Dear all,
thanks a lot for your warm welcomes on- and off-list. I'm really excited to
run this project and I'm very much looking forward to talking to many
interesting people, to collecting stories and to creating a snap-shot of
the Wikimedia movement.
We are setting up the first test interviews and scheduling
stakeholder interviews for the Wikimania. If you have questions you would
like us to ask stakeholders and chapters, please share them with us:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chapters_Dialogue#Draft_research_quest…
If you are attending the pre-conference in Hong Kong, you can join us on
Thursday from 10am-2pm. We will introduce the project and host an open
discussion round where you can pose questions, provide feedback and bring
in your own ideas.
You can contact me via my talk page or vie email kira.kraemer(a)wikimedia.de
We'll keep you posted about the course of the project.
Talk soon
Kira
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Nicole Ebber <nicole.ebber(a)wikimedia.de
> >wrote:
>
> > Dear Wikimedia friends,
> >
> > we are now ready to kick-off the Chapters Dialogue[1] project and I
> > would like to give you an update about the current situation and the
> > next steps.
> >
> > The Chapters Dialogue is a structured assessment of chapters needs,
> > goals and stories combined with a stakeholder survey. The goal is to
> > gain an overview in the universe of Wikimedia chapters and their
> > numerous stakeholders (WMF, FDC, AffCom, WCA, local communities) and
> > to uncover existing stories about how the chapters define themselves
> > and their roles in the international movement and what interests they
> > have and what challenges they might face. It will not only allow us to
> > reflect the status quo of our roles and relationships, but will enable
> > us to actively shape them in the future.
> >
> > For the next six month, we will collaborate with Design Thinking[2] &
> > User Research expert Kira Krämer who will facilitate the collection of
> > stories and insights. She has three years professional experience with
> > the Design Thinking methodology, both running projects based on the
> > user-centered approach and teaching the method to different types of
> > organizations. Kira is not a Wikimedian which provides us with a
> > neutral perspective of a researcher, without a personal Wikimedia
> > history and agenda. Together, we will design, realise and evaluate the
> > project.
> >
> >
> > == What will happen? ==
> >
> > We have listed a first collection of questions and topics we would
> > like to discuss with chapters and stakeholders on the Chapters
> > Dialogue talk page[4].
> >
> > On top of that, we will start getting in touch with stakeholders and
> > chapters to ask for their input, feedback and ideas directly.
> >
> > You can also meet us at Wikimania in Hong Kong: We will be present at
> > the Wikimania pre-conference from August 6 on and in the Chapters
> > Village[3] throughout the whole conference. We have planned following
> > activities:
> >
> > * inform about Chapters Dialogue
> > * discuss and exchange with as many people as possible
> > * collect feedback, ideas and inspiration
> > * conduct the first stakeholder interviews
> > * conduct at least three test-interviews with chapters
> > * open discussion round on Thursday (pre-conference, tbc)
> > * thematic meet-up in the Chapters Village on Saturday at 3.30 - 4.00 pm
> > [4]
> >
> > From mid August, after adjusting the project according to the
> > collected feedback, we will start interviewing chapters, either
> > on-site and in person or via video conferences. We would really love
> > to be able to interview as many chapters as possible and are hoping
> > for your collaboration in arranging dates and meetings.
> >
> > We are quite excited about now finally kicking-off this project and
> > look forward to working together with Kira and a lot of Wikimedia
> > people to make it a success. Come and join the discussion, contribute
> > your knowledge and curiosity, engage, discuss, participate – we’re
> > looking forward to meeting you.
> >
> > You can either engage on the talk page or get in touch directly with
> > Kira (kira.kraemer(a)wikimedia.de) and me.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Nicole
> >
> >
> > [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Dialogue
> > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking
> > [3] https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Village
> > [4]
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chapters_Dialogue#Draft_research_quest…
> > [5]
> >
> https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Village#afternoon_coffee_…
> >
> > --
> > Nicole Ebber
> > International Affairs
> >
> > Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
> > Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0
> >
> > http://wikimedia.de
> >
> > Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
> > Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
> > unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
> > Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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>
>
--
Kira Kraemer
Chapters Dialogue
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0
http://wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
(This press release is also posted online at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Aircel_partners_with_Wik…)
Aircel partners with Wikimedia Foundation to offer free mobile
Wikipedia access through Wikipedia Zero
[Aircel subscribers to be the first in India to have free access to
Wikipedia on their mobile phones]
SAN FRANCISCO and NEW DELHI -- July 25, 2013: Aircel and the Wikimedia
Foundation today announced a partnership to offer Wikipedia on mobile
phones without any data charges to Aircel customers. The alliance is
aimed at making knowledge available on Wikipedia accessible to all
Aircel customers in both rural and urban areas for free. This is the
first service of its kind to formally launch in India.
This partnership is part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia Zero
program, which focuses on reaching the billions of people around the
world whose primary opportunity to access the internet is via a mobile
device. The partnership will help provide Wikipedia to 60 million new
users in the region.
Anupam Vasudev, Chief Marketing Officer for Aircel, said, "Through our
alliance with the Wikimedia Foundation, Aircel is not only making
internet services reach a wider audience, but also helping to
encourage and enrich the lives of our customers by offering access to
knowledge and information free of cost. We are excited about this
partnership and hope this initiative will benefit all our customers
from various age groups."
"We hail Aircel’s commitment to enhancing and expanding access to free
knowledge for their mobile customers. With the partnership, we extend
our program to India where we potentially reach millions of people for
the first time." said Kul Takanao Wadhwa, Head of Mobile with the
Wikimedia Foundation. "Aircel is one of the operators across the globe
that has contributed towards expanding free access to Wikipedia Zero
to 470 million mobile users."
Aircel customers will be able to access versions of Wikipedia in
English, Hindi, Tamil, and 17 other Indic languages.
Aircel is a young, data led telecom player and has been continuously
innovating products and services to offer convenience to its young
customers. The company has recently introduced various noteworthy data
products like Pocket Internet Smart and the recent Pocket Internet 24,
which offers internet at less than 1 rupee a day. Therefore, Aircel
aims to empower and inspire the youth by enhancing their data
experience.
Questions and answers about this partnership can be found at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mobile_partnerships#Aircel
About Aircel Limited
http://www.aircel.com
Aircel is one of India’s leading pan India operators. It won 3G
spectrum in 13 circles and BWA spectrum in 8 circles and has
successfully launched 3G services which is the fastest 3G roll out
ever in the Indian Telecom Space. Aircel has been constantly
innovating products and services and is credited with making 3G
affordable to masses by launching Pocket Internet Smart which offers
best value 3G packs. Aircel Pocket Internet Smart gave a boost to 3G
adoption in the country as it is a true value for money product that
allows consumers to access unlimited 3G data at extremely affordable
prices. Aircel has positioned itself as a data led telecom player and
has addressed the multi-functionality of a mobile phone in many
innovative ways which are Industry firsts, be it the Aircel Pocket
Internet, Pocket Internet Games and Facebook Voice Updates on Aircel.
Aircel is also a preferred telecom network to launch Apple iPhone 3GS,
iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. For more information, please log on
to www.aircel.com.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.orghttp://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive more than 517 million unique visitors per month, making them
the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, April 2013).
Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 25 million
articles contributed by a global volunteer community of roughly 80,000
people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation
is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through
donations and grants.
Wikimedia Foundation media contact
Matthew Roth
Communications
+1 415-839-6885 ext 6635 (San Francisco)
mroth(at)wikimedia.org
Aircel media contact
Bhavya Suri
Corporate Communications
+ 91 8802999046 (India)
bhavya.suri(at)aircel.co.in
(To be unsubscribed from this list please reply with UNSUBSCRIBE in
the subject line.)
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
(This press release is also posted online at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Aircel_partners_with_Wik…)
Aircel partners with Wikimedia Foundation to offer free mobile
Wikipedia access through Wikipedia Zero
[Aircel subscribers to be the first in India to have free access to
Wikipedia on their mobile phones]
SAN FRANCISCO and NEW DELHI -- July 25, 2013: Aircel and the Wikimedia
Foundation today announced a partnership to offer Wikipedia on mobile
phones without any data charges to Aircel customers. The alliance is
aimed at making knowledge available on Wikipedia accessible to all
Aircel customers in both rural and urban areas for free. This is the
first service of its kind to formally launch in India.
This partnership is part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia Zero
program, which focuses on reaching the billions of people around the
world whose primary opportunity to access the internet is via a mobile
device. The partnership will help provide Wikipedia to 60 million new
users in the region.
Anupam Vasudev, Chief Marketing Officer for Aircel, said, "Through our
alliance with the Wikimedia Foundation, Aircel is not only making
internet services reach a wider audience, but also helping to
encourage and enrich the lives of our customers by offering access to
knowledge and information free of cost. We are excited about this
partnership and hope this initiative will benefit all our customers
from various age groups."
"We hail Aircel’s commitment to enhancing and expanding access to free
knowledge for their mobile customers. With the partnership, we extend
our program to India where we potentially reach millions of people for
the first time." said Kul Takanao Wadhwa, Head of Mobile with the
Wikimedia Foundation. "Aircel is one of the operators across the globe
that has contributed towards expanding free access to Wikipedia Zero
to 470 million mobile users."
Aircel customers will be able to access versions of Wikipedia in
English, Hindi, Tamil, and 17 other Indic languages.
Aircel is a young, data led telecom player and has been continuously
innovating products and services to offer convenience to its young
customers. The company has recently introduced various noteworthy data
products like Pocket Internet Smart and the recent Pocket Internet 24,
which offers internet at less than 1 rupee a day. Therefore, Aircel
aims to empower and inspire the youth by enhancing their data
experience.
Questions and answers about this partnership can be found at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mobile_partnerships#Aircel
About Aircel Limited
http://www.aircel.com
Aircel is one of India’s leading pan India operators. It won 3G
spectrum in 13 circles and BWA spectrum in 8 circles and has
successfully launched 3G services which is the fastest 3G roll out
ever in the Indian Telecom Space. Aircel has been constantly
innovating products and services and is credited with making 3G
affordable to masses by launching Pocket Internet Smart which offers
best value 3G packs. Aircel Pocket Internet Smart gave a boost to 3G
adoption in the country as it is a true value for money product that
allows consumers to access unlimited 3G data at extremely affordable
prices. Aircel has positioned itself as a data led telecom player and
has addressed the multi-functionality of a mobile phone in many
innovative ways which are Industry firsts, be it the Aircel Pocket
Internet, Pocket Internet Games and Facebook Voice Updates on Aircel.
Aircel is also a preferred telecom network to launch Apple iPhone 3GS,
iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. For more information, please log on
to www.aircel.com.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.orghttp://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive more than 517 million unique visitors per month, making them
the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, April 2013).
Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 25 million
articles contributed by a global volunteer community of roughly 80,000
people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation
is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through
donations and grants.
Wikimedia Foundation media contact
Matthew Roth
Communications
+1 415-839-6885 ext 6635 (San Francisco)
mroth(at)wikimedia.org
Aircel media contact
Bhavya Suri
Corporate Communications
+ 91 8802999046 (India)
bhavya.suri(at)aircel.co.in
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Hello,
When we started the WCA/Journal, we regarded it as a kind of experiment.
Would the movement accept it as central communications platform on Meta
Wiki?
Now, several months later, the Journal is growing and growing, reporting
about chapters, thematic organisations and "other stuff" in the movement.
Although most contributions come from a limited number of persons - if you
are interested about the going-ons in the movement, the Journal is already
a good start.
Of course, the more people contribute, the better. Did your
chapter/thorg/wug changed its board? Do you have an unusual new project?
Are you looking for the strategy papers of other chapters? And why is
Wikipedia in Switzerland in jail now?
Unlike the Signpost, the Journal can be edited by everybody at any time.
Without its model, the German Wikipedia:Kurier, German Wikipedia meta level
would be much more difficult to follow. Will the Journal play the same
important role on Meta Wiki as the Kurier in German Wikipedia?
Kind regards
Ziko
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Journal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ziko van Dijk
voorzitter / president Wikimedia Nederland
deputy chair Wikimedia Chapters Association Council
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
Postbus 167
3500 AD Utrecht
http://wikimedia.nl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello all the people involved in Chapters!
I would like to invite you to take a part in a survey on WM Chapters.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Research/Surv…
As I briefly explained there, it is an effort agreed during WCA meetings, taken to start gathering information about us and present it visibly. For now, information about chapters is scattered, and often missing - and even people wanting to highlight the chapters, build more bridges between them, create some benchmarks and share solutions are lacking data about all the local entities.
So, please help me in showing your Chapter and make sure your data are there! :) The sooner, the better! :)
== Survey ==
For your convienience I set up two ways to respond: you can answer it on-line using:
* MediaWiki: on a dedicated subpage on Meta
* Google Spreadsheet
Use whatever you find more suitable. If it is still not O.K. with you, you can send me a spreadsheet via e-mail.
I know it is an additional work and the survey is far from being perfect, but someone needed to start it. There is a talk page if you have any comments.
== Outcome ==
First presentation will be given in Hong Kong. Further hopefully will come.
Thanks for your help!
Best Regards to everyone,
Michał "Aegis Maelstrom" Buczyński, Wikimedia Poland.
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Craig Franklin
<cfranklin(a)halonetwork.net> wrote:
>
> As is usually the case, I'm not saying this to have a go at the developers
> or anyone else involved (who are obviously doing their best), but I think
> that some of the communication on this topic has been a bit clumsy and has
> caused a lot of unnecessary angst that could probably have been avoided if
> it had been planned for in advance. Does the Foundation have formal
> communication plans for things like this that focus on gaining community
> buy-in? If not, then you probably should. Obviously more testing and
> specifically more user acceptance testing would have been helpful in this
> case, although I understand the political pressures in getting the product
> shipped on time.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig Franklin
I alluded to this same issue in my earlier reply and thought this
deserved its own thread. We all know that it has happened many times -
a change, policy or other initiative emanates from the Foundation or a
member of its staff, and various community groups respond negatively.
The response is ignored or not properly addressed in a timely manner,
and it snowballs into something much larger.
The WMF staff often seem to be caught flat-footed when this happens,
and only after an unnecessary degree of escalation within the
community do they engage fully (in what I think of as "crisis mode"
communications, usually from Erik, Sue or another WMF senior leader).
So if it hasn't already, perhaps the WMF should consider making a
robust plan for active communications a part of every significant
initiative and rollout process. This should mean regular and
coordinated posts to mailing lists, blog posts, and community centers
on affected products - and a special effort should be made to discover
complaints and provide specific, regular and detailed feedback in
response. And I don't mean only product development; this ought to
apply equally to the full spectrum of WMF interaction with the
movement, from MediaWiki development to adjustments to the FDC process
to Board resolutions and so on. All teams, from engineering to product
to fundraising to community liaisons, should be evaluated and held
responsible for the quality of their movement communications.
Perhaps that is unusual for a software house, and thus not the normal
mental go-to or skillset for WMF staff used to working with a
different type of customer. But I think it is acutely evident that
this type of rapid, serious engagement would pay major dividends for
the WMF in terms of its relationship with the various editing
communities and the Wikimedia movement.
I don't get it... What is the purpose of a temporary opt-out? I don't see what that would solve. Power users still don't have a reason to use the VE, performance is worse, handy tools are missing and a lot of things can't be done easily with VE.
> As others have explained better than I, we think that users will be
> ill-served by this opt-out, and I hope that as few users as possible will
> choose this way to degrade their experience and deprive the community of
> their input. Instead of endlessly arguing the point about this, I'd rather
> my team and I spending our time working to make our sites better.
With such lousy replies I hope that as much as users would opt-out to give a signal that a different approach from developers/WMF is needed for local communities. And read please also http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-July/127111.html Perhaps that will give an idea why many users want an opt-out.
Romaine
James Forrester jforrester at wikimedia.org
Wed Jul 24 01:56:16 UTC 2013
On 23 July 2013 00:01, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > As I've noted in my response to wikitech-l just now, there's also the
> > issue of what "opt-out" should mean as VE becomes increasingly more
> > pervasive in the user experience.
> >
> > But as I've noted in [1], I do not think a compromise on the
> > preference question is necessarily out of reach. I've asked James and
> > team to deliberate on some of the possibilities here, and offered the
> > same suggestion I noted in [1].
> >
>
> [As just posted to wikitech-l]
>
> Because I understand the level of concern that this matter is causing, I am
> changing my mind on this. For the duration of VisualEditor's "beta" period,
> there will be an opt-out user preference. This will be deployed tomorrow
> morning, San Francisco time. Once VisualEditor is out of 'beta', this
> preference will be removed.
>
> As others have explained better than I, we think that users will be
> ill-served by this opt-out, and I hope that as few users as possible will
> choose this way to degrade their experience and deprive the community of
> their input. Instead of endlessly arguing the point about this, I'd rather
> my team and I spending our time working to make our sites better.
>
> Yours,
> --
> James D. Forrester
> Product Manager, VisualEditor
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> jforrester at wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
Dear All
It is certainly not news that a lot of deliberately biased editing goes on
on the Wikipedia. It is equally known that there are mechanims to address
these issues.
But that is where the problem lies - those intent on skewing information
know all the tricks and loopholes, whereas neutral editors who pass by to
add something they came across are not so clued up. Most editors that get
reverted just move on and don't bother. This leads to the 'ownsership'
syndrome, with editors shooing away anybody that adds anuthing they don't
like. The bigger problem, is when these editors who act as if they 'own'
certain articles are actually either being paid to do so or are actually
lomked to an organisation with particilar interests in the page(s).
A case in point, the other day I was looking for images of mosquitos
sucking blood and and came across blatant pornography on Flickr. I added a
few lines about pornography on Flickr and because it was reverted (I admit
the edit was not sterling worsmithing) it made me look into the history of
the page.
That there are two or three editors who automatically revert anything
negative is obvious. Less obvious is that one of these editors was
'dormant' for a year-and-a-half, then suddenly came out of hibernation 2
months ago to exclusively counter any anti-Flickr edits and add pro-Flickr
edits - about 75 edits in 2 months. And one or 2 sanitsing the page of
Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo!, (which owns Flickr). Another has
practically admitted to having some kind of association with Flickr (there
is plenty in Flickr-related debates on user pages to prove that there is
indeed a sinsiter and unhealthy relationship. The two or three work in a
concerted manner, even replying on behalf of each other, which makes
suspect the presence of sockpuppets or similar. There is also a high-school
student among the reverters. Things are now at a point that they are making
rules, 'agreeing' with those against them on the maximum length of a
section of a Flickr controversy. No such limitations on any other
(positive) aspect of the article. They have have 'agreed' that a number of
Huffington Post comments on Flickr must not be included - it is not a
relaible source, apparently..
This would not have bothered me were it not for the fact that the Flickr
article is of an adequate size, with lots of good information on it and
most of it quite complimentary. It is worrying that a few lines of bad
press should so annoy people that they are on stand-by to revert at
whatever hour of day or night.
The mechanisms that the Wikipedia has created to improve the project play
into the hands of people like these - features such as the watchlist.
Within minutes of a change, it gets reverted. Sometimes an editor will
persist for a while, but eventually walks off and goes edit elsewhere.
Which is odd, because if there are mechanisms for redress, why not use
them? Unfortunately, in my experience, whenever anything is put up for
arbitration, the first ones on the scene include the very editors involved
or others whom they trust who get tipped off about the issue as soon as it
develops. It is this that is tarnishing the name of the Wikipedia and
driving away good editors.
I use Flickr as an example, but is it not the firwst time that I have come
across this type of behaviour.
And so, tiny cliques and coteries flourish like fiefdoms in the blind spots
of the mechanisms created to ensure that we all strive for the same
principes. What is worse, there are big players behind this all. In an age
when the so-called 'big media' is already overwhelmingly in the service of
'big business', we owe to ourselves to keep them out of the WP.
Regards,
Rui Correia.
--
_________________________
Rui Correia
Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
_______________
Thanks Tilman.
Especially for your effort to resolve the misunderstandings, which most of
them I suppose are due to a shallow reading: "I had a bit of free time last
night waiting for trains and I skimmed through the study and its findings."
We had two strategies to get rid of vandalisms, as you mentioned,
considering only mutual reverts and waiting editors by their maturity, I
suppose a vandal could not have a large maturity score by definition.
As for the data, this study has been carried out in 2011, and we worked on
the latest available dump at the time. Someone experienced in academic
research, especially at this scale well knows that it really takes time to
get the analysis done, write the reports, get them reviewed, etc.
Especially that we have published 7-8 other papers during the same period.
I see no problem in this as long as the metadata and such information about
the methods and the data under study are mentioned in the manuscript, which
is clearly the case here. I have seen many Wikipedia studies without any
mention of the dump they have used!
Back to your concern for the general impression that the news media give
on wikipedia being a battlefield, I'd like to mention that I have
emphasised the small number of controversial articles compare to the total
number of articles in every single media response I had. Again as you
mentioned, we had given the percentages explicitly in our previous work.
But of course for obvious reasons journalists are not happy to highlight
this. They like to report on controversies and wars! This is not our fault
that what they report could be misleading, as long as we had tried our best
to avoid it. An interview of mine with BBC Radio Scotland: at 04:00 I
clearly say that there are millions and thousands of articles in WIkipedia
which are not controversial, is available here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8whovkmipbqdzlv/bbc_radio_Scotland.mp3 . I have
done the same in all the others.
Finally, I wish that the public media coverage of our research which is
clearly far from perfect, could also provide the members of the public a
better understanding of how Wikipedia works and how fascinating it is!
Thanks again,
Taha
On 22 Jul 2013 05:58, "Tilman Bayer" <tbayer(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 2:32 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> > Anders Wennersten wrote:
> >>A most interesting study looking at findings from 10 different language
> >>versions.
> >>
> >>Jesus and Middle east are the most controversial articles seen over the
> >>world, but George Bush on en:wp and Chile on es:wp
> >>
> >>http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.5566.pdf
> >
> FWIW, here is the review by Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia in last month's
> Wikimedia Research Newsletter:
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/28/wikimedia-research-newsletter-june-20…
> (also published in the Signpost, the weekly newsletter on the English
> Wikipedia)
>
> > Thanks for sharing this.
> >
> > I had a bit of free time last night waiting for trains and I skimmed
> > through the study and its findings. Two points stuck out at me: a
> > seemingly fatally flawed methodology and the age of data used.
> >
> > The methodology used in this study seems to be pretty inherently flawed.
> > According to the paper, controversiality was measured by full page
> > reverts, which are fairly trivial to identify and study in a database
> dump
> > (using cryptographic hashes, as the study did), but I don't think full
> > reverts give an accurate impression _at all_ of which articles are the
> > most controversial.
> >
> > Pages with many full reverts are indicative of pages that are heavily
> > vandalized. For example, the "George W. Bush" article is/was heavily
> > vandalized for years on the English Wikipedia. Does blanking the article
> > or replacing its contents with the word "penis" mean that it's a very
> > controversial article? Of course not. Measuring only full reverts (as the
> > study seems to have done, though it's certainly possible I've overlooked
> > something) seems to be really misleading and inaccurate.
> They didn't. You may have overlooked the description of the
> methodology on p.5: It's based on "mutual reverts" where user A has
> reverted user B and user B has reverted user A, and gives higher
> weight to disputes between more experienced editors. This should
> exclude most vandalism reverts of the sort you describe. As noted in
> Giovanni's review, this method was proposed in an earlier paper, Sumi
> et al. (
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2011/July#Edit_wars_and…
> ). That paper explains at length how this metric serves to distinguish
> vandalism reverts from edit wars. Of course there are ample
> possibilities to refine it, e.g. taking into account page protection
> logs.
>
> Personally, I'm more concerned that the new paper totally fails to put
> its subject into perspective by stating how frequent such
> controversial articles are overall on Wikipedia. Thus it's no wonder
> that the ample international media coverage that it generated mostly
> transports the notion (or reinforces the preconception) of Wikipedia
> as a huge battleground.
>
> The 2011 Sumi et al. paper did a better job in that respect: "less
> than 25k articles, i.e. less than 1% of the 3m articles available in
> the November 2009 English WP dump, can be called controversial, and of
> these, less than half are truly edit wars."
>
>
> >
> > In order to measure how controversial an article is, there are a number
> of
> > metrics that could be used, though of course no metric is perfect and
> many
> > metrics can be very difficult to accurately and rigorously measure:
> >
> > * amount of talk page discussion generated for each article;
> > * number of page watchers;
> > * number of page views (possibly);
> > * number of arbitration cases or other dispute resolution procedures
> > related to the article (perhaps a key metric in determining which
> articles
> > are truly most controversial); and
> > * edit frequency and time between certain edits and partial or full
> > reverts of those edits.
> >
> > There are likely a number of other metrics that could be used as well to
> > measure controversiality; these were simply off the top of my head.
> Perhaps you are interested in this 2012 paper comparing such metrics,
> which the authors of the present paper cite to justify their choice of
> metric:
> Sepehri Rad, H., Barbosa, D.: Identifying controversial articles in
> Wikipedia: A comparative study.
> http://www.wikisym.org/ws2012/p18wikisym2012.pdf
>
> Regarding detection of (partial or full) reverts, see also
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revert_detection
>
> >
> > The second point that stuck out at me was that the study relied on a
> > database dump from March 2010. While this may be unavoidable, being over
> > three years later, this introduces obvious bias into the data and its
> > findings. Put another way, for the English Wikipedia started in 2001,
> this
> > omits a quarter of the project's history(!). Again, given the length of
> > time needed to draft and prepare a study, this gap may very well be
> > unavoidable, but it certainly made me raise an eyebrow.
> >
> > One final comment I had from briefly reading the study was that in the
> > past few years we've made good strides in making research like this
> > easier. Not that computing cryptographic hashes is particularly
> intensive,
> > but these days we now store such hashes directly in the database (though
> > we store SHA-1 hashes, not MD5 hashes as the study used). Storing these
> > hashes in the database saves researchers the need to compute the hashes
> > themselves and allows MediaWiki and other software the ability to easily
> > and quickly detect full reverts.
> >
> > MZMcBride
> >
> > P.S. Noting that this study is still a draft, I happened to notice a
> small
> > typo on page nine: "We tried to a as diverse as possible sample including
> > West European [...]". Hopefully this can be corrected before formal
> > publication.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Tilman Bayer
> Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
> Wikimedia Foundation
> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>
--
Dr Taha Yasseri
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/yasseri/
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
1 St.Giles
Oxford OX1 3JS
Tel.01865-287229
-------------------------------------------
Latest Article: Phys. Rev. Lett. Opinions, Conflicts, and Consensus:
Modeling Social Dynamics in a Collaborative
Environment<http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v110/i8/e088701>
Non-technical review: University of Oxford, Mathematical model 'describes'
how online conflicts are
resolved<http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2013/130220.html>
Resent so I have an original copy to reply to.
Dear All
It is certainly not news that a lot of deliberately biased editing goes on
on the Wikipedia. It is equally known that there are mechanims to address
these issues.
But that is where the problem lies - those intent on skewing information
know all the tricks and loopholes, whereas neutral editors who pass by to
add something they came across are not so clued up. Most editors that get
reverted just move on and don't bother. This leads to the 'ownsership'
syndrome, with editors shooing away anybody that adds anuthing they don't
like. The bigger problem, is when these editors who act as if they 'own'
certain articles are actually either being paid to do so or are actually
lomked to an organisation with particilar interests in the page(s).
A case in point, the other day I was looking for images of mosquitos
sucking blood and and came across blatant pornography on Flickr. I added a
few lines about pornography on Flickr and because it was reverted (I admit
the edit was not sterling worsmithing) it made me look into the history of
the page.
That there are two or three editors who automatically revert anything
negative is obvious. Less obvious is that one of these editors was
'dormant' for a year-and-a-half, then suddenly came out of hibernation 2
months ago to exclusively counter any anti-Flickr edits and add pro-Flickr
edits - about 75 edits in 2 months. And one or 2 sanitsing the page of
Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo!, (which owns Flickr). Another has
practically admitted to having some kind of association with Flickr (there
is plenty in Flickr-related debates on user pages to prove that there is
indeed a sinsiter and unhealthy relationship. The two or three work in a
concerted manner, even replying on behalf of each other, which makes
suspect the presence of sockpuppets or similar. There is also a high-school
student among the reverters. Things are now at a point that they are making
rules, 'agreeing' with those against them on the maximum length of a
section of a Flickr controversy. No such limitations on any other
(positive) aspect of the article. They have have 'agreed' that a number of
Huffington Post comments on Flickr must not be included - it is not a
relaible source, apparently..
This would not have bothered me were it not for the fact that the Flickr
article is of an adequate size, with lots of good information on it and
most of it quite complimentary. It is worrying that a few lines of bad
press should so annoy people that they are on stand-by to revert at
whatever hour of day or night.
The mechanisms that the Wikipedia has created to improve the project play
into the hands of people like these - features such as the watchlist.
Within minutes of a change, it gets reverted. Sometimes an editor will
persist for a while, but eventually walks off and goes edit elsewhere.
Which is odd, because if there are mechanisms for redress, why not use
them? Unfortunately, in my experience, whenever anything is put up for
arbitration, the first ones on the scene include the very editors involved
or others whom they trust who get tipped off about the issue as soon as it
develops. It is this that is tarnishing the name of the Wikipedia and
driving away good editors.
I use Flickr as an example, but is it not the firwst time that I have come
across this type of behaviour.
And so, tiny cliques and coteries flourish like fiefdoms in the blind spots
of the mechanisms created to ensure that we all strive for the same
principes. What is worse, there are big players behind this all. In an age
when the so-called 'big media' is already overwhelmingly in the service of
'big business', we owe to ourselves to keep them out of the WP.
Regards,
Rui Correia.
--
_________________________
Rui Correia
Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant
Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186