What is May 17th?The International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia wascreated in 2004 to draw the attention to the violence and discriminationexperienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people and allother people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities orexpressions, and sex characteristics. The date of May 17th was specificallychosen to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision in 1990 todeclassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.https://may17.orgOne year ago in 2020 we started QueeringW in hope #1 Queering Wikipediaconference would be happening with a year of delay...now we hope it is in2022!Meanwhile we are "Together, we Resist, Support, and Heal"<https://twitter.com/may17org>Happy #May17 #IDAHOT #IDAHOTBITQfor those who celebrate and would supporthttps://www.instagram.com/QueeringW@may17org <https://twitter.com/may17org> #IDAHOT<https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT?src=hashtag_click> #IDAHOT2021<https://twitter.com/hashtag/IDAHOT2021?src=hashtag_click>https://twitter.com/QueeringW
Dear everyone,As presented at last year's WikidataCon<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_VxTlBNkyk>, Wikimedia Deutschland hasset out to find new ways for collaboration around Wikidata softwaredevelopment to enhance the diversity of our movement, increase Wikibase’sscalability and robustness and breathe life into our movement principles ofknowledge equity. With a grant from Arcadia<https://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/>, a charitable fund administered by LisbetRausing and Peter Baldwin, we will be able to implement such acollaboration in the next two years.Today, we are happy to share an exciting update on the progress of thisproject with all of you. After spending the last few months withconversations with the movement groups who were interested in joining sucha partnership, we have now reached a point where we can spread the newsabout the future partners and projects that will shape this Wikidatasoftware collaboration.Wikimedia Indonesia, the Igbo Wikimedians User Group and WikimediaDeutschland will be joining forces to advance the technical capacities ofthe movement around Wikidata development and with this, make the softwareand tools more usable by cultures underrepresented in technology, people ofthe Global South and speakers of minority languages.Wikimedia Indonesia, a non-profit organization based in Jakarta, Indonesiaand established in 2008, is dedicated to encouraging the growth,development & dissemination of knowledge in Indonesian and other languagesspoken in Indonesia. Since then, Wikimedia Indonesia has supported thedevelopment of 14 Wikipedias in the languages spoken in Indonesia, 12regional Wikimedian communities spread across the country, and twoWikimedia project-based communities.For this project, in collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland, WikimediaIndonesia wants to build up a software team of their own in the course ofthe next 2 years. The tools will hopefully help under-resourced languagecommunities contributing to the flourishing of their languages onlinethrough lexicographical data, and also involving the local languagecommunities in contributing to lexemes in Wikidata.Igbo Wikimedians is a group of Wikimedians that are committed to working onvarious wiki projects related to Igbo language<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language> and culture. The user groupis organizing projects around community building in the Igbo community,content improvement for Wikipedia and its sister project and hasestablished its own Wikidata hub in 2021.The Igbo Wikimedia User Group and their program of the Wiki Mentor Africa<https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Wiki_Mentor_Africa> is aiming atbuilding up technical capacity in African Wikimedia communities bymentoring African developers for Wikidata Tool Development. WikimediaDeutschland will support the user group in the implementation of theirproject and mentoring program.Wikimedia Deutschland has been founded in 2004 as a member’s associationand is located in Berlin, Germany. Wikimedia Deutschland supportcommunities like the Wikipedia community, develop software for Wikimediaprojects and the ecosystem of Free Knowledge, and wants to improve thepolitical and legal framework for Wikipedia and for Free Knowledge ingeneral.Specifically, Wikimedia Deutschland has been working on the development ofWikidata since 2012. Since then, an active and vibrant community ofvolunteer editors and programmers, re-users, data donors, affiliates andmore has formed around Wikidata.Wikimedia Deutschland will be responsible for the administrative setup ofthose collaborations and the communication with Arcadia. We are also happyto share our experiences and knowledge about establishing software teams,software development in the Wikidata/Wikibase environment, the Wikidatacommunity and providing support for emerging tech communities.If you want to find out more about the partnership, you can read up on thison our project page on Meta<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Software_Collaboration_for_Wikidata>,where we will keep updating the community on the progress of thiscollaboration. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions pleaseuse the talk page there to get in contact with us.We are all excited to see those collaborations coming to life!With kind regards,Igbo Wikimedians User GroupWikimedia IndonesiaWikimedia Deutschland-- Maria HeuschkelProjektmanagerinSoftwareentwicklungWikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 BerlinTel. (030) 219 158 26-0https://wikimedia.deUnsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der Menschheitteilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei!https://spenden.wikimedia.deWikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unterder Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt fürKörperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
Hello,The Community Affairs Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board ofTrustees would like to thank everyone who participated in the recentlyconcluded community vote on the Enforcement Guidelines for the UniversalCode of Conduct (UCoC)<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Universal_Code_of_Conduc…>.The volunteer scrutinizing group has completed the review of the accuracyof the vote and has reported the total number of votes received as 2,283.Out of the 2,283 votes received, 1,338 (58.6%) community members voted forthe enforcement guidelines, and a total of 945 (41.4%) community membersvoted against it. In addition, 658 participants left comments, with 77% ofthe comments written in English.We recognize and appreciate the passion and commitment that communitymembers have demonstrated in creating a safe and welcoming culture.Wikimedia community culture stops hostile and toxic behavior, supportspeople targeted by such behavior, and encourages good faith people to beproductive on the Wikimedia projects.Even at this incomplete stage, this is evident in the comments received. TheEnforcement Guidelines did reach a threshold of support necessary for theBoard to review. However, we encouraged voters, regardless of how they werevoting, to provide feedback on the elements of the enforcement guidelines.We asked the voters to inform us what changes were needed and in case itwas prudent to launch a further round of edits that would address communityconcerns.Foundation staff who have been reviewing comments have advised us of theemerging themes. As a result, as Community Affairs Committee, we havedecided to ask the Foundation to reconvene the Drafting Committee. TheDrafting Committee will undertake another community engagement to refinethe enforcement guidelines based on the community feedback received fromthe recently concluded vote.For clarity, this feedback has been clustered into four sections as follows: 1. To identify the type, purpose, and applicability of the UCoC training; 2. To simplify the language for more accessible translation and comprehension by non-experts; 3. To explore the concept of affirmation, including its pros and cons; 4. To review the conflicting roles of privacy/victim protection and the right to be heard.Other issues may emerge during conversations, particularly as the draftEnforcement Guidelines evolve, but we see these as the primary areas ofconcern for voters. Therefore, we are asking staff to facilitate a reviewof these issues. Then, after the further engagement, the Foundation shouldre-run the community vote to evaluate the redrafted Enforcement Outline tosee if the new document is ready for its official ratification.Further, we are aware of the concerns with note 3.1 in the Universal Codeof Conduct Policy. Therefore, we are directing the Foundation to reviewthis part of the Code to ensure that the Policy meets its intended purposesof supporting a safe and inclusive community without waiting for theplanned review of the entire Policy at the end of the year.Again, we thank all who participated in the vote and discussion, thinkingabout these complex challenges and contributing to better approaches toworking together well across the movement.Best,Rosie*Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight *(she/her)Acting Chair, Community Affairs CommitteeWikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> Board of Trustees<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello friendsShort version : We need to find solutions to avoid so many africans being globally IP blocked due to our No Open Proxies policy.*https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking*Long version :I'd like to raise attention on an issue, which has been getting worse in the past couple of weeks/months.Increasing number of editors getting blocked due to the No Open Proxies policy [1]In particular africans.In February 2004, the decision was made to block open proxies on Meta and all other Wikimedia projects.According to theno open proxiespolicy : Publicly available proxies (including paid proxies) may be blocked for any period at any time. While this may affect legitimate users, they are not the intended targets and may freely use proxies until those are blocked [...]Non-static IP addresses or hosts that are otherwise not permanent proxies should typically be blocked for a shorter period of time, as it is likely the IP address will eventually be transferred or dynamically reassigned, or the open proxy closed. Once closed, the IP address should be unblocked.According to the policy page, « the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of an open proxy with the IP block exempt flag. This is granted on local projects by administrators and globally by stewards. »I repeat -----> ... legitimate users... may freely use proxies until those are blocked. the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of an open proxy with the IP block exempt flag <------ it is not illegal to edit using an open proxyMost editors though... have no idea whatsoever what an open proxy is. They do not understand well what to do when they are blocked.In the past few weeks, the number of African editors reporting being blocked due to open proxy has been VERY significantly increasing.New editors just as old timers.Unexperienced editors but also staff members, president of usergroups, organizers of edit-a-thons and various wikimedia initiatives.At home, but also during events organized with usergroup members or trainees, during edit-a-thons, photo uploads sessions etc.It is NOT the occasional highly unlikely situation. This has become a regular occurence.There are cases and complains every week. Not one complaint per week. Several complaints per week.*This is irritating. This is offending. This is stressful. This is disrupting activities organized in _good faith_ by _good people_, activities set-up with _our donors funds. _**And the disruption**is primarlly taking place in a geographical region supposingly to be nurtured (per our strategy for diversity, equity, inclusion blahblahblah). *The open proxy policy page suggests that, should a person be unfairly blocked, it is recommended * * to privately emailstewards(_AT_)wikimedia.org. * * or alternatively, to post arequest (if able to edit, if the editor doesn't mind sharing their IP for global blocks or their reasons to desire privacy (for Tor usage)). * * the current message displayed to the blocked editor also suggest contacting User:Tks4Fish. This editor is involved in vandalism fighting and is probably the user blocking open proxies IPs the most. See logSo...Option 1: contacting stewards : it seems that they are not answering. Or not quickly. Or requesting lengthy justifications before adding people to IP block exemption list.Option 2: posting a request for unblock on meta. For those who want to look at the process, I suggest looking at it [3] and think hard about how a new editor would feel. This is simply incredibly complicatedOption 3 : user:TksFish answers... sometimes...As a consequence, most editors concerned with those global blocks... stay blocked several days.We do not know know why the situation has rapidly got worse recently. But it got worse. And the reports are spilling all over.We started collecting negative experiences on this page [4].Please note that people who added their names here are not random newbies. They are known and respected members of our community, often leaders of activities and/or representant of their usergroups, who are confronted to this situation on a REGULAR basis.I do not know how this can be fixed. Should we slow down open proxy blocking ? Should we add a mecanism and process for an easier and quicker IP block exemption process post-blocking ? Should we improve a process for our editors to pre-emptively be added to this IP block exemption list ? Or what ? I do not know what's the strategy to fix that. But there is a problem. Who should that problem be addressed to ? Who has solutions ?Flo[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies[2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/Tks4Fish[3]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global_permissions#Request…*[4]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking*
Dear all,Over the last few months, a small team at the Wikimedia Foundation has beenworking on a project that has been discussed by many people in our movementfor many years: building ‘enterprise grade’ services for the high-volumecommercial reusers of Wikimedia content. I am pleased to say that in aremarkably short amount of time (considering the complexity of the issues:technical, strategic, legal, and financial) we now have something worthy ofshowing to the community, and we are asking for your feedback. Allow me tointroduce you to the Wikimedia Enterprise API project – formerly codenamed“okapi”.While the general idea for Wikimedia Enterprise predates the currentmovement strategy process, its recommendations identify an enterprise APIas one possible solution to both “Increase the sustainability of ourmovement” and “Improve User Experience.”[0] That is, to simultaneouslycreate a new revenue stream to protect Wikimedia’s sustainability, andimprove the quality and quantity of Wikimedia content available to our manyreaders who do not visit our websites directly (including more consistentattribution). Moreover, it does so in a way that is true to our movement’sculture: with open source software, financial transparency, non-exclusivecontracts or content, no restrictions on existing services, and free accessfor Wikimedia volunteers who need it.The team believes we are on target to achieve those goals and so we havewritten a lot of documentation to get your feedback about our progress andwhere it could be further improved before the actual product is ‘launched’in the next few months. We have been helped in this process over the lastseveral months by approximately 100 individual volunteers (from manycorners of the wikiverse) and representatives of affiliate organisationswho have reviewed our plans and provided invaluable direction, pointing outweaknesses and opportunities, or areas lacking clarity and documentation inour drafts. Thank you to everyone who has shared your time and expertise tohelp prepare this new initiative.A essay describing the “why?” and the “how?” of this project is now onMeta:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/EssayAlso now published on Meta are an extensive FAQ, operating principles, andtechnical documentation onMediaWiki.org. You can read these at [1] [2] and[3] respectively. Much of this documentation is already available inFrench, German, Italian, and Spanish.The Wikimedia Enterprise team is particularly interested in your feedbackon how we have designed the checks and balances to this project - to ensureit is as successful as possible at achieving those two goals describedabove while staying true to the movement’s values and culture. For example:Is everything covered appropriately in the “Principles” list? Is thetechnical documentation onMediaWiki.org clear? Are the explanations in the“FAQ” about free-access for community, or project’s legal structure, or thefinancial transparency (etc.) sufficiently detailed?Meet the team and Ask Us Anything:The central place to provide written feedback about the project in generalis on the talkpage of the documentation on Meta at:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_EnterpriseOn this Friday (March 19) we will be hosting two “Office hours”conversations where anyone can come and give feedback or ask questions: - 13:00 UTC via Zoom athttps://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95580273732 - 22:00 UTC via Zoom athttps://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/92565175760 (note: this is Saturday in Asia/Oceania)Other “office hours” meetings can be arranged on-request on a technicalplatform of your choosing; and we will organise more calls in the future.We will also be attending the next SWAN meetings (on March 21)https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Wikimedia_Affiliates_Network, andalso the next of the Wikimedia Clinicshttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_ClinicsMoreover, we would be very happy to accept any invitation to attend anexisting group call that would like to discuss this topic (e.g. anaffiliate’s members’ meeting).On behalf of the Wikimedia Enterprise team,Peace, Love & Metadata-- Liam Wyatt [Wittylama], Wikimedia Enterprise project community liaison.[0]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recomme…[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ[2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Principles[3]https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise*Liam Wyatt [Wittylama]*WikiCite <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite> Program Manager & WikimediaEnterprise <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Okapi> Community LiaisonWikimedia Foundation
On behalf of Wikimedia Taiwan, we would like to say that this is long overdue. For more than half a decade, good faith volunteers from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, and Taiwan have raised concerns about dangerous members of that organization, including in the Signpost(1) (repeatedly(2)). It is not the kind of threat that communities or even larger ones, like our wiki, can deal with entirely on their own. We have been having very exhausting years. Now there is some hope. But we have a lot of work ahead of us as a volunteer community, and we call upon the Foundation to meet its commitment of support as we do. We need to rebuild an inclusive wiki that welcomes everyone from all places who wants to contribute to Chinese language Wikipedia in good faith. Many people have felt very unsafe for years, so restoring a shared sense of comfort will likely take a long time. Doing this work is very important to get back to focusing on knowledge and Wikipedia’s five pillars that should unite our community.Yuan Chang, Chairman of Wikimedia Taiwan(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_fo…(2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Speci… 中文版本: 在此僅代表台灣維基媒體協會聲明，這個行動是遲來的努力。多年來，香港、中國大陸和台灣的用戶一再呼籲對該組織中的危險成員與行為的關切，包括但不僅止於之前於Signpost報導(1) (另一則報導(2))中所提及。這不是社群，或甚至整個中文維基，可以自行處理的威脅。這些年我們心力交瘁。 現在的處置，讓我們覺得終於有了一些希望。但作為志願者組織，我們仍有很多工作要做，並希望基金會能大力支持。我們需要重建一個具有包容性的維基百科，歡迎來自所有地區，願意真誠貢獻中文知識的參與者。這幾年來，許多參與者感到不安，要恢復原本平和的氛圍，需要相當長時間的努力。這個工作非常重要，有助於我們把心力集中在知識，以及團結我們社群的維基百科的五大支柱上。台灣維基媒體協會理事長 張遠(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_fo…(2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Speci… Original Link of the statement:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Taiwan/Declaration/Wikimedia_Taiw…
Dear All,Please join me in welcoming Luis Bitencourt-Emilio to the WikimediaFoundation Board of Trustees. Luis was unanimously appointed to a 3-yearterm and replaces a board-selected Trustee, Lisa Lewin, whose term ended inNovember 2021 [1].Currently based in São Paulo, Luis is the Chief Technology Officer at Loft,a technology startup in the real-estate industry. He brings product andtechnology experience from a globally diverse career that has spanned largetechnology companies including Microsoft, online networking sites likeReddit, and a series of entrepreneurial technology ventures focused in theUSA and Latin America. Luis has led product and technology teams acrossLatin America, the United States, Europe and Asia. He is passionatelyinvolved in building and promoting the entrepreneurial ecosystem for LatinAmerican-based startups.Luis has more than two decades of experience across product development,software engineering, and data science. At Microsoft, he led engineeringteams shipping multiple Microsoft Office products. At Reddit, he led theKnowledge Group, an engineering team that owned critical functions such asdata, machine learning, abuse detection and search. He was deeply involvedin Reddit’s growth stage and worked closely with Reddit’s communities inthat evolution. Luis also co-founded a fintech startup to help millennialsmanage and automate their finances.His career has also been shaped by a visible commitment to recruitingdiverse leaders. At Reddit, Luis was a key member of the recruitmentefforts that achieved equal representation of women engineering directors.Luis says his proudest achievement at Microsoft was building theirBrazilian talent pipeline by working closely with local universities toplace thousands of engineering candidates at Microsoft, as well as hisinvolvement in expanding global recruitment to markets including Ukraine,Poland, Great Britain, the EU and Mexico.Luis was educated in Brazil and the United States, receiving a Bachelor ofScience in Computer Engineering with Honors from the University ofMaryland. He is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and English. He is also aproud father and dog lover.I would like to thank the Governance Committee, chaired by DariuszJemielniak, for this nomination process as well as volunteers in ourSpanish and Portuguese speaking communities who also met with Luis orshared their experiences.You can find an official announcement here [2].PS. You can help translate or find translations of this message onMeta-Wiki:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Janu…[1] Lisa Lewin served from January 2019 till November 2021:https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Renewing_Lisa_Lewin%E2%80%…[2]https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/12/luis-bitencourt-emilio-joins-wikimedi…Best regards,antanana / Nataliia TymkivChair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees*NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal workinghours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during weekend. Youshould not feel obligated to answer it during your days off. Thank you inadvance!*
HelloThe Wiki Loves Women team launched a podcast a few weeks ago.We have released 5 episodes so far, with a frequency of two episodes per month.All episodes are available on the usual podcast platforms, or may be accessed on Wiki Loves Women website with additional notes about each episode.https://podcast.wikiloveswomen.orgThe latest episode features Angela Lungati, current CEO of Ushaidi.If you are interested to receive a brief message on your talk each time a new episode is published, please drop your name here :https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Women/Podcast#SubscribeAnthere------------------About Inspiring OpenInspiring Open is a podcast series about women from Wiki Loves Women that celebrates the inspirational women whose careers and personal ethics intersect with the Open movement. Each episode features a dynamic woman from Africa who has pushed the boundaries of what it means to build communities and succeed as a collective. As a podcast series, it is available at anytime, anywhere to amplify the motivational stories of each guest, as spoken in their own voice. Listen to their personal journeys in conversation with host Betty Kankam-Boadu.Join Inspiring Open as we raise the global visibility and profiles of women who are redefining and reclaiming the Open sector.Be inspired • Be challenged • Be bold!
This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part ofalmost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It buildson a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and whichI presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't sendthe final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report wasnever really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting tolook briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articlesdown into surface features and latent features and then use those to studythe rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in asearch engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us toanalyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directlyat the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performedon the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on thesimple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surfacefeatures = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of qualitythat I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The[[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-KincaidGrade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of articlehtml, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], numberof internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of wordsand number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, numberof sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, numberof external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - seethe end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 orh3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, numberof h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguagelinks, 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 anyclass, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking outfeatured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles theclassifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution ofthis feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of externallinks is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highlydistinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive valueassigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, Band 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 ananalysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to thelink structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent DirichletAllocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student PrafulMangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysisis that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can thenlook at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick thearticle with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You canpick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to thisarticle that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while alsocontributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query inour system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the SimpleEnglish Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuringin the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDAonly: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[CarlRadle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[PlasticOno Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]],[[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simpleonly: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Druguse]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexualliberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]],[[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstockfestival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergicacid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articlesproduced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion /Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to yourperception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WETratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both featuresets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information thatthe rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is notdistinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together,Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articlesare also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn'tlook at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This isinteresting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "FiveStars Dominate Ratings"http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html…I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating systemiswell within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find andcreate good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid ratingsystem allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedianamespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content asneeded. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system youdon'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 articlesand using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. Youask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and givethe machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measureof readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived fromdocument word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of thekind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on whatfeatures end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word isan 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 latentfeatures to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when aperson rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it hashas 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 mostexcellent bit of news.The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in thefield of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a fundingdrive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money ina given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia tolearn 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 areasked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us morelinguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will beinterested in the languages that they care for and help it become morerelevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to getmore knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means thatwe get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed withall the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of theIncubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we shouldapprove yet another language :)NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much inthis 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 PMSubject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia VolunteersTo: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.orgLINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia VolunteersModerators: 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 athttp://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html===========================Directory==============================1)Date: 18-Jun-2007From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org >Subject: Wikipedia VolunteersDear 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 theirdonations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in theEnglish-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on thisat:http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm.The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosityofour readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiasticabout the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bitmoreleisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started ontheWikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purelyorganizational one. We will:*Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials orpages that need improvement;*Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identifiedas"in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite anyreferences or sources," etc;*Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics orarticles;*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'sefforts.We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help usallget started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify anareaneeding improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List ofLinguistspage at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. MMany people are not listed there; others need to have more facts andinformationadded. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort,pleaserespond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales athannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or whichlinguisticsentries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw ourcampaignon the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which wewillshare with you soon.This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. Theendresult will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadthanddepth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulateprospectivestudents to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public onwhatwe do. Please consider participating.Sincerely,Hannah MoralesEditor, Wikipedia Update ProjectLinguistic Field(s): Not Applicable-----------------------------------------------------------LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831