Yes I totally agree that "importance is a relative metric rather than absolute." I also agree that incoming links and pageviews are not accurate measurements of "importance" for all of the reasons you mention. However, we are still a project that is actively exploring the universe of knowledge, and leaning heavily on academia and other established sources we must "boldly go where no man has gone before" (and please feel free to insert "white, euro-centric" before the man part). So do you have any suggestions what we could measure going forward that would cough up some interesting stats to monitor? Pagewatching is useful , but problematic because these are only assigned at page-creation, while some marginal editor interest might be expanded to whole categories (speaking as someone who has thousands of pages watchlisted on multiple projects). I like your thoughts about looking for key articles such as those used as the "article as the "main" article for a category or as the title of a navbox ". I am looking for similar usages of paintings as a way to find popular painters or paintings rather than just those paintings which have articles written about them (which are often written for totally random reasons such as theft/sale/wikiproject).
On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 5:39 AM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raym...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just a few musings on the issue of Importance and how to research it ... > > I agree it is intuitive that importance is likely to be linked to > pageviews and inbound links but, as the preliminary experiment showed, it's > probably not that simple. > > Pageviews tells us something about importance to readers of Wikipedia, > while inbound links tells us something about importance to writers of > Wikipedia, and I suspect that writers are not a proxy for readers as the > editor surveys suggest that Wikipedia writers are not typical of broader > society on at least two variables: gender and level of education (might be > others, I can't remember). > > But I think importance is a relative metric rather than absolute. I think > by taking the mean value of importance across a number of WikiProjects in > the preliminary experiment may have lost something because it tried > (through averaging) to look at importance "generally". I would suspect > conducting an experiment considering only the importance ratings wrt to a > single WikiProject would be more likely to show correlation with pageviews > (wrt to other articles in that same WikiProject) and inbound links. And I > think there are two kinds of inbound links to be considered, those coming > from other articles within the same WikiProject and those coming from > outside that Wikiproject. I suspect different insights will be obtained by > looking at both types of inbound links separately rather than treating them > as an aggregate. I note also that WikiProjects are not entirely independent > of one another but have relationships between them. For example, The > WikiProject Australian Roads describes itself as an "intersection" (ha ha!) > of WikiProject Highways and WikiProject Australia, so I expect that we > would find greater correlation in importance between related WikiProjects > than between unrelated WikiProjects. > > When thinking about readers and pageviews, I think we have to ask > ourselves is there a difference between popularity and importance. Or > whether popularity *is* importance. I sense that, as a group of educated > people, those of us reading this research mailing list probably do think > there is a difference. Certainly if there is no difference, then this > research can stop now -- just judge importance by pageviews. Let's assume > a difference then. When looking at pageviews of an article, they are not > always consistent over time. Here are the pageviews for Drottninggatan > > https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en. > wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&range= > latest-90&pages=Drottninggatan > > Why so interesting on 8 April? A terrorist attack occurred there. This > spike in pageviews occurs all the time when some topic is in the news (even > peripherally as in this case where it is not the article about the > terrorist attack but about the street in which it occurred). Did the street > become more "important"? I think it became more interesting but not more > important. So I think we do have to be careful to understand that pageviews > probably reflect interest rather than importance. I note that The > Chainsmokers (a music group with a number of songs in the current USA music > charts) gets many more Wikipedia article pageviews than the Wikipedia > article on Pasteurization but The Chainsmokers are not rated as being of > high importance by the relevant WikiProjects while Pasteurization is very > important in WikiProject Food and Drink. Since pasteurisation prevents a > lot of deaths, I think we might agree that in the real world pasteurisation > is more important than a music group regardless of what pageviews tell us. > > https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en. > wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&range=latest-90&pages=The_ > Chainsmokers|Pasteurization > > Of course it is matters for Wikipedia's success that our *popular* > articles are of high quality, but I think we have be cautious about > pageviews being a proxy for importance. > > When we look at Wikipedia writers' decisions in tagging the importance of > articles to WikiProjects, what do we find? As we know, project tags are > often placed on new articles (and often not subsequently reviewed). So > while I find that quality tags are often out-of-date, the importance seems > to be pretty accurate even on a new stub articles. This is because it is > the importance of the *topic* that is being assessed which is independent > of the Wikipedia article itself. Provided the article is clear enough about > what it is about and why it matters (which is the traditional content of > that first paragraph or two and failing to provide it will likely result in > speedy deletion of the new article), assessment of the topic's importance > can be made even at new stub level. This tells us that importance for > Wikipedia writers is determined by something outside of Wikipedia (probably > their real-world knowledge of that topic space -- one assumes that project > taggers are quite interested in the topic space of that project). While > article quality hopefully improves over time, I would be surprised if > article importance greatly changed over time. Obviously there are > counter-examples. I am guessing Donald Trump's article may have grown in > importance over time but that's probably because his lede para changed. > Adding President of the USA into the lede paragraph makes him much more > important than he was before in the real world and internal to Wikipedia he > has acquired an inbound link from the presumably high-importance President > of the USA article. So I think it might be interesting to study those > articles whose importance does change over time to see if there are any > strong correlations with what is happening to the article inside Wikipedia. > I think it is this set of importance-changing articles may be where we > really learn what Wikipedia article characteristics are strongly correlated > to "importance" given that importance itself appears to be pretty stable > for most articles. > > Although not stated explicitly, I imagine we believe that generally less > important articles tend to link to more important articles but more > important articles don't link to less important articles. And hence > in-bound links are likely to matter in assessing importance and that > in-bound links from "important" articles are more valuable than in-bound > links from less important articles (which creates something of a > bootstrapping problem) similar to the issue to Google's PageRank > algorithms. But I think we do have some information that Google doesn't > have. The average webpage does not have a lede paragraph that situates the > topic relative to other topics; a Wikipedia article does. If I have to > choose to define Thing X in terms of Thing Y, it tends to suggest that Y is > more important than X. If Y also defines itself in terms of X, then it > tends to suggest they are equivalent in importance at some way. Indeed I > suspect when we get to the VERY IMPORTANT topics we will see this kind of > circular definition (e.g. you see circular definitions in Wikipedia around > Philosophy and Knowledge). Aside, if you have never done this before, try > this experiment. Choose a random article (left hand tool bar in Desktop > Wikipedia), then click the first link in the article that matters (i.e. > ignore links hatnotes or links inside parentheses). Repeat this first link > clicking and sooner or later you will reach articles like Knowledge and > Philosophy, which all sit inside circular definition groups. > > If we look at the Donald Trump article, his first sentence contains only > two links, one to List of Presidents of the USA and the other to President > of the USA. If we look at the those two articles, we find that both of them > mention Donald Trump in their lede paras (although not as early as the > first sentence) and before mentions of any other US President elsewhere in > the article. Which is consistent with what we know about the real world, > the role of the President is more important than its officeholders and that > the current officeholder has more importance than a past officeholder. So > topic importance does seems to be skewed towards the "present day". > > So I suspect the links in the lede paras are of greater relevance to the > assessment of importance than links further down in the article which will > be more likely relate to details of a topic and may include examples and > counter-examples (this is a way in which high importance article may > mention much lower importance articles). However, we do have to be a little > bit careful here because of the MoS practice of not linking very common > terms. For example, an Australian article will often refer to Australia in > the lede para but it will almost certainly not be linked to the Australia > article (and any attempt to add such a link will likely see it removed with > an edit summary that mentions [[WP:Overlinking]]) whereas there is no > problem if you link to an Australian state article, e.g. New South Wales. > So we might find that some very important topics that often appear in ledes > might get fewer links that you might expect because of the MoS policies on > overlinking, which may be problem when working with inbound links. It may > be that for "very common topics" the presence of the article title (or its > synonyms) in the lede may have to be considered as if it were an in-bound > link for statistical research purposes. > > Given all of the above, perhaps the most interesting group of articles to > study in Wikipedia are those articles whose manually-assessed importance > has changed over the life of the article AND which were NOT current topics > in the lifetime of Wikipedia (given the influence of "current" on > importance). But having said that, I wonder if that group of articles > actually exists. Recently a newish Australian contributor expressed > disappointment that all the new articles they had created were tagged (by > others) as of Low Importance. My instinctive reply was "that's normal, I > think of the thousands of articles I have started only a couple even rated > as Mid importance, this is because the really important articles were all > started long ago precisely because they were important". I suspect topics > that are very important (for reasons other than being short-lived > importance due in being "current" in the lifetime of Wikipedia) will > generally show up as having started early in Wikipedia's life and that > those that become more/less important over time will be largely linked to > becoming or ceasing to be "current" topics). E.g. article Pasteurization > started in May 2001 saying nothing more than " Pasteurization is the > process of killing off bacteria in milk by quickly heating it to a near > boiling temperature, then quickly cooling it again before the taste and > other desirable properties are affected. The process was named after its > inventor, French scientist Louis Pasteur. See also dairy products." The > links in this very first version are still present in its lede paragraph > today, suggesting our understanding of "non-current" topics is stable and > hence initial importance determinations can probably be accurately made. > For Pasteurization the Talk page shows it was not project-tagged until 2007 > when it was assigned High Importance as its first assessment. > > I suspect we will find that initial manual assessment of article > importance will be pretty accurate for most articles. And I suspect if we > plot initial importance assessments against time of assessment, we will > find the higher importance articles commenced life on Wikipedia earlier > than the lower importance articles. If I am correct, then there isn't a lot > of value in machine-assessment of importance of topics because it relates > to factors external to Wikipedia and often does not change over time and > therefore can often be correctly assessed manually even on new stub > articles (and any unassessed articles can probably be rated as Low > Importance as statistically that's almost certainly going to be correct). > If a topic becomes more important due to "current" events, then invariably > that article will be updated by many people and one of them will sooner or > later manually adjust its importance. What is less likely to happen is > re-assessing downwards of Importance when an important "current" topic > loses its importance when it is no longer current, e.g. are former American > presidents like Barack Obama or George W Bush or further back less > important now? These articles will not be updated frequently once the topic > is no longer in the news and therefore it is less likely an editor will > notice and manually downgrade the importance, so there may be a greater > role for machine-assessment in downgrading importance rather than upgrading > importance. > > Another area where there might be a role for machine-assessed importance > in regards to POV-pushing where an POV-motivated editor might change the > manual-assessment importance of articles to be higher or lower based on > their POV (e.g. my political party is Top Importance, other parties are of > Low Importance). I suspect that often a page watcher would correct or at > least question that kind of re-assessment. However, articles with few > active pagewatchers you might get away with POV-pushing the article's > importance tag because nobody noticed. In this situation, a machine > assessment could be useful in spotting this kind of thing. > > This suggests that another metric of interest to importance might be > number of pagewatchers, although I suspect that pagewatching may relate > more to caring about the article than to caring about the topic. And one > has to be careful to distinguish active pagewatchers (those who actually do > review changes on their watchlists) from those who don't, as that may make > a difference (although I am not sure we can really tell which pagewatchers > are truly actively reviewing as a "satisfactory review" doesn't leave a > trace whereas an "unsatisfactory" review is likely to lead to a relatively > soon revert or some other change to the article, the article Talk or the > User Talk of reviewed contributor which may be detectable). > > The other aspect of articles that occurs to me as being possibly linked to > importance of the topic would be use of the article as the "main" article > for a category or as the title of a navbox (as it suggests that the > articles in the category or navbox are in some way subordinate to the > main/title article). Similarly for list articles, the "type" of the list is > often more important than its instances). > > Kerry > > -----Original Message----- > From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] > On Behalf Of Morten Wang > Sent: Friday, 21 April 2017 6:04 AM > To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities < > wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Project exploring automated classification > of article importance > > Hi Pine, > > These are great pointers to existing practices on enwiki, some of which > I've been looking for and/or missed, thanks! > > > Cheers, > Morten > > On 19 April 2017 at 22:35, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi Nettrom, > > > > A few resources from English Wikipedia regarding article importance as > > ranked by humans: > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_ > > Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Priority_of_topic > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_assessment#Statist > > ics > > > > I infer from the ENWP Wikicup's scoring protocol that for purposes of > > the competition, an article's "importance" is loosely inferred from > > the number of language editions of Wikipedia in which the article > appears: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring#Bonus_points. > > > > HTH, > > > > Pine > > > > > > On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Morten Wang <nett...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > Hello everyone, > > > > > > I am currently working with Aaron Halfaker and Dario Taraborelli at > > > the Wikimedia Foundation on a project exploring automated > > > classification of article importance. Our goal is to characterize > > > the importance of an article within a given context and design a > > > system to predict a relative importance rank. We have a project page > > > on meta[1] and welcome comments > > or > > > thoughts on our talk page. You can of course also respond here on > > > wiki-research-l, or send me an email. > > > > > > Before moving on to model-building I did a fairly thorough > > > literature review, finding a myriad of papers spanning several > > > disciplines. We have > > a > > > draft literature review also up on meta[2], which should give you a > > > reasonable introduction to the topic. Again, comments or thoughts (e.g. > > > papers we’ve missed) on the talk page, mailing list, or through > > > email are welcome. > > > > > > Links: > > > > > > 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Automated_ > > > classification_of_article_importance > > > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Automated_ > > > classification_of_article_importance> > > > 2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Studies_of_Importance > > > > > > Regards, > > > Morten > > > [[User:Nettrom]] aka [[User:SuggestBot]] > > > _______________________________________________ > > > 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 > > > _______________________________________________ > 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
