There are a number of interesting topics in this month's Recent Research report. The
detailed list of contents for the Research Report may intrigue some readers of Wikimedia-l
and Research-l. The report is at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-11-26/Recen….
More information about the report is available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter.
Personally, I was most appreciative of the information under "Being Wikipedian is
more important than the political affiliation". Quoting from the report: "Based
on an analysis of a sample of 1390 editors with known political affiliation – either US
Democrat or Republican – (the authors) conclude that although the social identity of
editors is strongly reflected in their editorial interests – that is, the topics on which
they are more active – but that being "Wikipedian" dominates the political
affiliation when it comes to user pages. In contrast with other social media e.g.,
blogosphere, where cross-party interactions are very much underrepresented, it appears
that Wikipedian dialogues between editors from opposing parties are relatively profound
and notable. On the day before the US presidential election, the paper's results were
highlighted on the Wikimedia blog under the headline "In divisive times, Wikipedia
brings political opponents together".
Recent Research report topics for November 2012:
"Early prediction of movie box-office revenues with Wikipedia data"
"Readability of the English Wikipedia, Simple Wikipedia, and Britannica
compared"
"Wikipedia favors established views and scientifically backed knowledge"
"Trust, authority and credentials on Wikipedia: The case of the Essjay
controversy"
"Being Wikipedian is more important than the political affiliation"
"Eye-tracking study: Readers look at TOC first, then infobox"
"Edit categories in featured and non-featured articles"
"How the TV schedule influences Wikipedia pageviews"
"A truthfulness verification system based on Wikipedia"
"Characterizing Wikipedia traffic"
"One-year article ratings dump released"
"Measuring countries' visibility on Wikipedia"
"Ratio of African Wikipedia readers rising, but still low"
--Pine