Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Leila Zia]

Hi Gerard,

On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 2:26 PM Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> but really
> why can we not have the data that allows us to seek out what people are
> actually looking for and do not find..

Please open a Phabricator task for this request at
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org . Please add Research as a tag and
add me as one of the subscribers. I'd like to work with you on a
concrete proposal. A few items to consider as you're expanding the
description of the task:

* We won't be able to release raw search queries as they come to
Wikimedia servers. That is for privacy reasons.

* You also likely don't need raw search queries. If you can be
specific about what you want to have access to, as much as possible,
that can help us get started with scoping the problem. I'm looking for
something along these lines: "I want to be able to see a monthly list
of top n search terms in language x that result in 0 search results or
results where the user does not click on any of the search results
offered." The more specific, the better. If you are in doubt, put some
description and we can iterate on it.

Best,
Leila
p.s. The goal of this exercise is to have an open question ready (with
all the details one needs to know) for the next time we will have a
volunteer researcher to work with us.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Leila Zia]

Ciao Ilario,

On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 12:16 PM Ilario valdelli  wrote:
>
> Any study is interesting, but if it could be country-based, it would be
> better.

We agree with you that the country component is quite important. There
is some ongoing engineering work to make the feature available in
QuickSurvey [1] which is the extension we use. If it gets ready, we
will include at least some sampling by country.

Let me give you a couple of reasons why from our perspective sampling
by country is key:
* Understanding readers from countries such as Nigeria is hard through
English Wikipedia as the traffic in enwiki is dominated by other
countries. In order to get enough responses from Nigeria, we have to
ask many more questions from the rest of the world which is not
something we want to do.
* Many chapters are organized by geographical regions and learning
about the readers in their geography can empower them in new ways.
* If we have enough responses from different countries, we can have
more accurate debiasing steps. For example, if we have enough data
from country x, we can look at the age distribution of respondents and
see if that age distribution matches the age distribution from that
country based on external databases available. If not, we can try to
correct for the differences, or at least be aware of the caveats.

Best,
Leila
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:QuickSurveys

> Kind regards
>
>
> On 06/03/2019 22:12, Leila Zia wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > As I mentioned in an earlier thread [1], we will be running reader
> > surveys across a number of Wikipedia languages to learn about the
> > reader needs and motivations in these languages as well as some of
> > their demographic information (and perhaps the correlations between
> > demographics and user motivations and characteristics).
> >
> > If your language community is interested to have statistics on the
> > distribution of reader gender, age, education, native language, and
> > geographic region (rural/urban) in your language (and depending on how
> > much data we collect in your language, perhaps more insights), this is
> > your chance to indicate interest at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Demographics_and_Wikipedia_use_cases#Interested_languages
> >
> > I initially communicated 2019-02-15 as the deadline to sign up. Since
> > then, we have run a pilot test on enwiki and we are investigating some
> > of the results to see if any changes in the survey questions are
> > needed. You have now time until 2019-03-15 to indicate interest.
> >
> > As always: this call is primarily a service to your language
> > community. If you like it, take action on it. If you don't, no action
> > is needed. :)
> >
> > Best,
> > Leila
> >
> > [1] 
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2019-February/091762.html
> >
> > ___
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> > 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

Hi Vito,

I believe it depends on the way it is done. An edithaton on rappers & pop
stars with high-school students could be a great way to get them into the
project in a fun way. Then as they keep developing and diversifying their
interests, as generally happens with growing kids, they have a never ending
source of inspiration at Wikipedia, even to use as a train ground for
school/university.

I would like to note that, contrary to what seems to be happening in other
projects, and possibly related with some kind of Internet boom in Brazil,
Angola and other Portuguese-speaking countries, the Wikipedia in Portuguese
shows (at least empirically) a very high proportion of kids, mostly teens,
but some as young as 10 or 11, mostly editing in animation series &
computer games initially, and then progressing into other fields as they
grow. I've been watching this for 10 years already. A significant number of
those little kids that were there in 2009 are now sysops and regular
editors on Wikipedia, and part of the regular community. In a number of
cases I know Wikipedia was decisive to develop their skills at school,
sometimes even in their lives in general. It is a good thing. And it all
started with pokemons, Naruto, Saint Seiya and all the stuff that is often
derided as mostly useless in an encyclopedia, but that worked as a learning
school for that young generation, helping them learning how to edit
Wikipedia in a fun way.

I would not go as far as saying we should be doing edithatons about Naruto
and Pokemons, but I do believe we should be helping those kids editing
those articles, instead of chasing them away as "useless newbies only
interested in pop stuff" as often happens. They are the future generations
of Wikipedians.

Best,
Paulo - DarwIn
Wikimedia Portugal


Vi to  escreveu no dia terça, 12/03/2019 à(s) 10:22:

> Il giorno mar 12 mar 2019 alle ore 06:16 David Goodman 
> ha scritto:
>
> > "with popular topics cannibalizing resources."
> >
> > What resources can be cannibalized?   The limiting resource in WP is
> > interested people writing, improving, and validating  articles.  People
> > choose their own topics.  This is different from an organization where
> > staff can be directed to work on what the management think is important.
>
>
> I was exactly making reference to this.
> Editors' interests are hard to change and, actually, it wouldn't be
> auspicable to do it.
>
> The only resources which can be moved are those related to outreaching,
> editathons, various kinds of online and offline projects.
>
> Keeping it short I disagree with choosing topics for editathons and similar
> initiatives basing on topic popularity since this will be in contrast with
> any commitment to diversity, even more it will push a wrong model of
> encyclopedia.
>
>
> When you state that Mr Trump does not know about Indian-Pakistan conflicts,
> > does he know that a Nigerian governor outspends presidents of
> neighbouring
> > countries.. There are elections for Nigerian governors...
> >
>
> I didn't wrote this actually, inaccurate quoting of others' opinions can
> poison any discussion.
> Trying to rephrase, I wrote it would be better to cover things which suits
> more the mission of an encyclopedia and which get less attention by media,
> as Indian-Paki conflicts background, rather than mr. Trump's covfefes.
>
>
> >
> > What is the propblem with providing what people are looking for?
> >
> > I often look for bus schedule 
>
> Vito
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

Hi,

I absolutely agree with the idea of finding some way to know what is more
popular / wanted by readers. And if we identify with it/want to invest some
time in it / whatever, then we can have a good criteria to follow about
what to create first, or invest more in.

I have created myself a number of high-demand pop articles with which I do
not identify at all, as k-pop start Suga -
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suga and late rapper Lil Peep
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil_Peep , because I understood that a lot of
people was searching information about them, and it would be a win-win for
everyone if they would find reliable information in Wikipedia, and possibly
act as an anchor for those readers to better now and join our projects.

I have also done exactly the same with one of the most vandalized and used
in vandalism terms in Portuguese, an horrible swearing word, turning that
not only into an encyclopedic article, but into a featured article:
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caralho . A lot of people was absolutely
shocked by the amount of time apparently "lost" into collecting such stuff
and building it into a proper article, but I see that as an investment:
Turning something apparently hideous into a magnet for History, Medieval
Literature and Folk Culture. The result is that, as you can see, the
article is not even protected. I believe that kids and vandals find it so
educative (that is: boring) they simply turn away. Or they keep reading,
and actually learn something useful. :)

Other experiments I've been doing is writing, following and developing
news-like articles about current events, with high popular demand ATM, such
as shipwrecks, earthquakes and fires, and monitor their visibility and the
way they drive new people into the projects.

Finally, I would like to point the interesting case of encyclopedic article
on Brazilian pastry papo-de-anjo -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papo-de-anjo , which was created by
encyclopedic academic "most highly cited computer scientist in Brazil"
Jorge Stolfi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Stolfi

Why is Stolfi editing about cakes and Brazilian pastry instead of computer
science? Because he feels like it. Would you go to Solfi and say he should
be writing about computer science, instead of pastry, he would probably
leave and you end up with no computer science and no pastry. Why sometimes
I create pop articles instead of concentrating in more "encyclopedic"
stuff? Because this is supposed to be fun, and also a way to learn new
stuff. I do not identify at all with k-pop and rappers, but I found it
funny to write about them, and a way to learn about something that is
absolutely exotic to me. And still write a lot about Literature, History
and Science. But when people come to me saying that I'm loosing my time
writing about those pop subjects, and that I should write about this and
that, what I answer is: If you believe someone should write about that,
then YOU should write, not came asking others to do your stuff.

Please, bring on that popularity study, I'm certainly very interested in it.

Best,
Paulo - DarwIn
Wikimedia Portugal

Gerard Meijssen  escreveu no dia terça,
12/03/2019 à(s) 08:26:

> Hoi,
> The point is EXACTLY that this list will be different per language. What
> there is, what is needed differs as a consequence. What specific Wikipedias
> covers is as different.
>
> There are multiple objectives to be gained:
>
>- as we gain more articles, we will gain a bigger presence for a
>Wikipedia in Google
>- a bigger presence will give us more eye balls.
>- more people who edit a Wikipedia means that any and all subjects of
>their choosing become better covered
>
> When we choose for an approach like this, it is very much in the true Wiki
> spirit. When the argument is about "supervision", the question is how that
> would work. In my opinion, you are likely not to know the other language
> and Google translate is unlikely to function for all the 280+ languages.
>
> The point of this approach is very much that there is no solution for all
> of Wikipedia.. It is weird to suggest that would work in the first place.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On Mon, 11 Mar 2019 at 14:08, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > Reminding is easy, it's analyzing that it's complex.
> >
> > I suspect that editors and readers are probably a little bit smarter than
> > generally assumed. It's quite "obvious" that editors understand what is
> an
> > encyclopedia, after years. When I make an informal survey, statistically
> > the "smarter" students in the class or in the group of people in front of
> > me at an event are those who already edited something or who want to know
> > more or are willing to compile a form to state their opinion or similar.
> >
> > Plus, every topic is multifaceted somehow, it's the same for the most
> > popular ones. It's strange when long-time editors seem to miss this
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Vi to]

Il giorno mar 12 mar 2019 alle ore 06:16 David Goodman 
ha scritto:

> "with popular topics cannibalizing resources."
>
> What resources can be cannibalized?   The limiting resource in WP is
> interested people writing, improving, and validating  articles.  People
> choose their own topics.  This is different from an organization where
> staff can be directed to work on what the management think is important.


I was exactly making reference to this.
Editors' interests are hard to change and, actually, it wouldn't be
auspicable to do it.

The only resources which can be moved are those related to outreaching,
editathons, various kinds of online and offline projects.

Keeping it short I disagree with choosing topics for editathons and similar
initiatives basing on topic popularity since this will be in contrast with
any commitment to diversity, even more it will push a wrong model of
encyclopedia.


When you state that Mr Trump does not know about Indian-Pakistan conflicts,
> does he know that a Nigerian governor outspends presidents of neighbouring
> countries.. There are elections for Nigerian governors...
>

I didn't wrote this actually, inaccurate quoting of others' opinions can
poison any discussion.
Trying to rephrase, I wrote it would be better to cover things which suits
more the mission of an encyclopedia and which get less attention by media,
as Indian-Paki conflicts background, rather than mr. Trump's covfefes.


>
> What is the propblem with providing what people are looking for?
>
> I often look for bus schedule 

Vito
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Benjamin Ikuta]

I agree, we should not be deleting useful articles. 

https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism




On Mar 11, 2019, at 4:52 AM, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
 wrote:

> I know people in many fields with great technical expertise. people who 
> published articles on Science and Nature basically, and in the end I think 
> they are probably qualified to have an idea of what a good encyclopedia 
> should be. The point is that these people open wiki for topics far away from 
> their area, most of the time they look also for "pop" topics. Finding pop 
> culture is what makes them stay and grow interest as much as everything else. 
> It's when they find a deleted ye useful page of something of interest for 
> some internal reason they think wikipedia it's not worth spending time on. 
> 
> Based on that experience, in all the discussions when people who claim that 
> this focus on such pop information lower our image or damage our workflow, I 
> always question where these opinions come from and if they are peer-reviewed. 
> I am a scientist, I look at data. it has been years people are claiming the 
> "popmaggedon" of wikipedia is soon, and in the meantime its overall quality 
> on very specific topic is still increasing.
> 
> A balanced encyclopedia comes from trying to fill the gaps, all information 
> are useful in that direction. As long as someone else is studying missing 
> links, pages existing in other languages, encouraging what editors want and 
> so on, your idea is just part of patchwork. I cannot peer-review such 
> statement, but at least i can tell you it is said by someone who never edited 
> a "pop" article in all his wikipedia life and manage projects of outreach in 
> organic chemistry or biophysics, to name the last ones. So I hope that it 
> gives a hint that is probably fine.
> Go on and explore.
> 
> 
> 
>Il lunedì 11 marzo 2019, 10:08:23 CET, Vi to  ha 
> scritto:  
> 
> That's an unstable process on a long-term, with popular topics
> cannibalizing resources. Top read articles are already about two or three
> sports, some TV series and three or four music topics.
> These are also the most popular topics among editors but if you'll start
> focusing energies on these already popular topics you'll end up having no
> resources to be spent on "female combatants during Russian civil war",
> "near to extinction languages in Brazil", "computational chemestry in late
> XX century".
> 
> The way we self-identify as a project  deeply affects our results:
> promoting the idea of Wikipedia as "the pop encyclopedia" (instead of "the
> free encyclopedia embedding pop topics") will weaken our commitment to
> diversity and quality.
> 
> Also, topic popularity is mutable on a daily basis and it's driven by a
> very narrow number of media (basically Google/YouTube and Facebook) which
> will gain a complete influence over us.
> 
> To me the mission of an encyclopedia is providing the *knowledge* (not
> *information*) which is worth collecting and preserving. The information
> people need/want is likely to be a subset of this.
> 
> If Wikipedia is also an educational medium we should find a way to ask the
> ordes of people looking for new mr. Trump's bizarreness "hey, do you know
> the background of India-Pakistan conflicts?"
> 
> Vito
> 
> Il giorno lun 11 mar 2019 alle ore 06:19 David Goodman 
> ha scritto:
> 
>> The idea of an encyclopedia is to provide the information people need or
>> want  that's appropriate to the format. It would be useful to see what they
>> want that is appropriate but we do not have -- and also useful to see what
>> they look for that isn't appropriate for us. Within what's appropriate, I
>> see no reason why selection of topics should not be driven by reader
>> interests as much as by editor interests. Our purpose is not to practice
>> our writing skills for our own benefit.
>> 
>> On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 6:58 PM Vi to  wrote:
>> 
>>> The idea of a popularity-driven encyclopaedia scares 
>>> 
>>> Vito
>>> 
>>> Il giorno dom 10 mar 2019 alle ore 22:26 Gerard Meijssen <
>>> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>>> 
 Hoi,
 I have been thinking about it.. There is a place for research but
>> really
 why can we not have the data that allows us to seek out what people are
 actually looking for and do not find.. Why can we not promote what
>> proves
 to be of interest [1] ?
 Thanks,
   GerardM
 
 [1]
 
 
>>> 
>> https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-marketing-approach-to-what-it-is-that.html
 
 On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 at 22:13, Leila Zia  wrote:
 
> Hi all,
> 
> As I mentioned in an earlier thread [1], we will be running reader
> surveys across a number of Wikipedia languages to learn about the
> reader needs and motivations in these languages as well as some of
> their demographic information (and perhaps the correlations between
> demographics and user motivations and 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The point is EXACTLY that this list will be different per language. What
there is, what is needed differs as a consequence. What specific Wikipedias
covers is as different.

There are multiple objectives to be gained:

   - as we gain more articles, we will gain a bigger presence for a
   Wikipedia in Google
   - a bigger presence will give us more eye balls.
   - more people who edit a Wikipedia means that any and all subjects of
   their choosing become better covered

When we choose for an approach like this, it is very much in the true Wiki
spirit. When the argument is about "supervision", the question is how that
would work. In my opinion, you are likely not to know the other language
and Google translate is unlikely to function for all the 280+ languages.

The point of this approach is very much that there is no solution for all
of Wikipedia.. It is weird to suggest that would work in the first place.
Thanks,
GerardM

On Mon, 11 Mar 2019 at 14:08, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Reminding is easy, it's analyzing that it's complex.
>
> I suspect that editors and readers are probably a little bit smarter than
> generally assumed. It's quite "obvious" that editors understand what is an
> encyclopedia, after years. When I make an informal survey, statistically
> the "smarter" students in the class or in the group of people in front of
> me at an event are those who already edited something or who want to know
> more or are willing to compile a form to state their opinion or similar.
>
> Plus, every topic is multifaceted somehow, it's the same for the most
> popular ones. It's strange when long-time editors seem to miss this aspect.
> There is always a specific disease, an historical event, a place or a
> person in a family history linked to a most searched topic. You can detect
> many missing specific things just focusing on a core topic and starting
> from there. Again, maybe it's worth reminding also how our editors are
> quite good at doing this, and this type of information is therefore a
> starting point. In some of this comments, it always look like an end per
> se.
>
> Seriously, if someone is so superficial to just edit something with no
> depth because it's on a list, (s)he will just do something equally
> superficial somewhere else. Clinically, I might state that it's probably a
> good thing if this occur in an area with huge focus, it actually lowers the
> possible long-term disfunctionalities induced by a rigid approach,
> something that it's more subtle to detect in less supervised areas.
>
> in any case, these lists can change a lot from area to area so it is not
> even driven by the "mass", if you give a country in South America or Asia
> the same focus on a western country you end up with very unusual guideline.
> it's nice to know that you expertise in an area even if less taken into
> account in the average community around you, it's useful in a different
> part of the word.
>
>
>
> Il lunedì 11 marzo 2019, 13:32:12 CET, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> ha scritto:
>
>  ‬
>
> > The idea of a popularity-driven encyclopaedia scares 
> >
> >
> I agree, although I'd make it a bit more focused: an encyclopedia that is
> *only* popularity-driven is indeed scary. It's good to mention this, and
> not once, but repeatedly.
>
> However, providing Wikipedia editors with information about what *is* in
> demand is useful, as long as the editors clearly know that they have the
> choice to write what is *important* and that "important" is not equal to
> "popular".
>
> While I haven't ran a proper survey about this, conversations that with
> Wikipedia editors from various "big" and "small" languages tell me that
> most of them already understand it, and this is good. Nevertheless,
> reminding people that Wikipedia is not supposed to be just about covering
> popular topics won't hurt.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
You will not see me write about subjects I do not care about. So the notion
that anyone writing about subjects you care about is a fallacy. It takes
horses for courses, you will write about what you care about and so will I.
Others may look into what is missing and find that their subject matter
expertise is called for.

When you state that Mr Trump does not know about Indian-Pakistan conflicts,
does he know that a Nigerian governor outspends presidents of neighbouring
countries.. There are elections for Nigerian governors...

When Mr Trump does not know, and we do not either, we EXACTLY find a spike
in a subject people are looking for..
Thanks,
   GerardM

On Mon, 11 Mar 2019 at 10:07, Vi to  wrote:

> That's an unstable process on a long-term, with popular topics
> cannibalizing resources. Top read articles are already about two or three
> sports, some TV series and three or four music topics.
> These are also the most popular topics among editors but if you'll start
> focusing energies on these already popular topics you'll end up having no
> resources to be spent on "female combatants during Russian civil war",
> "near to extinction languages in Brazil", "computational chemestry in late
> XX century".
>
> The way we self-identify as a project  deeply affects our results:
> promoting the idea of Wikipedia as "the pop encyclopedia" (instead of "the
> free encyclopedia embedding pop topics") will weaken our commitment to
> diversity and quality.
>
> Also, topic popularity is mutable on a daily basis and it's driven by a
> very narrow number of media (basically Google/YouTube and Facebook) which
> will gain a complete influence over us.
>
> To me the mission of an encyclopedia is providing the *knowledge* (not
> *information*) which is worth collecting and preserving. The information
> people need/want is likely to be a subset of this.
>
> If Wikipedia is also an educational medium we should find a way to ask the
> ordes of people looking for new mr. Trump's bizarreness "hey, do you know
> the background of India-Pakistan conflicts?"
>
> Vito
>
> Il giorno lun 11 mar 2019 alle ore 06:19 David Goodman 
> ha scritto:
>
> > The idea of an encyclopedia is to provide the information people need or
> > want  that's appropriate to the format. It would be useful to see what
> they
> > want that is appropriate but we do not have -- and also useful to see
> what
> > they look for that isn't appropriate for us. Within what's appropriate, I
> > see no reason why selection of topics should not be driven by reader
> > interests as much as by editor interests. Our purpose is not to practice
> > our writing skills for our own benefit.
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 6:58 PM Vi to  wrote:
> >
> > > The idea of a popularity-driven encyclopaedia scares 
> > >
> > > Vito
> > >
> > > Il giorno dom 10 mar 2019 alle ore 22:26 Gerard Meijssen <
> > > gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > I have been thinking about it.. There is a place for research but
> > really
> > > > why can we not have the data that allows us to seek out what people
> are
> > > > actually looking for and do not find.. Why can we not promote what
> > proves
> > > > to be of interest [1] ?
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >  GerardM
> > > >
> > > > [1]
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-marketing-approach-to-what-it-is-that.html
> > > >
> > > > On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 at 22:13, Leila Zia  wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hi all,
> > > > >
> > > > > As I mentioned in an earlier thread [1], we will be running reader
> > > > > surveys across a number of Wikipedia languages to learn about the
> > > > > reader needs and motivations in these languages as well as some of
> > > > > their demographic information (and perhaps the correlations between
> > > > > demographics and user motivations and characteristics).
> > > > >
> > > > > If your language community is interested to have statistics on the
> > > > > distribution of reader gender, age, education, native language, and
> > > > > geographic region (rural/urban) in your language (and depending on
> > how
> > > > > much data we collect in your language, perhaps more insights), this
> > is
> > > > > your chance to indicate interest at:
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Demographics_and_Wikipedia_use_cases#Interested_languages
> > > > >
> > > > > I initially communicated 2019-02-15 as the deadline to sign up.
> Since
> > > > > then, we have run a pilot test on enwiki and we are investigating
> > some
> > > > > of the results to see if any changes in the survey questions are
> > > > > needed. You have now time until 2019-03-15 to indicate interest.
> > > > >
> > > > > As always: this call is primarily a service to your language
> > > > > community. If you like it, take action on it. If you don't, no
> action
> > > > > is needed. :)
> > > > >
> > > > > Best,
> > > > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[James Salsman]

Bamyers99's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY
weekly list linked from the Community Portal "Help out" section
addresses the issue directly, thanks to ORES. It would be great if
that were adopted by the Foundation for Wikipedias other than English.

Also, the links from the numbers on WP:BACKLOG which used to sort the
backlog categories by pageviews are broken again. I thought
Dispenser's categorder got moved to Toolforge years ago, but
apparently it's no longer maintained?

On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 5:53 AM Amir E. Aharoni
 wrote:
>
> ‫בתאריך יום א׳, 10 במרץ 2019 ב-23:27 מאת ‪Gerard Meijssen‬‏ <‪
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com‬‏>:‬
>
> > Hoi,
> > I have been thinking about it.. There is a place for research but really
> > why can we not have the data that allows us to seek out what people are
> > actually looking for and do not find.. Why can we not promote what proves
> > to be of interest [1] ?
> >
>
> Actually, there was some work done around it. Here are some examples:
>
> 1. The Discovery (Search) team in the Foundation researched searches in
> Wikimedia sites' search box that yielded zero results. This was done in
> 2016 or so, led by Dan Garry as the product manager, and this lead to some
> improvements in the functionality of Wikimedia sites' internal search
> engine, although I don't remember what they were exactly.
>
> 2. Google's Project Tiger provided lists of articles for which people often
> search in the Google search engine in India, and about which there are no
> articles in Wikipedias in languages of India. See
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program
>
> 3. Last year I made a list of articles that people search for in their
> language using the interlanguage links search box and cannot find. You can
> see a sample here:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Amire80/WEIRD/2018-04-09%E2%80%932018-04-15
> . I plan to make this list nicer-looking and auto-updating some time soon.
>
> 4. The GapFinder project is another tool that helps people find articles
> that are missing in some wikis: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GapFinder
>
> 5. This is just an idea, but it's written down, which is a bit better than
> nothing: Show the most popular articles by country in the PageViews tool,
> rather than just by language. It's documented at
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T207171 . The rationale for this is that
> the most popular English Wikipedia articles in the U.S., Nigeria, India,
> the Philippines, and South Africa are significantly different. The English
> Wikipedia is the most popular one in all these countries, but whereas it is
> sensible that it's popular in the U.S., it's a bit depressing that it's
> also the most popular in the other four countries, even though languages
> other than English are spoken there. The reason for this situation is, of
> course, that there is little content in the Wikipedias in the languages of
> these countries, and knowing what the most popular articles are can help
> people who write in these languages choose how to write that will be
> useful, and will hopefully raise the popularity of Wikipedias in these
> languages. The same is true for the most popular Russian Wikipedia articles
> in Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, the most popular French Wikipedia articles in
> Benin and Mali, etc. This is only an idea, but maybe it will be implemented
> some day.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Helene Hahn and Mirjam Stegherr appointed to the WMDE board

[Rajeeb Dutta]

Wonderful news!! All my best wishes..

Best Regards,
Rajeeb Dutta.
Wikimedia India.
Sent from my iPhone

> On 11-Mar-2019, at 11:14 PM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel 
>  wrote:
> 
> That is great news, Lukas!
> 
> I'm happy to see that more and more boards diverse their membership. I
> think it's an important thing and a valuable contribution to the ability of
> our organizations to see the big picture behind our current movement
> activities and thinking.
> 
> 
> 
> *Itzik Edri*
> Chairperson
> it...@wikimedia.org.il
> +972-54-5878078
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 1:24 PM Lukas Mezger 
> wrote:
> 
>> Dear fellow Wikimedians,
>> 
>> I am happy to share with you that the Wikimedia Deutschland board has
>> appointed Helene Hahn and Mirjam Stegherr as additional members to the
>> board.
>> 
>> *Helene *is a free knowledge enthusiast and a co-founder of Coding Da
>> Vinci, the first German open cultural data hackathon(1). For the past five
>> years, she has worked as a project manager for community and technology
>> projects in the fields of open government, data literacy and open culture
>> at the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. *Mirjam *is a highly experienced
>> expert in media and communications. Having worked as a freelance
>> journalist, consultant, deputy editor-in-chief, press officer, and head of
>> communications for 20 years, she has extensive experience at all levels of
>> strategic communications.
>> 
>> Both will be full members of the board until the next board elections at
>> the general assembly in June 2020 and we are very much looking forward to
>> working with Helene and Mirjam.
>> 
>> The Wikimedia Deutschland board(2) of consists of up to 9 members. Seven
>> members are elected by the general assembly for a two-year term. After the
>> election, the seven board members can appoint up to two additional members
>> to the board. As the general assembly on 1 December 2018 resulted in the
>> election of six men and one woman, we decided to consider only applications
>> from non-male candidates for the appointed seats. Subsequently, we
>> published a profile with the skills and experiences which we considered to
>> be most important for our board. We are happy that this approach was very
>> successful: We received more than 80 recommendations and 16 applications of
>> highly qualified candidates. Through this process, we have made some
>> valuable experiences and contacts on which we want to build to further
>> increase the diversity of candidates in upcoming board elections.
>> 
>> Please join me in welcoming Helene und Mirjam to the Wikiverse!
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> Lukas
>> 
>> (1) https://codingdavinci.de/about/
>> (2) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland#Board
>> --
>> 
>> Dr. Lukas Mezger
>> Vorsitzender des Präsidiums / chair of the Supervisory Board
>> 
>> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
>> Tel. (030) 219 158 260 – (0151) 268 63 931
>> http://wikimedia.de
>> 
>> Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an der Menge allen
>> Wissens frei teilhaben kann. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
>> http://spenden.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 27/029/42207
>> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
What is it that scares youi? When you want to write about the subject that
you care about do. If it is popular good. That is all.

What scares me is that people define what others want to / need to know.
What is the propblem with providing what people are looking for? In the big
Wikipedias almost everything is there including pokemon, soccer and ice
hockey...
Thanks,
GerardM

On Sun, 10 Mar 2019 at 23:58, Vi to  wrote:

> The idea of a popularity-driven encyclopaedia scares 
>
> Vito
>
> Il giorno dom 10 mar 2019 alle ore 22:26 Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
> > Hoi,
> > I have been thinking about it.. There is a place for research but really
> > why can we not have the data that allows us to seek out what people are
> > actually looking for and do not find.. Why can we not promote what proves
> > to be of interest [1] ?
> > Thanks,
> >  GerardM
> >
> > [1]
> >
> >
> https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-marketing-approach-to-what-it-is-that.html
> >
> > On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 at 22:13, Leila Zia  wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > As I mentioned in an earlier thread [1], we will be running reader
> > > surveys across a number of Wikipedia languages to learn about the
> > > reader needs and motivations in these languages as well as some of
> > > their demographic information (and perhaps the correlations between
> > > demographics and user motivations and characteristics).
> > >
> > > If your language community is interested to have statistics on the
> > > distribution of reader gender, age, education, native language, and
> > > geographic region (rural/urban) in your language (and depending on how
> > > much data we collect in your language, perhaps more insights), this is
> > > your chance to indicate interest at:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour/Demographics_and_Wikipedia_use_cases#Interested_languages
> > >
> > > I initially communicated 2019-02-15 as the deadline to sign up. Since
> > > then, we have run a pilot test on enwiki and we are investigating some
> > > of the results to see if any changes in the survey questions are
> > > needed. You have now time until 2019-03-15 to indicate interest.
> > >
> > > As always: this call is primarily a service to your language
> > > community. If you like it, take action on it. If you don't, no action
> > > is needed. :)
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Leila
> > >
> > > [1]
> > >
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2019-February/091762.html
> > >
> > > ___
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> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
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