A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
A paper titled "Factors that influence the teaching use of Wikipedia in Higher Education" [1] uses the technology acceptance model to shed light on faculty's (of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) views of Wikipedia as a teaching tool. The main factors are shown to be the perception of colleagues’ opinion about Wikipedia and the perceived quality of the information on Wikipedia. As the authors note, while prior studies also pointed to the quality concerns, this study suggests a causal link between colleagues' views and one's perception of Wikipedia quality. The authors conclude that the strong peer culture within academia makes the importance of role models very significant, which in turn has implications for the segment of the Wikimedia movement that desires greater ties with the academic world. The authors also note that "despite the lack of institutional support and acknowledgement, a growing number of academics think it is very useful and desirable to publish research results or even intermediate data in open repositories", an attitude that also correlates positively with positive views of Wikipedia. To quote the authors' very valid recommendation: "For those faculty members already using Wikipedia as a learning tool, we think it would have greater impact if they publicly acknowledged their practices more, especially to their close colleagues, and explain their own teaching experiences as well as the effects it has had on the students’ academic performance." The team behind the paper is also partnering in the Wikidata for research project featured in News and notes.
"Gender differences within the German-language Wikipedia" [2] is a pair of close readings of two gender-driven talk page conflicts on the German Wikipedia from 2006 and 2013, "show[ing] exemplarily that a) the feministic gender discourse in Wikipedia is not appreciated – primarily by male Wikipedians – [...] and b) that discussions behind the scenes of Wikipedia can feature an unpleasant and rude nature, that is not very appealing and motivating for female contributors". The analysis aims to focus on the communication styles of the gendered personalities as viewed under the critical rubrics of Margarete Jäger and Nina Schuppener. In the degenerating arguments around whether or not the welcome message on the German Wikipedia's main page ( 2006 thread) and German Wikipedia articles in general ( 2013/14 straw poll talk page) should use generic male pronouns and nouns, or newer more neutral alternatives, like using parentheses in "Mitarbeiter(in)", it is highlighted that the male-appearing participants use instruction and discrediting statements; and the female-appearing tend to question intellectual capabilities and give advice. Finally the authors conclude that "the most crucial point is the fact that the female author gave up [first]," stopping responding less than 24 hours into the discussion, and that the change advocated for was not enacted. These deconstructed examples add to an evidence of a hypothesis that minority voices are crowded out in Open Culture, as purported by the "Free as in Sexist" theory.
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.
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A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
A paper titled "Factors that influence the teaching use of Wikipedia in Higher Education" [1] uses the technology acceptance model to shed light on faculty's (of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) views of Wikipedia as a teaching tool. The main factors are shown to be the perception of colleagues’ opinion about Wikipedia and the perceived quality of the information on Wikipedia. As the authors note, while prior studies also pointed to the quality concerns, this study suggests a causal link between colleagues' views and one's perception of Wikipedia quality. The authors conclude that the strong peer culture within academia makes the importance of role models very significant, which in turn has implications for the segment of the Wikimedia movement that desires greater ties with the academic world. The authors also note that "despite the lack of institutional support and acknowledgement, a growing number of academics think it is very useful and desirable to publish research results or even intermediate data in open repositories", an attitude that also correlates positively with positive views of Wikipedia. To quote the authors' very valid recommendation: "For those faculty members already using Wikipedia as a learning tool, we think it would have greater impact if they publicly acknowledged their practices more, especially to their close colleagues, and explain their own teaching experiences as well as the effects it has had on the students’ academic performance." The team behind the paper is also partnering in the Wikidata for research project featured in News and notes.
"Gender differences within the German-language Wikipedia" [2] is a pair of close readings of two gender-driven talk page conflicts on the German Wikipedia from 2006 and 2013, "show[ing] exemplarily that a) the feministic gender discourse in Wikipedia is not appreciated – primarily by male Wikipedians – [...] and b) that discussions behind the scenes of Wikipedia can feature an unpleasant and rude nature, that is not very appealing and motivating for female contributors". The analysis aims to focus on the communication styles of the gendered personalities as viewed under the critical rubrics of Margarete Jäger and Nina Schuppener. In the degenerating arguments around whether or not the welcome message on the German Wikipedia's main page ( 2006 thread) and German Wikipedia articles in general ( 2013/14 straw poll talk page) should use generic male pronouns and nouns, or newer more neutral alternatives, like using parentheses in "Mitarbeiter(in)", it is highlighted that the male-appearing participants use instruction and discrediting statements; and the female-appearing tend to question intellectual capabilities and give advice. Finally the authors conclude that "the most crucial point is the fact that the female author gave up [first]," stopping responding less than 24 hours into the discussion, and that the change advocated for was not enacted. These deconstructed examples add to an evidence of a hypothesis that minority voices are crowded out in Open Culture, as purported by the "Free as in Sexist" theory.
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.
{{
cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(
help)
Discuss this story
I found it interesting that in 95% of the cases presented to Spanish ArbCom were dismissed in 2008. Tutelary ( talk) 00:05, 3 January 2015 (UTC) reply
Is reciprocity an extrinsic motivation?
Reciprocity isn't actually an extrinsic motivation: "reciprocity is significantly stronger when extrinsic motivation can be ruled out." EllenCT ( talk) 08:58, 3 January 2015 (UTC) reply
Gender split in 2012 Wikipedia Editor Survey?
As Tbayer (WMF) is one of the authors of this piece, and Maximilianklein's report covers gender issues, this seems as good a place as any to ask Tilman once more what the gender split in the 2012 Editor Survey was. The survey's talk page is full of community members asking for this data, yet all inquiries directed at Tilman over the past half year have been ignored. Can we please have this data – just the simple gender split: x% male, y% female, z% other? It is now over 2 years since the survey ran, and this simple piece of data should take less than a minute to report. Thank you. Andreas JN 466 11:57, 3 January 2015 (UTC) reply
R
Suggested tweaks: point to the CRAN libraries rather than the GitHub ones, and note that WikipediR was released in April 2014. That's not a particularly new thing (or a particularly recent thing - if you've tried writing API client libraries before httr you'll know how much of a pain it was). Ironholds ( talk) 15:52, 3 January 2015 (UTC) reply