Version Of Wikipedia Research Articles

Building efficient and effective OpenQA systems for low-resource languages

Question answering (QA) is the task of answering questions posed in natural language with free-form natural language answers extracted from a given passage. In the OpenQA variant, only a question text is given, and the system must retrieve relevant passages from an unstructured knowledge source and use them to provide answers, which is the case in the mainstream QA systems on the Web. QA systems currently are mostly limited to the English language due to the lack of large-scale labeled QA datasets in non-English languages. In this paper, we show that effective, low-cost OpenQA systems can be developed for low-resource contexts. The key ingredients are (1) weak supervision using machine-translated labeled datasets and (2) a relevant unstructured knowledge source in the target language context. Furthermore, we show that only a few hundred gold assessment examples are needed to reliably evaluate these systems. We apply our method to Turkish as a challenging case study, since English and Turkish are typologically very distinct and Turkish has limited resources for QA. We present SQuAD-TR, a machine translation of SQuAD2.0, and we build our OpenQA system by adapting ColBERT-QA and retraining it over Turkish resources and SQuAD-TR using two versions of Wikipedia dumps spanning two years. We obtain a performance improvement of 24–32% in the Exact Match (EM) score and 22–29% in the F1 score compared to the BM25-based and DPR-based baseline QA reader models. Our results show that SQuAD-TR makes OpenQA feasible for Turkish, which we hope encourages researchers to build OpenQA systems in other low-resource languages. We make all the code, models, and the dataset publicly available at https://github.com/boun-tabi/SQuAD-TR.

Media Network and Citizen Journalism: The Transition from Agenda Setting to Agenda Loop

ABSTRACT This study examines agenda-setting and citizen journalism networks between Baidupedia, the Chinese version of Wikipedia, and various media channels, demonstrating the influence of effective agenda-setting on individuals’ engagement in citizen journalism behavior. Using social network analysis and Granger causality tests, we found that Baidupedia is part of the agenda network of mainstream media, portal websites, and other media outlets. Our research also highlights the “agenda loop” phenomenon, where outcomes from individuals’ news production shape the agendas of other media channels, expanding our understanding of agenda-setting on an individual’s level. Cultural influences and regulations as well as the political system also significantly contribute to the intermedia agenda-setting effect. These findings contribute to our understanding of agenda-setting in the present media environment and shed light on the correlation between effective agenda-setting and people’s participation in citizen journalism production.

Governance Capture in a Self-Governing Community: A Qualitative Comparison of the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias

What types of governance arrangements make some self-governed online groups more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns? We present a qualitative comparative analysis of the Croatian and Serbian Wikipedia editions to answer this question. We do so because between at least 2011 and 2020, the Croatian language version of Wikipedia was taken over by a small group of administrators who introduced far-right bias and outright disinformation. Dissenting editorial voices were reverted, banned, and blocked. Although Serbian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias share many linguistic and cultural features, and faced similar threats, they seem to have largely avoided this fate. Based on a grounded theory analysis of interviews with members of these communities and others in cross-functional platform-level roles, we propose that the convergence of three features---high perceived value as a target, limited early bureaucratic openness, and a preference for personalistic, informal forms of organization over formal ones---produced a window of opportunity for governance capture on Croatian Wikipedia. Our findings illustrate that online community governing infrastructures can play a crucial role in systematic disinformation campaigns and other influence operations.

Navigating the emotional terrain of Wikipedia writing: A feminist affective analysis of student writers’ engagement with the “be bold” guideline

Despite being subtitled “the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” Wikipedia's editors are not nearly as diverse as Wikimedia, its nonprofit parent organization, would hope. In fact, the English version's encyclopedic community has long suffered from gender inequality in both its editorial demographic and its coverage of content representing and of interest to women and non-binary audiences; this despite boasting nearly 7 million articles as of 2024. Educational initiatives have so far proven to be one of the most effective strategies for mitigating Wikipedia's gender gap, the common term for what has become the encyclopedia's most pervasive systemic bias. However, even within educational projects, engaging and onboarding minority editors is challenging. Working from a feminist affective framework, this article reports on a study of student-editors' experience with Wikipedia-based writing, using their reactions to a key editing guideline, “Be bold,” as an entry-point for examining their affective experience. The “Be bold” guideline, which encourages would-be editors to “just go for it,” is nearly as old as the English language version of Wikipedia itself yet has received little critical attention. Drawing on survey and focus group interviews from participants at the undergraduate and graduate level, this study's findings provide new understandings of novice editors’ affective experiences in Wikipedia while offering a critical analysis of the “Be bold” guideline.

The Most Cited Scientific Information Sources in Wikipedia Articles Across Various Languages

Ensuring the accuracy of information in Wikipedia articles requires the use of reliable sources that can be assessed by encyclopedia readers. However, the determination of source reliability can be subjective, with variations based on the language and subject matter of the article. Consequently, each language version of Wikipedia may have its own guidelines for judging the trustworthiness of sources. Some Wikipedia citations lead to scientific resources, which are usually deemed more reliable than websites due to their rigorous peer-review procedures and publication by esteemed academic publishers. This implies that the data presented in these scientific sources has been meticulously examined by specialists in the relevant area, providing a higher level of precision and trustworthiness. In this study, 332,424,439 references from 61,218,277 Wikipedia articles across 309 language versions were analyzed to identify citations to scientific publications. Additionally, OpenAlex was used to find unified metadata of important sources of information of multilingual Wikipedia.

Quantifying Americanization: Coverage of American Topics in Different Wikipedias

As one of the most popular sources of information in the world, Wikipedia is edited by a large, global community of contributors. User-generated nature of this online encyclopedia ensures that the information reflects a wide range of topics. Hovewer, Wikipedia articles are created and edited independently in each language version. Therefore, some topics may be presented with varying degrees of completeness depending on their importance in a particular language community. In this paper, we quantified the concept of Americanization on a global scale through comparative analysis of the coverage of American topics in different language versions of Wikipedia. For this purpose, we analyzed over 90 million Wikidata items and 40 million Wikipedia articles in 58 languages. We discussed whether Americanization is more or less dominant in different languages, regions, and cultures. We showed that the interest in American topics is not universal. Western, developed countries are more Americanized (more interested in topics related to America) than the rest of the world. This is the first global, quantitative confirmation of issues often hypothesized, or assumed, in the literature on Americanization and related phenomena. This study shows that Wikipedia and Wikidata can allow quantification of social science concepts that previously were considered not realistically measurable. Finally, the presented research is also relevant to the discourses on the biases of Wikipedia.

Public interests in mental health topics in COVID-19: evidence from Wikipedia searches

ABSTRACT Objective The aim of the study was to explore community interest in mental health topics during and before the COVID-19 pandemic. Method We gathered and analysed a large dataset (over 3 billion) of views of 1763 English Wikipedia mental health articles, and their counterparts in nine other language versions of Wikipedia, between the period of January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2020. Results The results of this study show that the patterns of Wikipedia searches during the pandemic changed. Interest in articles about insecurities and paraphilias increased. There were more searches for child abuse-related topics. Views for depression decreased. Discussion We hypothesise that during the lockdown and enforced video communication, people’s concern about self-image and privacy arose, and the tendency to follow one’s desires online increased. There may be a possible interaction between media coverage and the novelty with the saturation of a given concept in the public discourse. The observations on the online interests of peers may become a sensitive predictor and early sign of arising new phenomena and increase of ongoing public health problems. The results of this study and future in-depth research may contribute to providing preventive programs including screening digital tools, and online apps for early intervention.

GLAM Wikiprojects as a Form of Organization of Cooperation Between Wikipedia and Cultural Institutions

The development of new communication technologies enabled the digitalization of the knowledge resources of cultural institutions all over the world and made them available to a wider audience. This was possible through the cooperation of cultural institutions with Wikipedia’s WikiProjects and engagement of the users from numerous countries. It seems important to recognize if this form of cooperation between Wikipedians and institutions is effective and attracts enough participants. The article takes up the subject of the character and effects of this cooperation. The aim of the paper is to study the activity of Wikipedians, including newcomers, in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) WikiProjects in several language versions of Wikipedia as an open knowledge project. The research questions concerned the characteristics of the activity of Wikipedians in GLAM WikiProjects and the differences between the behaviour of Wikipedians in GLAM WikiProjects in different language versions. The method used in the research is the content analysis, which includes quantitative tools. The author acquired and calculated the data on the activity of GLAM Wikiprojects participants thanks to the Wikipedia xTools tool. The calculations were made on participants of GLAM WikiProjects from five language versions of Wikipedia. The main conclusion from the research is that the results of this kind of organization of work, especially in terms of newcomers, are not satisfactory. The most effective participants are the coordinators of the projects or/and the Wikipedians with the highest seniority. Newly acquired participants most often do not continue their activity for long time. However, there are some differences in different language versions of Wikipedia. English one has better results in retaining and engaging new users. What is interesting is that despite the wide popularization and engagement of the GLAM institutions in the collaboration with Wikipedia, there is a relatively low interest of new Wikipedians in GLAM Wikiprojects. In order to reach a successful cooperation, it is significant to improve the effectiveness of welcoming, engaging, and retaining newcomers in the projects. The results may be of use to the practitioners of the virtual communities of practice which focus on creating and sharing knowledge.

Meaning of the Power Users in the Wikipedia Working Environment

One of the most popular sites to observe collaborative content creation on the Internet is Wikipedia. A significant part of the publication devoted to this encyclopaedia focuses on special forms of collaboration, such as WikiProjects, which allow to effective work sharing. The aim of the paper was to identify power users working in public spaces of Wikipedia, especially in WikiProjects, and to determine their importance for this form of cooperation in knowledge sharing. The research question was: what is the meaning of the Power Users in Wikipedia? The methods used in the paper were content analysis of activity logs of Wikipedians and participatory observation. The author presents the results of his own research on the total number of WikiProject users in the two language versions of Wikipedia: Polish and Korean. The research presented the existence of power users in the Polish and Korean versions. There was a moderately strong relationship between the length of time one remained active on Wikipedia and the time of joining as a Wikipedian, and a weak relationship between seniority and the number of WikiProjects in which the user was active. In turn, participatory observation identified the roles of power users, mainly as initiators of action in Wikipedia. The presented research results could be used mostly for coordinators of online communities, but also for the initiators of the new undertakings in cyberspace.

Collaborative Structures in WikiProjects. Wikipedia Users' Activity Case Study

The research presented in the article concerns the development of organizational and cooperation structures from interpersonal interactions in virtual communities sharing knowledge. It is assumed that the activity of communities functioning on the Internet reflects the organization of human communities in the offline space. The main aim of the research was to characterize the structures of cooperation groups that are formed around WikiProjects. The research question was: what is the structure of activity of Wikipedians in WikiProjects in chosen language versions of Wikipedia? The method used in the research is the content analysis method. The author calculated data thanks to the Wikipedia xTools. The numbers of participants involved in WikiProjects were analysed by referring to the Dunbar number concept and the cultural determinants of cooperation, thus referring to the masculinity index (MAS) according to Hofstede. Research has shown that WikiProject members show similarities to the layered community formation proposed by Dunbar. The sizes of groups of active editors are closer to these values. As the WikiProjects group grows, the ratio of declared participants to active participants decreases. The production of value in virtual communities, the ability to work together as a team in physical isolation, is becoming increasingly important. The results of the research may be significant to the knowledge management specialists and virtual communities practitioners.

«Википедия» как пространство мемориальной конфронтации каталонской и испанской исторической памяти

The purpose of this study is to analyze the perception of Catalan nationalism in the Catalan and Spanish ver-sions of Wikipedia as modern space for the development and actualization of collective historical memory and national identities. The author analyzes how agents of historical politics in Catalonia and Castile, using the vir-tual space of Wikipedia, construct various images of the history of Catalan nationalism and its political deriva-tives. The novelty of the research consists in the analysis of the virtual space of Wikipedia as a sphere of actual-ization of different versions of collective historical memory for Catalonia and Spain. The author analyzes: the perception of Catalan nationalism experience in the Catalan and Spanish sections of Wikipedia; various points of view on the history of Catalan nationalism presented in the virtual space; the perception of the history of Cat-alan nationalism as space of memory wars and memorial confrontations. The study also shows that the virtual-ization of collective memory has become a factor stimulating various and mutually exclusive ways of perceiv-ing the historical past, as presented in articles in the Catalan and Spanish sections of Wikipedia focused on the history of Catalan nationalism. It is assumed that the virtual space of the Catalan and Spanish versions of Wik-ipedia are just as susceptible to politicization as the academic environment of the regional historiographies of Spain. The results of the study suggest that the trends of memory virtualization will contribute to the Catalan-Spanish memorial confrontation.

Understanding the Use of Scientific References in Multilingual Wikipedia across Various Topics

To maintain information quality, Wikipedia articles are required to be based on reliable sources that readers can verify. However, assessing the reliability of sources is subjective and can vary depending on the language and topic. As a result, different language versions of Wikipedia may have their own criteria for determining the credibility of sources. Some Wikipedia references point to scientific sources that are generally considered more reliable than websites because they are subject to a rigorous peer review process and are published by reputable academic publishers. This means that the information presented in scientific sources has been thoroughly evaluated by experts in the relevant field, ensuring a higher degree of accuracy and credibility. In this study, we analyzed 325 million references from 60 million Wikipedia articles in 310 language versions to find scientific sources of information. Additionally, we divided the articles into different topics using three approaches: Wikipedia Projects, Wikidata and DBpedia. This allowed us to find and compare Sci score of each language version of Wikipedia and the topic.

Reportaż telewizyjny w służbie dziennikarstwa poszukującego prawdy o człowieku i świecie

The aim of this article is to draw attention to TV reportage as a message that tries to convey the truth about the human being and the world to the viewer. The reportage is treated as a journalist message in which the subjective narrative of the producer (reporter) shapes their work. The reportage can therefore be treated as a „text” which is a reliable description of reality as well as a work and a manifestation of artistry.The English version of Wikipedia (the so-called free encyclopedia) includes the term „narrative journalism” and characterizes it as containing verified and reliable information conveyed by the media. The media coverage produced by a journalist-reporter must therefore present true stories, in which the creator does not resign from the principles of dramaturgy and subjectivization. All journalist measures, however, focus on the superior function, which is an attempt to tell the truth about important issues, covering various areas of life – from politics through economy, science, racial problems to family relations and internal conflicts that people experience. The characteristic of „narrative journalism” thus evokes the genre features of reportage. This genre is creatively cultivated by the most eminent journalists of all the media – the press, radio and television. The article highlights the work by Monika Meleń and Barbara Włodarczyk, whose reportage presents the truth about the human and the world.

Exploiting Wikipedia to Measure the Semantic Relatedness between Arabic Terms

Measuring the semantic relatedness between words or terms plays an important role in many domains such as linguistics and artificial intelligence. Although this topic has been widely explored in the literature, most efforts focused on the English text, while little has been done to measure the similarity between Arabic terms. A growing number of semantic relatedness measures have relied on an underlying background knowledge such as Wikipedia. They often map terms to Wikipedia concepts, and then use the content or hyperlink structure of the corresponding Wikipedia articles to estimate the similarity between terms. However, existing approaches mostly focused on the English version of Wikipedia, while limited work has been done on the Arabic version. This work proposes an approach that takes advantage of Wikipedia features to measure the relationship between Arabic terms. It exploits two types of relations to gain rich features for the similarity measure, which are: the context-based relation and the category-based relation. The context-based relation is measured based on the intersection between incoming links of Wikipedia articles, while the category-based relation is measured by utilizing the taxonomy of Wikipedia categories. The proposed approach was evaluated based on a translated version of the WordSimilarity-353 benchmark dataset. The results show that our approach generally outperforms several approaches in the literature that use the same dataset in English. However, the poor structure and content of the Arabic version of Wikipedia compared to the English version has resulted in several incorrect similarity scores.

Forms of Adaptation of Newcomers in Wikipedia as Online Sharing Knowledge Project

Abstract: Wikipedia is one of the largest virtual communities of practice aimed at building and sharing knowledge online. Its ambitious goals require the cooperation of millions of users around the world. The development of the project has slowed down over the last few years, hence the acquisition and retention of new users is becoming more and more challenging. Consequently, properly organized adaptation, and encouragement of newcomers to become a part of the community emerges as a crucial issue for the existence of Wikipedia.
 This paper presents the results of the quantitative research carried out with the use of the content analysis method on the different language versions of Wikipedia. The issues investigated included the following aspects: the level of advancement of the newcomers’ adaptation process, the use of various adaptation tools, forms of welcoming and enhancing newcomers to learn and edit the Wikipedia content, while also their potential effect on the productivity and engagement of users.
 The results of the research indicate great diversity among the tools used, depending on the language version of the project. Not all the statements directed to the newcomers are encouraging and friendly, as some cultures create more restrictive and punitive content than the others. The latter leaves the newcomer with the responsibility for the process of learning the rules of behaviour of the Wikipedia community. The more advanced the adaptation process is, the more active and productive users are. The conclusions of the research may be of use to different virtual communities of practice and organizations which face the problem of adapting newcomers in the online activity connected with knowledge sharing.

Evolution of the Coordination of Activities Aimed at Building Knowledge in the Wikipedia Community

The first decade of the 21st century spawned the intense development of online communities of practice. The largest knowledge-sharing communities were formed in several dozen language versions of Wikipedia. Defining rules for cooperation was necessary to ensure the desired content quality created by Wikipedians. It was essential to develop the appropriate initiatives, tools, and space for effective activity coordination within the service. Previous research in this area pointed to the role of leadership, group size, and tools facilitating work automation in creating actionable strategies and in the self-organization of work.
 This paper aims to characterize the variability in creating new concepts of cooperation in selected language versions of Wikipedia and identify the factors of participating in various forms of cooperation. The author assumes that the greater number of initiatives a user enters contributes to an increase in their overall activity.
 The research conducted was both qualitative and quantitative. A netnographic approach was used, as well as a statistical analysis of user activity records. Thanks to the netnographic research, the stages of Wikipedia’s evolution were identified. Quantitative research has shown a correlation between the number of activity areas (a user’s affiliation to WikiProjects) and their overall activity (the number of edits made). A change in Wikipedians’ activity style was also observed depending on their seniority on the website. The study’s conclusions may be helpful for organizations using crowdsourcing to achieve their own goals.

The construction of a web narrative about the Portuguese colonial war: a critical perspective on Wikipedia

As part of recent research into the Portuguese colonial war in the sphere of memory studies, this article seeks to fill a gap in the underexplored field of digital memories. It aims, firstly, to explore the processes through which discourses about the Portuguese colonial war are produced in the Portuguese version of Wikipedia, looking at its dynamics and mechanisms of construction, including formal and informal rules; and secondly, to analyse that discourse using theoretical and methodological considerations from critical discourse analysis (CDA), complemented with concepts of absence and silence, which enable a reflection on the relationship between power, knowledge and memory. The article also explores the limits of Wikipedia as regards the formation of collaborative narratives about the past, arguing that they are marked by the reproduction of Eurocentric narratives which circulate in political, educational and media discourses, and also by the memories of more conservative sectors of Portuguese society, such as war veterans and former settlers returning from the colonies (the so-called retornados). These narratives mask the colonial violence and resistance to it that preceded the colonial war and depoliticize the struggle of the national liberation movements.

The role of Wikipedia in the dissemination of new knowledge: Analysis of the entry «desinformación» as a changeable concept

The main goal of Wikipedia’s founders, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, was to create a collaborative encyclopaedia driven by the users of the internet who, on a nonprofit basis, would compile and share all human wisdom and knowledge. In times of crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic, Wikipedia has emerged as a reference point for users around the world. In this vein, Wikipedia once again highlighted its cultural role in the production of available knowledge in the face of new knowledge.
 Therefore, the main objective of this study is to analyse the specific entry of desinformación –disinformation in English– in the Spanish version of Wikipedia, given the importance that this concept has acquired during the coronavirus crisis and given the need to disseminate a homogeneous definition of this term. For that purpose, we have applied the content analysis method to a textual case, that is, to the disinformation entry in Wikipedia. The main results show that the basic characteristics of the Spanish entry of desinformación on Wikipedia are not the suitable ones to inform users or readers of the real meaning of this concept. Furthermore, the content of the Wikipedia disinformation entry is incomplete, disjointed and of dubious reliability. Therefore, this research advocates the creation of a homogeneous definition that permeates the common imaginary and that is the result of a combination of experts’ opinions and the definitions proposed by institutions, governments, media and organizations.

Necessity for Improvement of Qualitative and Quantitative Contents of Persian Wikipedia in Field of Mental Health

Wikipedia is one of the most important online sources of information that can be edited by any one. About 80% of people in developed countries use the Internet to search for mental health information, which generally includes disease symptoms, illnesses, and treatment methods. Existing studies have reported varying degrees of quality for mental health information on the Wikipedia website. To our knowledge, there is no study on the quality of information on the Persian version of Wikipedia, especially in the field of mental health. Due to the importance of Wikipedia for Internet users, the main purpose of this letter is to present a brief report on the Iranian authors' efforts in improving the quality and quantity of mental health information on the Persian Wikipedia. This can a step to promote the general knowledge of the community about the mental health.

Identification of Important Web Sources of Information on Wikipedia across various Topics and Languages

Despite the fact, that over 21 years Wikipedia is edited by volunteers from all over the world with different views, culture, education and competences, this free encyclopedia is one of the most popular source of knowledge in the Internet. Freedom to edit does not mean, that you can put there whatever content you want. One of the core rules of Wikipedia says, that information in its articles should be based on reliable sources and Wikipedia readers must be able to verify particular facts in text. However, reliability is a subjective concept and a reputation of the same source can be assessed diffidently depending on a person (or group of persons), language and topic. So each language version of Wikipedia may have own rules or criteria on how the website must be assessed before it can be used as a source in references. At the same time, nowadays there are over 1 billion websites on the Internet and only few developed language chapters of the encyclopedia contains non-exhaustive lists of less than 1 thousand popular websites with reliability assessment. Additionally, since reputation of the source can be changed during the time, such lists must be updated regularly.This study presents result of important web sources identification based on analysis of over 230 million references that were extracted from over 40 million Wikipedia article of 42 most developed language version. Additionally, general statistics on references usage for each considered Wikipedia language were counted, including average number of references, number of unique references, scientific score, number of websites in references. Next, Wikipedia articles were assigned to different topics in each considered language. This allows to find differences in reliability and popularity of the same sources of information between Wikipedia languages, as well as find important websites in specific areas of knowledge.