You are hereMetrics for Museums on Wikipedia
Metrics for Museums on Wikipedia
One of the things that keeps coming up when I discuss the value of Wikipedia to a museum is the need for demonstrable qualitative and quantitative measures that are specific to that museum. These would be necessary to show the value of any collaboration in order to justify spending time/money on it - especially given that the outcome of the collaboration is not happening within the museum's own website.
The eventual idea I would like to see happen is to be able to create a one-click "report card" of any museum's relationship with Wikimedia project. We already have the monthy Wikimedia report card as a base for the idea: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/
Some metrics that might be useful to start with are:
- The combined pageview statistics for all articles directly related to the museum for any given month. (we can already do this for individual articles, but not categories - yet)
- The quality of these pages over time (we already have quality ratings, but not able to map the change over time)
- The clickthrough stats from Wikipedia or individual images on Wikimedia Commons back to the Museum's website (not currently tracked)
- Which Wikipedia language editions are using images from the museum's collection (we've actually already got this one, the tool is called "GLAMorous" and, for example, you can see how images from the Dutch Tropenmuseum are being used at this link.
So, my question is, what other kind of metrics would your museum be interested in seeing?
Max - You are right that one important step will be a way for curators and other editors to revise entries and review one anothers work directly through the text and structure and layout of articles. Wikipedia works in part because "evaluating uploaded content and challenging it after the fact" works quite well across a broad range of contexts. If every editor had to start a meta-discussion before they could make any substantive changes, we would get precious little work done.
Writing about cultural works or collections you are familiar with, or that you have curated, does not in itself represent a standard 'conflict of interest' on Wikipedia. Two common types of editing do, however --
These are two cases where the default desire of a curator and the default desire of curious readers do not always align... and it's wise to let others make the editorial decisions to include them in an article or leave them out. In other cases, from collection description to historical background to adding citations, useful information and content authoring should be welcome. Part of our work together may be to set expectations and guidelines for doing so to everyone's comfort.
I agree that Wikipedia's coverage of the arts generally is poor, especially compared to science or current events. It would be wonderful if those working in our cultural institutions were encouraged (even required!) to improve Wikipedia's entries on their areas of expertise.
However, this is substantially different from improving the articles on the institutions themselves. We do not want the curators of the J. Paul Getty Museum editing that article. So much controversy has swirled around their purchase and return of ancient artifacts that it is imperative that the article try to remain as neutral as possible. Having the people involved in the events write the article would not be the best way to achieve that. I pick this as an extreme example to demonstrate a general principle - the closer one is to an event or institution, the less objective one tends to be.
Very interesting discussion, Liam & Max. I’ll add my somewhat divergent and impassioned two cents to the mix.
For some time now I’ve been confused about a conflict of interest for cultural institutions and other NGOs editing Wikipedia. In doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t think one exists.
A cultural institution’s “product” (as it were), is the representation and preservation of our shared cultural heritage. While this product may belong on some level to a cultural institution, it is in reality an outcome of our shared culture, and thus—on some higher level—“owned” by everyone. With this logic, cultural institutions are not conflicted by editing in Wikipeida, but actually responsible for creating and editing the information about their cultural institutions and the cultural heritage for which it is responsible.
Considering the comparative dearth of information in Wikipedia related to our cultural heritage (in comparison to popular culture, namely: sports and television), I think Wikipedia should be asking cultural institutions to contribute. By "asking" I mean encouraging or even insisting that cultural institutions work to better represent global cultural heritage within Wikipedia.
Many museum professionals are in fact The World Experts on the cultural heritage contained in their cultural institutions—their voices need to be invested and heard directly if Wikipedia is to successfully contain “the sum of all human knowledge." Marginalizing or subjugating these folks to Talk pages is at best counterproductive.
Richard McCoy said something I like a lot:
'I think Wikipedia should be asking cultural institutions to contribute. By "asking" I mean encouraging or even insisting that cultural institutions work to better represent global cultural heritage within Wikipedia.'
I would like to see that, and find it appropriate for institutions to bear an obligation to inform the world about physical treasures and memories they preserve, through the most effective channels available.
One of the differences between exhibits and Wikipedia, however, is the tone and type of language used. Exhibits have a tendency to luxuriate in superlatives, touch on dramatic highlights, and present a single most-likely story of provenance that fits within the arc of a curated story. In contrast, Wikipedia style avoids dramatic flair and superlatives except when citable, prefers a balance of perspectives from different sources, and enjoys a good side story about uncertainty -- diverging academic camps, disputed provenance, or variations in the current best guess over time.
So there is work to be done by museum curators to share their knowledge through Wikipedia, but also work to be done by the experienced Wikipedia community editing that input and introducing those new community members to a different standard for balance and neutrality. Each needs to appreciate the value of the other's contribution for this to work out.
Wikipedia is quite unique in its insistence on representing multiple points of view. Other encyclopedias with single-authored entries generally present the views of that author.
I agree with Liam's suggestion about providing pageview stats of museum pages. This may the most effective way of demonstrating to senior administrators that articles about their museums matter--in many cases more than their own institutional websites.
The next challenge will be the subject of our discussion: how can we provide a credible, objective process for museums to alter their entries themselves--subject to peer review--and achieve some relative consistency in the kinds of information and information architecture from one museum article to the next.
Wikipedia already collects - and publishes - the pageview statistics for every article. For example, here is the January statistics for the Indianapolis Museum of Art article: http://stats.grok.se/en/201001/Indianapolis_Museum... (note that the stats failed to collect for a couple of the days). You can find the pageview statistics for any article by clicking on the "history" tab and then "page view statistics".
We are also working on a way to combine these (already available) statistics into one report. So, where there are articles in Wikipedia for many objects in a museum's collection there will often be a category for that - you can see categories at the very bottom of any Wikipedia article.
For example, there are categories for each of the departments of the British Museum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Collection_o... and within each of these are listings of articles that relate to those categories. It should be possible to output the combined pageview statistics for this combination of articles.
As for Clickthrough stats - the title of your reply Mr. Anderson - we don't currently track them primarily for privacy reasons. Furthermore, it is possible that by publishing clickthrough statistics organisations with strong PR/Marketing departments will want to try and include more and more external links from Wikipedia to their website. It is already a fulltime battle to stop organisations from spamming WP with links to their own website (rather than trying to build the encyclopedia itself) that this was the principle concern raised to encouraging curators to edit - to make sure that they didn't merely try to add links to their own museum's website.
Finally, with regards to your last point of museums editing the article about the museum itself - this becomes a problem of Conflict of Interest. The easiest way to work with this is to discuss changes to the article and prepare new texts on the article's discussion page. If other people like it, then they will add the new text themselves. Museum's should feel encouraged to draft their own versions of the article and propose it on the article's discussion page.
I seem to have put my foot wrong--I was simply concurring with the suggestion of a prominent report card.
Viz the presumed COI should museums participate in editing--that is of course the crux of the dilemma. It's one of Wikipedia's best attributes that self-promotion is guarded against, but it's also a stumbling block in relation to the provision of what self-interested parties like museums, universities, and other NFPs and NGOs--as opposed to individuals--consider 'authoritative' information.
Patrolling the boundaries of fact and opinion is the job of Wikipedians, no doubt. But there is an unintentionally 'nod and wink' flavor to the suggestion that museums draft their own versions and propose it on the discussion page, awaiting approval from crowdsourcing third parties. While this makes eminent good sense in familiar terrain where self-promotion is most at risk, there could be, with an agreed-upon taxonomy of relevant datasets (e.g. date of founding, collection strengths, staff size, etc.) a better and easier result for those searching than if every museum article simply follows its own logic/meandering narrative outline. Such desirable consistency could only be achieved today with a minimum of broadly acceptable article format features.
Could Wikipedians interested in museums not set up dedicated teams to evaluate uploaded content and challenge it after the fact? I am hoping for a convenient way to encourage uploads of significant, useful information and related multimedia links, not to prevent ex post facto scrubbing of overtly promotional claims.
The balancing act is delicate: the more NGOs are discouraged from participating in content authoring, the longer and more laborious will be the development of useful articles. At the same time, puffery serves no one and needs to be guarded against. I fear that the veil of posting on the discussion page and sitting tight will only will discourage ample participation--and the same protections against spin would be in effect regardless.
As you can tell, I'm a newbie at editing Wikipedia articles. But I'm also pretty versed in how to motivate museum professionals to improve online content, for everyone's benefit.