In an earlier discussion on the Engine Room, Thryduulf noted that the "Terms of use" link at the bottom of every page still directs users to the terms of use page on the WMF Foundation Wiki. Since WMUK services, including the wiki, are now independently hosted, our terms of use need to be modified. I asked for community input on 11th March, and again on 19th, and as there appears to be no volunteer appetite to work on this I have put up some thoughts of my own for discussion.
Please visit https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Terms_of_use and https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Disclaimers, and contribute to the discussion on the talk pages.
Regards
Michael
In order to further the charity's goal of encouraging and supporting
technological innovation, Wikimedia UK are looking for a contractor to
undertake a scoping exercise to report to the charity's Board with
proposals for how best we can achieve our mission in this respect. Details
of the tender can be found
here<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Contractor_Scoping_brief>
.
Richard Nevell
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+44 (0) 20 7065 0753
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
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*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
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On 26 Mar 2014, at 21:35, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> It would be great if this sort of rating was being systematically checked -
> but at a vague estimate of thirty seconds to scan, grade, and tag,
> aggregated across all pages on enwiki, that's about fifteen or twenty
> person-years of work to do it as a once-off, much less a rolling process.
>
> Andrew.
>
> On 25 March 2014 23:35, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> Philippe,
>>
>> The Public Policy Initiative produced strong validation for the Wikipedia
>> 1.0 approach to assessing article quality. Was Amy Roth's research ever
>> published, and are there any plans to repeat it with a larger sample size
>> etc.? I'd say we're closer than you think to having a good way to measure
>> article quality.
>>
>> Pete
>> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
There is at present no comprehensive automated tool that can be used to measure article and media file quality. Measuring quantity is easy; quality much more difficult.
At the Wikimedia Conference over the weekend I presented some thoughts about a possible software project, to be lead by Wikimedia UK, to tackle this.
A review of the presentation, and slides, can be seen at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2014/Documentation/24#…
The WMUK wiki page is here: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Technology_Committee/Project_requests/WikiRat…
Comments and feedback are most welcome. In particular, we would like to know whether creating such tools would be considered a useful thing to do by the community.
Best regards
Michael
____________
Michael Maggs
Chair, Wikimedia UK
I must say I'm pretty dubious about this approach for articles. I doubt
it can detect most of the typical problems with them - for example
all-online sources are
very often a warning sign, but may not be, or may be inevitable in a
topical subject. Most of Charles' factors below relate better to views
and controversialness than article quality, and
article quality has a limited ability to increase views, as study of FAs
before and after expansion will show.
Personally I'd think the lack of 1 to say 4 dominant editors in the
stats is a more reliable warning sign than "A single editor, or
essentially only one editor with
tweaking" in most subjects. Nothing is more characteristic of a popular
but poor article than a huge list of contributors, all with fewer than
10 edits. Sadly, the implied notion (at T for Traffic below) that
fairly high views automatically lead to increased quality is very
dubious - we have plenty of extremely bad articles that have had by now
millions of viewers who have between them done next to nothing to
improve the now-ancient text.
There is also the question of what use the results of the exercise will
be. Our current quality ratings certainly have problems, but are a lot
better than nothing. However the areas where systematic work seems to
be going on improving the lowest rated articles, in combination with
high importance ratings, are relatively few. An automated system is
hard to argue with, & I'm concerned that such ratings will actually
cause more problems than they reveal or solve, if people take them more
seriously than they deserve, or are unable to over-ride or question
them. One issue with the manual system is that it tends to give a
greatly excessive
weight to article length, as though there was a standard ideal size for
all subjects, which of course there isn't. It will be even harder for
an automated system to avoid the same pitfall without relying on the
very blunt instrument of our importance ratings, which don't pretend to
operate to common standards, so that nobody thinks that
"high-importance" means, or should mean, the same between say
WikiProject_Friesland
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiProject_Friesland> and
Wikiproject:Science.
John
> Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 19:53:20 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
>
>
> There's the old DREWS acronym from How Wikipedia Works. to which I'd now
> add T for traffic. In other words there are six factors that an experienced
> human would use to analyse quality, looking in particular for warning signs.
>
> D = Discussion: crunch the talk page (20 archives = controversial, while no
> comments indicates possible neglect)
> R = WikiProject rating, FWIW, if there is one.
> E = Edit history. A single editor, or essentially only one editor with
> tweaking, is a warning sign. (Though not if it is me, obviously)
> W = Writing. This would take some sort of text analysis. Work to do here.
> Includes detection of non-standard format, which would suggest neglect by
> experienced editors.
> S = Sources. Count footnotes and so on.
> T = Traffic. Pages at 100 hits per month are not getting many eyeballs.
> Warning sign. Very high traffic is another issue.
>
> Seems to me that there is enough to bite on, here.
>
> Charles
>
>
>
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Forwarding per Fæ's request...
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Fwd: [Wikimediauk-l] [Wikimedia-l] Rating Wikimedia content (was Our next strategy plan-Paid editing)
> Date: 17 April 2014 10:09:14 BST
> To: Michael Peel <email(a)mikepeel.net>
>
> Hi Mike, could you repost this for me? Apparently I'm now banned from
> the UK list.
>
> Fae
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>
> Date: 17 April 2014 10:01
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [Wikimedia-l] Rating Wikimedia content
> (was Our next strategy plan-Paid editing)
> To: UK Wikimedia mailing list <wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> It runs on WMFlabs, so by default the code is open, for simplicity I
> have posted the code at
> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae/code/TARDIS.py>. It is
> fairly simply written in Python, but a bit quick and dirty as usual.
>
> Fae
>
> On 17 April 2014 09:54, Michael Maggs <Michael(a)maggs.name> wrote:
>> That looks a very interesting tool. Definitely worth adding to the wiki page as related work that we could potentially make use of (if you permit, Fae; the source code is not open is it?)
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>> Have a play with
>>> <http://tools.wmflabs.org/faebot/cgi-bin/TARDIS.py?file=TARDIS.jpg&category=…>,
>>> it would not be hard to adapt into reports.
>>>
>>> This gave a way of solving arguments in Commons Deletion Requests by
>>> comparing a file's size and pixel resolution to others in similar
>>> categories. There was no easy way of doing this on-wiki. Knowing that
>>> a file is in the top 25% even by this crude measure, suddenly makes it
>>> appear more valuable, while a doubtful file in the bottom 10% seems a
>>> good candidate for deletion if it is a marginal out of scope case.
>>>
>>> Setting "hard" measures for size or resolution is not always
>>> meaningful. Many small images may have educational use and have no
>>> higher resolution equivalent, though in my size comparison report
>>> (off-line) I do have a version that plucks out the smallest images in
>>> a category and passes them back as a re-paste-able gallery for review.
>>>
>>> Fae
>>> --
>>> faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia UK mailing list
>>> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>>> WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia UK mailing list
>> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>> WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
>
>
>
> --
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> Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
>
>
> --
> faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
> Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
The University of Manchester in conjunction with WMUK is organising a Women
in Science Wikipedia Editathon during the day on 22 May 2014 at the
University of Manchester, followed by a panel discussion in the evening.
Details and registration are at:
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Women_in_Science_Wikipedia_Edit-a-thon_at_the…
I'm looking for two or three volunteers to help out with the editathon; you
don't have to be an accredited trainer (although it helps!). If you can
give some time, please sign up on the event page in the "trainers" section.
Cheers
--
Rexx
Hi all
Voting for the affiliate-selected board seats is now open, and WMUK as a chapter has to place a vote by 31st May by ranking the candidates in order of preference. The two available seats are reserved specifically for candidates chosen by the affiliate organisations. Before making any decision the WMUK board would like to seek input from our own volunteers and members.
Please contribute here: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room#Voting_for_the_affiliate-selected…
Best regards
Michael
____________
Michael Maggs
Chair, Wikimedia UK
Lots to read - now up on the wiki
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/WIKICON_BERLIN_2014_report
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tweet @jonatreesdavies
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
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Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
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operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990.
Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk
Lovely video from Armenia
From: Lilit Tarkhanyan <lilit.tarkhanyan(a)wikimedia.am>
Best regards
Lilit Tarkhanyan
Wikimedia Armenia
Board Member
Wikipedia Education Program Leader
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tweet @jonatreesdavies
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990.
Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk
Is there a place where I can find the monthly trend for the number of
leading (or active) volunteers? As a KPI agreed with the board of
trustees, this is required to be reported at least quarterly, however
for this measurement, it would make sense to report the trend in the
monthly report so that trustees and members of the charity can judge
if we are approaching the target agreed with the board and celebrate
the progress being made.[3]
Could someone explain why the operational target for 2014 appeared to
be adjusted from 150 in the FDC bid to a more modest 140 in the
recently published plan? I do not recall this being discussed with the
community, I may have missed it.
BACKGROUND
Reporting the number of active volunteers was a positive commitment
the chapter made in the last FDC bid[2] where it was stated that WMUK
was going to increase active volunteers from a reported 101 to 150 (in
2014). The specific phrasing was "Increase the number of active
volunteers to 150".
In the Strategy Monitoring Plan for this year[3], it was reported to
the board that in 2013 the number of "leading volunteers" was
estimated at 107 and a new target for 2014 has been set at 140.
Requests for reports on this number have been made for more than six
months. An upgrade to the CRM database was a reason for delays in
reporting this number in 2013.[1][4] From the monthly reports
available (including the drafts for February, March and April 2014,
this figure does not appear to be being publicly reported.[5]
Based on recent responses to questions by some trustees, I would like
to clarify that this is not a demand for employees of Wikimedia UK to
work for me, neither is it intended to be an order, sarcasm, trolling,
personal attack or personal criticism; it is an open question. Other
volunteers and members are interested in seeing this key performance
indicator for the charity as an outcome of the significant investment
of donor's funds in growth and improvement of our valued
volunteer-centric programmes and staffing, and will have an idea of
where to find this number if it has been reported on-wiki, so indeed
this may need no employee time to answer.
Links
1. Feb 2014 - https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room/2014#Community_consultation_-_Fin…
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/WMUK/…
3. https://wikimedia.org.uk/w/index.php?title=Strategy_monitoring_plan&oldid=5…
4. https://wikimedia.org.uk/w/index.php?title=Volunteers/numbers&oldid=55418
5. https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Reports
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
