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.

March 2014
March 19, 2014
 * Talks:tbd

February 2014
February 26, 2014 Video: Commons YouTube


 * Mobile session times: 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: by Aaron Halfaker. I'll present research examining trends in newcomer article creation across 10 languages with a focus on English and German Wikipedias.  I'll show that, in wikis where anonymous users can create articles, their articles are less likely to be deleted than articles created by newly registered editors.  I'll also show the results of an in-depth analysis of Articles for Creation (AfC) which suggest 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: 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.


 * Bar: by Jaime Anstee