2025:Program/Research and Privacy on Wikipedia
Session title: Research and Privacy on Wikipedia
- Session type: Lightning talk
- Track: Lightning Talk Showcase
- Language: en
Researchers frequently use Wikipedia related data for developing models, insights, and as part of research and development workflows. On average, every year researchers use or refer to Wikipedia in more than 130,000 articles and publish a minimum of roughly 500 articles about Wikipedia itself.
The amount and diversity of the usage of Wikipedia in research projects has resulted in significant insights and improvements in Wikipedia itself as well as in other aspects of our lives (e.g., through machine translation). However, conducting research using Wikipedia has its own challenges, both for researchers and Wikipedia community members.
The WMF Research team has recently completed a white paper focused on one of the most frequent topics we observe the Wikipedia community and researchers having to grapple with: privacy. This lightning talk will share a few highlights from the paper, and most importantly, recommendations around privacy for researchers and Wikipedians.
Description
Researchers frequently use Wikipedia related data for developing models, insights, and as part of research and development workflows. On average, every year researchers use or refer to Wikipedia in more than 130,000 articles and publish a minimum of roughly 500 articles about Wikipedia itself.
The amount and diversity of the usage of Wikipedia in research projects has resulted in significant insights and improvements in Wikipedia itself as well as in other aspects of our lives (e.g., through machine translation). However, conducting research using Wikipedia has its own challenges, both for researchers and Wikipedia community members.
The WMF Research team has recently completed a white paper focused on one of the most frequent topics we observe the Wikipedia community and researchers having to grapple with: privacy. This lightning talk will share a few highlights from the paper, and most importantly, recommendations around privacy for researchers and Wikipedians.
The primary goal of this lightning talk is to share recommendations around privacy for researchers and Wikipedians included in the recently completed 'Research and Privacy on Wikipedia' white paper, published as an OSF Preprint.[1] Secondarily, I will share very briefly about the process we went through in arriving at this white paper (originally requested by English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee), and invite audience members to engage with the paper and provide feedback.[2]
[1] https://osf.io/preprints/osf/uyxnf_v1 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_Research_Best_Practices_Around_Privacy_Whitepaper
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
In the spirit of inclusivity, inherent to the paper from which highlights are being shared is a recognition and acknowledgement that Wikipedia editors have varying needs and wishes around privacy. This underlies the recommendations that are offered as part of this paper for Wikipedians as they seek to navigate personal privacy on the projects in a way that is consistent with their individual needs and context.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- easikingarmager
- Eli is researcher and linguist who has worked with the Wikimedia Foundation since 2019.