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > I see following wikis hold secred information: > > http://internal.wikimedia.org > http://office.wikimedia.org > http://board.wikimedia.org > > Imagine a world in which every single human being can NOT freely share in > the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. > Having access to some of these "secret" Wikis, let me assure you that the content of most of them is banal, dull, and there are no juicy chunks of conspiratorial information in there. But they also contain the sort of information that can't go into the public sphere, such as private contact details and other information. But then again, I suppose that's just what I *would* say, right? Cheers, Craig Franklin

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation's 2010-11 Annual Report
by Seb35 31 Dec '11

31 Dec '11

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:29:51 -0800, Jay Walsh <jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > The Wikimedia Foundation is happy to announce the release of the 2010-11 > Annual Report, which is now posted on the WMF Wiki at > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report Thanks for this beautiful Annual Report :) Much appreciated also the translations! I have two points I would like see to happen in the process of the creation of this report: * a proofread by the community before the final issue; perhaps I missed it, but I didn’t find anything on foundation-l; for example it has been remarked a typo on the second page "Jean Javier" -> "Jean Janvier", corrected in the wiki version * a proofread of the translated versions; I didn’t noticed anything on translation-l; I noticed a couple of translation errors in the French version (example: "155 millions of edits" -> "155 millions de textes", but "textes" = "texts", "edits" = "éditions") I know it’s quite difficult to synchronize PDF versions and wiki versions, but I find it’s worth trying. Sébastien

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Wikimedia-l December 2011