Wikimania presentation on the "Understanding Sources" project
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The document explores how Wikipedians manage social media sources during high-volume news events, highlighting verification challenges and strategies for better source management. It discusses the roles of various source types, emphasizes the importance of using both reliable and secondary sources, and provides examples from the 2011 Egyptian revolution. The research focuses on methods editors use to verify information and the importance of avoiding reliance on single sources.
Wikimania presentation on the "Understanding Sources" project
- 1. Managing sources during high volume news events hford@ushahidi.com @hfordsa http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Understanding_sources
- 3. Research questions How are Wikipedians managing social media sources? What verification challenges were they facing? How can help editors manage sources better during high volume news events?
- 4. Ranking Variable 1 Variable 2 Variable 3 vote Source
- 6. Sources play 2 important roles • Verify facts • Directly represented (sometimes) • Verify importance • Summaries require interpretation (and in rapidly evolving news events that interpretation often hasn’t arrived) xkcd
- 8. sources ‘on the books’ source= 1. Use only reliable sources 2. Use predominantly secondary sources 3. Ensure verifiability
- 9. Social media sources are allowed! - Policy doesn’t specify media but warns to be careful - WP:Twitter sources can be used as sources on themselves - Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable sources
- 10. Primary sources are allowed! - and in fact, are the only sources available near an event - but policy states that the majority of sources should be secondary
- 11. 2011 Egyptian revolution article http://sonetlab.fbk.eu/wikitrip/#|en|2011_Egyptian_Revolution
- 12. How did editors verify? • Avoiding single sources • “Wait and see” • Reading/watching the source to see whether it has been accurately reflected • Counting
- 14. Suez Jan 26/27 Reports of Army involvements are refuted on Twitter, sometimes quite strongly; all reliable tweets seem to mention paramilitary riot police only (using Fahd (armored personnel carrier) which the Army also uses, hence the apparent confusion). Suez city center apparently cordoned off, curfew in effect, internet and phone (mobile and landlines) capped or intermittent at best, possibly blackout. Watercannons, dozens injured. Best source so far: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIfGGo6G-4Q (Arabic) possibly useful (mainstream media blog) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jan/26/ egypt-protests —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.196.206.14 (talk) 01:29, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- 17. context Ranking independent variable 1 Variable 1 independent Variable 2 variable 2 Variable 3 vote Source
- 18. Indep. variables Are the majority of sources secondary? What is the article about? How recent is the event being discussed?