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Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy

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How my father's railroad image collection now benefits the world: the value of digitization

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A carnival of animals, a river of dung, a wasteland of uncles, and some people with attitude

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2015-03-25

Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy

By Resident Mario and Tony1

Wikimedia Foundation at last adopts open-access policy

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Top scholarly citers, lack of open access references, predicting editor departures 27 March 2022 The Wikipedia SourceWatch 31 March 2019 Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy 25 March 2015 Wikipedia predicts flu more accurately than Google; 43% of academics have edited Wikipedia 30 April 2014 Licensed for reuse? Citing open-access sources in Wikipedia articles 15 January 2014 Loss of an Internet genius 14 January 2013 Wikimedia Foundation endorses open-access petition to the White House; pending changes RfC ends 28 May 2012 Wikimedia and the "seismic shift" towards open-access research publication 14 May 2012

Last week the WMF announced the release of its long-awaited open-access policy. In a statement on the Foundation's blog, executive director Lila Tretikov wrote that "Wikimedia is committed to nurturing open knowledge for all, unrestrained by cost barriers ... the Wikimedia movement has a longstanding commitment to open access practices. Today, we are excited to formalize that commitment with this policy."

Open access is a movement among researchers that was initially aimed at making research findings accessible to their colleagues, and now increasingly to the public. It evolved through the 1990s and early 2000s as scholars and scientists discovered the Web as a platform for communicating their findings. It became more formalized when the Budapest Open Access Initiative coined and defined the term. The Initiative sparked several follow-ups, among them the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, which was signed by several Wikimedia entities, including the Foundation.

Daniel Mietchen, an active researcher in data science and member of WikiProject Open Access, told the Signpost that while many researchers welcome open access in principle, the incentive structures in universities and other research institutions do not always make this an easy choice for their own publications. In response, research institutions, funding bodies, governments and other organizations have begun to modify the incentive landscape through open-access mandates. These mandates require that research findings from specific institutions or funded through specific programs be made available open access.

The Wikimedia movement as a whole has a long history of engagement with open access; in particular, the Foundation has been supporting interactions with the research community, be it through the Research Committee (which oversees the monthly Research Newsletter published as part of the Signpost), through support of the WikiSym/ OpenSym annual conference series, or through other forms of significant support. Initial work on an open-access policy was started in 2010, consolidated and presented at Wikimania in 2011, but never formalized into an actual policy; at the same time, open-access policies have continued to expand in reach and scope.

The Foundation has meanwhile continued to take increasingly strong stances on the issue. In 2011, the research committee put together a response to an EU public consultation on the nature of scientific information in the digital age. In 2012, it responded to a similar consultation by the White House. A few months later, the WMF moved to endorse a petition made to the White House by the public-access group Access2Research, asking for “free access over the Internet to journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research” (Signpost coverage). In 2013, the White House responded with a directive that moves in this direction by requiring the largest public research funders in the US to develop taxpayer access policies similar to the NIH Public Access Policy that has been in effect since 2008. This policy development is still ongoing.

Open-access policies are particularly important in the context of the Wikimedia movement. Not only do members of the Wikimedia movement work to provide "open access to knowledge" for all of our readers—a goal complementary to that of the scholarly open-access movement—they directly benefit from the increasing transparency of journal publications for studying, sourcing and illustrating knowledge available through Wikimedia projects.

How scholarly articles available under an open license can be reused on Wikimedia projects, and how readers can be made aware of that reusability

Mietchen says that in this context, "the WMF’s open-access policy shows interesting deviations from standard features of its academic siblings:

• It covers not just publications, but associated data, software and multimedia;
• It stresses the importance of open licensing, which facilitates and broadens the scope of reuse;
• It is itself available under an open license, so it can easily be adapted (e.g. translated);
• It avoids embargo periods (which most other policies allow for), and instead allows for limited exceptions;
• The exceptions are to be documented in public, which helps to collect data on the necessity for exceptions and can inform later refinements of the policy."

By establishing its own open-access policy, the Foundation has put its cards on the table and strengthened the alignment of its own research initiatives with the open-access movement. Further details on what the new policy means for researchers interested in the Wikimedia projects are in the open-access policy FAQ.

Since that Wikimania session in 2011, there have been multiple meetings in the movement on open access (while one specifically on the new policy has been proposed for Wikimania 2015) as well as dozens of talks (e.g. here or here) and blog posts (e.g. here or here) on the interaction between Wikimedia and open access (further Signpost coverage is linked in the sidebar).

Providing access to research is not always straightforward, highlighted by the long history of the proposal for an open-access policy for research coordinated with the support of an organization as committed to open access as the WMF. This is illustrated by the annual discussions about the open-access status of the research presented at WikiSym, a conference that spurred important contributions to Wikipedia research (2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012).

The new WMF policy on access to WMF-supported research—with its emphasis on open licensing and the option of publicly justified exceptions—could act as a catalyst for bringing the research and Wikimedia communities closer together. It is likely to lead to greater accessibility to research findings for contributors and other users of Wikimedia platforms. R, T

New WMF board member announced

Guy Kawasaki, technology evangelist and newly elected member of the Board of Trustees.

The Wikimedia Foundation this week announced the on-boarding of Guy Kawasaki to the Board of Trustees. Kawasaki replaces Bishakha Datta, who served from March 2010 to December 2014, in one of the four board seats reserved for "necessary expertise". In his introduction in the Foundation blog Kawasaki stated that "There are few projects in the history of the world that can have the long-term impact of Wikimedia ... the democratization of knowledge that Wikimedia stands for has been a long time in the coming, and I relish applying my passion and experience to this amazing mission." Executive director Lila Tretikov states that "Guy grasps what really moves people. His passion for extraordinary experiences is a perfect fit for Wikipedia’s remarkable mission."

The Board of Trustees is the WMF's "ultimate corporate authority"; as a new trustee, Kawasaki is now one of the ten people tasked with stewardship of the Wikimedia Foundation (and, through it, of the overall movement). Before his appointment to the Board, Kawasaki was chief evangelist for Canva, an online graphic design tool; he has formerly served as an adviser to Motorola and as a chief evangelist at Apple, where he "developed and popularized the concept of 'secular evangelism' for Apple’s brand, culture, and products". He has written ten books on the topics of business technology, marketing, and entrepreneurship, the first of which, The Macintosh Way, was published in 1989, and the most recent, The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, late last year. Although the blog post provides little detail about why the Board chose Kawasaki, specifically, it is not hard to see what expertise Kawasaki, an extremely active social-media influencer (see, for instance, his LinkedIn roll or his Twitter), is meant to bring to the board: a recent Forbes story went so far as to call The Art of the Start 2.0, a refresh of a 2004 Kawasaki publication, "The New Entrepreneur's Bible". R

In brief

• Wikimedia Hackathon 2015: Registration is now open for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2015. The event, organized by Wikimedia France, is to take place in Lyon on May 23–25; the four current topical focuses are mobile applications, Wikidata, MediaWiki, and Wikimedia Labs development. As of writing, the event had 50 attendees, among them members of the Foundation's and various affiliates' technical personnel. Topics to be covered are under discussion at the phabricator, and to "help newcomers mingle", the hackathon is experimenting with buddy pairing. This event is likely to be one of the largest such hackathons organized independently of Wikimania 2015 this year. R
• Wikimedia for children?: French Wikimedian User:Astirmays has organized an excerpt of last month's strategic planning community consultation, re-igniting a discussion as to the possibility and practicability of a Wikimedia project "for kids". Such a wiki has been proposed on and off for some time: the record of the most recent efforts, including the 2013 nomination and subsequent withdrawal of independently organized Vikidia, is preserved at Wikikids on the meta-wiki, indicating a proposal history stretching back all the way to 2003 (Signpost coverage of the strategic planning consultation). R
• Wikimedia Netherlands chapter report: Wikimedia Nederland last week released their chapter report for January–February 2015. Highlights include January's awarding of the Erasmus Prize (see Signpost coverage), an education program translation project pilot, a gendergap editathon with Dutch feminist magazine Opzij, and the uploading of more than 2,500 high-resolution photos to Commons from the Museum Catharijneconvent. R

• Entire book one of The Well-Tempered Clavier on Wikimedia Commons: The Open Well-Tempered Clavier is a Kickstarter-funded project to release a copyright-free recording, score, and braille edition of the first of two books of Johann Sebastian Bach's eponymous harpsichord works (here played on piano). The recordings, by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka, were posted online this month. The FLAC files were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Amire80 and are available in Category:Open Well-Tempered Clavier. Their previous project was Open Goldberg Variations, a similar release of Bach's work in 2012, also available on Commons at Category:Open Goldberg Variations. G
• Wikimedian in Residence in Scotland: Sara Thomas became Wikimedian in Residence at the Museums Galleries Scotland this week, making her the second such resident in Scotland—the first, Ally Crockford, is currently in residence at the National Library of Scotland. The UK has a long history in the GLAM program: the very first Wikimedian in residence, Liam Wyatt, completed a residency at the British Museum back in 2010 (Signpost coverage). For more on the GLAM initiative, see the GLAM newsletter. R
• Wiki Education Foundation monthly report: The Wiki Education Foundation have released their monthly report. The highlights, directly from their blog, are: a partnership signed with the National Women’s Studies Association, Association for Psychological Science, and the Communication across the Curriculum initiative at Louisiana State University; foundational planning work on new digital coursework infrastructure, funded with a $300K grant from the Stanton Foundation; and the launching of Wiki Ed's first student pilot program at University of California Berkeley, the University of Arizona, and Oregon State University. R
• SUL notifications trigger project milestones: A number of projects passed milestones on March 18 this week, mostly as a function of the mass-messaging of users affected by the upcoming SUL finalization process (coverage in last week's report). The Finnish Wikipedia has reached 1,000,000 total pages, the Finnish Wikibooks has reached 10,000 total pages, the Spanish Wikiversity has reached 10,000 total pages and 100,000 page edits, and—perhaps most impressively—the Moldovan Wikipedia has reached 10,000 page edits, despite having been closed to regular editing since 2006. The Armenian Wikipedia reached 150,000 articles this week in a metric uninflated by SUL, and the French Wikivoyage hit 5,000. R
  
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2015-03-25

How my father's railroad image collection now benefits the world: the value of digitization

By Michael Barera

The Chessie Steam Special at Plymouth, Michigan (July 1977), featuring Reading Railroad's #2101

An Ann Arbor Railroad Steam Special in Ann Arbor, Michigan (circa 1950)

Chicago South Shore and South Bend interurban #102 street running in South Bend, Indiana (August 1962)

An Amtrak RTG Turboliner at Ann Arbor, Michigan (May 1975)

Amtrak's Wolverine at Ann Arbor, Michigan (June 1976)

Once when I was young, growing up in the 1990s, my father pulled his collection of railroad slides out from the basement, set up his projector, and shared a glimpse into American railway history with our family. I was too young to remember the slides distinctly, but I do remember being really impressed by the experience. Many years later, a sequence of seemingly unrelated events would lead me back to these slides and a vision for digitizing them. In 2013, while I was the Wikipedian in Residence at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, I met Edward Vielmetti for a conference panel on the relationship between wikis and libraries. Before the panel, he introduced me to ArborWiki, a LocalWiki for all things related to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Then, while I was attending an ArborWiki meetup in 2014, I met David Erdody, who runs an analog-to-digital media conversion service called A2Digital. After learning that he had the equipment and expertise necessary to digitize slides, I immediately thought back to my father's collection and the possibility of digitizing it.

The slides themselves were taken both by my father (David) and his father (my grandfather, Lawrence). Most were created in the Midwestern United States, especially Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, chiefly during the 1960s and 1970s (although one photograph of an Ann Arbor Railroad Steam Special dates back to circa 1950). Their featured subjects are largely passenger trains, and due to their dates of creation they document both the last decade of private passenger rail service in the United States and the early years of Amtrak. According to my father, the majority of the photographs were taken by my grandfather, who was an avid amateur photographer; however, both my father and my grandfather would often go railfanning together, making it impossible to discern who took each individual photograph in most cases. For this reason, all of the digitized photographs credit "Lawrence and David Barera" as the photographer. However, because my father is my grandfather's legal heir, he controlled all of the copyrights to the entire collection, including for those photographs taken by his father.

I eventually decided to have the slides digitized as a Father's Day gift for my Dad, after which I agreed to terms with Erdody and handed off all of the slides to him. Initially, I thought about this project as simply a way to make the slides conveniently accessible to my father, and after receiving the digital surrogates from Erdody I began uploading them to Flickr for this purpose in May 2014. While doing this, I realized that there was tremendous potential for the further sharing of these digitized photographs, so I asked my father if he would be willing to release them under a Creative Commons license so I could also upload them to Wikimedia Commons. He graciously agreed to this proposal and released them freely under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, which is conveniently supported by Flickr.

My father's motivation for freely licensing these images was rooted in the fact that his slides had been underused prior to their digitization; in his own words, they had been "tucked away with other family artifacts" and only ever brought out of storage "every dozen years or so". Further explaining his rationale, he noted that "I was proud of the quality of most of the photos, and thought there was no better way to honor the work of my father than to make his photos available for public use."

In less than a year since they were uploaded, my father's donation of 146 original images (now 151 total files, including retouched derivatives) to Wikimedia Commons has certainly benefited the Wikimedia community, as over 10% have already been added to Wikipedia articles (chiefly but not exclusively on English Wikipedia). Interestingly but not surprisingly, my father's decision to freely license these images has also benefited him directly in the form of both subject identification and color correction, largely thanks to Wikimedians Mackensen and MagentaGreen, respectively. By voluntarily releasing his collection of railroad slides into the commons, my father has benefited from the volunteered efforts of other users while also enriching the content of both Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia.

In light of my experience with this digitization project, I believe that motivations for freely licensing older analog personal photographs are very similar to those for contemporary digital photographs, including the motivations that catalyzed my own personal photographic contributions to Wikimedia Commons back in the mid to late 2000s. The economics of their creation appear to be essentially the same, necessitating only a camera and the desire and ability to take photographs, often as a hobby; I believe that this makes the amateur analog photographer's decision to freely release his or her images very similar to the equivalent decision made by contemporary amateur digital photographers. The major challenge, however, is the cost and equipment required to digitize these images before they can be uploaded or freely licensed. While the cost is not insignificant, from my experience it is not prohibitive either ($0.50 per slide in my case), which for me at least made it a feasible and affordable gift idea.

From my personal experience I would certainly recommend A2Digital, although according to Erdody it is a "strictly local service"; while he told me that he would be willing to "receive materials by mail from anywhere", he also described the idea of mailing slides or similar analog materials back and forth for digitization as "very risky" (emphasis in the original). As a protective measure, he recommends that his customers deliver their materials to him by hand, which is precisely what I did. While this worked perfectly well for me as an Ann Arbor resident, it simply will not suffice for the rest of the world.

Due to the fragility of the medium in question, successfully digitizing slides nonetheless requires, as Erdody terms it, "a grassroots solution". Asking your local library or historical society about how they digitize slides or negatives is probably the best place to start. Although not terribly common, according to Erdody, some libraries do provide lists of their digitization vendors; an example is the state-run Library of Michigan in Lansing, which maintains this webpage on the subject. Perhaps the easiest way to locate such a service, however, is to simply search the Internet for "slide digitization" and the name of your city, town, or the nearest metropolitan area. However you find a slide digitizer, though, I'd highly recommend that you explore the possibility of digitizing any slides you may have of potential interest to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. In terms of the final results in my case, I think that my father said it best: "I know my Dad would be pleased and proud to know that his work was finally being enjoyed and appreciated by railfans (and others) all over the world."

• 
  The Illinois Central's Green Diamond at Kankakee, Illinois (August 1964)
• 
  The Pennsylvania Railroad's Pennsylvania Limited at Plymouth, Indiana (July 1963)
• 
  The Santa Fe's Grand Canyon Limited at Joliet, Illinois (August 1963)
• 
  A Gulf, Mobile, & Ohio train at Joliet, Illinois (August 1963)

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2015-03-25

A carnival of animals, a river of dung, a wasteland of uncles, and some people with attitude

By Xanthomelanoussprog, Gamaliel, The Herald, and Hafspajen

• People with attitude
• 
• 
• 

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 8 March through 14 March. Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution. (You know this disclaimer.)

Featured articles

Four featured articles were promoted this week.

Camille Saint-Saëns, photographed by Nadar

• Camille Saint-Saëns (nominated by Tim riley) Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer, conductor, and organist, revered by both Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel as a genius. He was regarded by the music critic Schonberg as "the most remarkable child prodigy in history, and that includes Mozart." Among the works of this celebrated Romantic composer still performed today are his suite The Carnival of the Animals, his tone poem Danse macabre, his opera Samson and Delilah, his Symphony No. 3, known as the "Organ symphony", and his Piano Concerto No. 2.
• Great Stink (nominated by SchroCat) The "Great Stink" was the name given to the smell of the River Thames in the hot summer of 1858. Raw sewage from London had been dumped in the river since the time of Brutus of Troy. Normally, the flow of the river and the tides would move everything eastwards, but dry weather caused a decrease in the river's flow, and the river banks soon developed a crust up to six feet thick. The stench from decaying faeces became so strong that the Houses of Parliament covered their windows with curtains soaked in lime chloride, but even this failed to mask the pong. Civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette proposed shifting the muck eastwards by propelling it along a series of sewers using pumping stations. His proposal was accepted, and Bazalgette oversaw the construction of 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of street sewers and 82 miles (132 km) of main sewers. Completed in 1875, the system dumped untreated sewage into the Thames just south of Dagenham. In 1878 the SS Princess Alice sank at this point one hour after the release of 75 million imperial gallons (340,000 m³) of raw sewage; over 650 people drowned.

  

  "Sorry, ate some bad roadkill last night" quoth the raven.

• Forest raven (nominated by Cas Liber) The forest raven is a passerine bird native to Tasmania and forests in Victoria and New South Wales. Its diet is opportunistic and omnivorous, and the raven has been blamed for killing poultry and lambs.
• Uncle David (nominated by Midnightblueowl) Uncle David is a 2010 film, set in the Isle of Sheppey. It is a love story set in a caravan park and on a shingle beach, and was filmed in muted colors using two Sony HVR-Z1 camcorders. Costumes were purchased from an Oxfam charity shop, and the extras were the inhabitants of Sheppey, described by one of the film's producers, Gary Reich, as "a truly Godforsaken wasteland". "[During] the shoot none of the locals expressed any interest in the crew's activities." Critics offered mixed reviews of the film.

Featured lists

Three featured lists were promoted this week.

New Zealand (pictured in 2009 during a test match) has been involved in five of the eight tied Twenty20 Internationals.

• List of tied Twenty20 Internationals (nominated by Harrias) Twenty20 cricket is a shortened form of the game, in which each side is restricted to a maximum of twenty "overs", each consisting of the delivery of six balls by one side's bowler to the other side's batspeople. The game usually lasts for three hours, with either a win, a draw, or a "no result". If both teams score the same number of runs, a draw is declared; as the match is usually part of a tournament, the winner is then decided by a "bowl-out" or, since December 2008, a super over.
• Salman Khan filmography (nominated by FrankBoy) Salman Khan, an Indian actor, has appeared in more than 100 Bollywood films since 1988. Critical recognition came early: his second film, the 1989 musical Maine Pyar Kiya, was the top-grossing Bollywood film of that year, and Khan won the Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut. In 2008, he became the producer of reality television shows 10 Ka Dum and Bigg Boss.
• Laurence Olivier on stage and screen (nominated by SchroCat) The English actor Laurence Olivier was once spotted by Michael Caine waiting at the Olivier Theatre. "Do you have to pay to go in here?" asked Caine. "Yes, I bloody well do" he replied acerbically. Olivier's stage career lasted from 1925 to 1986, and his film career from 1930 to 1989. His most topical role at the moment must be his portrayal of Shakespeare's Richard III in the 1955 film version – Olivier based his mannerisms on theatre producer Jed Harris (who was also the inspiration for Disney's Big Bad Wolf).

Featured pictures

• Duke of Buckingham in the sky with pearls and diamonds and the art of sculpture and living
• 
  George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham by Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt
• 
  Stephan's Quintet
• 
  Alessandro Vittoria

Twenty-two featured pictures were promoted this week.

Night View of Ho Chi Minh City

Mr and Mrs Andrews

Anatomical diagram of a nautilus

Mail Coaches on the Road – the Louth-London Royal Mail Progressing at Speed

Echo and Narcissus

The Temptation

• The Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John (created by Hendrick ter Brugghen, nominated by Crisco 1492) The Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John, by the Dutch artist Hendrick ter Brugghen, shows the deceased Jesus Christ on the cross, with the mourning Mary and John the Apostle. At the foot of the cross are the bones of Adam, which identify the location as Golgotha, the place of the skull. A strange light suffuses the landscape, ostensibly the weird half-light of a partial solar eclipse.
• Stephan's Quintet (created by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, nominated by The Herald and Crisco 1492) This is Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies, although the one upper left (NGC 7320 – that's its catalog number) is much closer to us than the other four. It's a dwarf galaxy. To its right is NGC 7319, a barred spiral, with little blue dots visible at the top; these, and the red dots below, are clusters of thousands of stars. In the middle, two galaxies, NGC 7318A and NGC 7318B, have distorted shapes because they are interacting with each other.
• Mr and Mrs Andrews (created by Thomas Gainsborough, nominated by Crisco 1492) Mr and Mrs Andrews is a double portrait by the English artist Thomas Gainsborough, painted when he was 21. The painting was first put on public exhibition in 1927, more than 170 years after its creation, and has become one of his best-known works. The Andrewses were members of the landed gentry of Essex, with an estate of 3,000 acres (1,200 ha), part of which forms the landscape half of this painting. Robert Andrews was a keen farmer, interested in modern agricultural techniques, such as Jethro Tull's seed drill, responsible for the neat rows of wheat featured (get it?) in the painting.
• George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (created by Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, nominated by Hafspajen) George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, seen here at the age of 33 in 1625 painted by the Dutch Golden Age artist Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, was the favourite courtier (and some reckoned lover) of King James I of England and Ireland. His widowed mother trained him for the life of a courtier; he was noticed by James during a hunt at Apethorpe. Others, who noticed the noticing, raised money to purchase Villiers a new wardrobe (not the kind from IKEA) and employment as James's cupbearer. These "others" were opponents of James's previous favourite, Robert Carr. Villiers rose to be the highest-ranking non-Royal, and an incompetent and corrupt statesman. He was stabbed in a pub by a slighted army officer, leaped up with an exclamation of "Villain!", began to give chase, and dropped dead.
• The Baptism of Christ (created by Piero della Francesca, nominated by SchroCat ) The Baptism of Christ is a painting by Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, completed circa 1448–1450. Christ is being baptised by John the Baptist; above Christ's head is a dove symbolising the Holy Ghost. To the left, three angels hold hands. It is opined that this is an allusion to the Council of Florence of a few years previous, which attempted to remedy the schism between the Eastern and Western churches – but Greek and Latin never did unite.
• Portrait of Alessandro Vittoria (created by Paolo Veronese, nominated by Crisco 1492) One of the greatest sculptors of 16th century Venice, Alessandro Vittoria, is depicted here by one of its greatest painters, Paolo Veronese. Veronese paints Vittoria holding a model of one of his most famous sculptures, that of Saint Sebastian created for the San Francesco della Vigna. Vittoria commissioned many portraits of himself and hung them in his house to impress his visitors and clients. You don't want to see the one that he had painted for the bedroom.
• The Entombment (created by Dieric Bouts, nominated by SchroCat) The Entombment, by the early Netherlandish painter Dieric Bouts, shows the lifeless body of Christ being lowered into a stone tomb; Nicodemus holds the body, while Mary Salome, Mary of Clopas, Mary, the mother of Jesus, John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalene, and Joseph of Arimathea look on. The painting was probably made sometime between 1440 and 1455 as part of an altarpiece. It's painted on linen with pigments bound in glue, which is why it's so dull; the canvas can't be cleaned without removing the paint.
• Christ in the Desert (created by Ivan Kramskoy, nominated by Hafspajen) Ivan Kramskoi was a Russian artist of the 19th century. Influenced by revolutionary and democratic ideals, he rebelled against academic art, and his paintings show an "expressive simplicity of composition and clarity of depiction [so as to] emphasize profound psychological elements of character". These traits are evident in his Christ in the Desert, depicting Christ as struggling with the "forces of spirit and flesh".
• Echo and Narcissus (created by John William Waterhouse, nominated by Sagaciousphil) Echo and Narcissus, by the Neoclassical artist John William Waterhouse, depicts the protagonists of a poem by Ovid. Echo is gazing with love at Narcissus, who is gazing with love at ... Narcissus. Kind of a love triangle gone wrong. Narcissus stayed there until he wasted away and became a flower.
• Portrait of a Man (created by Domenico Ghirlandaio, nominated by Alborzagros) and An Old Man and his Grandson (created by Domenico Ghirlandaio, nominated by Alborzagros) These portraits are by the early Italian Renaissance artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose skill at capturing likenesses was noted by Giorgio Vasari. Ghirlandaio, his brothers, and later his son, ran a large and efficient workshop, and among the many apprentices there was a young Michelangelo. Portrait of a Man (c. 1477) may be a depiction of the great Renaissance humanist and Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino. An Old Man and his Grandson (c. 1490), which depicts a man affected by rhinophyma and a young boy, may be Ghirlandaio's best known work, although the identity of the sitters is unknown. The expressions of tenderness between the old man and the child led art historian and consultant Bernard Berenson to write of it, "There is no more human picture in the entire range of Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy." Mostly out of Italy, if Berenson had anything to do with them – he was not above a bit of art smuggling.
• Battle of Vercellae (created by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, nominated by Crisco 1492) This is a big painting of a big battle, in which the Romans (almost) wiped out the Cimbri, who were attempting to invade Italy. A few of the Cimbri were left, and some Cimbric-speaking inhabitants of northeastern Italy have been supposed to be their descendants. The painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is a confused melee of men and horses; the Cimbri are being pressed in, stabbed, and crushed by the Roman legionaries. In the centre, a Roman has just withdrawn his spatha from the chest of a Cimbri warrior dressed in yellow. It looks like the latter has acquired some Roman equipment, including helmet and sword, maybe pillage from the Battle of Arausio. Tiepolo's swords don't appear to be historically accurate, but then neither does Plutarch's account of the battle.
• Christ Crowned with Thorns (created by Hieronymus Bosch, nominated by SchroCat) Hieronymus Bosch was an imaginative fellow for sure, and here he demonstrates the breadth of his imagination with this image of Christ being crowned by a man with a crossbow bolt in his hat. It's the sort of bolt used to cut rigging on a ship. Then there's the chappy wearing a malevolent grin, a spiked dog collar, a spray of oak leaves, and half a black sheep; good old Catweazle with a staff; and some nondescript man with rhinophyma who is attempting to wrench the seamless robe off of Jesus.
• Anatomical diagram of a nautilus (created and nominated by KDS4444) The nautilus is a living fossil, a scavenger and opportunistic predator, and hasn't evolved much during the last 500 million years. It has about 90 tentacles with a powerful grip, and its mouth has a parrot-like beak, which the nautilus uses to rip shellfish from rocks. It is resistant to pressure, and can live down to a depth of 700 metres (2,300 ft); the nautilus implodes at a depth of 800 metres (2,600 ft), so if you're pursued by one, go deeper.
• The Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles (created by Strobridge Lithograph Co., Cincinnati & New York, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Eugene Sandow is known as the "father of modern bodybuilding". Born in Prussia, he entered a strongman competition in Britain in 1889. Sandow was so successful that for the next four years, he toured the country giving exhibitions of "posing and incredible feats of strength". In 1894, he went to the States to appear at Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.'s father's nightclub, the Trocadero – Junior hired him because his dad's club was in financial trouble. Sandow was a big draw, primarily for pumping and flexing his muscles rather than for his feats of strength. Sandow had studied ancient sculpture, and he modeled his body shape on the Greek ideal: he would pose as a statue, with an artfully placed figleaf.
• Guillaume Budé (created by Jean Clouet, nominated by Crisco 1492) Idle and dissipated until the age of 24, Frenchman Guillaume Budé was then seized with a sudden desire to study, and thereafter made rapid progress in Latin and Greek. His most highly regarded book is on ancient coins and measures. In 1533, Budé persuaded Francis I of France to ignore the College of Sorbonne's advice to ban printing. The Sorbonne had been responsible for the introduction of printing to France in 1470, but in the intervening years, they'd lost the monopoly on publishing.
• Portrait of Rosa Bonheur (created by Anna Klumpke, nominated by Adam Cuerden) Rosa Bonheur was "the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century." The oldest child in a family of artists, she established by her talent the brand name Bonheur in the world of animal portraits.
• A Man with a Quilted Sleeve (created by Titian, nominated by SchroCat) This portrait by the celebrated Venetian artist Titian may be the same painting raved about by Giorgio Vasari (him again!), who identifies the sitter as a member of the Barbarigo family. Instead of a portrait of a man sitting still, Titian's subject appears to be in motion, caught in the act of turning towards the viewer, with the sleeve poking out towards the viewer as if it's escaping the canvas. The looking over the shoulder pose inspired countless imitations over the centuries, including a 1640 self portrait by Rembrandt.
• C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) (created by John Vermette, nominated by The Herald) C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) is a comet, discovered in 2014 by Terry Lovejoy – the fifth one he's found. Show off. The lovely blue-green colour is caused by the burning-off of cyanogen and diatomic carbon.
• Mail Coaches on the Road: the Louth-London Royal Mail Progressing at Speed (created by Charles Cooper Henderson, nominated by Hafspajen) This painting depicts one of the mail coaches that ran between Louth and London, part of a network of coach routes for delivering the mail before the development of the railways. Charles Cooper Henderson was a noted painter of coaching scenes – a very similar painting of the same coach belonged to American pianist Van Cliburn – it came onto the market in March 2014 after his death and fetched only $2,750. That's because, like buses, three coaches came along at the same time.
• Night View of Ho Chi Minh City (created by Diego Delso, nominated by Crisco 1492) Night view over Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, and before that Prey Nokor or "Forest City". The city now has a population of almost eight million and is the centre of the metropolitan area that is the economic powerhouse of Vietnam.
• North America Nebula (created by Ken Crawford, nominated by The Herald) The North America Nebula looks to us as if it's four times the size of the Moon, but it is in fact an estimated 100 light years across and 1,800 light years away. It has a "remarkable shape" which looks like the continent of North America.

• Our own mini-New Testament - the beginning -
• 
  The Baptism

• and ... THE END
• 
  The Crowning with Thorns
• 
  The Crucifixion
• 
  The Entombment

... of the beginning.... can't anyone nominate a resurrection, please?

• This is intentionally left blank for the coming Resurrection
• 
  The Resurrection

• 
  Including this makes these images in total cross-shaped (though probably not on mobiles and such).

Reader comments

2015-03-25

Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2014

By Gamaliel

The Wikimedia Commons' annual Picture of the Year contest has concluded, with 6,698 people voting—its largest participation yet. The contest has been held since 2006 and "aims to identify the best freely licensed images from those that during the year have been awarded Featured picture status". The photographers hail from three continents and include prolific Wikimedians as well as non-Wikimedians who didn't even know their photographs were in the contest. We attempted to contact all of them and heard back from six of them. The photographs capture every continent but Australia, and even reach outer space.

First place: Two Julia butterflies (Dryas iulia) drinking the tears of turtles in Ecuador.

This photograph, taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II in 2012, was posted on Flickr by the Ministry of Tourism of Ecuador. Butterflies often seek liquid in odd places. The practice of tear drinking in particular is called lachryphagy.

Second place: An emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) in Antarctica jumping out of the water.

This photograph was taken by Christopher Michel, a member of the famous Explorers Club, in December 2013. It was taken with a Nikon D4 and posted on his Flickr page. He told the Signpost that he took this picture on his fourth trip to Antarctica. He said "I spent hours waiting to capture that penguin shooting out of the water!"

Third place: High above Tocopilla, Chile, a boxcab belonging to the Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile moves downhill to the Reverso switchback.

David Gubler, a prolific photographer of trains, took this photograph with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III in 2013. He told the Signpost it was one of his favorite pictures. It may look like he's standing in a precarious position, but Gubler assured us it wasn't that steep. The difficulty was in finding a vantage point to capture the train and " a nice view of the sea and Tocopilla", while "the scary bit was actually the access road" on the way to the tracks.

Fourth place: Nakhi people carrying the typical baskets of the region in Lijiang, Yunnan, China:

Uwe Aranas took this photograph with a Canon PowerShot G11 in 2012. The Nakhi are an ethnic group who live in the foothills of the Himalayas in Yunnan. The scene is from a performance an amphitheater which uses the natural scenery of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain as a backdrop.

Fifth place: Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) jumping, in Spitsbergen Island, Svalbard, Norway.

This photograph was taken by wildlife photographer Arturo de Frias Marques with a Nikon D700 in 2011. Polar bears are the iconic symbol and a chief tourist attraction of Spitsbergen.

Sixth place: The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33), a dark nebula in the constellation Orion.

This picture was taken by Californian astrophotographer Ken Crawford in 2011. Crawford took this photo using his backyard observatory, including a 20 inch RC Optical Systems Carbon Fiber Truss telescope, in northern California. Crawford told the Signpost that this particular image took twenty hours of exposure time and seven different filters. He believes this image is popular because of the recognizable shape of the nebula and the striking astronomical features. "The glowing pink/red hydrogen provides a beautiful back drop to this amazing region of the deep sky," he said.

Seventh place: The Serra dos Órgãos National Park, with the Dedo de Deus (God's Finger) in the background, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This photograph was taken by Carlos Perez Couto with a Nikon D90 in 2014. Serra dos Órgãos is a national park founded in 1939. Its most iconic feature is the Dedo de Dues, which resembles a hand with a finger pointing towards the sky. The formation appears on the state flag and coat of arms of Rio de Janeiro .

Eighth place: Head of a Calliphora vicina, face view.

Sam Droege of the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab took this photograph in 2014. Droege told the Signpost that the mission of the Lab is "providing statistically robust information about the status of plants and animals for little to no cost to the public". While most of the photographs they take are bees as part of their educational and informational mission, they also take pictures of other things to engage the public or "just because they are too beautiful to pass up". This fly was found during a nature event on the National Mall for school children. This photograph is actually a combination of about fifty individual photos combined with a computer program called Zerene Stacker in a process called focus stacking.

Ninth place: A pair of Mandarin ducks (Aix galericulata) at Martin Mere, Lancashire, UK

WWT Martin Mere is a nature reserve near the residence of Francis C. Franklin, who took this photo with an Olympus PEN E-PL5 in 2012. He told the Signpost "I’d noticed the pair on the rocks amongst some other non-mandarin ducks, and given the neutral background I thought I might get a decent shot of them if I waited around for a few minutes. Luckily, the other ducks soon cleared off and then the mandarin pair decided to gaze into each others eyes!"

Tenth place: A cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) silhouetted against a sunset, in the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

Arturo de Frias Marques took this photograph with a Nikon D2X in 2014. The Okavango Delta is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa. The cheetah, one of the many species which make the delta their home, is the fastest known land animal and can reach speeds of up to 120 kph.

Eleventh place: Sunrise in morning mist near Dülmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Dietmar Rabich told the Signpost he took this photograph on an early Sunday morning, a time he prefers for photography. Rabich said he has to be patient to capture the image that he wants - "Sometimes I'm waiting weeks and months for the right moment". That waiting paid off in 2012 for this photograph, taken with a Canon EOS 600D. The time of day provided just the right light, as well as a lack of traffic that allowed him to capture this moment while standing in a local roadway.

Twelfth place: A C-130T Hercules aircraft with the Blue Angels flying over a platoon of Marines at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, United States

The photograph was taken by Staff Sgt. Oscar L. Olive IV, USMC in 2014 and posted on the official Flickr page of the United States Department of Defense. The Blue Angels are a popular flight demonstration squadron of the United States Navy.

Reader comments

2015-03-25

Oddly familiar

By Serendipodous

This week's list is reminiscent of lists from the early days of this project: a preponderance of famous faces, Reddit threads, and Google Doodles. Predictably, the arrival of St. Patrick's Day topped the list, while the arrest of Robert Durst proved surprisingly popular. Events of global significance, such as the devastation of Vanuatu, were pushed out this week.

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of March 15–21, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Saint Patrick's Day		2,783,603		Every man has his day, at least if he's a saint. And when your day happens to involve copious alcohol consumption and opportunities for gradeschool cruelty, it is bound to be popular. A Google Doodle doesn't hurt either.
2	Robert Durst		1,508,008		It's not often that a film documentary has an impact on an actual murder investigation; Errol Morris's 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line famously led to the exoneration of Randall Dale Adams, and now, the The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, the new documentary by Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans), has provided evidence leading to the re-arrest of Robert Durst, the wealthy son of a real-estate family suspected of, but never convicted for, three murders. It says something about the inner dynamics of the Durst family that his brother greeted the new evidence by saying he was "relieved" and "grateful" and that, "We hope he will finally be held accountable for all he has done."
3	Anna Atkins		953,069		The photographic and botanical pioneer (one of, if not the first person to illustrate a book with photographic plates) got a Google Doodle on her 216th birthday on 16 March.
4	Alex (parrot)		941,143		If his trainer is right, then this African grey parrot, who died unexpectedly in 2007, could very well have been the most intelligent non-human animal in recorded history. Not only did he have a vocabulary of over 100 words, he apparently understood what those words meant and could identify objects by name, even if they were different colours or shapes. But one day, Alex appeared to take things to another level completely. He turned to his trainer and asked, "What colour am I?" the first existential question ever asked by an animal. This was noted in a Reddit thread this week, which quickly filled up with contributions from parrot owners telling tales their own pets' abilities. Note: in the name of honest journalism I should admit that the above grey parrot is in fact NOT Alex, since his actual photo is copyrighted. Still, he'd pass in a crowd.
5	Natalia Kills		902,335		That's a rather aggressive stage name, it must be said. Anyway, the British singer apparently lives up to her name (somewhat) because she is currently engulfed in a minor scandal over bullying a contestant while acting as a judge on the New Zealand version of The X Factor.
6	To Pimp a Butterfly	Unassessed	828,825		The latest album from Kendrick Lamar (pictured) was released on 16 March.
7	Christian Laettner		811,567		How does a man named Christian Laettner respond to a TV documentary called I Hate Christian Laettner? Well if he happens to be the Christian Laettner who polarised fans throughout his college basketball career and stomped on rival team member Aminu Timberlake's chest during his career-defining match in 1992, he takes it in his stride and publicly apologises to his most famous victim, who promptly accepts it.
8	2015 Cricket World Cup		765,014		Down from 923K views last week as the tournament played through the quarter finals. With India still in, along with a raft of English-speaking countries (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), do not expect it to leave this list any time soon.
9	Saint Patrick		740,598		It is perhaps not surprising that Ireland, the only predominantly Catholic country in the English-speaking world, would produce the English-speaking world's most popular saint. It is, however, somewhat surprising that he has been embraced by pretty much everyone, regardless of religious affiliation.
10	Monica Lewinsky		692,719		The former White House intern and owner of the dress that almost brought down the free world gave a TED Talk this week on a pertinent subject in which she is well-versed: cyberbullying.

Reader comments

2015-03-25

Most important people; respiratory reliability; academic attitudes

By Piotr Konieczny, Anwesh Chatterjee and Tilman Bayer

A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

Most important people of all times, according to four Wikipedias

• 
  Most prominent person on the English, ...
• 
  ... Japanese, and ...
• 
  ... German Wikipedia, according to the paper's PageRank method

This social network analysis looks at the entire corpus of Wikipedia biographies (with data from English, Chinese, Japanese and German Wikipedias). The authors created several thousand networks (unfortunately, this short conference paper does not discuss precisely how) and used the PageRank algorithm to identify key individuals.

The authors attempt to answer the question "Who are the most important people of all times?" Their findings clearly show that different Wikipedias give different prominence to different individuals (the most prominent people, for the four Wikipedias, appear to be George W. Bush, Mao Zedong, Ikuhiko Hata and Adolf Hitler, respectively). The Eastern cultures seem to prioritize warriors and politicians; Western ones include more cultural (including religious) figures. Interesting findings concern globalization: "While the English Wikipedia includes 80% non-English leaders among the top 50, just two non-Chinese made it into the top 50 of the Chinese Wikipedia ... Japanese Wikipedia is slightly more balanced, with almost 40 percent non-Japanese leaders". Findings for the German Wikipedia are not presented. Though the authors don't make that point, it seems that no women appear in the Top 10 lists presented. Overall, this seems like an interesting paper (it also received a writeup in Technology Review), through the brief form (two pages) means that many questions about methodology remain unanswered, and the presentation of findings, and analysis, are very curt. On a side note, one can wonder whether this paper is truly related to anthropology; given that the only time this field is referred to in this work is when the authors mention that they are "replacing anthropological fieldwork with statistical analysis of the treatment given by native speakers of a culture to different subjects in Wikipedia."

See also our earlier coverage of similar studies:

• "Wikipedia in all languages used to rank global historical figures of all time"
• "'Interactions of cultures and top people of Wikipedia from ranking of 24 language editions'"
• "How Wikipedia's Google matrix differs for politicians and artists"
• "Multilingual ranking analysis: Napoleon and Michael Jackson as Wikipedia's 'global heroes'"

"Wikipedia a reliable learning resource for medical students? Evaluating respiratory topics"

A paper in Advances in Physiology Education claims to assess the suitability of Wikipedia's respiratory articles for medical student learning. Forty Wikipedia articles on respiratory topics were sampled on 27 April 2014. These articles were assessed by three researchers with a modified version of the DISCERN tool. Article references were checked for accuracy and typography. Readability was assessed with the Flesch–Kincaid and Coleman–Liau tools.

The paper found a wide range of accuracy scores using the modified DISCERN tool, from 14.67 for "[Nail] clubbing" to 38.33 for "Tuberculosis". Incorrect, incomplete or inconsistent formatting of references were commonly found, although these were not quantified in the paper. Readability of the articles was typically at a college level. On the basis of these findings, the paper declares Wikipedia's respiratory articles as unsuitable for medical students.

The researcher apparently uses an arbitrary unvalidated modification of the DISCERN tool to assess the accuracy of articles. The nature of this modification is not specified; nor is it available at the journal's website as claimed in the paper.

The DISCERN tool does not assess accuracy; rather, it is designed to assess "information about treatment choices specifically for health consumers". As such, the use of this tool is inappropriate to assess the suitability for medical students.

There is no acknowledgement that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Several of the DISCERN tool's questions are unsuitable for an encyclopedia. DISCERN questions such as "Does it describe how each treatment works?" and "Does it describe the risks of each treatment?" would be answered on other Wikipedia pages, not on the disease article's page. The author makes an a priori assumption that the medical textbooks used for comparison are perfect sources. The author does not assess those textbooks with the DISCERN tool.

The paper states: "[t]he number of citations from peer-reviewed journals published in the last 5 yr was only 312 (19%)." However this is far superior to the number of citations in the textbooks listed. The chapter on "Neoplasms of the lung" in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine (18th ed.) contains no citations at all. Seven sources are listed in its "Further readings" section, of which only one is from the last five years.

The claim that the article on "clubbing ... had no references or external links" is incorrect. On 27 April 2014, Wikipedia's article on "Nail clubbing" had ten references.

Several of the articles are at a rudimentary stage, containing limited information and lacking appropriate references. However two articles, "Lung cancer" and "Diffuse panbronchiolitis", were assessed by Wikipedia's editors at the highest standard and awarded "Featured article" status. Five more articles, "Asthma", "Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease", "Pneumonia", "Pneumothorax" and "Tuberculosis", reached "Good article" standard. These articles are exceptionally detailed, accurate, and well-referenced. Azer's paper makes no mention of the high quality of these articles.

The research uses an unvalidated tool for an inappropriate purpose without applying a suitable comparator, and inevitably draws incorrect conclusions.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a medical textbook; nor is it intended to replace medical textbooks. Rather, it should be used as a starting point by medical students. The quality of an individual article should be quickly assessed by the reader, and information can be confirmed in the references provided. Missing information should be sought from other sources, such as textbooks. Students should be encouraged to use Wikipedia alongside medical textbooks to assist their learning.

Disclosure: I (Axl) am a Wikipedia editor, a pulmonologist, the main author of Wikipedia's "Lung cancer" article, and a major contributor to other respiratory articles.

Most academics are not concerned about Wikipedia's quality – but many think their colleagues are

This recent study is a valuable contribution to the small body of work on academics attitudes towards Wikipedia, and is the largest-scale survey in that field so far, with nearly a 1000 valid responses from the faculty at two Spanish universities. The authors find that Wikipedia is generally held in a positive regard (nearly half of the respondents think it is useful for teaching, while less than 20% disagree; similar numbers use it for general information gathering, though the numbers are split at about 35% on whether they use it for research in their own discipline). Almost 10% of the respondents say they use it frequently for teaching purposes. The numbers of those who discourage students from using it and those who encourage student to consult the site are nearly equal, at about a quarter each. Almost half have no strong feelings on this, and fewer than 15% strongly disagree with students' use of Wikipedia – suggesting that the past few years have witnessed a major shift in universities (less than a decade ago, the stories of professors banning Wikipedia were quite common). Unsurprisingly, the faculty is much less likely to cite Wikipedia, with only about 10% admitting they do so.

Almost 90% of the academics think Wikipedia is easy to use, but only about 15% think editing is easy – with more than 40% disagreeing with that statement. Some 2% of respondents describe themselves as very frequent contributors to the side, and 6% as frequent. More than 40% have no thoughts on Wikipedia's editing and reviewing system, which leads the authors to suggest that "most faculty do not actually know Wikipedia‘s specific editing system very well nor the way the [site's] peer-review process works". Asked about Wikipedia's quality, those who think its articles are reliable outnumber those who disagree by two to one (40% to 20%), with an even higher ratio (more than three to one) agreeing that Wikipedia articles are up to date. The respondents are equally divided, however, on whether the articles are comprehensive or not. The authors thus conclude that the impression that most academics are concerned about Wikipedia's quality is not proven by their data. Nonetheless, the artifacts of Wikipedia early poor reception within academia linger: more than half of the respondents think the use of Wikipedia is frowned on by most academics, even though only 14% say they frown on it themselves.

The study goes beyond presenting simple descriptive statistics, giving us a number of interesting findings based on correlations: strongest correlation for teaching use is related to making edits (r=0.59), followed by opinions that it improves student learning (r=0.47), perception of and use by colleagues (r=0.41), Wikipedia's perceived quality (r=0.4), and its passive use (r=0.3). The researchers find that the use of Wikipedia is higher, and views of the site more favourable, among the STEM fields than in the "soft", social sciences. This also explains the Wikipedia's higher popularity among male instructors (which disappears when controlled for discipline and the corresponding much lower population of women teaching in the STEM fields). Interestingly, the influence of age was not found to be significant: "faculty’s decision to use Wikipedia in learning processes does not follow the usual pattern of other Web 2.0 tools where young people tend to be more frequent users."

Of immediate practical value to the Wikipedia community are the findings on what would help the respondents design educational activities using Wikipedia: 64% would like to see a "catalog presenting best practices", with similar numbers (~50%) pointing to "getting greater institutional recognition", "having colleagues explaining their own experiences", and "receiving specific training".

Wikipedia assignments at Finnish secondary schools

A conference paper titled "Guiding Students in Collaborative Writing of Wikipedia Articles – How to Get Beyond the Black Box Practice in Information Literacy Instruction" (already briefly mentioned in our October issue) reports on the use of Wikipedia student assignments in a somewhat different environment than the usual American undergraduates: this one instead deals with Finnish secondary school students. The authors use the guided inquiry framework, postulating that "information literacies are best learned by training appropriate information practices in a genuine collaborative process of inquiry", and asking how collaborative Wikipedia writing assignments fit into this approach. The findings tie in with the previous research on this subject: students are more motivated than in traditional writing assignments, develop skills in and understanding of wikis and Wikipedia (including its reliability) and more broadly encyclopedic writing. However, students are less likely to develop skills such as identifying reliable sources without specific additional instructions. The researchers note that "the limitation of encyclopaedic writing is that it is not intended to generate new knowledge but to synthesize knowledge from existing sources (i.e., a type of literature review)"; hence teachers who aim to develop skills in generating new knowledge might consider alternative assignments. The paper stresses the need to tailor the Wikipedia assignment (or any other) to the specific class.

Briefly

• Detecting the location of an editing controversy within a page: Researchers at Google, AT&T, Purdue University and the University of Trento have developed an algorithm that "in contrast to previous works in controversy detection in Wikipedia that studied the problem at the page level [...] considers the individual edits and can accurately identify not only the exact controversial content within a page, but also what the controversy is about and where it is located." As an example, the paper names the article about Chopin where "our method detected not only the known controversy about his origin but also the controversies about his date of birth and his photograph by Louis-Auguste Bisson."
• 7.8% of Germans use Wikipedia on any given day: In a survey by the German state media authorities, 26.8% of all Germans who had been seeking information on Internet on the preceding day had used Wikipedia for that purpose. In absolute terms, this means that 7.8% of Germans use Wikipedia on any given day to obtain information, compared to 11.2% for Facebook, 8.1% for YouTube, and 6.3% for Twitter.
  A separate study found that 40% of German teenagers use Wikipedia daily or several times per week (compared to 38% in 2013).
• Vandals' lack of spelling discipline hampers automatic detection of vulgar words: A student project at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County trained a vandalism detector on the well-known PAN 2010 vandalism corpus. The author concludes that compared to features based on the metadata of the revision (e.g. the size change, or whether the edit was made by an IP editors), or on quantiative features of the inserted text (e.g. the frequency of upper case character), "Language Features provide the least information gain. It is expected that language features would provide the maximum information gain. But the problem is if anyone wants to vandalize a page, he or she would not care to spell the words correctly and so in most cases vulgar/slang dictionaries fall short identifying the bad words. "
• New Wikimedia open access policy: At the recent CSCW conference (see also an overview of Wikimedia-related events and presentations there), the Wikimedia Foundation announced its new Open Access Policy to ensure that all research work produced with support from the Foundation will be openly available to the public and reusable on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. See also coverage in this week's News and Notes

Other recent publications

A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.

• "Reproduction of male power structures in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia" (in German; original title: "Reproduktion männlicher Machtverhältnisse in der Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia")
• "Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame" From the abstract: "we use the structure of the networks connecting multilingual speakers and translated texts, as expressed in book translations, multiple language editions of Wikipedia, and Twitter, to provide a concept of language importance that goes beyond simple economic or demographic measures." (See also coverage in the Economist)
• "Queripidia: Query-specific Wikipedia Construction" (demo)
• "Using Wikipedia to enhance student learning: A case study in economics" (preprint without paywall:)
• "Automatically Assessing Wikipedia Article Quality by Exploiting Article–Editor Networks"
• "Quality assessment of Arabic web content: The case of the Arabic Wikipedia"
• "Wikipedia vs Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature for Information About the 10 Most Costly Medical Conditions" (see also discussion and published rebuttal by medical Wikipedia editors, and media coverage summary)
• "Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia" (cf. Harvard Business Review coverage and our reviews of related papers by the same authors: "Language analysis finds Wikipedia's political bias moving from left to right", "Given enough eyeballs, do articles become neutral?")
• "Improving Wikipedia-based Place Name Disambiguation in Short Texts Using Structured Data from DBpedia"

References

Supplementary references and notes:

Reader comments

2015-03-25

The Wikipedia Library Team reflects on its new Visiting Scholars program

By Alex Stinson and Jake Orlowitz

The following content has been republished from the Wikimedia Blog. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author alone; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. For more information on this partnership see our content guidelines.

The Wikipedia Library's core mission is to provide Wikipedians with the best possible access to research, to help them write better Wikipedia content. When we started this project, we quickly realized that universities, with their extensive collections and journal subscriptions, offered one of the best opportunities for Wikipedians to access scholarly materials.

This led to the creation of our Wikipedia Visiting Scholar program: a university gives a top Wikipedia editor free and full access to the university library's entire online content—and the Wikipedia editor, who is unpaid and not on campus, then creates and improves Wikipedia articles in a subject area of interest to the institution.

Several universities have stepped up to pilot Wikipedians Visiting Scholars: George Mason University, Montana State University, University of California at Riverside, and Rutgers University. This experiment was a great success, with each institution producing at least a dozen well-researched articles, many of which have undergone community review as Featured or Good articles. In this report, we would like to share some of the great content and outcomes created by this Wikipedia Visiting Scholars program and our partner institutions.

Improving quality on Wikipedia

The main goal of the Visiting Scholars program is to equip Wikipedia editors with the highest quality resources, so that they can write the most comprehensive Wikipedia articles alongside the help of expert researchers. Montana State University Visiting Scholar Mike Cline, who focused his writing on the environment and Montana's natural history, described the impact university library access had on his work:

“ First, access to these resources helps me write better content, in many cases content that would otherwise not be included in Wikipedia. The journal resources via JSTOR and other sources are invaluable in fleshing out content in articles. Second, having access to these resources allows me to step into various content debates and issues and help other editors resolve them with better sources and more accurate content. An example of that was on William F. Raynolds, my access to more scholarly works helped resolve sourcing issues within that article during the Featured Article Review process. ”

Montana State resources have become part of Mike's Wikipedia routine, "for every article I work on".

Babe Ruth in his New York Yankees uniform, in 1920. Visiting Scholar Wehwalt expanded the article with the help of George Mason University Library Resources.

Wehwalt, Wikipedia Visiting Scholar at George Mason University, used his access to develop an impressive 10 Featured Articles in the area of American history. He writes:

“ I'm somewhat envious of the massive academic databases college students have at their disposal these days, given how useful having access to that material is. Since I started at the beginning of April, I've used GMU materials to get six articles to Featured Article status where I did most of the writing: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, William H. Seward, Babe Ruth, Judah P. Benjamin, John Hay, and Hay's only novel, The Bread-Winners. In addition, there have been collaborations with Designate on John Tyler and Franklin Pierce and others, where works from GMU again came in handy. ”

Two other articles that Wehwalt improved, Horace Greeley and Benjamin Tillman, have become featured articles since he first shared his experiences with us! These articles aren't always ones other editors will write about: "Due to his racist views, Tillman is difficult to write about, and not a fun read. But our readers aren't coming just to find information on nice people."

At Rutgers University, we had two visiting scholars, and they saw their work as an opportunity to collaborate with the academic community to help fill diversity gaps on Wikipedia. As Staticshakedown noted, when we asked her about her joint appointment with WeijiBaikeBianji:

“ We were both chosen because our goals and interests for the project aligned with the goals of the librarians and graduate students. For this initiative we narrowed the theme into four topics to work on in Wikipedia: Women in Jazz, Newark Jazz history, Asian immigrant experience in New Jersey, and Cultural competence in health care. So far, the collaboration has expanded over twenty-five articles and categories, and created eighteen new articles. ”

Library access strengthened the ability for all of our contributors to do what they do best: create content on Wikipedia, content that will become the most-viewed research starting point for hundreds of thousands of readers.

Striking up a conversation

Part of our goal with the Visiting Scholars program is to familiarize Universities Libraries with the practices of Wikipedia and to provide an accessible member of Wikipedia's community on those campuses. Visiting Scholars Chris Troutman and Wehwalt found themselves in conversations with library staff at UC Riverside and George Mason, helping the library or professors become more familiar with Wikipedia’s research and writing practices. Mike Cline learned at Montana State University that there are plenty of opportunities to interact with faculty letting them begin to understand Wikipedia's important role in communicating their knowledge:

“ I have also had the opportunity to consult with MSU library staff and faculty when they have desired to create or contribute to Wikipedia articles. In most cases, such faculty and staff have little or no practical knowledge of how Wikipedia really works. I have enjoyed bringing my experience on such issues and notability, reliable sourcing and original research to their attention and helping them devise the best approach in making their contributions to Wikipedia. In several cases, I've helped them by reviewing their work and making appropriate adjustments to drafts in user spaces and in articles themselves. In all cases, the staff and faculty are appreciative of the availability of such consultative services." ”

Working closely with the library staff at Montana State helped Mike Cline create an article about the Library's unique trout and salmon archive in addition to a wide range of people and topics written about with a top notch regional collection and the guidance of the experts who curate it. "My only wish, personally, is that they would take even greater advantage of my [consulting] services," Cline said.

The stairs leading up to Rutgers University Art Library, one of the libraries that our Visiting Scholars had access to.

Visiting Scholars at Rutgers University also seized further opportunities to participate in the campus environment. Staticshakedown shared:

“ This was both Rutgers University's first collaboration with Wikipedians, as well as our first collaboration of this type with an organization. The initiative from Rutgers's side was directed by head librarian Grace Agnew, who has been accessible, friendly, and resourceful throughout the whole exchange. As part of this initiative, twelve members from the Rutgers University team have learned more about how to add content to Wikipedia. Aside from teaching librarians and students about Wikipedia, I have also been the student. Graduate students Yingting and Yu-Hung jointly held a video conference with me on how to access the library resources of Rutgers remotely and how to use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to investigate healthcare-related subjects." ”

Solving a critical problem

For all of our Visiting Scholars, this has been a great opportunity to fill in major gaps found throughout the encyclopedia and to ensure that the best scholarly materials—not just information that happen to be available on the open web—are leveraged to create public knowledge. This is an important mission, as Wehwalt points out:

“ There was a time when Wikipedia was still working to get articles in place on a lot of significant subjects. Well, it has them now, and the number of articles continue to grow. But there’s also a need to improve what we have. Many scholarly articles are hidden behind paywalls for most Wikipedia editors without an academic connection. Visiting Scholar positions are helping us create better content using those sources. Everyone consults Wikipedia, and the need to improve the quality of what we give them through a larger network of experts and scholarly access." ”

Wikipedia Visiting Scholars offers an opportunity for the best keepers of knowledge—libraries—and the best sharer of knowledge—Wikipedia—to collaborate in disseminating knowledge to the public. We are proud to be able to facilitate these opportunities and deeply impressed by the contributions of this year’s prolific Visiting Scholars.

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