2006-08-21 Day One at WikiSym 2006

My notes on WikiSym 2006. ¹

Angela Beesley talked about things that make WikiPedia work. Stuff I noticed.

She also mentioned the importance of OffTopic: 75% of the articles are not articles: Talk pages, user pages, talk pages for user pages, help pages, etc.
NeutralPointOfView doesn’t mean compromise or single point of view: It means *multiple* points of view + verifiable sources
Wikipedia has a *code of conduct*
Projects, portals, regional meetings
Public & private watchlists; public watchlists are user editable
Tagging pages as stubs, controversial, unverified, etc. Angela says that these are used both to warn visitors (I agree) and to allow editors to search for and fix these articles (I doubt this works as envisioned).
Semi-protected pages: Prevent edits by unregistered users, prevent edits by new users (four days or less)
BarnStars, IRC
Planned feature: Stable versions (approved by certain people?) – reminds me of StableCopy
Poll support might be interesting, as Wikipedia uses lots of (informal) polls, it seems
Asking questions on a wiki are problematic for users unfamiliar to wikis – they expect a personal response, eg. mail. A bug tracking tool helps solve this issue.

Talking to Eugene about PurpleNumbers I mentioned that most wiki pages don’t change. I decided to look at the numbers for CommunityWiki.

Days #Pages
1000: 102
 900: 128
 800: 210
 700: 189
 600: 80
 500: 251
 400: 359
 300: 264
 200: 259
 100: 466
   0: 229

OpenSpace: Nobody was interested in my session, Integrating Language Minorities. I ended up listening in to a discussion about measurements.

Anrea Forte talks about learning, how students learn, how people are motivated (WikiPedia = authentic context). Are teachers required? Interesting questions:

Classroom vs. wiki culture – no hierarchies
Some structure needed – critical thinking about sources, faithful citations. Special pages for sources, where students can comment on sources, and with a user interface that makes it easy to pick sources
How do we know learning when we see it – hard to do anyway
Ethical implication of coerced publication – but I disagree with her, here: Society will have to adapt to RecordKeepers, adapt to the TransparentSociety.

Sheizaf Rafaeli talks about using a WikiBook. What is a book? Problems with text books: Expensive, unavailable, revenue goes not to the researches but to few writers, publishers motivated to issue new editions every semester, few non-English books. Motivation: Extrinsic, by providing a 3% grade bonus for five edits per semester, but the average is much higher. Statistically significant: High participation and better grades correlate.

WikiBook

He mentions WikiLiteracy.

Talking about WikiFounding with Kerry Santo. She was wondering how much effort she would have to invest in her wiki before it would take off. Intrigued, I looked at my own EmacsWiki numbers:

EmacsWiki

Month   Total    Top Poster     Edits
2001-05  289     [[AlexSchroeder]]   222
2001-06  457     [[AlexSchroeder]]   228
2001-07  293     [[AlexSchroeder]]   152
2001-08  182     [[AlexSchroeder]]   108
2001-09  246     [[AlexSchroeder]]   203
2001-10  381     [[AlexSchroeder]]   170
2001-11  387     [[AlexSchroeder]]   191
2001-12  225     [[AlexSchroeder]]   108
2002-01  415     [[AlexSchroeder]]   131
2002-02  302     [[AlexSchroeder]]   103
2002-03  279     [[AlexSchroeder]]   96
2002-04  367     [[AlexSchroeder]]   117
2002-05  431     [[AlexSchroeder]]   168
2002-06  513     [[AlexSchroeder]]   163
2002-07  338     [[AlexSchroeder]]   102
2002-08  424     [[AlexSchroeder]]   163
2002-09  530     [[AlexSchroeder]]   225
2002-10  507     [[AlexSchroeder]]   189
2002-11  337     [[AlexSchroeder]]   129
2002-12  414     [[AlexSchroeder]]   125
2003-01  795     DeepakGoel      181
2003-02  627     [[AlexSchroeder]]   185
2003-03  1222    [[AlexSchroeder]]   225
2003-04  684     [[AlexSchroeder]]   115
2003-05  682     [[AlexSchroeder]]   214
2003-06  765     [[AlexSchroeder]]   237
2003-07  485     [[AlexSchroeder]]   65
2003-08  480     [[AlexSchroeder]]   177
2003-09  695     [[AlexSchroeder]]   221
2003-10  705     [[AlexSchroeder]]   184
2003-11  745     [[AlexSchroeder]]   130
2003-12  369     [[AlexSchroeder]]   46
2004-01  417     [[AlexSchroeder]]   79
2004-02  388     [[AlexSchroeder]]   76
2004-03  970     [[AlexSchroeder]]   105
2004-04  1202    MarkusKnittig   165
2004-05  934     [[AlexSchroeder]]   140
2004-06  1049    [[AlexSchroeder]]   212
2004-07  750     [[AlexSchroeder]]   68
2004-08  1055    [[AlexSchroeder]]   289
2004-09  1132    [[AlexSchroeder]]   296
2004-10  768     DrewAdams       115
2004-11  1104    [[AlexSchroeder]]   210
2004-12  869     DrewAdams       184
2005-01  1008    DrewAdams       114
2005-02  722     [http://ashawley.com AaronHawley]     53
2005-03  1002    [[AlexSchroeder]]   166
2005-04  794     [[AlexSchroeder]]   137
2005-05  653     DrewAdams       124
2005-06  817     [[AlexSchroeder]]   109
2005-07  1660    [[AlexSchroeder]]   703
2005-08  947     [http://ashawley.com AaronHawley]     135
2005-09  809     [[AlexSchroeder]]   85
2005-10  2565    [[AlexSchroeder]]   1438
2005-11  971     DrewAdams       409
2005-12  1570    DrewAdams       377
2006-01  1248    DrewAdams       374
2006-02  827     DrewAdams       352
2006-03  1329    DrewAdams       543
2006-04  859     DrewAdams       149
2006-05  955     DrewAdams       211
2006-06  744     DrewAdams       179
2006-07  587     DrewAdams       133

Images of WikiSym 2006

Image by Eugene Kim, click for more info on the people

Images of WikiSym 2006

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WikiSym 2006 pictures

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