dissecting wikipedia
DESCRIPTION
Talk on "Dissecting Wikipedia" given at CRASSH, Cambridge, on 6th March 2013. Abstract: Andrew Gray, the British Library's Wikipedian in Residence, has been working on an AHRC-supported program to help more academics and researchers engage with Wikipedia. In this talk, he will give a brief history of the Wikipedia project, looking at its origins and the way it has developed over time. The talk will also cover the growing amount of research done around Wikipedia itself. Well over 2,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published which looked at Wikipedia in some way - looking at the project's content and community, or using this data as a way to study broader questions of collaboration and interaction.TRANSCRIPT
Dissecting Wikipedia
Andrew Gray
Wikipedian in Residence, British Library
[email protected] // @generalising
Wikipedia & Wikimedia
Wikimedia Movement and charitable body 80-100,000 contributors in 280 languages
and eleven core projects Image repository, dictionary, news site… …used by almost 500,000,000 people
Wikipedia 25,000,000 articles, 4,000,000 in English representing 8-9,000,000 topics & entities 6,500 articles and 235,000 edits per day
(…and twelve years ago, this was all fields…)
…so what is Wikipedia?
…an encyclopedia (more or less)
…written neutrally
…and verifiably
…using previously published information
…free to use, distribute, or reuse
…a collaborative community
…with no firm rules
A developing internal infrastructure
All edits are visible through watchlists and page histories About 7% are vandalism or malicious; processes to detect
these Median time to correction < 2 minutes… but some stay much
longer
Individual discussion pages for all articles – “talk”
Quality review and assessment process
Specialised working groups and central noticeboards eg/ content topics; style; dispute resolution; copyright; etc.
Quality of Wikipedia as a source
On average… it’s not bad In 2005 four errors per article, versus three in Britannica In 2011, in English, Spanish & Arabic:
“…the Wikipedia articles in this sample scored higher overall than the comparison articles with respect to accuracy, references, style/ readability and overall judgment…”
Millions of articles – so many are, individually, problematic Various ways of identifying “signs” of quality Markers for quality are both obvious and subtle
Very effective “springboard” tool
Moving to other content
Other languages – not translations, and may have more content
Mousing over footnote markers
Within the references: Links through DOIs and other identifiers ISBNs go to a special landing page
…and then out to libraries, booksellers, etc ISSNs go to WorldCat If an author, look for authority control links:
Other research tools
Some tools available – “toolserver” allows live DB queries Complex to use, but rewarding
CatScan: look for intersection of categories “all physicists born in 1912” – 53 in English, 35 in German
Full dumps of all data available – http://dumps.wikipedia.org/
Reusers – Freebase, DBpedia, Wolfram Alpha
Wikidata
Wikidata: our new linked data repository Phase I: cross-language links Phase II: structured data elements Phase III: dynamic lists
Very loosely defined schema
Currently harvesting structured data from WP
Public API, open to reusers
CC-0 licensed data – fully open
Research about Wikipedia
Thriving research around Wikimedia communities & content by mid-2011, 2100 peer-reviewed articles and 38 PhD theses Active research committee and WMF support
Regular community-produced monthly newsletter http://enwp.org/meta:Research // @wikiresearch
Topics include: Community and content creation Reading and researching by users Quality of content Technical research Large-scale content examination
Research on communities
Research on the Wikipedia communities:
Dynamics of community conflict, discussions, collaboration, voting, contribution, mentoring…
Demographics, motivation and specialisms of contributors Patterns of growth and content creation/deletion Effect of central programs on volunteer activity Cross-cultural interaction
Visualisation: discussion dynamics
http://notabilia.net/
Editor activity and motivation
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Effect_of_barnstars_on_productivity.png
Research on users
Research on usage of Wikipedia:
Specific searching behaviour Patterns of usage (yearly, daily) Tracking external events through Wikipedia Search engine rankings Change in usage by students Effect of Wikipedia publication on wider literature
Visualising editing patterns
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiTrip_egyptian_revolution_screenshot.png
Research on content
Research on the content of Wikipedia:
Evolution of content Accuracy, coverage and quality Biases – geographic, cultural, gender Linguistic analysis Effect of external publications on Wikipedia
Quality assessment comparisons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boxplot_of_Average_Article_Feedback_ratings_by_project_rated_quality.svg
Research on technical aspects
Research on the technical side of Wikipedia:
Extensive work on scaling open-content services Tools for detecting and handling vandalism Algorithmic detection and identification of bias, spam Practical research on uses of wikis
Research using content
Research using content from Wikipedia
Hard to distinguish from “conventional” research, but some examples:
Geographical analysis Visualisations of content Source for extracted datasets
...and Wikidata still to come!
Visualising art history
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiarthistory.png
Visualising place
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imageworld-artphp3.png