Wikimania 2013 – Hong Kong

Submissions/The UserMetrics API: Measuring participation in Wikimedia projects

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See also: Submissions/Wikimetrics for a maturing encyclopaedia, Submissions/Datafying Wikimedia

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2013.

Presentation Media



Submission no.
5068
Subject no.
C7 or T5

Wikimedia Foundation

Presentation slides
Screenshot of the UserMetrics API.
Introducing the User Metrics API. Slides from a March 2013 presentation (PDF).
Title of the submission
The UserMetrics API: Measuring participation in Wikimedia projects
Type of submission
presentation
Author of the submission
Dario Taraborelli
Ryan Faulkner
Country of origin
USA
Affiliation
E-mail address
dario@wikimedia.org
Username
User:DarTar - w:User:Renklauf
Abstract

The purpose of this talk it to present the UserMetrics API, a tool developed by the Wikimedia Foundation's Editor Engagement Experimentation (E3) team to measure editor activity based on a set of standardized metrics. Using this API, a set of key metrics can be selected and applied to a cohort of users to measure their overall productivity. The platform is designed for extensibility (creating new metrics, modifying metric parameters) and to support various types of cohort analysis and program evaluation in a user-friendly way. It accepts requests via a RESTful API and returns responses in JSON format.

We will demo the API and provide access to interested community members and researchers.

Detailed proposal

Historically, measuring the impact of various Wikimedia projects or initiatives has been challenging due to the lack of standardized metrics and the ad-hoc nature of tools and scripts to quantify user activity. As part of the editor engagement program, the Wikimedia Foundation started to consolidate the definition of participation metrics, with a specific focus on new contributors' activity. Routinely running queries to extract these metrics for groups of new contributors prompted the development of a generic platform to perform these measurements and its further expansion into a full-fledged API. The UserMetrics API has been used for several months to support analytics needs in various WMF teams (E2, E3, Mobile, Global Education) and is now being redesigned to support a broader set of customers, including chapters or sister organizations interested in measuring participation. In this talk we will give an overview of the design and the functionality of the API, demoing how authenticated users can run arbitrary requests, modify the parameters of existing metrics and use the output of the API for data visualization and data analysis. We will discuss with participants in this session how to extend the tool to further meet the needs of the community and the organization and how to participate in its further development.

Track
  • Technology and Infrastructure
Length of presentation/talk
25 Minutes
Language of presentation/talk
English
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
yes
Slides or further information (optional)
Slides from a presentation on the UserMetrics API, Wikimedia Foundation's Monthly Metrics Meeting (March 7, 2013).
Project homepage
Source code (github mirror)
Special requests


Interested attendees

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  1. Slashme (talk) 18:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. អមីរ ឯ. អហរោណិ 07:57, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Jtmorgan (talk) 23:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Jean-Frédéric (talk) 22:26, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. CT Cooper · talk 00:45, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Steven (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Howief (talk) 18:31, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Vishnu (talk)07:55, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11. The wub (talk) 14:10, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Ocaasi (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Madcoverboy (talk) 23:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 02:15, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Multichill (talk) 15:00, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Eloquence (talk) 06:01, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Nennes (talk) 17:07, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Anthonyhcole (talk) 21:38, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Denis Barthel (WMDE) (talk)
  20. Adamw (talk) 23:46, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Manuel (WMDE) (talk) 08:03, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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