Grants:PEG/WikiSym Initiative/2015 OpenSym Conference/Evidence

A collection of pieces of evidence about the usefulness of the WikiSym/OpenSym conference series.

If you would like to add something, please go right ahead!

If you are not sure, use a format like this one:

The paper "xxx" published at WikiSym 20XX was cited yyy times. ~~ ~~

Or

My paper "xxx" helped person yyy, see link. ~~ ~~

Or

I can't give numbers and data but believe my paper was important because... ~~ ~~

The four tilde signs will add your user information when saved like this Dirk Riehle (talk) 20:31, 17 February 2015 (UTC). Omit the space in the middle that I added to avoid extension.

Please add your comments by adding to the following Evidence section.

Comments / Evidence

• At WikiSym 2006, wiki software enthusiasts including Brion Vibber met to define a common wiki markup standard see http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/People Several wiki engines use it though Brion and the Mediawiki community ultimately opted not to adopt it. Dirk Riehle (talk)
• Our paper "Design and Implementation of the Sweble Wikitext Parser: Unlocking the Structured Data of Wikipedia" published in WikiSym 2011 laid the groundwork for the Sweble wikitext parser used by a large number of companies to extract content from Wikipedia. Dirk Riehle (talk)
• The groundwork that was summed up in our paper "Bots vs. Wikipedians, Anons vs. Logged-Ins (Redux): A Global Study of Edit Activity on Wikipedia and Wikidata", published in OpenSym 2014, was prominently featured in the MIT Technology Review. Tomayac (talk)
• My paper on the Polymath online mathematical collaborations at WikiSym 2010 has been cited about a dozen times thusfar in other scholars' work on mathematical collaboration and online scientific communitites, and has been included on at least one graduate syllabus that I know of. I remain in touch with several researchers I met at the symposium and have had regular and fruitful scholarly exchanges with them. Mbarany (talk) 21:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
• The paper "Constrained wiki: an oxymoron?" published at WikiSym 2006 was cited 33 times. ~~ ~~
• My 2006 keynote on "Intimate Information" began an engagement with the problems of Wikipedia collaboration and governance that culminated most recently in an essay series, “Infamous, Thoughtless, Careless, and Reckless” which has been quoted in newspapers from The Washington Post to der Standard and in journals from SocialText to Gawker. Technical discussions at WikiSym 2008, of which I was program chair, led to important features in Tinderbox, a spatial hypertext system for personal knowledge management with strong wiki flavor. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:38, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
• My poster accompanying paper at WikiSym 2011 were instrumental in securing $200,000 in foundation funding for outreach to the open education community, which in turn funded four rounds of a free online course, Writing Wikipedia Articles, which enabled those unfamiliar with Wikipedia editing to learn to contribute, as and also about the philosophical underpinnings of the Wikimedia movement. (blog post about the course, written by a student) -Pete F (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
• Ed Chi's keynote address at WikiSym 2011 included an otherwise unpublished study of the use of Wikipedia vs. other online research approaches. The slide he presented has been an invaluable tool to me in many efforts to engage organizations' interest in Wikipedia; I published a blog post that explores its importance. It has been an important component in my persuading numerous organizations to invest resources into improving Wikipedia. That blog post, in turn, was covered in [http:endofbig.com The End of Big], by Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Nicco Mele. -Pete F (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
• At WikiSym 2010, Frank Schulenburg and I presented on our then-formative pilot program for what has become the Wikimedia Education Program and the Wiki Education Foundation. The presentation was our first detailed exposition of the project to a wider audience. We made contact with various people who later engaged with the project. -Pete F (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
• The WikiSym 2010 paper Wikis at work: Success factors and challenges for sustainability of enterprise wikis has over 60 GS citations, which to me is a very strong result.
• From James Blustein, via email: "I don't recall publishing in Wokisym but I did attend one. It was an eye-opening and somewhat mind expanding experience. I was enriched by the exposure to a new (and effective) conference model, heard 2 or 3 very good articles (aka papers) and came away with a clear understanding of the relationship between the OO community and wikis."
• Our paper on "Towards Wikis as semantic hypermedia" from 2006 at Wikisym received a number of good citations.
• Our paper WikiChanges: exposing Wikipedia revision activity was published at WikiSym 2008 in Porto, Portugal and has been cited 23 times.
• At WikiSym Sept 2008 held in Porto, Portugal, I presented the translation project of George Landow's Victorian Web <http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/espanol/index.html> The project is being carried out in Wiki format by students are Universidad Complutense Madrid. George Landow was also keynote at WikiSym 2008.
• The paper "Deletion discussions in Wikipedia: Decision factors and outcomes" published at WikiSym 2012 was cited 11 times. The WikiSym 2014 paper, "Accept, decline, postpone: How newcomer productivity is reduced in English Wikipedia by pre-publication review", has generated further collaboration including my coauthor's individual engagement grant (Grants:IEG/Automated_Notability_Detection) which aims to directly impact the community. Attending the WikiSym 2009 (colocated with WikiMania 2009) helped me build a network of colleagues in Wikipedia and Wikipedia research. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 16:20, 25 February 2015 (UTC)