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Wikipedia Zero piracy in Bangladesh; bureaucracy; chilling effects; too few cooks; translation gaps

In a follow-up to his story on Wikipedia Zero-based piracy in Angola (see previousSignpostcoverage),Motherboard's Jason Koeblerreports (April 27) on very similar problems with piracy in Bangladesh, arguing that "Wikipedia's piracy police are ruining the developing world's Internet experience":

Wikipedia Zero users in Bangladesh are now being monitored, banned, and threatened by Wikipedia editors who are engaged in a continuous game of whack-a-mole against piracy on the site.

Last month, I wrote several articles about the creative (if illegal) ways that people in Angola are using the free Wikipedia Zero and Facebook Free Basics services to share copyrighted files with each other. Both of these services zero rate data uploaded and downloaded from those sites, meaning users don’t have to pay for that data, which would normally be very expensive. Users upload files to the Wikimedia Commons database, link to them in closed Facebook groups, and, bam – free ad-hoc filesharing network.

Koebler says the "arms race" between the pirates and Wikimedians trying to stop them is "significantly more advanced" than it it is in Angola:

A task force of editors in the developed world are desperately trying to get Bangladeshis play by Wikipedia's existing rules by closely monitoring and banning people who upload pirated content. They're invading Facebook groups to monitor and determine how and where people are uploading files. They're keeping a running tally of the number and names of accounts that have uploaded content. They've blocked entire IP ranges from uploading files, and have created filters that monitor all uploads that come from Wikipedia Zero accounts and from new accounts in general.

Meanwhile,

the Bangladeshi operations that I've seen appear to be much more sophisticated than the Angolan ones – they have posted specific guides to converting videos to smaller and harder-to-detect file types, have started using Wikipedia test sites, and have started using free sites online that automatically upload YouTube videos to Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Bangladesh has become involved, pleading with users to stop the uploads, telling them they are contributing to an "increasingly negative perception of Bangladesh in many different sectors" by treating Wikimedia sites as a sort of free YouTube. But, Koebler argues,

Commons is YouTube for Wikipedia Zero users out of necessity, not choice. Because they can't afford access to YouTube and the rest of the internet, Wikipedia has become the internet for lots of Bangladeshis. What's crazy, then, is that a bunch of more-or-less random editors who happen to want to be the piracy police are dictating the means of access for an entire population of people ... there's no simple way out of this situation. When you create two entirely different tiers of internet, those in the second tier will rightly aspire to get into the first tier.

Gizmodoreports (April 25) on a newstudy by Bradi Heaberlin and Simon DeDeo arguing that Wikipedia has become a corporate bureaucracy, "akin to bureaucratic systems that predate the information age."

Wikipedia is a voluntary organization dedicated to the noble goal of decentralized knowledge creation. But as the community has evolved over time, it has wandered further and further from its early egalitarian ideals, according to a new paper published in the journal Future Internet. In fact, such systems usually end up looking a lot like 20th century bureaucracies.

Even in the brave new world of online communities, the Who had it right: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

One of the study's most striking findings, Gizmodo reports, is that

even on Wikipedia, the so-called "Iron Law of Oligarchy" – a.k.a. rule by an elite few – holds sway. ... "You start with a decentralized democratic system, but over time you get the emergence of a leadership class with privileged access to information and social networks," DeDeo explained. "Their interests begin to diverge from the rest of the group. They no longer have the same needs and goals. So not only do they come to gain the most power within the system, but they may use it in ways that conflict with the needs of everybody else."

DeDeo and Heaberlin note Wikipedia's conservative nature: over 89 per cent of its core norms, created by a small pool of around 100 users, have remained unchanged; they have achieved a "myth-like status" even as they inevitably conflict with each other. Resolution of such conflicts is made more difficult by the fact that editors form central "neighbourhoods" organised around "article quality, content policy, collaboration, and administrators" that are "increasingly separate and interact with each other less and less", leading to the emergence of tribalism.

DeDeo and Heaberlin performed a purely mathematical analysis of broad trends in the Wikipedia data, connecting this hyper-quantitative approach with sociology and political science. The next step is to collaborate with cultural anthropologists to undertake a close reading of all those inter-linked individual pages.

"We need to understand how these systems work if we're going to understand how the economy of the future will run. They don't have laws, they have traditions and norms," said DeDeo when asked why this kind of research matters. "I think what we're doing is investing research into a problem that, 200 years from now, could be the biggest problem in the world – if we don't destroy ourselves first."

In its article, Gizmodo references astudy published earlier this year inPhysical Review E by Jinhyuk Yun (윤진혁), Sang Hoon Lee (이상훈), and Hawoong Jeong (정하웅) from theKorea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, which came to similar conclusions about Wikipedia. The Korean study received a German-languagewrite-up intaz this week (April 28).

DeDeo's and Heaberlin's study was subsequently alsocovered byThe Washington Post as well as bySciencealert.com (April 28).

The Washington Post, along with many other media outlets,reports that according to a new study by Jon Penney, "Snowden's disclosures about NSA spying had a scary effect on free speech":

Internet traffic to Wikipedia pages summarizing knowledge about terror groups and their tools plunged nearly 30 percent after revelations of widespread Web monitoring by the U.S. National Security Agency, suggesting that concerns about government snooping are hurting the ordinary pursuit of information.

The study, titled"Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use", is

focused on Wikipedia pages related to sensitive topics specifically flagged by the Department of Homeland Security. In a document provided to its analysts in 2011, the DHS listed 48 terrorism terms that they should use when "monitoring social media sites." Penney collected traffic data on the English Wikipedia pages most closely related to those terms.

The collected data showed that pageviews dropped immediately after the June 2013 news stories about Snowden and never recovered to previous levels.

"You want to have informed citizens," Penney said. "If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate."

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TheNew Statesmancovers (Apr. 17) a project kickstarted by Bee Wilson, chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, to bring more women editors to Wikipedia in order to improve its articles on food. The article's writer, Felicity Cloake, visited a related group editing session at theBritish Library.

[Wikipedia's] "egregious gender imbalance" is especially notable in matters relating to food, because, as Polly Russell, the library's curator of food studies, explains, "we're such a new area of serious study". Most food throughout history has been cooked by women, "but if you can’t name them, they get forgotten."

Commenting on the under-representation of notable women on Wikipedia,

Wilson ... cites the example ofPhilippa Glanville, a former chief curator of the metalwork, silver and jewellery department at the Victoria and Albert Museum and a world expert on historical dining practices, whose achievements were recognised by the Queen before the online encyclopaedia ("Presumably getting on Wikipedia should be easier than getting an OBE").

Facilitating this process is the goal of Wiki-Food, which groups academics, students, experts and enthusiastic amateurs with the aim of improving and expanding Wikipedia's coverage of food-related topics, especially but not exclusively those relevant to women, with support from Wikipedia.

VentureBeatreports (Apr. 28) on a collaboration between Wikimedia andStanford University to help point translators to significant content gaps in other language versions of Wikipedia:

finding out which topics or articles are in particular shortage in specific tongues is a challenge, which is why Wikimedia is partnering with Stanford University researchers to design a new recommendation system. This will rank Wikipedia articles in order of priority across languages. The ranking is based on a number of factors, including editor interests (using contribution history data), language proficiency, and anticipated popularity if an article was translated. For example, a native Swahili speaker is unlikely to care about the history of a U.K. baking business, but they may care about WrestleMania 32.

University news site Futurity also hasan article (Apr. 15) on the project; a Wikimedia blog post (Apr. 27) is availablehere.

• Japanese Wikipedia hits 1 million articles:The Japan Timesnotes that theJapanese Wikipedia has passed the 1-million mark. (Apr. 30)
• Thiruvananthapuram Wikipedia workshop May 4/5:The New Indian Express hasnews of an upcoming Wikipedia workshop led by Indian ecologist and writerMadhav Gadgil, due to take place on May 4 and 5 inKerala's capital,Thiruvananthapuram. The workshop is "jointly organised by Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre and the Centre for Internet and Society in association with the Wikipedia fraternity of Kerala." Interested editors can find a telephone number and further details in the linked article. (Apr. 30)
• Hillsborough disaster: TheLiverpool Echoreports that theHillsborough disaster page has again been vandalised, this time from aWarwickshire County Council IP address. This is the second time vandalism of the page traced to a UK government source has led to press headlines; in 2014, an unnamed civil servant was fired aftermaking offensive edits to the page from a government IP address. (Apr. 28)
• "Wikipedia editors feud like teens":Gawker's Ashley Feinberg has anotherinstalment of deleted Wikipedia articles, including thebiography of Wikipedian Derek Ramsey. (Apr. 28)
• Tulu Wikipedia:The Hindureports on efforts to create aTulu Wikipedia. (Apr. 27)
• Glenn Hughes:Loudwire hasDeep Purple'sGlenn Hughes playWikipedia: Fact or Fiction?. For more in the same vein, seeLoudwire'soverview of recent episodes. (Apr. 27)
• Sahapedia:The Daily Mailreports onSahapedia (http://www.sahapedia.org/), a project to create a "web portal of India's cultural heritage". Unlike the crowdsourced Wikipedia, Sahapedia will be written by subject matter experts. (Apr. 27)
• Wikipedia's dentistry pages need work: Asreported byThe Courier, "staff and students from University of Dundee School of Dentistry have set up a Wikipedia editing team, after becoming disappointed with the 'inaccurate and incomplete' material available on the free online encyclopaedia." (Apr. 26)
• Cowgirl blues: Noted left-leaning political blogger "Montana Cowgirl"reckons someone with ties toGreg Gianforte, a candidate for the Republican Party's nomination forgovernor of Montana, USA, has been airbrushing his Wikipedia biography. (Apr. 25)

• The Beyhive descends on Wikipedia: As covered byThe Root,The Daily Mail and many others,Beyoncé fans, collectively known as the "Beyhive", took to vandalising fashion designerRachel Roy's Wikipedia biography, believing her to be the "Becky with the good hair" referred to by Beyoncé in one of the songs on her new album,Lemonade, as a rival for husbandJay Z's affections. On April 24, the Rachel Roy biography received over one hundred edits within the space of one hour. (Apr. 24–25)
• Product placement:The A.V. Clublooks at Wikipedia's article onproduct placement as part of itsWiki Wormhole series. (Apr. 24)
• A source-o-meter?:The Atlanticreports on a study (see previousSignpost coverage in theFebruary edition of "Recent research" and the related talk page) suggesting that Wikipedia should build a "source-o-meter" indicating how many of the information sources a Wikipedia article is based on can readily be verified by the reader online. (Apr. 22)
• Wikipedia soon to be available on the Moon:Mic,TechCrunch,TechWorm and others cover the efforts to take Wikipedia to the Moon, ascovered in last week'sSignpost. (Apr. 21–24)
• Police chief apologises: TheSaskatoon Star-Phoenixreports that "Saskatoon police Chief Clive Weighill said he is angry and upset that someone from inside police headquarters altered the department's Wikipedia page to erase all references to 'starlight tours.'" "It really does upset me. It's just another step backward," Weighill is reported to have said at a board of police commissioners meeting. For context see the previousSignpost article,"Saskatoon police delete Wikipedia content about police brutality". (Apr. 21)
• Full Measure:Sharyl Atkisson's U.S. TV seriesFull Measurecovers the "Dark Side of Wikipedia". The programme interviewed two banned paid editors,Wikipediocracy co-founder Gregory Kohs (Thekohser) and Mike Wood (Morning277). (Apr. 17)
• Pottermore take-down notices target Wikipedia: As described byBusiness Insider andTorrentFreak,Pottermore, the publishing company responsible for marketing the popularHarry Potter series, has filed copyright takedown demands alleging various websites, among them Wikipedia, contain its intellectual property.Business Insider andTorrentFreak described the takedown requests as "surreal" and "bizarre". (Apr. 14–15)

• Odia Wikimedian:Opensource.comfeatures Sailesh Patnaik's description of his "four year, action-packed experience with Wikipedia" that began with his registering a user account in April 2012, aged 15. "I consider myself to be an Odia Wikimedian. I contributeOdia knowledge (the predominant language of the Indian state ofOdisha) to many Wikimedia projects, like Wikipedia and Wikisource, by writing articles and correcting mistakes in articles. I also contribute to Hindi and English Wikipedia articles." And he has done much else besides in the Wikimedia movement, as you can read in his retrospective. (Apr. 15)
• Wiki-geeks get seriously young:The Statesmanreports on school-age Wikipedia contributors fromHong Kong. Jimmy Wales "once described the Hong Kong team as the youngest group of Wikipedians in the world." (Apr. 15)
• Block chain war:Cryptocurrency blogCoinTelegraphdiscusses an "edit war" on the articleblock chain. (Apr. 14)
• Year of science:Plos.orgreports that "The Wiki Education Foundation (Wiki Ed) has announced the 2016 Wikipedia Year of Science, an initiative to improve Wikipedia's potential for communicating science to the public. Through its Classroom Program (where students write Wikipedia articles on class-related topics in place of a traditional research paper) and with collaborations from Wikipedia editors, Wiki Ed will engage scientists to improve the breadth and depth of scientific content on Wikipedia." (Apr. 14)

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2016-05-02

The best ... from the past two weeks

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ByArmbrust

John Legend andCommon received theAcademy Award for Best Original Song for "Glory", the theme song ofSelma.

---

ThisSignpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 17 to 30 April.
Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Featured articles

Sevenfeatured articles were promoted these weeks.

• The7th Army(nominated byPeacemaker67) was a Royal Yugoslav Army formation raised prior to the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, during World War II. It consisted of two divisions, two brigade-strength mountain detachments, and a brigade-strength infantry detachment. It formed part of the 1st Army Group, and was responsible for the defence of Yugoslavia's north-western frontier with Italy and the Third Reich.
• Literary Hall(nominated byWest Virginian) is a mid-19th-century brick library building and museum in Romney, West Virginia. Located at the intersection of North High Street and West Main Street, the hall was constructed between 1869 and 1870 by the Romney Literary Society. Its basic design incorporates Federal and Greek Revival styles along with Victorian details. Architectural historian Michael J. Pauley described Literary Hall as "one of Romney's and Hampshire County's most notable landmarks, and one in which this community is justifiably proud".
• The Phantom Tollbooth(nominated byWehwalt) is a 1961 children's adventure novel by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer. It tells the story of a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon and, having nothing better to do, drives through it in his toy car. The tollbooth transports him to the Kingdom of Wisdom, once prosperous, now troubled. There, he acquires two faithful companions and goes on a quest to restore to the kingdom its exiled princesses—named Rhyme and Reason—from the Castle in the Air. Milo accomplishes his quest, and in so doing realizes the world around him is filled with interesting things. The text is full of puns and wordplay, and many events, such as when Milo unintentionally jumps to Conclusions (an island in Wisdom), explore the literal meanings of idioms. It has been adapted into a film, opera, and play, and translated into many languages.
• Djedkare Isesi(nominated byIry-Hor) was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the eighth and penultimate ruler of the Fifth Dynasty in the late 25th to mid 24th century BCE, during the Old Kingdom period. Djedkare likely enjoyed a long reign of over 40 years, which heralded a new period in the history of the Old Kingdom. He effected comprehensive reforms of the Egyptian state administration, reorganised the funerary cults of his forebears buried in the necropolis of Abusir and reformed the corresponding priesthood.
• TheGudovac massacre(nominated by23 editor) was the mass killing of around 190 Bjelovar Serbs by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement in 1941. The massacre occurred shortly after the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustaše-led Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia. It was the first act of mass murder committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power.
• Maxinquaye(nominated byDan56) is the debut album by English rapper and producer Tricky, who recorded the album primarily at his home studio in London in 1994 with his then-girlfriend, singer Martina Topley-Bird, who shared vocals on most of the tracks with him. The songs explore themes of dysfunctional sexual relationships, fear of intimacy, recreational drug use, and cultural decline. His songwriting style and use of female vocalists such as Topley-Bird were influenced by his mother, Maxine Quaye, after whom the album was titled. It reached number three on the United Kingdom's albums chart and sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.
• Knight Lore(nominated byCzar) is a 1984 action-adventure game known for popularising isometric graphics in video games. The game was developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game and written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper. InKnight Lore, the player-character Sabreman has forty days to collect objects throughout a castle and brew a cure to his werewolf curse. Each castle room is depicted in monochrome on its own screen and consists of blocks to climb, obstacles to avoid, and puzzles to solve. It is regarded as a seminal work in British gaming history. Critics considered its technical solutions and isometric 3D style a harbinger of future game design. They praised the game's controls and atmosphere of mystery, but noted its difficult gameplay and criticised its sound and occasional graphical slowdown.

Featured lists

Sixfeatured lists were promoted these weeks.

• Selma is a 2014 American historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay. The screenplay was written by Paul Webb. The film follows the events leading up to and during the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the resulting establishment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which prohibited racial discrimination in voting in the United States. The film garneredawards and nominations(nominated byCowlibob) in a variety of categories with particular praise for its direction, David Oyelowo's portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr., and the song "Glory" by John Legend and Common. It grossed a worldwide total of over $66 million on a production budget of $20 million.
• Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was a British author and scriptwriter.His bibliography(nominated bySchroCat) includes nineteen novels, thirteen short story collections, twelve scripts, three poem collections and nine non-fiction works. He also selected the stories for the 1983 short story collectionRoald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. As of 2015, Dahl's works have been translated into 59 languages and have sold more than 200 million books worldwide. His awards for contribution to literature include the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and the British Book Awards' Children's Author of the Year.
• Lady Gaga (born 1986) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress.Her live performances(nominated byFrB.TG andGagaNutella) include five concert tours (with 499 shows), one residency show at Roseland Ballroom and a promotional concert. Additionally she also performed live at various award ceremonies and television shows, including the MTV Video Music Awards (three times), the Grammy Awards (four times) and the Academy Awards (twice). She also performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" before Super Bowl 50.
• F.C. United of Manchester is an English semi-professional association football club based in Moston, Manchester. The club was formed in June 2005 by supporters of Manchester United opposed to American businessman Malcolm Glazer's takeover of that club. The club played their first twoseasons(nominated byOdder andDelusion23) in the North West Counties League, becoming the champions in the league's both divisions, and advanced to the Northern Premier League. They finished second in the Division One North, and advanced to the Premier Division through play-offs. In the 2015–16 season, the club competed in the National League North, at level six of English football, following promotion after the previous season.
• The Green Park Stadium is a cricket ground in Kanpur, India. It is the home ground of the Uttar Pradesh cricket team and has played host to Ranji Trophy matches, as well as being a Test and One Day International venue. As of 2016, there have been41 international cricket centuries(nominated byVensatry) at the venue, with the most recent being made by Rohit Sharma during a One Day International match between India and South Africa.
• Olly Murs (born 1984) is an English singer-songwriter, television presenter and actor. As of 2016, Murs hasrecorded 80 songs(nominated byCalvin999 andTomica), including seven-teen singles.

Featured pictures

Fourfeatured pictures were promoted these weeks.

• 
  Christian Fleetwood
  (created by unknown author; restored andnominated byAdam Cuerden)
• 
  Meerkats
  (created andnominated byCharlesjsharp)
• 
  Vervain hummingbird
  (created andnominated byCharlesjsharp)
• 
  Pope Pius VII
  (created byThomas Lawrence,nominated bySpongie555)

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2016-05-02

Two editors unbanned; Wikicology case enters workshop phase; Gamaliel restricted from Gamergate at his own request

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ByAndreas Kolbe

On 19 April, the arbitration committeeunbanned two editors,Ottava Rima andProf. Carl Hewitt. Both remain subject to various editing restrictions, but are permitted to contribute within certain parameters. Welcome back.

The evidence submission phase in theWikicology case ended on 25 April. The case has now moved to theWorkshop phase, which is due to close on 2 May. Proposals made to date range from a site ban or an indefinite ban from article space, which would allow Wikicology to continue contributing to draft space, user space and talk pages, to a topic ban from biomedical and public health and policy topics.

TheGamaliel and others case is in itsevidence phase, which is due to end 6 May. Developments to date include a temporary injunction prohibitingDHeyward andGamaliel from interacting, passed on 19 April 2016, and the addition ofDHeyward,Arkon andJzG as involved parties, which proved controversial on the case'stalk page.

Independently of the ongoing case, on 30 April the committee made anannouncement on the ArbCom noticeboard indefinitely restricting Gamaliel, "per his request", "from taking any action to enforce any arbitration decision within the GamerGate topic, broadly construed".

In anamendment to the Infoboxes arbitration case announced on 21 April, the arbitration committee rescinded three remedies applied toPigsonthewing, who is "cautioned that the topic of infoboxes remains contentious under some circumstances and that he should edit carefully in this area."

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2016-05-02

The eight roles of Wikipedians; do edit histories expose social relations among editors?

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ByGuillaume Paumier,Brian Keegan andTilman Bayer

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

"Who did what: editor role identification in Wikipedia"

Reviewed byGuillaume Paumier

Who did what: editor role identification in Wikipedia is the title of an upcoming paper to be presented at theInternational Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) in Cologne, Germany.^[1] The work presented in the paper is a collaboration between researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the Wikimedia Foundation. The authors' goal was to analyze edits from the English Wikipedia to identify roles played by editors and to examine how those roles affected the quality of articles.

Identifying roles of participants in online communities helps researchers and practitioners better understand the social dynamics that lead to healthy, thriving communities. This line of research started in the 2000s, focused on Usenet groups, before expanding to wiki communities like Wikipedia.^{[supp 1]}

The paper covers the three stages of work:

• determining edit categories, to describe the types of changes made by editors;
• modeling editor roles represented by those categories;
• measuring the quality of a set of articles over time, and determining if its evolution is linked to the roles played by their editors.

For the first stage, the authors built on previous publications that aimed at classifying Wikipedia edits, in particular the work by Daxenberger et al.^{[supp 2]} Classifying edits usually starts by separating them bynamespace. A more granular approach considers not just the namespace, but the content of the change. This was the method chosen here for edits in the main namespace, with the possibility of assigning a revision to multiple categories: for example, a single revision can entail both "grammar" and "template insertion" changes. Those categories were operationalized using anensemble methodclassifier based on the content and metadata of the edit.

Then, the authors derived roles based on patterns that emerged from the classes of edits, using thelatent Dirichlet allocation method (LDA). This method is traditionally used innatural language processing to identify topics making up a document. Here, the authors used the method to identify roles making up a user, positing that a user is a mixture of roles in the same way that a document is a mixture of topics. In addition to edits, they trained the LDA model using other information such as reverts, and edits in other namespaces.

They ended up with eight roles: social networker, fact checker, substantive expert, copy editor, wiki gnomes, vandal fighter, fact updater, and Wikipedian. They found that most editors play between one and three of those roles. To validate the roles, they attempted to predict edit categories based on the editors' roles, with mixed results.

Last, the authors examined whether the roles of editors were correlated with the evolution of the quality of a set of articles. They measured article quality twice, six months apart, using an existing model^{[supp 3]} that assigns a score in Wikipedia's qualitative assessment scale based on the article's measurable characteristics.

They found some correlation between the difference in quality and the roles involved, taking into account control variables like the starting quality score. Their results suggest that "the activities of different types of editors are needed at different stages of article development". For example, "as articles increase in quality, the substantive content added by substantive experts is needed less" but "the cleanup activities by Wiki Gnomes become more important".

One limitation acknowledged by the authors is that their detailed edit classification was only performed on edits made in the main namespace (Wikipedia articles). For other edits, they only considered the namespace itself. Namespaces likeWikipedia: are host to very varied activities, and applying the same level of detail to them would presumably yield a richer, and possibly more accurate, taxonomy of roles.

Some choices in the role nomenclature are a little surprising. For example, it seems odd to have one role simply called "Wikipedians", or "reference modification" being a behavior representative of "social networkers". Translating patterns of data (structural signatures) into words (roles) is a difficult exercise, and often a weak link in such analyses.

In conclusion, the article is a welcome contribution to the field of Wikipedia research, in particular of editor roles on Wikipedia. Many previous role identification efforts have used a simplified approach where editors were reduced to their main role. In contrast, here the authors went further and considered editors as a mixture of roles, which is expected to provide a more accurate representation of human behavior.

Since the authors mention task recommendation as a possible application of their work, it would be particularly interesting to examine how the role composition of a user evolves over time. There may be patterns in the evolution of users' roles during their life cycle as editors. Uncovering such patterns could lead to more relevant task recommendations, and help guide editors along their contribution journey.

"Verifying social network models of Wikipedia knowledge community"

Reviewed byBrian C. Keegan

This paper was published in theInformation Sciences journal and was co-authored by researchers from severalPolish universities.^[2] The paper's central research question is "are the popular assumptions about the social interpretations of networks created from the edit history valid?" The paper evaluates four different methods for constructing complex networks from Wikipedia data and comparing these constructs with survey results about Polish Wikipedians' self-reported relationships. While there is a strong correspondence between all the different network types, networks derived from Wikipedians' talk pages map most clearly onto Wikipedians' feelings of acquaintanceship.

The paper examines four kinds of relationships: co-edits to article and user talk pages (acquaintanceship), co-edits in the vicinity of other users' text (trust), reverts of editors' revisions (conflict), and co-edits to articles in the same category (shared interest). Crucially, the paper extends prior research using these network constructs by conducting a respondent-driven survey of Wikipedians to ask them to name other Wikipedians they consider to be acquaintances, trusted, conflict-prone, or having the same interest. The survey respondents tended to be more experienced than typical users and so responses were re-weighted based on population frequency.

The paper goes on to use a variety of machine learning methods to evaluate the strength of the relationship between different behavioral features and the self-reported relationships. First the find that naive constructions of these networks from behavioral data only end up predicting one kind of relationship (discussion/acquaintanceship). Using more complex sets of temporal features such as days since last edit and category similarity to account for biases in self-reporting yielding only marginal improvements in model performance. The authors conclude by suggesting that the correspondence between relationships imputed from observed Wikipedia data and the relationships reported by Wikipedians themselves are weak.

The survey methods employed in this paper to generate the ground-truth networks can be criticized by the lack of randomness in the population or generalizability across other wiki communities. Similarly, there are well-known limits on informant accuracy compounded by the often impersonal nature of the editing interface and process. Nevertheless, this research suggests that researchers combining behavioral data social network methods may be making faulty assumptions about how strong the observed relationships are actually perceived by the Wikipedians themselves.

Briefly

"Tracking interactions across business news, social media, and stock fluctuations"

Reviewed byBrian C. Keegan

This study^[3] from researchers at theUniversity of Helsinki examinescross-correlations between Wikipedia pageviews, news media mentions, and company stock prices. This work extends prior work that developed atrading strategy based on Wikipedia pageviews to assess stock market moves^[4][5] byextracting entities about companies, products, and dates from news media mentions and matching them to Wikipedia entries. An exploratory case study demonstrates there are some correlations across these three indices and that the strongest cross-correlations are observed without a time lag and for the same company. However, in a subsequent case study involving 11 large companies, the strongest cross-correlations were forThe Home Depot andNetflix. That correlations among news mentions, Wikipedia pageviews, and stock performance is neither theoretically nor empirically surprising, but the paper's work on identifying entities and mapping them to Wikipedia articles could have some potential. Research like this comparing correlations across dozens of entities and time series is subject tomultiple comparisons problems and there's likewise a large body of methods inmathematical finance that can be used to extend these findings further.

New event calendar

Acalendar of events (mostly research conferences) relevant to Wikimedia-related research has recently been set up on Meta-wiki. Notable entries for this month includeCHI 2016 andICWSM-16.

"Detection of text-based advertising and promotion in Wikipedia by deep learning method"

Reviewed byTilman Bayer

This conference paper^[6] presents a method to automatically detect promotional content in Wikipedia. It appears to aim at articles, but the actual method focuses on user pages.

The authors highlight the fact that their method is purely text-based, whereas "[c]urrently most researches about spamming in Wikipedia are focusing on editing behavior and making use of user’s edit history to do feature-based judging." (See, however, our earlier coverage of a related paper that reported success using stylometric, i.e. text-based features: "Legendary, acclaimed, world-class text analysis method finds you promotional Wikipedia articles really easily")

The researchers explain that a "traditionalbag-of-words document vector representation" (counting only word frequencies) is insufficient. Instead, they "employ adeep learning method to obtain a word vector for each word and then apply a sliding window on each document to gradually gain the document vector." The classifier was trained on a dataset of user pages speedily deleted under criterion "G11. Unambiguous advertising or promotion", compared to user pages of administrators which were assumed to be advertising-free. In tests (which apart from Wikipedia user pages also included a dataset of web page ads drawn from other sites) it "produced better performance than thebag-of-words model in bothprecision and recall measurements."

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.

• "Taking Online Search Queries as an Indicator of the Public Agenda The Role of Public Uncertainty"^[7] From the abstract: "... the influence of media coverage on Wikipedia searches concerning two issues is compared: one issue with uncertainty (the Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli [EHEC] epidemic), and one without uncertainty (unemployment). Analyses show much stronger correlations in the case of EHEC, which suggests that online search behavior may especially be used as an indicator of the public agenda in case public uncertainty exists." (see also:earlier publication by the same authors)
• "Public relations interactions with Wikipedia"^[8] From the abstract: "The purpose of this paper is to consider the relevance of the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework (Ostrom, 1990) in understanding the incentives for public relations (PR) practitioners’ interactions with Wikipedia, and other common-pool media. [... It] applies the economics theory of commons governance to two case studies of PR interactions with Wikipedia. [...] The analysis concludes that commons governance theory identifies the downside risks of opportunistic behaviour by PR practitioners in their interactions with media commons such as Wikipedia. ... The economic value of information held by public relations professionals has been undermined by the collaborative nature of common pool media, which has consequences for the role of public relations."
• "Digital Library Citation Parsing to Wikipedia Reference Analysis"^[9] From the abstract: "... we empirically verify the potential of automatic identification of incomplete references in Wikipedia with our machine learning based software. Second we propose a normalization method on the identified result to group identical references. We evaluate the reference parsing performance of our system on author and title fields then provide Wikipedia citation statistics on the identified and normalized result."
• "Collaboration of Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers in Dyads for Wikipedia Article Authoring"^[10] From the abstract: "A prerequisite for pre-service teachers, among others, is their preparation to apply collaborative methodologies [...] In this paper, we discuss an approach involving collaboration of pre-service early childhood teachers in dyads while working on Wikipedia article authoring. To the best of our knowledge, there is no other such approach combining all these characteristics. [...] From an approach such as ours, benefits can be derived for students themselves, society and Wikipedia."
• "A New Epistemic Culture? Wikipedia as an Arena for the Production of Knowledge in Late Modernity"^[11]
• "Wikipedia, democracy and local elections in São Paulo: a study of the developing of articles edited during the election campaign in 2012"^[12] From the English abstract: "This article has as main objective to understand how during the campaign to elect the mayor of São Paulo city in 2012 users have accessed articles related to the three leading candidates – Russomanno, Haddad and Serra – and have edited them. We consider the period from 2008 to 2012 as a reference to explore variables such as the page view indices and the number of editions provided by frequent users. It was concluded that the intensification of the political battle during the election period affects the number of access to such articles, their editions, and the nature of the interaction between registered editors."
• "Hot news detection using Wikipedia"^[13] From the blog post: "I show how we can use the number of Wikipedia article page views to determine if a news story is hot. This approach is fully data-driven and does not need any human supervision."

References

1. ^Yang, Diyi; Halfaker, Aaron; Kraut, Robert; Hovy, Eduard (2016-05-17).Who Did What: Editor Role Identification in Wikipedia(PDF).International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM-16). Cologne, Germany.
2. ^Jankowski-Lorek, Michał; Jaroszewicz, Szymon; Ostrowski, Łukasz; Wierzbicki, Adam (2016-04-20)."Verifying social network models of Wikipedia knowledge community".Information Sciences.339:158–174.doi:10.1016/j.ins.2015.12.015.ISSN 0020-0255.
3. ^Karkulahti, Ossi; Pivovarova, Lidia; Du, Mian; Kangasharju, Jussi; Yangarber, Roman (2016-03-20)."Tracking Interactions Across Business News, Social Media, and Stock Fluctuations". In Nicola Ferro; Fabio Crestani; Marie-Francine Moens; Josiane Mothe; Fabrizio Silvestri; Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio; Claudia Hauff; Gianmaria Silvello (eds.).Advances in Information Retrieval. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing. pp. 735–740.ISBN 9783319306704.
4. ^Alanyali, Merve; Moat, Helen Susannah; Preis, Tobias (2013-12-20)."Quantifying the Relationship Between Financial News and the Stock Market".Scientific Reports.3.doi:10.1038/srep03578.ISSN 2045-2322. Retrieved2016-04-28.
5. ^Moat, Helen Susannah; Curme, Chester; Avakian, Adam; Kenett, Dror Y.; Stanley, H. Eugene; Preis, Tobias (2013-05-08)."Quantifying Wikipedia Usage Patterns Before Stock Market Moves".Scientific Reports.3.doi:10.1038/srep01801.ISSN 2045-2322. Retrieved2016-04-28.
6. ^Guo, Yuanzhen; Iwaihara, Mizuho (2015).Detection of text-based advertising and promotion in Wikipedia by deep learning method(PDF). DEIM Forum. p. 1.
7. ^Maurer, Marcus; Holbach, Thomas (2015-10-22)."Taking Online Search Queries as an Indicator of the Public Agenda The Role of Public Uncertainty".Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.doi:10.1177/1077699015610072.ISSN 1077-6990.
8. ^Gareth Thompson (2016-01-05)."Public relations interactions with Wikipedia".Journal of Communication Management.doi:10.1108/JCOM-12-2014-0083.ISSN 1363-254X.
9. ^Kim, Young-Min."From Digital Library Citation Parsing to Wikipedia Reference Analysis"(Billet).
10. ^Galini, Rekalidou; Karadimitriou, Konstantinos; Prentzas, Jim (2015-05-25)."Collaboration of Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers in Dyads for Wikipedia Article Authoring".International Journal of Modern Education Research. Vol. 2 (No. 2):8–17.ISSN 2375-3781.{{cite journal}}:|issue= has extra text (help);|volume= has extra text (help)
11. ^Gelernter, Lior."A New Epistemic Culture? Wikipedia as an Arena for the Production of Knowledge in Late Modernity".
12. ^Sousa, Carlos Henrique Parente; Marques, Francisco Paulo Jamil Almeida (2015)."Wikipedia, democracy and local elections in São Paulo: a study of the developing of articles edited during the election campaign in 2012".Revista Eletrônica de Comunicação, Informação & Inovação em Saúde.9 (2). ("Wikipédia, democracia e eleições municipais em São Paulo: um estudo sobre as edições de verbetes durante a campanha eleitoral de 2012"; in Portuguese, with English and Spanish abstracts)
13. ^Firooz, Hamed."Hot news detection using Wikipedia".

Supplementary references:

1. ^ An ambitious review of such efforts is currently underway atm:Research:Codex/Roles of contributors.
2. ^Corpus-Based Study of Edit Categories in Featured and Non-Featured Wikipedia Articles, mentioned in theNovember 2012 Research Newsletter.
3. ^Tell me more: an actionable quality model for Wikipedia, mentioned in theJuly 2013 Research Newsletter.

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