Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-01-30/News and notes

News and notes

Update on Global Development, Wikipedia Day NYC is a success, JFK audio on Commons

Global Development midyear report

Wikipedia on a smartphone; readers are using their phones to browse content now more than ever.

The Global Development team has released its midyear report for 2011–2012. The Global Development department is a part of the Wikimedia Foundation that is tasked with Mobile and Offline development, as well as the Foundation's global and regional strategy. Overall, "the global development team continues to make progress in building our team; however, we are moving more slowly than would be preferred in some areas." Highlighted in the report are the two most active sectors of development: mobile development and attempts at stimulating editor growth.

In terms of mobile development, the Foundation is making progress on meeting a target of 2 billion monthly page views and partnerships with mobile operators to reach 500 million subscribers by later this year. December 2011 saw 1.534 billion mobile page views across all Wikipedias, as compared to 802 million in June of that year (see previous Signpost coverage here, here, and here). Current prospective mobile partnerships are being developed in Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Turkey and Russia, which could affect up to 700 million mobile users. Not all deals are expected to stick, but those that will will offer, in most cases, free Wikipedia access to their subscribers. A much-improved web portal was designed and launched in September of this year, results from the Mobile Readers Survey 2011 are being analyzed, and the results of mobile research in India and Brazil have already been published. Work on an Android app for Wikipedia, a major gap in mobile coverage, was concluded this week with the publication of the new free Wikipedia App designed by the mobile team.

Progress on editor growth has been much more arduous. Active editor populations have been

Global Education Program, whose Pune Pilot in India it deemed a failure (see next story for more). An analysis of the Portuguese Wikipedian community is also underway, as is planning, supported by the Qatar Computing Research Institute

, for a program for the Arabic Wikipedia sometime in the coming months. More information on and the summation of the Pune Project proceedings can be found below.

Verdict delivered on the India Education Program

A

India Education Program's pilot scheme. The Pune pilot project recruited over a thousand^[1] university students, but ended in disrepute, having quickly ran aground on editorial inexperience and blatant disregard for copyright (as documented in the Signpost's special report). According to a quantitative analysis

conducted in tandem with the report, only 21% of total content added by the students survived cleanup to date.

The Read report gives an overview and blow-by-blow history of the project's travails, chronicling early failures of project management to engage with the English Wikipedia community, the recruitment of unseasoned students as ambassadors with two days' training and a disregard for assigned tasks, and the enlisting of vast numbers of students in the scheme (the vaunted

American predecessor

involved a mere 200), the decision to make Wikipedia editing mandatory for all students in contravention of professors' wishes, the decision not to enlist volunteer online ambassadors from the beginning, the impact on global editors of the students' problematic missives and early efforts by the Foundation consultants to combat it, the English Wikipedia community's exasperation and decisive action after communication lapses, and the cleanup effort and fallout that resulted. The report outlined the positive experience of some of the students and their professors' frustration, and the statistical outcome of its study, which indicated that "the pilot yielded a high percentage of low-quality content being added to English Wikipedia".

In assessing the project, the report cited inadequate planning, poor communication and lack of due diligence on the part of the Wikimedia Foundation for its failure, but also declared that the "global Wikipedia community and the Wikipedia community in India must also take responsibility", for having responded in uncivil and hurtful ways; Read concluded "there is no cause for bashing and mocking people on talk pages and email lists, particularly when so many people are working hard with good intent toward a common goal". The termination of employment of those involved was judged premature. The response from the Wikimedia Foundation, which included the report's commission, was described favourably; whether this is justified may be seen in the fortunes of the nascent Cairo education program. The recommendations for the future of such initiatives covered predictable ground; including a key role for the global editing community in the planning process, capitalising on the talent which has emerged from previous initiatives, building "capacities and relationships" between pilots, a system for the early detection of copyright violations and an overhaul of the editing interface.

The reception of the report at the time of writing has been complimentary though not universally credulous, with several commenters sharing the sentiment of Hut 8.5 that it seemed "an attempt to find a way for the program to continue rather than to honestly evaluate whether it should". Much of the discussion, which involved many of the editors who bore the brunt of the cleanup efforts, has been solution-oriented, indicating the potential for reconciliation and future productive co-operation.

Wikipedia Day NYC

Over 100 people packed into New York University's

lightning talks, open space sessions, plenty of food and fun. The event was organized by Wikimedia NYC, Free Culture NYU, and Free Culture Alliance NYC

.

The morning panel session covered Wikipedia Loves Libraries and Wikimedia library and archives outreach initiatives. Among the presentations,

Sarah Stierch talked about GLAM-Wiki collaborations and opportunities for Wikimedians and about the gender gap, and a planning session was held to discuss Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in the United States. New York Times journalist Noam Cohen gave a lightning talk about his experiences in covering Wikipedia. The day ended with Courcelles winning a game of The Price Is Right, with Mitchazenia

as game show host.

JFK assassination audio released on Wikimedia Commons

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has released two audio reel recordings of conversations between Air Force One pilots and crew and personnel on the ground, following the JFK assassination in 1963. The recordings are 2 hours and 22 minutes in length. David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, explains that the audio "provides additional documentation concerning the immediate response of the U.S. Government on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination." User:Dominic was provided with a 1.4 GB raw audio file, converted it to Ogg format and had it uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, at just about the same time that NARA publicly announced this release.

The Raab Collection, a Philadelphia-area dealer of autographs, historical documents and manuscripts, discovered the audio reels. Raab had the audio "professionally digitized" and a copy donated to the National Archives. The audio was discovered among papers and materials in the collections of senior Kennedy military aide and Army General Chester "Ted" Clifton, Jr. Raab is selling the original audio reels for US$500,000.

Air Force One audio, following the JFK assassination. Reel 1 of 2.

Air Force One audio, reel 2 of 2.

In brief

Board of Trustees sets the agenda: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is planning their first session of 2012, to take place next week. An agenda has been posted; topics include the WMF's annual planning for 2012/2013, fundraising and fund distribution scenarios for the WMF and Chapters, the movement roles process, and the issue of paid editing.
Global fundraising mechanisms discussed: Earlier this month, WMF executive director Sue Gardner began publicly drafting recommendations to the Board on the future of movement fundraising. Last week, responses, research, and alternate suggestions were published by Wikimedia Deutschland (on "Wikimedia's culture of sharing") and by Wikimedia UK (a "statement of principles").
Call for moderators: The Wikimedia Foundation has issued a call for moderators for a new mailing list devoted to the involvement of the Wikimedia movement in advocacy. Interested parties are invited to email head of reader relations Philippe Beaudette at [email protected].
Feedback on article feedback tool: The
Article Feedback Team held office hours on 27 January of this week (log), with product developer Fabrice Florin and community liaison of product development Okeyes (better known as Ironholds) presiding. See this week's "In the news"
for more on Florin and the AFT.

Chapters Committee seeks new members: The Chapters Committee has put out a call for candidates. The committee seeks five new members to help review new chapter applications and help guide volunteers who want to setup a chapter.
New administrator: The Signpost welcomes MikeLynch, our newest administrator. As nominator Rsrikanth05 summarized, "He's an admin and a bureaucrat on the Sanskrit Wikipedia, a member of the Wikimedia OTRS team, member of the U.S. and Global Education Program's Ambassador Steering Committee and a Wikipedia Online Ambassador."
Project milestones: Recent project milestones include the Hawaiian Wikipedia reaching 50,000 page edits, the Dutch Wiktionary reaching 150,000 entries, the Mongolian Wikipedia reaching 20,000 total pages, and the Malagasy Wiktionary reaching 1,000,000 entries.

Correction

^ A previous version of this article inaccurately stated the number of students involved as 2,000. According to the Read report, there were 1,014 students involved in the program, 665 of whom edited the article namespace.

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"A lack of due dilligence by the Wikimedia Foundation"? How surprising! Hopefully all the donations they collected this year will help buy them some due dilligence over all their projects. Cla68 (talk) 07:04, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's somewhat ironic that an initiative that partly aimed to help address problems with western-focused editing didn't take into account the academic culture of the editors who were recruited - though I do find it amazing and horrifying that Indian university students are apparently allowed to include plagiarised material in assessment items. It's good that there's been such a frank assessment of this though. Nick-D (talk) 11:09, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the figure of 2000 students recruited (See Verdict delivered on the India Education Program above) is inaccurate. According to Tory Read's report and the quantitative analysis report, there were 1,014 students registered for the IEP of whom 665 (66%) actually made edits. Nevertheless, an absurd number for a "pilot" involving completely inexperienced participants, starting with the paid consultants who were running the program.Voceditenore (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- You're quite right, that figure survived from an early draft; I've corrected the error and will bring it to the attention of the editor responsible. Skomorokh 17:13, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strange, the blog post said that "The program has not been oriented toward creating new Wikipedians, but has added almost 2,000 editors during the Fall 2011 semester, more than thrice the number from Spring 2011 (500+)." ResMar 21:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"The program" there is a reference to the Global Education Program rather than just the Indian one I believe. Skomorokh 21:25, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the 665 students refers to mainspace edits. A significant fraction of the remaining students had userspace edits, some of which contained copyvios. MER-C 01:08, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is not just India that has had problems with plagiarism. See here for a analysis of a Canadian effort [1] dealing with a class of 1700 students
talk · contribs · email) 17:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply
]

Although that class had 1500 students, only 317 students created a user account. Of those, only half went on to edit Wikipedia articles—158 students. The more discursive analysis, User:Colin/A large scale student assignment – what could possibly go wrong?, makes very interesting reading. Voceditenore (talk) 17:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Funny how nobody contacted me when I can offer help at a moment's notice since I'm on campus anyway. And the campus ambassadors are a joke (including one who's my high school friend). You assigned 4 ambassadors and none of them have more than 50 edits? Is WMF so desperate that they'll accept ambassadors with close to no experience? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Has anything been learned from the India and Canada experiences? See: IEP/Welcome Mathew Townsend (talk) 01:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, despite the efforts of many of us (spearheaded by Kudpung); their
inability to recognize and acknowledge what went wrong is extraordinarily frustrating. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい
)

I have reasons to believe that the described observations have nothing to do with how well or poorly the experiment was designed or conducted. From my accidental experience with relatively obscure articles related to India culture and geography and adited by Indians well before this experiment I had an impression that a considerable number Indian editors from India disregard all wikipedia rules about referencing. They just dump something either out of their head or from some Indian websites. A typical, randomply picked examples are Chaturvedi, Tiwari, Pathak. I bet the same will be for any page randomly picked from Category:Indian family names... Here...: "Ghatorhe". Try picking yourself now. Loggerjack (talk) 03:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Run a search for "...is a beautiful village"; more than half of them are Indian/Pakistani villages. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

nice catch! Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Getting away from India, isn't there a paradox that the two main efforts of the WMF at the moment - more mobile uses and more editors - are likely to be pulling in different directions. Presumably people are much less likely to edit from a mobile? Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Besides the occasional wikiholic on a smartphone, you mean. ResMar 22:59, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's been some effort to create better support for editing Wikipedia on smart phones. But if we can establish good means of turning readers into editors (which some of the new editor programs are aimed to do, although some of the new editor programs seem to be aiming to attract people who don't necessarily read Wikipedia), then getting mobile readers means when the person does sit down to a computer, then they will edit. Jztinfinity (talk) 17:56, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost is looking for new talent.

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