2019/Grants/Who can make Wikipedia a more reliable source for unadulterated information: A research study

Title:

Who can make Wikipedia a more reliable source for unadulterated information: A research study

Name:

Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran and Meena Gayathri Surampudi

Wikimedia username:

Bhuvana_Meenakshi ; Meena_gayathri.s

E-mail address:

bhuvanameenakshigmail.com ; meenagayathrisurampudigmail.com

Resume:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhuvana-meenakshi-koteeswaran-a67b58103/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gsxyF-rhpWp9-_CC9SWmXaHSae0ldSmU/view?usp=sharing

Geographical impact:

global

Type of project:

Research + Output

What is your idea?

This research will focus on making a thorough study of how the credibility of the Wikipedia content can be improved by subject matter experts who are Wikipedia editors. Here we are finding the source of contribution in terms of ‘who’ can give better content whether a person who has specialised on a subject or a person who is more experienced in editing on Wikipedia. The research will involve understanding the diverse Wikipedia contributor’s background in terms of their academic or factual knowledge or field expertise over the subject of their contributions.

We will the editors into three categories:
1. Editors who are Experts and edit on Wikipedia
2. Editors who are Non- Experts but edit on Wikipedia
3. Editors who are Experts but do not edit on Wikipedia

Here, 'Experts' are those who have an educational background or specialisation towards a particular subject. In some cases, we would consider Intermediates who have gained factual knowledge by avid reading or have a history for giving valid contributions on Wikipedia and non-Wikipedia mediums for a considerable amount of time.

Our study samples will involve people who fall in the (1), (2) and (3) categories and with the comparison of the quality of the content from these three editors. will help in observing the patterns of contributions of editors to Wikipedia.

Why is it important?

This research is essential to know how Wikipedia editors have varied perspectives while they edit on this platform. It will throw light on how each contributor understands the end user who will read their content. Based on the outputs it becomes easier to know which category of editors in Wikipedia must be educated more on misinformation and credibility. Therefore, these group of editors can be trained further with necessary resources as per their requirements in order to make them vigil and also a valuable contributor to this Open Knowledge movement.

Is your project already in progress?

How is it relevant to credibility and Wikipedia? (max 500 words)

Wikipedia is the most popular knowledge hub and many readers rely on the quality of the content. Maintaining high standards of reliability of content in Wikipedia and improving content with more quality is a shared responsibility of all stakeholders of knowledge production(not just people and entities who are already associated with and have been part of Wikimedia movement).

What is the ultimate impact of this project?

From the interviews made, we would bring out a set of recommendations about who could be the better content editors for subjects especially which are considered sensitive and also have direct impact over the real time consequences. We will also make more communities aware of subjects that need more improvisation and with the touch of experts how Wikipedia collectively can be a source of a more trustable platform for gathering unbiased information.In addition to this the study will also involve a case study on how the quality of the articles related to women can be maintained and how this can help in bridging the knowledge gap will be produced as an additional report.

Could it scale?

We are starting with English Wikipedia Users as there is a broader scope for the study itself. Later, we wish to customise this study to regional language Users across the globe so that more intricate data on the regular practices followed and how is the credibility maintained in their language ecosystem can be studied with a more deeper research.Awareness campaigns from the conclusions would be organised in order to pitch to the editors on Wikipedia about how each one is responsible to break the chain of spread of fake news in this era of misinformation.

Why are you the people to do it?

Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran:
I currently works as a Research Consultant at the Centre for Internet and Society or CIS(CIS,is a registered non-profit research organisation in India that undertakes interdisciplinary research on the internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives), Bangalore- India, where I work with the with the Access to Knowledge team to research on bridging the gender gap among Indian language Wikimedians. Previously I was a Research Intern at the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Defense Research and Development Organisation, Bangalore where I worked on a “Geospatial Intelligence”, a project for the Indian Navy. Also I was a Research Intern at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and researched on a Virtual Reality based project. Apart from this I have been volunteering with Mozilla for the past 6 years and I am a Mozilla Representative of my region. As a Mozilla volunteer I contribute to Firefox Reality, Add-ons and Womoz projects. I was also invited as a Wrangler (part of the organising team) at MozFest 2019 and as a Facilitator (to present about my Open Source project) at MozFest 2018 which happened at Ravensbourne University, London.
https://reps.mozilla.org/u/bhuvanameenakshi/
https://medium.com/mozilla-festival/wrangler-round-up-k-bhuvana-meenakshi-74ae08009680

Meena Gayathri Surampudi:
I have 7 years of experience in editing Wikipedia. I have improved and created more than 500 articles in telugu Wikipedia. I had successfully completed 100 Wiki days twice in which one was dedicated to women content. I also designed this 100 women wiki days project and 2 other Wikipedians from my community continued this project too. I also participated in conferences conducted by Access To Knowledge(a programme of The Centre for Internet and Society, India, that supports and facilitates the work of Indian Wikimedia projects located across various Indian language communities).

With these experience of ours on research and networks with the Wikimedians and other Open Source communities across the globe we both collaborated to propose this research study and try something innovative that can create a productive impact in the Wiki world.

What is the impact of your idea on diversity and inclusiveness of the Wikimedia movement?

We also look forward to reaching out to female editors who will fall into the three parameters as mentioned earlier. We are keen to expand our study to know whether this research can help in improving the quality and reliability of articles related to women's mental and physical health.

What are the challenges associated with this project and how you will overcome them?

As we are trying to cover most of the interviews for the research by remote calls, there can be possible challenges like:
1. Network or internet issues on the interviewees side
2. Availability of the interviewee if they are in a different Time Zone
3. One of us is a home maker, so there are more responsibilities towards family, the family time and research time could not overlap. As women we both have to compromise on social taboos to proceed further to make this research complete.

To overcome the above challenges, we are giving options to interviewees to find the best chat medium that works well for them and also use Doodle(https://doodle.com/dashboard) scheduling polls for finding their best available time.

As women researchers it is a necessary to balance on the routines and commitments towards works like that of research which is a passion for us. So far through this journey there had been different types of challenges say in terms of communication, time or logistical but it differs from project to project. We will keep a track on what sort of challenges we come across once we begin this journey of research and will get back with possible solutions of how we overcame the same. This could help in inspiring more women to take up research and foresee the challenges that might come across their way and how to handle it.

How much money are you requesting?

7,00,000-8,00,000 INR

How will you spend the money?

This money will be used for the following purposes:
1. Travel (for interviewing purpose) (domestic/International travels): this will be only 20% and most of them will be taken over by remote
2. Conferences (to showcase the outputs) : this is a case if there the conference does not have sufficient fund to support our Travel and Accomodations.
3. Internet and telephone call bill charges
4. Research consultancy fees
5. Souvenir (customised t-shirts or handmade 'thanksgiving' card and postal charges): as a token of gratitude for the interviewees who participate in the research

How long will your project take?

The research process will take about 6-7 months and to reflect on the outputs another 2-3 months, approximately 9-10 months will be the duration for the overall research study. A tentative time frame of the research can be seen below:
Milestone 1: Interviews with minimum 30 English Wikipedians ( 3 months)
Milestone 2: Observations from the interviews and analysis on the same (3 months)
Milestone 3: Framing the set of recommendations and reachout for feedback (2 months)
Milestone 4: Deriving outputs or deliverables (2 months)

Have you worked on projects for previous grants before?

Bhuvana Meenakshi: I am currently working on a research which is under Annual Grant's Program and is subject to end by May/June 2020
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Research/Bridging_gender_gap