Wybo Wiersma | University of Oxford (original) (raw)

Papers by Wybo Wiersma

Abstract This paper sets out to show that philosophy has much to gain from the web, and what phil... more Abstract This paper sets out to show that philosophy has much to gain from the web, and what philosophy on the web might be like. We argue that philosophers usage of the web will undeniably go beyond on-line journals, and the distribution of. pdf files. The failure of historical attempts at making the web work for philosophy are investigated and explained, such as the Xanadu and Discovery projects, and plain webforums. LogiLogi, a working prototype of a philosophical discussion platform, is introduced.

Abstract We develop an aggregate measure of syntactic difference for automatically finding common... more Abstract We develop an aggregate measure of syntactic difference for automatically finding common syntactic differences between collections of text. With the use of this measure, it is possible to mine for differences between, for example, the English of learners and natives, or between related dialects. If formulated in advance, hypotheses can also be tested for statistical significance. It enables us to find not only absence or presence, but also under-and overuse of specific constructs.

We discuss an application of a technique from language technology to tag a corpus automatically a... more We discuss an application of a technique from language technology to tag a corpus automatically and to detect syntactic differences between two varieties of Finnish Australian English, one spoken by the first generation and the other by the second generation. The technique utilizes frequency profiles of trigrams of part-of-speech categories as indicators of syntactic distance between the varieties. We then examine potential shift effects in language contact.

Abstract In this paper we compared three widely differing digital editions of Adam Smiths Wealth ... more Abstract In this paper we compared three widely differing digital editions of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations: those offered by the Gutenberg Project, the Library of Liberty, and Google Books. While there are notable variations between these resources in terms of their suitability for various ways of reading, we found their usefulness for serious research to be rather limited, mostly for lack of transformative possibilities (such as adding notes to them).

The notion of digital natives has stirred up a lot of emotions since it was coined by Prensky in ... more The notion of digital natives has stirred up a lot of emotions since it was coined by Prensky in 2001. 16, 15 It refers to the idea that todays youth would be generally proficient with the wide array of digital technologies that have become available over the last decades, mostly because they grew up with them as a generation.

The paper discusses the application of a computational technique to tag a corpus containing Finni... more The paper discusses the application of a computational technique to tag a corpus containing Finnish Australian English automatically and to analyze the frequency vectors of part-of-speech (POS) trigrams using a permutation test (Nerbonne & Wiersma 2006). Our general goal is to detect the linguistic sources of the syntactic variation between two groups, the “adults”, who had received their school education in Finland, and the “juveniles”, who were educated in Australia.

Online communities can greatly impact society, as the recent events in the Middle East, and the r... more Online communities can greatly impact society, as the recent events in the Middle East, and the rise of global online social movements such as Occupy Wallstreet, suggest (Aouragh 2011; Ellis 2011). But in order to thrive, and become a community at all, online communities have to attain a critical mass of initial users. The central problem of which is that, until a certain number of participants are present, joining the community is not going to affect outcomes, or be socially rewarding to newcomers.

As the number of internet-users approaches three billion, the internet has started to impact poli... more As the number of internet-users approaches three billion, the internet has started to impact politics in several ways. Parties are using ICTs and web-technologies to solicit funding and to better target voters, and MPs now stay in touch with their constituents using e-mail and social media. Yet, the legislative process itself still remains largely untouched by the internet. In this paper it will be argued that a global advisory parliament that is integrated with the social web, and follows the agenda of national parliaments, could give the internet a focussed voice in legislation, and help reduce the democratic deficit. And as a voting system, Transitive Delegative Democracy - which combines the best of first past the post, proportional representation, and direct democracy - would get the incentives right for it to succeed.

Many of us who have used the internet, have participated in online political discussions. But why... more Many of us who have used the internet, have participated in online political discussions. But why did we do this? In economic terms, contributing to such forums is irrational. Online discussions are unlikely to significantly affect the behaviour of other voters, let alone that of politicians. But even if they would, such effects are even less likely to flow back to the original contributor, and to benefit him or her significantly. In this essay we will therefore try to clarify why people would want to contribute to online political discussion forums.

In 2009 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters was published by the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Instit... more In 2009 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters was published by the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute. It was released both in book-form, and as a digital edition. In this paper we will predominantly be focusing on the digital edition. We will be looking at what aims the project had, what approach it took to meet them, and to what extent it was successful at this.

In this essay we will be examining what exactly critical mass is, and how it affects collaborativ... more In this essay we will be examining what exactly critical mass is, and how it affects collaborative hypertext environments. In short critical mass is the minimum number of users required for an application to make it worthwhile for new visitors. While, generally, the effect of critical mass on hypertext applications is that it makes them fail because it cannot be attained.

Abstract LogiLogi est une plateforme de traitement hypertexte comportant un systeme de notation. ... more Abstract LogiLogi est une plateforme de traitement hypertexte comportant un systeme de notation. Elle cumule les avantages d'une bonne discussion avec ceux du texte écrit. Elle est destinéea héberger toutes ces idées impossiblesa transformer tout de usuite en article de revue, mais suffisamment intéressantes pour qu'on n'ait pas envie de les abandonner au gré du vent.

In this paper we look at three important resources for philosophy: the Stanford Encyclopedia of P... more In this paper we look at three important resources for philosophy: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an online encyclopaedia of philosophy, Google Scholar, a search-engine for academic literature, and the PhilPapers project, a site that allows one to keep track of new publications. We will be examining why exactly they are so essential for academic philosophy, and what factors contributed to their success.

“Then he [who knows the just and good and honourable] will not seriously incline to write his tho... more “Then he [who knows the just and good and honourable] will not seriously incline to write his thoughts [which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit] in water with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others?”

In this essay we will be looking at whether we have reasons to act morally, and at the related qu... more In this essay we will be looking at whether we have reasons to act morally, and at the related question of whether we can have amoral reasons for forming moral intentions. The first question is also known as Hume's 'is–ought'problem: The problem of how to get from 'is', the state of affairs, to discussing 'ought', what morally speaking should be done, in a way that can be seen as argumentatively sound. 1 If we speak to non-philosophers, the 'is–ought'problem hardly seems to be an issue.

The First World War was a war as Europe had never seen before. It was fought throughout the conti... more The First World War was a war as Europe had never seen before. It was fought throughout the continent, and along the Western front alone—a front of trenches that stretched for 80 kilometres—millions were killed. It left Europe broken for much of the early 20th century, and soon was called The Great War, or simply The War. Whole libraries have been written about it, but there always remain some riddles and questions to be debated.

“No easy way of measuring or characterizing the total impact of one language on another in the sp... more “No easy way of measuring or characterizing the total impact of one language on another in the speech of bilinguals has been, or probably can be devised. The only possible procedure is to describe the various forms of interference and to tabulate their frequency.”-Weinreich, Languages in Contact

The popular view of online communities is that they transcend time and place. But as many popular... more The popular view of online communities is that they transcend time and place. But as many popular views of the internet, it is partially wrong. Threads are created at a specific point in time and (mostly) ordered in chronological order. Moreover, as replies are posted the ensuing online-discussions unfold over time as well. All this makes the time at which participants arrive potentially very important. The research reported here examines this process in detail, by looking at how time and time zones affect the community structure of an international news-site called Hacker News (HN).

The internet as a medium for conducting experiments could potentially be all that social scientis... more The internet as a medium for conducting experiments could potentially be all that social scientists have ever dreamt of. Yet, even though several researchers already make fruitful use of online experiments, the majority do not. In this paper, the opportunities and challenges posed by online experiments are discussed. Our hypothesis is that field experiments in virtual worlds offer more new opportunities than those that use traditional web-technologies. In addition, experiments in online virtual worlds pose fewer challenges than web-based ones, as virtual worlds afford more control, and are potentially more engaging.

As more types of media have entered peoples homes, surveys can be conducted in ever more ways. An... more As more types of media have entered peoples homes, surveys can be conducted in ever more ways. And now, as the internet is ever
more ubiquitous, web-surveys are becoming an interesting option as well. Online surveys are generally considered cheaper, faster, and more convenient. Yet online surveys bring new problems as
well, especially in terms of validity. The most important threats to the validity of both online and offline surveys are assessed in this paper.

Abstract This paper sets out to show that philosophy has much to gain from the web, and what phil... more Abstract This paper sets out to show that philosophy has much to gain from the web, and what philosophy on the web might be like. We argue that philosophers usage of the web will undeniably go beyond on-line journals, and the distribution of. pdf files. The failure of historical attempts at making the web work for philosophy are investigated and explained, such as the Xanadu and Discovery projects, and plain webforums. LogiLogi, a working prototype of a philosophical discussion platform, is introduced.

Abstract We develop an aggregate measure of syntactic difference for automatically finding common... more Abstract We develop an aggregate measure of syntactic difference for automatically finding common syntactic differences between collections of text. With the use of this measure, it is possible to mine for differences between, for example, the English of learners and natives, or between related dialects. If formulated in advance, hypotheses can also be tested for statistical significance. It enables us to find not only absence or presence, but also under-and overuse of specific constructs.

We discuss an application of a technique from language technology to tag a corpus automatically a... more We discuss an application of a technique from language technology to tag a corpus automatically and to detect syntactic differences between two varieties of Finnish Australian English, one spoken by the first generation and the other by the second generation. The technique utilizes frequency profiles of trigrams of part-of-speech categories as indicators of syntactic distance between the varieties. We then examine potential shift effects in language contact.

Abstract In this paper we compared three widely differing digital editions of Adam Smiths Wealth ... more Abstract In this paper we compared three widely differing digital editions of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations: those offered by the Gutenberg Project, the Library of Liberty, and Google Books. While there are notable variations between these resources in terms of their suitability for various ways of reading, we found their usefulness for serious research to be rather limited, mostly for lack of transformative possibilities (such as adding notes to them).

The notion of digital natives has stirred up a lot of emotions since it was coined by Prensky in ... more The notion of digital natives has stirred up a lot of emotions since it was coined by Prensky in 2001. 16, 15 It refers to the idea that todays youth would be generally proficient with the wide array of digital technologies that have become available over the last decades, mostly because they grew up with them as a generation.

The paper discusses the application of a computational technique to tag a corpus containing Finni... more The paper discusses the application of a computational technique to tag a corpus containing Finnish Australian English automatically and to analyze the frequency vectors of part-of-speech (POS) trigrams using a permutation test (Nerbonne & Wiersma 2006). Our general goal is to detect the linguistic sources of the syntactic variation between two groups, the “adults”, who had received their school education in Finland, and the “juveniles”, who were educated in Australia.

Online communities can greatly impact society, as the recent events in the Middle East, and the r... more Online communities can greatly impact society, as the recent events in the Middle East, and the rise of global online social movements such as Occupy Wallstreet, suggest (Aouragh 2011; Ellis 2011). But in order to thrive, and become a community at all, online communities have to attain a critical mass of initial users. The central problem of which is that, until a certain number of participants are present, joining the community is not going to affect outcomes, or be socially rewarding to newcomers.

As the number of internet-users approaches three billion, the internet has started to impact poli... more As the number of internet-users approaches three billion, the internet has started to impact politics in several ways. Parties are using ICTs and web-technologies to solicit funding and to better target voters, and MPs now stay in touch with their constituents using e-mail and social media. Yet, the legislative process itself still remains largely untouched by the internet. In this paper it will be argued that a global advisory parliament that is integrated with the social web, and follows the agenda of national parliaments, could give the internet a focussed voice in legislation, and help reduce the democratic deficit. And as a voting system, Transitive Delegative Democracy - which combines the best of first past the post, proportional representation, and direct democracy - would get the incentives right for it to succeed.

Many of us who have used the internet, have participated in online political discussions. But why... more Many of us who have used the internet, have participated in online political discussions. But why did we do this? In economic terms, contributing to such forums is irrational. Online discussions are unlikely to significantly affect the behaviour of other voters, let alone that of politicians. But even if they would, such effects are even less likely to flow back to the original contributor, and to benefit him or her significantly. In this essay we will therefore try to clarify why people would want to contribute to online political discussion forums.

In 2009 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters was published by the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Instit... more In 2009 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters was published by the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute. It was released both in book-form, and as a digital edition. In this paper we will predominantly be focusing on the digital edition. We will be looking at what aims the project had, what approach it took to meet them, and to what extent it was successful at this.

In this essay we will be examining what exactly critical mass is, and how it affects collaborativ... more In this essay we will be examining what exactly critical mass is, and how it affects collaborative hypertext environments. In short critical mass is the minimum number of users required for an application to make it worthwhile for new visitors. While, generally, the effect of critical mass on hypertext applications is that it makes them fail because it cannot be attained.

Abstract LogiLogi est une plateforme de traitement hypertexte comportant un systeme de notation. ... more Abstract LogiLogi est une plateforme de traitement hypertexte comportant un systeme de notation. Elle cumule les avantages d'une bonne discussion avec ceux du texte écrit. Elle est destinéea héberger toutes ces idées impossiblesa transformer tout de usuite en article de revue, mais suffisamment intéressantes pour qu'on n'ait pas envie de les abandonner au gré du vent.

In this paper we look at three important resources for philosophy: the Stanford Encyclopedia of P... more In this paper we look at three important resources for philosophy: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an online encyclopaedia of philosophy, Google Scholar, a search-engine for academic literature, and the PhilPapers project, a site that allows one to keep track of new publications. We will be examining why exactly they are so essential for academic philosophy, and what factors contributed to their success.

“Then he [who knows the just and good and honourable] will not seriously incline to write his tho... more “Then he [who knows the just and good and honourable] will not seriously incline to write his thoughts [which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit] in water with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others?”

In this essay we will be looking at whether we have reasons to act morally, and at the related qu... more In this essay we will be looking at whether we have reasons to act morally, and at the related question of whether we can have amoral reasons for forming moral intentions. The first question is also known as Hume's 'is–ought'problem: The problem of how to get from 'is', the state of affairs, to discussing 'ought', what morally speaking should be done, in a way that can be seen as argumentatively sound. 1 If we speak to non-philosophers, the 'is–ought'problem hardly seems to be an issue.

The First World War was a war as Europe had never seen before. It was fought throughout the conti... more The First World War was a war as Europe had never seen before. It was fought throughout the continent, and along the Western front alone—a front of trenches that stretched for 80 kilometres—millions were killed. It left Europe broken for much of the early 20th century, and soon was called The Great War, or simply The War. Whole libraries have been written about it, but there always remain some riddles and questions to be debated.

“No easy way of measuring or characterizing the total impact of one language on another in the sp... more “No easy way of measuring or characterizing the total impact of one language on another in the speech of bilinguals has been, or probably can be devised. The only possible procedure is to describe the various forms of interference and to tabulate their frequency.”-Weinreich, Languages in Contact

The popular view of online communities is that they transcend time and place. But as many popular... more The popular view of online communities is that they transcend time and place. But as many popular views of the internet, it is partially wrong. Threads are created at a specific point in time and (mostly) ordered in chronological order. Moreover, as replies are posted the ensuing online-discussions unfold over time as well. All this makes the time at which participants arrive potentially very important. The research reported here examines this process in detail, by looking at how time and time zones affect the community structure of an international news-site called Hacker News (HN).

The internet as a medium for conducting experiments could potentially be all that social scientis... more The internet as a medium for conducting experiments could potentially be all that social scientists have ever dreamt of. Yet, even though several researchers already make fruitful use of online experiments, the majority do not. In this paper, the opportunities and challenges posed by online experiments are discussed. Our hypothesis is that field experiments in virtual worlds offer more new opportunities than those that use traditional web-technologies. In addition, experiments in online virtual worlds pose fewer challenges than web-based ones, as virtual worlds afford more control, and are potentially more engaging.

As more types of media have entered peoples homes, surveys can be conducted in ever more ways. An... more As more types of media have entered peoples homes, surveys can be conducted in ever more ways. And now, as the internet is ever
more ubiquitous, web-surveys are becoming an interesting option as well. Online surveys are generally considered cheaper, faster, and more convenient. Yet online surveys bring new problems as
well, especially in terms of validity. The most important threats to the validity of both online and offline surveys are assessed in this paper.