Good points. Which is why I suggest refocusing RCOM from trying to
address the rants of few malcontents about "too many surveys" (read:
more than 0) to doing something more useful for the research community
(and Wikipedia one). Reorganize research pages. Advertise the existence
of the reorganized site. Develop tools to make research into Wikipedia
easier, and/or pressure WMF to develop those tools (and once we have
such tools they can be used as a carrot to tempt people into registering
their research programs on meta or such).
--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
On 7/18/2014 06:37, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
First, I wanted to highlight the important issue that Heather raises
here, because although it's a separate issue, it's an important one:
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 2:38 AM, Heather Ford <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
...
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.
As a community-run group, RCOM doesn't have any role in making
non-public data available to researchers. However, Aaron and I are
putting together a proposal for a workshop
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:CSCW15_workshop> that would
address issues like this. That's work we're doing in an official
capacity, as opposed to the RCOM work, which is volunteer.
On RCOM more generally... I think clarifying the role of the
committee, and getting a larger and more diverse set of people
involved, might help make RCOM work. But as Aaron can attest, it is
difficult to get people to agree on what RCOMs role should be, let
alone get them to work for RCOM.
I've been involved with RCOM for a while, albeit not very actively.
Unfortunately, I think that the fact that the only people who "review"
requests /happen to be*/ WMF staffers contributes to confusion about
RCOM's role and it's authority. IMO, if RCOM or any other subject
recruitment review process is to succeed, we need:
* more wiki-researchers who are willing to regularly participate in
both peer review /and/ in developing better process guidelines and
standards (it's really just Aaron right now)
* more /Wikipedians/ who are willing to do the same
* some degree of buy-in from the Wikimedia community as a whole.
RCOM needs legitimacy. But where, and from whom? Subject
recruitment is a global concern, but the proposed subject
recruitment process is focused on en-wiki (mostly because that's
where most of the relevant research activities /that we are aware
of/ are happening). How to make RCOM more global?
RCOM is in a tough spot right now. We can't force researchers to
submit their proposals, or abide by the
suggestions/recommendations/decisions/whatever that result from their
review. But because we /look like /an official body, it's easy to
blame us for failing to prevent disruptive research (if you're a
community member), for "rubber stamping" research that we like
(ditto), or for drowning research in red tape (if you're a
wiki-researcher).
- J
*we were wiki-researchers first!
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 <http://hblog.org/> | @hfordsa
<http://www.twitter.com/hfordsa>
On 17 July 2014 08:49, Kerry Raymond <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>]
*Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 5:37 PM
*To:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>; 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
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>:
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:*[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *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 ([email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>) 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)
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 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&hidebots=1&hideredirs=1&limit=500&offset=&namespace=202>
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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--
Jonathan T. Morgan
Learning Strategist
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF)
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_%28WMF%29>
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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