This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of
almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds
on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which
I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send
the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was
never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to
look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles
down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study
the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a
search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to
analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly
at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed
on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the
simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface
features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality
that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The
[[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article
html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number
of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words
and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number
of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number
of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see
the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or
h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number
of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage
links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age
(based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :*
Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any
class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out
featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the
classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of
this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external
links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly
distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value
assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B
and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information.
:* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. =
Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an
analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the
link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet
Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful
Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis
is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then
look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the
article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can
pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this
article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also
contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in
our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple
English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring
in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA
only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl
Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic
Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]],
[[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple
only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug
use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual
liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]],
[[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock
festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic
acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles
produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion /
Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your
perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET
ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature
sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that
the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not
distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together,
Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles
are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't
look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is
interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five
Stars Dominate Ratings"
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html…
I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system
is
well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and
create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating
system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia
namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as
needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you
don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot).
:* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles
and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You
ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give
the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure
of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from
document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page
262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the
kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what
features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is
an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority,
economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance,
precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent
features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a
person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has
has this much of these surface and these latent features.
= References =
- DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in
Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report.
PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…>
- Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the
feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical
Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>
Hoi,
I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most
excellent bit of news.
The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the
field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding
drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in
a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to
learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics.
What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are
asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more
linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be
interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more
relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get
more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that
we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with
all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the
Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should
approve yet another language :)
NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in
this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus...
Thanks,
GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.
Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org>
Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org>
Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project
<reviews(a)linguistlist.org>
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/
The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University,
and donations from subscribers and publishers.
Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org>
================================================================
To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html
===========================Directory==============================
1)
Date: 18-Jun-2007
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35
From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >
Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers
Dear subscribers,
As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the
"Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their
donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the
English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this
at:
http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm.
The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity
of
our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic
about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit
more
leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on
the
Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely
organizational one. We will:
*Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or
pages that need improvement;
*Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified
as
"in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any
references or sources," etc;
*Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or
articles;
*Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia;
*Keep track of our project Wikipedians;
*Keep track of revisions and new entries;
*Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's
efforts.
We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us
all
get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an
area
needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of
Linguists
page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M
Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and
information
added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort,
please
respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at
hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which
linguistics
entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our
campaign
on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we
will
share with you soon.
This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The
end
result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth
and
depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate
prospective
students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on
what
we do. Please consider participating.
Sincerely,
Hannah Morales
Editor, Wikipedia Update Project
Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable
-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831
Dear all,
I was the [[:m:User:555]], mainly active on the last years of my volunteers
actions on Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. I've left the Wikimedia
projects mainly because the lack of energy from my side to keep trying to
get free time to work in projects fully neglected by the Wikimedia staff,
developers team and some volunteers in the core of the Foundaction acts.
A friend told me about the http://labs.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/ . I've
checked http://labs.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrixand...
surprise! no Wikisource wikis with blue color links! I asked myself
random things about the [[bug:21653]] lasted for 26 months until gets
PARTIALLY fixed and decided to check some 'Recent changes' pages and found
this:
http://pt.wikisource.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=233269
Come on guys! What is the point to run a bot spamming on all wikis if the
tests are only to the Wikipedias? Attempt of a 'politically correct' action
to these worse guys from others projects get's 'socially included'? Like in
the real life, those worse guys aren't in need of assistencialism [1]
actions...
Well, I don't expect any change on the Wikipediocentric actions in short,
medium or long time (in fact the Foundation and some local chapters are
trying to make things for the Wikimedia Commons project, but only because
that project is the central media source for Wikipedias), this was only a
mutter.
Despite my apparently hatred on this message, I really hope that the 3-4
extensions only enabled on Wikisources wikis don't get's any aditional bugs
than the current ones in the new version of MediaWiki in the same intensity
that your guys hopes that focusing in a project that only describes the
knowledge in an encyclopedic way fully meets the
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
[1] - wow, a concept from social sciences yet not defined neither on
en.wikpedia or en.wiktionary? O_O
As on all of my previous messages, sorry for my limited English skills.
Best regards,
[[:m:User:555|Lugusto]]
Dear all,
Well as you know, Brazil is a priority, but when spending is a waste.
We have a volunteer group that operates in Brazil since 2008 in direct
contact with the problems of Brazil, know much about the free national
culture, know a lot about education in the country, and their projects, they
can tell the reasons why Brazil has poor performance on Wikipedia. Wikimedia
Foundation conducted several interviews with the group, I was interviewed
three times and had several conversations with several different employees.
Also recently a person was hired to do a search on this, already operating in
Brazil.
And yesterday they announced the arrival of two more employees to ask only
that, again. [1] They already have the answer to these interviews, what
they are asking again?
And what I find worse is the fact that there is a prohibitive message for
explanation of other Wikimedia projects. As for the local group that
Wikipedia is not central. And there will be an office of WMF, only to
activities for Wikipedia. And many Brazilians criticize the model of the WMF,
and that centralization in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is only the tenth seventh most
visited site in the country. Need better, yes, but the problem is the
community that is not healthy, and that the WMF does not interfere on that. So
it's skating, and spending resources unnecessarily.
Several staff members say the Wikipedia impact is larger than the other
projects.
Which has more impact for you?
"The Movement Wikimedia projects through education, created free
educational resources available in Wikibooks, and classes on Wikiversity,
this could change the lives of thousands of poor children" or
"The Movement Wikimedia succeeded in creating an encyclopaedia in
Portuguese high quality "
Unfortunately I live in a country that 38% of teens lives in extreme
poverty [2], how they want to create a program just with universities, to
share knowledge if people that never walk inside one university? Or not be
able to read the contents of Wikipedia because they were not properly
literate. I'm not talking to literate Brazilians, I'm talking to create free
educational resources, and create classes, and encourage businesses
and organizations
to do that change, this is a collaborative work.
With the money spent to keep three people six days in Brazil from the U.S.A.,
we could fund a fellow to start a social work with teachers to create this
material.What is the interest of the WMF on this? "Our priority is Wikipedia
"
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.
*
I'll keep imagining, and having to push myself very hard to see this world.
That will never be reached by Wikipedia alone.Especially in Brazil.
If it were to promote Wikipedia as a site, it would be best to hire a company,
not a Foundation, if that way selected, do things as a Foundation.
Sorry for my English, I'm tired and I didn't review.
[1]
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Esplanada/geral/Wikip%C3%A9dia…
[2]
http://noticias.r7.com/brasil/noticias/adolescentes-sao-mais-pobres-que-res…
--
Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton
rodrigo.argenton(a)gmail.com
+55 11 7971-8884
Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the promotion of Howie Fung
to the position of Director of Product Development at the Wikimedia
Foundation, effective February 1.
Howie joined us in October 2009 as a consultant for usability
projects, and became a permanent staff member in May 2010. Prior to
Wikimedia, Howie was Senior Product Manager at Rhapsody, where he
helped grow the music site's traffic five-fold within the the first
year on the basis of extensive customer research, including web
analytics, focus groups, user testing, and customer surveys. Prior to
that, Howie was Product Manager at eBay, prioritizing features based
on business objectives, usability studies, and economic impact. He
has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and a Bachelor of Science
in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
I’m really proud of all the work Howie’s done for Wikimedia since he’s
joined, calmly and rationally introducing method where there was
madness, always challenging us to increase our understanding of our
communities and to use our limited resources for the projects that are
likely to have the highest impact. In addition to the work he’s done
on the Usability Initiative, he’s worked on a variety of projects,
including the Editor Trends Study, the Former Contributors Survey, the
Article Feedback Tool, Moodbar, and the Feedback Dashboard. We’re
very lucky to have him in this new role.
This announcement also means that we’re formally establishing a
Product Development department at Wikimedia, which is part of the
larger Engineering department. Product, in our context, means really
digging into what we want our projects to look like in a year, in two
years, in three years, and working together with software developers
and architects, as well as across Wikimedia, to make that vision a
reality. Our work will be organized along the following product
areas: Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and
Internationalization/Localization.
The following staff and contractors will be part of the Product group,
going forward: Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik
van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the
new Interaction Designer, when hired.
The Mobile team, which works on both mobile apps (such as the
Wikipedia Android app) and the mobile web experience, is a good
example of how this works in practice. It has Phil as a product owner
(reporting to Howie), Tomasz as a scrum master and engineering
director, and Patrick, Arthur, Max, and Yuvi as engineers (reporting
to Tomasz). The team itself is the most important unit here: it drives
the success of any given initiative. The connection into the Product
Development group helps to ensure we follow a consistent strategy and
coordinate efforts across the board. [1]
This is an important step in our organizational development and will
help us parallelize and coordinate product and engineering work more
effectively.
Please join me in congratulating Howie, and WMF. :-)
All best,
Erik
[1] In case you’d like to learn more about agile product development
and software engineering, this presentation is a good intro to scrum,
a specific methodology we've started to use on a couple of teams:
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Phoebe,
On this agenda, could you give more detail about the topic "Paid editing discussion"? There is a current discussion on EN at the Village Pump regarding, among other things, PR personnel who edit on Wikipedia in ways that might violate NPOV and COI policy. It would be good to know if the Board is taking up this specific subject. Alternatively, if "paid editing discussion" instead is about editors which will be paid by WMF to edit, I think the community would want to know that this is will be discussed.
Thanks,
Pine
> Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:22:56 -0800
> From: phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] WMF Board of Trustees meeting agenda
> Message-ID:
> <CAAi3vqFM1b2JdkPixsR7B2b8JauWH6CVr7qF5YO5FOQYVeMm4Q(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi all,
>
> The WMF Board of Trustees is planning our winter meeting for next
> weekend. The draft agenda is posted here for comment:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_Meetings/February_3-4,_2012
>
> This is a very full agenda, focusing on three main topics: the WMF
> annual planning process for 2012/2013, fundraising and funds
> dissemination models, and the movement roles process.
>
> -- Phoebe
> (Board of Trustees Secretary, 2011-2012)
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
> <at> gmail.com *
>
(This mail is focused on books, but the topic is of more general
interest IMHO, thus foundation-l)
Hi all,
I just saw the "iBooks Author" news:
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/19/a-closer-look-at-ibooks-author-textbook…
Of course, all these pretty books will be only available in the Apple
paywalled garden.
So I thought: As they use basically HTML5 (plus a few proprietary
libraries), could we produce such interactive, tablet/phone-enabled
e-books ("wBooks" as in "Wikimedia":-) from free content? I believe
the answer is yes, though it might be quite a push technologically
(just to be clear, I am speaking of the books here, not of the
authoring software).
Also: Should we? I believe the answer is yes as well, for two reasons.
One, Apples work here might (yet again) set a new standard, which
means everything falling short of that standard will be neglected by
the target audience, which runs counter to our declared goal of
disseminating free knowledge; standing still might well mean falling
behind. Another reason is the opportunity that Apple creates for us
here: Once such e-books become accepted as general teaching tools in
schools, it will be much easier to switch from Apple-only, costly
books to run-everywhere, free books; they might just win the
"technology battle" for us.
What do you think?
Cheers,
Magnus
Hi everyone -
Sue has asked me to create a mailing list to discuss advocacy and
Wikimedia's position in it for the future. Although I don't yet have the
list created, I wanted to put out a call for moderators. If you're
interested in moderating this mailing list (a bit more of an "active"
moderation role, nudging people on topic, etc), would you please let me
know by private email (philippe{{(a)}}wikimedia.org)? Depending on how many
people express interest, I'll figure out how we proceed forward.
Thanks!
pb
___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
415-839-6885, x 6643
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
To check my email volume (and thus know approx how long it will take me to
respond), go to http://courteous.ly/hpQmqy