summary of wiki-related research

conversation at WikiMedia San Francisco, 2011

Dr Mark GrahamOxford Internet Institute

www.geospace.co.ukwww.zerogeography.net

www.wikichains.org

e: mark@geospace.co.ukt: @geoplace

Spatial Palimpsests

“The Internet surrounds us like air, saturating our offices and our homes. But it’s not confined to the ether. You can touch it. You can map it. And you can photograph it”

- Andrew Blum 2009

“here be dragons”

Psalter World map (1265)

Map by Mark Graham, Monica Stephens, Matthew Zook

Map by Mark Graham, Monica Stephens, Matthew Zook

total number of Wikipedia articles in all languages

Eastern Canada: English and French

Spain: Spanish (Castilian) and Catalan

Israel/Palestine: Arabic and Hebrew

Bangkok

วั�ด (“temple” in Thai) “temple” in English

Wikipedia research:- The Middle East and North Africa- East Africa

Collaborators: Dr Bernie Hogan (Oxford), Richard Farmbrough (Oxford), Dr Ali Frihida (Tunis National School of Engineering, Tunisia), Dr Ilhem Allagui (American University of Sharjah, UAE)

Wikipedia research:

(1) what is the geography of articles in the Middle East/North Africa/East Africa compared to the rest of the world?

Wikipedia research:

(2) do local authors in the Middle East/North Africa/East Africa comprise disproportionately fewer of the contributors to articles about that region?

Wikipedia research:

(3) are the contributions of local contributors undervalued?

Breadth from bilingual contributors?

German geo-taggedarticles in Latin America

Spanish geo-tagged articles in Latin America (good coverage even in Brazil)

Little overlap between language editions (Hecht and Gergle 2010)

Regions without many speakers of a given language are relatively under-represented in that language edition of the encyclopedia.

What role do bilinguals and foreign-language sources play?

What incentives might increase contributions from 2nd language learners & bilinguals and hence increase coverage?

- Scott Hale (scotthale.net)Oxford Internet Institute Wikipedia working group:http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=66

wikichains.org

thank you

Dr Mark GrahamOxford Internet Institute

geospace.co.ukzerogeography.netmark@geospace.co.uk@geoplace