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This Month in GLAM: February 2015



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Wikidata weekly summary #149

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Just wondering

You seem to have become less active in building wp:WikiProject X, for example you have not responded to questions posted in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council#Dead_Links, even though you were notified. Just wondering if you actually got the message, or is another wiki-tool not functioning? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:48, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ottawahitech! I've been busy with all sorts of back-end work for WikiProject X, mostly involving analyzing the stories and developing some analytics with the help of a script I wrote. I actually was about to work on issue 2 of the newsletter before seeing this! In any case, I probably did see your comment and forgot to respond to it. I have now posted a response. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks, Harej (talk) 19:15, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2

For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...

  • Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
  • WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #150

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Project banner template proposed at WikiProject X

I was wondering, do you think it might be possible to add a link to wikisource in the project banner you proposed, which might be able to link to pages there which specifically relate to a given article, like, for instance, an Encyclopedia Britannica article or biographical dictionary article on the same topic? John Carter (talk) 23:47, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

John Carter, I don't see why that would belong in a template that exists to list WikiProjects. Though it does sound interesting as a standalone template. Harej (talk) 03:10, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #151

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

YGM

YGM -- Go Phightins! 20:43, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, Harej. Please check your email – you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{YGM}} template.

--Pine✉ 07:34, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #152

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

This Month in GLAM: March 2015



Headlines


Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Wikidata weekly summary #153

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Upcoming attractions in DC

Hello!

Here are some upcoming DC meetups in April and May:

  • Tuesday, April 14: National Archives Hackathon on Wikipedia Space with American University – 2:30-5pm
    See the latest work on the Wikipedia Space exhibit in the new NARA Innovation Hub and brainstorm on new ideas for a public exhibit about Wikipedia
  • Friday, April 17: Women in Tech Edit-a-thon with Tech LadyMafia – 5-9pm
    Team up with Tech LadyMafia to improve Wikipedia content on women in the history of technology.
  • Saturday, April 25: April Dinner Meetup – 6 PM
    Dinner and drinks with your fellow Wikipedians!
  • Friday, May 1: International Labour Day Edit-a-Thon – 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM
    An edit-a-thon at the University of Maryland

Hope to see you at these events! If you have any questions or require any special accommodations, please let me know.


Cheers,

James Hare

To remove yourself from this mailing list, remove your name from this list. 22:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

April 29: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

Wednesday April 29, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our inaugural evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.

We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.

After the main meeting, pizza and refreshments and video games in the gallery!

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles, 137 West 14th Street

Featuring a keynote talk this month on Lady Librarians & Feminist Epistemologies! We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Calling all WikiProject X members!

Hello fellow member! WikiProject X needs your help!

We studied the various needs that WikiProjects have, and have come up with some ideas for our first round of WikiProject tool development. These include:

  • An automatically updated WikiProject directory that surfaces WikiProject-related metrics and automatically generates a list of active participants and potential members;
  • A lightweight, optional alternative to WikiProject banners, featuring an option to quickly send a message to the named WikiProjects;
  • A tool that bootstraps WikiProjects; and
  • A worklist generation script for WikiProjects

We are now looking for volunteer coders to work on these projects. If you are interested in developing these tools, or if you would to volunteer for other tasks, check out our new volunteers portal. Thank you for your help!


Cheers, Harej (talk) 20:38, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

The Collaborator's Barnstar
For all of your collaboration, a blue handshake. Keegan (talk) 03:29, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3

Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:

  • A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
  • An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.

We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.

Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.

While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.

Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.

We need volunteers!

WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!

As an aside...

Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.

Harej (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #154

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Campaigns on Commons

I noticed that you created commons:Campaign:wsm this past summer to add the NRHP template to an uploaded image allowing it to be tagged with an NRIS reference number. The summer has been over for a while now (it's almost summer again!), but {{NRHP row}} still links to this campaign so that users can upload images including this template. The problem, though, is that these images all still get tagged with the WSM categories. Is is possible to create another campaign that only adds the NRHP template but not the WSM categories so that the code for NRHP row can be changed to use that new campaign instead? It seems you have to have special rights on Commons to do this, or I would take a crack at it myself. Any help you could provide would be appreciated. Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:07, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Dudemanfellabra, I've been meaning to genericize the campaign so that it could be used year-round, but I don't have the time. In the meantime I would just take out the link. Harej (talk) 11:20, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Report bot

Hi, Harej,
I was wondering if the Report bot was going to be updating Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProject watchers...I see that you have the other stats updating recently. Liz Read! Talk! 16:20, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Liz, I plan on having it update the WikiProject watchers list, but it can't do so at the moment because I don't have access to the watchlist database at the moment. Once I do, I will work to get the list updated again. (There are privacy implications of making the whole watchlist database available, so the Wikimedia Foundation is going to make a redacted version available, but they actually have to implement it when they have like a hundred other things to do.) Harej (talk) 16:24, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the speedy response, Harej! Just wanted to know that other editors appreciate looking at stats that others take the trouble of putting together. I'll check in the future and see if it's been implemented. Liz Read! Talk! 16:31, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Test

User:Harej/AtCabal Does this work? Harej (talk) 01:17, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

This is some massively confusing UX. This is me stating it for the record, that it actually makes the yellow banner of friendship seem like a great thing by comparison. When really that was just a slightly less bad hack than this is. -— Isarra ༆ 01:34, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Great meetup.

I found the meetup very useful. Keep me posted on Quotebase (or Wikiquotebase, or whatever it ends up being called). Also, although you don't seem to have caught the Userbox bug, if you ever do I have made some for Wikimania attendance, vis:

This user attended Wikimania 2014 in London, United Kingdom.

Cheers! bd2412 T 02:31, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #155

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Future of the help desk

Belatedly pursuant to this WT:HD discussion, Wikipedia:Community portal has a button for Help desk but none for Teahouse. That button could be changed to Teahouse, and then users could learn about Help desk after they have some experience. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:49, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Learning Quarterly: May 2015

L&E Newsletter / Volume 1 / Issue 4 / May 2015
 Learning Quarterly

Stay tuned
blogs, events
& more!

Leave your mark on Meta!
Gender Gap on IdeaLab and Learning Pattern Library.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:57, 1 May 2015 (UTC) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:57, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

Wikidata weekly summary #156

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
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