For those who couldn’t attend Wikimania, the annual international Wikimedia conference, this panel of top contributors to the wiki community reviews some of the latest developments, lessons learned, and what to expect from Wikimedia in the future.
Adina Levin of SocialText leads a panel that includes Wikimedia executives and other noted wiki experts as they share highlights from Wikimania 2009. The panelists discuss a project that would allow Wikimedia to be more usable for contributers, opportunities to help Wikimedia move forward, and the latest wiki trends.
Yahoo!'s Micah Alpern describes the culture of Wikimania. Sue Gardner, Wikimedia's executive director, covers the foundations priorities and projects. Ed Chi of PARC summarizes his much-discussed research on the slowing growth of Wikipedia, with data, models, and possible explanations. Naoko Komura shows off the achievements of Wikimedia's Usability Project and describes its future plans. Jack Herrick of wikiHow describes his company's efforts to increase contributions to wikis.
The broad wiki community is strong, productive, and inventive, and our panelists are a few of the people who help make it a success. Whether you use wikis for reference, contribute to wikis at work, use other kinds of user-contributed media, or participate in open-source communities, you'll learn a lot from these experts.
1. BayCHI 10.13.09 Redux
Micah Alpern - Overview of Wikimania
Sue Gardner & Erik Möller- Wikimedia Foundation
Ed Chi - Slowing growth of Wikipedia
Naoko Komura - Wikipedia Usability
Jack Herick - Lessons from WikiHow
2. Flavor of the conference
Big trends:
Confronting slowing growth
Maintain Quality
How/why (demographic shifts)
What to do about it Usability, Policy, Engagement
Taken by Beatrice Murch (blmurch)
28. Traditional Moderation
Failed
As Answers grew traditional
moderation methods failed to
scale with the community.
Manual customer care systems:
Had slow response times
Treated all abuse reports the same
Had high false positive and false negative rates
Were high cost and scaled up with traffic
29. Answers Community
Moderation
To address these challenges:
challenges:
Deployed a new
Community Moderation
system
Empowered trusted Answers users to help moderate
content by allowing their report abuse actions to
automatically delete content.
content.
Illustration by Bryce Glass
System didn’t reveal reputation scores to users,
didn’ users,
Encouraged them to report accurately so they could gain
more community influence.
influence.
38. Agenda for the evening
Intro
Micah Alpern - Overview of Wikimania
Sue Gardner & Erik Möller- Wikimedia Foundation
Ed Chi - Slowing growth of Wikipedia
Naoko Komura - Wikipedia Usability
Jack Herick - Lessons from WikiHow
41. Slowing Growth of Wikipedia:
Implications for the Future
Bongwon Suh, Gregorio Convertino,
Ed H. Chi, Peter Pirolli
Augmented Social Cognition Area
Palo Alto Research Center
42. 1. What’re the Global Activity level patterns?
2. What’re activity patterns by Editor Classes?
3. Are the Population Sizes stable? Analysis of
Population by Editor Class
43. Number of Articles (Log Scale)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Modelling_Wikipedia’s_growth
48. 1. What’re the Global Activity level patterns?
2. What’re activity patterns by Editor Classes?
3. Are the Population Sizes stable? Analysis of
Population by Editor Class
51. Undoing the effects of one or more
edits
– The page being restored to a version
that existed sometime previously.
– Reverting may also refer to any action
that reverses the actions of other editors.
– Fighting vandalism
– This analysis exclude vandalism to
model “resistance”
53. Increased resistance from
the Wikipedia community to
activities by occasional
editors
Disparity of treatment of edits
– Occasional editors have been
reverted in a higher rate
Photo: http://lianza2009.wordpress.com/
54. 1. What’re the Global Activity level patterns?
2. What’re activity patterns by Editor Classes?
3. Are the Population Sizes stable? Analysis of
Population by Editor Class
57. 1. What’re the Global Activity level patterns?
– No longer following an exponential growth curve.
– Logistic growth is now a better explanation
2. What’re activity patterns by Editor Classes?
– Middle class decreasing their proportion of edits
– Different editor classes experience differing
resistances
3. Are the Population Sizes stable?
– Middle class a smaller portion of the pyramid
58. Exponential growth model
– Growth rate depends on the current N
dN
= r*N
dt
Preferential Attachment: Edits beget edits
– The more number of previous edits, the more number of new
edits
€
– r, growth rate of the population
59. Ecological population growth model
– r, growth rate of the population
– K, carrying capacity (due to resource limitation)
dN N
= rN(1− )
dt K
€
62. Biological system
– Competition increases as
population hit the limits of the
ecology
– Advantage go to members of the
population that have competitive
dominance over others
Analogy
– Limited opportunities to make
novel contributions
– Increased patterns of conflict and
dominance
63. Ecological growth model
– r, growth rate of the population
– K, carrying capacity (due to resource
limitation)
r-Strategist
– Growth or exploitation dN N
– Less-crowded niches / produce many
= rN(1− )
dt K
offspring
K-Strategist
– Conservation [Gunderson & Holling 2001]
– Strong competitors in crowded niches /
€
invest more heavily in fewer offspring
64. People-ware
– Growing resistance to new content
– Coordination cost and bureaucracy
Knowledge-ware
– Availability of easy topics to write about
Tool-ware
– Quality of tools used by editors and admins
65. Monthly Ratio of Reverted Edits
ed.chi@parc.com
http://asc-parc.blogspot.com
Augmented Social Cognition Area
Palo Alto Research Center
102. - What is wikiHow
- Why people contribute
- Redesign
103. Why do people contribute to wikiHow?
• I think it is fun/entertaining (77%)
• I find it personally rewarding (75%)
• I love to give back (66%)
• I enjoy collaborating with others (60%)
108. Noble missions provide greater
meaning
• Wikipedia : An encyclopedia for every
person on the planet in their own language.
• wikiHow : Practical instructions to help
people solve the problems of everyday life.
111. Going carbon neutral: A cautionary tale
• wikiHow went carbon neutral a few years ago. Temporarily
were the most popular carbon neutral website.
• Going carbon neutral added meaning for many in community
• But detracted meaning for others....
113. Classes on Compassionate
Communication
• Classes on Compassionate Communication
(aka Non-Violent Communication)
o Taught by live instructors on phone
and online
o Free to wikiHow editors
o $250 to non-editors
• Goal to encourage civil, enjoyable
collaboration.
114. Classes on writing skills
• Offered free classes on general
writing skills taught by live instructors
from Gotham Writers Workshop.