Hi Martin, Regarding the concept of readability, the Knowledge Gap Taxonomy[1] uses the term very broadly. The Taxonomy has readability as one of only one of three components of “Accessibility”, and says that readability is about "Barriers for accessing or consuming information originating from content.” The gap addresses the important issue that some Wikipedia articles are difficult for their target audience to understand.
I’m not super-familiar with the scholarship around readability, but the concept has come up in some discussions that I’ve been in recently. It seems that scholars tend to use a more narrow definition of readability, e.g. "Readability is the extent to which each sentence reads naturally, while comprehensibility is the extent to which the text as a whole is easy to understand.”[2] I’m not here to criticize the Taxonomy, but what it labels readability is what some researchers might call either text comprehensibiity or understandability. Readability is one of several factors that influence whether a reader will understand a piece of text.[3] To quantify progress in filling the relevant knowledge gap, research that looks at understandability holistically would be needed. References: 1) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/The_Knowledge_Gaps_Taxonomy_Summary-and-Motivation.pdf , p. 4 2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5998532/#bibr11-8755122517706978 3) https://www.ajol.info/index.php/spl/article/view/151787/141398 Cheers, Su-Laine (Wikipedia volunteer) > On Feb 15, 2023, at 6:57 AM, Martin Gerlach <mgerl...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > > Hi Samuel, > thanks for your interest in this project. > Following up on your question, I want to share some additional background: > This work is part of our updated research roadmap to address knowledge gaps > [1], specifically, developing methods to measure different knowledge gaps > [2]. We have identified readability as one of the gaps in the taxonomy of > knowledge gaps [3]. However, we currently do not have the tools to > systematically measure readability of Wikipedia articles across languages. > Therefore, we would like to develop and validate a multilingual approach to > measuring readability. Furthermore, the community wishlist from the > previous year contained a proposal for a tool to surface readability scores > [4]; while acknowledging that this is a difficult task to scale to all > languages in Wikipedia. > Let me know if you have further comments, suggestions, or questions -- > happy to discuss in more detail. > Best, > Martin > > > [1] > https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/04/21/a-new-research-roadmap-for-addressing-knowledge-gaps/ > [2] > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_3_Years_On#Measure_Knowledge_Gaps > [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_Index/Taxonomy > [4] > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Bots_and_gadgets/Readability_scores_gadget > > > On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 10:50 PM Samuel Klein <meta...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Fantastic. What a great teamn to work with. >> >> We definitely need multiple reading-levels for articles, which involves >> some namespace & interface magic, and new norm settings around what is >> possible. Only a few language projects have managed to bolt this onto the >> side of MediaWiki (though they include some excellent successes imo). >> Where does that fit into the research-practice-MW-WP roadmap? >> >> SJ >> >> On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 12:13 PM Martin Gerlach <mgerl...@wikimedia.org> >> wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> The Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation has officially started a >> new >>> Formal Collaboration [1] with Indira Sen, Katrin Weller, and Mareike >>> Wieland from GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences to work >>> collaboratively on understanding perception of readability in Wikipedia >> [2] >>> as part of the Addressing Knowledge Gaps Program [3]. We are thankful to >>> them for agreeing to spend their time and expertise on this project in >> the >>> coming year. >>> >>> Here are a few pieces of information about this collaboration that we >> would >>> like to share with you: >>> * We aim to keep the research documentation for this project in the >>> corresponding research page on meta [2]. >>> * Research tasks are hard to break down and track in task-tracking >> systems. >>> This being said, the page on meta is linked to an Epic level Phabricator >>> task and all tasks related to this project that can be captured on >>> Phabricator will be captured under here [4]. >>> * I act as the point of contact for this research in the Wikimedia >>> Foundation. Please feel free to reach out to me (directly, if it cannot >> be >>> shared publicly) if you have comments or questions about the project. >>> >>> Best, >>> Martin >>> >>> [1] >>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations >>> [2] >>> >>> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Understanding_perception_of_readability_in_Wikipedia >>> [3] https://research.wikimedia.org/knowledge-gaps.html >>> [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T325815 >>> >>> -- >>> Martin Gerlach (he/him) | Senior Research Scientist | Wikimedia >> Foundation >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wiki-research-l mailing list -- wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> To unsubscribe send an email to >> wiki-research-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org >>> >> >> >> -- >> Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 >> _______________________________________________ >> Wiki-research-l mailing list -- wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> To unsubscribe send an email to wiki-research-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org >> > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list -- wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wiki-research-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list -- wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wiki-research-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
