Hi Folks:
I just wanted to interject at this point that I and others are working on
organizing a conference to host the varied work of those teaching with
Wikipedia in higher education. I hope to have more details to offer soon.
Such a conference might be slightly different from the research discussed
on this list, but I anticipate that all manner of presentations focusing on
the intersection of higher education and Wikipedia will be present -- this
would include presentations on pedagogy, but also content focusing on the
epistemologies of Wikipedia and higher education systems.
More soon.
Yours,
Bob Cummings
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 10:45 AM, <
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: discussion about wikipedia surveys (Aaron Halfaker)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 08:45:17 -0700
From: Aaron Halfaker <ahalfaker(a)wikimedia.org>
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
<wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys
Message-ID:
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s5K1+q00hw29E+AWg+ydJhk+tdH6Ls4CGUcQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
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Kerry said:
Because of the criticism of “not giving back”, could we perhaps do things
to try to make the researcher feel part of the community to make “giving
back” more likely? For example, could we give them a slot every now and
again to talk about their project in the R&D Showcase? Encourage them to
be
on this mailing list. Are we at a point where it
might make sense to
organise a Wikipedia research conference to help build a research
community? Just thinking aloud here …
This is a bit different than the main topic, so I wanted to break it out
into another reply.
We just had Nate Matias[0] from the MIT media lab present on his work at
the last showcase[1]. We also just sent out a survey about the showcase
that includes a call for recommended speakers at future showcases[2]. As
for a Wikipedia research conference, see OpenSym[3] (formerly WikiSym) and
Wikimania[4] (not as researchy, but a great venue to maximize wiki research
impact).
0.
http://natematias.com/
1.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Research_and_Data/Showcase#July_20…
2.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2014-July/003574.html
3.
http://www.opensym.org/os2014/
4.
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Aaron,
when I read that it is active because I had heard from others in
your team about a
year or two ago that this wasn't going to be the
vehicle
for obtaining permission going forward and that a
new, more lightweight
process was being designed.
1) If anyone told you that we are no longer active, they were wrong.
2) The "lightweight" process you refer to is what I linked to in enwiki
in my previous response. See again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment
Generally, there seems to be a misconception that RCom == paid WMF
activities. While RCom involves a relationship with the Wikimedia
Foundation, our activities as part of RCom are 100% volunteer and open to
participation from other Wikipedians (seriously, let me know if you want
to
help out!), and as such, our backlog tends to
suffer when our available
volunteer time does. FWIW, I became involved in this work as a volunteer
(before I started working with the WMF). With that in mind, it seems
like
we are not discussing RCom itself which is mostly
inactive -- so much as
we
are discussing the subject recruitment review
process which is still
active. Let me state this clearly: *If you send an email to me or Dario
about a research project that you would like reviewed, we will help you
coordinate a review. *Our job as review coordinators is to make sure
that the study is adequately documented and that Wikipedians and other
researchers are pulled in to discuss the material. We don't just welcome
broad involvement -- we need it! We all suffer from the lack of it.
Please show up help us!
To give you some context on the current stats and situation, I should
probably give a bit of history. I've been working to improve subject
recruitment review -- with the goal of improving interactions between
researchers and Wikipedians -- for years. Let me first say that *I'm
game to make this better**.* In my experience, the biggest issue to
documenting the a review/endorsement/whatever process that I have come
across is this: there seems to be a lot of people who feel that
minimizing
*process
description* provides power and adaptability to
intended processes[1].
It's these people that I've regularly battled in my frequent efforts to
increase the formalization around the subject recruitment proposal
vetting
process (e.g. SRAG had a structured appeals
process and stated
timelines).
The result of these battles is the severely
under-documented process
"described" in meta:R:FAQ <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ
.
Here's some links to my previous work on subject recruitment process that
will show these old discussions about process creep
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_instruction_creep>.
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Subject_Recruitment_Approvals_Group
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Subject_Recruitment_Approvals_…
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Research&oldid=354…
--
Note that this was actually an *enwiki
policy* for about 5 hours
before the RfC was overturned due to too few editors being
involved in the
straw poll.
For new work, see my current (but stalled for about 1.5 years) push for a
structured process on English Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment See also
the checklist I have been working on with Lane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment/Wikipedian_che…
When you review these docs and the corresponding conversations, please
keep in mind that I was a new Wikipedian for the development of WP:SRAG
and
WP:Research, so I made some really critical
mistakes -- like taking
hyperbolic criticism of the proposals personally. :\
So what now? Well, in the meantime, if you let me know about some
subject
recruitment you want to do, I'll help you
find someone to coordinate a
review that fits within the process described in the RCom docs. In the
short term, are any of you folks interested in going through some
iterations of the new WP:Research_recruitment policy doc?
-Aaron
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 2:38 AM, Heather Ford <hfordsa(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Agree with Kerry that we really need to have a more flexible process
that
> speaks to the main problem that (I think)
RCOM was started to solve i.e.
> that Wikipedians were getting tired of being continually contacted by
> researchers to fill out *surveys*. I'm not sure where feelings are about
> that right now (I certainly haven't seen a huge amount of surveys
myself)
> but I guess the big question right now is
whether RCOM is actually
active
> or not. I must say that I was surprised,
Aaron, when I read that it is
> active because I had heard from others in your team about a year or two
ago
> that this wasn't going to be the vehicle
for obtaining permission going
> forward and that a new, more lightweight process was being designed. As
> Nathan discusses on the Wikimedia-l list, there aren't many indications
> that RCOM is still active. Perhaps there has been a recent decision to
> resuscitate it? If that's the case, let us know about it :) And then we
can
> discuss what needs to happen to build a good
process.
>
> One immediate requirement that I've been talking to others about is
> finding ways of making the case to the WMF as a group of researchers for
> the anonymization of country level data, for example. I've spoken to a
few
> researchers (and I myself made a request
about a year ago that hasn't
been
> responded to) and it seems like some work is
required by the foundation
to
> do this anonymisation but that there are a
few of us who would be really
> keen to use this data to produce research very valuable to Wikipedia -
> especially from smaller language versions/developing countries. Having
an
> official process that assesses how worthwhile
this investment of time
would
> be to the Foundation would be a great idea, I
think, but right now there
> seems to be a general focus on the research that the Foundation does
itself
> rather than enabling researchers outside. I
know how busy Aaron and
Dario
> (and others in the team) are so perhaps this
requires a new position to
> coordinate between researchers and Foundation resources?
>
> Anyway, I think the big question right now is whether there are any
plans
> for RCOM that have been made by the research
team and the only people
who
> can answer that are folks in the research
team :)
>
> Best,
> Heather.
>
> Heather Ford
> Oxford Internet Institute <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk> Doctoral Programme
> EthnographyMatters <http://ethnographymatters.net> | Oxford Digital
> Ethnography Group <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=115>
>
http://hblog.org | @hfordsa <http://www.twitter.com/hfordsa>
>
>
>
>
> On 17 July 2014 08:49, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, I meant the community/communities of WMF. But the authority of
>> the community derives from WMF, which chooses to delegate such
matters. I
>> think that “advise” is a good word to
use.
>>
>>
>>
>> Kerry
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> *From:* Amir E. Aharoni [mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il]
>> *Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 5:37 PM
>> *To:* kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and
>> communities
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys
>>
>>
>>
>> > WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who
can
>> and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes.
>>
>> I don't think that it really should be about WMF. The WMF shouldn't
>> enforce anything. The community can formulate good practices for
>> researchers and _advise_ community members not to cooperate with
>> researchers who don't follow these practices. Not much more is needed.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
>>
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>> “We're living in pieces,
>> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014-07-17 8:24 GMT+03:00 Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>om>:
>>
>> Just saying here what I already put on the Talk page:
>>
>>
>>
>> I am a little bothered by the opening sentence "This page documents the
>> process that researchers must follow before asking Wikipedia
contributors
>> to participate in research studies such
as surveys, interviews and
>> experiments."
>>
>> WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who can and
>> cannot recruit me for whatever purposes. What WMF does own is its
>> communication channels to me as a contributor and WMF has a right to
>> control what occurs on those channels. Also I think WMF probably
should
be
>> concerned about both its readers and its
contributors being recruited
>> through its channels (as either might be being recruited). I think this
>> distinction should be made, e.g.
>>
>> "This page documents the process that researchers must follow if they
>> wish to use Wikipedia's (WMF's?) communication channels to recruit
people
>> to participate in research studies such
as surveys, interviews and
>> experiments. Communication channels include its mailing lists, its
Project
>> pages, Talk pages, and User Talk pages
[and whatever else I've
forgotten]."
>>
>>
>>
>> If researchers want to recruit WPians via non-WMF means, I don’t think
>> it’s any business of WMF’s. An example might be a researcher who
wanted
to
>> contact WPians via chapters or thorgs; I
would leave it for the
>> chapter/thorg to decide if they wanted to assist the researcher via
their
>> communication channels.
>>
>>
>>
>> Of course, the practical reality of it is that some researchers
>> (oblivious of WMF’s concerns in relation to recruitment of WPians to
>> research projects) will simply use WMF’s channels without asking nicely
>> first. Obviously we can remove such requests on-wiki and follow up any
>> email requests with the commentary that this was not an approved
request.
>> In my category of [whatever else I’ve
forgotten], I guess there are
things
>> like Facebook groups and any other social
media presence.
>>
>>
>>
>> Also to be practical, if WMF is to have a process to vet research
>> surveys, I think it has to be sufficiently fast and not be overly
demanding
>> to avoid the possibility of the
researcher giving up (“too hard to deal
>> with these people”) and simply spamming email, project pages, social
media
>> in the hope of recruiting some
participants regardless. That is, if we
make
>> it too slow/hard to do the right thing,
we effectively encourage doing
the
>> wrong thing. Also, what value-add can we
give them to reward those who
do
>> the right thing? It’s nice to have a
carrot as well as a stick when it
>> comes to onerous processes J
>>
>>
>>
>> Because of the criticism of “not giving back”, could we perhaps do
>> things to try to make the researcher feel part of the community to make
>> “giving back” more likely? For example, could we give them a slot
every
now
>> and again to talk about their project in
the R&D Showcase? Encourage
them
>> to be on this mailing list. Are we at a
point where it might make
sense to
>> organise a Wikipedia research conference
to help build a research
>> community? Just thinking aloud here …
>>
>>
>>
>> Kerry
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> *From:* wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
>> wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Aaron
>> Halfaker
>> *Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 6:59 AM
>> *To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities
>> *Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys
>>
>>
>>
>> RCOM review is still alive and looking for new reviewers (really,
>> coordinators). Researchers can be directed to me or Dario (
>> dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org) to be assigned a reviewer. There is also
a
>> proposed policy on enwiki that could use
some eyeballs:
>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
>> nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> phoebe ayers, 16/07/2014 19:21:
>>
>> > (Personally, I think the answer should be to resuscitate RCOM, but
>> > that's easy to say and harder to do!)
>>
>> IMHO in the meanwhile the most useful thing folks can do is subscribing
>> to the feed of new research pages:
>> <
>>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&feed=atom…
>
It's easier to build a functioning RCOM out of an active community of
"reviewers", than the other way round.
Nemo
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