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29 July 2015

 

2015-07-29

BARC de-adminship proposal; Wikimania recordings debate

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By Go Phightins! and Gamaliel

BARC proposal for removing adminship under discussion

Kudpung and Worm That Turned have introduced an RFC proposing to create a "Bureaucrats' Admin Review Committee" (BARC) composed of bureaucrats empowered to remove adminship rights. Each case before the Committee would last only seven days, at which point the case would be rejected, the administrator's tools would be removed, or the case passed on to the Arbitration Committee.

A 2012 discussion concluded that the current methods to remove adminship were insufficient and that a "community-driven method" – such as this proposal – should be implemented. This feeling still exists, as evidenced by the dozens of support votes the RFC quickly amassed when it was opened. Dennis Brown wrote of all the proposed solutions to this issue, the BARC proposal "has the best blend of safety, equity, speed and flexibility. This will help increase the number of admin and reduce the impression that admin are guaranteed to be admin for life."

The proposal theorizes that it would also address the pressing problem of the dwindling ranks of administrators, positing that requests for adminship – widely considered an arduous process – would be easier to pass if removing the right were easier too. The proposal would make no direct changes to the RfA process, however. Gatoclass wrote, "This is not going to make a lick of difference to the number of successful RfAs in my view, but it may well lead to fewer people bothering to stand in the first place." Carrite disagrees, and wrote, "Easier removal of tools of abusive Administrators will lessen the stakes and hopefully soften the tone of the RFA process."

Bureaucrats, given their "very high level of community trust" – requesting bureaucratship is far more arduous, requiring around 85% support – play a main role in the proposed committee; half of its members would come from the ranks of the bureaucrats. However, concerns were raised about the workload for bureaucrats – there are only 33 of them as of this writing – and giving them a new task the role was not originally designed to implement. Wehwalt wrote, "Bureaucrats were not selected for their abilities to investigate and judge." Chillum asked, "Has anyone asked the crats if they even want this job?" On the other hand, Tony1 affirmed the bureaucrats' aptness for the job: "Bureaucrats are appointed through a very high bar for trust (higher than stewards, even); and in my view their role has always been too narrowly conceived. Since crats exercise judgement in closing RFAs, it is natural and logical that they should play a role further down the pipeline."

A number of editors expressed the concern that it would be taken advantage of to target administrators who made unpopular decisions, including Chillum, who wrote "This system sounds like an invitation for a witch hunt every few days." Kudpung tried to assuage such concerns, reiterating the bureaucrats' role as gatekeeper: "In this system, the Bureaucrats are not just gatekeepers, they are part of the deliberating committee."

As of this writing, the RFC has about 70% support; time will tell where it goes from here, but one thing is for sure, the community is talking about this proposal in droves, with over 125 having !voted already, and many more participating in the discussion.

Recording the Wikimania video controversy in slow motion

Last week, we reported on the situation with video at Wikimania 2015. In short, only keynote speeches were recorded, not all sessions, as had been done in years' past, including at Wikimania 2014 in London. This angered some editors, who felt this plan of only recording keynotes was poorly communicated; one individual expressed that the point of recording video is so that one need not attend to be informed. Even a WMF staffer conceded the lack of recording was problematic. Compounding that controversy was a comment from Victor Grigas pertaining to the licensing of videos, noting that the licensing process was in the hands of Wikimedia Mexico (WMMX). Katherine Maher, the Foundation's Chief Communications Officer, was unable to comment last week due to staff vacations. She later followed up with us.

In regards to Grigas' comment regarding licensing, Maher suggested that the confusion was mostly over procedure:

The Signpost contacted Ivan Martinez, a representative of Wikimedia Mexico, to ask when the videos would be released, under what license, and where they could be found. We received no reply by press time. We also received a message from Ellie Young, the WMF Conference Coordinatior, who indicated that she would be able to reply to an inquiry upon returning from her vacation earlier this week; but again, we received no reply.

In regards to only recording keynote sessions, Maher cited cost as the primary factor in that decision, one she said the Foundation revisits every year. "Recording all the sessions would have been prohibitively expensive, and the reality is that most Wikimania videos only get a few hundred views," she said. She acknowledged the confusion the decision caused, noting that people probably assumed that everything would be recorded, as it was in London.

A number of Wikimedians objected to the decision not to record all the sessions. In true Wikimedian fashion, a number of them have assembled a list of publicly available videos made by attendees. On the mailing list Wikimania-l, Guillaume Paumier (Guillom) wrote: "I realize it's probably too late to do anything for this year's Wikimania, but I'd like to start a discussion about making video recordings of all sessions (not just a selection of them) a requirement for upcoming Wikimania bids."

The Signpost will continue to convey any additional relevant information or findings regarding the video situation from the recent conference.

July Research Showcase

The Wikimedia Foundation's Research Showcase on July 29 offered two presentations.

Aaron Halfaker (Halfak (WMF)) presented the results of a study on VisualEditor's effect on newly registered editors. This comes two years after a previous study and a number of improvements to VisualEditor. The current study found that there was "no difference in newcomer productivity", a small decrease in the burden on current editors, and that new editors were less likely to save their edits and spent more time before saving them.

Stanford University students Juhana Kangaspunta and Thomas Palomares presented "Wikipedia Knowledge Graph with DeepDive", a project using a tool called DeepDive to extract data from Wikipedia and add it to Wikidata.

Brief notes

  • Stub contest: The Stub Contest for expanding stub-class articles is running from August 1–31. The idea is to expand tiny or uncited stubs to a basic cited start-class (or better) article. This year, there are seven £25 Amazon vouchers up for grabs as a sort of 'lucky dip/raffle', with each qualifying entry serving as one 'ticket'. The editor with the most points will receive a £50 Amazon voucher, editor who expands the oldest stub will get a £25 voucher. As previously, vouchers are kindly donated by Wikimedia UK. So come and enter at Wikipedia:Stub Contest/Entries!
  • Trouble with the Creative Commons image license?: After an initial post regarding an editor on the German Wikipedia engaging in "non-wiki-love" relating to image attribution, a lengthy discussion ensued on the Wikimedia-l mailing list regarding Creative Commons licenses.
  • Quarterly report due imminently: Components of the WMF's next quarterly report were released and discussed on the Wikimedia-l mailing list. There was significant subsequent dialogue over whether community or board authorization is necessary to implement a new friendly-space policy pertaining to grant proposals on Meta. Numerous foundation staffers as well as a few community members sought to rebuff an argument that authorization would be necessary in the name of good procedure.
  • Grant eligibility announcement: WMF program officer Winifred Olliff made an announcement regarding eligibility of various entities for grants on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.
  • New VP of Strategic Partnerships hired: Replacing the outgoing Koroush Karimkhany, WMF announced that it hired Sheree Chang to fill the same role. Chang comes to the Foundation after being Head of Revenue and Partnerships at N3twork.
  • Brad Jorsch earns promotion: Brad Jorsch, the author of numerous highly-active Wikipedia bots including the venerable AnomieBOT, has been promoted to senior software engineer for WMF, according to a release to the Wikitech mailing list.
  • New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Cyphoidbomb, whose request for adminship accrued 118 supports to 30 opposes, the latter mostly related to a copyright issue. Bureaucrat Acalamari stated that the issue was a "one-time error in Cyphoidbomb's otherwise excellent record", and that otherwise he found consensus to promote the editor.
  • Wikinews ArbCom elections: Elections on Wikinews for their Arbitration Committee have just concluded. Six candidates, including five incumbent Arbitrators, vied for six open spots on the Committee. Wikinews holds yearly elections for its six-member Arbitration Committee.




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2015-07-29

My life as an autistic Wikipedian

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By Guillaume Paumier

This article, the basis for his talk of the same name at Wikimania 2015, was originally posted on the author's blog and is reprinted with his permission.

The author at Wikimania 2015

Two years ago, I discovered that I was on the autism spectrum. As I learned more about myself and the way my brain worked, I started to look at past experiences through the lens of this newly-found aspect. In this essay, I share some of what I’ve learned along the way about my successes, my failures, and many things that confused me in the past, notably in my experiences in the Wikimedia movement.

At age 4, I was in nursery school, the French equivalent of Kindergarten. I don't have many memories about that time, but my parents remember that, while I wasn't usually enthused about going to school during the week, I would often ask to go on Saturdays, because most of the other kids weren't there.

It wasn't that I didn't like them; it was because the school was much quieter than during weekdays, and I had all the toys to myself. I didn't have to interact with other children, or share the pencils, or the room. I could do whatever I wanted without worrying about the other kids.

I didn't know it at the time, but it would take me nearly 30 years to look back at this story and understand how it made complete sense.

Today

The author at Wikimania 2007

I'm now 32 years old, and a lot has changed. Two years ago, after some difficulties at work, my partner decided to share his suspicions that I might be on the autism spectrum. I knew little about it at the time, but it was a hypothesis that seemed to explain a lot, and seemed worth exploring.

Sure, the subject had come up before a few times, but it was always as a joke, an exaggeration of my behavior. I never thought I fitted that label. One problem is that autism is usually represented in a very uniform manner in popular culture. Movies like Rain Man feature autistic savants who, although they have extraordinary abilities, live in a completely different world, and sometimes aren't verbal. The autism spectrum is much more diverse than those stereotypical examples.

After I started researching the topic, and reading books on autism or autobiographies by autistic people, I realized how much of it applied to me.

It took a bit longer (and a few tests) to get a confirmation from experts, and when it came, many people still had doubts. The question that came up the most often was "But how was this never detected before?" Autism is generally noticed at a much younger age, and it seemed that for most of my life, I had managed to disguise myself as "neurotypical", meaning someone whose brain works similarly to most people.

The current prevailing hypothesis to explain this, based on an IQ test taken as part of the evaluation process, is that I am privileged to have higher-than-average intellectual capacities, which have allowed me to partly compensate for the different wiring of my brain. One way to illustrate this is to use a computer analogy: in a way, my CPU runs at a higher frequency, which has allowed me to emulate with software the hardware that I'm missing. What this also means is that it can be exhausting to run this software all the time, so sometimes I need to be by myself.

As you can imagine, realizing at 31 that you are on the autism spectrum changes your perception dramatically; everything suddenly starts to make sense. I've learned a lot over the past two years, and this increased metacognition has allowed me to look at past events through a new lens.

In this essay, I want to share with you some of what I've learned, and share my current understanding of how my brain works, notably through my experience as a Wikimedian.

One caveat I want to start with is that autism is a spectrum. There's a popular saying among online autistic communities that says: "You've met an autist, you've met one autist." Just keep this in mind: What I'm presenting here is based on my personal experience, and isn't going to apply equally to all autistic people.

The picture at right was taken during Wikimania 2007 in Taipei. I was exploring the city with Cary Bass (Bastique) and a few other people. Looking back at this picture now, there are a few things I notice today:

  • I'm wearing simple clothes, because I have absolutely no sense of fashion, and those are "safe" colors.
  • I'm carrying two bags (a backpack and a photo bag), because I always want to be prepared for almost anything, so I carry a lot of stuff around.
  • I'm sitting down to change a lens on my camera, because it's a more stable position to avoid dropping and breaking expensive gear. I've learned that this habit of using very stable positions is actually a mitigating strategy that I developed over the years without realizing it, to compensate for problems with balance and motor coordination.

Spock

Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Kirk (William Shatner) in a 1968 publicity photo for Star Trek

A good analogy to help understand what it's like to be autistic in a neurotypical society is to look at Mr. Spock, from the original Star Trek. The son of a Vulcan father and a human mother, Spock is technically half-human, but it is his Vulcan side that shows the most in its interactions with the crew of the Enterprise.

Some of the funniest moments of the show are his arguments with the irascible Dr. McCoy. In one episode, McCoy calls him an "unfeeling automaton" and "the most cold-blooded man [he's] ever known", to which Spock responds: "Why, thank you, Doctor."

As a Vulcan, Spock's life is ruled by logic. Although he does feel emotions, they are deeply repressed. His speech pattern is very detached, almost clinical. Because of his logical and utilitarian perspective, Spock often appears dismissive, cold-hearted, or just plain rude to his fellow shipmates.

In many ways, Spock's traits are similar to autism, and many autistic people identify with him. For example, in her book Thinking in Pictures, Temple Grandin, a renown autistic scientist and author, recounts how she related to Spock from a young age:

In this example, and in many others, Spock's perception filter prevents him from understanding human decisions mainly driven by emotion. Those actions appear foolish or nonsensical, because Spock interprets them through his own lens of logic. He lacks the cultural background, social norms and unspoken assumptions unconsciously shared by humans.

The reverse is also true: Whenever humans are puzzled or annoyed by Spock, it is because they expect him to behave like a human; they are often confronted to a harsher truth than they would like. Humans interpret Spock's behavior through their own emotional perception filter. They often misunderstand his motives, assume malice, and superimpose intents that change the meaning of his original words and actions.

Autism

Alan Turing at age 16

You're probably familiar with the conceptual models of communication. In many of those models, communication is represented as the transmission of a message between a sender and a receiver.

If you apply this model to an oral conversation, you quickly see all the opportunities for miscommunication: From what the sender means, to what they actually say, to what the receiver hears, to what they understand, information can change radically, especially when you consider nonverbal communication. It's like a 2-person variation of the telephone game. In the words of psychologist Tony Attwood:

If this is the case for neurotypical people, meaning people with a "typical" brain, imagine how challenging it can be for autists like me. A great analogy is given in the movie The Imitation Game, inspired by the life of Alan Turing, who is portrayed in the film as being on the autism spectrum.

Historical accuracy aside, one of my favorite moments in the movie is when a young Alan is talking to his friend Christopher about coded messages. Christopher explains cryptography as "messages that anyone can see, but no one knows what they mean, unless you have the key."

A very puzzled Alan replies:

Autistic people are characterized by many different traits, but one of the most prevalent is social blindness: We have trouble reading the emotions of others. We lack the "Theory of mind" used by neurotypical people to attribute mental states (like beliefs and intents) to others. We often take things literally because we're missing the subtext: it's difficult for us to read between the lines.

Liane Holliday Willey, an autistic author and speaker, once summarized it this way:

How are you?

Many languages have a common phrase to ask someone how they're doing, whether it's the French Comment ça va?, the English How are you?, or the German Wie geht's?

When I first moved to the US, every time someone asked me "How are you?", I would pause to consider the question. Now, I've learned that it's a greeting, not an actual question, and I've mostly automated the response to the expected "Great, how are you?" It only takes a few milliseconds to switch to that path and short-circuit the question-answering process. But if people deviate from that usual greeting, then that mental shortcut doesn't work any more.

A few weeks ago, someone in the Wikimedia Foundation office asked me "How is your world?", and I froze for a few seconds. In order to answer that question, my brain was reviewing everything that was happening in "my world" (and "my world" is big!), before I realized that I just needed to say "Great! Thanks!".

Privilege and pointed ears

Wikimania 2014 welcome reception

This is only one of the challenges faced by autistic people, and I would now like to talk about neurotypical privilege. I'm a cis white male, and I was raised in a loving middle-class family in an industrialized country. By many standards, I'm very privileged. But, despite my superpowers, being autistic in a predominantly neurotypical society does bring its lot of challenges.

The most common consequence I've noticed in my experience, and in accounts from other autistic people, is a feeling of profound isolation. The lack of Theory of mind and the constant risk of miscommunication make it difficult to build relationships. It's not anyone's fault in particular; it's due to a general lack of awareness.

Imagine that you're talking to me face to face. You don't really know me, but I seem nice so you start making small talk. I'm not saying much, and you need to carry the discussion over those awkward silences. When I do speak, it's in a very monotone manner, like I don't really care. You try harder, and ask me questions, but I hesitate, I struggle to maintain eye contact, and I keep looking away, as if I'm making stuff up as I go.

Now this is what's happening from my perspective: I'm talking to someone I don't really know well, but you seem nice. I don't know what to talk about, so I keep quiet at first. Silences aren't a problem: I'm just happy to be in your company. I don't have very strong feelings about what we're talking about, so I'm speaking very calmly. You're asking me questions, and of course it takes a while to think about the correct answer. All this "eye contact" thing that I learned in school is taking a lot of mental resources that would be better used to compute the answer to your question, so I sometimes need to look away to better focus.

This illustrates one of many situations in which each person's perception filter caused a complete disconnect between how the situation was perceived on each side.

There are also many professional hurdles associated with being on the autism spectrum, and autists are more affected by unemployment than neurotypicals.[4] I'm privileged in that I've been able to find an environment in which I'm able to work, but many autists aren't so lucky. It's been well documented that people in higher-up positions aren't necessarily the best performers, but often people with the best social skills.

With that in mind, imagine what the career opportunities (or lack thereof) can be for someone who is a terrible liar, who has a lot of interest in doing great work, but less interest in taking credit for it, who doesn't understand office politics, who not only makes social missteps and angers their colleagues, but doesn't even know about it, someone who's unable to make small talk around the office. Imagine that person, and what kind of a career they can have even if they're very good at their job.

Casual relationships with colleagues and acquaintances are usually superficial; the stakes of the water cooler discussions are low, so people are more inclined to forgive missteps. However, friendship is another matter, and for most of my life, I have hardly had any friends, unless you use Facebook's definition of the term. Awkwardness is generally tolerated, but rarely sought after. It's not "cool".

Most of those issues arise because you don't have a way of knowing that the person in front of you is different. At least Spock had his pointed ears to signal that he wasn't human. His acceptance by the crew of the Enterprise was in large part due to the relationships he was able to develop with his shipmates. Those relationships would arguably not have been possible if they had not known how he was different.

Computer-mediated communication

Let me go back to that conceptual model of face-to-face communication. Now imagine how this model changes if you're communicating online, by email, on wiki, or on IRC. All those communication channels, that Wikimedians are all too familiar with, are based on text, and most of them are asynchronous. For many neurotypicals, these are frustrating modes of communication, because they're losing most of their usual nonverbal signals like tone, facial expressions, and body language.

However, this model of computer-mediated communication is much closer to the communication model of autists like me. There is no nonverbal communication to decrypt; less interaction and social anxiety; and usually, no unfamiliar environment either. There are much fewer signals, and those that remain are just words; their meaning still varies, but it's much more codified and reliable than nonverbal signals.

What there is online, instead, is plenty of time, time that we can use to collect our thoughts and formulate a carefully crafted answer. Whereas voice is synchronous and mostly irreversible, text can be edited, crafted, deleted, reworded, or rewritten until it's exactly what we want it to be; then we can send it. This is true of asynchronous channels like email and wikis, but it also extends to semi-synchronous tools like instant messaging or IRC.

It's not all rainbows and unicorns, though. For example, autists like me are still very much clueless about politics and reading between the lines. We tend to be radically honest, which doesn't fly very well, whether online or offline. Autists are also more susceptible to trolling, and may not always realize that the way people act online isn't the same as the way they act in the physical world. The internet medium tends to desensitize people, and autists might emulate behavior that isn't actually acceptable, regardless of the venue.

Autism in the Wikimedia community

Of course, one major example of wide-scale online communication is the Wikimedia movement. And at first glance, Wikimedia sites, and Wikipedia in particular, offer a platform where one can meticulously compile facts about their favorite obsession, or methodically fix the same grammatical error over and over, all of that with limited human interaction; if this sounds like a great place for autists (and a perfect honey trap) well, it is to some extent.

For example, my first edit ten years ago was to fix a spelling error. My second edit was to fix a conjugation error. My third edit was to fix both a spelling and a conjugation error. That's how my journey as a Wikipedian started ten years ago.

Wikipedians are obsessed with citations, references, and verifiability; fact is king, and interpretation is taboo. As long as you stay in the main namespace, that is. As soon as you step out of article pages and venture into talk pages and village pumps, those high standards don't apply any more. There are plenty of unsourced, exaggerated and biased statements in Wikipedia discussions.

That's in addition to the problems I mentioned earlier. As an autist, it can be hard to let go of arguments about things or people you care about. It's often said that autistic people lack empathy, which basically makes us look like cold-hearted robots. However, there is a distinction between being able to read the feelings of other people, and feeling compassion for other people.

Neurotypical people have mirror neurons that make you feel what the person in front of you is feeling; autistic people have a lot fewer of those, which means they need to scrutinize your signals and try to understand what you're feeling. But they're still people with feelings.

If you're interested in learning more about autism in the Wikimedia community, there's a great essay on the English Wikipedia, which I highly recommend. One thing it does really well is avoiding the pathologization of autism, and instead insisting on neurodiversity, meaning autism as a difference, not a disease.

Conclusion

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti offering a tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy aboard the International Space Station

Steve Silberman, who wrote a book on the history of autism, presented it this way:

But still, neurodiversity has a cost. Sometimes, you'll be offended; sometimes, you'll be frustrated; and sometimes, you'll think "Wow, I would never have thought of that in a million years".

As I mentioned earlier, I believe Spock was only able to build those relationships over time because people were aware of his difference, and learned to understand and embrace it. Spock also learned a lot from humans along the way.

My goal here was to raise awareness of this difference that exists in our community, and encourage us to discuss our differences more openly, and to improve our understanding of each other.

There is a lot I didn't get into in this essay, and I might expand on specific points later. In the meantime, I'm available if you're interested in continuing this discussion, and you should feel free to reach out to me, whether in person or online.

Live long and prosper. \\///

Guillaume Paumier is a Senior Analyst with the Wikimedia Foundation

References

  1. ^ Temple Grandin. Thinking in Pictures. p.152.
  2. ^ Tony Attwood. The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. p.126.
  3. ^ Liane Holliday Willey, in Tony Attwood, The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, p.126
  4. ^ Maanvi Singh. "Young Adults With Autism More Likely To Be Unemployed, Isolated". NPR. 21 April 2015.
  5. ^ Steve Silberman. "The forgotten history of autism". TED 2015.



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2015-07-29

Wikipedia and collective intelligence; how Wikipedia is tweeted

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By Piotr Konieczny, Tilman Bayer, and Kim Osman

A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

Wikipedia as an example of collective intelligence

An article[1] in Social Science Computer Review presents an argument that Wikipedia is an example of collective intelligence. It is primarily a theoretical piece, but the author is well-informed about Wikipedia's everyday workings, illustrating the theory with his knowledge of Wikipedia. The article heavily relies on Pierre Lévy's notion of "humanistic collective intelligence". The author argues that Wikipedia displays some key characteristics of a collective intelligence process, such as software optimized for stigmergy (a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions, such as the existence of edit history, talk pages, etc.); distributed cognition (such as existence of bots, and division of tasks between various tools and individuals, facilitating their actions), and possibly, through it is not possible to prove beyond any doubt, emergence (a process whereby larger entities, patterns, and regularities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities that themselves do not exhibit such properties). The author concludes that Wikipedia thus exemplifies a special kind of collective intelligence, the aforementioned humanistic collective intelligence proposed by Lévy.

#Wikipedia and Twitter

review by Kim Osman

This study from OpenSym '15[2] analysed 2.5 million tweets, collected over a five-month period on Twitter, that linked to Wikipedia pages. The authors found tweets referencing Wikipedia in both English and Japanese linked to pages from their respective language versions of Wikipedia nearly all the time (97 and 94 percent respectively). However, in other languages, tweets often linked to a different language version of Wikipedia - roughly one fifth of the time. Interestingly, tweets in Indonesian referenced another language version more than half the time (linking to English Wikipedia in half the tweets) and of the links to English Wikipedia the authors found that 75% of linked articles did not have an equivalent Indonesian version. There was a long tail distribution of articles among the analysed tweets, with the authors noting certain “events” (like the Gamergate controversy) generating multiple tweets. Of the Top 20 Twitter users in the dataset, 19 were bots, with the most prolific tweeter being Wikipedia Stub Bot (@wpstubs). The authors do note that in their study there is not enough evidence to support the relationship between “how actively edited a certain article is and its popularity on Twitter.” This study does however raise interesting questions about the platform relationship between Wikipedia and Twitter and the role of bots in creating and maintaining this association. The authors note future research could consider the role of events in popularising Wikipedia articles on Twitter along with further examining motivations for inter-language linking on Twitter.

Briefly

"As of early 2015, the typical edit [on the English Wikipedia] is made by an account that is over 5 years old."
  • How old is the account making an average edit? Among other charts recently created by Dragons flight to visualize statistical data about the English Wikipedia community, this one shows that "the long-term trend is for the active community to gain about 6 months in average age for every year of time that passes in real life."
  • Simplifying sentences by finding their equivalent on Simple Wikipedia: A preprint[3] by researchers at the University of Washington describes a method to automatically align sentences on the English Wikipedia and the Simple English Wikipedia about the same facts. Besides a hand-annotated dataset of corresponding (and non-corresponding) sentence pairs used to test and adjust the algorithm, their approach uses a "novel similarity metric" between of pairs of words which is based on synonym information from Wiktionary, resulting in a weighted graph called "WikNet" that consists of "roughly 177k nodes and 1.15M undirected edges. As expected, our Wiktionary based similarity metric has a higher coverage of 71.8% than WordNet, which has a word coverage of 58.7% in our annotated dataset". These datasets are available online. The following pair of sentences are presented as an example for good match found by the resulting method:
    "The castle was later incorporated into the construction of Ashtown Lodge which was to serve as the official residence of the Under Secretary from 1782" (en:Ashtown Castle) vs.
    "After the building was made bigger and improved, it was used as the house for the Under Secretary of Ireland from 1782." (simple:Ashtown Castle)

Other recent publications

A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.

  • "The Virtues of Moderation"[4] presents "a novel taxonomy of moderation in online communities", including a case study of Wikipedia (p.88).
  • "Studying the Wikipedia Hyperlink Graph for Relatedness and Disambiguation"[5] From the abstract: "We show that using the full graph is more effective than just direct links by a large margin, that non-reciprocal links harm performance, and that there is no benefit from categories and infoboxes ..."
  • "Wikidata through the Eyes of DBpedia"[6] From the introduction: "All DBpedia data is extracted from Wikipedia and Wikipedia authors thus unconciously also curate the DBpedia knowledge base. Wikidata on the other hand has its own data curation interface ... While DBpedia covers a very large share of Wikipedia at the expense of partially reduced quality, Wikidata covers a significantly smaller share, but due to the manual curation with higher quality and provenance information."
  • "WikiMirs: A Mathematical Information Retrieval System for Wikipedia"[7]
  • "Content Translation: Computer-assisted translation tool for Wikipedia"[8]
  • "Peer-production system or collaborative ontology development effort: what is Wikidata?"[9] (to be presented at the OpenSym 2015 conference in August)
  • "Big data and Wikipedia research: social science knowledge across disciplinary divides"[10]
  • "Comparing language development in Wikipedia in terms of page views per Internet users"[11] See also Wiki-research-l mailing list discussion
  • "Understanding Graph Structure of Wikipedia for Query Expansion"[12]
  • "Turning Introductory Comparative Politics and Elections Courses into Social Science Research Communities Using Wikipedia: Improving Both Teaching and Research"[13]
  • "Utilizing the Wikidata System to Improve the Quality of Medical Content in Wikipedia in Diverse Languages: A Pilot Study"[14]
  • "Is it Possible to Enhance our Expert Knowledge from Wikipedia?"[15] From the English-language abstract: "In September 2013 two different questionnaires about medical issues were given to medical students, resident physicians and one medical specialist. The questioning was about diseases/symptoms, examinations/classifications and conservative therapy/surgery of the department of orthopaedics and traumatology. ... The survey has proven the up-to-dateness of Wikipedia articles and their listing on the first or second position on Google. Wikipedia contains a lot of bibliographical references, high-quality images and video material. Almost half (42,5 %) of all evaluated articles are appropriate for use in medical exams and in the daily clinical work."
  • "Predicting elections from online information flows: towards theoretically informed models"[16] From the conclusions: "We have shown good evidence that an 'uncertainty effect' drives much Wikipedia traffic: newer parties which attracted a lot of swing voters received disproportionately high levels of Wikipedia traffic. By contrast, there was no evidence of a 'media effect': there was little correlation between news media mentions and overall Wikipedia traffic patterns. Indeed, the news media and Wikipedia appeared biased towards different things: with news favouring incumbent parties, whilst Wikipedia favoured new ones." (See also coverage of an earlier preprint by the same authors: "Attempt to use Wikipedia pageviews to predict election results in Iran, Germany and the UK")

References

  1. ^ Livingstone, Randall M. (2015-06-26). "Models for Understanding Collective Intelligence on Wikipedia". Social Science Computer Review. 34 (4): 497–508. doi:10.1177/0894439315591136. ISSN 0894-4393. S2CID 60657789. Closed access icon
  2. ^ Zangerle, Eva; Schmidhammer, Georg; Specht, Günther (2015). "#Wikipedia on Twitter: Analyzing Tweets about Wikipedia" (PDF). OpenSym '15. doi:10.1145/2788993.2789845. S2CID 5959813.
  3. ^ William Hwang, Hannaneh Hajishirzi, Mari Ostendorf, and Wei Wu: Aligning Sentences from Standard Wikipedia to Simple Wikipedia. NAACL-HLT, 2015. PDF
  4. ^ James Grimmelmann. "The Virtues of Moderation.…" Yale Journal of Law and Technology. 17.42 (2015) http://yjolt.org/virtues-moderation
  5. ^ Agirre, Eneko; Barrena, Ander; Soroa, Aitor (2015-03-05). "Studying the Wikipedia Hyperlink Graph for Relatedness and Disambiguation". arXiv:1503.01655 [cs.CL].
  6. ^ Ali Ismayilov, Dimitris Kontokostas, Sören Auer, Jens Lehmann, Sebastian Hellmann. "Wikidata through the Eyes of DBpedia". http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.04180
  7. ^ Hu, Xuan; Gao, Liangcai; Lin, Xiaoyan; Tang, Zhi; Lin, Xiaofan; Baker, Josef B. (2013). "WikiMirs: A Mathematical Information Retrieval System for Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 13th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. JCDL '13. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 11–20. doi:10.1145/2467696.2467699. ISBN 978-1-4503-2077-1. Closed access icon
  8. ^ Laxström, Niklas; Giner, Pau; Thottingal, Santhosh (2015-06-05). "Content Translation: Computer-assisted translation tool for Wikipedia articles". arXiv:1506.01914 [cs.CL].
  9. ^ Müller-Birn, Claudia; Karran, Benjamin; Lehmann, Janette; Luczak-Rösch, Markus (2015-05-24). "Peer-production system or collaborative ontology development effort: what is Wikidata?". doi:10.1145/2788993.2789836. S2CID 15126336. OpenSym 2015
  10. ^ Schroeder, Ralph; Taylor, Linnet (2015-02-24). "Big data and Wikipedia research: social science knowledge across disciplinary divides". Information, Communication & Society. 18 (9): 1039–1056. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2015.1008538. ISSN 1369-118X. S2CID 144817168.
  11. ^ Liao, Han-Teng (2015-03-15). "Comparing language development in Wikipedia in terms of page views per Internet users". Blog of Han-teng Liao, Oxford Internet Institute.
  12. ^ Guisado-Gámez, Joan; Prat-Pérez, Arnau (2015-05-06). "Understanding Graph Structure of Wikipedia for Query Expansion". Proceedings of the GRADES'15: 1–6. arXiv:1505.01306. doi:10.1145/2764947.2764953. ISBN 9781450336116. S2CID 8058094.
  13. ^ Kennedy, Ryan; Forbush, Eric; Keegan, Brian; Lazer, David (April 2015). "Turning Introductory Comparative Politics and Elections Courses into Social Science Research Communities Using Wikipedia: Improving Both Teaching and Research". PS: Political Science & Politics. 48 (2): 378–384. doi:10.1017/S1049096514002157. ISSN 1537-5935. S2CID 147555546. Closed access icon / Author's copy
  14. ^ Pfundner, Alexander; Schönberg, Tobias; Horn, John; Boyce, Richard D; Samwald, Matthias (2015-05-05). "Utilizing the Wikidata System to Improve the Quality of Medical Content in Wikipedia in Diverse Languages: A Pilot Study". Journal of Medical Internet Research. 17 (5): 110. doi:10.2196/jmir.4163. ISSN 1438-8871. PMC 4468594. PMID 25944105.
  15. ^ Rechenberg, U.; Josten, C.; Klima, S. (2015). "Is it Possible to Enhance our Expert Knowledge from Wikipedia?". Zeitschrift für Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie. 153 (2): 171–176. doi:10.1055/s-0034-1396207. ISSN 1864-6743. PMID 25874396. S2CID 196457871. Closed access icon (German, with English abstract)
  16. ^ Yasseri, Taha; Bright, Jonathan (2015-05-05). "Wikipedia traffic data and electoral prediction: Towards theoretically informed models". EPJ Data Science. 5. arXiv:1505.01818. doi:10.1140/epjds/s13688-016-0083-3. S2CID 256241960.



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2015-07-29

Is Wikipedia a battleground in the culture wars?

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By Gamaliel

Is Wikipedia a battleground in the culture wars?

In The Conversation, Russell Blackford (Metamagician3000), Wikipedia editor and Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Newcastle, writes about the phrase "cultural Marxism" and his involvement in the related discussion on Wikipedia. Last December, Wikipedia's article on cultural Marxism was deleted following a contentious debate that spilled over onto User talk:Jimbo Wales after Wales reopened a closed discussion on the article's fate. The term is now a redirect to a section of the article on the Frankfurt School of philosophy called "conspiracy theory".

Dr. Blackford writes that the phrase has been embraced by a number of "right-wing ideologues", including the terrorist Anders Breivik, which use it to refer to "a concerted effort by an elite...to destroy Western morality and civilization." (Indeed, a number of right-wing blogs and message boards angrily denounced the December deletion, referring to it as "censorship".) However, Blackford explains that much of what is labeled "cultural Marxism" is often "nothing more than left-wing cultural criticism".

Blackford also discusses scholarly uses of the phrase, but distinguishes it from its ideological use. This use, he writes, "bears only a slight resemblance to the grand, semi-conspiratorial, civilization-wrecking ideology described by Breivik and others." He traces this use as far back as 1973, to the sociologist and philosopher Trent Schroyer's book The Critique of Domination. However, academic use of this term does not appear to have been consistent. Blackford notes "Its meaning remains somewhat unclear and contested, but there is at least some commonality of understanding."

On Wikipedia, Blackford writes, "polemicists" have denied these "legitimate uses" of the phrase. According to him, there is an "intransigent, vehement, and (to date) successful opposition from some well-entrenched Wikipedia editors to the existence of any 'cultural Marxism' article." He believes this is a sign of larger issues with the encyclopedia, which "has itself become a site for culture wars, with editors representing rival political tribes frequently attempting to impose their respective narratives as the official version of one or another cultural controversy." Because of this, "its articles have little credibility when it comes to explaining contemporary cultural and political controversies."

Another Wikipedia editor who frequently writes about cultural topics, Mark Bernstein (MarkBernstein), dissented from Blackford's viewpoint. Dr. Bernstein told the Signpost "as Prof. Blackford observes, contemporary right-wing extremists have latched on to the phrase to mean something entirely different from what Blackford’s earlier sources intended — and the early sources never used the term very extensively or to great effect." He notes that none of the varied uses of the term "have gained much traction or proven to be particularly helpful outside the originators’ immediate circle."

Bernstein supports the deletion of the article, writing that "An encyclopedia doesn't require a page for every phrase, slogan, or term of art ever proposed, and the project always has to balance the cost of creating and maintaining a page against its benefit." In this case, Wikipedia is "facing an onslaught from organized extremists who want to exploit its pages for their own purposes", and should delete "at least for now, a page that was never essential or indeed particularly useful". He adds that the article can be added again "if monographs and journals in the coming years find the term useful". (July 27)

In brief

Pikey?
  • The 19th century persists: The Guardian reports that the article for Indigenous Australian rules football player Adam Goodes continues to be the target of racist vandalism (see previous Signpost coverage). (July 29)
  • Larger donation ads: VentureBeat reports that the Wikimedia Foundation is now experimenting with full-page messages soliciting donations. The article was originally titled "Lack of donations drives Wikipedia to test massive new ads" before it was corrected. (July 27)
  • Top Gear avoids Ofcom censure: British media reports that Ofcom has declared the BBC2 television program Top Gear was not in breach of "content standards for television". A complaint was made about a February 2014 episode, the first of series 21, in which a sign called "Pikey's Peak" was displayed. Pikey is an ethnic slur directed at Irish Travellers, but it is also a slang term roughly meaning "cheap", in this case referring to Richard Hammond's choice to drive a Vauxhall Nova SRi. In its decision, Ofcom noted the citation of an older version of the Wikipedia article for the term "pikey" by the BBC Trust in its response to the complaint. (July 27)
  • Printing out the apocalypse: In Matter, Choire Sicha wonders what Wikipedia articles he would print out in the face of a climate change-created dystopia. He writes "I put the Wikipedia pages in for Novels, as well as Fiction, and also Literary Criticism, Literary Theory and also Literary Modernism, just because it seems like it would be really agonizing if everyone had to go through all that again." (July 27)
Excited citizens of Tulare, 1940
  • Local editing: "Let’s edit Tulare’s wiki page", urges the Visalia Times-Delta, in order to make the article Tulare, California "a little bit more thorough and — honestly — more exciting." (July 27)
  • More Parliament editing: PinkNews reports that the Wikipedia article for MP Stewart Jackson was edited by an IP address registered to the Parliament of the United Kingdom to remove material concerning "a disdainful message he sent a lesbian constituent." (July 25)
  • Maintaining your own article: In Forbes, author Rob Asghar writes about the Wikipedia article of an unnamed "prominent leadership guru". Asghar writes that the article had been "hijacked" by proponents of EST, a large-group awareness training program that had its heyday in the 1970s, to over-emphasize minor historical links to the guru and EST. Asghar writes that he attempted to remove the text but was thwarted by Wikipedia editors who said "If you think the balance is wrong, it’s up to you to add other info that helps bring everything into the right balance," so he and others improved the article. Asghar concludes "It’s a helpful reminder that your personal brand is a story that’s either being told by you—or by a host of other forces who aren’t going to emphasize what’s most important to you." (July 23)
  • PR editing: LinkedIn offers PR people "10 things you need to know about Wikipedia" (July 23)
  • The Weedman goeth: New Jersey marijuana enthusiast Ed Forchion, better known as "NJWeedman", complained in The Trentonian about the deletion of his Wikipedia article last year. Weedman wrote that he was "wiped out of cyberhistory" and compared the deletion to "Texas...rewriting its history books". The article was deleted following an AfD discussion. A number of editors felt that being a perennial candidate for office with the Legalize Marijuana Party and his frequent arrests and other legal actions related to marijuana did not amount to sufficient notability (July 22)
  • Financial editing: The Tribune de Genève reports that an account identifying itself as belonging to the Zurich Cantonal Bank deleted a section from the bank's article on the German Wikipedia regarding a 2006-2007 financial scandal. (July 9)



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or contact the editor.



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2015-07-29

Even mammoths get the Blues

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By Xanthomelanoussprog, Hafspajen, and The ed17
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 12 July through 18 July. Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.
Male Frigate bird

Five Featured articles were promoted this week.

  • Columbian mammoth (nominated by FunkMonk) The Columbian mammoth was native to the southern half of North America, evolving from the steppe mammoth about 1.5 million years ago. The last specimens appear to have died out about 11,000 years ago. The largest adult specimens stood 13 feet high and weighed about 10 tons; only bones and hair have been recovered from deposits so far. Examples of their dung and stomach contents have also been found- it's estimated that a full-grown mammoth consumed about 400 pounds of vegetation and tree bark a day, browsing in their preferred habitat of open parkland (groves of trees set in grassland). There is possible evidence of hunting by humans from about 22,000 years ago. Sites associated with the rise of the Clovis culture from about 15,000 years ago provide evidence of hunting with spears, butchering, and the utilisation of bones for tool-making. The Columbian mammoth may have become extinct through overkill and/or climate change – warmer temperatures allowed the replacement of parkland by forests impassable for mammoths, treeless grasslands, and deserts.
  • Frigatebird (nominated by Aa77zz and Casliber) Frigatebirds are tropical seabirds with black plumage, forked tails, and a wingspan up to 2.3 metres (7.5 ft), which allows them to float over the water for days on the wind currents. The males have a distinctive red gular pouch, which they inflate during the breeding season to attract females. Frigatebirds spend most of the day soaring in flight over the ocean, hunting for fish and squid. At night they sleep on trees or cliffs.
  • Hurricane Gonzalo (nominated by Juliancolton) Hurricane Gonzalo started as a tropical wave off the west coast of Africa at the beginning of October, 2014. Moving across the Atlantic against "hostile winds", this area of low atmospheric pressure encountered a Kelvin wave moving eastwards- showers and thunderstorms associated with the tropical wave became more concentrated. The wave then passed the "upper-level trough axis" that had been causing the hostile winds, and developed into a "small surface low pressure area" and then a tropical depression. This depression then became a category 4 hurricane, which passed over Bermuda twice. After causing extensive damage in the Caribbean, the remains of the storm hit Europe as a large storm system.
  • SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (nominated by Parsecboy) SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was a German battleship, launched in 1899. She was of a pre-Dreadnought type, with four main guns of 9.4 inch calibre, and driven by three steam engines. This type, common to many navies, was rendered outgunned and obsolete when HMS Dreadnought arrived in 1906, with her ten 12-inch guns and more powerful steam turbines. Kaiser Wilhelm served until 1910, when she underwent a major refit and was placed in reserve. On the outbreak of war in 1914, she and her four sister ships were formed into a battle group to serve in the Baltic. Eventually, shortage of manpower led to her decommissioning in February 1915. She became a depot ship, and was sold for scrap in 1919.
  • The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (nominated by Brianboulton) The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a semi-autobiographical novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1957. The protagonist is a successful novelist; enervated and insomniac he resorts to barbiturates and alcohol. Depressed by the oncoming winter, Pinfold embarks on a cruise. As he rests in his cabin he becomes aware of noises and voices somehow transmitted from other parts of the ship. The voices gradually become more distinct and threatening, assuming the identities of a BBC radio interviewer and two women. Waugh had himself suffered from harassing voices on board a cruise he took to Colombo in 1954; a doctor diagnosed him as suffering from the effects of a mixture of "chloral and bromide", washed down with crème de menthe. He'd been afflicted with writer's block and financial worries at home which had given him insomnia, and the boozy cocktail was self-medication. When paraldehyde was substituted for chloral, the delusions ceased, and Waugh was able to return to writing. Pinfold was written over the next two years.
Taylor Swift

Five Featured lists were promoted this week.

Sega Nomad
Convair NB-36H
Two mohurs or double Mohur, from British India, 1835, depicting King William IV.
Guinea baboon, Papio papio adult and juvenile
Egg fruit

Sixteen Featured pictures were promoted this week.


What if we staged a revolution, and no-one noticed?



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2015-07-29

Namaste again, Reddit

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By Serendipodous

Months ago, when four India-related topics appeared in the top 25, I predicted that the Traffic Report would eventually become a masala of American and Indian flavours. However, over time my prediction failed to materialise, as Indian topics gradually drifted out of the top list. Well, they're back now, and for the first time since this list began, have claimed both the top two slots. Another sudden returnee from seeming oblivion is Reddit, which had four topics in the top 25 for the first time in years.

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.


As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of July 19 to 25, 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Bajrangi Bhaijaan Start-class 1,510,842
Bollywood's Muslim-targeted counterprogramming to the raging box office tsunami of Baahubali: The Beginning, starring Hindu/Muslim superstar Salman Khan (pictured) and opening on Eid weekend, has managed to make Rs 2 billion ($31.2 million) in its first nine days, and earned support from legends like Shekhar Kapur. It is the first Bollywood film to cross the 2 billion mark this year. But Khan's tweets in apparent support of Bombay bomber Yakub Memon have led to posters for the film being defaced in some areas.
2 Baahubali: The Beginning C-class 1,191,758
At $41 million, this sprawling, two-part historical epic is the most expensive film in Indian history (no, it isn't actually Bollywood, since it was made in South India, much to Bollywood's chagrin). Starring the Telugu actor Prabhas (pictured), the first part, subtitled "The Beginning", broke box office records upon its release on July 10, earning Rs 2.15 billion ($34 million) worldwide in just 5 days and in just two weeks has already crossed the Rs 4 billion ($62 million) mark.
3 Ant-Man (film) C-class 1,002,486 Other than Guardians of the Galaxy, this was always going to be Marvel Studios's biggest gamble, and signs did not augur well after writer-director Edgar Wright abandoned the project when refused total creative control. And yet, while it is hardly the box-office miracle that Guardians was, it has so far outperformed Thor, another questionably saleable debut property.
4 Memphis Pyramid C-class 839,800
As noted in a Reddit thread this week, this Bass Pro Shops megastore is the tenth largest pyramid in the world, slightly behind the Bent Pyramid.
5 Donald Trump B-Class 661,692
The bombastic real estate developer and media personality continues his improbable rise to the top of Republican politics, much to the horror of the Republican establishment, who have been cheering for his sudden, swift downfall for weeks. But it appears nothing, not doxxing one of his opponents on live television, not insulting John McCain's war record, can dent his popularity in the run up to the controversial Fox News Republican debate, inclusion for which will be decided according to fairly meaningless national poll numbers.
6 Tutankhamun B-class 646,844
The turbulent, short life of the boy king, son of the heretic ruler Akhenaten, was the subject of a miniseries on Spike TV this week, which saw ratings for the usually male-skewing network double.
7 Tsar Bomba B-Class 602,258
The largest single explosion ever detonated by mankind (not the image at left, which is free to use) had a mushroom cloud seven times higher than Mount Everest and rattled windows 900 km away, as learned in a Reddit thread this week.
8 Battleground (2015) Start-class 592,797
The WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was performed at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
9 Deaths in 2015 List 535,850
The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450,000 and 550,000, apparently heedless of who actually died.
10 Death of Sandra Bland Start-class 524,160 The death in police custody of this 28-year-old African American woman has been ruled a suicide, though the protests that greeted the ruling have highlighted its significance against a mounting backdrop of police violence against African Americans in recent months.



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