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As some of you might know, I work part-time at the Federation of American Scientists. Most of what I do has involved the creation of a wiki for virtual worlds, and I am proud to say that it is ready for the world. It is not simply a wiki, but a structured semantic wiki. This means that when you edit a page on a virtual world, you get a customizable form instead of a massive textbox. Check it out! Read more
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As someone who studies Internet culture, one of my biggest problems is “link rot,” or broken links. I’m a big fan of the Internet Archive, but they are usually six to eight months behind on even the most popular sites. I also applaud sites like Wikipedia for providing stable version histories so that I can point to a specific revision of a page. However, for all other websites, the only option is self-archiving, which is technically difficult and fraught with problems. What I have found incredibly useful is WebCite, a free webpage archiving service that fills in this gap. Read more
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The good folks at the Library of Alexandria and Kaltura have made available videos of a good number of presentations from Wikimania 2008. Luckily, mine was one of the ones up! So without further ado: Read more
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I came across this 1996 review published in Entertainment Weekly of The Palace, Worldsaway, and Worlds Chat. These were the first graphical chat programs, a genre which became virtual worlds a half-decade later. The entire article is fascinating from a historical perspective, but the last paragraph in particular shows us how some things really do stay the same: Read more
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An outright ban on technology in the classroom - which may or may not include the pen and paper - is not the right answer. If one wishes to curb disruptive behavior, then ban disruptive behavior instead of banning all the little things that could be disruptive. Read more
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As you may know, Google often thinks it knows what you are looking for better than you do. It will suggest different search queries and display them underneath the top three results for your original query. So I did a simple Google search for “Phenomenology of Spirit,” an 1807 book written by German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel today and found a very interesting suggestion. Read more
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This was my final project for an Information Studies class I took back in 2006, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas. Our assignment was to transform information from one form to another, and I chose to perform this analysis of Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. I scanned and OCRed the entire book and did a visual frequency representation of certain words. I analyzed by chapter and comprehensively with certain core themes in the work. I also did a comprehensive analysis with more general or common words. It is intended to look the way it does, as I am going for a “1960s IBM goes to the academy” look. Take what you will from it: it is about 35% art, 25% snarky pastiche, 15% pretending to be linguistics, and -5% serious intellectual critique. Here is a sample: Read more
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Content on my website and my Flickr account has been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license for a while. I was pretty proud of myself. But then I got to thinking: why don’t I choose Attribution-ShareAlike? Obviously, it was product of two kneejerk reactions: I don’t want someone else to make money off my stuff, and I don’t want someone messing with my stuff. Read more
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Director of the Library of Alexandria, Dr. Ismail Serageldin gave a keynote speech on the first day of Wikimania 2008 titled, New Paradigms for New Tomorrows. It was quite thoughtful and inspiring – the man is one of the most amazing individuals I have heard. He is learned in so many different areas of academic and cultural knowledge, as well as incredibly wise. I would recommend watching the video of his speech, but if you are pressed for time you can read my notes. Read more
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Collaborative research on Wikiversity by Cormac Lawler (user Cormaggio on Wikimedia projects) at the University of Manchester. Wikiversity is a relatively young project in the Wikimedia umbrella, but I think it is a natural development and a great space to realize the potential of all the educators currently on Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and all the other projects. Read more
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State of the Mediawiki, a presentation give at Wikimania by some developers of Mediawiki and maintainers of the Wikimedia installation of it Read more
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Wikipedia as Real Utopia: Governance, knowledge production, and the institutional structure of Wikipedia – Edo Navot, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Sociology. Here follows my rough transcription of his speech, followed by my comments. The fact that his is the only presentation I have so far commented on should be taken as a sign of respect, not of disparagement. I rather enjoyed his presentation, pledge to read Wikipedia as Real Utopia: Governance, knowledge production, and the institutional structure of Wikipedia – Edo Navot, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Sociology. Here follows my rough transcription of his speech, followed by my comments. The fact that his is the only presentation I have so far commented on should be taken as a sign of respect, not of disparagement. I rather enjoyed his presentation, pledge to read in depth as soon as possible (I have skimmed it), and admire him for being one of the few academics out there studying social and political thought on Wikipedia. Read more
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Here are my notes from the closing ceremony of Wikimania. It was really an amazing conference and I was very honored to be there. Read more
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From “Flagged Revisions,” a presentation at Wikimania 2008 by Philip Birken. In my opinion, flagged revisions realize the concept of stable versions without making the article actually stable. It is not a system of voting to approve new revisions – a new revision is approved when only one autoconfirmed user says it is vandalism-free. Yes, it won’t solve everything, but it will make things much better. We can get rid of protecting articles that are experiencing heavy vandalism if we do this, because an edit only updates to the public when it is flagged as not-vandalism by a trusted user. However, vandals (or any other user) immediately sees the results of their edit for an hour, which is just ingenious. Also, you can choose whether the most recent revision is shown by default, or make it so that certain users (like anonymous users) only see the most recent reviewed revision. For those who feel that it threatens “the wiki way,” I suggest making the most recent version appear by default and giving people the option to see the latest reviewed version. Read more
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This panel was at Wikimania 2008, and featured James Forrester, Andrew Lih, Kat Walsh, and Charles Matthews. Everyone except for Lih is or has been on the Arbitration Committee, and this turned into a discussion about admins. Read more
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As an ethnographer, I enter into communities, learn their customs, beliefs, and practices, then report back to the academy to share what I have discovered. In this presentation, I wish to do the opposite, presenting to the Wikipedian community an ethnography of academics as they relate to Wikipedia. Read more
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Content and the Internet in the (Globalized) Middle East, Dr. Ahmed Tantawi, Technical Director, IBM Middle East and North Africa. Another copy of my notes from Wikimania 2008 – this was the keynote speech on the second day of the conference. He began by warning us that, “I’ve changed this presentation, and I’ll change it during. That is open content, yes?” Everyone laughed. Read more
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This was part of the opening keynote in Wikimania 2008, given by the Egyptian Deputy Minister of Communication and IT, Hoda Baraka. Here are my notes, again without any commentary – I apologize for them not being cleaner. Read more
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The official theme or slogan for this year’s Wikimania is “the knowledge revolution that is changing wisdom.” I think this phrase – especially the difference between knowledge and wisdom – was chosen very carefully and I think it is an excellent distinction to make. This morning’s opening ceremony began with a speech from the Egyptian Minister of State for Administrative Development, Dr. Ahmed Darwish. I will relay his comments here, without much analysis – that will come later, when I have the time. Read more
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I am currently in Egypt for Wikimania 2008, which is being held this year at the Library of Alexandria. On Sunday, I will be presenting my ethnographic analysis of conceptions and misconceptions academics hold about Wikipedia. This presentation was going to be about old, computer-illiterate professors but has turned into something much more interesting: a commentary on Wikipedia’s status in the so-called postmodern digital humanities. I will update the post on this site as I finalize my presentation. Read more
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I feel bad that I have not written a new entry in so long. I feel like I should apologize - not to the readers, but to the software, to the site itself. I ought to write a new post; I ought to update my status. How did I get into a situation whereby these collections of code could make ethical demands upon me? And is this bad? Read more
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Brian Williams talked about how this year’s primary season has shown that even in the age of the Internet, we still have a longing for real communities. I take issue with his use of “virtual community” and claim that most political communities are virtual. Read more
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I explore the memetic inkblot, which refers to units of cultural information that have effectively no singular semiotic value and therefore serve as a psychosocial indicator. In other words, they are so vague and open to interpretation that you can learn a lot about someone by asking someone to give a simple definition of them. Read more
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Works licensed under the GPL and the GFDL can be modified and then freely redistributed, as long as the modified versions are released under the same conditions. Why are we not allowed to modify these licenses and redistribute them? Read more
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Benjamin Wiker’s book on bad books throughout the ages is misinformed and makes a few critical errors in its analysis. Specifically, it ignores the cultural context around each book he critiques, treating them as pure subliminal propaganda. Read more
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This presentation was adapted from a chapter in my Senior thesis on Wikipedia’s legal system that focused on a dispute over the inclusion of images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in an article about him, using a methodology of communicative ethnography. Most who opposed the image were not familiar with Wikipedia’s unique method of content regulation and dispute resolution, as well as its editorial standards and principles. However, most who argued in favor of keeping the image knew these and initially used them to their advantage. This ethnographic study of the communicative strategies used by the parties involved in the dispute shows how new editors to the user-written encyclopedia first emerged in a hostile communicative environment and subsequently adapted their argumentative strategies. This conflict is an excellent example of how disputes are resolved in Wikipedia, showing how this new media space regulates its own content. Read more
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This paper is a Foucauldian account of power relations as expressed through discourse in the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia. Read more
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An investigation into the community formed by small number of Wikipedia contributors who care enough to decide how, at some level, Wikipedia is run. The work discusses identity, communication, and organizational hierarchy in this subculture. Read more
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My thesis studied the legal culture of Wikipedia to examine the law through stories and histories, giving the reader a sense of not only what the Wikipedian legal system is, but also what fundamental assumptions the community makes in utilizing such a system. Read more
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This is a piece of web art or net art, with an included work of art criticism about the piece. The work makes the argument that while interactive digital art can be considered user-centered, this new style and medium is only centered around those possibilities that the creator wishes to make available to the user. You can see The Facticity of Art at http://stuartgeiger.com/art/art-intro.shtml. Read more
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This is a response to they hypertext fiction work Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson. It is comprised in part of ‘patches’ of other works, most notably Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I have made this essay entirely out of parts from the novel. Read more
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William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer tells the story of a team of radically different technologically-savvy individuals who are recruited by a young artificial intelligence named Wintermute, who desires to bypass the limitations placed on it by its owners and the authorities. Read more
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In his book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, William Mitchell describes how information technology – specifically digital, wireless networks which are accessed primarily through portable devices – fundamentally changes how we interact with others. More than anything else, “[c]onnectivity had become the defining characteristic of our twenty-first-century urban condition” (11). For Mitchell, we have given up the virtual reality fantasy that dominated predictions made in previous decades in lieu of subtler revolution: that of the networked self, the Me++. Read more
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This was a CSS stylesheet I wrote for the CSS Zen Garden, which is a really cool concept in web design. There is a standard HTML page in which all the content is wrapped up in div tags, and the idea is to write a CSS stylesheet that makes it pretty. Mine was based on blueprints, and can be accessed here. It turns out that I didn’t make into the accepted designs, but I did get on the list of those that didn’t make the cut. I can see why – it needs some cleaning up around the lines which I might do if I have some time. But I’ll take being top of that list. Read more
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The vast worlds of MMORPGs seem close to postmodern theories of identity, as a player is able to radically constitute their on-line self at will. Despite this, these virtual gaming communities should not be seen as safe spaces in which a subject can realize their true (or ideal) self. Read more
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Embracing Trobriand cricket as an instance in which domineering cultural empires were repelled is a flawed concept which masks the very forms of domination that it attempts to criticize. Read more
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Corporate adoption of open source software should not be viewed as antithetical to capitalism; rather, it is an example of corporations co-opting Communism to become more capitalist. Read more
Published in Nutrition and Diabetes, 2019
Obesity and obesity-related diseases represent a major public health concern. Recently, studies have substantiated the role of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) consumption in the development of these diseases. The fine identification of populations and areas in need for public health intervention remains challenging. This study investigates the existence of spatial clustering of SSB intake frequency (SSB-IF) and body mass index (BMI), and their potential spatial overlap in a population of adults of the state of Geneva using a fine-scale geospatial approach. Read more
Published in Nature, 2020
Global insights into cellular organization and genome function require comprehensive understanding of the interactome networks that mediate genotype–phenotype relationships1,2. Here we present a human ‘all-by-all’ reference interactome map of human binary protein interactions, or ‘HuRI’. With approximately 53,000 protein–protein interactions, HuRI has approximately four times as many such interactions as there are high-quality curated interactions from small-scale studies. The integration of HuRI with genome3, transcriptome4 and proteome5 data enables cellular function to be studied within most physiological or pathological cellular contexts. We demonstrate the utility of HuRI in identifying the specific subcellular roles of protein–protein interactions. Inferred tissue-specific networks reveal general principles for the formation of cellular context-specific functions and elucidate potential molecular mechanisms that might underlie tissue-specific phenotypes of Mendelian diseases. HuRI is a systematic proteome-wide reference that links genomic variation to phenotypic outcomes. Read more
Published in The Lancet, 2020
Background Assessing the burden of COVID-19 on the basis of medically attended case numbers is suboptimal given its reliance on testing strategy, changing case definitions, and disease presentation. Population-based serosurveys measuring anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (anti-SARS-CoV-2) antibodies provide one method for estimating infection rates and monitoring the progression of the epidemic. Here, we estimate weekly seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the population of Geneva, Switzerland, during the epidemic.
Methods The SEROCoV-POP study is a population-based study of former participants of the Bus Santé study and their household members. We planned a series of 12 consecutive weekly serosurveys among randomly selected participants from a previous population-representative survey, and their household members aged 5 years and older. We tested each participant for anti-SARS-CoV-2-IgG antibodies using a commercially available ELISA. We estimated seroprevalence using a Bayesian logistic regression model taking into account test performance and adjusting for the age and sex of Geneva’s population. Here we present results from the first 5 weeks of the study.
Findings Between April 6 and May 9, 2020, we enrolled 2766 participants from 1339 households, with a demographic distribution similar to that of the canton of Geneva. In the first week, we estimated a seroprevalence of 4·8% (95% CI 2·4–8·0, n=341). The estimate increased to 8·5% (5·9–11·4, n=469) in the second week, to 10·9% (7·9–14·4, n=577) in the third week, 6·6% (4·3–9·4, n=604) in the fourth week, and 10·8% (8·2–13·9, n=775) in the fifth week. Individuals aged 5–9 years (relative risk [RR] 0·32 [95% CI 0·11–0·63]) and those older than 65 years (RR 0·50 [0·28–0·78]) had a significantly lower risk of being seropositive than those aged 20–49 years. After accounting for the time to seroconversion, we estimated that for every reported confirmed case, there were 11·6 infections in the community.
Interpretation These results suggest that most of the population of Geneva remained uninfected during this wave of the pandemic, despite the high prevalence of COVID-19 in the region (5000 reported clinical cases over <2·5 months in the population of half a million people). Assuming that the presence of IgG antibodies is associated with immunity, these results highlight that the epidemic is far from coming to an end by means of fewer susceptible people in the population. Further, a significantly lower seroprevalence was observed for children aged 5–9 years and adults older than 65 years, compared with those aged 10–64 years. These results will inform countries considering the easing of restrictions aimed at curbing transmission.
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Published in The Lancet Digital Health, 2020
The novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has impacted our societies on an unprecedented scale. Worldwide, lockdowns and quarantines have been implemented to contain the spread of the virus, and are currently in place for more than 50% of the global population. These restrictive physical distancing measures raise many concerns regarding their adverse impact on our societies, economies, and health-care systems. Read more
Published in Frontiers in Public Health, 2021
Objective: To investigate the association between socioeconomic deprivation and the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 clusters.
Methods: We analyzed 3,355 SARS-CoV-2 positive test results in the state of Geneva (Switzerland) from February 26 to April 30, 2020. We used a spatiotemporal cluster detection algorithm to monitor SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics and defined spatial cluster persistence as the time in days from emergence to disappearance. Using spatial cluster persistence measured outcome and a deprivation index based on neighborhood-level census socioeconomic data, stratified survival functions were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier estimator. Population density adjusted Cox proportional hazards (PH) regression models were then used to examine the association between neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 clusters.
Results: SARS-CoV-2 clusters persisted significantly longer in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. In the Cox PH model, the standardized deprivation index was associated with an increased spatial cluster persistence (hazard ratio [HR], 1.43 [95% CI, 1.28–1.59]). The adjusted tercile-specific deprivation index HR was 1.82 [95% CI, 1.56–2.17].
Conclusions: The increased risk of infection of disadvantaged individuals may also be due to the persistence of community transmission. These findings further highlight the need for interventions mitigating inequalities in the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and thus, of serious illness and mortality. Read more
Published in Nutrients, 2021
Inadequate sodium and potassium dietary intakes are associated with major, yet preventable, health consequences. Local public health interventions can be facilitated and informed by fine-scale geospatial analyses. In this study, we assess the existence of spatial clustering (i.e., an unusual concentration of individuals with a specific outcome in space) of estimated sodium (Na), potassium (K) intakes, and Na:K ratio in the Bus Santé 1992–2018 annual population-based surveys, including 22,495 participants aged 20–74 years, residing in the canton of Geneva, using the local Moran’s I spatial statistics. We also investigate whether socio-demographic and food environment characteristics are associated with identified spatial clustering, using both global ordinary least squares (OLS) and local geographically weighted regression (GWR) modeling. We identified clear spatial clustering of Na:K ratio, Na, and K intakes. The GWR outperformed the OLS models and revealed spatial variations in the associations between explanatory and outcome variables. Older age, being a woman, higher education, and having a lower access to supermarkets were associated with higher Na:K ratio, while the opposite was seen for having the Swiss nationality. Socio-demographic characteristics explained a major part of the identified clusters. Socio-demographic and food environment characteristics significantly differed between individuals in spatial clusters of high and low Na:K ratio, Na, and K intakes. These findings could guide prioritized place-based interventions tailored to the characteristics of the identified populations. Read more
Published in Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), 2021
Background: The early detection of clusters of infectious diseases such as the SARS-CoV-2–related COVID-19 disease can promote timely testing recommendation compliance and help to prevent disease outbreaks. Prior research revealed the potential of COVID-19 participatory syndromic surveillance systems to complement traditional surveillance systems. However, most existing systems did not integrate geographic information at a local scale, which could improve the management of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Objective: The aim of this study is to detect active and emerging spatiotemporal clusters of COVID-19–associated symptoms, and to examine (a posteriori) the association between the clusters’ characteristics and sociodemographic and environmental determinants.
Methods: This report presents the methodology and development of the @choum (English: “achoo”) study, evaluating an epidemiological digital surveillance tool to detect and prevent clusters of individuals (target sample size, N=5000), aged 18 years or above, with COVID-19–associated symptoms living and/or working in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland. The tool is a 5-minute survey integrated into a free and secure mobile app (CoronApp-HUG). Participants are enrolled through a comprehensive communication campaign conducted throughout the 12-month data collection phase. Participants register to the tool by providing electronic informed consent and nonsensitive information (gender, age, geographically masked addresses). Symptomatic participants can then report COVID-19–associated symptoms at their onset (eg, symptoms type, test date) by tapping on the @choum button. Those who have not yet been tested are offered the possibility to be informed on their cluster status (information returned by daily automated clustering analysis). At each participation step, participants are redirected to the official COVID-19 recommendations websites. Geospatial clustering analyses are performed using the modified space-time density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (MST-DBSCAN) algorithm.
Results: The study began on September 1, 2020, and will be completed on February 28, 2022. Multiple tests performed at various time points throughout the 5-month preparation phase have helped to improve the tool’s user experience and the accuracy of the clustering analyses. A 1-month pilot study performed among 38 pharmacists working in 7 Geneva-based pharmacies confirmed the proper functioning of the tool. Since the tool’s launch to the entire population of Geneva on February 11, 2021, data are being collected and clusters are being carefully monitored. The primary study outcomes are expected to be published in mid-2022.
Conclusions: The @choum study evaluates an innovative participatory epidemiological digital surveillance tool to detect and prevent clusters of COVID-19–associated symptoms. @choum collects precise geographic information while protecting the user’s privacy by using geomasking methods. By providing an evidence base to inform citizens and local authorities on areas potentially facing a high COVID-19 burden, the tool supports the targeted allocation of public health resources and promotes testing. Read more
This was my final project for an Information Studies class I took back in 2006 at UT-Austin. Our assignment was to transform information from one form to another, and I chose to perform this analysis of Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. I scanned and OCRed the entire book and did a visual frequency representation of certain words. Read more
We introduce IP over Xylophone Players (IPoXP), a novel Internet protocol between two computers using xylophone-based Arduino interfaces. In our implementation, human operators are situated within the lowest layer of the network, transmitting data between computers by striking designated keys. We discuss how IPoXP inverts the traditional mode of human-computer interaction, with a computer using the human as an interface to communicate with another computer Read more
One of the many forks of the popular game 1024 by Veewo Studio (which is conceptually similar to Threes by Asher Vollmer). Try to combine all the 0 tiles until they add up to 1. Read more
A Twitter bot powered by tweets proclaiming that something ‘is apparently a thing.’ Read more
An algorithmically-generated robots.txt, which disallows all bots with one exception: the bot requesting the file is allowed full access. Read more
A Markov chain Twitter bot trained on titles of Wikipedia articles that have been deleted. Read more
AcademicPages is a ready-to-fork GitHub Pages template for academic personal websites, based on structured data in markdown files. I created it for this website, then released it so others can make their own, which are hosted for free by GitHub. Over 500 people have! Read more
Published:
An avant-garde poem about Python Read more
Published in Exploring New Media Worlds, 2008
Published in Annual Wikimedia Conference (Wikimania), 2008
Published in Annual Conference on Science and Technology in Society, 2009
Published in Media in Transition 6, 2009
Published in First Annual Wikiconference NYC, 2009
Published in the Second Annual Media Sociology Forum, 2009
Published in International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, 2009
A short paper showing the recent explosive growth of automated editors (or bots) in Wikipedia, which have taken on many new tasks in administrative spaces. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2009
Published in Critical Point of View: Wikipedia and the Politics of Open Knowledge, 2010
Published in Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2010
This paper traces out a heterogeneous network of humans and non-humans involved in the identification and banning of a single vandal in Wikipedia. Read more
Published in Critical Point of View: Wikipedia and the Politics of Open Knowledge, 2010
Published in Wikimania 2010, 2010
A panel intended to foster a dialog between academic researchers who study Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia community. Read more
Published in Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2011
We detail the methodology of ‘trace ethnography’, which combines the richness of participant-observation with the wealth of data in logs so as to reconstruct patterns and practices of users in distributed sociotechnical systems Read more
Published in Digital Media and Learning (DML), 2011
Published in International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, 2011
This paper investigates Wikipedia's article deletion processes, finding that it is heavily populated by specialists. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2011
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2011
Published in GCOE International Symposium on Informatics Education, 2012
Published in Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI), 2012
We introduce IP over Xylophone Players (IPoXP), a novel Internet protocol between two computers using xylophone-based Arduino interfaces Read more
Published in Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI), 2012
Published in International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), 2012
A descriptive study of Wikipedia's highly-automated socialization processes and an A/B test to improve templated messages to newcomers. Read more
Published in Infosocial, 2012
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2012
Published in International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym 2012), 2012
Published in Social Aspects of Information Systems course, 2013
An introduction to Actor Network Theory for students in the Masters of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) course Read more
Published in Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2013
This paper establishes a quantitative metric for measuring editor activity through temporal edit sessions. Read more
Published in ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2013
Published in Theorizing the Web, 2013
Published in International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym 2012), 2013
This paper examines what happened when one of Wikipedia's counter-vandalism bots unexpectedly went offline. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2013
Published in Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), 2013
Published in Bangkok Scientifique, 2013
A talk introducing various concepts around large-scale data analysis to a general audience, including spam detection and governmental survellance. Read more
Published in Robots and New Media, 2014
A panel discussing the ethical and political issues that are raised with autonomous robots and software bots. Read more
Published in History of Information, 2014
A lecture on the history of Wikipedia, in the broader context of the history of reference works. Read more
Published in Theorizing the Web, 2014
Published in The Contours of Algorithmic Life, 2014
Published in Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), 2014
This panel focuses on the challenges faced by researchers conducting mixed-method research into online platforms, particularly where large amounts of data are widely available. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), 2014
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2014
Published in Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), 2014
Published in Human Computation Conference (HCOMP), Citizen-X Workshop, 2014
We review various crowdsourcing and collective action systems, identifying particular sets of civic values and assumptions. Read more
Published in Berkman Center for Internet and Society, 2014
Published in CSCW Workshop on Ethics for Studying Sociotechnical Systems in a Big Data World, 2015
Published in CSCW Workshop on Feminism and Feminist Approaches in Social Computing, 2015
Published in ISchools Conference, 2015
Published in Social Aspects of Information Systems course, 2015
An overview of how various online platforms moderate content, discussing issues that link up to the theories discussed in the Social Aspects of Information Systems class. Read more
Published in Social Aspects of Information Systems course, 2015
An overview of Wikipedia and other peer production platforms, discussing issues that link up to the theories discussed in the Social Aspects of Information Systems class. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), 2015
In this talk, I examine the early history of “anyone can edit” wiki software – originally developed in 1995, six years before Wikipedia’s origin – focusing on the ways in which this technological infrastructure has been repurposed across communities, domains, and scales. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), 2015
This presentation introduces bot-based collective blocklists (or blockbots) in Twitter, which have been created to help various groups better moderate their own experiences on the site. Read more
Published in Crowdsourcing and the Academy Symposium, 2015
A panel discussing how academics use crowdsourcing in research. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2015
I examine the roles that automated software agents (or bots) play in the governance and moderation of Wikipedia, Twitter, and reddit – three online platforms that differently uphold a related set of commitments to ‘open’ and ‘public’ online participation. Read more
Published in Wikipedia 15th Anniversary Birthday Bash, 2016
A short talk to open up an event celebrating the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia. The prompt we were given was "Why [x] is my favorite contribution to Wikipedia." Read more
Published in The Hacker Within, BIDS, 2016
A tutorial (with Jupyter notebooks) about how to use APIs to query structured data from Wikipedia articles and the Wikidata project. Read more
Published in Theorizing the Web, 2016
Published in Theorizing the Web, 2016
Published in Algorithms, Automation, and Politics workshop, 2016
I discuss how algorithmic systems are deployed to enforce particular behavioral and epistemological standards in Wikipedia, which can become a site for collective sensemaking among veteran Wikipedians. Read more
Published in Big Data: Critiques and Alternatives workshop, 2016
I discuss four data-intensive activist projects as "successor systems," discussing the political and epistemological implications of using data to advance activist projects. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), 2016
This panel extends discusses the potentials and complications of mixed-methods research in big data studies, specifically in cases when population-level data is available. Read more
Published in Communicating with Machines workshop, 2016
I discuss cases from a multi-year ethnographic study of automated software agents in Wikipedia, where ‘bots’ have fundamentally transformed the nature of the ‘anyone can edit’ encyclopedia project. Read more
Published in SciPy, 2016
Many open source, volunteer-driven projects begin with a small, tight-knit group of collaborators, but then rapidly expand far faster than anyone expects or plans for. I discuss cases of governance growing pains in Wikipedia, which have many lessons for running open source software projects. Read more
Published in PyData SF, 2016
Wikipedia relies on one of the world’s largest open collaboration communities. Since 2001, the community has grown substantially and faced many challenges. This presentation reviews research and initiatives around community sustainability in Wikipedia that are relevant for many open source projects, including issues of newcomer retention, governance, automated moderation, and marginalized groups. Read more
Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2016
Wikipedians rely on software agents to govern the ‘anyone can edit’ encyclopedia project, in the absence of more formal and traditional organizational structures. Lessons from Wikipedia’s bots speak to debates about how algorithms are being delegated governance work in sites of cultural production. Read more
Published in The 21st Annual BCLT/BTLJ Symposium, 2017
This talk is part of a panel session titled “Demystifying Algorithmic Processes: What is the role of algorithms in online platforms, what can they do and not do, and how should they be governed?” Read more
Published in JupyterCon, 2017
We (Stuart Geiger, Brittany Fiore-Gartland, and Charlotte Cabasse-Mazel) share ethnographic findings made observing and working with Jupyter notebooks, focusing on how people use Jupyter to create and deliver computational narratives in particular local contexts, like classrooms, hackathons, research collaborations, and more. Read more
Published in 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), 2017
An overview of how to study data science ethnographically by personally engaging in various practices of data science. Read more
Published in Berkeley Institute for Data Science, 2017
Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology – with its origins in cultural anthropology – that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both. Read more
Published in UC-Berkeley Department of Statistics: Reproducible and Collaborative Data Science, 2017
A guest lecture for Fernando Perez’s STAT 159/259 course on Reproducible and Collaborative Data Science, in which I discuss issues of open science and reproducibility around our recent paper Operationalizing conflict and cooperation between automated software agents in Wikipedia: A replication and expansion of ‘Even Good Bots Fight’ Read more
Published in 2017 Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers, 2017
This paper examines the early history of “anyone can edit” wiki software – originally developed in 1995, six years before Wikipedia’s origin. While today, the idea of a wiki is associated with large-scale, massively-distributed encyclopedic knowledge production, this was not always the case. Articles on pre-Wikipedia wikis were often closer to a Joycean stream of consciousness than Wikipedia’s Britannica-inspired texts that speak in single voice, and the underlying wiki platform lacked many of the affordances that are now taken for granted in wiki platforms. In fact, the creator of the first wiki advised Wikipedia’s co-founders that the goals of creating a general-purpose encyclopedia and a wiki were inherently contradictory. Read more
Published in Bay Area Science Festival, 2017
Today, “artificial intelligence” seems to be everywhere – in our phones, vacuums, hospitals, and inboxes – but it can be hard to separate science fiction from science fact. Many discussions about AI imagine a fully autonomous superintelligence that designs itself with little to no human intervention, making decisions in ways that humans cannot possibly understand. Yet the work of designing, developing, engineering, training, and testing such systems requires a massive amount of human labor, which is typically erased when such systems are released as products. In this talk, I give a human-centered, behind-the-scenes introduction to machine learning, illustrating the creative, interpretive, and often messy work humans do to make autonomous agents work. Understanding the humanity behind artificial intelligence is important if we want to think constructively about issues of bias, fairness, accountability, and transparency in AI. Read more
Published in School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018
Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both. Read more
Published in School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018
Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both. Read more
Published in College of Information Studies, University of Maryland at College Park, 2018
Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both. Read more
Published in UC-Berkeley: Human Contexts and Ethics of Data course, 2018
A guest lecture for Cathryn Carson and Margo Boenig-Liptsin’s course on Human Contexts and Ethics of Data (HIST 182C, STS 100C), focusing on how various publics generate, analyze, and interpret data. Read more
Published in University of Manchester, Data Science Institute, 2018
In this talk, I discuss the role of qualitative and ethnographic methods in relation to computer, information, and data science. These holistic, reflexive, and meta-level approaches to studying data and computation in context help us better understand how to both support and practice data analytics at various scales. Read more
Published in IT University of Copenhagen, ETHOSlab, 2018
Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both. Read more
Published in Open Science Symposium, Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2018
Openness in science is hard to disagree with as an abstract principle, but what exactly do we mean when we call for science to be made open – or more open than before? In this talk, I introduce and unpack the many different goals, strategies, products, values, and assumptions of the broad open science movement. Read more
Published in University of California at San Diego, The Design Lab, 2018
In this talk, I discuss the role of qualitative and ethnographic methods in relation to computer, information, and data science. These holistic, reflexive, and meta-level approaches to studying data and computation in context help us better understand how to both support and practice data analytics at various scales. Read more
Published in 2018 Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, 2018
How can institutions that own and operate large-scale social media platforms come to know “their users” at scale? In this talk, I discuss ways of knowing user populations at scale, drawing on Foucault’s account of governmentality, particularly the role of statistics in the formation of the modern nation state. Read more
Published in 2018 European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 2018
Data analytics increasingly relies on open source software (OSS) libraries that extend scripted languages like python and R. Software documentation for these libraries is crucial for people across all experience levels, but documentation work raises many challenges, particularly in open source communities. In this collaboration between ethnographers and data scientists, we discuss the types, roles, practices, and motivations around documentation in data analytics OSS libraries. Read more
Published in Machine Learning and User Experience San Francisco (MLUXSF), 2018
With the rise of Machine Learning and AI to solve human-focused needs, how do we design and use data science ethically to help empower and support people? Read more
Published in ACM International Symposium on Open Collaboration (OpenSym), 2018
We reflect on a decade of studying Wikipedia using qualitative and quantitative methods. Read more
Published in eScience Institute, University of Washington, 2019
In this talk, I argue that there is often substantial qualitative contextual inquiry and expertise deployed in quantitative methods. Such insights are crucial to ‘cooking data with care,’ as Geoff Bowker advocated. Read more
Published in eScience Institute, University of Washington, 2019
In this talk, I discuss the central yet often passed over role of documentation in data science, based on several recent and ongoing studies and projects about the role and importance of documentation in software packages, datasets, analysis code, research protocols, and research teams. Read more
Published in University of California, San Diego, 2019
Panelist on the ‘Knowledge and Culture’ panel at this workshop on algorithms and big data, sponsored by a number of different departments across UCSD. Read more
Published in SciPy 2019, 2019
Opening keynote at SciPy 2019, in which I discuss a wide range of issues around the work of developing and maintaining open-source software, based on our team’s ongoing mixed-method research into this topic. Read more
Published in ACM FAT* 2020, 2020
Many machine learning projects for new application areas involve teams of humans who label data for a particular purpose, from hiring crowdworkers to the paper’s authors labeling the data themselves. Such a task is quite similar to (or a form of) structured content analysis, which is a longstanding methodology in the social sciences and humanities, with many established best practices. In this paper, we investigate to what extent a sample of machine learning application papers in social computing — specifically papers from ArXiv and traditional publications performing an ML classification task on Twitter data — give specific details about whether such best practices were followed. Read more
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Intermediate undergraduate course on the relationship between data and culture Read more
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Graduate-level course on social and ethical issues in data science Read more
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Undergraduate course on social issues in data science Read more
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Undergraduate course on social issues in data science Read more
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