Wikimedia-l March 2017

140 participants
85 discussions

[Foundation-l] Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery
by Brian J Mingus 09 Sep '22

09 Sep '22

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…>

3 2

[Foundation-l] Fwd: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
by GerardM 09 Aug '22

09 Aug '22

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

3 2

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Politics
by Bill Takatoshi 25 Apr '20

25 Apr '20

>>> The people who are loudest in their demands for consensus >>> do not represent the Wikimedia movement. >> >> The voices loudest for the WMF doing something against the >> Trump administration are not representative of the Wikimedia >> movement either.... > > Is the Community Process Steering Committee currently > prepared to "engage more 'quiet' members of our community" > with a statistically robust snap survey to resolve this question? Anyone can go to Recent Changes and send a SurveyMonkey link to the most recent few hundred editors with contributions at least a year old, to get an accurate answer. Will a respected member of the community please do this? I would like to know what the actual editing community thinks of the travel ban and their idea of an appropriate response. I don't want to see community governance by opt-in participation in obscure RFCs. I would offer to do this myself, but I value keeping my real name unassociated with my enwiki userid. -Will

4 4

Fresh data on the gender gap in content
by Asaf Bartov 10 Feb '20

10 Feb '20

Hullo everyone. I was asked by a volunteer for help getting stats on the gender gap in content on a certain Wikipedia, and came up with simple Wikidata Query Service[1] queries that pulled the total number of articles on a given Wikipedia about men and about women, to calculate *the proportion of articles about women out of all articles about humans*. Then I was curious about how that wiki compared to other wikis, so I ran the queries on a bunch of languages, and gathered the results into a table, here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ijon/Content_gap (please see the *caveat* there.) I don't have time to fully write-up everything I find interesting in those results, but I will quickly point out the following: 1. The Nepali statistic is simply astonishing! There must be a story there. I'm keen on learning more about this, if anyone can shed light. 2. Evidently, ~13%-17% seems like a robust average of the proportion of articles about women among all biographies. 3. among the top 10 largest wikis, Japanese is the least imbalanced. Good job, Japanese Wikipedians! I wonder if you have a good sense of what drives this relatively better balance. (my instinctive guess is pop culture coverage.) 4. among the top 10 largest wikis, Russian is the most imbalanced. 5. I intend to re-generate these stats every two months or so, to eventually have some sense of trends and changes. 6. Your efforts, particularly on small-to-medium wikis, can really make a dent in these numbers! For example, it seems I am personally responsible[2] for almost 1% of the coverage of women on Hebrew Wikipedia! :) 7. I encourage you to share these numbers with your communities. Perhaps you'd like to overtake the wiki just above yours? :) 8. I'm happy to add additional languages to the table, by request. Or you can do it yourself, too. :) A. [1] https://query.wikidata.org/ [2] Yay #100wikidays :) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/100wikidays -- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org

12 18

Introducing the Wikimedia Resource Center
by Maria Cruz 28 Jul '17

28 Jul '17

Hi all, As we have stated in our annual plan [1], “currently, community members must search many pages and places to stay informed about Foundation activities and resources.” We have worked in the past two quarters to create a single point of entry. We call it the Wikimedia Resource Center, and its alpha version is now live on Meta Wikimedia: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Resource_Center As the movement expands to include more affiliates and more programmatic activities every year, newer Wikimedians are faced with lack of experience in the movement and its various channels for requesting support. In order to expand Wikimedia communities’ efforts, we want to provide easy access to resources that support their very important work. The [[m:Wikimedia Resource Center]] is a hub designed in response to this issue: it is intended to evolve into a single point of entry for Wikimedians all over the world to the variety of resources and types of staff support they may need to develop new initiatives or also expand existing ones. This version of the Resource Center is only the beginning. For phase two of the project, we will enable volunteer Wikimedians to add resources developed by other individuals or organizations to the Wikimedia Resource Center, and in phase three, the Wikimedia Resource Center will include features to better connect Wikimedians to other Wikimedians that can support them. We want to hear what you think about this prototype and our plans for it! If you have comments about the Wikimedia Resource Center, you can submit your feedback publicly, on the Talk Page, or privately, via a survey hosted by a third party, that shouldn’t take you more than 4 minutes to complete. A feedback button is on the top right corner on every page of the hub. Looking forward to more collaborations! Best, María [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2016-2017/… -- María Cruz Communications and Outreach Project Manager, Community Engagement

2 2

Tech Talk: A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Absolute Beginners [including non-techies!]
by Rachel Farrand 25 Jun '17

25 Jun '17

Please join for the following talk: *Tech Talk**:* A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Absolute Beginners [including non-techies!] *Presenter:* Asaf Bartov *Date:* February 09, 2017 *Time: *19:00 UTC <https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Tech+Talk%3A+A+Ge…> Link to live YouTube stream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVrAx3AmUvA> *IRC channel for questions/discussion:* #wikimedia-office *Summary: *This talk will introduce you to the Wikimedia Movement's latest major wiki project: Wikidata. We will cover what Wikidata is, how to contribute, how to embed Wikidata into articles on other wikis, tools like the Wikidata Game, and how to query Wikidata (including SPARQL examples).

4 6

Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
by Jacob Rogers 25 Apr '17

25 Apr '17

Hi all, As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks. You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Foundation_statement_on_p…> Best, Jacob -- Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.

23 53

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Wikimania 2017 call for submissions
by phoebe ayers 09 Apr '17

09 Apr '17

Dear all, We have extended the deadline for submitting presentations, panels, roundtables and workshops to Wikimania until *April 10*. The deadline for posters and birds-of-a-feather sessions remains *May 15*. Please see below for the call for submissions for Wikimania, and submit your ideas! Please also note, for those who have already submitted, there is now a field in the registration form for "completed" or "in-progress" submission. When you are ready to have your submission reviewed, please note that it is "completed". Thank you! Please contact us with any questions: wikimania-program(a)wikimedia.org best, Phoebe On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 10:10 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: > All, > I'm very pleased to send out the Wikimania Montréal Call for Submissions, > which can be found in French here: > https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/fr > and in English here: > https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/en > > On behalf of the Wikimania programme committee, > Phoebe Ayers > ----- > > Que vous soyez un membre de la communauté de l’un des projets Wikimédia > (tels que Wikipédia, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikimedia > Commons, Wiktionnaire, MediaWiki ou autres), un créateur de contenu libre > ou un consommateur, nous recevrons avec plaisir votre proposition pour une > session lors de Wikimania 2017. > > *dates importantes* > > Appel aux propositions ouvert : 2 février 2017 > Date limite de soumission des présentations (conférence, panneau, table > ronde et atelier) : *15 avril 2017* > Date limite de soumission des brefs exposés, affiches et réunions > d’oiseaux de la même plume : 15 mai 2017. > Notification d’acceptation des présentations : 20 avril 2017 > Notification d’acceptation des brefs exposés, affiches et réunions > d’oiseaux de la même plume : 10 juin 2017 > > *Types de soumissions & Comment soumettre: *https://wikimania2017. > wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/fr > > *Des questions ?* Merci de contacter le Comité du programme par > wikimania-program(à)wikimedia.org. > > ---- > > Whether you are a community member of one of the Wikimedia projects (such > as Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikimedia Commons, > Wiktionary, MediaWiki or others), or a fellow open content creator or > consumer, we welcome your proposal for a session at Wikimania 2017. > > *Important dates* > > Call for proposals opens: February 2, 2017 > Deadline for submitting presentation (lecture, panel, roundtable and > workshop) submissions: *April 10, 2017* > Deadline for submitting lightning talks, poster, and birds of a feather > submissions: May 15, 2017 > Notification of acceptance for presentations: April 20, 2017 > Notification of acceptance for lightning talks, poster and birds of a > feather submissions: June 10, 2017 > > *Submission types & how to submit:* https://wikimania2017. > wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/en > > *Any questions?* Please contact the Programme Committee at > wikimania-program at wikimedia.org > -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com *

2 2

Arbital, another Wikipedia competitor/complement
by David Gerard 01 Apr '17

01 Apr '17

Being put together by Eliezer Yudkowsky of LessWrong. Content is cc-by-sa 3.0, don't know about the software. https://arbital.com/p/arbital_ambitions/ Rather than the "encyclopedia" approach, it tries to be more pedagogical, teaching the reader at their level. Analysis from a sometime Yudkowsky critic on Tumblr: http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/140995096534/a-year-ago-i-remember-be… (there's a pile more comments linked from the notes on that post, mostly from quasi-fans; I have an acerbic comment in there, but you should look at the site yourself first.) No idea if this will go anywhere, but might be of interest; new approaches generally are. They started in December, first publicised it a week ago and have been scaling up. First day it collapsed due to load from a Facebook post announcement ... so maybe hold off before announcing it everywhere :-) - d.

4 6

Timeless: a grant proposal
by Isarra Yos 01 Apr '17

01 Apr '17

Hi, I'm Isarra, a volunteer MediaWiki developer, and I've submitted a grant proposal to the WMF to support my work on a new responsive skin designed for the Wikimedia projects, Timeless: * Abstract: A new skin, Timeless, has been deployed to the Beta Cluster, but to make it worth eventual deployment to all projects, we need proper research into what's expected/needed from a better skin, and the ability to devote development resources to making it meet these expectations/needs. This grant, as part of a larger series of vaguely planned grants intended to work on many of the underlying issues with MediaWiki's user-facing interfaces, will serve to address this need. * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Timeless Timeless currently exists as fairly basic prototype, but I invite you to take a look at the current version: * Wiki specifically for Timeless: https://timeless-skin.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page * To see what it might look/act like in production, there is a copy of the Simple English Wikipedia on the Beta Cluster, where Timeless has already been deployed: https://simple.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page - you can create an account, set your skin to Timeless, and go through some of the things you might do here, or simply append the string ?useskin=timeless to the end of any page url to see what it would look like in Timeless * Skin documentation: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Timeless If this looks like a project you would be interested in seeing happen, I would very much appreciate your feedback. This applies especially if you have any specific concerns about the skin or the proposal itself, or have faced particular problems on your own projects that you think this might be able to address, because the more of these are documented, the better they will be. I look forward to working with all of you to redefine how we handle our project interfaces. Thanks, Isarra

4 5

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

Wikimedia-l March 2017