This document discusses a new research agenda for Wikimedia to address challenges and opportunities arising from the growth of human and machine knowledge. It outlines areas for research including: preserving transparent sourcing of information as answers become readily available from search; breaking down long-form articles into structured data and fragments for new forms of consumption; and distributing content in ways that route attention back to Wikimedia instead of intermediating it. The agenda proposes evaluating systems that address these areas to help Wikimedia continue supporting open knowledge curation in the age of machines.

1. The sum of all human knowledge
in the age of machines
A new research agenda for Wikimedia
Dario Taraborelli • Wikimedia Foundation
Big Dive, 16 June 2015

2. Non-profit running Wikipedia and sister projects
Mission: support the creation and dissemination
of collaboratively produced free knowledge.
250+ employees, mostly based in San Francisco
6th most popular web property by traffic of the
planet

3. 35M articles in 288 languages 26M media files 60M triples

4. A conversation

5. Academic research on Wikipedia
rise and decline of the editor population
gender gap and content biases
contributor motivation
asymmetries in content and provenance of contributions
socio-technical systems governing quality control.

6. WIkipedia’s rise and decline
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_Rise_and_Decline

7. Human curated knowledge
in the age of machines

8. the long-form encyclopedia

9. Outline
1. sourcing information
2. consuming information
3. distributing content
A new research agenda
Distributed innovation: how we work

10. 1. Sourcing information

11. Goats

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat#Life_expectancy

15. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42

16. https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/stats.php
85%

17. 1. Sourcing information
● What’s the role of humans in sourcing and verifying information when answers to most
questions are readily available from search engines?
● Should Wikipedia start integrating algorithmically extracted sources in its contents?
● Should Wikipedia further invest in supporting human generated citations?

18. 2. Consuming information

19. O. Keyes (2015) The Mobile Singularity is already here. Wikipedia and the Mobile Web

20. Bite-sized consumption

21. Structured contributions

22. Manipulating fragments

23. media
structured data
references
media
long-form
text
fragments
references geocoordinates
structured
data
decoupled
article
Decoupling the article
long-form
article

24. 2. Consuming information
● Can we transform Wikipedia contents to make them suitable to bite-sized consumption?
● How to accelerate extraction of structured data from Wikipedia and its use in Wikidata?
● How to design effective lightweight contribution funnels around structured data and
content fragments?
● How to support programmatic manipulation of content fragments?

25. 3. Distributing content

26. The paradox of reuse

27. Routing attention
Women in Science
Wikipedia needs your help
The English Wikipedia article Women in
Science needs contributors from a more
global perspective. Help expand it!

28. Routing attention

29. Routing attention

30. 3. Distributing content
● How can we design content distribution systems that do not intermediate Wikipedia?
● How do we leverage content syndication to route (expert) attention to the source?

31. A new research agenda
Designing and evaluating systems to:
1. preserve and increase transparent sourcing of information
2. break down long-form articles into their constituents
3. optimize content fruition, as a function of access
4. enable lightweight contribution/manipulation of structured data / fragments
5. leverage content distributed / syndicated by 3rd parties
6. prioritize work and route contributors to the site, as a function of demand

32. Distributed innovation: how we work

33. Open knowledge curation ecosystem
Humans
Cyborgs
Machines

34. Wikimedia Research as a platform
Wikimedia Research & Data team
Edit/article quality classifiers
Automated link recommendations
Article creation recommendations
Fundraiser testing and optimization

35. Scaling Wikimedia Research
1:100,000,000
Approximate ratio of full-time data scientists at WMF to monthly unique visitors

36. Formal collaborations
Stanford University
GroupLens, University of Minnesota
Oxford Internet Institute
Los Alamos National Laboratory
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy

37. Open data
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Data

38. Open data: pageviews
http://www.wikipediatrends.com

39. Open data: clickstream
Wulczyn, E; Taraborelli, D (2015): Wikipedia Clickstream. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1305770

40. Open data: tuples
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Data_access http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/tempo_spatial_display.html

41. Open data: real-time changes
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/RCStream

42. Conclusions

43. Questions?
dario@wikimedia.org
@readermeter
@wikiresearch

44. Image credits
Election Night Crowd, Wellington, 1931
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz_commons/3326203787
CC0
King Billy of Dalkey Island
https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulodonnell/5937678226
CC BY
Secretary at typewriter, 1912
https://www.flickr.com/photos/muohio_digital_collections/3192197470
CC0
"Getting em up" at U.S.Naval Training Camp, Seattle, Washington. ca. 1917 - ca. 1918
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/5505933145
CC0