Hello everyone,

I think one of the problems with WikiSym - especially the research tracks - is

that it is (mostly) an academic conference and so is almost entirely dependent

on the academic pool (+ funding challenges etc) for participants. That said,

not sure what the actual problem is that you are pointing to. The research tracks are set up the way they are set up to provide researchers with a quality-controlled publication mechanism that evaluates (and values) their work. Academic currency, that is :-)

Conference cost is a wholly separate issue. WikiSym + OpenSym is very cheap compared to most other academic conferences, and we are constantly pushing for lowering the prices.

we're co-located with Wikimania this year which means that hopefully we can

draw from a larger group of practitioners and researchers.

The community track as well as open space will provide lots of outlets for anything that does not have to or does not want to pass academic peer review. There's ample space!

I'll definitely reach out to the WikiWomen's Collective and hopefully with

enough time to plan ahead, we'll be able to engage more women in next year's

event!

Sounds good to me.

Dirk

On Nov 23, 2012, at 7:57 PM, Fuster, Mayo wrote:

Hello!

Thank you Heather for the note!. The call looks interesting to me, but I

would suggest to add gender inclusion as a topic at the call for paper, as

it is a central problem in Wikipedia.

Additionally, I would encourage the organizers of Wikisym 2013 to make an

extra effort in order to assure engaging women in the conference. In 2012,

the organizers of Wikisym were highly predominantly male: 89% of the

Symposium Committee, 78% of the Program Committee, and 80% of the program of

speakers were men (according to the data provided at

http://www.wikisym.org/ws2012/bin/view/Main/Schedule). While other

technological related conference (such as OK Fest and Personal Democracy

Forum) are able to engage a better gender balance (data provided here:

http://wiki.digital-commons.net/Gender).

In case it could he of help, this wiki collect best practices to engage

women in technology related conferences and list of women experts:

http://wiki.digital-commons.net/Gender

The WikiWomen's Collaborative wiki might also be a useful resource:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:WikiWomen%27s_Collaborative

Thank you again. Have a nice day! Mayo

       «·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·»

«·´¨*·¸¸« Mayo Fuster Morell ».¸.·*¨`·»    @Lilaroja

        «·´`·.(¸.·´(¸.·* *·.¸)`·.¸).·´`·»

Fellow. Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Harvard University.

Researcher. Institute of Government and Public Policies. Autonomous

University of Barcelona.

Ph.D European University Institute

Website: http://www.onlinecreation.info

________________________________________

From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org

<mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>

[wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] on behalf of Heather Ford

[hfordsa@gmail.com]

Sent: Friday, November 23, 2012 8:34 PM

To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities

Cc: Mark Graham

Subject: [Wiki-research-l] advice on Wikipedia topics for WikiSym 2013

Mark Graham and I are co-chairs of the Wikipedia Track at next year's

WikiSym conference (now with added OpenSym!) and we're preparing the call

for papers to go out Friday week. There has been such great discussion on

this list in the past about what is currently missing from Wikipedia

research that I thought I'd send our draft to you in case there are items

that you think we might add? Our current suggestions below:

      • What do particular articles or groups or articles tell us about the

norms, governance and architecture of Wikipedia and its impact on media,

politics and the social sphere? How is information on Wikipedia being shaped

by the materiality of Wikipedia infrastructure?

      • What is the impact of all/some of Wikipedia’s 211 language editions

having on achieving the project’s goal to represent the “sum of all human

knowledge”? Do smaller language editions follow the same development path as

larger language editions? Can different representations in different

languages tell us anything about cultural, national or regional differences?

      • What are the methodological challenges to studying Wikipedia? How

are researchers engaging with innovative methodologies to solve some of

these problems? How are other researchers using traditional or

well-established methods to study Wikipedia?

      • How are wiki projects other than Wikipedia evolving? What are the

benefits to studying other wiki projects and can comparisons and

generalisations be made from our observations of these systems?

      • How does information contained in Wikipedia shape our understanding

of broader social, economic, and political practices and processes? What

theoretical frameworks in social, economic, legal and other relevant

theoretical traditions can be applied to enrich the academic discourse on

Wikipedia?

Also really looking forward to some great papers next year. We think that

it's a really good thing that Wikipedia research has a separate track next

year and we're hoping that it's going to really strengthen the quality of

research. Looking forward to any suggestions you might have.

Best,

Heather.

Heather Ford

Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Programme

www.ethnographymatters.net <http://www.ethnographymatters.net>

@hfordsa on Twitter

http://hblog.org

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@hfordsa on Twitter

http://hblog.org

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