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…>
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
Hi folks,
a quick update on the launch of a travel project under the WMF
umbrella, and the import of the existing Wikivoyage site.
* The name of the new site will be wikivoyage.org, per community vote.
Language domains will live at (foo).wikivoyage.org.
* A mailing list has been set up at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivoyage-l
* We're not planning to import "Wikivoyage Shared" (which is a media
repository similar to Commons) and are encouraging the community to
help with transferring appropriately licensed files to Wikimedia
Commons.
* The Wikivoyage Association is currently finalizing details of a
domain name transfer with WMF. They have also recently secured
wikivoyage.com.
* The technical launch team at WMF consists of Chris Steipp, Daniel
Zahn, Sam Reed, Matthias Mullie, and myself. Everyone is encouraged to
help. Technical updates will be posted to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_migration and related pages.
We're using #wikimedia-wikivoyage on irc.freenode.net to coordinate,
so feel free to join us there any time and use it for other related
issues.
* We've received a tarball of extensions running on the Wikivoyage
sites, have imported them into Wikimedia's Git repo, and are currently
reviewing them and making changes where needed to ensure they're ready
for WMF. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikivoyage_migration/Extensions
for a list of extensions if you want to help (and feel free to comment
on the priorities suggested by the Wikivoyage folks)
We may not be able to deploy all extensions; we're using the two week
time-box for the launch as the main forcing function.
* The hairiest part is to properly migrate user accounts. We can only
migrate with users' permission, so Wikivoyage will kick off an opt-in
process shortly to ask users to consent to transferring their private
account data. On the WMF side, we have to reconcile account names with
existing ones and require renames if necessary.
We'll set up an initially private test instance in Labs and iterate
over it with a (possibly reduced) content import, to ensure that all
the tricky legal bits (e.g. attribution) are handled correctly. Then
we'll set up the production cluster wikis.
* Our goal is to go live by the end of this month. That might slip
depending on the domain name transfer and unexpected technical hurdles
or emergencies on the WMF side. We will aim to minimize downtime for
current users, and to ensure that the old sites can be available in
read-only mode for a little while longer to make it possible to
compare site behavior.
Let me know if you have any questions about the process. :-)
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Tim Starling wrote:
> According to ru.wp Arbcom member DR, the danger to Wikipedia was
> overstated, and the text of the proposed law was misrepresented.
I think that the interpretation to the bill given by DR is incorrect. In fact the proposed bill was not only about child pornography and extremism, but also about drugs and, about “information, prompting children to commit actions, making threat to their life and health”. That was a very loose clause, that could ban virtually anything. After the blackout this clause was removed from the bill and it is a clear achievement of the strike. On the other hand the final version of the bill contains another clause, that is even more hazardous to us. It is about “information of methods of producing and use of narcotic substances, … of methods and places of cultivation of narcotic plants”. We do have information of drug synthesis on Wikipedia, ways of its use (e.g. marijuana) and we do have thorough instructions of marijuana cultivation on wikibooks. That is why our achievements are ambiguous. On the one hand we have a removal of a loose clause about information harmful to children, but on the otherwe now have another clause that is even more dangerous. That is why we are still trying to do what we can via our contacts within the authorities to revise the passed bill.
But that is not all. The most important issue is extremism. According to the bill, the materials, that are banned for distribution in Russia should be included to the register of banned information on the ground of the court decision, banning the distribution of that information in Russia. We already have such court decisions and a list of extremist materials, distribution of which is prohibited in Russia. That list contains some really nasty materials, as e.g. nazi propaganda, but also Islamic texts (including those of famous non-terrorist Islamic authors e.g. Said Nursî), Saentologist, Jehova’s witnesses , Falun Gong, letters and materials of opposition in Russia, works of contemporary art, etc.
We *do have* banned extremist materials in Wikipedia. E.g. this image:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Александр_Савко_Путешествия_Микки_Мауса_п… искусства.jpeg
is considered extremist and is banned for distribution in Russia. (Hopefully it was uploaded two years before it was regulated as banned by the court).
This letter in wikisource is also considered extremist:
http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Всем,_кто_сочувствует_жертвам_бесланского_тер…!
This is enough for banning the IPs of Wikimedia projects in Russia. And I am really afraid of this.
I guess DR is aware of discussion on this list, but anyway I will inform him of it. Maybe he has something to add.
> According to Levg in his Arbcom application, again via Google
> Translate, "It should be noted that there are no objective reasons for
> such a 'sprint survey' did not exist, to discuss the bill on second
> reading has been known since at least last Friday."
That is our fault that we could not manage to get the information in time. The first hearing was on Friday, but the community and myself got to know about the problem only on Monday, 9th. What for me personally I haven’t read the news on the weekend (yes, it is bad, that I relaxed on the weekend and haven’t read the news), and I failed to get to know about the problem in time. I guess it is also true for others. If we start to organize on Friday, the result would be better. It is a fault, but anyway it was not a deliberate fault, as nobody has informed the community earlier.
Forwarding questions from Research-l with permission, with the hope that these will spark discussion here on Wikimedia-l.
RJensen:
"Comments: I have not seen any editor make actual use of the Article
Feedback tool -- are there examples? Yes Wikipedians are very proud
of their vast half-billion-person audience. However they do not ask
"what features are most useful for a high school student or teacher/
a university student/ etc""
Pine:
This is a very interesting question. What have been the benefits of AFT5? I
have seen complaints about spam and suppressible material being written in
AFT5. What benefits has it had?
Thanks,
Pine
Hi all,
we have just launched the Foundation's 2012 editor survey; with
invitations to participate being shown to logged-in users on Wikipedia
and Commons.
A few quick facts about the survey (for more refer to
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012
):
* This is the third survey of editors as envisaged in the Foundation's
2010-15 strategic plan "in order to take the pulse of the community
and identify pressing issues or concerns", after the April 2011 and
December 2011 surveys.
* The first main purpose of this survey is to continue the work of the
2011 studies (conducted by Mani Pande and Ayush Khanna), with a focus
on tracking changes since last year and identifying trends.
Which is why many questions are being repeated from last time.
* The second emphasis in this instance of the survey is to measure the
satisfaction of the editing community with the work of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
* This is the first editor survey that includes a non-Wikipedia
project (Commons, for the questions that are non Wikipedia-specific).
* Thanks to everyone who commented on the draft questionnaire after we
solicited feedback on this list and in and IRC office hour, as well as
to those who commented about the last survey. We made several changes
based on the feedback, and tried to reply to all concerns.
* Also many thanks to all volunteer translators who reviewed or
contributed translations; the questionnaire is available in 14
languages (Italian, Polish and Portuguese will launch a bit later).
* As with the previous two surveys, the results will be published in
the following forms: A "topline" report detailing the percentage of
responses for each question, a series of posts on
https://blog.wikimedia.org analyzing the results, and a data set
consisting of anonymized responses which others can use to do their
own analyses. This time we will also aim to produce language-specific
topline reports (an approach we already tested for Chinese with the
data from the December 2011 survey).
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Heya folks :)
Denny and I will be doing another round of Wikidata office hours. You
can come and ask your questions about Wikidata - technical and
non-technical. The next ones will be:
* 5. November at 17:30 UTC
(http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=17&min=30&sec=0&d…)
in German
* 6. November at 17:30 UTC
(http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=17&min=30&sec=0&d…)
in English
Both of them will happen on IRC in #wikimedia-office on freenode. Logs
will be published afterwards for everyone who can't attend.
I hope to see many of you there.
Cheers
Lydia
PS: Don't forget the Wikidata Main Page design that needs your hand:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2012-October/001104.html
;-)
--
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
Community Communications for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Obentrautstr. 72
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Hi folks,
I'm pleased to announced that the next WMF metrics and activities
meeting is going to be the first one that'll be live-streamed on
YouTube with an open IRC backchannel.
The meeting will take place November 1, 2012 at 5:30 PM UTC. The IRC
channel is #wikimedia-metrics-meetings [1] on irc.freenode.net.
The current structure of the meeting is:
* Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also
specialized reports and analytics
* Review of financials
* Welcoming recent hires
* Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest
priority initiatives
* Update and Q&A with the Executive Director, if available
Please review https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
for further information about how to participate.
We'll post IRC logs and the video recording publicly after the meeting.
All best,
Erik
[1] I'm open to just using #wikimedia or another channel if folks
would prefer that, but didn't want to assume that it's OK to hog the
channel :)
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
I agree with Denny’s point about COIs in this discussion, and I believe that the same issue has been raised regarding the FDC.
I find it helpful when people who have financial interests or other potential COIs disclose that information in their statements on that Meta page and/or in Wikimedia-l depending on where they make their comments, and I would be in favor of a policy requiring that potential conflicts of interest be disclosed in a situation like this. These potential COIs include being a staff member of WMF whose budget or employment would be affected positively or negatively by these proposed changes.
In my own case, I'm not a fellow or aspiring fellow, chapter executive, paid researcher, or WMF staff person whose department would be affected by these proposed changes, so I believe that as far as my own comments are concerned, I can speak without a financial interest in the outcome of the discussion.
If we operate by consensus instead of by mere vote-counting, and if editors and WMF staff participate in good faith, then hopefully there will be enough balancing and give-and-take negotiation among those with COIs for a supermajority consensus to solidify. The other option is to ask for people who don’t have potential COIs to make a decision based on the opinions and information provided by others. However, this may all be a moot issue since it appears to me that Sue, a few of her chosen associates, and the Board apparently intend to make decisions themselves, so the community discussion on that Meta talk page will be used for discussion but not for finalizing a decision. Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken.
Pine