Wikimania presentation on the "Understanding Sources" project

Managing sources during highvolume news eventshford@ushahidi.com@hfordsahttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Understanding_sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aude/Egypt

Research questionsHow are Wikipedians managingsocial media sources?What veriﬁcation challenges werethey facing?How can help editors managesources better during highvolume news events?

Ranking Variable 1 Variable 2 Variable 3vote Source

1. Deﬁning concepts

Sources play 2 important roles• Verify facts • Directly represented (sometimes)• Verify importance • Summaries require interpretation (and in rapidly evolving news events that interpretation often hasn’t arrived) xkcd

sources‘on the books’ source=1. Use only reliable sources2. Use predominantly secondarysources3. Ensure veriﬁability

Social media sourcesare allowed!- Policy doesn’t specify mediabut warns to be careful- WP:Twitter sources can be usedas sources on themselves- Self-published expert sourcesmay be considered reliablesources

Primary sources areallowed!- and in fact, are the only sourcesavailable near an event- but policy states that themajority of sources should besecondary

2011 Egyptian revolution article http://sonetlab.fbk.eu/wikitrip/#|en|2011_Egyptian_Revolution

How did editors verify?• Avoiding single sources• “Wait and see”• Reading/watching the source to see whether it has been accurately reﬂected• Counting

Suez Jan 26/27Reports of Army involvements are refuted on Twitter, sometimes quitestrongly; all reliable tweets seem to mention paramilitary riot police only(using Fahd (armored personnel carrier) which the Army also uses, hencethe apparent confusion).Suez city center apparently cordoned off, curfew in effect, internet andphone (mobile and landlines) capped or intermittent at best, possiblyblackout. Watercannons, dozens injured. Best source so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIfGGo6G-4Q (Arabic) possibly useful(mainstream media blog) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jan/26/egypt-protests —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.196.206.14 (talk)01:29, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

contextRanking independent variable 1 Variable 1 independent Variable 2 variable 2 Variable 3vote Source

Indep. variablesAre the majority of sourcessecondary?What is the article about?How recent is the event beingdiscussed?

hford@ushahidi.com@hfordsahttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Understanding_sources

Wikimania presentation on the "Understanding Sources" project

by hfordsa on Jul 13, 2012

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Wikimania presentation on the "Understanding Sources" project Presentation Transcript

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