Wikipedia talk:GLAM/Boot Camp/2013

Metrics

My perspective on organizations' interest in Wikipedia is that they are attracted by the audience which Wikipedia demands. In the case of my organization, my colleagues are impressed by the pageviews which Wikipedia articles get, and they ask me for metrics about the audience.

As a resident wikiperson, I feel like a large part of my duty is to generate supporting evidence of any impact which wiki projects make. If I were to propose any alternative to the given schedule, it would be that one talk address the issue of metrics. In my mind, the first duty of a hired wikiperson is to demonstrate the legitimacy of the work because in all other online communication (private websites, Twitter, Facebook, the rest), there are established and expected requirements for reporting metrics. I am very curious about the extent to which other people feel metrics are important and how other people feel about the current state of wiki metrics tools. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:41, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

This talk page may not be the best place to discuss this. I put up a simple page at Commons:User:Smallman12q/Tracking usage for the ford collaboration Commons:Commons:Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum. Metrics are fairly important...how else do you expect to measure results? Regarding the state of wiki metric tools, there isn't much beyond page-views, file-usage, and referrers. What are you looking for?Smallman12q (talk) 19:52, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Your tracking usage page is interesting.

Some people might say that metrics are fairly important and some people might say they are most important. There are some projects for which it would be better to do almost no project work and have excellent metrics describing what did happen, and in those same projects, doing excellent project work and having no metrics might be considered as not having done any project work at all.

Most professional communicators online are responsible for doing some work reporting. So far as I know, the practice of providing supporting evidence that an audience exists as is ubiquitous in communications elsewhere is almost completely undeveloped from the Wikipedia side. The kind of numbers I ultimately want are the same kind of numbers that a professional person managing a website, Facebook, Twitter, an e-newsletter, or any other kind of online outreach might give. Is Wikipedia so fundamentally different that its impact need not be reported according to standards in similar publishing projects?

The problem here is that metrics reporting is what only professionals do, and Wikipedia historically has been engaged by only non-professionals. If there is to be more professional engagement, then I think there will be more professional expectations with regard to metrics. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

There are professionals on here... Anyhow, what kind of metrics are you looking for exactly? Wikipedia can't provide the level of detail that google/twitter/other businesses because we don't profile readers as extensively. Additionally, we don't have scripts running on third party pages. Wikipedia can't (and won't) offer the level of profiling available from some such as google, but what is offered should be enough.Smallman12q (talk) 00:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Whatever metrics tools are available are not well-explained to the audience who cares about such things. Having limits to what the Wikipedia platform can report is fine, but those limits are not enunciated nor is there any particular advice page written to explain to people who would track metrics how to most efficiently track the metrics they want to have. Suppose that there is an educational organization like a museum, and it thinks to develop 100 Wikipedia articles within its field of expertise. It also wants to donate to free licensure a certain number of non-text media files, perhaps images, videos, and audio recordings. It return, the organization just wants to know the extent to which anyone cared about the contribution they made. Traditionally, what such organizations would do is somehow track how many people accessed what they were sharing and how many people reused it.

I have never heard of any organization wanting to do educational outreach and not caring about reporting how many people it reached in its educational campaign. To even do so would be unethical - it is bad stewardship of their resources to do educational outreach and be unconscious of the impact. And I feel that engagement with Wikipedia often starts here - someone asks an organization to share resources with Wikipedia, and their engagement with Wikipedia will have some cost, and there is no obvious way for them to plan to fulfill their usual duty to their funders to show that they have some idea that what they are doing is a fair use of the resources that go into it.

"What is offered should be enough." What do you mean by that? What are we offering? If an organization developed 100 Wikipedia articles and shared those files, where is the tutorial which shows them how to track the impact they make by doing this? What is the time commitment for setting up metrics tracking? To what extent do you think that it can be ethical for an organization to engage with Wikipedia if metrics tracking is not in place here as it is for other communication channels? Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:55, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

There is a related discussions at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_100#WP:GLAM.2C_and_how_to_solicit_for_content, the prior case studies, and this blog post about Let’s start talking about program evaluation. What I meant by "What is offered should be enough." is that we don't profile users as extensively as other commercial sites (for example google tracks when you click a link to an external site, we do not)...however that shouldn't be an issue. Obviously, metrics are essential to properly measuring impact. The primary methods of tracking usage are pageviews, referers (more traffic to your site from the wiki), and file usage. glamorous can provide file usage for files in a category. Do you need more specifics? I'll expand the tracking usage page.Smallman12q (talk) 12:54, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, metrics are crucial to educational outreach, and yes, the users who straddle the educational institution and the Wikimedia/Wikipedia project often have no idea where/how to harvest those metrics, since they are also learning to navigate and edit. A tutorial or help area would certainly be useful. That being said, the metrics I've seen/used have been "enough".. From speaking with colleagues, it's clear that many cultural institutions are not staffed/nimble enough to deal with too many metrics, or to be able to effect the changes the metrics might point to. By and large cultural institutions do what they've always done, with small intermittent corrections. A spike in a particular web based metric is unlikely to make a big change occur. IMHO many cultural institutions still believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that footfalls are the best measure of success. Please excuse the generalities, there are institutions working hard to break from this.
However, there is a big difference between metrics and impact - perhaps in the long run, the impact of participating in an on-going Wikipedia project on the institution's culture is vastly more important and long-lasting. Bdcousineau (talk) 01:01, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

US-centric

Is this a United States-centric event? If so, we might consider moving it to the newly-created "Category:Wikipedia GLAM in the United States". --Another Believer _(Talk) 22:05, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Looking forward!

Safe travels to all those traveling to attend the workshop. I look forward to meeting fellow Wikipedians and learning new skills! --Another Believer _(Talk) 15:30, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Greetings

Y'all have fun in DC. Tell me what you thought of the Obama burger (Ed knows where to get 'em). Drmies (talk) 17:27, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmph, who do you think you are, posting on this talk page?! Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I run this show, Gorman. Who gave you permission to leave the West Coast? Drmies (talk) 19:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Don't make me rangeblock you, son. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:17, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

A huge thank you to Lori, Dominic, Wikimedia DC and the National Archives for a great workshop. Pleasure meeting you all, and I look forward to our continued work and discussions. Safe travels home, all! --Another Believer _(Talk) 14:47, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

"first GLAM meeting" 2008?

"Likely the first GLAM meeting -- at Wikimania 2008 with the Alexandria Library staff." - That was definitely not the first meeting of Wikimedians with representatives of a major GLAM. For example, right after Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt, a group of Wikipedians visited the German National Library in the same city for a guided behind the scenes tour and subsequent meeting with several staff there - IIRC, we talked mainly about their already ongoing collaboration with the German Wikipedia regarding "Personendaten" metadata and the PND authority file (which was the subject of a presentation - which also mentions "Wikidata" btw - at the same Wikimania, by Jakob Voß, one of the Wikipedians who had initiated that collaboration). As an aside, the term and concept of "Wikipedian in Residence" was likewise proposed much earlier than many realize, in 2006 or before. Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks HaeB, I fixed it. Sorry it took almost three years...in the future I think you should be bold when you see stuff like this! -Pete (talk) 21:59, 4 May 2016 (UTC)