Ten days left to apply for Chapcom membership

The Chapters Committee is looking to fill five places and is looking for candidates who are able and willing to help groups of Wikimedians self-organize around the world. See the call here.

A year in ChapCom

It was a busy year in the Chapters Committee, the body that is entrusted with guiding groups of enthusiastic Wikimedia volunteers towards greater offline activity. This is usually in the form of forming a local Wikimedia Chapter, but given the technical and bureaucratic difficulties that this may entail, it often takes the form of recommending local activities without a formal legal structure taking advantage of the Wikimedia trademarks policy and grants programme.

Chapters approved in 2011 (dark blue), and those on their way towards chapterhood in 2012 (greenish shade of blue). Germany has become a lake by accident.

Once a group decides to form a chapter, it is the dual duty of the Committee – composed of a group of volunteers with experience in international relations, running chapters and other non-profits and good intercultural skills – to give advice and guide the group through the steps of creating a well-functioning legal association and making sure that the resulting entity conforms to the requirements of official Wikimedia chapterhood.

In 2011 ChapCom finalised 10 chapter applications from 4 continents: from the northern tip of the World in Canada all the way south to Cape Horn (in Chile) and as far east as the 93rd meridian. This makes it the second busiest year for the Committee (after 2008); however, we will not be bored in 2012 either. If the world doesn't end, the Committee will process applications from Brazil, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Slovakia and most likely Croatia (and we are only in January; hopefully, many more communities will approach us over the year).

2012 will also be the year, when anyone can apply to be part of the group that helps new groups around the world in forming chapters (or other affiliated orgs). If you wonder what kind of person we are looking for, see the call from 2010, and please sign up to be notified of the 2012 call!

Wikimedia Chapters Planet

So I have created my first real website, Wikimedia Chapters Planet, a blog aggregator that collects blog posts and reports from the Wikimedia Chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Setting it up was surprisingly easy thanks to the free Planet software (only a small hack was needed to get it to run). The question on how to update it was a bit of a dilemma as it is not trivial to run the Python Planet scripts on the free hosting I had (and I didn't want to spend too much on updated hosting), but I solved it by simply running all the scripts on my PC and having a .bat file do the uploading every hour or so.
The translation part, which is crucial in making the site useful, was sheer luck, as although Google closed its Translation API, it is still available as a free gadget for websites, and it can handle multiple languages in the same page (something, Google Chrome's built in  service can't).

All that was left is to gather the blogs and flip the switch. Currently, I collect blog posts from 19 and reports from eight  chapters(out of 35) plus the Wikimedia Foundation. Hopefully, more chapters will join the list and we can all see the many things that are happening around the world.

WikiCamp 2011 takes Miskolc

Just as last year, a score and ten Wikipedians gathered for a four-day Wikicamp in the north-eastern town of Miskolc.

The campers got a chance to get to know each other while sightseeing in Eger and Miskolc (the former with a pit stop at a wine cellar), hiking and getting lost in the nearby woods, a visit to an adventure park and some short presentations on how to take quality pictures for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons and of the planned software changes coming to Wikipedia (among a few others).

The event proved to be a success and is becoming a tradition, so we urge everyone to sign up early for the 2012 camp to be held in Veszprém.

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Photo: Texaner, Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL

Wikimedia Hungary grants

The National Civil Fund (recently renamed after Sándor Wekerle, a former prime minister), the Hungarian grant giving arm of the European Social Fund has granted Wikimedia Hungary 250 000 HUF ($1300) to cover its operating expenses between 1 July and 30 September, in particular, the grant funds the development of an online payment gateway for our bank built on CiviCRM, and for producing printed materials.

This is the third grant in a row that we have won and the justifications of the grants show that we are getting better at it, reflecting both on our grant writing skills and more so on our activities.


($1 = 190 Hungarian Forints)

Featured article word cloud

The three thousand featured articles of the English are made up of roughly 223 thousand different words, out of which 100 thousand are used only once.* As a comparison, Shakespeare used 29 thousand words in his works, out of which 12 thousand occurred only once.

The most frequent words represented as a cloud after the most common function words were removed:

And this is what the above cloud would look like if the function words (including the 1.1 million the's out of the 15 million words in total) were included and weighted according to their frequency:

* Different word forms of the same word are counted separately but uppercase and lowercase forms are counted as one.E.g  "Cat" and "cat" count as one but "cats" is counted separately from "cat". 

Readability of South African Constitutions

South Africa has had five constitutions during its history. The first one, the South Africa Act of 1909 was actually an act of the British Parliament. The 1961 Constitution was adopted during apartheid to transform the country into a Republic and the 1983 tried to reform things a bit with a Tricameral parliament. The 1993 Constitution was an interim one that set out the framework for the process that created the current, democratic Constitution of 1996.

My thesis looked at the readability (and factors affecting easy comprehension) of South African Constitutions at two specific points in time, but it is quite, or even more interesting to look at the whole developmental sequence.

The language of two South African Constitutions

One of my two theses is now finally ready, and given that I am satisfied with the results, I thought I should share it. It was a comparison of two South African constitutions (the 1961 and the current 1996 one), to see if the freer society has manifested itself in a more accessible legal text, which I showed it did. This was not only the result of modernization, but a conscious effort on the part of the drafters.

Here's the abstract, and if you are interested, you can read the whole thing here.

This study examined in detail the language of two South African constitutions. The Republic of South Africa Constitution Act, 1961 adopted in the era of apartheid was compared with the current constitution, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, to find out whether the democratization of society has resulted in a more accessible constitution. 

Based on the recommendations of the Plain Language Movement for more accessible legal language, four criteria were examined in a quantitative analysis: average sentence length, the use of passive verb forms, the use of „shall‟ and the use of archaic and Latin expressions. 

The results showed that the 1996 Constitution compared to the 1961 Constitution has significantly shorter average sentences; passive constructions are half as frequent; the use of „shall‟ and difficult, archaic and Latin expressions are avoided. The results indicate that the language of the 1996 Constitution conforms better to the recommendations on accessible language. In conclusion, the democratization of society has been accompanied by a constitution that is easier to comprehend and understand, allowing the citizens to understand their rights and obligations towards the state better.

The Mouse That Roared

The text of the declaration from The Mouse That Roared book, which is about as good as the film itself:

The readability of user warning messages

Looking at the talk pages on the English Wikipedia I got the impression that the standard user warning messages are terribly difficult to understand. First impressions can be deceiving though, so I decided to investigate.

The English Wikipedia catalogues 405 different warning messages (there are some duplicates in that count) that can be sent to users who commit any of the scores of possible transgressions. As a comparison, there are only 137 so called barnstars used to congratulate users for their achievements.

To determine how readable these are, I looked at 105 of these messages and calculated their readability scores (the raw data is available here). The standard readability formulas take into account the length of sentences and the length of words (either as the number of characters or syllables in them) and using a formula give a prediction of the number of years of formal education one would need to understand them (this is the “grade level” based on the US education system).

Readability is not really an exact science, different formulas give slightly different weights to the length of words and sentences and there are a number of other factors that influence the comprehensibility of a text – for example, the frequency of difficult words, the use of multiple negation, etc. – that the formulas don’t take into account¹. Nevertheless, readability formulas give a comparable indication of the difficulty of different texts.

The readability of various categories of user warnings, based on the SMOG formula

The results show that on average it would take an American student 12 years of study (i.e. graduating high school) to understand these warning messages. This level seems appropriate for an encyclopedia.²


The averages, however, mask the outliers. The least readable message in the sample was the notice people get when they are blocked to enforce a decision by the English Wikipedia’s arbitration committee would need about 18 and a half years of education to understand on the first reading. Running up are some of the more commonly appearing templates that warn users that their article is nominated for deletion or breaches copyrights.

Purpose	SMOG index (years of education needed to understand text)
Block to enforce arbitration decision	18,49
Warning that the user has added copyrighted material	17,23
Warning that the user has added a link to copyrighted material	16,86
User's article is proposed for deletion	16,64
Final warning that the user not remove maintenance templates	16,42
User's article nominated for deletion	15,45
User's article proposed for deletion	15,42
User blocked for advertising or self-promoting	15,25
User's article speedily deleted for spam	14,75
Warning that the user not assume ownership of articles	14,62

In conclusion, the warning messages aren’t unreasonably unreadable, although the various deletion notices, especially the ones concerned with copyright are written in a way that is too difficult to understand by the average user. At this point it is only a hunch, that the most commonly used messages are among the most difficult to comprehend.

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¹ Studies have confirmed that the inclusion of other factors in the formula contributes more work than it improves the results. [1]
² According to the UNU-Merit user survey, 88% of the users have finished secondary education. [2]

A bit more on user talk pages

Building on my previous post, where I have looked at the tone of discussions on Wikipedia users' talk pages, especially that of new users, today I looked at a couple of other languages to see if there are any interesting trends.

I looked at 30-30 recently registered users' talkpage from April on the Croatian, Serbian, Russian and English Wikipedias – of course, this means that neither sample was very representative as the size of the Wikipedias differ and in certain cases it takes days, while in others only minutes until 30 new users register. Therefore, it is important to take the numbers with a grain of salt, while the overall trends should be about right.

Colourful welcome message on the Russian Wikipedia. There is  also a more text heavy black and white version.

The three smaller Wikipedias (and the previously examined Hungarian one) had in common the practice to place a welcome template message on the users' pages  following their first edits, even if they didn't have any other comment (praise or correction) to offer (about 28-29 people in the samples received some form of welcome template).The welcome messages are sometimes (6-30% of cases) followed by warnings that are somewhat specific to a given Wikipedia.   

Serbian welcome message, with a warm invitation at the end that looks personal.

What was interesting was the common warning (4 times in the sample) on the Croatian Wikipedia that the user write in Croatian (given the similarity of the Serbocroatian languages, I cannot judge whether the warning was justified, but it can't be a positive experience if you are told that you are not speaking the right language or the language right), and that 4 out of the 30 people were indefinitely blocked for unproductive editing (without the ability to see deleted edits I cannot judge these blocks, but their harshness and the lack of warning in cases was striking).

A typical English Wikipedia talk page with a welcome and a number of deletion notices.

When I turned to the English Wikipedia the image was slightly different. The talk pages suddenly look like minefields dotted with danger signs. Only 55% of the users received a welcome message preceding a notice that their article was deleted or their contribution reverted (about 85% of the sample received some kind of warning).

Given the high proportion of users faced with the warning sign messages as the first feedback they get from Wikipedia, it might be worthwhile to consider making them more user friendly. One good step would be to make them easier to understand by simply rewriting them in Plain English (the grammar could be simplified, insider jargon like "tag", "under criteria A7", "userfy" should be removed, etc.). 

An interesting follow-up study would be to see what effect do welcome messages or the lack of them have on new users' behaviour.

Tone of talk page discussions

The Community Department at the Wikimedia Foundation has been running a number of small scale studies on the English Wikipedia in preparation for a more in-depth study during the summer.

English Wikipedia. (CC By-Sa: Steven Walling)

One of the things they have looked into was the tone of messages left on new editors' talk pages. Their findings show that the ratio of messages with a negative tone and sometimes scary imagery (red stop signs usually) has been on the increase, while messages of praise has shown a stark decline around 2007.

To see if the situation is similar on the Hungarian Wikipedia I tried to look at the user discussion pages on the Hungarian Wikipedia. Without diving into copies of the database that contain every single historical edit, I concentrated on edits in April-May 2011.

First I looked at the 100 most recent edits on user talk pages, which has included experienced editors – indeed, a lot of the discussion was between experienced editors. I tried to partition the edits based on tone into positive, negative and neutral, but (except for negative) it is usually quite difficult and the line between positive and neutral is a matter of subjective judgement (as a rule of thumb, anything that included a thank you or the default welcome template went into the positive bucket).

After doing this, I realized that I should have concentrated on messages left for new editors, so I looked at the talk pages of 30 people who have registered in April on the Hungarian Wikipedia.

The results weren't too exciting as there wasn't much interaction happening with new users. The majority received only the standard welcome message on their talk page; only two of the pages showed extensive discussion (indicating that the user has become quite active already).

A good sign is that the Hungarian Wikipedia doesn't really use scary images in templates, except in the cases of copyright violations and the Wikipedia puzzle piece in warnings about articles that are too short and that will therefore be deleted.

Thus, the situation seems to be better on the Hungarian Wikipedia than on the English Wikipedia. Unfortunately, this means that other explanations are needed to find out why is the retention and "conversion rate" of new editors on the Hungarian Wikipedia very low.

Wikimedia Estonia

I’ve met Ivo, a university student of about my age in last October to discuss the possibilities and benefits of setting up a Wikimedia chapter in Estonia.

At the time he has just finished giving a lecture on how to use Wikipedia in the Tartu local library and I was confident that if he could get a couple of more people that share his enthusiasm, they could achieve a lot for free culture in Estonia.

Fast forward to the present, and Wikimedia Eesti has been established and approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation as an official chapter.

This past year has not been spent in vain; however, as a couple of projects, like an image gathering drive and an article writing contest have been started on the Estonian Wikipedia  and from what I gather from their recent grant request, a project involving Estonian schools is well in preparation, as well.

Please join me in welcoming Wikimedia Eesti to the network of Wikimedia chapters and wish them luck for their first projects.

Estonian Parliament

The Estonian Parliament is a curiously eclectic building in the heart of Tallinn’s Old Town just behind the ornamental three-domed building of the Russian Orthodox Nevsky Cathedral.

This building complex blends completely into its surrounding like a chameleon, so much so that each side of the building comes from a different century. The backside of the building is actually the original town walls blending into a medieval castle.

Inside the building one finds the usual accessories of parliamentary buildings with a courtyard to solve any parking problems of cabinet members and deputies, large reception areas with exquisitely woven carpets and overhanging chandeliers, offices and of course the debating chamber.

The blue room that accommodates the hundred or so MPs is situated in the blue part of the building and as a nice feature it receives natural light from the courtyard, which surely helps the deliberation and cuts down on the electricity bill.

The Welsh Assembly

Front view of the Senned

On my January visit to Cardiff I chanced upon the second devolved parliament of Britain that is not housed in an ordinary building (I haven't yet had the chance to visit Belfast, but I imagine Stormont to be a more traditional building). The Welsh National Assembly building is located in the bay area of the town next to the iconic Millenium Centre.

The debating chamber's walls become the roof

The building was finished in 2006 and it projects the image of transparency, openness.One also notices the prominent use of natural materials such as wood and glass. The steps in front of the glass portal of the building covered by the wavy, overhanging roof made of wood are inviting to the public and fit well into the area with the sea nearby and the rainy English weather. The whole building suggest looking out to the sea, the people and looking forward to the future, as well as invitingly offering shelter.

Slovakian Parliament

National Council of the Slovak Republic

On my last trips to Bratislava unfortunately I didn't get to visit the Slovakian Parliament's building. It is located in the best possible place of the town, next to the castle. Unfortunately, it is quite an uninteresting (from outside), gray, concrete building next to the imposing castle so most tourists probably don't even realize its significance and head directly through the gate on the opposite side of the street to the castle grounds.

The Chaos

I am studying for my English phonology exam and I wanted to share what I'm going through, so here's a poem by Gerald Nolst Trenité (IPA version; one of the many video adaptations).

Awkward Situations for Men

Ever since I caught a glimpse on a fine summer afternoon in London of Danny Wallace's attempts to create his own country I have been hooked on his humour and "special boy projects", like accidentally founding a cult or saying yes to everything.

I have found the book versions of his escapades quite funny (less so with his later attempts to revisit some old friends or find the center of the universe) so I am having great hopes about his adventures in the New World, which should come out in book form in about a month and will hopefully become a TV series on ABC I guess in the autumn, if all goes well.

Peru, OLPC and Wikipedia

Web: La Selva from Web on Vimeo. Hat tip to Jimmy Wales.

Berlin

Holocaust memorial

Reichstag

Last week I was in Berlin for the 2010 Wikimedia Conference. This has been my third visit to Berlin and probably the most enjoyable, so far.

The conference was very productive and made more enjoyable by the presence of all those people who stayed because of the ash cloud. I am sure we can convert some of the energy of the conference into cool events here in Hungary.

Best of all, after many night-time sightseeing tours in Berlin I had the chance to look around during the day in the fine weather. Hopefully, at my next visit I will also have the time to visit some of the museums of Berlin.