Using Edit Sessions to Measure Participation in Wikipedia
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Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance
Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance Andrea Forte1, Vanessa Larco2 and Amy Bruckman1 1GVU Center, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology {aforte, asb}@cc.gatech.edu 2Microsoft [email protected] This is a preprint version of the journal article: Forte, Andrea, Vanessa Larco and Amy Bruckman. (2009) Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance. Journal of Management Information Systems. 26(1) pp 49-72. Publisher: M.E. Sharp www.mesharpe.com/journals.asp Abstract How does “self-governance” happen in Wikipedia? Through in-depth interviews with twenty individuals who have held a variety of responsibilities in the English-language Wikipedia, we obtained rich descriptions of how various forces produce and regulate social structures on the site. Our analysis describes Wikipedia as an organization with highly refined policies, norms, and a technological architecture that supports organizational ideals of consensus building and discussion. We describe how governance on the site is becoming increasingly decentralized as the community grows and how this is predicted by theories of commons-based governance developed in offline contexts. We also briefly examine local governance structures called WikiProjects through the example of WikiProject Military History, one of the oldest and most prolific projects on the site. 1. The Mechanisms of Self-Organization Should a picture of a big, hairy tarantula appear in an encyclopedia article about arachnophobia? Does it illustrate the point, or just frighten potential readers? Reasonable people might disagree on this question. In a freely editable site like Wikipedia, anyone can add the photo, and someone else can remove it. And someone can add it back, and the process continues. -
Community and Communication
Community and 12 Communication A large, diverse, and thriving group of volun- teers produces encyclopedia articles and administers Wikipedia. Over time, members of the Wikipedia community have developed conventions for interacting with each other, processes for managing content, and policies for minimizing disruptions and maximizing use- ful work. In this chapter, we’ll discuss where to find other contributors and how to ask for help with any topic. We’ll also explain ways in which community members interact with each other. Though most discussion occurs on talk pages, Wikipedia has some central community forums for debate about the site’s larger policies and more specific issues. We’ll also talk about the make-up of the community. First, however, we’ll outline aspects of Wikipedia’s shared culture, from key philosophies about how contributors How Wikipedia Works (C) 2008 by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates should interact with each other to some long-running points of debate to some friendly practices that have arisen over time. Although explicit site policies cover content guidelines and social norms, informal philosophies and practices help keep the Wikipedia community of contributors together. Wikipedia’s Culture Wikipedia’s community has grown spontaneously and organically—a recipe for a baffling culture rich with in-jokes and insider references. But core tenets of the wiki way, like Assume Good Faith and Please Don’t Bite the Newcomers, have been with the community since the beginning. Assumptions on Arrival Wikipedians try to treat new editors well. Assume Good Faith (AGF) is a funda- mental philosophy, as well as an official guideline (shortcut WP:AGF) on Wikipedia. -
Modeling Popularity and Reliability of Sources in Multilingual Wikipedia
information Article Modeling Popularity and Reliability of Sources in Multilingual Wikipedia Włodzimierz Lewoniewski * , Krzysztof W˛ecel and Witold Abramowicz Department of Information Systems, Pozna´nUniversity of Economics and Business, 61-875 Pozna´n,Poland; [email protected] (K.W.); [email protected] (W.A.) * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 31 March 2020; Accepted: 7 May 2020; Published: 13 May 2020 Abstract: One of the most important factors impacting quality of content in Wikipedia is presence of reliable sources. By following references, readers can verify facts or find more details about described topic. A Wikipedia article can be edited independently in any of over 300 languages, even by anonymous users, therefore information about the same topic may be inconsistent. This also applies to use of references in different language versions of a particular article, so the same statement can have different sources. In this paper we analyzed over 40 million articles from the 55 most developed language versions of Wikipedia to extract information about over 200 million references and find the most popular and reliable sources. We presented 10 models for the assessment of the popularity and reliability of the sources based on analysis of meta information about the references in Wikipedia articles, page views and authors of the articles. Using DBpedia and Wikidata we automatically identified the alignment of the sources to a specific domain. Additionally, we analyzed the changes of popularity and reliability in time and identified growth leaders in each of the considered months. The results can be used for quality improvements of the content in different languages versions of Wikipedia. -
Omnipedia: Bridging the Wikipedia Language
Omnipedia: Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap Patti Bao*†, Brent Hecht†, Samuel Carton†, Mahmood Quaderi†, Michael Horn†§, Darren Gergle*† *Communication Studies, †Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, §Learning Sciences Northwestern University {patti,brent,sam.carton,quaderi}@u.northwestern.edu, {michael-horn,dgergle}@northwestern.edu ABSTRACT language edition contains its own cultural viewpoints on a We present Omnipedia, a system that allows Wikipedia large number of topics [7, 14, 15, 27]. On the other hand, readers to gain insight from up to 25 language editions of the language barrier serves to silo knowledge [2, 4, 33], Wikipedia simultaneously. Omnipedia highlights the slowing the transfer of less culturally imbued information similarities and differences that exist among Wikipedia between language editions and preventing Wikipedia’s 422 language editions, and makes salient information that is million monthly visitors [12] from accessing most of the unique to each language as well as that which is shared information on the site. more widely. We detail solutions to numerous front-end and algorithmic challenges inherent to providing users with In this paper, we present Omnipedia, a system that attempts a multilingual Wikipedia experience. These include to remedy this situation at a large scale. It reduces the silo visualizing content in a language-neutral way and aligning effect by providing users with structured access in their data in the face of diverse information organization native language to over 7.5 million concepts from up to 25 strategies. We present a study of Omnipedia that language editions of Wikipedia. At the same time, it characterizes how people interact with information using a highlights similarities and differences between each of the multilingual lens. -
The Culture of Wikipedia
Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia Good Faith Collaboration The Culture of Wikipedia Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. Foreword by Lawrence Lessig The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Web edition, Copyright © 2011 by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. CC-NC-SA 3.0 Purchase at Amazon.com | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound | MIT Press Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. Despite unease over its implications for the character (and quality) of knowledge, Wikipedia has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the centuries-old Author Bio & Research Blog pursuit of a universal encyclopedia. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a rich ethnographic portrayal of Wikipedia's historical roots, collaborative culture, and much debated legacy. Foreword Preface to the Web Edition Praise for Good Faith Collaboration Preface Extended Table of Contents "Reagle offers a compelling case that Wikipedia's most fascinating and unprecedented aspect isn't the encyclopedia itself — rather, it's the collaborative culture that underpins it: brawling, self-reflexive, funny, serious, and full-tilt committed to the 1. Nazis and Norms project, even if it means setting aside personal differences. Reagle's position as a scholar and a member of the community 2. The Pursuit of the Universal makes him uniquely situated to describe this culture." —Cory Doctorow , Boing Boing Encyclopedia "Reagle provides ample data regarding the everyday practices and cultural norms of the community which collaborates to 3. Good Faith Collaboration produce Wikipedia. His rich research and nuanced appreciation of the complexities of cultural digital media research are 4. The Puzzle of Openness well presented. -
An Analysis of Contributions to Wikipedia from Tor
Are anonymity-seekers just like everybody else? An analysis of contributions to Wikipedia from Tor Chau Tran Kaylea Champion Andrea Forte Department of Computer Science & Engineering Department of Communication College of Computing & Informatics New York University University of Washington Drexel University New York, USA Seatle, USA Philadelphia, USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Benjamin Mako Hill Rachel Greenstadt Department of Communication Department of Computer Science & Engineering University of Washington New York University Seatle, USA New York, USA [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—User-generated content sites routinely block contri- butions from users of privacy-enhancing proxies like Tor because of a perception that proxies are a source of vandalism, spam, and abuse. Although these blocks might be effective, collateral damage in the form of unrealized valuable contributions from anonymity seekers is invisible. One of the largest and most important user-generated content sites, Wikipedia, has attempted to block contributions from Tor users since as early as 2005. We demonstrate that these blocks have been imperfect and that thousands of attempts to edit on Wikipedia through Tor have been successful. We draw upon several data sources and analytical techniques to measure and describe the history of Tor editing on Wikipedia over time and to compare contributions from Tor users to those from other groups of Wikipedia users. Fig. 1. Screenshot of the page a user is shown when they attempt to edit the Our analysis suggests that although Tor users who slip through Wikipedia article on “Privacy” while using Tor. Wikipedia’s ban contribute content that is more likely to be reverted and to revert others, their contributions are otherwise similar in quality to those from other unregistered participants and to the initial contributions of registered users. -
Classifying Wikipedia Article Quality with Revision History Networks
Classifying Wikipedia Article Quality With Revision History Networks Narun Raman∗ Nathaniel Sauerberg∗ Carleton College Carleton College [email protected] [email protected] Jonah Fisher Sneha Narayan Carleton College Carleton College [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT long been interested in maintaining and investigating the quality We present a novel model for classifying the quality of Wikipedia of its content [4][6][12]. articles based on structural properties of a network representation Editors and WikiProjects typically rely on assessments of article of the article’s revision history. We create revision history networks quality to focus volunteer attention on improving lower quality (an adaptation of Keegan et. al’s article trajectory networks [7]), articles. This has led to multiple efforts to create classifiers that can where nodes correspond to individual editors of an article, and edges predict the quality of a given article [3][4][18]. These classifiers can join the authors of consecutive revisions. Using descriptive statistics assist in providing assessments of article quality at scale, and help generated from these networks, along with general properties like further our understanding of the features that distinguish high and the number of edits and article size, we predict which of six quality low quality Wikipedia articles. classes (Start, Stub, C-Class, B-Class, Good, Featured) articles belong While many Wikipedia article quality classifiers have focused to, attaining a classification accuracy of 49.35% on a stratified sample on assessing quality based on the content of the latest version of of articles. These results suggest that structures of collaboration an article [1, 4, 18], prior work has suggested that high quality arti- underlying the creation of articles, and not just the content of the cles are associated with more intense collaboration among editors article, should be considered for accurate quality classification. -
Wikipedia Is Under 'Siege'
Wikipedia and Academic Research A guide on interacting with the free encyclopaedia. Greek Fire Catapult (Harper's Engraving) Public domain image from Wikicommons. Wikipedia is under ‘siege’. It may be helpful, in the first instance, to think of Wikipedia in terms of it being under siege. Whether this is from politicians, PR companies or from private individuals seeking to either gain an advantage in some way or denigrate a rival in some way, the point remains that the Wikipedia community is primed to protect the integrity of its main Open Knowledge project in order to hold on what is good about it. Wikipedia administrators will often immediately revert any changes they perceive as a threat as part of their default safety-first approach. Consequently, the advice from Wikimedia UK is to adopt a ‘softly, softly’ approach when making edits to Wikipedia articles i.e. not overloading the encyclopaedia with too many external links at one time without due consideration of the relevance of the link to the article or if it really adds anything. Protecting the integrity of Wikipedia Parliament WikiEdits Twitter account - Screengrab 28/03/2016 With preserving the integrity of Wikipedia in mind, those Wikipedia edits made from Parliamentary IP addresses are routinely monitored through the Parliament WikiEdits Twitter account (@parliamentedits). Did you know? There are PR companies out there offering ‘Wikipedia sanitisation’ as a service. Imagine the following situation: A new Wikipedia User account has appeared and its only activity is to add external links- all to the same site- to a lot of articles. To a Wikipedia editor this looks promotional and doesn’t look like building an encyclopaedia. -
Florida State University Libraries
)ORULGD6WDWH8QLYHUVLW\/LEUDULHV 2020 Wiki-Donna: A Contribution to a More Gender-Balanced History of Italian Literature Online Zoe D'Alessandro Follow this and additional works at DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES WIKI-DONNA: A CONTRIBUTION TO A MORE GENDER-BALANCED HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE ONLINE By ZOE D’ALESSANDRO A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: Spring, 2020 The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Zoe D’Alessandro defended on April 20, 2020. Dr. Silvia Valisa Thesis Director Dr. Celia Caputi Outside Committee Member Dr. Elizabeth Coggeshall Committee Member Introduction Last year I was reading Una donna (1906) by Sibilla Aleramo, one of the most important works in Italian modern literature and among the very first explicitly feminist works in the Italian language. Wanting to know more about it, I looked it up on Wikipedia. Although there exists a full entry in the Italian Wikipedia (consisting of a plot summary, publishing information, and external links), the corresponding page in the English Wikipedia consisted only of a short quote derived from a book devoted to gender studies, but that did not address that specific work in great detail. As in-depth and ubiquitous as Wikipedia usually is, I had never thought a work as important as this wouldn’t have its own page. This discovery prompted the question: if this page hadn’t been translated, what else was missing? And was this true of every entry for books across languages, or more so for women writers? My work in expanding the entry for Una donna was the beginning of my exploration into the presence of Italian women writers in the Italian and English Wikipedias, and how it relates back to canon, Wikipedia, and gender studies. -
Parallel Creation of Gigaword Corpora for Medium Density Languages – an Interim Report
Parallel creation of gigaword corpora for medium density languages – an interim report Peter´ Halacsy,´ Andras´ Kornai, Peter´ Nemeth,´ Daniel´ Varga Budapest University of Technology Media Research Center H-1111 Budapest Stoczek u 2 {hp,kornai,pnemeth,daniel}@mokk.bme.hu Abstract For increased speed in developing gigaword language resources for medium resource density languages we integrated several FOSS tools in the HUN* toolkit. While the speed and efficiency of the resulting pipeline has surpassed our expectations, our experience in developing LDC-style resource packages for Uzbek and Kurdish makes clear that neither the data collection nor the subsequent processing stages can be fully automated. 1. Introduction pages (http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/ So far only a select few languages have been fully in- 04/328.html, April 2007) as a proxy for widely tegrated in the bloodstream of modern communications, available material. While the picture is somewhat distorted commerce, research, and education. Most research, devel- by artificial languages (Esperanto, Volapuk,¨ Basic En- opment, and even the language- and area-specific profes- glish) which have enthusiastic wikipedia communities but sional societies in computational linguistics (CL), natural relatively few webpages elsewhere, and by regional lan- language processing (NLP), and information retrieval (IR), guages in the European Union (Catalan, Galician, Basque, target English, the FIGS languages (French, Italian, Ger- Luxembourgish, Breton, Welsh, Lombard, Piedmontese, man, Spanish), -
Lessons from Citizendium
Lessons from Citizendium Wikimania 2009, Buenos Aires, 28 August 2009 HaeB [[de:Benutzer:HaeB]], [[en:User:HaeB]] Please don't take photos during this talk. Citizendium Timeline ● September 2006: Citizendium announced. Sole founder: Larry Sanger, known as former editor-in-chief of Nupedia, chief organizer of Wikipedia (2001-2002), and later as Wikipedia critic ● October 2006: Started non-public pilot phase ● January 2007: “Big Unfork”: All unmodified copies of Wikipedia articles deleted ● March 2007: Public launch ● December 2007: Decision to use CC-BY-3.0, after debate about commercial reuse and compatibility with Wikipedia ● Mid-2009: Sanger largely inactive on Citizendium, focuses on WatchKnow ● August 2009: Larry Sanger announces he will step down as editor-in-chief soon (as committed to in 2006) Citizendium and Wikipedia: Similarities and differences ● Encyclopedia ● Strict real names ● Free license policy ● ● Open (anyone can Special role for contribute) experts: “editors” can issue content ● Created by amateurs decisions, binding to ● MediaWiki-based non-editors collaboration ● Governance: Social ● Non-profit contract, elements of a constitutional republic Wikipedian views of Citizendium ● Competitor for readers, contributions ● Ally, common goal of creating free encyclopedic content ● “Who?” ● In this talk: A long-time experiment testing several fundamental policy changes, in a framework which is still similar enough to that of Wikipedia to generate valuable evidence as to what their effect might be on WP Active editors: Waiting to explode ● Sanger (October 2007): ”At some point, possibly very soon, the Citizendium will grow explosively-- say, quadruple the number of its active contributors, or even grow by an order of magnitude ....“ © Aleksander Stos, CC-BY 3.0 Number of users that made at least one edit in each month Article creation rate: Still muddling Sanger (October 2007): “It's still possible that the project will, from here until eternity, muddle on creating 14 articles per day. -
Detecting Undisclosed Paid Editing in Wikipedia
Detecting Undisclosed Paid Editing in Wikipedia Nikesh Joshi, Francesca Spezzano, Mayson Green, and Elijah Hill Computer Science Department, Boise State University Boise, Idaho, USA [email protected] {nikeshjoshi,maysongreen,elijahhill}@u.boisestate.edu ABSTRACT 1 INTRODUCTION Wikipedia, the free and open-collaboration based online ency- Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia based on the principle clopedia, has millions of pages that are maintained by thousands of of open collaboration; for the people by the people. Anyone can volunteer editors. As per Wikipedia’s fundamental principles, pages add and edit almost any article or page. However, volunteers should on Wikipedia are written with a neutral point of view and main- follow a set of guidelines when editing Wikipedia. The purpose tained by volunteer editors for free with well-defned guidelines in of Wikipedia is “to provide the public with articles that summa- order to avoid or disclose any confict of interest. However, there rize accepted knowledge, written neutrally and sourced reliably” 1 have been several known incidents where editors intentionally vio- and the encyclopedia should not be considered as a platform for late such guidelines in order to get paid (or even extort money) for advertising and self-promotion. Wikipedia’s guidelines strongly maintaining promotional spam articles without disclosing such. discourage any form of confict-of-interest (COI) editing and require In this paper, we address for the frst time the problem of identi- editors to disclose any COI contribution. Paid editing is a form of fying undisclosed paid articles in Wikipedia. We propose a machine COI editing and refers to editing Wikipedia (in the majority of the learning-based framework using a set of features based on both cases for promotional purposes) in exchange for compensation.