I have been Wikimedian in Residence at the Data Science Institute at the University of Virginia since March 2018. 6 Months into this role I wanted to share an update summarizing what I do.
Graduate student research with Wikimedia projects
The Data Science Institute’s primary activity till now is running a masters degree program in data science. This program admits students who already have data analysis skills including proficiency in Python, statistics, and some systems engineering. Perhaps half of the students are returning to school after a few years of working in industry while the other half are either coming out of a bachelor degree or in a dual degree program using data science techniques as part of their studies in some other domain. Immediately in the program there is a research fair in which clients pitch students to address some challenge with data science. I support clients who have Wikimedia related projects, and this year there are 3 of those.
One client is Cochrane. The challenge from Cochrane is to seek better ways to integrate expertise from their academic articles into Wikipedia articles. They have about 10,000 up to date publications. Perhaps Wikipedia should summarize all of them, and about 1500 are in English Wikipedia right now. The student researchers might merely match suggested Wikipedia articles to academic articles, or they could go further and explain which parts of the academic article go where in Wikipedia articles. This is a specific exploration of the general problem of recommending the latest research to Wikipedia’s editors.
Another client is the Wikimedia Foundation Trust and Safety team. Their challenge is reduce misconduct by suggesting user account blocks with automation more quickly. Currently the moderation system depends mostly on human review to identify and suppress editors doing rude behavior. Any technical support to more quickly halt toxic behavior would improve the mood of the community. There are many different sorts of toxic behavior so this project could develop in any number of directions.
The other client is partially Wikimedia related, but is for a project called Collective Biographies of Women at the University of Virginia Library. This project seeks to deconstruct biographies into structured data. A side effect of this deconstruction is that Wikidata can accept the structured data, and Wikimedia projects would be useful for distributing the outcomes of this project.
This research just started this week so the story of the outcomes will come by summer 2019.
University of Virginia Library engagement in Wikimedia projects
The university libraries here have their own archives and datasets. Two that are of present interest are SNAC and the Collective Biographies of Women. The Wikidata community has already mapped connections between items in those databases and corresponding Wikidata items. Now Wikidata should be able to transit structured data between itself, the databases at the University of Virginia, and any other databases matched to Wikidata.
We seek to document how this works, what effects there are, and how any other library can engage in Wikimedia projects in this way.
Wiki parties at University of Virginia
I am hosting Wiki editing events with anyone who would partner with me at the university or its partners. The goal is to raise the profile of Wikimedia projects in local culture, build a community of people who contribute to the media commons, and make more people aware of the opportunity to leverage Wikimedia platforms for publication and distribution.
I am posting some of my wiki parties at WikiProject University of Virginia. Bigger events that I have planned for the next few months include “Resurfacing Black Life” and Public Domain Day 2019.
University of Virginia engagement with WikiCite
WikiCite is the highest profile Wikidata project. It has the most participants, has attracted the most resource investment, is the most discussed in the general Wikidata community, and was the most imagined concept of Wikidata prior to the establishment of Wikidata.
For WikiCite to work it requires the participation of many universities and perhaps all universities. From one perspective it seems like the self-promotional dream that every conflict of interest editor has ever had about Wikimedia projects, because WikiCite seeks to catalog all of an institution’s publications, departments, and authors. From another perspective, the organizations which previously sought to edit with a COI become highly frightened to actually catalog their publications. While I have a supportive environment here at the University of Virginia, I have not yet integrated the university’s publications into Wikidata in the WikiCite model.
Reasons for the cautious start include a desire to document the process, make it replicable for other institutions, and coordinate with other institutions to promote this model collectively in a way that will be attractive for others.
The general idea in this project is to share citation information for every university publication in Wikidata. This seems like no problem because citation information is public and what universities promote anyway. The goal would be to be able to query Wikidata for university publications by author, department, topic, or any of 100s of other ways.
University of Virginia participation in the Wiki Education Program
Besides the wiki parties some particular classes might wish to edit Wikimedia content as part of their learning goals. This would follow the established model of the Wiki Education Program, where instructors in a class replace a traditional writing assignment with some Wikipedia writing or Wikimedia assignment.
Currently the Wiki Education Program has no model for developing Wikidata even though the Wiki Education Foundation Program and Events Dashboard can track Wikidata edits. My own goal is to develop a way to teach basics of database management, queries, and structured data using Wikidata as a playground and constructive outlet.
University of Virginia participation in Wikimedia community projects
As Wikimedian in Residence I am liaison of the Wikimedia community to the University of Virginia. I am also liaison of the university to the Wikimedia community, and a percentage of my time is in service to the Wikimedia community only with indirect benefit back to the university. This is a characteristic of open knowledge project engagement.
I have my own Wikimedia Movement and Open Movement projects and interests. I bring university resources into these interests. Some communities in which I have professional membership include Wiki NYC, Wiki Project Med, Wiki LGBT+, the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network, WikiConference North America, the WALRUS group, WikiProject Open Access, WikiCite, Wiki Loves Vegan, and also general casual engagement in other Wiki community projects which come to me.