Category Archives: Research Tracks

Geographic and Linguistic Normalization: Towards a Better Understanding of the Geo-linguistic Dynamics of Knowledge

Announcement, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Posters, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Geographic and Linguistic Normalization: Towards a Better Understanding of the Geo-linguistic Dynamics of Knowledge

Authors: Han-Teng Liao, Thomas Petzold

Abstract: This paper proposes a method of geo-linguistic normalization to advance the existing comparative analysis of open collaborative communities, with multilingual Wikipedia projects as the example. Such normalization requires data regarding the potential users and/or resources of a geolinguistic unit.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Why Do Some Students Become More Engaged in Collaborative Wiki Writing? The Role of Sense of Relatedness

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, Open Educational Resources Track, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: Why Do Some Students Become More Engaged in Collaborative Wiki Writing? The Role of Sense of Relatedness

Authors: Wilson W.T. Law (The University of Hong Kong), Ronnel B. King (Nanyang Technological University), Michele Notari (University of Teacher Education Bern), Eddie W.L. Cheng (Hong Kong Institute of Education), Samuel K.W. Chu (The University of Hong Kong)

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the role of sense of relatedness in students’ engagement in using wikis in collaborative writing. Hong Kong secondary school students (N = 422) participated in the study and answered questionnaires about their sense of relatedness and their level of engagement when using wikis for open collaborative project work. Results from the regression analyses showed that students’ sense of relatedness with their teacher and peers facilitated their engagement in the collaborative wiki writing environment. The results were also consistent with the educational psychology research findings in a traditional classroom setting. Most importantly, the result from this study showed the possible linkage between IT in education research and the educational psychology literature. Implications of psychological factors on students’ learning in technologically-enriched learning environments are discussed.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Contropedia – The Analysis and Visualization of Controversies in Wikipedia Articles

Announcement, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Posters, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Contropedia – The Analysis and Visualization of Controversies in Wikipedia Articles

Authors: Erik Borra, Esther Weltevrede, Paolo Ciuccarelli, Andreas Kaltenbrunner, David Laniado, Giovanni Magni, Michele Mauri, Richard Rogers, Tommaso Venturini

Abstract: Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead to conflict. In Wikipedia, one of the most prominent examples of collaboration online, conflict is mediated by both policy and software, and conflicts often reflect larger societal debates. Contropedia is a platform for the analysis and visualization of such controversies in Wikipedia. Controversy metrics are extracted from activity streams generated by edits to, and discussions about, individual articles and groups of related articles. An article’s revision history and its corresponding discussion pages constitute two parallel streams of user interactions that, taken together, fully describe the process of the collaborative creation of an article. Our proposed platform, Contropedia, builds on state of the art techniques and extends current metrics for the analysis of both edit and discussion activity and visualizes these both as a layer on top of Wikipedia articles as well as a dashboard view presenting additional analytics. Furthermore, the combination of these two approaches allows for a deeper understanding of the substance, composition, actor alignment, trajectory and liveliness of controversies on Wikipedia. Our research aims to provide a better understanding of sociotechnical phenomena that take place on the web and to equip citizens with tools to fully deploy the complexity of controversies. Contropedia is useful for the general public as well as user groups with specific interests such as scientists, students, data journalists, decision makers and media communicators.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Learning Process Analytics for a Self-study Class in a Semantic Mediawiki

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Open Educational Resources Track, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Learning Process Analytics for a Self-study Class in a Semantic Mediawiki

Authors: Daniel Schneider (University of Geneva), Barbara Class (University of Geneva), Julien Da Costa (University of Geneva)

Abstract: We describe a framework and an implementation of learningprocess analytics for both learners and teachers to enhance a self-study class on psychological and educational theory. The environment is implemented in a Semantic MediaWiki using Semantic Forms and Semantic Result Formats. The design early development, but it is deployed and operational.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Measuring the Quality of Edits to Wikipedia

Announcement, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Posters, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Measuring the Quality of Edits to Wikipedia

Authors: Susan Biancani

Abstract: Wikipedia is unique among reference works both in its scale and in the openness of its editing interface. The question of how it can achieve and maintain high-quality encyclopedic articles is an area of active research. In order to address this question, researchers need to build consensus around a sensible metric to assess the quality of contributions to articles. This measure must not only reflect an intuitive concept of “quality,” but must also be scalable and run efficiently. Building on prior work in this area, this paper uses human raters through Amazon Mechanical Turk to validate an efficient, automated quality metric.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Older Adults and Free/Open Source Software: A Diary Study of First-Time Contributors

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: Older Adults and Free/Open Source Software: A Diary Study of First-Time Contributors

Authors: Jennifer Davidson (Oregon State University), Umme Ayda Mannan (Oregon State University), Rithika Naik (Oregon State University), Ishneet Dua (Oregon State University), Carlos Jensen (Oregon State University)

Abstract: The global population is aging rapidly, and older adults are becoming increasingly technically savvy. This paper explores ways to engage these individuals to contribute to free/open source software (FOSS) projects. We conducted a pilot diary study to explore motivations, barriers, and the contribution processes of first-time contributors in a real time, qualitative manner. In addition, we measured their self-efficacy before and after their participation. We found that what drove participants were intrinsic motivations, altruism, and internal values, which differed from previous work with older adults and with the general FOSS population. We also found that self-efficacy did not change significantly, even when participants encountered significant barriers or setbacks. The top 3 barriers were lack of communication, installation issues, and documentation issues. We found that asking for and receiving help, and avoiding difficult development environments were more likely to lead to success. To verify these results, we encourage a future large-scale diary study that involves multiple demographics. Given our pilot study, we recommend that future outreach efforts involving older adults focus on how to effectively communicate and build community amongst older contributors.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Reliability of User-Generated Data: the Case of Biographical Data in Wikipedia

Announcement, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Posters, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Reliability of User-Generated Data: the Case of Biographical Data in Wikipedia

Authors: Robert Viseur

Abstract: Wikipedia is a collaborative multilingual encyclopedia launched in 2001. We already conducted a first research on the extraction of biographical data about personalities from Belgium in order to build a large database with biographical data. However, the question of the reliability of the data arises. In particular, in the case of Wikipedia, the data are generated by users and could be subject to errors. In consequence, we wanted to answer to the following question: are the data introduced in Wikipedia articles reliable? Our research is organized in three sections. The first section provides a brief state of the art about the reliability of the user-generated data. A second section presents the methodology of our research. A third section will present the results. The error rates that were measured for the birthdate is low (0.75%), although it is higher than the 0.21% score that we observed for the baseline (reference sources). In a fourth section, the results are discussed.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Bots vs. Wikipedians, Anons vs. Logged-Ins (Redux): A Global Study of Edit Activity on Wikipedia and Wikidata

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Bots vs. Wikipedians, Anons vs. Logged-Ins (Redux): A Global Study of Edit Activity on Wikipedia and Wikidata

Authors: Thomas Steiner

Abstract: Wikipedia is a global crowdsourced encyclopedia that at time of writing is available in 287 languages. Wikidata is a likewise global crowdsourced knowledge base that provides shared facts to be used by Wikipedias. In the context of this research, we have developed an application and an underlying Application Programming Interface (API) capable of monitoring realtime edit activity of all language versions of Wikipedia and Wikidata. This application allows us to easily analyze edits in order to answer questions such as “Bots vs. Wikipedians, who edits more?”, “Which is the most anonymously edited Wikipedia?”, or “Who are the bots and what do they edit?”. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time such an analysis was done for Wikidata and for really all Wikipedias—large and small. According to our results, all Wikipedias and Wikidata together are edited by about 50% bots and by about 23% anonymous users. Wikidata alone accounts for about 48% of the totally observed edits. If we do not consider Wikidata, i.e., if we only look at all Wikipedias, about 15% of all edits are made by bots and 26% of all edits are made by anonymous users. Overall, we found a stabilizing number of 274 active bots during our observation period. Our application is available publicly online at the URL http://wikipedia-edits.herokuapp.com/, its code has been open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Information Evolution in Wikipedia

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Information Evolution in Wikipedia

Authors: Ujwal Gadiraju, Mihai Georgescu, Marco Fisichella, Andrea Ceroni, Kaweh Djafari Naini

Abstract: The Web of data is constantly evolving based on the dynamics of its content. Current Web search engine technologies consider static collections and do not factor in explicitly or implicitly available temporal information, that can be leveraged to gain insights into the dynamics of the data. In this paper, we hypothesize that by employing the temporal aspect as the primary means for capturing the evolution of entities, it is possible to provide entity-based accessibility to Web archives. We empirically show that the edit activity on Wikipedia can be exploited to provide evidence of the evolution of Wikipedia pages over time, both in terms of their content and in terms of their temporally defined relationships, classified in literature as events. Finally, we present results from our extensive analysis of a dataset consisting of 31, 998 Wikipedia pages describing politicians, and observations from in-depth case studies. Our findings reflect the usefulness of leveraging temporal information in order to study the evolution of entities and breed promising grounds for further research.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

On Influences Between Software Standards and Their Implementations in Open Source Projects: Experiences from RDFa and Its Implementation in Drupal

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: On Influences Between Software Standards and Their Implementations in Open Source Projects: Experiences from RDFa and Its Implementation in Drupal

Authors: Björn Lundell (University of Skövde), Jonas Gamalielsson (University of Skövde), Alexander Grahn (University of Skövde), Jonas Feist (RedBridge AB), Tomas Gustavsson (PrimeKey Solutions AB), Henrik Strindberg (Findwise AB)

Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that standards implemented in open source software can reduce the risk for lock-in, improve interoperability, and promote competition on the market. However, there is limited knowledge concerning the relationship between standards and their implementations in open source software. This paper reports from an investigation of influences between software standards and open source software implementations of software standards. The study focuses on the RDFa standard and its implementation in the Drupal project. Specifically, issues in the W3C issue trackers for RDFa and the Drupal issue tracker for RDFa have been analysed. Findings show that there is clear evidence of reciprocal action between RDFa and its implementation in Drupal. The study contributes novel insights concerning effective processes for development and long-term maintenance of software standards and their implementations in open source projects.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.