Wikimedia Research/Showcase

The Monthly Research & Data Showcase is a public showcase of recent research by the Wikimedia Foundation's Research and Data Team, other WMF researchers and occasionally guest presenters. The showcase is hosted at the Wikimedia Foundation every 3rd Wednesday of the month at 11.30 Pacific Time and live streamed on YouTube.

How to attend
We live stream our research showcase every month on YouTube. The link is announced a few minutes before the showcase starts via wiki-research-l, analytics-l and @WikiResearch. You can join the conversation and participate in Q&A after each presentation by connecting to our IRC channel on freenode:

March 2014
March 19, 2014
 * Metrics standardization
 * by Dario Taraborelli -- In this talk I'll present the most recent updates on our work on participation metrics and discuss the goals of the Editor Engagement Vital Signs project. 


 * Wikipedia's rise and decline
 * by Aaron Halfaker -- In Halfaker et al. (2013) we present data that show that several changes the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have ironically crippled the very growth they were designed to manage. Specifically, the restrictiveness of the encyclopedia's primary quality control mechanism and the algorithmic tools used to reject contributions are implicated as key causes of decreased newcomer retention.



February 2014
February 26, 2014 Video: Commons YouTube


 * Mobile session times
 * Mobile_sessions_presentation_(Feb_2014).pdf by Oliver Keyes -- A prerequisite to many pieces of interesting reader research is being able to accurately identify the length of users' 'sessions'. I will explain one potential way of doing it, how I've applied it to mobile readers, and what research this opens up. (slides, read more)


 * Wikipedia article creation research
 * Wikipedia article creation (Nov, 2013).pdf by Aaron Halfaker -- A brief overview of research examining trends in newcomer article creation across 10 languages with a focus on English and German Wikipedias.  In wikis where anonymous users can create articles, their articles are less likely to be deleted than articles created by newly registered editors.  An in-depth analysis of Articles for Creation (AfC) suggests that while AfC's process seems to result in the publication of high quality articles, it also dramatically reduces the rate at which good new articles are published.  (slides, read more)



January 2014
January 15, 2014
 * IP reliability tracking: by Oliver Keyes
 * The Wikipedia Adventure, quantitative and qualitative results from the pilot: by Jake Orlowitz (User:Ocaasi) We made a 7 mission gamified interactive onboarding tutorial to teach people how to edit Wikipedia in 1 hour. The journey involves badges, barnstars, challenges, and simulated interaction throughout a realistic quest to edit the article Earth. Game dynamics were used to create a sense of understanding, belonging, deep value identification, and technical proficiency. The use of games in open source and free culture online communities has great potential to drive participation. This talk will share the inspiration for taking a gamified approach, a review of the design highlights, and a discussion of quantitative and qualitative data and survey analysis. (slides, read more)

December 2013
December 18, 2013


 * Metrics standardization: Metrics Standardization 10 Dec 2013.pdf by Dario Taraborelli
 * On the nature of Anonymous Editors
 * Anonymous_editors_-_WMF_R%26D_showcase_(Dec._2013).pdf by Aaron Halfaker -- A brief discussion & critique of the use of the term "anonymous" to refer to IP editors and a presentation of research results that suggest that newly registered users who edit anonymous right before registering their account are highly productive. (slides, read more)


 * Overview of Program Evaluation (beta) Reports
 * Program Evaluation overall responses - 2013.png by Jaime Anstee -- A brief overview of the first round reporting for programs including summary of the target measures along with strategies and challenges in metric standardization. Overview outline