Research:Wiki Ed student editor contributions to sciences on Wikipedia

Created

21:28, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Contact

Kevin Schiroo

Wiki Education Foundation

Collaborators

Aaron Halfaker

Wikimedia Foundation

Duration: 2016-05 – 2016-06

Research:Projects

This page documents a completed research project.

2016 is the Year of Science for the Wiki Education foundation. With this push to create new science content, how do we determine what the real impact is on Wikipedia? To find the portion of science content being generated by Wiki Ed, we analyse work performed on science articles by the Spring 2016 Wiki Ed cohort. We conclude that while Wiki Ed science output varies substantially based on the current position in the academic year, at its peak, students maintain a sustained output of 6% of total science-related content output.

Research Question

RQ: What portion of science content is generated by Wiki Ed students?

Methods

Defining science articles

Our first challenge is to identify what articles count as science articles. We do this by first finding science WikiProjects and then finding articles tagged by these projects.

We start with the Wikiproject directory, selecting all projects listed under Science. This gives us a diverse list of 295 projects. This list is then reviewed and non-top-level projects (e.g. taskforces like Climate change task force) are removed as well as projects that fell significantly out of a reasonable definition of science (i.e. Internet culture). Our final list of selected projects is listed below.

Selected projects

Abortion
AIDS
Aircraft
Airlines
Airports
Algae
Alternative_fuels
Alternative_medicine
Amiga
Amphibians_and_Reptiles
Anatomy
Animal_anatomy
Animals
Apple_Inc.
Aquarium_Fishes
Aquatic_Invertebrates
Archaeology
Arthropods
Astronomical_objects
Astronomy
Audiovisual_telecommunications
Australian_biota
Automobile_construction
Aviation
Banksia
Beekeeping
Beetles
Bell_System
Biology
Biophysics
Biota_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland
Birds
Bivalves
Blades
C++
Cannabis
Carnivorous_plants
Cats
Cell_Signaling
Cellular_devices
Cephalopods
Cetaceans
Chemical_and_Bio_Engineering
Chemicals
Chemistry
Civil_engineering
Climate
Cognitive_science
Color
Computational_Biology
Computer_graphics
Computer_music
Computer_science
Computer_Security
Computer_Vision
Computing
Cosmology
Cryptography
Cryptozoology
Dams
Databases
Dentistry
Dinosaurs
Dogs
Dyslexia
Earthquakes
Earth_science
Eclipses
Ecology
Economics
Ecoregions
Electrical_engineering
Electronics
Elements
Energy
Engineering
Environment
Equine
Evolutionary_biology
Explosives
Extinction
Firearms
First_aid
Fishes
Forestry
Formation_Evaluation
Free_Software
Fungi
Futures_studies
Game_theory
Gastropods
Gemology_and_Jewelry
Gender_Studies
Genetics
Geologic_timescale
Geology
Gliding
Golden_ratio
Health_and_fitness
History_of_Biology
History_of_Nuclear_Enterprise
History_of_Science
Horticulture_and_Gardening
Hospitals
Human_Genetic_History
Insects
IRC
Java
KDE
Lepidoptera
LGBT_studies
Linux
Malware
Mammals
Mantodea
Marine_life
Mars
Mass_spectrometry
Mathematical_and_Computational_Biology
Mathematics
Mathematics_Competitions
Measurement
Medicine
Metalworking
Meteorology
Method_engineering
Microbiology
Microsoft
Microsoft_Windows
Mind-Body
Mining
Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology
Monotremes_and_Marsupials
Moon
National_Health_Service
Nature
.NET
Neuroscience
NIH
NLP_concepts_and_methods
Non-tropical_storms
Numbers
Nursing
Optics
Perl
Pharmacology
Phasmatodea
Physical_Chemistry
Physics
Physiology
Plan_9
Plants
Pollution
Polyhedra
Polymers
Primates
Probability
Programming_languages
Prokaryotes_and_protists
Pseudoscience
Psychedelics,_Dissociatives_and_Deliriants
Psychology
Pterosaurs
Radio_Stations
RISC_OS
RNA
Robotics
Rocketry
Rocks_and_minerals
Rodents
Sanitation
Science
Sea_Monsters
Seamounts
Severe_weather
Sexology_and_sexuality
Sharks
Signal_Processing
Software
Soil
Solar_System
Spaceflight
Spectroscopy
Spiders
Statistics
Superfunds
Systems
Systems_Engineering_Initiative
Technology
Telecommunications
Time
Trains
Trains_in_Japan
Transportation
Tree_of_Life
Tropical_cyclones
Uniform_Polytopes
Veterinary_medicine
Viruses
Volcanoes
Water
Women_scientists
Years_in_science
Zoo

Collecting science revisions

After selecting science WikiProjects we were still left needing to identify the pages belonging to the selected project and the revisions belonging to the selected pages.

Selecting science pages

We used the category labels to identify science pages. Using the replica databases provided at wmflabs, we selected all category links indicating quality rating or importance which frequently contain the project name. The output of this query is then further processed to extract the project name and associated page id. From this list of project page-id pairs we select all page ids in the selected projects.

Selecting science revisions

With our science pages identified we iterate through all enwiki-20160601-stub-meta-history*.xml.gz dumps selecting out and diffing the number of bytes between consecutive revisions for all revisions belonging to the identified pages.

Tallying daily contributions

Using the selected revisions we tally the number of positive bytes added by Wiki Ed students and by contributors in general. We iterate through our data set of selected revisions, searching back 10 revisions to look for a sha1 matching, indicating a likely revert. If we find a match we omit all edits between the original and the reverting edit. The reverting edit is also omitted. For each edit that passes this test and contributes a positive number of bytes we identify its date and contributor. If the contributor is part of the Wiki Ed cohort it is added to that date's sum of contributions for Wiki Ed.

Results

Bytes added by general users to Wikipedia in science articles during spring 2016.

Examining contribution trends by general users throughout the semester shows that they are relatively consistent with the exception of some intermittent spikes. The largest of these in science contribution, and actually in all contribution in the history of Wikipedia occurred on April 11 and correlated with User:Rfassbind merging list of 100 minor planets into lists of 1000 minor planets. For the sake of further analysis contributions made on April 11 were removed from consideration since the metric was dominated by the shifting around of content, rather than its creation which is the concept we are attempting to measure.

The median level of contribution over Wikipedia's entire lifespan is 1129336 bytes/day while looking only over the past two year it is a slightly reduced 1079130 bytes/day.

Bytes added by Wiki Ed students to Wikipedia in science articles during spring 2016.

Looking at student bytes added to science articles we see a clear relationship with the academic schedule. Students are more active in the last two months of the typical semester, correlating to the typical times in which term papers would be due. There are also smaller bursts of activity in mid February and early March believed to be correlated with quarter system classes.

During the spring 2016 semester general editors produced 192878894 bytes, 167649187 bytes when April 11 is removed. Wiki Ed students produced 4685882 bytes of content, 4611449 bytes omitting April 11, during the spring 2016 semester. This amounts to 2.8% of all science content added. If we narrow our focus to the most active time in the school year, between April 1 and May 15 (April 11 omitted), Wiki Ed students contribute 5.9% of all science content added.

Portion of bytes added by Wiki Ed students during spring 2016 to science articles.