A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee and republished as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
An analysis used Wikipedia to rank Jimi Hendrix as the most influential rock guitarist
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- I read with interest: "During lookup tasks, tables and graphical representations were preferred (but illustrative/decorative images were almost never looked at. As the authors point out, their test question, about the number of passengers on the Titanic, focused on textual information)." How do I correctly quote the first half, when the bracket is closed only after the second? I tried here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:10, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
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- This is a translation/summary/paraphrase from German, as noted elsewhere in the review. For reference, here is the corresponding text in the German original [1], with surrounding sentences:
- "Werden bei Look up eher Tabellen und grafische Darstellungen genutzt, konzentriert sich der Nutzer bei Learn-Aufgaben mehr auf Einleitung und Listen. ... Bei den Aufgabentypen Learn und Casual-Leisure werden Bilder sehr viel häufiger verwendet. Hier geht es um die Aneignung von Wissen, nicht aber um das Nachschlagen ganz konkreter Informationsstücke (siehe Look up). Bilder stellen dabei eine zusätzliche Informationsquelle oder eine Visualisierung des Textes dar (Bsp. Spielfeld des Spiels Lacrosse). Beim TaskTyp Look up werden Bilder fast nie betrachtet."
- Back to your question: If you just want to the English text from the review, how about simply using an ellipsis ;) - "During lookup tasks, tables and graphical representations were preferred (but illustrative/decorative images were almost never looked at. [...])."
- Alternatively, ref 4 contains some of the same observations in English [2]. Quoting alongside other interesting bits:
- "In learn tasks, users prefer headlines for scan actions, presumably as headlines are better for detecting the topic of the focussed section of the page than text passages. Furthermore, in casual-leisure tasks introductions are much more important than in learn tasks – from that observation we conclude again that in learn tasks users do not feel a need to find out whether a web page could be interesting to them, but are seeking a certain pieces of information. Interestingly with pictures it is the other way round. We assume that users need textual information in order to understand what the web page is about. In learn tasks however, they prefer to get information from any (type of) content element available."
- "In lookup tasks, we observe that – contrary to both other task types – users prefer content elements that provide quick access to information. They focus on introductions, charts, tables, and lists more often than on text passages, which are just scanned briefly. The same observation holds for look at actions which are applied to charts and tables only – again elements facilitating quick access to small pieces of information. Finally, in contrast to both other task types, in lookup tasks we observed a very high proportion of navigate actions [...]"
- It is not stated explicitly in that passage that pictures are not looked at in lookup tasks. But can be inferred from Table 1 there (the content element "BI" for images is not present in the actions recorded for lookup tasks).
- Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 08:47, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
- PS: I see you are interested in infobox usage as well. Their use was tracked in the experiment too, see the "IB" columns in table 1 in ref 4 (with the caveat that some of the other publication cited in the review may contain later results based on more data). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 08:53, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
- This is a translation/summary/paraphrase from German, as noted elsewhere in the review. For reference, here is the corresponding text in the German original [1], with surrounding sentences:
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- I am one of the alleged "infobox warriors" who try to make data more accessible, especially now that Persondata is deprecated, - thus making life on Wikipedia hard for editors who like a plain picture as aesthetically more pleasing. See Busoni, 150 years yesterday. The topic is also up for arbcom clarification. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
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