A quantitative examination of the impact of featured articles in Wikipedia

This paper presents a quantitative examination of the impact of the presentation of featured articles as quality content in the main page of several Wikipedia editions. Moreover, the paper also presents the analysis performed to determine the number of visits received by the articles promoted to the featured status. We have analyzed the visits not only in the month when articles awarded the promotion or were included in the main page, but also in the previous and following ones. The main aim for this is to assess the attention attracted by the featured content and the different dynamics exhibited by each community of users in respect to the promotion process. The main results of this paper are twofold: it shows how to extract relevant information related to the use of Wikipedia, which is an emerging research topic, and it analyzes whether the featured articles mechanism achieve to attract more attention

The distorted mirror of Wikipedia: a quantitative analysis of Wikipedia coverage of academics

Activity of modern scholarship creates online footprints galore. Along with traditional metrics of research quality, such as citation counts, online images of researchers and institutions increasingly matter in evaluating academic impact, decisions about grant allocation, and promotion. We examined 400 biographical Wikipedia articles on academics from four scientific fields to test if being featured in the world's largest online encyclopedia is correlated with higher academic notability (assessed through citation counts). We found no statistically significant correlation between Wikipedia articles metrics (length, number of edits, number of incoming links from other articles, etc.) and academic notability of the mentioned researchers. We also did not find any evidence that the scientists with better WP representation are necessarily more prominent in their fields. In addition, we inspected the Wikipedia coverage of notable scientists sampled from Thomson Reuters list of "highly cited researchers". In each of the examined fields, Wikipedia failed in covering notable scholars properly. Both findings imply that Wikipedia might be producing an inaccurate image of academics on the front end of science. By shedding light on how public perception of academic progress is formed, this study alerts that a subjective element might have been introduced into the hitherto structured system of academic evaluation.Comment: To appear in EPJ Data Science. To have the Additional Files and Datasets e-mail the corresponding autho

“The Sum of All Human Knowledge”: A Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on the Content of Wikipedia

Wikipedia might possibly be the best-developed attempt thus far of the enduring quest to gather all human knowledge in one place. Its accomplishments in this regard have made it an irresistible point of inquiry for researchers from various fields of knowledge. A decade of research has thrown light on many aspects of the Wikipedia community, its processes, and content. However, due to the variety of the fields inquiring about Wikipedia and the limited synthesis of the extensive research, there is little consensus on many aspects of Wikipedia’s content as an encyclopedic collection of human knowledge. This study addresses the issue by systematically reviewing 110 peer-reviewed publications on Wikipedia content, summarizing the current findings, and highlighting the major research trends. Two major streams of research are identified: the quality of Wikipedia content (including comprehensiveness, currency, readability and reliability) and the size of Wikipedia. Moreover, we present the key research trends in terms of the domains of inquiry, research design, data source, and data gathering methods. This review synthesizes scholarly understanding of Wikipedia content and paves the way for future studies

Changing Higher Education Learning with Web 2.0 and Open Education Citation, Annotation, and Thematic Coding Appendices

Appendices of citations, annotations and themes for research conducted on four websites: Delicious, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook

Exploring the Relationship between Membership Turnover and Productivity in Online Communities

One of the more disruptive reforms associated with the modern Internet is the emergence of online communities working together on knowledge artefacts such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. Recently it has become clear that these initiatives are vulnerable because of problems with membership turnover. This study presents a longitudinal analysis of 891 WikiProjects where we model the impact of member turnover and social capital losses on project productivity. By examining social capital losses we attempt to provide a more nuanced analysis of member turnover. In this context social capital is modelled from a social network perspective where the loss of more central members has more impact. We find that only a small proportion of WikiProjects are in a relatively healthy state with low levels of membership turnover and social capital losses. The results show that the relationship between social capital losses and project performance is U-shaped, and that member withdrawal has significant negative effect on project outcomes. The results also support the mediation of turnover rate and network density on the curvilinear relationship

'Not enough music': a critique of music education in schools in England

This paper presents a critical overview of music education in schools in England, both generally and historically up to the end of 2019. It was decided early on that justice could not be done to all the nations of the UK - Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales - with their respective rich and important music cultures; neither could there be an international comparative analysis: while these two perspectives are important, it would have required a book rather than a monograph to fully explore these dimensions. This monograph was researched and written by me from late 2016 to late 2019. It started as a short article, maybe 3000 to 5000 words, for a journal, but as I read more, visited places and researched more deeply and widely, I realized that a short journal article would not do justice to the subject. I was also persuaded that the finished work should be written in accessible English and should reach a much wider readership than a narrowly academic journal article would allow. So it is now a research monograph, 29,000 words long and with over 100 references. I consider the current state of teaching and learning in music education by drawing on national and local research projects including online web research, observations, and visits to institutions, as well as on my own insights and experience. The visits included a variety of schools and colleges, interviews, and attendance at key conferences, along with phone conversations and personal discussions with people in music and music education, and extensive reading of major texts and reports. The monograph includes historical perspectives as well as considering the social, political and economic aspects of music education, including issues related to the substantial inequality in access to instrument learning and the variable quality of the reach and provision of music education in schools. It attempts to offer a balanced view, exploring the negative aspects but also featuring positive coverage of the many successful initiatives at local and national level, often promoted by schools, government policy, concert halls, universities and music colleges, music professional bodies, charities and other third sector organizations. It also seeks to explore and celebrate the many important manifestations of music in the public domain in England, as a background to questioning, along with music reports and professional organizations attached to the cultural and creative industries, why music education in schools has increasingly suffered underfunding, decreased provision and lowered status in the school curriculum, when England has such a world-renowned, diverse and rich music culture. Relevant developments and research on music and arts education at De Montfort University are also discussed and Dr Austin Griffiths, my colleague and member of the Education Studies staff, was invited to write a special analysis of elite music education based on his ongoing research

Polycentric Information Commons: A Theory Development and Empirical Investigation

Decentralized systems online—such as open source software (OSS) development, online communities, wikis, and social media—often experience decline in participation which threatens their long-terms sustainability. Building on a rich body of research on the sustainability of physical resource systems, this dissertation presents a novel theoretical framing that addresses the sustainability issues arising in decentralized systems online and which are amplified because of their open nature. The first essay develops the theory of polycentric information commons (PIC) which conceptualizes decentralized systems online as “information commons”. The theory defines information commons, the stakeholders that participate in them, the sustainability indicators of information commons and the collective-action threats putting pressure on their long-term sustainability. Drawing on Ostrom’s factors associated with stable common pool resource systems, PIC theory specifies four polycentric governance practices that can help information commons reduce the magnitude and impact of collective-action threats while improving the information commons’ sustainability. The second essay further develops PIC theory by applying it in an empirical context of “digital activism”. Specifically, it examines the role of polycentric governance in reducing the threats to the legitimacy of digital activism—a type of information commons with an overarching objective of instigating societal change. As such, it illustrates the applicability of PIC theory in the study of digital activism. The third essay focuses on the threat of “information pollution” and its impact on open collaboration, a type of information commons dedicated to the creation of value through open participation online. It uncovers the way polycentric governance mechanism help reduce the duration of pollution events. This essay contributes to PIC theory by expanding it to the realm of operational governance in open collaboration