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,
to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course
corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me
and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process,
starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according
to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the
Board [1]:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero)
- Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams)
- Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity
I'm proposing the following initial schedule:
January:
- Editor Engagement Experiments
February:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (Contribs + Zero)
March:
- Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects)
- Funds Dissemination Committee
We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly
metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on
their recent progress, which will help set some context that would
otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will
also create open opportunities for feedback and questions.
My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly
review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as
meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this
discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here
which we can use to discuss the concept further:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…
The internal review will, at minimum, include:
Sue Gardner
myself
Howie Fung
Team members and relevant director(s)
Designated minute-taker
So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual
Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker.
I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a
duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks:
- Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter,
compared with goals
- Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would?
- Review of challenges, blockers and successes
- Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other
action items
- Buffer time, debriefing
Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved
structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases
where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world.
In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be
to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than
a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews
may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally
to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in
engineering.
As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can
help inform and support reviews across the organization.
Feedback and questions are appreciated.
All best,
Erik
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi folks,
While watching the current changes to Wikimedia France microgrants program
implemented, I was curious to know which Wikimedia entities had similar
funding programs for individuals - how they worked, how we could learn form
each other.
Since apparently there was no Meta page for that(tm) (yet!) I went ahead and
drafted <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jean-Frédéric/Funding_programs
>
I dug my information out of my email archives and FDC proposal forms, so I
could totally have missed some programs - please add the ones you know
about!
Of course, it would be more useful to have more detailed information on
every program.
Together with Caroline & Pierre-Selim we threw some ideas on what we
thought was interesting to know about the programs, but that's still very
alpha - please add more ideas!
Looking forward to your thoughts about this!
Cheers,
--
Jean-Frédéric
Wikimédia France
Hello community,
this is to inform you that in response to the trademarking of the
Wikimedia community logo[1], created in 2006 by Artur “WarX”
Fijałkowski, which was discussed on this mailing list[2] as well as on
Meta[3] back in March, a small group of community members—Artur, myself,
Federico Leva (Nemo) and John Vandenberg—have initiated a formal process
of opposition against the registration of the trademark by the
Foundation in order to *reclaim the logo* for unrestricted use by the
community.
We appreciate the Foundation’s protection of the other trademarks they
have registered so far, including the logos of Wikipedia, Wikisource and
some other sister projects. In the case of the community logo, however,
it is our belief that the Foundation’s actions are exactly opposite to
what the community logo stands for and contradict the purpose behind its
very existence.
We would like to make it clear that it is not our intention to damage
anyone; our actions are a challenge against what we perceive as
unilateral declaration of ownership of an asset that has always belonged
to the wider community, and not to one or another organisation that is
part of the movement. By formally opposing the registration of the
trademark we hope to ensure the history of this logo is not disregarded,
and we wish to protect the community against unnecessary bureaucracy
and, to use another quote, let “groups who do not purport to represent
the WMF”[4] to continue to be able to freely associate with a logo that
has been part of their identity for so long.
We also want to note that this is in no way a legal action against the
Foundation, but a simple notice of opposition against the registration
of the logo in the European Union. If we assume good faith, we can only
be confident that the WMF, having now a formal occasion, will withdraw
its registration of the logo rather than continue using movement
resources to force the community into lengthy, expensive proceedings.
We invite all community members interested in this issue to express
their opinions at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo/Reclaim_the_Logo
If any of you would like to help us in any way (covering the costs of
the opposition, promoting the discussion, etc.), please feel free to
contact us off–list.
Artur Fijalkowski (WarX)
Tomasz Kozlowski (odder)
Federico Leva (Nemo)
John Vandenberg (jayvdb)
== References ==
* [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg
* [2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124715.html
* [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo
* [4]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124730.html
Hi all,
for those of you who do not watch the RecentChanges on the Foundation
wiki <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges>, I
think it might be somehow surprising to see that in a top-level
decision, almost all volunteer administrators of the wiki have been
stripped off their adminship yesterday evening (UTC time).
As far as I know, community members have been helping out maintaining
this wiki for as long as 2006, spending countless hours of their free
time on categorising existing pages, importing translations from Meta,
and recently, deleting unnecessary and broken pages left over by WMF staff.
Apparently, this is something that not only isn't appreciated, but
unwelcome. Let me repeat that: the WMF does not wish volunteers to help
out with running their wiki, even if they have been helping out almost
since the very start of the wiki.
Some questions come to my mind right now:
1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members?
(I'm assuming it was Gayle, but it could've be someone from the
Communications department for all we know.)
2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed?
3) Why did you decide to desysop people straight away instead of
discussing things with them first?
These are questions directed at the WMF—for you regular folks, I have a
riddle (I'll give a WikiLove barnstar to the first person to submit a
correct answer). There is /at least/ one community member who does not
hold any official position within the WMF, and who has not been
desysopped in yesterday's purge—do you know who this person is?
-- Tomasz
Hi. :)
I wanted to let you know that James Forrester is holding a second set of
office hours to discuss VisualEditor. These are scheduled for 1700 UTC on 2
November and 0000 UTC on 3 November. For local time conversions, see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_hours and click on the starting time
As always, logs will be posted on Meta (same page) after each hour
completes.
Thanks!
Maggie
--
Maggie Dennis
Senior Community Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Dear all,
In our new education program with youngs in scholar difficulties, we have the problem that only half of the new accounts have the visual editor activated, it's quite annoying to have two teach two way of editing.
Is there a trick to force the activation of Visual Editor for a specific user?
Thanks
Charles
___________________________________________________________
Charles ANDRES, Chief Science Officer
"Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge –
www.wikimedia.ch
Skype: charles.andres.wmch
IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
Dear all,
The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday,
November 7, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC (11 AM PST). The IRC channel is
#wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net and the meeting will be broadcast as
a live YouTube stream.
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 the video recording publicly after the meeting.
Thank you,
Praveena
--
Praveena Maharaj
Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering and Product Development
+1 (415) 839 6885 ext. 6689
www.wikimedia.org
Dear fellow Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributors and users,
The issue at hand that has forced me to compose this address are the
pressing circumstances surrounding the Croatian language branch of
Wikipedia, which has become notoriously well known in the broader Wikipedia
community in recent months.
For some years now, a part of the administrators at Croatian language
Wikipedia have been operating as a cabal of sorts; the exact number of
members, the shape of this community and the extent of their doings
difficult to discern. For the last couple of months on Wikipedia there has
been an on-going prolonged dispute underway about abuse of administrator
privileges and breach of Wikipedia rules.
Three days ago, on 26 October 2013 and as a result of this dispute, one of
the contributors (Frano Milić[1]), who can safely be figured among those
who had avoided previous conflicts, called for a desysopping vote for the
three admins that seem to be have been the most involved with the current
issues regarding the project.
[2] Immediately after this, SpeedyGonsales, one of the admins whose
privileges were about to be put to vote and who had already been reported
for promotion of fascism, breach of rules and abuse of administrative
tools, now being in a conflict of interests, brought to a halt the voting
process on his own initiative on the pretext of "lack of evidence" [3].
After the part of the admins who were not members of the cabal expressed
their support for the mechanics allowing the community to express their
opinions in a process of vote, a revert war broke out on the vote page and
sitenotice.
[4] SpeedyGonsales, the administrator whose work was under scrutiny and
privileges put to the vote, now with other admins who we believe are
members of the cabal, initiated the process of "admin poll request" (a
process somewhat unique to Croatian Wikipedia, which is aimed at gathering
opinions and decisions of the college of admins). It was an attempt to use
orchestrated voting to silence those admins who supported the continuation
of the desysopping vote. The presumed purpose was to attempt to win enough
votes to either block those opposing him or desysop them in order to
disable the continuation of the desysopping vote against him and the two of
his colleagues.
The overall sentiment of the community was evidently strongly inclined to
vote which became clear when the voting recommenced as soon as the lock on
the vote page had been lifted. However, under the current circumstances the
process has been severely disturbed and it is not certain that the wish of
the community would be respected.
For the picture to be complete, one piece of information is crucial. The
administrators who have expressed their resistance against the spirit of
the cabal and the dictatorship are under a lot of pressure as they are
harassed by e-mails and texting. The messages vary in content but as a
general rule they contain little niceties.
If the issue we are dealing with is not resolved very soon, if not
immediately, a large number of contributors will simply leave the project.
As we are all aware, the admins are hobbyists and not activists and their
capacity for conflict and unpleasantries are limited. They are unable to
resolve the problems without your assistance.
And the problems they face have been in the making for many years, but it
has taken a while for the community to unite and gather strength to deal
with these issues. Now we are witnessing an almost unique situation on
Wikipedia - that the community has made a decision and gained the required
strength to get rid of all internal cabals. Stopping the process now would
spell a disaster for the entire project - it would send a message of
encouragement to anyone willing to usurp sysop privileges in the future.
Additionally, the admins who have expressed dissent over the accumulated
problems at Croatian Wikipedia have managed to accurately pinpoint the
administrators responsible for the ridiculously low quality of certain
articles, and the public and the media have recognized the overall
soundness of the Wiki project and that the work lacking in quality is to be
attributed to the minority of administrators-usurpers. However, we fear
that the positive momentum might be lost now, if the process is stopped,
and the critical public and media eye might see the current situation as
reflective of the entire Wiki project’s quality.
Please, lend aid any way you can
Dalibor Bosits
[1] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posebno:Doprinosi/Frano_Mili%C4%87
[2]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijed…
[3]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijed…
has initiated full protection of the page, trying to stop
the voting)
[4]
https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Zahtjev_za_mi%C5%A1ljenje_administ…
