Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle5

Some researchers at the University of Washington have expressed interest in helping organize this meetup (e.g. (1) and (2)) (disclosure: some of those are the ones putting together this initial page!). It would be fun to have a better community to research connection in the area.

Summary
Nearly everyone made it, not only those who said they would, but Eclecticology came down from Canada as well. (We should probably consider having another meetup on a Saturday for those for whom that works better.) The food was good and the restaurant pleasant, although with a bit of noise (including live music) it wasn't always easy to hear every conversation. I'll try to summarize the discussions I participated in and others are free to add their own thoughts.

In terms of study, Wikipedia is sometimes approached from the social network perspective, but researchers may instead focus more on sites that are explicitly social networks. Being task-oriented with the emphasis on developing an encyclopedia, the social aspect is not Wikipedia's primary focus and it doesn't readily collect or neatly assemble data about the social connections. Instead they are free-form and develop from interaction on talk pages and the like. It might be an interesting phenomenon to look at from a sociology or anthropology perspective, but nearly all the work so far has been from computer scientists and cross-disciplinary connections would be needed.

Among computer scientists, there are essentially two major approaches to research involving Wikipedia. One is this social network and/or graph, while the other emphasis is on development of artificial intelligence, using Wikipedia information to improve computer linguistic and data analysis. Examples of this include Powerset and Freebase. The two fields are fairly specialized and don't overlap that much. Maybe the closest example where they might intersect is building on Luca de Alfaro's text-coloring analysis of Wikipedia reliability. This has a social element in that it looks to the reputation of individual authors in assessing the value of a chunk of text, but ratings of that text could also be used for the benefit of AI-like applications.

I talked a little with those around me about the work of the Wikimedia board, although I avoided saying much about my preferences in the board elections. We did have one of the candidates (Eclecticology) attending, though, and he and I mentioned the challenge of being diligent in answering the many questions posed during the course of an election. Not everyone had voted yet, and in fact a few of those attending did not have enough edits to be eligible to vote. That's unfortunate, and for me it speaks to the importance of finding alternative ways for people in the community to participate in selecting the board. I explained briefly the rationale for designating two seats for selection by chapters, and the background history of membership in the foundation, with chapters needing to feel more involved in things and also providing another avenue for individual membership of some kind.

We also discussed dispute resolution and some of the challenges involved in naming articles (Myanmar/Burma and other political conflicts, different capitalization practices for different specialties in zoology). The relationship between language as it is used in the media and Wikipedia is interesting. With a question like whether waterboarding is torture, sometimes one view may become the prevailing approach, or we may have to retreat to describing "X said Y" while "A believes Z." The same debates and negotiations are taking place in newsrooms and between different media sources. On occasion, Wikipedia may be a little ahead of them in determining what the predominant view is, at other times it lags slightly behind, but typically it ends up in the same place the broader media does.

That covers a fair amount of what I remember, although it can't be everything, others are welcome to fill in gaps. And with all of us there, I'm sure there was a lot talked about that I wasn't in on. --Michael Snow (talk) 23:05, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I was involved in a few other conversations. In one of these, we discussed the utility of self expression on user pages. Whether userboxes are generally helpful for first-time interactions with other users for example. The utility of babel userboxes is clear, but when it comes to self described political views, we decided that it depends on how the user interprets the AGF policy and whether relevant personal information can be correctly contextualized in a discussion.

In another conversation with TeaDrinker and Leafman we discussed various topics related to the wiki-technology. Such as showing visitors different views of a page to understand what factors might impact anonymous contributions. We decided that a controlled experiment would be very challenging to carry out as the pages would dynamically change due to editing. There were a few other conversations motivated by other research-related topics such as performing appropriate sampling in a power law distribution (exhibited by almost every Wikipedia dynamic). Maybe someone else remembers the details. Bestchai (talk) 02:13, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Date / Place
Date: Thurs. 19 June 2008 730pm

Location: Thaiku, reservation under 'Wikipedia'

Agenda
Here is a loose meetup agenda.

Introductions

Wikipedia & academic community
 * what are appropriate ways for researchers to engage with the community?
 * statistical sampling?
 * foundation sponsoring?
 * what are some possible collaborations?

General community concerns Enhancements to wiki technology
 * member retention
 * keeping good editors around (TeaDrinker)
 * why do people stop contributing?
 * what are the effects of efforts such as mentoring, giving out barnstars, etc.
 * state of dispute resolution
 * work in wikipedia
 * what are some of the more time consuming activities?
 * unseen, unrecognized work
 * the place of self-expression in wikipedia
 * future of wikiprojects
 * stabilization of edits & contributors
 * limitations of wiki technology
 * flagged revisions
 * structured approaches to dispute resolution
 * text coloring based on text longevity & author reputation
 * reputation systems more generally?

Events
 * Wikimania
 * Local Wikipedia Academy event?
 * Organizing Seattle/ regional Wikimedia chapter?

Confirmed/probable attendees

 * : I'll try. This is short notice. Is there an agenda? I don't see one here beyond the fact that some researchers want to talk to us.
 * likely
 * : I'll try. This is short notice. Is there an agenda? I don't see one here beyond the fact that some researchers want to talk to us.
 * likely
 * : I'll try. This is short notice. Is there an agenda? I don't see one here beyond the fact that some researchers want to talk to us.
 * likely
 * : I'll try. This is short notice. Is there an agenda? I don't see one here beyond the fact that some researchers want to talk to us.
 * likely
 * likely
 * likely

People who want to come to a meetup but cannot make June 19 at 730

 * Really bad date. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
 * Ditto. A Saturday would work better. (Last one I attended, entire day was consumed with driving up to Seattle, meeting, having dinner with folks, then driving back.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:59, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * This isn't a good month for me, period, but even if it were, yes--weekends are better. --Lukobe (talk) 04:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Saturdays work better for me too. I have the same problem as Llywrch, but coming from the other direction.  If there's no date choice, at least let it be someplace where we can have dinner. Eclecticology (talk) 23:18, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll stop by if I can, but it turns out I may not be able to make it after all.

Previous Seattle meetups
1 2 3 4