Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia traffic: selected language versions
Thanks for your suggestions. Just some quick pointers below. h, 18/05/2014 08:26: (I-A). Tabulate the data points in absolute numbers first, not percentage numbers [...] (I-B). Include all language versions for the *editing traffic* report as well. [...] (I-C). Provide static data objects in more accessible format (i.e. csv and/or json). [...] (II-A). Putting viewing traffic and editing traffic report on the same page. [...] (II-B). Organizing and archiving the traffic reports for historical comparison. [...] (I-C). Provide dynamic data objects in more accessible format (i.e. csv and/or json). At least the first four are just changes in the WikiStats reports formatting, personally I encourage you to submit patches: https://git.wikimedia.org/summary/analytics%2Fwikistats.git (should be the squids directory, but there is some ongoing refactoring of the repos). On archives and history rewriting/reports regeneration, see also https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46198 [...] (III-B). Smaller (i.e more specific) geographic aggregate units. The country (geographic) information is often based on geo-IP databases, and sometimes provincial and city-level data would be available. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-April/075964.html [...] ( I know that the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR Version 25 http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-25) provides“language-territory” http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_territory_information.htmlor “territory-language” http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/territory_language_information.htmlunit-based charts, but I believe that the Wikimedia projects can use and build one better..) [...] No, we definitely can't, not alone. I've asked for help, please contribute: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/FAQ#How_does_Universal_Language_Selector_determine_which_languages_I_may_understand. Nemo ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
[Wiki-research-l] Conference venues for Social Media Researchers [Deadlines are fast approaching!] Reminder
*Apologies for cross-posting* Calling all Social Media and Online Communities Researchers! Please consider submitting your research to the following conferences. Deadlines are fast approaching. (1) #SMSociety14: SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIETY CONFERENCE Location: Toronto, ON, Canada When: September 27-28, 2014 Poster Abstracts Due: May 23, 2014 (!!! in 5 days !!!) More info: http://SocialMediaAndSociety.com/?page_id=549 Conference organizers: Anatoliy Gruzd, Dalhousie University Barry Wellman, University of Toronto Philip Mai, Dalhousie University Jenna Jacobson, University of Toronto (2) Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) Minitrack: SOCIAL NETWORKING COMMUNITIES Location: Kauai, Hawaii, USA When: January 5-8, 2015 Full Papers Due: June 15, 2014 More info: http://socialmedialab.ca/?page_id=9308 Minitrack co-chairs: Anatoliy Gruzd, Dalhousie University Caroline Haythornthwaite, University of British Columbia Karine Nahon, University of Washington Please contact Anatoliy Gruzd gr...@dal.ca if you have any questions about these calls. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
[Wiki-research-l] Kill the bots
Is there a way to retrieve a canonical list of bots on enwiki or elsewhere? I'm interested in omitting automated revisions (sorry Stuart!) for the purposes of building co-authorship networks. Grabbing everything under 'Category:All Wikipedia bots' excludes some major ones like SmackBot, Cydebot, VIAFbot, Full-date unlinking bot, etc. because these bots have changed names but the redirect is not categorized, the account has been removed/deprecated, or a user appears to have removed the relevant bot categories from the page. Can anyone advise me on how to kill all the bots in my data without having to resort to manual cleaning or hacky regex? -- Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D. Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Lazer Lab College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University Affiliate, Berkman Center for Internet Society, Harvard Law School b.kee...@neu.edu www.brianckeegan.com M: 617.803.6971 O: 617.373.7200 Skype: bckeegan ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Kill the bots
People whose last name is Abbot will be discriminated. And a true story: A prominent human Catalan Wikipedia editor whose name is PauCabot skewed the results of an actual study. So don't trust just the user names. בתאריך 18 במאי 2014 19:34, מאת Andrew G. West west.andre...@gmail.com: User name policy states that *bot* names are reserved for bots. Thus, such a regex shouldn't be too hacky, but I cannot comment whether some non-automated cases might slip through new user patrol. I do think dumps make the 'users' table available, and I know for sure one could get a full list via the API. As a check on this, you could check that when these usernames edit, whether or not they set the bot flag. -AW -- Andrew G. West, PhD Research Scientist Verisign Labs - Reston, VA Website: http://www.andrew-g-west.com On 05/18/2014 12:10 PM, Brian Keegan wrote: Is there a way to retrieve a canonical list of bots on enwiki or elsewhere? I'm interested in omitting automated revisions (sorry Stuart!) for the purposes of building co-authorship networks. Grabbing everything under 'Category:All Wikipedia bots' excludes some major ones like SmackBot, Cydebot, VIAFbot, Full-date unlinking bot, etc. because these bots have changed names but the redirect is not categorized, the account has been removed/deprecated, or a user appears to have removed the relevant bot categories from the page. Can anyone advise me on how to kill all the bots in my data without having to resort to manual cleaning or hacky regex? -- Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D. Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Lazer Lab College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University Affiliate, Berkman Center for Internet Society, Harvard Law School b.kee...@neu.edu mailto:b.kee...@neu.edu www.brianckeegan.com http://www.brianckeegan.com M: 617.803.6971 O: 617.373.7200 Skype: bckeegan ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia traffic: selected language versions
Dear Nemo, As I am waiting for a more complete response, I am not sure that I understand your last No as in No, we definitely can't means. To clarify, take the CLDR supplement Language-Territory information for example http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_territory_information.html One can suggest additions of the data point by submitting sourced numbers for a geo-linguistic population like this: http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/newticket?description=%3Cterritory%2c%20speaker%20population%20in%20territory%2c%20and%20references%3Esummary=Add%20territory%20to%20Traditional%20Chinese%20(zh_Hant) In Wikipedia articles and Wikidata pages, there are many attempts to provide more updated and better sourced data points. I see the potentials in exchanging such data, curating them better in Wikidata projects as more detailed and dynamic source than the CLDR. These data points will have extra benefits in curating traffic data. For one, these geo-linguistic population data points would be useful to normalize traffic data for further analysis, such as geographic normalization. For another, they provide important reference data for the development strategies and policies of the Wikipedia projects. Best, han-teng liao 2014-05-18 16:23 GMT+08:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Thanks for your suggestions. Just some quick pointers below. h, 18/05/2014 08:26: (I-A). Tabulate the data points in absolute numbers first, not percentage numbers [...] (I-B). Include all language versions for the *editing traffic* report as well. [...] (I-C). Provide static data objects in more accessible format (i.e. csv and/or json). [...] (II-A). Putting viewing traffic and editing traffic report on the same page. [...] (II-B). Organizing and archiving the traffic reports for historical comparison. [...] (I-C). Provide dynamic data objects in more accessible format (i.e. csv and/or json). At least the first four are just changes in the WikiStats reports formatting, personally I encourage you to submit patches: https://git.wikimedia.org/summary/analytics%2Fwikistats.git (should be the squids directory, but there is some ongoing refactoring of the repos). On archives and history rewriting/reports regeneration, see also https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46198 [...] (III-B). Smaller (i.e more specific) geographic aggregate units. The country (geographic) information is often based on geo-IP databases, and sometimes provincial and city-level data would be available. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-April/075964.html [...] ( I know that the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR Version 25 http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-25) provides“language-territory” http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/ language_territory_information.htmlor “territory-language” http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/ territory_language_information.htmlunit-based charts, but I believe that the Wikimedia projects can use and build one better..) [...] No, we definitely can't, not alone. I've asked for help, please contribute: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_ Selector/FAQ#How_does_Universal_Language_Selector_ determine_which_languages_I_may_understand. Nemo ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Kill the bots
Very helpful, Lukas, I didn't know about the logging table. In some recent work [1] I found many users that appeared to be bots but whose edits did not have the bot flag set. My approach was to exclude users who didn't have a break of more than 6 hours between edits over the entire month I was studying. I was interested in the users who had multiple edit sessions in the month and so when with a straight threshold. A way to keep users with only one editing session would be to exclude users who have no break longer than X hours in an edit session lasting at least Y hours (e.g., a user who doesn't break for more than 6 hours in 5-6 days is probably not human) Cheers, Scott [1] Multilinguals and Wikipedia Editing http://www.scotthale.net/pubs/?websci2014 -- Scott Hale Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford http://www.scotthale.net/ scott.h...@oii.ox.ac.uk On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Lukas Benedix lbene...@l3q.de wrote: Here is a list of currently flagged bots: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsersoffset=limit=2000username=group=bot Another good point to look for bots is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndexprefix=Bots%2FRequests_for_approvalnamespace=4 You should also have a look at this pages to find former bots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive_bots_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive_bots_2 And last but not least the logging table you can access via tool labs: SELECT DISTINCT(log_title) FROM logging WHERE log_action = 'rights' AND log_params LIKE '%bot%'; Lukas Am So 18.05.2014 18:34, schrieb Andrew G. West: User name policy states that *bot* names are reserved for bots. Thus, such a regex shouldn't be too hacky, but I cannot comment whether some non-automated cases might slip through new user patrol. I do think dumps make the 'users' table available, and I know for sure one could get a full list via the API. As a check on this, you could check that when these usernames edit, whether or not they set the bot flag. -AW ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l -- Scott Hale Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford http://www.scotthale.net/ scott.h...@oii.ox.ac.uk ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia traffic: selected language versions
Could you give an example of what we could do better than CLDR or the relevant ISO standards? On 18 May 2014 10:06, h hant...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Nemo, As I am waiting for a more complete response, I am not sure that I understand your last No as in No, we definitely can't means. To clarify, take the CLDR supplement Language-Territory information for example http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_territory_information.html One can suggest additions of the data point by submitting sourced numbers for a geo-linguistic population like this: http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/newticket?description=%3Cterritory%2c%20speaker%20population%20in%20territory%2c%20and%20references%3Esummary=Add%20territory%20to%20Traditional%20Chinese%20(zh_Hant) In Wikipedia articles and Wikidata pages, there are many attempts to provide more updated and better sourced data points. I see the potentials in exchanging such data, curating them better in Wikidata projects as more detailed and dynamic source than the CLDR. These data points will have extra benefits in curating traffic data. For one, these geo-linguistic population data points would be useful to normalize traffic data for further analysis, such as geographic normalization. For another, they provide important reference data for the development strategies and policies of the Wikipedia projects. Best, han-teng liao 2014-05-18 16:23 GMT+08:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Thanks for your suggestions. Just some quick pointers below. h, 18/05/2014 08:26: (I-A). Tabulate the data points in absolute numbers first, not percentage numbers [...] (I-B). Include all language versions for the *editing traffic* report as well. [...] (I-C). Provide static data objects in more accessible format (i.e. csv and/or json). [...] (II-A). Putting viewing traffic and editing traffic report on the same page. [...] (II-B). Organizing and archiving the traffic reports for historical comparison. [...] (I-C). Provide dynamic data objects in more accessible format (i.e. csv and/or json). At least the first four are just changes in the WikiStats reports formatting, personally I encourage you to submit patches: https://git.wikimedia.org/summary/analytics%2Fwikistats.git (should be the squids directory, but there is some ongoing refactoring of the repos). On archives and history rewriting/reports regeneration, see also https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46198 [...] (III-B). Smaller (i.e more specific) geographic aggregate units. The country (geographic) information is often based on geo-IP databases, and sometimes provincial and city-level data would be available. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-April/075964.html [...] ( I know that the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR Version 25 http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-25) provides“language-territory” http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/ language_territory_information.htmlor “territory-language” http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/ territory_language_information.htmlunit-based charts, but I believe that the Wikimedia projects can use and build one better..) [...] No, we definitely can't, not alone. I've asked for help, please contribute: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_ Selector/FAQ#How_does_Universal_Language_Selector_ determine_which_languages_I_may_understand. Nemo ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Kill the bots
How does one cite emails in ACM proceedings format? :) On Sunday, May 18, 2014, R.Stuart Geiger sgei...@gmail.com wrote: Tsk tsk tsk, Brian. When the revolution comes, bot discriminators will get no mercy. :-) But seriously, my tl;dr: instead of asking if an account is or isn't a bot, ask if a set of edits are or are not automated Great responses so far: searching usernames for *bot will exclude non-bot users who were registered before the username policy change (although *Bot is a bit better), and the logging table is a great way to collect bot flags. However, Scott is right -- the bot flag (or *Bot username) doesn't signify a bot, it signifies a bureaucrat recognizing that a user account successfully went through the Bot Approval Group process. If I see an account with a bot flag, I can generally assume the edits that account makes are initiated by an automated software agent. This is especially the case in the main namespace. The inverse assumption is not nearly as easy: I can't assume that every edit made from an account *without* a bot flag was *not* an automated edit. About unauthorized bots: yes, there are a relatively small number of Wikipedians who, on occasion, run fully-automated, continuously-operating bots without approval. Complicating this, if someone is going to take the time to build and run a bot, but isn't going to create a separate account for it, then it is likely that they are also using that account to do non-automated edits. Sometimes new bot developers will run an unauthorized bot under their own account during the initial stages of development, and only later in the process will they create a separate bot account and seek formal approval and flagging. It can get tricky when you exclude all the edits from an account for being automated based on a single suspicious set of edits. More commonly, there are many more people who use automated batch tools like AutoWikiBrowser to support one-off tasks, like mass find-and-replace or category cleanup. Accounts powered by AWB are technically not bots, only because a human has to sit there and click save for every batch edit that is made. Some people will create a separate bot account for AWB work and get it approved and flagged, but many more will not bother. Then there are people using semi-automated, human-in-the-loop tools like Huggle to do vandal fighting. I find that the really hard question is whether you include or exclude these different kinds of 'cyborgs', because it really makes you think hard about what exactly you're measuring. Is someone who does a mass find-and-replace on all articles in a category a co-author of each article they edit? Is a vandal fighter patrolling the recent changes feed with Huggle a co-author of all the articles they edit when they revert vandalism and then move on to the next diff? What about somebody using rollback in the web browser? If so, what is it that makes these entities authors and ClueBot NG not an author? When you think about it, user accounts are actually pretty remarkable in that they allow such a diverse set of uses and agents to be attributed to a single entity. So when it comes to identifying automation, I personally think it is better to shift the unit of analysis from the user account to the individual edit. A bot flag lets you assume all edits from an account are automated, but you can use a range of approaches to identifying sets of automated edits from non-flagged accounts. Then I have a set of regex SQL queries in the Query Library [1] which parses edit summaries for the traces that AWB, Huggle, Twinkle, rollback, etc. automatically leave by default. You can also use the edit session approach like Scott has suggested -- Aaron and I found a few unauthorized bots in our edit session study [2], and we were even using a more aggressive break, with no more than a 60 minute gap between edits. To catch short bursts of bulk edits, you could look at large numbers of edits made in a short period of time -- I'd say more than 7 main namespace edits a minute for 10 minutes would be a hard rate for even a very aggressive vandal fighter to maintain with Huggle. I'll conclude by saying that different kinds of automated editing techniques are different ways of participating in and contributing to Wikipedia. To systematically exclude automated edits is to remove a very important, meaningful, and heterogeneous kind of activity from view. These activities constitute a core part of what Wikipedia is, particularly those forms of automation which the community has explicitly authorized and recognized. Now, we researchers inevitably have to selectively reveal and occlude -- a co-authorship network based on main namespace edits also excludes talk page discussions and conflict resolution, and this also constitutes a core part of what Wikipedia is. It isn't wrong per se to exclude automated edits, and it is certainly much worse to not