Wikipedia for Researchers talk, as given at the British Library. The first part covers Wikipedia as a resource for researchers, looking at how it works, how to judge the reliability of content, and how to use Wikipedia as a starting point to access other resources. The second part looks at how Wikipedia is used by researchers as a subject or a corpus, and gives an overview of the kinds of research being done on Wikipedia.

1. Wikipedia for Researchers
Andrew Gray – Wikipedian in Residence
andrew.gray@bl.uk / @generalising

2. About Wikipedia & Wikimedia
 Wikimedia
 Movement and charitable body
 80,000 contributors in 280 languages and
eleven core projects
 Image repository, dictionary, news site…
 …read by 7% of the world!
 Wikipedia
 19,000,000 articles, 4,000,000 in English
 6,500 articles and 235,000 edits per day
(…and ten years ago, this was all fields…)
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3. …so what is Wikipedia?
 …an encyclopedia
 …written neutrally and verifiably
 …using previously published information
 …free to use, distribute, or reuse
 …a collaborative community
 …with no firm rules
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4. Internal processes
 All edits are visible through watchlists and page histories
 About 7% are vandalism or malicious; processes to detect
these
 Median time to correction < 2 minutes… but some stay much
longer
 Individual discussion pages for all articles – “talk”
 Quality review and assessment process
 Specialised “wikiproject” working groups and central noticeboards
 eg/ content topics; style; dispute resolution; copyright; etc.
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5. Quality of Wikipedia
 On average… it’s not bad
 In 2005 four errors per article, versus three in Britannica
 In 2011, in English, Spanish & Arabic:
“…the Wikipedia articles in this sample scored higher overall than the
comparison articles with respect to accuracy, references, style/
readability and overall judgment…”
 Millions of articles – so many are, individually, problematic
 Various ways of identifying “signs” of quality
 Markers for quality are both obvious and subtle
 Very effective “springboard” tool
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6. Looking for quality
 Corner icons
 - article locked down in some way
 - featured or “good” quality
 Problem tags
 Article talk pages and histories
 Style
 Badly written or formatted articles = often neglected
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7. Accessing other content
 Structured categories and navigational templates
 “What links here”
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8. Moving on to other content
 Other languages – not translations, and may have more content
 Mousing over footnote markers
 Within the references:
 Links through DOIs and other identifiers
 ISBNs go to a special landing page
 …and then out to libraries, booksellers, etc
 ISSNs go to WorldCat
 If an author, look for authority control links:
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9. Preferences
 Available to logged in users
 Two particularly useful options:
 New window for external links (Gadgets > Browsing)
 Quality assessment in headers (Gadgets > Appearance)
 Many others - mostly editor-oriented tools
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10. Looking for sets of material
 Some tools available – http://www.toolserver.org
 Complex to use, but rewarding
 CatScan: look for intersection of categories
 “all physicists born in 1912” – 51 in English, 34 in German
 Full dumps of all data available – http://dumps.wikipedia.org
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11. Research about Wikipedia
 Thriving research around Wikipedia community & content
 by mid-2011, 2100 peer-reviewed articles and 38 PhD theses
 Active research committee and WMF support
 Regular report - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter
 also @wikiresearch
 Major themes include:
 Community and content creation
 Reading and researching by users
 Quality of content
 Technical research
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12. Research on communities
 Research on the Wikipedia communities:
 Dynamics of community conflict, discussions, collaboration,
voting, contribution, mentoring…
 Demographics, motivation and specialisms of contributors
 Patterns of growth and content creation/deletion
 Effect of central programs on volunteer activity
 Cross-cultural interaction
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13. Research on users
 Research on usage of Wikipedia:
 Specific searching behaviour
 Patterns of usage (yearly, daily)
 Tracking external events (eg swine flu) through Wikipedia
 Search engine rankings
 Change in usage by students
 Effect of Wikipedia publication on wider literature
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14. Research on content
 Research on the content of Wikipedia:
 Evolution of content
 Accuracy, coverage and quality
 Biases – geographic, cultural, gender
 Linguistic analysis
 Visualisations of content
 Effect of external publications on Wikipedia
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15. Research on technical aspects
 Research on the technical side of Wikipedia:
 Extensive work on scaling open-content services
 Tools for detecting and handling vandalism
 Algorithmic detection and identification of bias, spam
 Practical research on uses of wikis
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16. Research example – visualising art history
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiarthistory.png
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17. Research example – visualising editing patterns
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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiTrip_egyptian_revolution_screenshot.png

18. Research example – editor activity
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Effect_of_barnstars_on_productivity.png
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