Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
Yes there is some data on templating in a research paper somewhere, and some more on a/b template runs. But the solution is not trivial. I have stuck up for a few editors who appear to be children, suggesting that we treat them a little more gently, only to be told that they are in fact trolls, pretending to be children, pretending to create obvious socks... When I joined Wikipedia I was constantly being surprised (and delighted) by the unwillingness to block, the willingness to unblock, the IAR ethos when something did something obviously good that broke a rule. I get the feeling that many admins still have the same /attitude/ they are just to weary to AGF. UNblock is pretty much always standard offer or nothing - even people who say I see what I did was wrong but.. end up with their talk page access removed, or giving up. This is not about the vandalism only accounts, this is people who do something stupid, and something in good faith, or make a mistake. They may well not be ready to edit for a few years, but we are building up a resentment about Wikipedia that is visible in every comments section of every article about Wikipedia I tired to edit once and it got reverted. Of course there will always be some who won't engage with discussion, but fundamentally we should be able to engage these people, rather than alienate them. On 03/01/2013 10:01, Thomas Morton wrote: It might help; often it is surprising how statistical analysis can help narrow the focus of such efforts. For example; it is taken as a given that incivility drives away new users, but do we have hard statistical evidence to back that up? And if that is a true situation, can we identify specifically what uncivil things are driving the most editors away (rudeness, templating, etc.). Although please lets do it without words like big data, which makes me squirm :P Tom ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
2013/1/3 Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org: On 03/01/13 16:09, George Herbert wrote: Laugh all you want, but the best man at my wedding's scalable P2P in the cloud company was acquired by Adobe, then he was poached by Skype who were poached by Microsoft, and now he's a Very Senior Architect spending most of his time flying around the world to far-flung offices, architecting and implementing scalable P2P in the cloud. Flying sucks. Time spent flying should be a measure of failure, not success. Anyway, I wouldn't go so far as to deny the existence of petabyte-sized data sets, or to deny that some organisations derive value from being able to pass them through CPUs in a reasonable amount of time. I merely question the value of a mailing list post that says hey, big data, we should do that. Which is not, as far as I understood, what Pine said. I read Hey, big data, cool topic, interesting articles for who may be interested follow. No action needed. So what's the point of all this sarcasm? (note: rhetoric question, you should not need to answer this). We all know that our problems lie elsewhere, and as far as I am concerned I think that the topic of Wikimedia and Big Data is only a great opportunity for anyone who is interested. That said, Pine, thank you for the interesting reading. Cristian ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
On Jan 3, 2013 11:01 AM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: On 3 January 2013 06:38, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: You don't need big data to see what needs to be done. It might help; often it is surprising how statistical analysis can help narrow the focus of such efforts. For example; it is taken as a given that incivility drives away new users, but do we have hard statistical evidence to back that up? We don't even have a proper working definition of civilty, stats of how many times and how early in their editing life someone has been uncivil to would be hard to come by. And if that is a true situation, can we identify specifically what uncivil things are driving the most editors away (rudeness, templating, etc.). Editor retention programmes have some data there. Check wp:wer on en.wiki. how the data for the other projects match up I don't know. Although please lets do it without words like big data, which makes me squirm :P Can we make use of big microdata for future projects? Tom ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
On 02/01/13 09:33, ENWP Pine wrote: Hi Pine, It might be because of the alcohol I've ingested these last days, but - what are you proposing exactly? Hapy new year, strainu I wasn't proposing any specific action. I was thinking, Big Data is a cool topic, it's a big topic in its own right, it's relevant to several aspects of Wikimedia, and other people might be interested in reading about it or thinking about it in relation to work that they're doing or priorities that they have. Maybe Wikimedia should have some sort of Buzzword Compliance Officer to manage this sort of thing. You know, scalable P2P in the cloud, mining big data on a NoSQL platform etc. etc. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 8:16 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 02/01/13 09:33, ENWP Pine wrote: Hi Pine, It might be because of the alcohol I've ingested these last days, but - what are you proposing exactly? Hapy new year, strainu I wasn't proposing any specific action. I was thinking, Big Data is a cool topic, it's a big topic in its own right, it's relevant to several aspects of Wikimedia, and other people might be interested in reading about it or thinking about it in relation to work that they're doing or priorities that they have. Maybe Wikimedia should have some sort of Buzzword Compliance Officer to manage this sort of thing. You know, scalable P2P in the cloud, mining big data on a NoSQL platform etc. etc. -- Tim Starling Laugh all you want, but the best man at my wedding's scalable P2P in the cloud company was acquired by Adobe, then he was poached by Skype who were poached by Microsoft, and now he's a Very Senior Architect spending most of his time flying around the world to far-flung offices, architecting and implementing scalable P2P in the cloud. And a recent company coworker was hired to mine big data on a NoSQL platform as part of the data analysis team of Obama's reelection campaign. That is not to say we aren't all getting a good laugh at the current round of fully-buzzword-compliant press articles with the new year, or have fun watching trunk friends stagger around yelling Fully virtualized big data SAAS in the cloud!. 8-) -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
Yes. Big data is neither the problem nor the solution here. George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone On Jan 2, 2013, at 10:38 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 03/01/13 16:09, George Herbert wrote: Laugh all you want, but the best man at my wedding's scalable P2P in the cloud company was acquired by Adobe, then he was poached by Skype who were poached by Microsoft, and now he's a Very Senior Architect spending most of his time flying around the world to far-flung offices, architecting and implementing scalable P2P in the cloud. Flying sucks. Time spent flying should be a measure of failure, not success. Anyway, I wouldn't go so far as to deny the existence of petabyte-sized data sets, or to deny that some organisations derive value from being able to pass them through CPUs in a reasonable amount of time. I merely question the value of a mailing list post that says hey, big data, we should do that. Wikipedia's problems are obvious and severe: * Incivility by established users towards new users * Capture of articles by self-appointed owners * Sneaky vandalism and misinformation If you look at the comments section of any online news article about Wikipedia, you will see these valid criticisms repeated over and over as reasons why people have stopped contributing to Wikipedia or refuse to start. The number of active (5 edits/mo) contributors has declined from 13000 in January 2007 to 5900 in October 2012. You don't need big data to see what needs to be done. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:19:25 +0200 From: Strainu strain...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org, wiki-researc...@lists.wikimedia.org wiki-researc...@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices) Message-ID: CAC9meR+Ap=3pn5jn4yadjmagzsnblntw8iqrmjksupgr5nm...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Hi Pine, It might be because of the alcohol I've ingested these last days, but - what are you proposing exactly? Hapy new year, strainu I wasn't proposing any specific action. I was thinking, Big Data is a cool topic, it's a big topic in its own right, it's relevant to several aspects of Wikimedia, and other people might be interested in reading about it or thinking about it in relation to work that they're doing or priorities that they have. Happy new year, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
Hi Pine, It might be because of the alcohol I've ingested these last days, but - what are you proposing exactly? Hapy new year, strainu 2012/12/30, ENWP Pine deyntest...@hotmail.com: I'm sending this to Wikimedia-l, Wikitech-l, and Research-l in case other people in the Wikimedia movement or staff are interested in big data as it relates to Wikimedia. I hope that those who are interested in discussions about WMF editor engagement efforts, WMF fundraising, or WMF HR practices will also find that this email interests them. Feel free to skip straight to the links in the latter portion of this email if you're already familiar with big data and its analysis and if you just want to see what other people are writing about the subject. * Introductory comments / my personal opinion Big data refers to large quantities of information that are so large that they are difficult to analyze and may not be related internally in an obvious way. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data I think that most of us would agree that moving much of an organization's information into the Cloud, and/or directing people to analyze massive quantities of information, will not automatically result in better, or even good, decisions based on that information. Also, I think that most of us would agree that bigger and/or more accessible quantities of data does not necessarily imply that the data are more accurate or more relevant for a particular purpose. Another concern is the possibility of unwelcome intrusions into sensitive information, including the possibility of data breaches; imagine the possible consequences if a hacker broke into supposedly secure databases held by Facebook or the Securities and Exchange Commission. We have an enormous quantity of data on Wikimedia projects, and many ways that we can examine those data. As this Dilbert strip points out, context is important, and looking at statistics devoid of their larger contexts can be problematic. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-02-07/ Since data analysis is also something that Wikipedia does in the areas I mentioned previously, I'm passing along a few links for those who may be interested about the benefits and limitations of big data. * Links: From the Harvard Business Review http://hbr.org/2012/04/good-data-wont-guarantee-good-decisions/ar/1 From the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/technology/big-data-is-great-but-dont-forget-intuition.html and https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html From the Wall Street Journal. This may be especially interesting to those who are participating in the discussions on Wikimedia-l regarding how Wikimedia selects, pays, and manages its staff. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1872396390443890304578006252019616768.html And from English Wikipedia (: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence Cheers, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
