[Wiki-research-l] Let's discuss Growing the MediaWiki Technical Community (Dev Summit)

[Matthew Flaschen]

At the Dev Summit, Birgit Müller and I will run a session on Growing the 
MediaWiki Technical Community.  If you're attending, we hope you will 
consider joining us.


Everyone (attending the Dev Summit or not) is welcome and encouraged to 
participate at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183318 (please comment 
there, rather than by email).


We are discussing the following questions:

* What would allow you to develop and plan your software more efficiently?
* What would make software development more fun for you?
* What other Open Source communities do we share interests with?
* How can we change our processes to take technical debt more seriously?

"Develop" means any kind of work on a software system, including design, 
documentation, etc.


Our topics are:

* Better processes and project management practices, integrating all 
developers and allowing them to work more efficiently
* Building partnerships with other Open Source communities on shared 
interests (e.g. translation, audio, video)

* Reducing technical debt

Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] OpenSym 2018 | August 22-24, 2018 | Paris, France | General Call for Papers | Deadline March 15, 2018

[fn]

A few extra notes:

On Wikidata we have P4419 for VideoLectures. There are only 47 linked at 
the moment.


SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?url WHERE {
  ?item wdt:P4419 ?videolectures .
  BIND(URI(CONCAT('http://videolectures.net/', ?videolectures)) AS ?url)
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language 
"[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }

}

https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3Furl%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP4419%20%3Fvideolectures%20.%0A%20%20BIND%28URI%28CONCAT%28%27http%3A%2F%2Fvideolectures.net%2F%27%2C%20%3Fvideolectures%29%29%20AS%20%3Furl%29%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%7D


For KDD 2010 at http://videolectures.net/kdd2010_washington/ the three 
invited talks have 1500 views (I do not know what a VideoLectures "view" 
is, whether it is a complete view or just starting the video).


An opportunity with videos on Commons is to describe them on Wikidata so 
that they can be queried with the Wikidata Query Service and become more 
discoverable. We have recently started to add handling of events to 
Scholia https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/. It would be interesting to 
include videos to the Scholia pages describing scientific meetings.


Encouraging conference speakers to upload screencast could be another 
possibility.


I wonder if there is any statistics on Wikimedia Commons video views?

As a P.S.: I find it interesting that videos can be reused out of 
context, e.g., Wikinews videos on Korean matters were reused on the
page on Robert Kelly: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kelly_(political_analyst)



Finn Årup Nielsen
http://people.compute.dtu.dk/faan/



On 01/18/2018 08:45 PM, Leila Zia wrote:

Hi Nicolas,

While I appreciate the desire and commitment to be open by default and
I am big supporter of Aaron's reminders to all of us for staying open
as much as we can, I'd like to put some different perspective here, as
the topic of video-recording for academic conferences has been
relatively hot in the past few years. :)

I do believe that the organizers of academic conferences (and I
emphasize on the academic component, I do have very different
perspectives for a conference such as Wikimania or an event like
WikiCite) should consider cost tradeoffs very carefully when choosing
to record the sessions at all or not. For context, I'm the general
co-chair for The Web Conference 2019 (a.k.a., WWW2019) and we actively
discuss this topic in the context of that conference. Some things to
consider:

* The cost of recording (almost) all sessions, depending on where you
organize the conference can be really high. For example, for a
conference in San Francisco, unless the conference is organized on a
federal land (which is not the case for TWC2019), we cannot have
volunteers recording the sessions. Professional crew will have to do
it, and one will have to look at the costs carefully. We will be
talking certainly about more than $150K.

* KDD has been doing recording of many of its sessions in the past
couple of years. The view counts of these videos are not very high. I
understand that view counts is not the only measure of success for a
video, but I also would argue that if the cost is very high, and
resources are constrained, someone should look into the value the
recording will bring for the global community of researchers.

* In the limited subset of conferences I attend or I'm in network of,
year in and year out, Networking is chosen as the top reason for
coming to the conference. Many choose to attend a few talks and spend
the rest of the time just talking to people. :) Just today a colleague
reminded me of this: people who attend these conferences have already
decided what is the most valuable item for them in this conference.
Why should we take the second or third most favorite part of the
conference and record it for others? Why don't we focus on the top
commodity and make it available to those who can't attend? This is
something to keep in mind.

* Someone should seriously look into this, but there is argument to be
made that if the money spent on recording is very large compared to
the size of the budget for the conference, channeling that to student
scholarships and providing an opportunity to students who normally
would not make it to these conferences to experience the networking
side of the conference (which is rated very high usually in surveys)
can be a better choice. I'm not talking about providing scholarships
to the students who would make it anyway, but thinking carefully about
those who would never make it on their own unless we would proactively
reach out to them and help them make the journey happen.

Good luck with organizing OpenSym. I have even a bigger respect now
that I'm at this side of a big conference for people like you and your
colleagues who stand up, many times as volunteers, and make these
conferences happen. :)

Best,
Leila

--

[Wiki-research-l] [Call for Participation] Web Science Summer School 2018

[Ujwal Gadiraju]

Hi all,

Apologies for cross-posting.

*** WEB SCIENCE SUMMER SCHOOL 2018, Hannover, Germany 
***


The Web Science Summer School 2018 (WWSSS’18) will be held in Hannover, 
Germany. It is hosted by L3S Research Center and will take place from 
30.07.18 till 04.08.18.


Web Science is the emergent study of the people and technologies, 
applications, processes and practices that shape and are shaped by the 
World Wide Web. Web Science aims to draw together theories, methods and 
findings from across academic disciplines, and to collaborate with 
industry, business, government and civil society, to develop our 
knowledge and understanding of the Web: the largest socio-technical 
infrastructure in human history.


Web Science requires mining and understanding data from the Web, 
requiring both technical skills for handling big (Web) data as well as 
fundamental understanding of the social, psychological or legal aspects 
underpinning online activities.
The WWSSS’18 will address the inter-disciplinary field of Web Science by 
focusing on lectures which tackle the aforementioned challenges in 
topics such as data science and data mining, big data processing, 
information retrieval, Web governance as well as the sociology and 
psychology of online interactions.


Alongside lectures that will address major trends in Web Science, the 
Summer School will provide hands-on training in data processing, 
analysis and methods, team work, and opportunities to present current 
research. Participants shall work on specific tasks linked to the 
datasets provided, and will be mentored by local instructors. All teams 
will present the results of their work on the last day of the school.


Speakers, tutors and the full program are currently being finalized. 
Registration for the summer school will be made open for everyone. In 
addition, there will be a selection process for a few scholarships that 
will be awarded to students to cover participation costs.
Follow the updates at http://wwsss18.webscience.org/, and do not miss 
the chance to be a part of this enriching experience! Please feel free 
to contact the chairs of the summer school or the local organization 
team if you have any queries.


*

--
Ujwal Gadiraju
L3S Research Center
Leibniz Universität Hannover
30167 Hannover, Germany

Phone: +49. 511. 762-5772
Fax: +49. 511. 762-19712
E-Mail: gadir...@l3s.de
Web: www.l3s.de/~gadiraju/

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[Wiki-research-l] Fwd: [Wikidata] Fwd: Call for Papers: EuropeanaTech 2018 Conference

[Jonathan Morgan]

Interesting/relevant research venue...


-- Forwarded message --
From: Sandra Fauconnier 
Date: Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 10:07 AM
Subject: [Wikidata] Fwd: Call for Papers: EuropeanaTech 2018 Conference
To: "Discussion list for the Wikidata project." <
wikid...@lists.wikimedia.org>


Hi all!

Here's a call for proposals for the EuropeanaTech conference, which will
take place in Rotterdam, May 15-16, 2018.
https://pro.europeana.eu/event/europeanatech-conference-2018

Some of the suggested topics are very Wikidata- and Wikimedia-related.

Best! Sandra (User:Spinster)

-- Forwarded message --
From: Gregory Markus 
Date: Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 9:17 AM
Subject: Call for Papers: EuropeanaTech 2018 Conference
To: europeana-t...@list.ecompass.nl


Dear EuropeanaTech community

EuropeanaTech is about the practical application of research concepts and
the latest technologies to digital libraries. For this edition of
EuropeanaTech, we concentrate on t*he three D’s: Data, Discovery and
Delivery*. Intertwined are the concepts of participation, linked and big
data; language and tools. Across all the subjects we are looking for the
inclusion of rigorous evaluations of the outcomes.

The conference will be a mix of invited speakers and successful
presentations from this call. We are not expecting an academic paper but a
lively presentation of work that you have been doing under the subjects
below. We are as interested in the glorious failures as we are in the
gorgeous successes.
Submission Guidelines

Please submit your proposal* by February 7*.  It should contain a title, an
abstract of 250 words, some key words and a two sentence evaluation of its
practical benefits or learning.  The Programme Committee will evaluate all
the submitted proposals and will notify you before the end of February if
your proposal has been selected for presentation.  *We have room for up to
15 presentations* to be given in the conference as a result of this call.
The conference fee and your travelling costs will be covered if your
presentation is chosen.

Submissions are to be made via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferen
ces/?conf=eurtech18
List of Topics

*DATA*

   1.

   *User generated content and metadata:*  from crowdsourcing of
   descriptive data and transcription projects to Wikidata and structured data
   on the Commons to how to combine institutional and user generated metadata.
   We are looking for what has worked, or what hasn’t and can be done better.
   2.

   *Enhancing the results of digitisation: *various applications connect
   the act of digitisation with required data processes for the use of the
   data.   What are the latest techniques, have they been applied at scale, do
   they work in the in the more challenging audio-visual areas?  We are
   interested in everything from 3D capture, OCR,  sound/video labelling,
   named entity recognition and feature detection, to machine or deep learning
   to help classify and categorise the digitised data.
   3.

   *Decentralisation vs Centralisation:* We know that aggregation works as
   a process to bring together disparate data, standardised, normalise it and
   make it available to other parties, but we also know that this is labour
   intensive, very hierarchical, and does not distribute knowledge and
   expertise. On the other hand more decentralised ways of working have yet to
   be really proven in practice. Presentations that give the latest thinking
   on how we can best enable access to cultural heritage data and reduce
   friction costs are welcome, particularly with evaluation on the relative
   strengths and weaknesses.
   4.

   *Multilingualism*: Google has more or less cracked full text translation
   of mainstream languages, but we are still struggling with niche languages
   and metadata. Presentations that evaluate the current thinking or give
   insights into the latest work in the area would fit well in this section of
   the creation and use of multilingual data in Cultural Heritage.

*DISCOVERY*

   1.

   *User Interaction: *Search is still the dominant means of gaining access
   to the wealth of cultural heritage data now online, but does it represent
   that wealth? Search is ungenerous: it withholds information, and demands a
   query, what are the alternatives? Papers on generous interfaces and
   frictionless design are sought to shed new light on how Cultural Heritage
   can show itself more deeply. Evaluating the benefits and weaknesses to the
   user in the process.
   2.

   *Artificial Intelligence: *For this subject topics ranging from machine
   learning to neural network-based approaches to Cultural Heritage are
   welcome. This includes applications of AI from image feature recognition to
   natural language processing, and from building search interfaces on
   features/colour similarity between images and discovery to the use of human
   metadata and 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] OpenSym 2018 | August 22-24, 2018 | Paris, France | General Call for Papers | Deadline March 15, 2018

[Leila Zia]

Hi Nicolas,

While I appreciate the desire and commitment to be open by default and
I am big supporter of Aaron's reminders to all of us for staying open
as much as we can, I'd like to put some different perspective here, as
the topic of video-recording for academic conferences has been
relatively hot in the past few years. :)

I do believe that the organizers of academic conferences (and I
emphasize on the academic component, I do have very different
perspectives for a conference such as Wikimania or an event like
WikiCite) should consider cost tradeoffs very carefully when choosing
to record the sessions at all or not. For context, I'm the general
co-chair for The Web Conference 2019 (a.k.a., WWW2019) and we actively
discuss this topic in the context of that conference. Some things to
consider:

* The cost of recording (almost) all sessions, depending on where you
organize the conference can be really high. For example, for a
conference in San Francisco, unless the conference is organized on a
federal land (which is not the case for TWC2019), we cannot have
volunteers recording the sessions. Professional crew will have to do
it, and one will have to look at the costs carefully. We will be
talking certainly about more than $150K.

* KDD has been doing recording of many of its sessions in the past
couple of years. The view counts of these videos are not very high. I
understand that view counts is not the only measure of success for a
video, but I also would argue that if the cost is very high, and
resources are constrained, someone should look into the value the
recording will bring for the global community of researchers.

* In the limited subset of conferences I attend or I'm in network of,
year in and year out, Networking is chosen as the top reason for
coming to the conference. Many choose to attend a few talks and spend
the rest of the time just talking to people. :) Just today a colleague
reminded me of this: people who attend these conferences have already
decided what is the most valuable item for them in this conference.
Why should we take the second or third most favorite part of the
conference and record it for others? Why don't we focus on the top
commodity and make it available to those who can't attend? This is
something to keep in mind.

* Someone should seriously look into this, but there is argument to be
made that if the money spent on recording is very large compared to
the size of the budget for the conference, channeling that to student
scholarships and providing an opportunity to students who normally
would not make it to these conferences to experience the networking
side of the conference (which is rated very high usually in surveys)
can be a better choice. I'm not talking about providing scholarships
to the students who would make it anyway, but thinking carefully about
those who would never make it on their own unless we would proactively
reach out to them and help them make the journey happen.

Good luck with organizing OpenSym. I have even a bigger respect now
that I'm at this side of a big conference for people like you and your
colleagues who stand up, many times as volunteers, and make these
conferences happen. :)

Best,
Leila

--
Leila Zia
Senior Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation


On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 12:33 AM, Nicolas Jullien
 wrote:
> Hello,
>
> our plan is that they will, we are committed to that, but also that the
> papers are accessible before the presentation.
> Olivier and Georg, in cc, are already working on that aspect.
>
> My philosophy is that the goal of the presentations (and of being in Paris)
> must be to interact better, to build on the research presented, in a world
> to have time to co-construct the next steps.
>
> But, of course, if you guys reading cannot be in Paris with us (August
> 22-24), we will make our best to provide you with the tools to be connected
> with the conference
>
> Nicolas
>
> Le 17/01/2018 à 21:59, Aaron Halfaker a écrit :
>>
>> Hi Nicolas!
>>
>> Thanks for sending the CFP.  Any chance that the talks will be
>> live-streamed this year?  :)
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 10:57 AM, Nicolas Jullien
>> > > wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> it's my pleasure to inform you that the call for paper for OpenSym
>> 2018 is available.
>> Conference Website and call for papers: http://opensym.org
>>
>> Papers are due by March 15, 23h59 (any time on Earth).
>> Submission: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=opensym2018
>> 
>> (accepted rate in 2017: 45%)
>>
>> Topics: The conference provides peer-reviewed research tracks on
>> subjects related to open collaboration including:
>> - Open Collaboration Research, esp. Wikis and Social Media
>> - Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)
>> - Open Data, Open Access, and 

[Wiki-research-l] Fwd: [Input requested] Knowledge as a Service at the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018

[Adam Baso]

Cross-post.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Adam Baso 
Date: Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 6:38 AM
Subject: [Input requested] Knowledge as a Service at the Wikimedia
Developer Summit 2018
To: Wikimedia developers 


Howdy Wikitechnorati,

(And thank you for patience with me cross-posting if you're on other lists.)

I'm writing to invite your input on the following Phabricator task ahead of
next week's Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 [1] session.

Knowledge as a Service
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183315

The purpose [2] of the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 sessions is to
provide guidance for Phase 2 of the Movement Strategic Direction [3] on
buildout of technology capabilities. We'd really love your thoughts to help
set context for our session next week, as Knowledge as a Service is a
primary consideration in the Movement Strategic Direction.

What is Knowledge as a Service? Its essence is about information
architecture approaches and the necessary software that will ultimately
allow content consumption and creation to radiate to new and different
types of interfaces and devices in addition to browser-based approaches. As
you review position papers from attendees [4] you'll notice that the way
they (myself included) think about best solving this is through a heavy
emphasis on technology that makes it easier to better structure information
and its metadata for re-use, remixing, and querying.

What might this mean? Does it mean we should build Wikimedia software in an
API- and metadata-first manner following industry standards compatible with
content structuration? Does it mean weaving our existing structured and
semi-structured data technologies together? How do we build technology that
can ensure successful collaboration between communities on increasingly
structured and interdependent information sources? And how can we ensure
the tech will bolster growth of multilingual and multimedia content
creation and consumption?

I've copied some of the essential material from the Movement Strategic
Direction concerning Knowledge as a Service so you have it here. We would
appreciate your input and hope you will subscribe to the Phabricator task
to contribute and follow along as we explore this topic.

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183315

The following content is copied from https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction :


Knowledge as a service: To serve our users, we will become a platform that
serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities. We
will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free
knowledge beyond Wikimedia. Our infrastructure will enable us and others to
collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge.

...

As technology spreads through every aspect of our lives, Wikimedia's
infrastructure needs to be able to communicate easily with other connected
systems.

...

As a platform, we need to transform our structures to support new formats,
new interfaces, and new types of knowledge. We have a strategic opportunity
to go further and offer this platform as a service to other institutions,
beyond Wikimedia. In a world that is becoming more and more connected,
building the infrastructure for knowledge gives others a vested interest in
our success. It is how we ensure our place in the larger network of
knowledge, and become an essential part of it. As a service to users, we
need to build the platform for knowledge or, in jargon, provide knowledge
as a service.

...

Knowledge as a service: A platform that serves open knowledge to the world
across interfaces and communities
Our openness will ensure that our decisions are fair, that we are
accountable to one another, and that we act in the public interest. Our
systems will follow the evolution of technology. We will transform our
platform to work across digital formats, devices, and interfaces. The
distributed structure of our network will help us adapt to local contexts.

...


We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free
knowledge beyond Wikimedia.
We will continue to build the infrastructure for free knowledge for our
communities. We will go further by offering it as a service to others in
the network of knowledge. We will continue to build the partnerships that
enable us to develop knowledge we can't create ourselves.

...

Our infrastructure will enable us and others to collect and use different
forms of free, trusted knowledge.
We will build the technical infrastructures that enable us to collect free
knowledge in all forms and languages. We will use our position as a leader
in the ecosystem of knowledge to advance our ideals of freedom and
fairness. We will build the technical structures and the social agreements
that enable us to trust the new knowledge we compile. We will focus on
highly structured information to facilitate its exchange and reuse in
multiple 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] OpenSym 2018 | August 22-24, 2018 | Paris, France | General Call for Papers | Deadline March 15, 2018

[Nicolas Jullien]

Hello,

our plan is that they will, we are committed to that, but also that the 
papers are accessible before the presentation.

Olivier and Georg, in cc, are already working on that aspect.

My philosophy is that the goal of the presentations (and of being in 
Paris) must be to interact better, to build on the research presented, 
in a world to have time to co-construct the next steps.


But, of course, if you guys reading cannot be in Paris with us (August 
22-24), we will make our best to provide you with the tools to be 
connected with the conference


Nicolas

Le 17/01/2018 à 21:59, Aaron Halfaker a écrit :

Hi Nicolas!

Thanks for sending the CFP.  Any chance that the talks will be 
live-streamed this year?  :)


On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 10:57 AM, Nicolas Jullien 
> wrote:



Dear all,

it's my pleasure to inform you that the call for paper for OpenSym
2018 is available.
Conference Website and call for papers: http://opensym.org

Papers are due by March 15, 23h59 (any time on Earth).
Submission: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=opensym2018

(accepted rate in 2017: 45%)

Topics: The conference provides peer-reviewed research tracks on
subjects related to open collaboration including:
- Open Collaboration Research, esp. Wikis and Social Media
- Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)
- Open Data, Open Access, and Open Science
- Open Education
- IT-Driven Open Innovation
- Open Policy/Open Government/Open Law
- Wikipedia and Wikimedia Research


Looking forward to seeing your paper's presentation in Paris

Nicolas Jullien, general chair of OpenSym 2018

About the Conference


OpenSym is the only conference that brings together the different
strands of open collaboration research and practice, seeking to
create synergies and inspire new collaborations between people from
computer science, information science, social science, humanities,
and everyone interested in understanding open collaboration and how
it is changing our society.
This year’s conference will be held in Paris, France on August
22-24, 2018.  A Doctoral Symposium will take place on August 21, 2018.
OpenSym is held in-cooperation with ACM SIGWEB and ACM SIGSOFT and
the conference proceedings will be archived in the ACM digital
library like all prior editions.


Submission Information and Instructions
---
Topics: The conference provides peer-reviewed research tracks on
subjects related to open collaboration including:
- Open Collaboration Research, esp. Wikis and Social Media
- Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)
- Open Data, Open Access, and Open Science
- Open Education
- IT-Driven Open Innovation
- Open Policy/Open Government/Open Law
- Wikipedia and Wikimedia Research
Paper Presentation: OpenSym 2018 will be organized as a one track
conference in order to emphasize the interdisciplinary character of
this conference and to encourage discussion.
Submission Deadline: The research paper submission deadline is March
15th 2018. Submitted papers should present integrative reviews or
original reports of substantive new work: theoretical, empirical,
and/or in the design, development and/or deployment of novel
concepts, systems, and mechanisms. Research papers will be reviewed
to meet rigorous academic standards of publication. Papers will be
reviewed for relevance, conceptual quality, innovation and clarity
of presentation.
All the submissions are done via the EasyChair platform, here:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=opensym2018

Paper Length: There is no minimum or maximum length for submitted
papers. Rather, reviewers will be instructed to weigh the
contribution of a paper relative to its length. Papers should report
research thoroughly but succinctly: brevity is a virtue. A typical
length of a “long research paper” is 10 pages (formerly the maximum
length limit and the limit on OpenSym tracks), but may be shorter if
the contribution can be described and supported in fewer
pages—shorter, more focused papers (called “short research papers”
previously) are encouraged and will be reviewed like any other
paper. While we will review papers longer than 10 pages, the
contribution must warrant the extra length. Reviewers will be
instructed to reject papers whose length is incommensurate with the
size of their contribution. Papers should be formatted in ACM SIGCHI
paper format. Reviewing is not double-blind so manuscripts do not
need to be anonymized.
Posters: As in previous years, OpenSym will also