Wikipedia takes the stage

12 featured articles were promoted this week.

• No. 38 Squadron RAAF (nom) by Nick-D. This article covers a Royal Australian Air Force transport squadron that was formed in 1943, and saw service in World War II, the Malayan Emergency, and a number of other training and peacekeeping roles. The squadron still exists today in both a transportation and training role, and has the "longest period of continual operation of any of the RAAF's flying squadrons."
• Stanley Bruce (nom) by Unus Multorum. Was the eighth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1923 to 1929. Bruce was a World War I veteran, member of the Nationalist Party, and later an international figure. Most notably, Bruce oversaw the Australian government's move from Melbourne to Canberra, the new capital, and became the first Australian to serve in the United Kingdom's House of Lords.
• Boletus calopus (nom) by Casliber. Also known as the "bitter beech bolete" or the "scarlet–stemmed bolete", this fungus grows in the woodlands of Asia, Northern Europe, and North America. Although first described as a member of the genus Boletus in 1801, recent evidence indicates that it will likely be moved to a new genus due to substantial differences with other Boletus species. While not strictly poisonous, the bitter-tasting compounds calopin and O-acetylcyclocalopin A make this fungus rather unpalatable.
• Love the Way You Lie (nom) by Wikipedian_Penguin. This 2010 hit single, performed by Eminem (and featuring Rihanna), was written by the rapper, along with artists Skylar Grey and Alex da Kid. The track went on to become Eminem's best-selling single, despite its somewhat controversial topic, domestic violence. Interestingly, the song was criticized due to its focus on the "abuser" (sung by Eminem, and portrayed by Dominic Monaghan in the music video) rather than the "victim" (sung by Rihanna, and portrayed by Megan Fox); perhaps this led to Rihanna's "Love the Way You Lie (Part II)", which although less well–received, turned the tables on the original song.
• Elgin Cathedral (nom) by Aunva6. Construction started on this Scottish cathedral in around 1215, and was completed by 1242. Serving the Diocese of Moray, the cathedral survived fires in 1270, 1390, and 1402. When the Scottish Parliament voted to adopt Protestantism as the state church in 1560, the cathedral was abandoned. Since that time, the structure was stripped of its lead roofing and permitted to decay, leaving the site in ruins today.
• Mascarene Parrot (nom) by FunkMonk. The Mascarene Parrot was a species of parrot unique to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. First discovered in 1674, the parrot was described by Linnaeus in 1771, and was likely extinct before the dawn of the 19th century. Modern researchers have been unable to determine precisely the correct scientific classification for this parrot, which debate centers around whether the bird was of African (subfamily Coracopsinae) or Asian (subfamily Psittaculinae) in origin. Adding to that confusion is the fact that, despite two stuffed specimens existing today, researchers are not sure of the parrot's coloration in life.
• Kellie Loder (nom) by Neelix. This Canadian recording artist has released two Contemporary Christian albums, with her latest album, 2010's Imperfections & Directions earning the singer-songwriter a nomination for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year at the 2012 Juno Awards, Canada's top music awards. Originally intending to become a nurse, Loder did not finally make the decision to abandon her medical career for music until 2013. Despite moving toward writing and performing more secular music, Loder still considers her craft a form of Christian ministry.
• Format of Sesame Street (nom) by Figureskatingfan. Sesame Street, a popular American children's show, has varied its format several times throughout its 44-year history. Originally starting out in a "magazine" format, the show gradually became more "story"-oriented, depicting a single thematic story throughout several 10-minute segments. Eventually, the show's audience grew younger, and by the late 1990s, Elmo became a dominant narrative figure.
• Julianne Moore (nom) by Loeba. This article covers the well-known British-American actress of stage, television, and film, who starred in such works as Boogie Nights, The Hours, and Game Change. Moore has won both a Daytime and Primetime Emmy, a SAG Award, and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for four Academy Awards.
• Talk That Talk (Rihanna song) (nom) by Tomica. This article covers the Bajan singer's 2011 single that earned Rihanna and Jay-Z, who rapped on the track, a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for the 2013 awards show. The song is considered one of Rihanna's more light-hearted songs from the album of the same name, and was promoted with a B-side that included a remix of the singer's hit single with Calvin Harris, "We Found Love".
• "Goodbyeee" (nom) by Ajmint. This was the sixth and last episode of Blackadder's fourth series (known as Blackadder Goes Forth), which concentrated around the First World War. This was the last regular episode of the show to be broadcast. Without giving away too many spoilers, the episode was considered "darker" than others in the series, and the final shot is of a field of poppies.
• D-Day naval deceptions (nom) by ErrantX. An article that contains exactly "what it says on the tin", it describes Operations Taxable, Glimmer, and Big Drum, which all had one primary thing in common: attempting to fool German military before and during the Invasion of Normandy in June 1944. While Taxable and Glimmer focused on Calais, to the east of the planned invasion site, Big Drum was an attempt to make the Allied invasion force seem larger than it was. Despite being thoroughly planned, sources are divided as to whether they were successful to any degree.

6 featured lists were promoted this week.

• List of Square Enix compilation albums (nom) by PresN. Japanese video game company Square Enix constantly releases compilation albums containing songs, or arrangements of songs, from multiple video game series owned and developed by the company. These albums include music directly from the games, as well as arrangements covering a variety of styles, such as orchestral, piano, vocal, and techno. Dozens of albums have been published since, primarily through Square Enix's own record label.
• Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series (nom) by SoapFan12. This award is presented annually at the Emmy Awards ceremony to honour outstanding series in the drama field of television. The Doctors, first aired in 1963, became the first recipient of the award in 1972. General Hospital holds the record for the most awards, winning on eleven occasions. ABC has been the the most successful network, with a total of twenty-one wins.
• Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) (nom) by SchroCat. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was the subject of a series of fourteen films released between 1939 and 1946. Actors Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played Holmes and Dr. John Watson, respectively. The first two films were released by 20th Century Fox, while the rest were made by Universal Studios. Some of the films in the series had become degraded over time, with some of the original negatives lost.
• 62nd Academy Awards (nom) by Birdienest81. The 62nd Academy Awards took place on March 26, 1990 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Awards in 23 categories were presented. Driving Miss Daisy became the most-awarded film of the ceremony, winning four awards including Best Picture and Best Actress. Drama war film Glory finished second with three awards, while other thrirteen films receiving at least one. Additionally, two special honourary awards were given.
• List of Billboard number-one alternative singles of the 1980s (nom) by Holiday56. A total of twenty-two singles had topped the Alternative Songs record chart by the end of the 1980s. The chart, that ranks the most-played songs on American modern rock radio stations, debuted in the September 10, 1988 issue of Billboard, having "Peek-a-Boo" as its inaugural number-one single. Alternative rock band R.E.M. and new wave group The B-52's were the only acts to score more than one number-one single during the 1980s.
• National Film Award for Best Actor (nom) by Vensatry with Bill william compton. This award, officially known as the Rajat Kamal Award for the Best Actor in Hindi, is presented annually at the National Film Awards of India since 1968. It honours actors who have delivered the best performance in a leading role within the Indian film industry. Uttam Kumar, from Bengali cinema, was the first recipient of the award, thanks to his performances in Anthony Firingee and Chiriyakhana.

5 featured pictures were promoted this week.

• Ida B. Wells (nom) created by Mary Garrity, restored by Adam Cuerden and nominated by Chick Bowen. African-American journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells (1862 – 1931) documented lynching in the United States. She was a skilled rhetorician.
• New Moon (1940 film) (nom) created by Tooker Litho Co. and nominated by Crisco 1492. New Moon is a 1940 musical film adaptation of The New Moon operetta. The film starred Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mary Boland, and George Zucco.
• Nototropis falcatus (nom) created by Lycaon and nominated by Crisco 1492. This photo, by a Belgian marine biologist who is a Wikipedia contributor, shows a species of amphipod crustacean.
• Sunset at Montmajour (nom) created by Vincent Van Gogh and nominated by Crisco 1492. This oil painting by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh was completed in 1888. In 2013 it became the first Van Gogh painting to be confirmed as the artist's work since 1928.
• Socks the Cat (nom) created by Barbara Kinney/The White House and nominated by I JethroBT. Socks the Cat, owned by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his family, appears on the presidential lectern in the White House Briefing Room.

and his family during President Clinton's years in office.]].

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2013-09-25

Automatic detection of "infiltrating" Wikipedia admins; Wiki, or 'pedia?

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By Brian Keegan, Piotr Konieczny, Aaron Halfaker, Jonathan Morgan and Tilman Bayer

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

Wiki, or 'pedia? The genre and values of Wikipedia compared with other encyclopedias

Wikipedia and Encyclopaedism: A Genre Analysis of Epistemological Values^[1] is a new master's thesis that analyzes the values that influenced how knowledge is presented on Wikipedia, in comparison with other encyclopedias that have been created throughout history. The author uses genre analysis to compare the epistemological values that are represented in the kind of knowledge that different encyclopedias present and in the way they present that knowledge. The author first conducts a literature review to compare the epistemology of two genres: wikis and encyclopedias. The wiki epistemology is composed of six values: self-identification, collaboration, co-construction, cooperation, trust in the community, and constructionism. By contrast, the values of major current and historical encyclopedias—such as Diderot's Encyclopédie, Pliny's Natural History, and the Encyclopædia Britannica—prioritize trust in experts, authority, and consistency.

Despite being based on different, and even somewhat contradictory, value systems, the purpose of Wikipedia and the way it presents knowledge are shown to be similar to other works in the encyclopedia genre. The author analyzes the frequency of common words in section headings of 25 heavily edited English Wikipedia articles that had a corresponding article in Britannica. He compares the evolution of section headings within these Wikipedia articles and multiple editions of Britannica, and shows that the gradual process by which a Wikipedia article becomes more structured through the addition and alteration of headings is similar to the process for Britannica articles, which also tend to become longer and more formally structured over subsequent editions. This thesis presents some interesting parallels between the way articles are developed within Wikipedia and other encyclopedias, despite vastly different timescales and some differing underlying values. It also offers an engaging, in-depth discussion of the concept of genre, the purpose of the encyclopedia genre, and the history of several major historical encyclopedias.

Identifying trending topics of yesteryear

In a paper titled "Temporal Wikipedia search by edits and linkage",^[2] the authors develop a method to identify Wikipedia articles associated with topics around a date based on changes the length of the article as well as patterns of the other articles to which it links. This paper expands on prior work in temporal information retrieval and anomaly detection and uses modifications to the HITS and PageRank to return a list of the most relevant documents for a topic on a date. This work has implications for not only using Wikipedia data to identify trending topics, but also to retrospectively identify trending topics. A downloadable Java client allows test searches (for the months of September and October 2011) and the display of the resulting page networks.

Automatic detection of "infiltrating" Wikipedia admins

A paper titled "Manipulation Among the Arbiters of Collective Intelligence: How Wikipedia Administrators Mold Public Opinion",^[3] to be presented at next month's ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), makes a rather serious claim: "We find a surprisingly large number of editors who change their behavior and begin focusing more on a particular controversial topic once they are promoted to administrator status." This reviewer does not find it shocking, as he has written about this problem years ago. The authors note that those editors are difficult to understand based on their pattern of edits, but are more easily spotted by analyzing the pattern of votes at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, though they also suggest that a relatively simple fix may be helpful - simply increasing the threshold of success votes required for a successful RfA may increase the quality of the Wikipedia admin corps.

One may however quibble with "enforcement of neutrality is in the hands of comparatively few, powerful administrators", another attention-drawing claim in the abstract, that however finds little discussion or support in the body. Discussions about NPOV topics are hardly limited to mop'n'bucket wielders, and thus this claim, and the article abstract, may be exaggerating the importance of the findings. Some admins wait until getting the nearly-impossible-to-remove mop before becoming, well, regular editors. As long as they are not abusing their powers - this reviewer is not sure why we should care. What is more relevant, certainly, is how this entire process shows the inefficiency of RfA, which forces people to hide behind false "I am perfect" personas, as any sign of being a real person (i.e. making errors, being human, etc.) is often enough to threaten to derail that process. Still, this review is not a place for beating that nearly dead horse - but those interested in the RfA reform process should likely read this article in more detail.

Academic role models important for promoting the use of Wikipedia in higher education

"An Empirical Study on Faculty Perceptions and Teaching Practices of Wikipedia"^[4] is a new paper in the emerging subfield of "academics and educators attitudes on Wikipedia", which we have covered before (links). This paper benefits from a respectable sample (about 800 respondents from the faculty body of the Open University of Catalonia). The paper confirms a number of previous findings, namely the importance of one's perception of Wikipedia's usefulness and quality, which is significantly and positively correlated to whether one will consider using it as a teaching resource. Correspondingly, poor knowledge about Wikipedia in particular, and about open access and collaborative knowledge creation models in general, are negatively correlated with views on Wikipedia. Having a respected figure (role model) using Wikipedia in teaching is also likely to influence others, through the usual informal peer networks. Individual characteristics (academic rank, teaching experience, age or gender) are not seen as significant. As the authors conclude, there is much work to be done in educating the worlds of education and academia about the basics of Wikipedia - something we should never take for granted.

Was Steve Jobs an inventor? WP:V as "delegated voice"

In a paper titled "Learning through Massively Co-Authored Biographies: Making Sense of Steve Jobs on Wikipedia through Delegated Voice",^[5] the authors performed a qualitative analysis of discussions about whether or not to describe Steve Jobs as an "inventor" from the articles talk page. They use the discussion as an example of Wikipedians' use of WP:Verifiability to write articles from a "delegated voice". While mostly critical of the limitations and contradictions that this approach to encyclopedia construction entails, they admit that Wikipedia articles "do indeed illustrate a variety of voices and points of view." They draw a contrast with Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on Steve Jobs which does not contain any critical comments while Wikipedia's contains several nuanced discussions critical of Jobs' life and work.

Briefly

• 
  Distribution of biography articles on the German Wikipedia by gender and decade of birth (red = male, blue = female)
• 
  Distribution of biography articles on the Swedish Wikipedia by gender and decade of birth (red = male, blue = female)

• Historical gender ratio of Wikipedia biographies: Swedish Wikipedian LA2 has evaluated biography articles on the German and Swedish Wikipedia by birth date and gender.^[6] The results show a ratio of more than 10:1 males to females for births before 1900, decreasing to less than 3:1 in the late 20th century.
• Readability rating tool based on AFT data: A paper titled "Automatic Readability Classification of Crowd-Sourced Data based on Linguistic and Information-Theoretic Features"^[7] uses readability ratings that Wikipedia readers submitted via the Article Feedback Tool to construct an automatic text readability test.
• Wikipedia usage in Germany: According to an annual survey by ARD and ZDF (Germany's two main public broadcasters),^[8] 74% of German Internet users access Wikipedia at least occasionally (among academics, the number is 88%), and 32% use it once per week or more often.
• BALL CHICKEN BRITISH WOMAN: A master's thesis submitted last year to the University of Georgia, titled "A Large Scale Study of Edit Patterns in Wikipedia and its Applications to Vandalism Detection"^[9] contains a wealth of statistical results about vandalism edits on the English Wikipedia, for example a "List of top 25 vandal words", starting as follows: Ball, chicken, British, woman, hole, handicap, meat, kiss...
• Automatic classification of edits: A paper titled "Automatically Classifying Edit Categories in Wikipedia Revisions"^[10] presents a system to automatically classify Wikipedia edits into categories such as the fixing of spelling mistakes, the adding of citations, markup changes or vandalism.
• Analysis of product comparison matrices on Wikipedia: A conference paper from the International Conference on Automated Software Engineering^[11] analyzes more than 300 "Product comparison matrices (PCMs)" on Wikipedia (such as in the article Comparison of webmail providers).
• Legendary, acclaimed, world-class text analysis method finds you promotional Wikipedia articles really easily: Training a machine learning algorithm to distinguish 13,000 articles in the Category:All articles with a promotional tone from articles not tagged as promotional, and from good or featured articles, three researchers from the University of Texas at Austin conclude that "stylometric features ... work very well for detecting promotional articles in Wikipedia."^[12] Among the many features used in the classifier is the "percentage of special phrases such as peacock terms (‘legendary’, ‘acclaimed’, ‘world-class’), "weasel terms" (‘many scholars state’, ‘it is believed/regarded’, ‘many are of the opinion’, ‘most feel’, ‘experts declare’, ‘it is often reported’) , editorializing terms (‘without a doubt’, ‘of course’, ‘essentially’)."

References

1. ^ Steven J. Jankowski: Wikipedia and Encyclopaedism: A Genre Analysis of Epistemological Values
2. ^ Julianna Göbölös-Szabó, András A. Benczúr: Temporal Wikipedia search by edits and linkage. TAIA’13 August 1, 2013, Dublin, Ireland.
3. ^ Sanmay Das, Allen Lavoie, Malik Magdon-Ismail: Manipulation Among the Arbiters of Collective Intelligence: How Wikipedia Administrators Mold Public Opinion. CIKM’13, Oct. 27–Nov. 1, 2013, San Francisco, CA, USA.
4. ^ Josep Lladós; Eduard Aibar; Maura Lerga; Antoni Meseguer; Julià Minguillon: An Empirical Study on Faculty Perceptions and Teaching Practices of Wikipedia
5. ^ Rughinis, C.; Matei, S.: Learning through Massively Co-Authored Biographies: Making Sense of Steve Jobs on Wikipedia through Delegated Voice. Control Systems and Computer Science (CSCS), 2013, 19th International Conference on 29-31 May 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CSCS.2013.62
6. ^ User:LA2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie_Diskussion:Person_nach_Geschlecht#Statistik
7. ^ Zahurul Islam and Alexander Mehler: Automatic Readability Classification of Crowd-Sourced Data based on Linguistic and Information-Theoretic Features
8. ^ Annual survey by ARD and ZDF
9. ^ Deepika Sethi: A Large Scale Study of Edit Patterns in Wikipedia and its Applications to Vandalism Detection
10. ^ Johannes Daxenberger and Iryna Gurevych: Automatically Classifying Edit Categories in Wikipedia Revisions
11. ^ Nicolas Sannier, Mathieu Acher, and Benoit Baudry: From Comparison Matrix to Variability Model: The Wikipedia Case Study. 8th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (2013)
12. ^ Shruti Bhosale, Heath Vinicombe, Raymond Mooney: "Detecting Promotional Content in Wikipedia"

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