Wikimedia-l January 2014

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173 participants
107 discussions

[Foundation-l] Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery
by Brian J Mingus 10 Sep '22

10 Sep '22

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

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

09 Aug '22

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

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Data privacy, encrypted links and recent change captures
by John Vandenberg 11 Mar '15

11 Mar '15

We know NSA wants Wikipedia data, as Wikipedia is listed in one of the NSA slides: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KS8-001.jpg That slide is about HTTP, and the tech staff are moving the user/reader base to HTTPS. As we learn more about the NSA programs, we need to consider vectors other than HTTP for the NSA to obtain the data they want. And the userbase needs to be aware of the current risks. One question from the "Dells are backdored"[sic] thread that is worth separate consideration is: Are the Wikimedia transit links encrypted, especially for database replication? MySQL has replication over SSL, so I assume the answer is Yes. If not, is this necessary or useful, and feasible ? However we also need to consider that SSL and other encryption may be useless against NSA/etc, which means replicating non-public data should be avoided wherever possible, as it becomes a single point of failure. Given how public our system is, we don't have a lot of non-public data, so we might be able to design the architecture so that information isnt replicated, and also ensure it isnt accessed over insecure links. I think the only parts of the dataset that are private & valuable are * passwords/login cookies, * checkuser info - IPs and useragents, * WMF analytics, which includes readers iirc, and * hidden/deleted edits * private wikis and mailing lists Have I missed any? Are passwords and/or checkuser info replicated? Is there a data policy on WMF analytics data which prevents it flowing over insecure links, and limits what is collected and ensures destruction of the data within reasonable timeframes? i.e. how about not using cookies to track analytics of readers who are on HTTP instead of HTTPS? The private wikis can be restricted to https, depending on the value of the data on those wikis in the wrong hands. The private mailing lists will be harder to secure, and at least the English Wikipedia arbcom list contain a lot of valuable data about contributors. Regarding hidden/deleted edits, the replication isnt the only source of this data. All edits are also exposed via Recent Changes (https/api/etc) as they occur, and the value of these edits is determined by the fact they are hidden afterwards (e.g. don't appear in dumps). Is there any way to control who is effectively capturing all edits via Recent Changes? -- John Vandenberg

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Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives
by Erik Moeller 17 Feb '15

17 Feb '15

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

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Visually impaired
by rupert THURNER 31 Mar '14

31 Mar '14

Hi, would anybody of you have some starting points concerning wikipedia for visually impaired persons, both computer and mobile devices? Rupert

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WikiConference USA Announcement
by Pharos 18 Mar '14

18 Mar '14

I am very pleased to announce that Wikimedia NYC and Wikimedia DC are working in collaboration to host the first national Wikimedia conference in the United States! Here are the details for the conference: Dates: Friday, May 30, 2014 - Sunday, June 1, 2014 Location: New York Law School (185 West Broadway, New York, NY 10013) Website: http://wikiconferenceusa.org Email: wikicon(a)wikimedianyc.org Registration: http://wikiconusa.eventbrite.org/ For more information, please review our official press release below! We hope you will join us and help us spread the word! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiCon_USA_2014_Press_Release_v1.p… Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos) Wikimedia NYC

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's accept Bitcoin as a donation method
by Jake Orlowitz 15 Mar '14

15 Mar '14

I can think of a few reasons why we should accept bitcoin: * It's consistent with our leadership in internet technology * Our peers like EFF, and Internet archive accept it * It's secured using the same kinds of encryption we rely on to maintain user privacy * It permits donations from countries that do not have Visa/Mastercard services * It has a fanatically loyal and growing following that is dying to give us money in that currency Most imporantly, current technology would permit us to accept bitcoin without ever *holding* bitcoin. Companies like BitPay ( https://bitpay.com/) and CoinBase ( https://coinbase.com/) are little different than accepting Visa, Mastercard, or Paypal. It's now possible for funds received as bitcoins to be *immediately* converted to USD. I don't think we should 'make a statement' by accepting bitcoin, I think the currency is simply at the stage where it would be to our benefit to do so. Jake (Ocaasi)

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Funding programs for individuals.
by Jean-Frédéric 04 Mar '14

04 Mar '14

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

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Annoucement from the Executive Director of Wikimedia Argentina
by Osmar Valdebenito 19 Feb '14

19 Feb '14

Dear members of the Wikimedia Movement: In the past weeks, I've taken the decision to resign to my position of Executive Director of Wikimedia Argentina. This decision was presented to the Board of the chapter past Saturday and it was accepted. For personal and professional reasons, I've decided to return to my country, Chile, in the following weeks and start a new stage of my life. Two years ago, I was presented with the opportunity of living in Argentina and working for one of my passions. This was a big challenge for me: I had to leave my country and my family and work in a foreign country. These last 18 months have been a unique experience and I've learnt a lot, becoming a better professional and a more mature person. However, at the same time I feel that I need to move on and continue with new projects and challenges. Certainly, this has not been an easy decision for me, because I'm very fond of this work, the people that have participated in our activities and the projects we worked on and we are still working on. I leave the Association in a very different position than when I took office. We have several ongoing projects and we regularized all the delayed paperwork. We became the first organization from a developing country to get an Annual Plan Grant via FDC and have been one of the best-graded chapters in both processes. We are now a reliable and serious organization, continuing a process of professionalization that can improve our programs, making them more efficient and more effective. Clearly, this has not been only due to my work, which is why I thank the Board of the Chapter that helped me in everything and to María Cruz, which has been a great colleague these months. My main interest is that Wikimedia Argentina continues to grow, which is why we have decided that my departure occurs at the end of March. This will allow us to work calmly to ensure the continuity of the ongoing projects of Wikimedia Argentina and the transfer of knowledge once the new Executive Director takes office. In any case, I will continue to participate as a member and Wikimedia volunteer, once this period expires. By request of our Board, I will also attend the next Wikimedia Conference, so I will be able to transmit the experiences of Wikimedia Argentina in the last year. I appreciate the trust placed in me by the Board and all the members of Wikimedia Argentina and their support all these months. I'm sure they will continue the great work we have done lately. Kind regards, *Osmar Valdebenito G.* Director Ejecutivo A. C. Wikimedia Argentina

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VisualEditor office hours in February
by Maggie Dennis 15 Feb '14

15 Feb '14

Hi, guys. I just wanted to let you know, so you could mark your calendars if interested, that there are two IRC office hours scheduled to discuss VisualEditor in February. The first will be held on Saturday February 15 at 1700 UTC and the second will be held on Sunday February 16 at 00:00 UTC. (See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for time conversion links.) Logs will be posted on meta after each office hour completes. You'll find them, along with logs for older office hours on the topic, at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:VisualEditor_office_hours_logs Please see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for more information on how to join in. Thanks! Maggie -- Maggie Dennis Senior Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

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Wikimedia-l January 2014