Loris Gaio

Evaluating and designing Web site quality

There are many reasons to evaluate a Web sites quality. The growth of e-commerce, for example, has made a companys success more dependent on the quality of its Web site, whether its goal is commerce or content presentation. We developed the 2QCV3Q model to help site owners and developers evaluate Web site quality and incorporate these findings into site design. Starting with the assumption that a Web site is a hypermedia system primarily concerned with communication, we used classical rhetoric to create this model.

Approximate Reasoning in the Modeling of Consensus in Group Decisions

In this paper we propose an approach to consensus reaching based on linguistically expressed individual opinions and on so-called opinion changing aversion. We operate within this basic context: there is a group of experts which must choose a preferred alternative from a finite set of admissible ones according to several criteria. Each expert is called upon evaluate linguistically the alternatives in terms of their performance with respect to each criterion. The task of the experts is to reach some agreement during a consensus reaching process directed by a third person called the moderator. The experts are expected subsequently to change their testimonies until sufficient agreement (consensus) has been reached. The measure of consensus depends on a function estimated for each expert according to his/her aversion to opinion change.

Wikibugs: using template messages in open content collections

In the paper we investigate an organizational practice meant to increase the quality of commons-based peer production: the use of template messages in wiki-collections to highlight editorial bugs and call for intervention. In the context of SimpleWiki, an online encyclopedia of the Wikipedia family, we focus on {complex}, a template which is used to flag articles disregarding the overall goals of simplicity and readability. We characterize how this template is placed on and removed from articles and we use survival analysis to study the emergence and successful treatment of these bugs in the collection.

Using Metadata Signals to Support Stigmergy

Wikipedia, the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”, has evolved substantially over the years according to the editors’ needs for more coordination and better quality management. In particular, metadata in the form of “templates” added to pages have come to play a critical role, working in a sense like stigmergic “stigmata” or “signals” which editors use to orient the efforts of their colleagues. We wonder whether such signals can be used to actually coordinate more effectively the collective efforts of editors. Based on an empirical analysis of two types of signals in Wikipedia, namely the “unsimple” and “NPOV” templates, we provide mixed evidence to support this claim. The effectiveness of stigmergic metadata signals appears to be affected by the division of labor within the Wikipedia community between core and more peripheral members.

Mining for Practices in Community Collections: Finds From Simple Wikipedia

The challenges of commons based peer production are usually associated with the development of complex software projects such as Linux and Apache. But the case of open content production should not be treated as a trivial one. For instance, while the task of maintaining a collection of encyclopedic articles might seem negligible compared to the one of keeping together a software system with its many modules and interdependencies, it still poses quite demanding problems. In this paper, we describe the methods and practices adopted by Simple Wikipedia to keep its articles easy to read. Based on measurements of article readability and similarity, we conclude that while the mechanisms adopted by the community had some effect, in the long run more efforts and new practices might be necessary in order to maintain an acceptable level of readability in the Simple Wikipedia collection.