[WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Research Newsletter launched
(* cross-posting *) We are glad to announce the inaugural issue of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter [1], a new monthly survey of recent scholarly research about Wikimedia projects. This is a joint project of the Signpost [2] and the Wikimedia Research Committee [3] and follows the publication of two research updates in the Signpost, see also last month's announcement on this list [4]. The first issue (which is simultaneously posted as a section of the Signpost and as a stand-alone article in the Wikimedia Research Index) includes 5 "in depth" reviews of papers published over the last few months and a number of shorter notes for a total of 15 publications, covering both peer-reviewed research and results published in research blogs. It also includes a report from the Wikipedia research workshop at OKCon 2011 and highlights from the Wikimedia Summer of Research program. The following is the TOC of issue #1: • 1 Edit wars and conflict metrics • 2 The anatomy of a Wikipedia talk page • 3 Wikipedians as "Janitors of Knowledge" • 4 Use of Wikipedia among law students: a survey • 5 Miscellaneous • 6 Wikipedia research at OKCon 2011 • 7 Wikimedia Summer of Research • 7.1 How New English Wikipedians Ask for Help • 7.2 Who Edits Trending Articles on the English Wikipedia • 7.3 The Workload of New Page Patrollers & Vandalfighters • 8 References We are planning to make the newsletter easy to syndicate and subscribe to. If you wish your research to be featured, a CFP or event you organized to be highlighted, or just join the team of contributors, head over to this page to find out how: [5] We hope to make this newsletter a favorite reading for our research community and we look forward to your feedback and contributions. Dario Taraborelli, Tilman Bayer (HaeB) on behalf of the WRN contributors [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2011-07-25 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee [4] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2011-June/001552.html [5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter -- Dario Taraborelli, PhD Senior Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org http://nitens.org/taraborelli ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Article Feedback - Ramp up to 10% of Articles
> > The average is not very trustworthy. But the bar graph of how many > people have actually voted each score is a bit more interesting. If > it's bimodal, with two peaks, then that often tells you something. > > But the tool doesn't currently give you that, it probably should. > Yeh.. this why my current attitude to the tool is "well it's potentially important, but at the moment gives no useful visual feedback to the editors" Tom ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Article Feedback - Ramp up to 10% of Articles
On 27/07/2011, Thomas Morton wrote: > The issue I've noted is that it is being used as a "warfare" tool on > controversial articles. I've not seen it mentioned on a talk page yet; but > one contentious article (on a subject with a large online following, > entrenched *readers* on either side of the issue) has had the bars swinging > between about 1.5 and 4 in the last week. > > Not a huge issue, but I suspect that on certain articles the ratings are to > be trusted less than usual :) The average is not very trustworthy. But the bar graph of how many people have actually voted each score is a bit more interesting. If it's bimodal, with two peaks, then that often tells you something. But the tool doesn't currently give you that, it probably should. > Tom -- -Ian Woollard ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Article Feedback - Ramp up to 10% of Articles
> > I'm cynical about this article feedback system for several reasons, > chiefly the worry that it could exacerbate the templating trend of > commenting on lots of articles rather than actually improving a few. > > I'm also slightly circumspect about the idea (though not outright opposed or anything). The issue I've noted is that it is being used as a "warfare" tool on controversial articles. I've not seen it mentioned on a talk page yet; but one contentious article (on a subject with a large online following, entrenched *readers* on either side of the issue) has had the bars swinging between about 1.5 and 4 in the last week. Not a huge issue, but I suspect that on certain articles the ratings are to be trusted less than usual :) Tom ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Article Feedback - Ramp up to 10% of Articles
Actually there are a number of other tests we need to run before we know whether Article Rating really is a net positive or a net negative. I hoped they would compare the 100,000 with a control sample to see which gets more edits: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Talk:Article_feedback/Is_this_a_positive_or_a_negative%3F It should still be possible to keep a control sample of 100,000 articles without the rating system to see if their average quality improves more or less quickly than those with that huge AFT template. And while I can appreciate the excitement that 15% of raters could be tempted to edit, I'd like to see that broken down between: 1 Article improvements 2 Useful talkpage comments 3 Is awesome type comments I'm cynical about this article feedback system for several reasons, chiefly the worry that it could exacerbate the templating trend of commenting on lots of articles rather than actually improving a few. But I accept it is a another great test of the theory that people are basically nice and constructive as opposed to the theory that people are better behaved if they feel they have a reputation at stake. Though judging from the proportion of vandalism amongst IP editors as opposed to registered editors I think we know how that one will pan out. WSC On 27 July 2011 09:08, David Gerard wrote: > On 27 July 2011 08:34, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> On 07/16/11 4:42 PM, Dan Dascalescu wrote: > >>> After rating an article, there is this link asking "Did you know you >>> could edit this page". > >> Just saying that is not enough to inspire people to edit. > > > It turns out it is: > > http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/15/%e2%80%9crate-this-page%e2%80%9d-is-coming-to-the-english-wikipedia/ > > "The feature brings in editors. One of the main Strategic Goals for > the upcoming year is to increase the number of active editors > contributing to WMF projects. The initial data from the Article > Feedback tool suggests that reader feedback could become a meaningful > point of entry for future editors. > > Once users have successfully submitted a rating, a randomly selected > subset of them are shown an invitation to edit the page. Of the users > that were invited to edit, 17% attempted to edit the page. 15% of > those ended up successfully completing an edit. These results > strongly suggest that a feedback tool could successfully convert > passive readers into active contributors of Wikipedia. A rich text > editor could make this path to editing even more promising. > > While these initial results are certainly encouraging, we need to > assess whether these editors are, in fact, improving Wikipedia. We > need to measure their level of activity, the quality of their > contributions, their longevity, and other characteristics." > > > - d. > > ___ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Scale of online resources, was Re: Rating the English wikipedia
On 27/07/2011 08:49, Ray Saintonge wrote: > On 07/26/11 3:13 AM, Charles Matthews wrote: >> On 20/07/2011 10:17, Ray Saintonge wrote: >>> I missed reading this thread when it was active, but my own estimate of >>> what still needs to be done in historical biographies alone is quite >>> high. >> Yes, that is one area where the material seems available to do much >> more. >> >> >An estimate of 20,000,000 English >>> Wikipedia articles seems increasingly conservative. The amount of work >>> to be done is enormous even without having to fight with the notability >>> police. >> On the other hand, the number of active Wikipedians who know where their >> next 1000 articles are coming from is quite small, IMX. The emphasis on >> enWP is hardly on being prolific: quality is more highly rated than >> quantity. That may not be wrong, of course, but to some extent these >> things are a matter of personal taste, and should remain so. We could do >> with better support of the "good stub" concept, I think: probably an >> example of "tacit knowledge" about the site, in that editors who have >> been around for a while know what that means, while the manual pages >> have a different slant. >> >> All discussions of the "notability" concept we use seem to end up with >> the generally broken nature of the thing. It is just that there is no >> snappy replacement. WP:GNG is a bit objectionable in the insistence on >> "secondary sources"; it is not completely silly but is not that helpful >> either when you start pushing the limits. >> >> > Perhaps this requires a clearer description of what is essential to a > good stub. I think a discussion of the nature of "good stubs", in relation though to what we know (or rather guess) about the "long tail" of reference material that is "out there" in some form, sounds like an interesting one to have, and not one I recall having before. Basically there are things that (a) people could want to look up, (b) for which "footnote"-style answers exist and are verifiable, and (c) could appear at that sort of length in WP, where they would be an asset rather than an embarrassment. And we still don't know that much about the whole population of such things. > > The WP:GNG is opaque and bureaucratic. It is not suitable to much of > the 19th century material that I have. "Notes and Queries is a > fascinating publication where the readership answered questions posed > by others. Providing other sources for this could be extremely > difficult, and none of it comes close to being subject to BLP > requirements. > Yes, a kind of reference desk for those of largely antiquarian interests in the 19th century (and onwards). The GNG has plenty wrong with it in some topic areas, which is why specialised notability guides are written. I don't think it has yet come up in the form "for historical/antiquarian purposes, what is the minimum adequate kind of answer to a query?". One day I suppose we'll have an overview of "topic policy" based on a census of actual "topics". I think we'll have to get through our second decade before worrying about that, though. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Article Feedback - Ramp up to 10% of Articles
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 9:08 AM, David Gerard wrote: > http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/15/%e2%80%9crate-this-page%e2%80%9d-is-coming-to-the-english-wikipedia/ > "While these initial results are certainly encouraging, we need to > assess whether these editors are, in fact, improving Wikipedia. We > need to measure their level of activity, the quality of their > contributions, their longevity, and other characteristics." There is little point assessing the "level of activity, the quality of their contributions, their longevity, and other characteristics" for editors that start editing after using the 'Article Feedback tool' if there is no corresponding effort made to assess the *same* characteristics for editors who start editing for other reasons. In particular, I'm referring to other motivations for editing Wikipedia (advertising, pushing an agenda) and editors whose contributions are of poor quality and don't improve over time even when this is pointed out. In other words, are the editors that Wikipedia currently has "improving Wikipedia"? It is quite conceivable that different sorts of editors are needed at different stages, or are expending their efforts in the wrong places. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Article Feedback - Ramp up to 10% of Articles
On 27 July 2011 08:34, Ray Saintonge wrote: > On 07/16/11 4:42 PM, Dan Dascalescu wrote: >> After rating an article, there is this link asking "Did you know you >> could edit this page". > Just saying that is not enough to inspire people to edit. It turns out it is: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/15/%e2%80%9crate-this-page%e2%80%9d-is-coming-to-the-english-wikipedia/ "The feature brings in editors. One of the main Strategic Goals for the upcoming year is to increase the number of active editors contributing to WMF projects. The initial data from the Article Feedback tool suggests that reader feedback could become a meaningful point of entry for future editors. Once users have successfully submitted a rating, a randomly selected subset of them are shown an invitation to edit the page. Of the users that were invited to edit, 17% attempted to edit the page. 15% of those ended up successfully completing an edit. These results strongly suggest that a feedback tool could successfully convert passive readers into active contributors of Wikipedia. A rich text editor could make this path to editing even more promising. While these initial results are certainly encouraging, we need to assess whether these editors are, in fact, improving Wikipedia. We need to measure their level of activity, the quality of their contributions, their longevity, and other characteristics." - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Scale of online resources, was Re: Rating the English wikipedia
On 07/26/11 3:13 AM, Charles Matthews wrote: > On 20/07/2011 10:17, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> I missed reading this thread when it was active, but my own estimate of >> what still needs to be done in historical biographies alone is quite >> high. > Yes, that is one area where the material seems available to do much more. > > >An estimate of 20,000,000 English >> Wikipedia articles seems increasingly conservative. The amount of work >> to be done is enormous even without having to fight with the notability >> police. > On the other hand, the number of active Wikipedians who know where their > next 1000 articles are coming from is quite small, IMX. The emphasis on > enWP is hardly on being prolific: quality is more highly rated than > quantity. That may not be wrong, of course, but to some extent these > things are a matter of personal taste, and should remain so. We could do > with better support of the "good stub" concept, I think: probably an > example of "tacit knowledge" about the site, in that editors who have > been around for a while know what that means, while the manual pages > have a different slant. > > All discussions of the "notability" concept we use seem to end up with > the generally broken nature of the thing. It is just that there is no > snappy replacement. WP:GNG is a bit objectionable in the insistence on > "secondary sources"; it is not completely silly but is not that helpful > either when you start pushing the limits. > > Perhaps this requires a clearer description of what is essential to a good stub. The WP:GNG is opaque and bureaucratic. It is not suitable to much of the 19th century material that I have. "Notes and Queries is a fascinating publication where the readership answered questions posed by others. Providing other sources for this could be extremely difficult, and none of it comes close to being subject to BLP requirements. People who rate quality as more important than quantity fail to see the negative aspects of their condition. A simple "caveat lector" can be more reliable than any guarantee of accuracy. Ec ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Article Feedback - Ramp up to 10% of Articles
On 07/16/11 4:42 PM, Dan Dascalescu wrote: > On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 02:28, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> On 07/14/11 5:56 AM, WereSpielChequers wrote: >>> Do we have stats yet that measure whether this is encouraging editing, >>> or diverting even more people from improving the pedia to critiquing >>> it? >> It's difficult to see any logical connection between an article rating >> system, and encouraging new editors. > After rating an article, there is this link asking "Did you know you > could edit this page". > Just saying that is not enough to inspire people to edit. Ec ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Scale of online resources, was Re: Rating the English wikipedia
On 07/20/11 4:23 AM, Carcharoth wrote: > On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote: >> I missed reading this thread when it was active, but my own estimate of >> what still needs to be done in historical biographies alone is quite >> high. > I agree, but some level of selectivity is needed. I now try and > maintain a list of articles I failed to find when looking for > information, and also of articles that are on other language > Wikipedias but not the English one. I'll post some of those at the > end. "Level of selectivity" too easily becomes an excuse for exclusion. Some of us feel that comprehensiveness is closer to the core values of Wikipedia. >> For most of its 177 years of publication "The Gentleman's >> Magazine". provided a steady diet of obituaries. If it averaged 1000 >> pages a year that's well over 170,000 pages of material. > A good start would be a listing along with how long the obituaries > are. You might find some are very short. The obvious thing to focus on > is ones where other sources exist, and keep the others as a project > list for now. Some are indeed too short to warrant individual articles. Perhaps the entire content of an issue's obituary (The publication uses the singular to refer to the entire collection of death notices in an issue.) needs to be added to Wikisource. I am looking at the October 1801 issue where there are many such stubs, as with an entry for August 16: "A poor old man, named Threadaway belonging to the workhouse at Newington, Surrey, employed in brewing beer for the use of the house, by some accident fell into the boiling liquor, and was scalded to death." This one is not likely to ever be expanded, but others easily have more useful information. >> What do we do with such things >> as the drawings of the proposed new gaol at Bury-St. Edmonds in the >> August 1801 issue of "The Gentleman's Magazine"? (Does it even still >> exist?) > You would first look for it in other sources, and then add it to the > history section or article for Bury-St. Edmonds. Not all material will > lend itself to a new article, and corroboration with other sources is > important. Corroboration from other sources should not always be such a necessity. When we are dealing with 200-year old information that corroboration is not such an easy task. Even when it exists it is not easily accessible, or will take a great deal of effort to track down. Sometimes you just need to trust your single source on the basis of your experience with the reliability of the source. Corroboration can wait for some other day, though our one source still needs to be fully identified. >> Then there's the endless stream of books that were reviewed in >> a wide range of 19th century periodicals. The reviews themselves are as >> worth reading as the books, because they often contrasted a number of >> publications around a chosen theme. > Eh. I'm less enthusiastic about book reviews. I'd transcribe them into > Wikisource and link them from the books they review (if the books have > articles, and if not, then move on). I would be less interested in the reviews than the books themselves. It is the books themselves that need articles. >> An estimate of 20,000,000 English >> Wikipedia articles seems increasingly conservative. The amount of work >> to be done is enormous even without having to fight with the notability >> police. > Sometimes other sites are better suited to some material. I would > start with Wikisource for some of the material you have mentioned. > > Anyway, a few examples of missing articles: > > Gunnarea capensis (marine polychaete worm) > Laboratoire Souterrain à Bas Bruit (LSBB, French research ) > Giovanni da Vigo (1450-1525, Italian surgeon) > > The latter two have articles on the French (fr) and Italian (it) > Wikipedia, so could be dealt with by translation efforts, but nothing > on the first example. Some of the more obscure branches of the tree of > life are replete with redlinks. > Absolutely! We can always easily find missing articles on an individual basis. It's the scope that's overwhelming. Ec ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
