+1 Thanks for your really thoughtful comments, Joe, Han-Teng.

Nemo, would you be willing to add a note to the review and/or contacting
the researcher?

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 2 July 2014 05:17, h <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> [email protected]
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>>
>>
>
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