This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of
almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds
on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which
I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send
the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was
never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to
look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles
down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study
the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a
search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to
analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly
at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed
on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the
simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface
features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality
that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The
[[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article
html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number
of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words
and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number
of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number
of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see
the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or
h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number
of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage
links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age
(based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :*
Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any
class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out
featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the
classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of
this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external
links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly
distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value
assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B
and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information.
:* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. =
Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an
analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the
link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet
Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful
Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis
is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then
look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the
article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can
pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this
article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also
contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in
our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple
English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring
in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA
only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl
Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic
Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]],
[[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple
only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug
use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual
liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]],
[[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock
festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic
acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles
produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion /
Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your
perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET
ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature
sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that
the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not
distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together,
Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles
are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't
look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is
interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five
Stars Dominate Ratings"
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html…
I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system
is
well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and
create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating
system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia
namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as
needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you
don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot).
:* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles
and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You
ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give
the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure
of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from
document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page
262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the
kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what
features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is
an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority,
economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance,
precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent
features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a
person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has
has this much of these surface and these latent features.
= References =
- DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in
Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report.
PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…>
- Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the
feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical
Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>
Hoi,
I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most
excellent bit of news.
The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the
field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding
drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in
a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to
learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics.
What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are
asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more
linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be
interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more
relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get
more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that
we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with
all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the
Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should
approve yet another language :)
NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in
this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus...
Thanks,
GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org>
Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org>
Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project
<reviews(a)linguistlist.org>
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/
The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University,
and donations from subscribers and publishers.
Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org>
================================================================
To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html
===========================Directory==============================
1)
Date: 18-Jun-2007
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
Dear subscribers,
As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the
"Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their
donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the
English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this
at:
http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm.
The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity
of
our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic
about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit
more
leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on
the
Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely
organizational one. We will:
*Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or
pages that need improvement;
*Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified
as
"in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any
references or sources," etc;
*Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or
articles;
*Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia;
*Keep track of our project Wikipedians;
*Keep track of revisions and new entries;
*Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's
efforts.
We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us
all
get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an
area
needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of
Linguists
page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M
Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and
information
added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort,
please
respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at
hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which
linguistics
entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our
campaign
on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we
will
share with you soon.
This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The
end
result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth
and
depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate
prospective
students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on
what
we do. Please consider participating.
Sincerely,
Hannah Morales
Editor, Wikipedia Update Project
Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable
-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831
Hi folks,
to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course
corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me
and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process,
starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according
to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the
Board [1]:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero)
- Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams)
- Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity
I'm proposing the following initial schedule:
January:
- Editor Engagement Experiments
February:
- Visual Editor
- Mobile (Contribs + Zero)
March:
- Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects)
- Funds Dissemination Committee
We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly
metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on
their recent progress, which will help set some context that would
otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will
also create open opportunities for feedback and questions.
My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly
review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as
meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this
discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here
which we can use to discuss the concept further:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r…
The internal review will, at minimum, include:
Sue Gardner
myself
Howie Fung
Team members and relevant director(s)
Designated minute-taker
So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual
Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker.
I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a
duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks:
- Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter,
compared with goals
- Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would?
- Review of challenges, blockers and successes
- Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other
action items
- Buffer time, debriefing
Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved
structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases
where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world.
In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be
to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than
a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews
may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally
to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in
engineering.
As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can
help inform and support reviews across the organization.
Feedback and questions are appreciated.
All best,
Erik
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi folks,
While watching the current changes to Wikimedia France microgrants program
implemented, I was curious to know which Wikimedia entities had similar
funding programs for individuals - how they worked, how we could learn form
each other.
Since apparently there was no Meta page for that(tm) (yet!) I went ahead and
drafted <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jean-Frédéric/Funding_programs
>
I dug my information out of my email archives and FDC proposal forms, so I
could totally have missed some programs - please add the ones you know
about!
Of course, it would be more useful to have more detailed information on
every program.
Together with Caroline & Pierre-Selim we threw some ideas on what we
thought was interesting to know about the programs, but that's still very
alpha - please add more ideas!
Looking forward to your thoughts about this!
Cheers,
--
Jean-Frédéric
Wikimédia France
Have come across a collection of basic college textbooks that appear to be
more or less based on text from Wikipedia. There are 21 of them. The
company claims that they are being used by more than 2 million students.
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here
http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do eventually
attribute Wikipedia.
They are being offered for free on amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywo…
and
are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate
position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would
consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this
textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free available?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Hi all.
Would Wikimedia like to have anything similar to https://input.mozilla.org/ (it runs on an open-source platform)? I see this as a useful and transparent (!) channel for feedback; useful to see what majority of users actually have issues with. While most WMF projects have a village pump, a talk page, mailing lists, they're sort of to solve issues on the spot without leaving a trace. This one leaves output: a pattern of what users are displeased with. Output classifiable by language, by project, by time. Similarly what they're pleased with, likewise.
Gryllida.
Forwarding for info.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Forrester <jdforrester(a)gmail.com>
Date: 1 November 2013 18:43
Subject: Wikimania 2015 - Call for Jury volunteers
To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)" <
wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
Soon we will be kicking off the selection process for deciding where we
will hold Wikimania 2015[0].
The Requests for Proposals (RfP) is being written right now[1], and will be
coming out soon, but in this e-mail we would like to invite volunteers to
serve on the selection jury[2]. The jury will select the winning bid based
on published criteria, reviewing the bids from January onwards until the
final selection is made in April 2014.
This is roughly 30-40 hours' work, and is key to us making Wikimania a
strong, healthy community conference that we all can enjoy. The Wikimania
Committee will select a jury that is a balanced representation of the
community, from a diverse range of backgrounds, sexes, languages, cultures
and regions of the world.
The main criteria are as follows:
* You want to help make Wikimania as great a celebration of the community
as we can make it;
* You can represent some of the Wikimedia community's varied projects and
activities;
* You have some experience of community events, meetings, conferences, or
want to learn;
* You have some free time during the selection period, especially late
March and early April; and
* You are not closely involved in any bid (it's a conflict of interest).
If you would like to serve on the jury, please e-mail Florence Devouard
(off-list) [[Wikipedia:User:Anthere]] at fdevouard @ wikimedia.org by 12
November. We will announce the jury in two weeks' time.
Please help us by translating this message and passing it on to your wiki's
community for those that don't read these mailing lists.
Thank you, and good luck to all Bids.
[0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015_bids
[2] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_jury
On behalf of the Wikimania Committee.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal
capacity)
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal
capacity)
Please find below a link announcement for the hire of two Wikipedians in
Community (*).
One candidate is meant to be working in Uganda whilst the other will be
working in Ivory Coast. Positions are for one year
:http://www.wikiafrica.net/call_for_wir_en/
If you know people/media associated to Uganda or Ivory Coast, please
relay the call !
More info about Kumusha:
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki/en (EN)
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki/fr (FR)
(*) After much thinking, we decided to name the people we are looking
for, "WiC" as in Wikipedian in Community rather than Wikipedian in
Residence as previously. Our reasoning was that in most cases, WiR are
typically Wikipedians "planted" in institutional context (Museums,
libraries etc.) whilst we wanted to avoid this situation and get us to
focus on people or communities (already-existing or to-be-created).
Hence the new name.
Thanks
Anthere
Hello community,
this is to inform you that in response to the trademarking of the
Wikimedia community logo[1], created in 2006 by Artur “WarX”
Fijałkowski, which was discussed on this mailing list[2] as well as on
Meta[3] back in March, a small group of community members—Artur, myself,
Federico Leva (Nemo) and John Vandenberg—have initiated a formal process
of opposition against the registration of the trademark by the
Foundation in order to *reclaim the logo* for unrestricted use by the
community.
We appreciate the Foundation’s protection of the other trademarks they
have registered so far, including the logos of Wikipedia, Wikisource and
some other sister projects. In the case of the community logo, however,
it is our belief that the Foundation’s actions are exactly opposite to
what the community logo stands for and contradict the purpose behind its
very existence.
We would like to make it clear that it is not our intention to damage
anyone; our actions are a challenge against what we perceive as
unilateral declaration of ownership of an asset that has always belonged
to the wider community, and not to one or another organisation that is
part of the movement. By formally opposing the registration of the
trademark we hope to ensure the history of this logo is not disregarded,
and we wish to protect the community against unnecessary bureaucracy
and, to use another quote, let “groups who do not purport to represent
the WMF”[4] to continue to be able to freely associate with a logo that
has been part of their identity for so long.
We also want to note that this is in no way a legal action against the
Foundation, but a simple notice of opposition against the registration
of the logo in the European Union. If we assume good faith, we can only
be confident that the WMF, having now a formal occasion, will withdraw
its registration of the logo rather than continue using movement
resources to force the community into lengthy, expensive proceedings.
We invite all community members interested in this issue to express
their opinions at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo/Reclaim_the_Logo
If any of you would like to help us in any way (covering the costs of
the opposition, promoting the discussion, etc.), please feel free to
contact us off–list.
Artur Fijalkowski (WarX)
Tomasz Kozlowski (odder)
Federico Leva (Nemo)
John Vandenberg (jayvdb)
== References ==
* [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg
* [2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124715.html
* [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo
* [4]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124730.html
