Wiki Research Articles

Wiki warriors: language editors counter knowledge hierarchies during the pandemic

ABSTRACT The volunteerism of Wikipedia editors has been conceptualised as an altruistic form of social production and a form of social activism. However, notions of linguistic activism and cultural identity as motivators, and the ways in which editors representing the Global South have sought to counter knowledge inequities online, have not been addressed. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of digital colonialism and social justice; a grounded theory approach that included semi-structured interviews with prominent editors; and digital data analysis from Wikipedia, we present a culturally situated case study of Indian language Wikipedia editors during the Covid-19 pandemic. We identify them as ‘Wiki Warriors’ and offer their motivations and work practices as instructive for rethinking assumptions about digital colonialism. We find that during the urgency of the global health crisis, the editors in the Global South developed a range of decolonialist practices as they negotiated the tensions of western medicine and traditional non-Western healing systems, such as Ayurveda and Unnani, ‘universal’ facts, and the spreadability of vernacular, localised health information in the digital space. Such decolonialist strategies were shaped by the responses towards religious disharmony and misinformation.

How offline meetings affect online activities: the case of Wikipedia

As open-source communities and other peer production projects face the challenge of sustaining themselves over time, the role of offline gatherings in fostering community resilience becomes a vital question. This study centres on the potential of offline social interactions as a means to mitigate declines within such communities, using Wikipedia as a case example. Using a comprehensive dataset spanning informal meetups within the German-language Wikipedia community from 2001 to 2020 and combining it with large scale online activity data, this study investigates the relationship between offline gatherings and online contribution behaviour. Results show that attending meetups has a positive effect on contributing towards Wikipedia both in the short and long term. By shedding light on the significance of offline social interactions in bolstering online communities, this study offers valuable insights into potential strategies for sustaining collaborative online environments amidst broader declines and further shows how offline and online activities intertwine.

Vocapedia Reborn: A True Wiki Resource for Voice Teachers

Abstract: Vocapedia is NATS’ online information resource. In existence since 2014, Vocapedia has recently undergone a transformation into a true wiki format. In this article, the author reviews the history of Vocapedia, discusses its new format, and urges voice teachers, collaborative pianists, choral directors, speech language pathologists, voice researchers, and others who enjoy and study the voice to contribute to the resource and to refine and update its content.

WC-SBERT: Zero-Shot Topic Classification Using SBERT and Light Self-Training on Wikipedia Categories

In natural language processing (NLP), zero-shot topic classification requires machines to understand the contextual meanings of texts in a downstream task without using the corresponding labeled texts for training, which is highly desirable for various applications. In this article, we propose a novel approach to construct a zero-shot task-specific model called WC-SBERT with satisfactory performance. The proposed approach is highly efficient since it uses light self-training requiring target labels (target class names of downstream tasks) only, which is distinct from other research that uses both the target labels and the unlabeled texts for training. In particular, during the pre-training stage, WC-SBERT uses contrastive learning with multiple negative ranking losses to construct the pre-trained model based on the similarity between Wiki categories. For the self-training stage, online contrastive loss is utilized to reduce the distance between a target label and Wiki categories of similar Wiki pages to the label. Experimental results indicate that compared to existing self-training models, WC-SBERT achieves rapid inference on approximately 6.45 million Wiki text entries by utilizing pre-stored Wikipedia text embeddings, significantly reducing inference time per sample by a factor of 2,746 to 16,746. During the fine-tuning step, the time required for each sample is reduced by a factor of 23–67. Overall, the total training time shows a maximum reduction of 27.5 times across different datasets. Most importantly, our model has achieved state-of-the-art (SOTA) accuracy on two of the three commonly used datasets for evaluating zero-shot classification, namely the AG News (0.84) and Yahoo! Answers (0.64) datasets. The code for WC-SBERT is publicly available on GitHub, 1 and the dataset can also be accessed on Hugging Face. 2

Public Good Superstars: a Lab-in-the-Field Study of Wikipedia

Abstract Many field public goods are provided by a small number of contributors: the ‘superstars’ of their respective communities. This paper focuses on Wikipedia, one of the largest online volunteering platforms. Over 9 consecutive years, we study the relationship between social preferences – reciprocity, altruism, and social image – and field cooperation. Wikipedia editors are quite prosocial on average, and superstars even more so. But while reciprocal and social image preferences strongly relate to contribution quantity among casual editors, only social image concerns continue to predict differences in contribution levels between superstars. In addition, we find that social image driven editors – both casual and superstars – contribute lower quality content on average. Evidence points to a perverse social incentive effect, as quantity is more readily observable than quality on Wikipedia.

Arabic Wikipedia users' personalized behavior analysis considering gender gap.

As many web platforms adopt collaborative content editing models, the gender gap is addressed as one of the chief concerns in using technology to restrict content editing by one gender. This study aims to analyze the Arabic Wikipedia, the largest collaborative content editing platform on the Arabic web, in terms of gender behavior and differences in user activities. This study is the first to address the gender gap in Arabic Wikipedia, characterize users' gender through their behavior, and then address changes in characteristics over the past five years. This study analyzes parts of Arabic Wikipedia offline by linking article pages and page edit histories to user profiles of known genders. This study reported that a gender gap exists in Arabic Wikipedia. The results reported differences over the past five years between both genders in terms of tasks and user behavior. One aspect that indicated similarity is the period of active time over months/years. Differences were observed in the reported number of increasing users, activities, responsibilities, and average actions performed. The results reveal a vast gap in terms of gender behavior in Wikipedia activities. Moreover, the results reveal that some administrative activities are disclosed to men more than to women.

Causal evidence for social group sizes from Wikipedia editing data.

Human communities have self-organizing properties in which specific Dunbar Numbers may be invoked to explain group attachments. By analysing Wikipedia editing histories across a wide range of subject pages, we show that there is an emergent coherence in the size of transient groups formed to edit the content of subject texts, with two peaks averaging at around for the size corresponding to maximal contention, and at around as a regular team. These values are consistent with the observed sizes of conversational groups, as well as the hierarchical structuring of Dunbar graphs. We use a model of bipartite trust to derive a scaling law that fits the data and may apply to all group size distributions when these are based on attraction to a seeded group process. In addition to providing further evidence that even spontaneous communities of strangers are self-organizing, the results have important implications for the governance of the Wikipedia commons and for the security of all online social platforms and associations.

The acceptance of a wiki site as a learning platform in English exam training

The development of computer mediated technologies facilitated the paradigm shift in the culture of working and learning. Due to these changes, language education is also going through the development beyond the communicative approach to more complex and dynamic action-oriented approaches. There arises a necessity to explore how language teaching and learning, which are guided by new strategies, can be mediated through technology. This research proposes the deployment of a wiki site as a “learning platform” the design of which is underpinned by the principles of networked learning (NL). A wiki-site created by the teacher will be deployed as a platform for language learning and exam training. The study explores students’ perceptions of accepting a wiki site as a learning platform for IELTS (International English language testing System). The previous research has pointed to the fact that wiki as an educational technology has not been used for improving IELTS training so far. So, before large-scale implementing of it on a regular basis at the formal university level, it is necessary to explore whether students accept or reject this information technology as an educational tool. Taking a pragmatic view of NL approach allows the authors to start with exploring the needs of learners involved in NL environments so that a teacher could co- construct the knowledge about the design together with the learners. Technology acceptance model was used to gather the data via an on-line survey. The participants are undergraduates from different faculties who voluntarily and anonymously took part in the research. The survey included the questions about the main TAM constructs: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitudes, intentions and expectations. The research reports a high level of agreement on easiness and usefulness of wiki sites, with the latter sub-construct having a higher rate of agreement among the respondents. Overall, students are reported to have high expectations of a wiki technology used for practising exam skills. However, there is evidence of some less positive outlook in terms of students’ prior experience of wiki in their studies. Despite some limitations, the paper reveals favorable students’ perceptions and proposes implications for further wiki deployment

Wiki communities’ management tools in conditions of digitization

The rise of local and global challenges (such as COVID-19, wars, natural disasters, etc.) requires advanced communication and information technologies to support economic development. The study aims to form a theoretical basis and practical tools for creating and functioning of wiki communities. Wiki communities are a new form of social association based on Internet communications of socio-economic subjects (individuals and organizations), in which each participant has equal rights to receive information, exchange opinions, and generate solutions. The theoretical basis involves substantiating the key principles on which wiki communities are formed, e.g., decentralization, openness, peering, sharing, and mass nature of activity. Wiki communities are represented by a set of specific types, such as professional, academic and research, custom, creative, public and non-commercial communities. The specific managing activities of wiki communities are described by several classification levels, such as operational activities, ensuring security, quality assurance, and motivation. The wiki community management toolkit includes a goal-setting algorithm, decision-making procedures, communications, rules of operation, typical tasks, areas of application, the operation and development cycle, and functional capabilities. It allows effective transfer of information, communication in real-time, and mutually enriching each other in forming knowledge and innovation. AcknowledgmentThe publication was prepared in the framework of the research project “Restructuring of the national economy in the direction of digital transformations for sustainable development” (№0122U001232) from National Research Foundation.

Design of Moodle-based collaborative learning activities to enhance student interactions

PurposeThis article explores the impact of systematically designed online collaborative activities in two engineering undergraduate modules and key considerations for student interaction in Moodle.Design/methodology/approachThe educational design research approach was chosen to improve educational practices through iterative needs analysis, design, development and implementation. The study followed design-based research (DBR) approach, with a mixed-method research design used to uncover the critical factors in designing, developing and implementing online collaborative learning activities for improving student interaction. Two iterative cycles of online collaborative learning activities were implemented using the Moodle learning management system for two modules of an engineering undergraduate degree programme at a state university in Sri Lanka.FindingsResults indicate that students had demonstrated increased motivation for collaborative activities, and they had not experienced any significant difficulties in accessing materials or instructions. This study emphasizes that the design of learning activities has a greater influence on determining the level of interaction between the learner interface and the learner content. Also, a higher number of interactions on the wiki page improved learner-learner interactions, likely due to clear instructions and reduced complexities compared to previous Moodle activities. Overall, appropriately designed online activities can enhance students' motivation and improve communication, collaboration, cooperation and a sense of community among peers.Research limitations/implicationsThe study's constraints included a small sample size of 93 students in two courses, which limits generalization of the results. The study's findings should be carefully considered before being applied to courses with nontechnical content. The second constraint was the number of courses on which the activities were carried out. The activities were designed specifically for two Earth Resources engineering courses, and the developed activities addressed technical course content. The effect of the activities on students' engagement and motivation in various courses with nontechnical content must be investigated, and a complete generalization of the study's results may be called into question. As a result, careful consideration must be given to generalizing the study's findings.Practical implicationsThe study found that authentic collaborative learning activities using online technologies increased student participation and helped them discover their engineering design skills. Future research can focus on developing activities for other technical courses and incorporating additional tools into the instructional process. The use of a design-based research approach was recommended for future studies to obtain more comprehensive results than traditional comparative study designs.Originality/valueThe findings of this study suggest mechanisms to improve student interaction through online collaborative activities, particularly for delivering technical content. Such an understanding of learner interactions with course content, peers, teachers and interfaces will assist in the effective transformation of traditional technical content to online delivery mode. This is a unique study of converting in-class delivered engineering module content to online delivery within an equal time frame under restricted facilities and conditions resulting from a pandemic environment.

Medieval grammars as non-literary source for syntax: The Wiki format for terminological analyses

Medieval grammars as non-literary source for syntax: The Wiki format for terminological analyses

“I Don’t Feel Like It Is ‘Mine’ at All”: Assessing Wikipedia Editors’ Sense of Individual and Community Ownership

Given Wikipedia’s breadth of coverage, social impact, and longevity as an impactful open knowledge resource, the encyclopedia has been the subject of considerable interdisciplinary research. Building on scholarship related to collaboration, authorship, ownership, and editing in Wikipedia, this study sought to better understand Wikipedians as writers, paying specific attention to their sense of ownership. While previous research has shown that editors engage in individualist editing practices at times, often ignoring community-mediated policy regarding ownership, findings from a mixed-method survey of 117 editors demonstrate the existence of both “individual” and “community” notions of ownership that often reinforce, or mutually inform, each other. This study adds clarity to these issues by demonstrating how feelings of individual ownership, voice, and pride in writing often occur in collaborative circumstances. This research ultimately extends our understanding of collaborative writing in what is one of the most well-known collaborative websites. Despite contemporary theoretical strides advocating for relinquishing ownership concepts in favor of distributed or ecological frameworks, the concept of ownership remains prevalent within digital writing communities, exemplified by Wikipedia.

Wikipedia’s Indian problem: settler colonial erasure of native American knowledge and history on the world’s largest encyclopedia

ABSTRACT This article details settler colonial erasure of Native American and Indigenous histories, knowledges, and philosophies on Wikipedia. I show that long-time Wikipedia editors follow the settler colonial logic of elimination to omit Native histories from Wikipedia’s American history pages; block Native and allied editors from adding scholarship that centers Native experience; and ban Native and allied editors from the website so that settlers can lay claim to digital space. To do so, I concentrate on Wikipedia’s United States and American history pages, and I detail editor discussions regarding Native histories on Wikipedia’s talk pages, noticeboards, and off-Wikipedia message boards where editors congregate. I supplement this information with interviews of Wikipedia editors engaged in editing these topics. I argue that digital erasure on Wikipedia is done in the service of claiming digital space, much like settler erasure in physical space is done to claim land. I ultimately provide suggestions for the Wikimedia foundation to combat settler colonial erasure on Wikipedia. This study contributes to recent work in the digital humanities that clarifies historical manipulation for public consumption by Wikipedia editors, and it provides key insights into the ways that settler colonialism manifests in digital space.

TRACES OF UNEQUAL ENTRY REQUIREMENT FOR ILLUSTRIOUS PEOPLE ON WIKIPEDIA BASED ON THEIR GENDER

Wikipedia is a widely used tool people use to gather knowledge about the world, causing it to have a vast impact on the way individuals perceive the reality they live in. It is then of paramount importance that the picture of the world Wikipedia provides is accurate. We cannot afford such an important tool to eschew inclusiveness or a fair representation of reality: an inaccurate picture of the world in such a tool can be used to claim unjust and unfair positions — such as that women are inferior to men — as if they were facts, because they are enshrined on an encyclopedia. In this paper, we study issues of fair gender representations for people in history noted by multiple language editions of Wikipedia: are women underrepresented on Wikipedia? We do so via a combination of natural language processing and network science. Our results indicate that there is indeed a higher bar for women to have their own biographical page on Wikipedia: women are only included when they have more significant connections than men to the rest of the network. There are visible effects of the initiatives Wikipedia is taking to fix this issue, showing that the gap is narrowing, which validates our interpretation of the data.

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.

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.

Spanning Literacy Instruction: A Wikipedia Editing Assignment in an Upper-Level Biochemistry Course

abstract: The authors, a chemistry professor and a librarian, used a qualitative survey to assess student perceptions of a Wikipedia editing assignment that they included in a large upper-level biochemistry course. The assignment was initially intended as a public-facing alternative to a short research paper, emphasizing information literacy and scientific literacy. The goal of the survey was to use the results to enhance the assignment. The results of the survey and research for the literature review inspired a novel approach to the assignment using the perspective of metaliteracy. This approach encourages students to think critically about their role as scholars in a participatory environment.

TA2Viewer: A web-based browser for Terminologia Anatomica and online anatomical knowledge.

TA2Viewer is an open-access, web-based application and database for browsing anatomical terms and associated medical information on a computer or mobile device (https://ta2viewer.openanatomy.org/). It incorporates the official digital version of the second edition of Terminologia Anatomica (TA2) as published by the Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology (FIPAT), and adopted by the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA) and other associations. It provides a dynamic and interactive view of the Latin and English nomenclatures. The organizational hierarchy of the terminology can be navigated by using a scrollable, expandable, and collapsible structured listing. Interactive search includes the official TA2 terms, synonyms, and related terms. TA2Viewer also uses TA2 term information to provide convenient access to other online resources, including Google web and image searches, PubMed, and Radiopaedia. Using cross-references from Wikidata, which were provided by the Wikipedia community, TA2Viewer offers links to Wikipedia, UBERON, UMLS, FMA, MeSH, NeuroNames, the public domain 20th edition of Gray's Anatomy, and other data sources. In addition, it can optionally use unofficial synonyms from Wikidata to provide multilingual term searches in hundreds of languages. By leveraging TA2, TA2Viewer provides free access to a curated anatomical nomenclature and serves as an index of online anatomical knowledge.

Explaining how Wikipedia deals with credibility to university students: the case of Wikipedia in the Basque language

PurposeThis study aims to analyse how first-year undergraduate audiovisual communication students assess the credibility and reliability of information on Wikipedia in Basque and analyse whether the experience of being a Wikipedia editor helps to improve students’ perceptions of Wikipedia’s trustworthiness. The purpose of this project was to help students to better understand the credibility mechanisms of Wikipedia in Basque regarding the work of editing and creating entries. Do students’ perceptions about how reliable Wikipedia is change if they receive training as Wikipedia content editors and understand Wikipedia’s credibility mechanisms? What are their perceptions about the credibility of Wikipedia?Design/methodology/approachThe authors observed and analysed students’ behaviour and perceptions when creating Wikipedia articles and learning about the process of evaluating Wikipedia. This research was carried out at [masked for review] over four consecutive years, where 188 students in the Degree Programme in Audiovisual Communication participated through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews.FindingsAfter the experience of creating content on Wikipedia and learning about Wikipedia’s credibility mechanisms experientially, the majority of students reported that their perception of Wikipedia’s credibility had increased, and 70% of students believed Wikipedia to be reliable or more reliable than expected. A smaller number of students stated that understanding Wikipedia’s editing processes decreased their perception of Wikipedia’s credibility.Practical implicationsThis project will lead to a better understanding of the performance of students in editing content on Wikipedia and of the impact that this editing experience has on students’ perceptions of credibility with respect to Wikipedia. It will make it possible to better incorporate Wikipedia content editing into the learning processes of students and citizens. This study provides interesting keys to improving the reliability and credibility of Wikipedia among students.Social implicationsAs the study examined Basque Wikipedia, it has important social implications since Basque is a minority language and Wikipedia is the main sources of information for students who study in Basque.Originality/valueThe authors have been analysing the credibility of information in general and that of information on Wikipedia in particular since 2010. Based on this experience, the authors decided to design this study so that it was carried out while the students were creating and editing Wikipedia content as part of a project in their educational curriculum. Furthermore, the study expands the body of research carried out to date by incorporating the perspectives of media studies students.

Wikipedia and the Outsider Within: Black Feminism and Social Inequality in Knowledge Sharing

This paper examines the politics of knowledge on Wikipedia through a Black feminist lens, with particular attention to Patricia Hill Collins’s concept of Black women as “the outsider within” in intellectual spaces. We present an assignment in which a class of predominantly Black, female undergraduate students were tasked with analyzing and then improving content on Wikipedia. Wikipedia strives to be unbiased through a transparent writing and editing process that draws on reliable, published sources. These protocols regularly help catch and fix hoaxes and content vandalism. Nonetheless, we build on existing scholarship to show that Wikipedia has other kinds of biases that result in racist and sexist knowledge gaps, euphemisms, stereotypes, and misrepresentation. These problems are a result of (1) the personal experiences and opinions of Wikipedia editors, who are predominantly white and male; (2) the requirement for subjects to be deemed “noteworthy” through citing multiple sources that meet Wikipedia’s standards of reliability; and (3) gatekeeping practices by the existing editors. As a result, we argue that Wikipedia can not only extend but also exacerbate pro–white male biases present in the source materials that Wikipedia draws on. We note the potential for more diverse editors to improve Wikipedia content, but we also offer cautionary observations on this strategy. Last, we suggest that college instructors can teach students to better understand racialized and gendered knowledge processes through assignments to contribute to Wikipedia that are paired with supportive readings.