Dear all,
I will be contributing the "Research & Strategy" section of the WMF's monthly report from now on. Some RCom-driven projects are just starting to get traction so this may be premature, but if you feel there is any item related to the RCom areas of activity that should be included in the report*, please send me a blurb and I'll make sure it's included. Figures, plots etc. are welcome (please send me a link if they are on a publicly accessible server). For the next report I need input by Monday 7 morning (London time) at the latest.
Thanks!
Dario
* major findings, publications (academic or on-wiki), Wikimedia-related research initiatives etc.
All,
during the first RCom meeting we decided we would seek ways to highlight strategic research challenges at some major social computing conference.
John suggested we could organise "a panel at which some members of this committee might give a presentation on their views on high-value research contributions to Wikipedia". Others proposed a competition/data challenge to bootstrap research relevant to the strategic objectives of the Wikimedia community [1].
I wanted to bring to your attention the fact that two upcoming conferences, SocialCom [2] and WebScience [3], currently accept workshop proposals. KDD [4] is also soliciting workshop proposals but the deadline is very close (1 Feb). Calls for workshops at other major conferences this summer (HT, ICWSM, CHI, CSCW) are already closed. If we wish to organise a Wikimedia research session, the two conferences above would make great venues. I am not yet considering venues such as WikiSym, CollaborateCom, GROUP or CPOV that will take place later in Fall 2011, but these are obvious options as well.
Is anyone among us already planning to attend any of the above conferences?
Does anybody want to help draft some ideas for a possible workshop proposal?
Dario
[1] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities
[2] http://www.iisocialcom.org
[3] http://www.websci11.org
[4] http://www.kdd.org/kdd2011
All,
Yaroslav added a short summary of the previous discussion on expert involvement/expert feedback:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Ex…
My feeling is that we will learn a lot about what may or may not work for this project from the survey that Daniel, Giota and myself are currently preparing (I am happy to give anybody on RCom access to a live preview of the survey, just drop me a line off-list if interested).
How to implement an "expert feedback" system that is at the same time respectful of the community, useful (as in: unbiased and constructive for the editor community) and scalable (i.e. involving as many reviewers and from as many fields as possible) remains very much an open question.
Dario