Hi all, A reminder that this is happening in 2 hours from now.
Best, Leila On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Leila Zia <le...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > [Apologies for cross-posting] > > Hi everyone, > > Almost a year ago, we [1] embarked on a research project to understand who > Wikipedia readers are. More specifically, we set a goal for finding a > taxonomy of Wikipedia readers. In the upcoming Research Showcase, I will > present the findings of this research. > > *Logistics* > The Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, November 16, > 2016 at 11:35 (PST) 19:35 (UTC). > > YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O24F1xkbNwI > > As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC freedone at > #wikimedia-research. And, you can watch our past research showcases at > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase. > > *Title* > Why We Read Wikipedia > > *Abstract* > Every day, millions of readers come to Wikipedia to satisfy a broad range > of information needs, however, little is known about what these needs are. > In this presentation, I share the result of a research that sets to help us > understand Wikipedia readers better. Based on an initial user study on > English, Persian, and Spanish Wikipedia, we build a taxonomy of Wikipedia > use-cases along several dimensions, capturing users’ motivations to visit > Wikipedia, the depth of knowledge they are seeking, and their knowledge of > the topic of interest prior to visiting Wikipedia. Then, we quantify the > prevalence of these use-cases via a large-scale user survey conducted on > English Wikipedia. Our analyses highlight the variety of factors driving > users to Wikipedia, such as current events, media coverage of a topic, > personal curiosity, work or school assignments, or boredom. Finally, we > match survey responses to the respondents’ digital traces in Wikipedia’s > server logs, enabling the discovery of behavioral patterns associated with > specific use-cases. Our findings advance our understanding of reader > motivations and behavior on Wikipedia and have potential implications for > developers aiming to improve Wikipedia’s user experience, editors striving > to cater to (a subset of) their readers’ needs, third-party services (such > as search engines) providing access to Wikipedia content, and researchers > aiming to build tools such as article recommendation engines. > > > *How to prepare? What to expect?* > If you decide to attend, here are a few things I would like to ask you to > keep in mind, especially if this will be your first time to one of our > research showcases: > > * Like many other research projects in fields that are not heavily > explored, the findings of this research will create more questions than > they answer. I encourage you to keep these questions in mind throughout the > presentation and discussion: "What can we do with this finding? What other > questions can we ask? What other ideas can we try?" > > * Be open to ask these questions to yourself, especially if you are a > Wikipedia editor, even before coming to the showcase: "Why do I edit > Wikipedia? Who am I writing the content for, if anyone? Will I change the > way I write content if I know more about who reads it (to encourage or > discourage certain types of reading or readers)? What needs an encyclopedia > should serve? What is Wikipedia: A place one can quickly find the answer to > his/her questions, or a place that one can go to when he/she wants to spend > a quiet time reading and learning, or a place for both and even more? etc." > > * And, see if you would be interested to see the result of this study in > your language. What will be presented is based on research on English, > Persian, and Spanish Wikipedia (the data from the latter two projects have > been used only for one part of the research). We are interested in running > the study on at least 2-3 more languages to understand the robustness of > some of the results across different languages, and to also help > communities with having access to the results for their specific language > project. > > Looking forward to seeing you there, and if you can't make it, please > feel free to watch the video later and get in touch with us with > questions/comments. :) > > Best, > Leila > -- > Leila Zia > Senior Research Scientist > Wikimedia Foundation > > [1] WMF Research and researchers from three academic institutions: EPFL, > GESIS, and Stanford University, in collaboration with WMF Reading. > > > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
