from ACM Authors Guide (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/sigguide-v2.2sp ):
"Private communications should be acknowledged, not referenced (e.g. "[Robertson, personal communication]")." Although this one was not quite private ;-) .t On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 1:59 AM, Brian Keegan <[email protected]> wrote: > How does one cite emails in ACM proceedings format? :) > > > On Sunday, May 18, 2014, R.Stuart Geiger <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Tsk tsk tsk, Brian. When the revolution comes, bot discriminators will >> get no mercy. :-) >> >> But seriously, my tl;dr: instead of asking if an account is or isn't a >> bot, ask if a set of edits are or are not automated >> >> Great responses so far: searching usernames for *bot will exclude non-bot >> users who were registered before the username policy change (although *Bot >> is a bit better), and the logging table is a great way to collect bot >> flags. However, Scott is right -- the bot flag (or *Bot username) doesn't >> signify a bot, it signifies a bureaucrat recognizing that a user account >> successfully went through the Bot Approval Group process. If I see an >> account with a bot flag, I can generally assume the edits that account >> makes are initiated by an automated software agent. This is especially the >> case in the main namespace. The inverse assumption is not nearly as easy: I >> can't assume that every edit made from an account *without* a bot flag was >> *not* an automated edit. >> >> About unauthorized bots: yes, there are a relatively small number of >> Wikipedians who, on occasion, run fully-automated, continuously-operating >> bots without approval. Complicating this, if someone is going to take >> the time to build and run a bot, but isn't going to create a separate >> account for it, then it is likely that they are also using that account to >> do non-automated edits. Sometimes new bot developers will run an >> unauthorized bot under their own account during the initial stages of >> development, and only later in the process will they create a separate bot >> account and seek formal approval and flagging. It can get tricky when you >> exclude all the edits from an account for being automated based on a single >> suspicious set of edits. >> >> More commonly, there are many more people who use automated batch tools >> like AutoWikiBrowser to support one-off tasks, like mass find-and-replace >> or category cleanup. Accounts powered by AWB are technically not bots, >> only because a human has to sit there and click "save" for every batch edit >> that is made. Some people will create a separate bot account for AWB >> work and get it approved and flagged, but many more will not bother. Then >> there are people using semi-automated, human-in-the-loop tools like Huggle >> to do vandal fighting. I find that the really hard question is whether >> you include or exclude these different kinds of 'cyborgs', because it >> really makes you think hard about what exactly you're measuring. Is >> someone who does a mass find-and-replace on all articles in a category a >> co-author of each article they edit? Is a vandal fighter patrolling the >> recent changes feed with Huggle a co-author of all the articles they edit >> when they revert vandalism and then move on to the next diff? What about >> somebody using rollback in the web browser? If so, what is it that makes >> these entities authors and ClueBot NG not an author? >> >> When you think about it, user accounts are actually pretty remarkable in >> that they allow such a diverse set of uses and agents to be attributed to a >> single entity. So when it comes to identifying automation, I personally >> think it is better to shift the unit of analysis from the user account to >> the individual edit. A bot flag lets you assume all edits from an account >> are automated, but you can use a range of approaches to identifying sets of >> automated edits from non-flagged accounts. Then I have a set of regex SQL >> queries in the Query Library [1] which parses edit summaries for the traces >> that AWB, Huggle, Twinkle, rollback, etc. automatically leave by default. >> You can also use the edit session approach like Scott has suggested -- Aaron >> and I found a few unauthorized bots in our edit session study [2], and we >> were even using a more aggressive break, with no more than a 60 minute gap >> between edits. To catch short bursts of bulk edits, you could look at large >> numbers of edits made in a short period of time -- I'd say more than 7 main >> namespace edits a minute for 10 minutes would be a hard rate for even a >> very aggressive vandal fighter to maintain with Huggle. >> >> I'll conclude by saying that different kinds of automated editing >> techniques are different ways of participating in and contributing to >> Wikipedia. To systematically exclude automated edits is to remove a very >> important, meaningful, and heterogeneous kind of activity from view. These >> activities constitute a core part of what Wikipedia is, particularly >> those forms of automation which the community has explicitly authorized and >> recognized. Now, we researchers inevitably have to selectively reveal >> and occlude -- a co-authorship network based on main namespace edits also >> excludes talk page discussions and conflict resolution, and this also >> constitutes a core part of what Wikipedia is. It isn't wrong per se to >> exclude automated edits, and it is certainly much worse to not recognize >> that they exist at all. However, I always appreciate seeing how the >> analysis would be different if bots were not excluded. The fact that >> there are these weird users which absolutely dominate a co-authorship >> network graph if you don't filter them out is pretty amazing, at least to >> me. >> >> Best, >> Stuart >> >> [1] >> https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/MySQL_queries#Automated_tool_and_bot_edits >> [2] http://stuartgeiger.com/cscw13-labor-hours.pdf >> >> >> On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Scott Hale >> <[email protected]>wrote: >> >> Very helpful, Lukas, I didn't know about the logging table. >> >> In some recent work [1] I found many users that appeared to be bots but >> whose edits did not have the bot flag set. My approach was to exclude users >> who didn't have a break of more than 6 hours between edits over the entire >> month I was studying. I was interested in the users who had multiple edit >> sessions in the month and so when with a straight threshold. A way to keep >> users with only one editing session would be to exclude users who have no >> break longer than X hours in an edit session lasting at least Y hours >> (e.g., a user who doesn't break for more than 6 hours in 5-6 days is >> probably not human) >> >> Cheers, >> Scott >> >> [1] Multilinguals and Wikipedia Editing >> http://www.scotthale.net/pubs/?websci2014 >> >> >> -- >> Scott Hale >> Oxford Internet Institute >> University of Oxford >> http://www.scotthale.net/ >> [email protected] >> >> >> >> On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Lukas Benedix <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Here is a list of currently flagged bots: >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&offset=&limit=2000&username=&group=bot >> >> Another good point to look for bots is here: >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Bots%2FRequests_for_approval&namespace=4 >> >> You should also have a look at this pages to find former bots: >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive_bots_1 >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive_bots_2 >> >> And last but not least the logging table you can access via tool labs: >> SELECT DISTINCT(log_title) >> FROM logging >> WHERE log_action = 'rights' >> AND log_params LIKE '%bot%'; >> >> Lukas >> >> Am So 18.05.2014 18:34, schrieb Andrew G. West: >> > User name policy states that "*bot*" names are reserved for bots. >> > Thus, such a regex shouldn't be too hacky, but I cannot comment >> > whether some non-automated cases might slip through new user patrol. I >> > do think dumps make the 'users' table available, and I know for sure >> > one could get a full list via the API. >> > >> > As a check on this, you could check that when these usernames edit, >> > whether or not they set the "bot" flag. -AW >> > >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wiki-research-l mai >> >> > > -- > Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D. > Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Lazer Lab > College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University > Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University > Affiliate, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School > > [email protected] > www.brianckeegan.com > M: 617.803.6971 > O: 617.373.7200 > Skype: bckeegan > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > -- .t
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