The tone of the sentence in question
'it is disappointing that the main purpose appears to be completing a
thesis, with little thought to actually improving Wikipedia'
could have been written as
'It would be more useful for the Wikipedia community of practice if the
author discussed or even spelled out the implications of the research for
improving Wikipedia".
This suggestion is based on my own impression that [Wiki-research-l]
has mainly two groups of readers: community of practice and community of
knowledge. It is okay to have some group tensions for creative/critical
inputs. Still, a neutral tone is better for assessment, and an encouraging
tone might work a bit better to encourage others to fill the *gaps* (both
practice and knowledge ones).
Also, the factors such as originally intended audience and word limits
may determine how much a writer can do for *due weight* (similar to
[[WP:due]]). If the original (academic) author failed to address the
implications for practices satisfactory, a research newsletter contributor
can point out what s/he thinks the potential/actual implications are. (My
thanks to the research newsletter's voluntary contributors for their unpaid
work!)
While I understand that the monthly research newsletter has its own
perspective and interests different from academic newsletters, it does not
sacrifice the integrity of the newsletter to be gentle and specific. I
would recommend a minor edit to the sentence as the the newsletter could be
read by any one in the world, not just the Wikipedians. It is
public/published for all readers, and thus please do not assume the readers
know the context of Wikipedia research.
Best,
han-teng liao
2014-07-01 19:37 GMT+07:00 Heather Ford <[email protected]>:
> Thanks so much for the newsletter [1]! Always a great read...
>
> But have to just say that comments like this: 'it is disappointing that
> the main purpose appears to be completing a thesis, with little thought
> to actually improving Wikipedia' [2] are really harsh and a little unfair.
> The student is studying Wikipedia - they can hardly only be interested in
> completing their thesis. We need to remember that researchers are at very
> different stages of their careers, they have very different motivations,
> and different levels of engagement with the Wikipedia community, but that
> *all* research on Wikipedia contributes to our understanding (even if as a
> catalyst for improvements). We want to encourage more research on
> Wikipedia, not attack the motivations of people we know little about -
> particularly when they're just students and particularly when this
> newsletter is on housed on Wikimedia Foundation's domain.
>
> Best,
> Heather.
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2014/June
> [2]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2014/June#.22Recommending_reference_materials_in_context_to_facilitate_editing_Wikipedia.22
>
> 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>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
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