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Submissions/User digest/State of Wikimedia Research 2016-2017

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This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2017.


Info

This is an Open submission for Wikimania 2017 that has not yet been reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Submission no. 7036 - E3
Title of the submission
State of Wikimedia Research 2016-2017
Type of submission (lecture, panel, tutorial/workshop, roundtable discussion, lightning talk, poster, birds of a feather discussion)
lecture
Author of the submission
Benjamin Mako Hill; co-presenters: Tilman Bayer, Aaron Shaw, Reem Al-Kashif (on the gender gap)
Language of presentation
English
E-mail address
mako@atdot.cc, tbayer@wikimedia.org, aaronshaw@northwestern.edu
Username
User:Benjamin Mako Hill, User:Tbayer (WMF), User:Aaronshaw
Country of origin
United States, Germany/United States, United States
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
University of Washington, Wikimedia Foundation, Northwestern University
Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (up to 300 words to describe your proposal)

This talk is a regular talk given at Wikimania each year. Previous version were given at 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2010 and 2009, for example.

This talk will offer a quick tour of scholarship and academic research on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects from the last year. It will give a bird's-eye view of Wikimedia research and go into depth on a dozen or so of the most important findings from the last year. The goal is to explain both what our community is teaching others and what Wikimedia editors, the foundation, and our community as a whole, might be able to learn about ourselves. While wonderful research will be presented as part of the academic track, this talk will focus on the other important results that will not be presented. The work will involve collaboration with the team that produces the monthly Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

A quick search of a multi-disciplinary scholarly database shows over 500 scholarly publications (i.e., articles, books, thesis, etc.) in the last year alone that contain the term "Wikipedia" in their title. Journals and conferences in the social sciences, computational sciences, humanities, engineering, and a variety of other fields have published scholarly works that examine Wikipedia, use data mined from Wikipedia, and try to help us make sense of Wikimedia projects, their people, processes, and artifacts. More than a dozen people have now graduated with PhDs earned by studying Wikipedia (and at least one by studying Wiktionary). There are even conferences — OpenSym (formerly WikiSym) most notable among them — that focus on wikis and who focus on publishing work based on Wikipedia. What does all this work mean for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects? How can our community learn from academic research into our projects? Does any of this work have anything to teach us about how to run our projects? What does all that academic jargon mean in terms that any editor could understand?

This talk will try to point toward answers to these questions with a quick tour — a literature review in the scholarly parlance — of the last year's academic landscape around Wikimedia and its projects, geared at non-academic editors and readers.


What will attendees take away from this session?
Theme of presentation
  • WikiCulture & Community (?)
  • Education (?)
For workshops and discussions, what level is the intended audience?
Beginning
Length of session (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long)
25 minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes.
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests
Is this Submission a Draft or Final?
Info

This is a Completed submission for Wikimania 2017 ready to be reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

  1. Masssly (talk) 23:15, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Luisalvaz (talk) 21:22, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  3. LZia (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Ovedc (talk) 07:13, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Ainali (talk) 14:55, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Digitaleffie (talk) 16:36, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Cobblet (talk) 03:59, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  8. --Ziko (talk) 20:43, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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