Thanks for the prod Dario. There are two parts of this conversation that
I'd like to draw attention to:
1. How should RCom move forward as a group? (meta)
2. What's the status and needs of current, live initiatives and what new
initiatives should we (RCom) take on?
I think that we'd best deal with (1) in this thread and start discussions
of (2) in separate threads.
*How should RCom move forward as a group?*
My first question is, how do we benefit from a fixed list of members? One
of the issues I feel that we've suffered from is a lack of activity beyond
a core group of members. This isn't surprising since we all participate in
this committee as volunteers -- even those of us at the WMF to a large
extent. If we (RCom) are going to have a powerlaw of participation[1], we
might consider "opening our doors" and boosting membership to let whoever
has the time and interest pick up work as necessary. I suspect that there
was some reasoning behind starting with a limited group size and official
membership status, so I encourage someone else to make that point.
Next I'm wondering how we can organize better. I agree that
decentralization has worked for us to some extent, but I suspect that we'd
benefit from better coordination. Should we plan to spend more time in the
IRC channel? Use this mailing list more? Find some place on-wiki to
discuss our work? I'm not sure what's going to work for us, but I wanted
to point out that we can coordinate while still maintaining decentralized
decision making.
I'll be on #wikimedia-rcom & #wikimedia-research today if anyone wants to
do some synchronous chat.
1.
-Aaron
On Wed, Dec 25, 2013 at 11:16 PM, Daniel Mietchen <
daniel.mietchen(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
Dear all,
I agree that "the existence of a fixed-membership group with a
recognized authority on any possible matter related to Wikimedia
research and associated policies" is not a priority, and think it
probably never was, since initiatives as those outlined by Dario seem
to have been anticipated.
Anyway, what I think we do need is a Wikimedia equivalent of an
ethical review panel, and RCom would be a good channel for that,
ideally with the help of some others, as appropriate to the topic
(here, we should perhaps think about involving relevant WikiProjects,
user groups etc. more). I have just drafted a Research Newsletter
entry that highlights this need once more (search for "integrity" on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-12-25/Recen…
).
Cheers,
Daniel
--
http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/en/institution/mitarbeiter/mietchen-d…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Publications
http://okfn.org
http://wikimedia.org
On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Dario Taraborelli
<dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi everybody,
I received a few days ago a request to merge and redirect the almost
inactive #wikimedia-rcom IRC channel to #wikimedia-research (a public
channel open to anyone but primarily operated by the WMF Research and
Data
team). I agreed with this proposal but I’d be
happy to put it on hold if
others think that a dedicated RCom channel still serves a purpose.
A little bit of retrospective. The Research Committee as a group with a
fixed membership and a regular meeting schedule has been inactive for a
very
long time. However, a number of RCom initiatives
have continued to grow
organically over the years thanks to the effort of individual members.
These
include:
(1) the monthly Research Newsletter [1] has been continuously published
since July 2011 and is now close to completing its 3rd volume, thanks to
Tilman Bayer’s commitment and unwavering dedication and a number of
occasional or recurring contributors;
(2) the @WikiResearch handle [2], originally designed as a companion to
the
newsletter, today is followed by almost 1.5K
users and brings together a
large community of editors, researchers, journalists and members of the
public interested in research on Wikimedia projects;
(3) Subject Recruitment requests [3] have kept trickling in. If they
received timely support and an adequate response, it’s primarily thanks
to
Aaron Halfaker’s effort. Aaron joined WMF a few
months ago as a full-time
member of the Research and Data team but he is still investing some of
his
time in supporting these requests, despite the
lack of formal legal or
community policies backing the RCom approval process.
(4) Open Access initiatives led by Daniel Mietchen have spawned, among
other
things, a dedicated Wikiproject [4] and OA is now
becoming an
opportunity of
active collaboration between Wikimedians and open
knowledge/open science
advocates, thanks to the work of Daniel, Andrea Zanni, Lane Rasberry, to
name just a few. OA was big last summer at Wikimania ’13 and it will be
even
bigger this coming year in London. [5]
Other outreach initiatives similar in spirit to the RCom’s – such as
Labs2
and WikiResearch hackathons [6] – have taken off
thanks to the
self-organized effort of like-minded individuals.
I am very proud of these achievements, which wouldn’t have been possible
without many of you donating time and energy to push them forward (and I
am
sure I’m omitting other ideas born under the RCom
brand that I am less
familiar with). I am also glad that decentralization produced the desired
effect of freeing individual projects from coordination costs and allowed
them to grow at their own pace.
I take these success stories as evidence that the existence of a
fixed-membership group with a recognized authority on any possible matter
related to Wikimedia research and associated policies has ceased to be a
priority. I believe this is the right operating model, given the
diversity
of projects that fell under the original scope of
the RCom, but I’d like
to
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