Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
On Thu, 3 May 2012 20:51:27 -0400, Brian Butler wrote: Yes -- Wikipedia is an exercise in knowledge mobilization, not knowledge creation. While there are some exceptions, most scholars are seeking to create knowledge (and academic literature is part of that process -- hence rarely is it useful for knowledge mobilization). We don't expect a physicist (or an electrical engineer) to be able wire a house (or even write instructions for how to do it) -- and we don't expect an academic paper to useful for someone wanting to know how to plan wiring. Researchers/scholars, inventors, product developers and users are usually different people. This is actually not correct. At least in natural sciences we have review articles - long papers which summarize the existing knowledge in a particular field. These articles are usually much appreciated by the community, get widely read and cited. My best cited paper - such a review article - is cites 15 times more than my second best cited paper, which is a regular article. We also write books (sometimes even textbooks) and contribute to encyclopedias. Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
All fields have reviews, textbooks, popularization books, and encyclopedias ... but there are few scholars or disciplines that see creation of these resources (as valuable as they are) as their primary mission. For this discussion it's important for us to see that there are many ways in which this is highly functional. Telling craftsmen (people?) to pay attention to end users needs rarely results in better design and it severely disrupts their social structures which are focused on intrinsic values. In contrast, entrepreneurs/product creators/etc. are very focused on the match between artifacts and needs -- and their communities have very different ways of organizing and motivating participants. While these distinctions are all a matter of degree, in most cases people (and groups) find it very difficult to be both/and. ... On May 4, 2012, at 2:42 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: On Thu, 3 May 2012 20:51:27 -0400, Brian Butler wrote: Yes -- Wikipedia is an exercise in knowledge mobilization, not knowledge creation. While there are some exceptions, most scholars are seeking to create knowledge (and academic literature is part of that process -- hence rarely is it useful for knowledge mobilization). We don't expect a physicist (or an electrical engineer) to be able wire a house (or even write instructions for how to do it) -- and we don't expect an academic paper to useful for someone wanting to know how to plan wiring. Researchers/scholars, inventors, product developers and users are usually different people. This is actually not correct. At least in natural sciences we have review articles - long papers which summarize the existing knowledge in a particular field. These articles are usually much appreciated by the community, get widely read and cited. My best cited paper - such a review article - is cites 15 times more than my second best cited paper, which is a regular article. We also write books (sometimes even textbooks) and contribute to encyclopedias. Cheers Yaroslav ___ 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] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
I've been looking over a lot of history articles and the tupical pattern in terms of edits is a bell-shaped curve with the peak around 2007. For a good example see Shakespeare http://toolserver.org/~tparis/articleinfo/index.php?article=William_Shakespearelang=enwiki=wikipedia look at the bar chart under year counts.. By Nov 2007 the surge of editing virtually ended. The article was then 83kb in length...it had a small burst of growth in late 2009 reaching 100k in June 2009; it is now 106k long. Basically the article was mostly finished in 2007, and has had little change in the last 3 years. With a couple minor exceptions the youngest source cited in the footnotes is 2006. The newest item in the bibliography is one book from 2007, I saw n=1 article in a scholarly journal (from 1969). Maybe it's ok for a college freshman but an English major so unaware of the recent scholarship would not get a good grade. The look at the contributors http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=enwikifam=.wikipedia.orggrouped=onpage=William_Shakespeare of the 9 editors with over 100 edits, only two have been active on this article in 2012 Shakespeare received 648,000 views in April 2012, compared to 585,000 in April 2010 and 575,000 in April 2008. As for the often heard fear that anyone can edit it, note that 1100 editors are watching over that article and are alerted to any changes. However none of them has added anything from the ton of scholarship that has appeared since 2006. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
On Thu, 03 May 2012 03:41:59 -0600, Richard Jensen wrote: JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. But is there smth in these publications which is not in the standard textbooks and should be necessarily cited for the general audience? Shakespeare is pretty well covered by textbooks, and from what I know there were no breakthroughs in the last 50 years at least. We can not put all the info in one article. Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:41 PM, Richard Jensen rjen...@uic.edu wrote: JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. They are not aware of the use of scholarly articles for use on Shakespeare's article or period? If period, there are many places where it would be unlikely that an article could be sourced well using scholarly texts. Think most biographies of living people. Think sports. (And if you're going to do sports, the best histories are found in books.) A lot of this changes from discipline to discipline, topic to topic. (MEDRS generally prohibits the use of citing primary source research on English Wikipedia for medical articles, so it would be inappropriate to do so.) In the case of Shakespeare, what of those 300 recent scholarly works do you think are seminal to put into the article? Are there any that would likely be problematic because of [[WP:FRINGE]]? The reasons why people don't use academic articles are more complicated than your simplistic comment would suggest. I spent about three hours crawling through a library looking for research related to Lauren Jackson and I can tell you none of the academic work would likely apply. I doubt you could source an article on it. -- twitter: purplepopple blog: ozziesport.com ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
De: Richard Jensen rjen...@uic.edu Para: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org CC: Enviado: Jueves 3 de Mayo de 2012 10:24 Asunto: Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like I've been looking over a lot of history articles and the tupical pattern in terms of edits is a bell-shaped curve with the peak around 2007. For a good example see Shakespeare http://toolserver.org/~tparis/articleinfo/index.php?article=William_Shakespearelang=enwiki=wikipedia look at the bar chart under year counts.. By Nov 2007 the surge of editing virtually ended. The article was then 83kb in length...it had a small burst of growth in late 2009 reaching 100k in June 2009; it is now 106k long. Basically the article was mostly finished in 2007, and has had little change in the last 3 years. With a couple minor exceptions the youngest source cited in the footnotes is 2006. The newest item in the bibliography is one book from 2007, I saw n=1 article in a scholarly journal (from 1969). Maybe it's ok for a college freshman but an English major so unaware of the recent scholarship would not get a good grade. Hi Richard. I think the example is quite interesting. There is a surprising pike of 1,250 edits in June 2007, and about 3,000 edits were added between May and October 2007. This made me think that there could be some possible causes behind this peculiar pattern. Indeed, I have found some organizational factors that we must consider to understand this case: 1. The effect of Wikiproject Shakespeare: It looks like it was founded in April 2007 [1] [2]. After we got ourselves organized, our first big project was bringing William Shakespeare to FA status (from interview published on Signpost). Thus, this is a good explanation for the febrile editing activity in subsequent months. 2. Apparently, it got FA status in August 2007 [3], and it showed up on the main page in October 2007 [4]. This can also explain the activity drop since then. 3. Yet another question is whether the fact that the article is currently semi-protected (and it is probably quite prone to vandalism, according to the high number of watchers) has some discouraging effect for new contributors. Please, note that there are still new editors joining WikiProject Shakespeare in 2012. Best, Felipe. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Shakespeare/Archive_4 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Shakespeare [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/William_Shakespeare [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:William_Shakespeare The look at the contributors http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=enwikifam=.wikipedia.orggrouped=onpage=William_Shakespeare of the 9 editors with over 100 edits, only two have been active on this article in 2012 Shakespeare received 648,000 views in April 2012, compared to 585,000 in April 2010 and 575,000 in April 2008. As for the often heard fear that anyone can edit it, note that 1100 editors are watching over that article and are alerted to any changes. However none of them has added anything from the ton of scholarship that has appeared since 2006. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l - Mensaje original - ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:41 AM, Richard Jensen rjen...@uic.edu wrote: JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. Not at all. Wikipedians are *very much* aware that these journals exist. They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down. They just now started letting people access content that is in the public domain! If as an academic, you see a problem where peer reviewed content is not cited in Wikipedia, I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work. Otherwise, you're complaining about a problem that Wikipedians do not have the power to fix, because academics tacitly support a system in which knowledge is kept in the hands of the few who can pay for it. -- Steven Walling https://wikimediafoundation.org/ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_JSTOR_access ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
This is an EXCELLENT email, Steven. +1 to it! Luca On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.orgwrote: On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:41 AM, Richard Jensen rjen...@uic.edu wrote: JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. Not at all. Wikipedians are *very much* aware that these journals exist. They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down. They just now started letting people access content that is in the public domain! If as an academic, you see a problem where peer reviewed content is not cited in Wikipedia, I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work. Otherwise, you're complaining about a problem that Wikipedians do not have the power to fix, because academics tacitly support a system in which knowledge is kept in the hands of the few who can pay for it. -- Steven Walling https://wikimediafoundation.org/ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_JSTOR_access ___ 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] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.orgwrote: They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down. A friend pointed out to me offlist that there is a slight error in my statement which merits correcting: JSTOR is not necessarily to blame here, since they are simply an archive, and have to fit in with how journal publishers license their content. So FWIW, the real solution probably starts with open access journals like those published by PLoS. Wikipedia could do a lot more to encourage use of the the open access content that already is available. -- Steven Walling https://wikimediafoundation.org/ ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
They are more than an archive. They impose a very hefty surcharge on their own account, beyond what they need pay for licensing the backfiles from the publishers. They spent the money very usefully in the past: they have scanned and archived hundreds of thousands of pages print journals at a time nobody else was doing it sand no electronic backfiles existed, themselves developing the technology. They continue to archive additional print publications--but since there are so many people prepared to use what is now a mature technology without charging anybody for it, perhaps this role is no longer essential. And making available backfiles that publishers have already digitized costs very little by comparison. But their publishers are by and large not profit-making commercial enterprises: they are primarily scholarly societies, some of them prosperous, but most very precariously funded themselves. On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:06 PM, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.org wrote: They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down. A friend pointed out to me offlist that there is a slight error in my statement which merits correcting: JSTOR is not necessarily to blame here, since they are simply an archive, and have to fit in with how journal publishers license their content. So FWIW, the real solution probably starts with open access journals like those published by PLoS. Wikipedia could do a lot more to encourage use of the the open access content that already is available. -- Steven Walling https://wikimediafoundation.org/ ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
